Note: Just a bit of Valentine's Day J/C fluff. Blame it on the view over the lake as we walked to the pub for dinner.

THE GREAT GROWING MOON

"The Celts called it 'The Moon of Ice.'"

At the sound of her voice, the footsteps behind her stopped. Kathryn pulled her coat tighter around her body but didn't turn. She'd hoped for a moment or two away from the happy chatter inside the house, but she should have known he wouldn't let her get too far before he followed her across the yard and down to the snowy field.

"The Moon of Ice?"

She nodded toward the full moon rising above the distant treeline. "The February full moon. The Celts called it 'The Moon of Ice.' In medieval England they called it 'The Storm Moon' or 'The Wolf Moon.'"

He took a halting step toward her, his boots crunching on the frozen snow. "I didn't know that," he said.

"Your ancestors had names for it, too. 'Snow Moon.' 'Bony Moon.'"

He let out a slow breath. "I've also heard 'Hunger Moon.' I think that one was Algonquin. February would have been the coldest time of year. The fields would have been blanketed with snow, the lakes and rivers covered with ice. The hunting and fishing would have been bad, and the people would have been afraid of starvation."

Kathryn titled her head to catch the sound of the cold wind whistling across the barren field. "'Hunger Moon,'" she mused. "It's...evocative, isn't it? It whispers of deprivation and loss."

He took another step toward her. "Maybe. But it would also have been a time of drawing together around a warm fire, listening to the ancient tales, learning the lessons of patience and appreciation."

"Patience and appreciation?"

"Patience for a spring that will surely come again. And appreciation for what we have. For the food we've preserved to sustain us through the long winter. For a fire and a family to keep us warm." He moved to stand beside her, but still she refused to face him. "Did you know that the February full moon is the only moon of the month that's visible all night?"

She gave her head a small shake.

"It rises just after sunset and stays in the sky until dawn."

"A light to count on in the deep darkness. I like that." Kathryn raised her eyes and spotted the constellation Orion, proud and bright, overhead. "I missed these stars," she said.

He shifted in the snow beside her. "I think maybe the sky we're born under never leaves us," he said. "No other sky ever feels so familiar or comforting."

She finally glanced at his profile. The bright moonlight reflected off the snow gave his face an unearthly glow. "Do you miss your home stars?"

He blinked and nodded once, slowly. "A little. It's the daytime sky that I miss most, though. The light from a red dwarf is different." He smiled. "But you know that."

"Yes."

"That's what I miss. The color of the sky. The way the light looked filtered through the trees. The sunrises and sunsets." He tilted his head to one side. "But that place is gone now. And it hasn't been home for me since I was a boy."

They stood in silence for a time, watching the full moon rise in the east. Chakotay's words tumbled through Kathryn's mind. Sunrises and sunsets. The color of the sky. Home. She wondered where "home" was for him now, whether he had been able to disentangle himself from Voyager and start building something for himself, or if perhaps he missed their shipboard life as much as she did.

She shivered and pulled up the collar of her coat.

He glanced at her, plunging half his face into deep shadow and bringing the other half into full light, the lines of his tattoo black against his moonlit skin. "Are you cold? We should go back inside."

"Not yet."

"All right." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Why did you run away so quickly?"

A part of her wanted to rebuke him for jumping to conclusions about her sudden flight from the warm house, but realized it would be pointless and dishonest. Of course she had fled, and of course he would notice it. He probably even knew why and was asking just to get her to talk. She sighed. "Tom," she said simply.

"He didn't mean anything by it."

"I know."

"Then why-"

"You know why," she snapped. "You of all people know why."

He let out a great, gusty breath that hung in the air around them both before it swirled and dissipated on the wind. "It's been three months. It's time to let go."

"Don't you think I know that?" She whirled on him, suddenly furious with the night and the occasion and the cold and his solid, unexpected presence beside her. "It's all the counselors have been talking about. It's all my own mother has been talking about. 'Let it go, Kathryn,' they say, over and over again. Let go of the remorse. Let go of the anger. Let go of the shame and the sorrow and the…the guilt. And believe me, I would love to, Chakotay. I would love to. But I don't know how."

"Maybe you could start by forgiving yourself." He nodded back toward the house. "They have."

"How can you say that?" she cried. "How can you say they've forgiven me when I've deprived Joe Carey's boys of their father, Pete Durst's mother of her son, Gloria Young Bear's-"

"Stop, Kathryn," he said softly, his eyes boring into hers. "I know their names, all of their names, as well as you do. They haunt me, too."

"But it was my decision."

"That was almost eight years ago. And it was still the right decision."

"That doesn't make it any easier to live with."

"Doesn't it? You realize that if you hadn't decided to destroy the array that day, B'Elanna and I would probably on your list of the dead instead of Joe and Pete and Gloria and the rest of them."

She gave an inelegant snort of disbelief. "So I'm supposed to feel better because Joe's dead and you're not? My own selfishness makes it all right, is that it?"

He drew back from her as if she'd slapped him. "No, of course not. You know me better than that. Or at least I thought you did."

"So what is it you're trying to say?"

"That there were no better choices that day, and all the days that followed it." He bent low to look into her eyes. "When all your options were limited, you made the best decisions that you could. Yes, people died. Good people, and too many of them. But people would have died anyway. Maybe not those particular ones, but some would have. I vividly remember that lesson from Command School, and I'm sure you do, too. Not everyone who ships out with you will return with you, and if you can't handle that fact, you have no business being a starship Captain."

"I remember," she murmured.

"Given our circumstances out there," he continued, "it's a wonder you brought as many of us back as you did. It could have been far worse."

