6:27 am. Too late to go back to sleep, he reflected, as he caught sight of the dimly illuminated clock numbers, and rubbed his stiff neck. 'Kathryn?' he thought, then relaxed as he heard a faint sound of breathing from her sleeping quarters. So at least she had slept soundly through the night. He had sat opposite her for what seemed like an eternity last night, transfixed by the transformation of her troubled countenance to a childlike restfulness, before settling down to a fitful night's sleep on the couch. Starfleet furniture was clearly not designed for overnight guests.
Shaking out the uniform jacket that he had folded as a pillow then pulling it on, Chakotay began to unravel the previous night's events. He had come to Kathryn's quarters after a long conversation with Tom. Why had he come? He had seen her leave the mess hall an hour or so earlier; had he hoped that the half-finished bottle of wine from last night might still be waiting? Or had had it simply been intuition: had he sensed that something in her step was not quite as it should be?
Kathryn was exhausted, that much was clear. Usually any suggestion of her own vulnerability angered her: Chakotay had learned simply to stay quiet when he found her in her ready room in the late evening propping up her head over her computer after a long day, or insisting on discharging herself from Sickbay after an away mission—any suggestion otherwise would simply lead to another round of science experiments, or another set of diagnostics.
It was during the long weeks that Voyager spent in darkness after months of near-daily battles that her brisk, energetic temperament had finally broken, but when he had tried to reach her, to draw her out of her self-enforced exile in her quarters, she had pushed him away, retreating further into herself until another crisis would finally pull her back into the Captain's chair. This time, however, her ferocious inner strength must simply have given out: too exhausted to hold back the tears, too exhausted to enforce her own parameters.
But had Kathryn been the only one to breach her parameters last night? Chakotay's shoulders instinctively tensed as he recalled their conversation about New Earth. So she had remembered. At least he had only woken her once: she was a surprisingly deep sleeper, and outdoor work and meditation had helped calm his mind. But the Cardassians had still been there, at the edges of his consciousness, waiting for the twilight of sleep to slip into his dreams and wreak havoc on his home. Again. And again. Disregarding the advice the Doctor had given him as they left Voyager, he had hidden the hypospray from her, shoving it deep inside a cargo box, ashamed to admit that when the phaser fire in his mind grew too vivid, this was sometimes the only way to subdue the flashing lights and burning smells.
Of course, it was a two-edged sword. He had learned early in life to respect the power of the mind, born into a family whose minds could journey, but were also fragile. As a young man, frightened by the voices his grandfather heard, he had buried himself in astrophysics, as if science could push away the spirits of the skies. Years later—too late for his father—he had found the spirits (or had they had found him?) and he was quickly touched by the easy grace with which he could travel among them, connecting past and future as easily as a starship could set a course through the Alpha quadrant.
Sometimes he was surprised that not everyone shared the same colours of experience. As much as he appreciated the seemingly effortless way in which Kathryn could bring clear, rational thinking to any situation, her mind was animated by science, not spirituality. In the early Voyager days he had summoned up the courage to offer his new captain a spirit quest: she willingly accepted, but even before she put her hand on the akoonah, his heart sank as he could tell that for her this was a fleeting, exotic experience, like a new ethnic dish in Neelix's kitchen, rather than a powerful reach into the beyond. Since then, they had been through so many experiences together, had grown used to one another: yet here their minds remained light years apart.
Bringing his thoughts back to the present, Chakotay rose to his feet. 6:40. He considered returning to his quarters but Kathryn's quiet breathing seemed to radiate a special calm, prolonging the soft affection that he had felt in her brief touch last night. Moving softly across the room, he replicated her morning coffee, then picked up a familiar stone from the table, setting it in front of him as he dropped to his knees and brought his fingertips together in meditation. Conversations would come later, and this would be a long day: in the meantime, he once more sought order in the turmoil of his mind.
