"Don't you say a word."
She stopped pacing and stood in front of him, her face a mere inch from his chin. Chakotay had seen her angry before, the last occasion at that hapless Ororan ambassador, but never at him. This time he was the one at the receiving end of her death glare, the thin hard lips and full-blown ire.
"I've got more than enough reasons to demote you down to third class crewman. I should also throw you in the brig for ten days while I'm at it, and get you to do double shifts in maintenance for the next three months when you get out."
Chakotay clamped down whatever he was going to say. She was baiting him to defend himself, and that was not something he was ready to do right now. At least, she'd had the decency to wait until they were alone in the briefing room before flying into him. Given the haste with which Kim and Ayala had filed through the door, they too had caught on what she had in store for him from her curt questions and dagger-like glances in his direction.
Blinding splinters of blue sky cutting through the tall trees. He is running, his heart pounding.
Her eyes drilled into him, her finger poking hard at his chest with each point. "One, you disobeyed a direct order. Two, you put the mission in jeopardy. Three, and worst of all, you risked the lives of the away team."
Her words hurt. The last thing he wanted was the captain thinking he had put the team in danger on purpose. His fists clenched.
"No."
"No? How come they followed you when you jumped out of cover, then?"
"I told them to go back to the shuttle. Ordered them to. They said so during the debriefing."
Deafening weapon fire shred the tree trunks as he tears through the dense undergrowth. He hardly feels the shower of exploding shards slicing through his skin.
Her smile was not gentle, her voice taking on a scathing tone. "What a coincidence. You gave them the same order I had given you. The one you completely ignored."
The order to leave.
To leave her behind.
To leave her behind in the hands of those—
He slowly opened his fists, his body so tense he was almost shaking.
"If the situation had been reversed and one of us had been taken prisoner, you would have jumped to their help too," he managed to say through clenched teeth.
"I'm not talking about a team member here. I'm talking about the chain of command."
"The chain of command?" he asked, dumbfounded.
"How can you expect them to follow your orders if you won't obey mine? This morning, when I put those four pips on my collar, I was your commanding officer, I believe." She tilted her head and there they were, neatly aligned against the sharp line of her neck. The pips which were supposed to keep her alive, to make her invulnerable to weapons and deadly aliens.
"Don't pull rank on me, Captain. I couldn't leave you behind and you know that."
Janeway is bleeding all over him, slung across his shoulders in a fireman's carry . Claws of fear rip through his chest that she won't make it to the safety of the shuttle if he can't run faster.
"Do I need to write down my orders now, Commander? Give them to you in triplicate?" Hands on hips, she was so wound up her knuckles were white against the black uniform top.
Had he been so wrong to refuse to listen to her order? What did she expect of him? He drew near, towering over her. "You do that," he spat out. "You do just that. Make it a written order and next time you are in trouble, I'll just walk away."
She took a step back. For a fleeting second, he saw uncertainty, maybe even a glint of fear reflected on her face. Good. Anything that would help put some sense in that thick skull of hers.
"I would have been fine, Commander. I would have got away."
Did she think him that stupid?
The panic in her eyes does not last long before she is goading the attackers, giving the team a chance to escape while the aliens' attention is on her. After a short scuffle she drops to her knees, her own phaser put to her head.
"Let me see. Stab wound to the abdomen, a broken wrist, concussion, and you would have been fine? Seriously?"
Garro not three weeks ago; the shuttle crash early in the month; those aliens today. It could not continue like that. Not if he valued his sanity. Because if she was to die—
He stepped forward, and she tried to move away from him. His hands reached across to the wall behind her, effectively pinning her against the bulkhead. "Or does the captain own the exclusive right to self-sacrifice on this ship?" An inch closer and their chests would be touching.
"Don't you play that game with me, Commander." She jutted her chin. "If I remember well, you did exactly the same thing on Garro."
