He stepped into her quarters, filled with questions and concern and apprehension, but determined to make things better. He couldn't stand the divide that had grown between them, and now seemed like the right time to try and steer things back to the way they had been, before they had entered the void.
She was standing by the window, where she had been most of the times he'd been to her quarters in the last few months, watching the stars, her arms crossed.
His heart fell. She wasn't any better. Yes she had left her quarters, spent the day on the bridge, tried to sacrifice herself for her crew – but whatever was wrong with her was still very much there.
'Captain,' he greeted.
He had been avoiding calling her 'Kathryn', as every time he'd used it she'd simply pushed him further away. Captain was safer, it meant that she had to listen to him, it was calling to her sense of Duty and that was something she could never push away.
He could still hear her words echoing in his mind.
'Are you ready to Captain this ship?'
It's not that he was ever going to let her go, but the fact that was the last thing she had intended to say to him in private had hurt. He had always imagined that if a moment like that did arrive, there would be something between them, a final goodbye of some sort.
But no.
There had been nothing.
He had felt the hope fade from his mind fast in that moment, but there was no way he was going to let her sacrifice herself. Not for the sake of two years. Not for anything.
She turned slowly to face him and he felt his heart sink even further. Her eyes weren't the familiar warm place he had grown to love, they were cold, distant, lonely.
'You disobeyed my direct order,' she whispered.
He didn't expect the anger that rose in him at that moment. He wanted to point out that she actually hadn't ordered him to do anything, and he had ordered the crew not to listen to her. He wanted to shout at her and tell her that losing their Captain was no way to improve crew morale. That they needed her.
But instead he said nothing.
Their relationship had become so strained her didn't even know how to talk to her anymore.
They stood for a few moments, her eyes cold and blank and he was sure his were ablaze with anger. He was about to speak when she did.
'Thank you.'
Her mask slipped, suddenly he could see it all. The pain in her eyes, the absolute devastation she had talked herself into during the last couple of months, the fact that she needed someone to hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay, but that she would never ask for or accept if it was offered.
'I wasn't going to let you die,' he spoke softly. 'Not as my Captain and definitely not as my…'
He paused.
As his what?
Friend?
They had barely spoken for two months, and the way he felt was hardly what he would feel for a friend who had treated him that way. He had known without a doubt that he loved her for years, but watching the chasm open up between them had only confirmed that she wasn't only the person he loved, but an entire part of his soul.
Friend didn't quite seem to cover that.
She narrowed her eyes at him and took a step forward.
He'd paused too long.
'You no longer consider me your friend?' she asked, and he could hear the hurt in her voice.
How was he meant to get out of this one? How did you even talk your way out of this topic?
'Of course I do,' he responded, also taking a step towards her.
They were close enough now. He took her hands with his, ignoring the way she flinched as he did so. He considered letting go when he felt her reaction, but she didn't try to pull away so he held her hands loosely, rubbing a thumb softly over each.
'I'm just not sure friend entirely conveys the way that I feel about you,' he whispered.
There. He'd said it. Broached a topic that neither of them had broached in a number of years. He focused on their joined hands, unable to look her in the eyes, unable to know if she was panicking, trying to find a way out of the situation.
To his surprise he felt her hands soften beneath his, her fingers wrap around his and squeeze them.
He looked up.
There were tears in her eyes and a soft smile on her lips.
'Chakotay,' she whispered. 'I've missed you.'
'Then why did you insist on pushing me away?' he asked.
'Because I needed you,' she replied. 'And I knew where that would lead and…'
She paused.
'And?' he asked.
'And it's against protocol.'
She barely sounded convinced that it was even a problem at that moment, letting her eyes drop to the floor as she said it. He let go of a hand and reached up to push her hair back from her face, tracing a finger down the side of her face before pushing her chin back up to look directly at him.
'I'm not going to fight you on that,' he spoke carefully. 'But you need to understand something, Kathryn. This crew? This mix of Stafleet and Maquis and whoever else we've found along the way, they're our family. Friends. This is not a normal starship. Most of these people expect to spend the rest of their lives here, and you insist on only working to solve the problem, without accepting that this could be how things are. I thought I taught you this once before, and yet here we are.'
'I can't give up hope that easily,' she replied. 'I can't believe that it will take us seventy years to reach Earth.'
Hope.
'And I also can't give up hope that easily,' he whispered.
She looked at him, obviously confused. 'I don't…'
'I stay by your side, day in and day out, even when you locked yourself in here, I spent time outside your room every night, listening, trying to make sure you were okay without intruding on your space, because I love you. And I want you to understand that I wake up every day hoping that maybe this day, maybe this ordinary day, will be the one where you turn to me and say that you have accepted all your research has been destroyed by the storm and it's time to just live our lives here. It's not about giving up hope, Kathryn, it's about accepting the parameters of it.'