The full moon ducked behind a cloud, plunging the world around her into full darkness. A memory of Rudy Ransom's desperation rose up in Kathryn's mind, and right behind it, the vision of her own self, white-haired and resolute, but alone. So very alone. She dismissed them both quickly. "I know."

"Then put it to use," he said, and turned to face the moon again. "Please. Don't let this guilt destroy you."

Something in his voice, some tremor of concern that she hadn't heard in years, caused her throat to tighten. "I'm trying, Chakotay. I am. But it's not easy. And Tom's stupid question-"

"Forgive me for saying it, Kathryn, because I know he's one of your favorite pet projects and he's become almost a brother to me. But even though he's grown up a lot and he didn't mean anything by it, Tom Paris can still be kind of a jackass."

In spite of herself, Kathryn chuckled softly. "Don't I know it. I noticed you didn't answer him, either."

Chakotay ducked his head and rolled his shoulders, signs Kathryn had come to associate with discomfort. She raised her eyebrows at him in silent question. "I couldn't," he finally said, his lips twisting into a cringe. "Not with Seven sitting right there."

Kathryn frowned. "I don't understand."

He drew in a long breath and looked down at her with a sheepish expression. "We broke up weeks ago, but I couldn't very well admit that I never should have agreed to go out with her in the first place, not with her sitting right there."

Kathryn gasped. "That's the one thing? If you had it to do all over again, that's the only thing you would do differently?"

He shrugged. "That's it."

She took a step away from him. "Unbelievable."

"Is it? It's the one time I really feel like I compromised my own ethics out there. I realized that during the debriefings and it comes back to me every time I'm with the counselors. I can hold my head up high and know that I stuck to my principles day in and day out…except with Seven. I made a bad choice and I almost took advantage of someone who needed my patience and understanding, not my…um."

She raised a hand to stop whatever he was about to say next. "Don't."

"Right." He sighed and continued his blithe admission. "So that's it. That's the one thing I would do differently, and I can't even honestly call that a regret. It was really more of an…awakening. And I'm very grateful we got back to the Alpha Quadrant in time for me to grasp it."

She shook her head. "I would change so much."

"I know you would."

"I can't believe that you wouldn't. I don't believe it."

He said nothing in response. The silence grew uncomfortable between them. When she finally turned to face him, she saw the storm of suppressed emotion in his eyes and knew, maybe for the first time, that he regretted almost as much as she did. He'd simply learned to live with it all. She swallowed hard, staring at him, until he nodded once in acknowledgment. "You'll get there," he said gently. "It'll take longer for you, and it won't be easy. But you'll get there. And I'll be here if you need me. If you'll let me."

And there it was. The topic that had remained unspoken between them ever since they'd departed Voyager months ago, that hovered between them every time they encountered each other on the Starfleet grounds. She took a slow step toward him. "Why did you come here tonight?"

"Because your mother invited me." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Am I not welcome?"

"If my mother says you're welcome in her home, then you are."

He stood very still under her scrutiny. "But you disagree?" Kathryn raised her chin at him. Chakotay moved away from her and toward the house. "I'll go call for transport."

She took a hasty step forward and grabbed his elbow in her gloved hand. "Wait. I don't mean you're not welcome. Of course you're welcome."

His expression, when he turned back to her, was wary. "Then why the interrogation?"

"Because this dinner with the senior staff," she waved vaguely toward the house, "has become a more or less weekly thing with my mother. And I know she's invited you before, but you declined. This time, you didn't. I want to know why."

He sighed heavily and shuffled his feet in the snow. "I missed you," he said simply. "I wanted to see you. I thought maybe away from work and with a little time and distance from the Delta Quadrant behind us we could…figure things out."

"Things," she echoed. "You're going to have to be more specific than 'things.'"

He shook his head. "It's funny. I had all these grand plans when I got here, but now, standing here with you…I'm not sure I can be more specific."

She rolled her eyes and turned toward the treeline again, hiding her smirk from him. "You're not going to tell me a story, are you?"

His low, rolling laugh warmed her to her toes. "Sometimes I really dislike you," he said. "Do you know that?"

She twitched a shoulder at him. "Sometimes I really dislike you, too, Chakotay."

The full moon – Snow Moon, Bony Moon, Hunger Moon – emerged from the clouds and bathed them in bright, white light. Something shifted in Kathryn and settled more easily, as if an old burden had finally been lessened just enough to be comfortable, even welcome.

"You know, not all my ancestors came from North America," Chakotay said, and Kathryn smiled. So it wouldn't be a story, exactly, but of course he would weave his words with something ancient and metaphorical. "My line really traces back to Central and South America. Inca, Aztec, Maya."

She hummed her acknowledgment and encouragement for him to continue.

"February would be the height of summer there, and the beginning of the harvest season." He moved up behind her and wrapped a tentative arm around her shoulders. "The Inca would have called this moon hatun-pucuy quilla. The Moon of Ripening. The Great Growing Moon."

"The opposite of the Hunger Moon and the Celtic Snow Moon," she said, and leaned against him.

"Maybe we meet in the middle, Kathryn."

She waved a hand toward the snowy field. "Southern Indiana is hardly equatorial."

She felt him shake his head. "Maybe where we meet is not a physical place. It's somewhere between winter and summer, between deprivation and abundance, where we are content with what we have and grateful to be together."

"Sounds like home."

"It does, doesn't it?"

An old conversation from a long time ago came back to her. "'Home is wherever you are'?"

"Not quite," he said. He pulled her into his arms, tilting her face up to his as he tucked her body close to his. Even through both their coats, she could feel the warmth of him, so welcome even after all this time. "Home is wherever you are," he said, and kissed her.

-THE END-