"And you got almost killed too," he roared, before spinning on his heels to put some distance between him and the unbending source of his anguish.
Heavy silence filled the room. His jaw was hurting from trying to keep his anger at bay. Nothing he could say would change her opinion that her first officer had failed her. What he did hitch to do was to spend the rest of the evening pounding a few aliens to mush in his boxing holoprogram. Taking a few deep breaths, he waited for her dismissal. If she wanted to blame him, she would let him know his punishment in due course.
"So, what now?" she said, standing close to the briefing room table sitting between them. "For the next seventy-five years of our journey, I'll wonder what orders you are going to follow and which ones you are going to flout? Is that what you are condemning me to, Commander? Never knowing which side of the coin you'll fancy next: heads you'll go with the rightful captain of this ship, tails you'll do exactly the opposite?"
He should have known better than think Janeway was going to let the matter lie. "How are you so sure that 'mistake' of mine, because it's so evidently a mistake according to you, has got anything to do with you being the captain?"
"Then why, Chakotay?" She threw her arms in the air. "Why?"
Then, as if a new thought had hit her all of a sudden, she slowly brought her arms down, staring at him and her face growing pale. "Or is it because I am a Starfleet officer?"
"What?" he asked, taken aback.
She leaned both hands on the table in front of her. "Is that what this is all about? Maquis against Starfleet?"
His mind in turmoil, he grasped the back of the nearest chair. She was accusing him of Maquis deception? Did she even know how many talks of mutiny he had quashed during the first month of their journey? How he had had to put the fear of god in Seska and Jarvin to make them understand the new order of things?
He'd never talked to Janeway about any of this. Not a word, and maybe that had been his mistake, but it was his responsibility alone to deal with his former crew. He shook his head in desperate denial.
She must have mistaken his silence for an admission of guilt, because she held one hand up as if in supplication, or perhaps to ward off a truth she was loath to face. "Understand that if it is the case, I am the one who made an error in judgment when I offered you the position. I didn't think about what it would cost you to be back on a Starfleet ship, wearing a Starfleet uniform. I forced you to abandon your Maquis principles you obviously still hold dear, and for that I am very sorry."
Chakotay could not believe what he was hearing. The woman was blaming herself. The damn woman was blaming herself. All because he had refused to obey that one command. Because he had acted on his belief that Kathryn Janeway couldn't die there and then.
Before he could open his mouth, she walked to the window of the briefing room, her back to him. "Whatever the reason, if you can't or won't obey my orders any longer…" Janeway's breath hitched, and she lowered her head. Her voice was so low, he had to strain to catch what she was saying. "Then there's no place for you on the bridge, Chakotay, and I'll have to trust someone else with the job of being my first officer."
He froze, unwilling to consider a position that was not close to her. Since that disastrous shuttle crash two weeks prior, he had realised that there would be many more occasions over their long journey home where the captain would be lying on the biobed, alive by a mere thread before waking up gasping and dazed. Hurting. And that, one day, she might not wake up at all, turning ashen and cold.
That evening, in sickbay, he had also realised that he more than cared for the woman who was Kathryn Janeway. That he would do anything to stay by at her side, to serve under her, to protect her. Not because it was his duty according to Starfleet, or to repay his debt for not having been thrown in the brig as the Maquis leader.
Her arm had found the support of the vertical beam next to the window. He'd never seen her so lost, so miserable, but he dared not move towards her for fear of doing something rash once again. Something that was not part of his duties. Something he would regret doing this time because it would not help either of them.
Instead, he turned the chair around and sat down, his forearms resting on the table top, his fingers spread open on the hard wood-like surface. This was a conversation they should have had weeks ago. Bonding over animal guides or deliberately omitting a few facts from mission reports were never going to be enough to forge a command team which could, should, trust each other in times of danger.
But meek and compliant, he could not be, despite what others might think when they saw him stand all clad in red and black by the captain. Never had been even if many thought he had sold his soul to Starfleet and forgotten his principles for the practicalities of going home.