She seemed to freeze in place in front of him, and he could see the clocks ticking over in her mind, but he had no idea what they were analysing.
Her eyes were searching his, but other than that she hadn't moved at all. Her hand that still held his was frozen in place, he wasn't even entirely sure she was breathing.
'Kathryn, please say something.'
'You love me?'
The panic hit him.
Had he just said that?
He had been so distracted by his rant to her that he hadn't even realised he'd said those words as part of it. He replayed the moment in his mind.
Oh.
Now it was his turn to freeze.
He had said it to her in his mind so many times that he hadn't even realised when the words finally came out of his mouth. He knew it shouldn't matter, they were just words, and there was no way that she hadn't already known how he felt, but she probably hadn't expected to hear it.
He could deny it, he could say that she was his friend, of course he loved her. He loved all his friends.
But he couldn't.
She knew better.
'Yes,' he said simply. 'Kathryn, I love you. I've loved you since New Earth, probably before that, but that was when I accepted it. And I have been waiting for you to be ready to hear that but I guess you never will be. I'm sorry.'
He let go of her hands and turned, heading for the door, embarrassed and fighting off a rising panic inside him. He need to meditate or go to the holodeck, anything. Away from Voyager and from her.
'Chakotay,' she said quietly.
He stopped, not turning, his hand moments from hitting the button to open her door.
'I love you too,' she whispered.
He waited for a moment, waited for the but, for the excuse, the reasoning.
Nothing came.
The words hung there between them, the silence louder than any battle he had ever been a part of.
Finally he turned to face her. She seemed so small, as though admitting her feelings had removed her strength, and he suddenly understood why she was so afraid to say them. They made her vulnerable, she wasn't someone comfortable with emotions, particularly when having those emotions meant breaking protocol.
He let himself smile slightly, giving her permission to do the same.
A smile broke out across her face, the infectious kind that he hadn't seen in a long time.
'Chakotay, I'm sorry I pushed you away,' she continued, closing the distance between them in a few short steps. 'I've never felt this way about anyone, not even Mark, being so completely a part of someone that I can't exist without them anymore. And that scared me, because I didn't want to drag you down with me. So I pushed you away and I shouldn't have.'
The floodgates of truth were open and he wondered how long they had before she shut it down again.
He wasn't going to wait and find out.
He leaned in and kissed her lightly, pulling back the moment he had. Regretting his decision as his pulse began to race and he was pretty sure his heart had migrated into his throat. His stomach dropping into his feet somewhere. Everything was wrong and he was lightheaded.
'I'm sorry,' he closed his eyes, not wanting to see her face.
He had definitely overstepped the line now.
To his surprise he felt her lips against his a moment later, her hands on arms.
'Don't be,' she whispered as she pulled back. 'Stay. Please.'
It didn't feel like an invitation for anything that would break protocol, just a request. To be there for her. He placed his hands on her arms and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
'Any time,' he replied.
He pulled her in for a hug and felt her relax beneath his arms.
'You know, we can't go back now,' he said quietly. 'I'm not going to let you push me away again.'
She laughed quietly, pulling out of the hug and tilting her head to smile at him. 'I think you're forgetting who's in charge here…'
He narrowed his eyes at her and she genuinely laughed this time.
He felt his heart swell in his chest, as though it might just explode out. It had been so long since he saw her laugh that he had almost forgotten what it was like to see her face light up that way.
'What?' she questioned, and he realised he must have been smiling back at her.
'It's good to see you happy,' he responded. 'It's been too long.'
'I'm not promising that I can be better yet, but this feels like a step in the right direction,' she admitted.
'Did you want to talk about it?' he questioned.
She shook her head lightly. 'Not tonight. Perhaps tomorrow.'
Tomorrow.
It suddenly all felt so comfortable, so natural, so entirely worth everything that had led up to that moment.
'How will this work?' she asked, changing the topic.
'On shift we're Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay,' he started. 'At night, we're whatever we want to be. No one has to know.'
'Chakotay, the gossip mill on this ship runs at Warp 8,' she smiled.
'And it's been running about us for a good four years now,' he replied.
She seemed genuinely surprised at that comment. 'Excuse me?'
'That never got back to you?' he smiled, knowing she would hate it.
'No, I think you have some gossip to catch me up on,' she responded. 'But first, let me get some wine.'
He watched as she headed for her kitchen, taking a seat by the window, a smile spreading across his face. This hadn't been his intention for the day, but it was exactly what he had hoped for every day for three years.
This was how things were meant to be.
And for once he didn't care what happened the next day on the bridge, or if he was going to upset someone.
For the first time in months he felt like everything was going to be all right.