"Some among the Maquis told me I should have put pressure on you in exchange for my aid in blowing up the Caretaker array. As if I had had the time to calculate the price of my help then."
He didn't know how exactly—a stillness in the air maybe, or the soft sound of her feet on the carpet—but after weeks working with the captain, he could sense when she was looking at him even as he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the table.
"Others insisted I should have beamed on Voyager's bridge with a fully armed Maquis contingent. Taken the advantage right then and forced the Starfleet crew aside."
He heard the unsaid question. "The Kazon were like a wake of vultures, circling your ship with my crew onboard. Starting a bloodbath on the bridge was the last thing on my mind."
Without saying a word, she sat across him, the table wide between them. He could only see her hands clasped together—small, smooth skin, long fingers.
He liked her hands. They were always on the move, as expressive as her voice. Moving through the air when she was thinking aloud. Touching him, resting on his chest, threading through his arm.
The hard boot lands on her wrist, shattering the bones. The alien takes the phaser from her opened fingers and rests its muzzle against the back of her head.
He welcomed the chill that crawled down his spine. It bolstered his resolution to forge ahead, to make her understand why he would never obey that order of hers. Because she was right. Trust was indeed the problem here—her definition of the term more to the point. To him, trust meant something totally different from blind obedience. "I was told repeatedly that you were not as experienced as I was. You'd been Voyager's CO for only a few weeks, your hold on the ship and crew too recent to fight me if I wanted to seize the captain's seat."
Janeway's hands curled into fists, but she remained silent, hearing him out.
'Her first officer is dead, her Chief Medical Officer is laying in his own morgue. Janeway has nobody to rely on. Why not get rid of her and become the rightful captain, Chakotay?' Seska had whispered those words in his ears more than once until he had told her to hold her tongue. For good, he hoped.
"That is what I heard at the beginning," Chakotay continued. "When things went wrong and tempers flared, when another away mission came back with little to fill the ship's empty stores. When the Kazon attacks intensified. When the reality of seventy-five years trekking home set in."
"Tuvok warned me, but I didn't listen," she said, her right thumb worrying her left hand.
"He warned you against me?"
"Not in so many words. But for a while he was very intent in keeping me on the ship, eager to shield me by reciting protocols. He is the Chief of Security, and I chose to ignore his misgivings."
She let out a few breaths. "So why didn't you…?"
"Take over the ship? Maroon the Starfleet crew on an M class planet? Sit in your seat?"
"Yes. We have to talk about this. After today, I need to understand what happened. I need to understand you."
For all his bravery in the face of danger, Chakotay wasn't ready to confront the depth of his feelings for her, let alone bring them into the open. "For one," he said, playing it safe, "neither crew would
have survived long by themselves, lost in the Delta quadrant and at the mercy of countless species who don't take too kindly to those Federation crossing their borders."
Her hands stilled. "It was the logical thing to do, and I thought we were in agreement on that."
"I still am. I haven't changed my mind. And when you asked me to be your first officer, I also agreed to make this ship a Starfleet ship with one set of rules, one crew, one goal."
"And you've discharged your duties admirably. You are a strong, determined leader in your own right. You have been this crew's pillar of strength. You are also kind and considerate, and you've taken so much more of my load than I ever asked for. That's why it's so hard for me to figure out what changed today."
They were going round in circles. She needed a 'good' reason to keep him as her first officer. A Starfleet-sanctioned reason preferably. Great. That was going to be easy to find in their situation. Of course, Starfleet-protocols-on-legs Tuvok would most probably be able to recite a couple in his sleep. There had to be one which applied here—
"Regulation 45 Section 4b."
"What?"
It felt good to put her on the wrong-foot for a change. "Regulation 45 Section 4b states that when a commanding officer is incapacitated by injury or sickness or due to other causes, the next officer in line becomes—"
"The commanding officer. I know the regulations as well as you do."
Chakotay was on a roll and dared a satisfied smile. "There you are. I was the commanding officer and acted entirely within Starfleet protocols."
"You overruled an order which I gave before I was…incapacitated!"
"That's a matter of opinion. The way I saw it, you were already in enemy's hands by that time. You had therefore become a member of my team, no different from Kim or Carey. I was well within the rule book to ignore an order you were in no position to give."
Keeping his face neutral, he waited for her to find a hole in his interpretation of Starfleet regulations.
She looked away and swallowed hard before nodding curtly. "It seems that you were after all acting within the letter of Starfleet rules today, Commander. I assume you reacquainted yourself with that particular regulation as part of your role as my first officer, and as such I'll leave you to deal with Ensign Kim and Lieutenant Ayala."
Chakotay relaxed the tension in his shoulders. He had beaten her at her own game, and she knew it. More importantly, he was still her First Officer, and that was the only thing that counted. "Thank you, Captain. You have my word that it was never my intention to undermine your authority. Far from it."
"Then what I am supposed to do differently from now on, so you obey my orders instead of trying to save my life at all costs?"
"Next time, you shouldn't tempt fate by asking to die too early." He said in a gentle tone. It was no game to look after the captain, but she had to understand he'd do exactly the same again if the circumstances were to repeat themselves.
A glare threatened. "I wasn't—"
He stretched his arm across the table. "There's a saying among my people that one should be careful what you ask the spirits in case they grant your request tenfold. It's mostly meant for kids," he conceded. "If you prefer, I could tell you a story about how warriors have to learn to live so they can fight another fight. But I can't. I am not that clever."
A shadow of a smile lifted the corner of her mouth, and her hand moved forward as if on its own accord. "Are you sure? My animal guide seemed to think I should have…"
"Faith in me, Captain?"
"Yes," she sighed, her gaze cast down for a couple of seconds.
"Then trust me when I say that nothing changed today, just the realisation this crew, this ship won't make it home without you, and I'll do whatever it takes to make sure you'll stay at the helm." There was more of course. So much more. Did she realise that?
"But it's unreasonable for them to think I'll always be around. My first officer might have to take the reins one day. It's in the role description, as is his oath to obey his captain. There's no leeway."
"I hope we will never get to that, and yes, your first officer will take over if he has to. Give the orders to maintain a course for home, like she did. He'll lead the ship when the captain is no longer there, but not yet. Not today." Their hands were almost touching across the expanse of the table, and he focused on her fingertips barely an inch from his. "Because you must realise that losing you would mean much more than the loss of my captain."
He had said so little, yet everything went still, the air heavy with expectations he didn't mean to lay on her. Before he could think of something to say, anything really because he had gone too far, her fingers moved closer and covered his.
"And believe me that as long as I am alive I don't want anybody else than you at my side, Chakotay."
Some moments etch into the mind without trying. The humming of Voyager's engines, the streaming stars behind Kathryn making her hair sparkle. A touch of mist in the blue of her eyes, the silly grin he could not contain.
Janeway broke the silence first and pushed herself upright. "I owe you an apology and a celebration, Commander."
He stood too. "A celebration?"
"Thanks to you, we can celebrate the ship's good fortune that the command team is alive and well."
"Another evening meal in your quarters, Captain?"
"Are you getting sick of them already?" she asked in a mocking tone.
"Not at all. In fact, I suggest we should have them more often."
"Regulation 101 Section 1a. The captain is to invite her first officer once a week for dinner in her quarters, weather permitting."
"I'll make sure Tuvok add that one to Voyager's protocols."
"You do that, Commander, you do that."
Inspired by a Stargate fic 'Next to Her Heart' by RhinoHill, posted on Archive Of Our Own.
My greatest thanks to Devovere and BlackVelvet42 for keeping everything on track. Any grammar/ spelling/ sentence errors are mine only.