Hey there, Fang here. Next installment is up! Enjoy.


Chakotay lifted his head carefully, mindful of the stinging pain in his right temple, to meet Janeway's eyes. She still lay on his chest, and made no motion to change position.

"Good morning." he rasped, his face breaking into a weaker version of his wry smile. As much as Kathryn wanted to stay stern and allow the pent-up worry and anger to come out in her reprimand, his smile dissipated much of it that had built up inside for the moment. The corners of her mouth lifted involuntarily.

Taking her head off his chest, she moved closer to his head, placing the hand that wasn't joined with his on his bare shoulder.

"You owe me a new shuttle." she raised an eyebrow. Chakotay let out a small chuckle.

"Well, there go my replicator rations for a month..." he half-joked.

"I swear, Chakotay, I'm almost considering never letting you pilot another one. I'll threaten to send Tom with you, so he can successfully bring it back." she admonished. Chakotay shrugged tiredly.

"The ion storm we saw on the long range sensors hit too fast. Hull breach was imminent once the shields went. After I fell unconscious, I doubt much else could have been done." he commented matter-of-factly.

Kathryn opened her mouth with a comeback, but at that moment, the Doctor strode in, seeing his patient awake.

"Ah, Commander...good to see you haven't lost any more brain cells in your recovery...not that there was much to begin with, considering the ignorance of the risks of going out in a shuttlecraft here in the first place."

"I don't think I'm quite responsible for a storm..."

"Prehaps not, but considering the decision to take one out to collect readings that we honestly didn't even remotely need despite your insistance-"

"Doctor. how long will the Commander be required to stay here?" Janeway quickly interrupted, but Chakotay merely raised his brow in amusement at the Doctor's manner.

Unpreturbed, the Doctor continued. "I would like to keep him here for a day or two more, depending on his cooperation or lack there-of...but..." he sighed dramatically and long-sufferingly, "he can be safely discharged in a few hours, once I make the necessary checks, if you wish."

He clearly did no seem pleased by the diagonsis, and Janeway would have gladly let him have his way any other day, but right now there were words unspoken between her and her first officer that needed to come to life. For her, the sooner it was, the better.

"Once he is fit to leave, please release him." she held up a hand as the Doctor opened his mouth in protestation. "That does not mean I will return him to duty, Doctor. That call is entirely yours to make."

The Doctor finally looked appeased at that, and began his check-up on Chakotay's progress. Janeway waited patiently while he worked, already trying to figure out in her mind what exactly she would say to her first officer. She could not come up with anything that wouldn't sound scripted or fake. She simply had to come up with it on the spot, and hope the words would come out the right way.

The Doctor had finished attending to Chakotay's remaining injuries with his trusty hypospray and his dermal regenerator, and had propped him up against the wall behind the bio bed.

"Your ribs are fine, but any sort of exertion on your behalf will undo all the exquisitely brilliant work I've done on them, and along with your recovering concussion, I would expect to see you withing twelve hours of you leaving my sickbay. Seems to be all the people on this ship do here, create more work for me." he punctuated with an aggravated stare at Chakotay. Her first officer's non-smile was lighting up his face. The Doctor huffed and began tapping quickly into a PADD.

Janeway tapped her comm badge. "Janeway to Bridge."

"Tuvok here, Captain. I assume nothing out of the ordinary has occured?"

"Commander Chakotay is fine. Do you need me up on the Bridge? Or can you manage?"

"Nothing is in direct need of your attention, Captain."

"Understood. Janeway out."

Tapping her comm closed, she walked briskly to the Doctor, who had made his way to the other side of sickbay. Now was better than ever to talk to Chakotay, especially when she didn't know when this rare relative peace Voyager hardly ever found itself in would end and they would all be back to fighting for their lives.

"Doctor...I would like to speak to Chakotay." she murmured. He gestured to the patient on the other side of the room mindlessly. She cleared her throat. The Doctor looked up at her, and finally realized what she meant. Sheepishly, he placed the PADD down and transferred his program to Holodeck 2.

Janeway walked to Chakotay's bedside and sat down on the empty space beside him. Chakotay opened his eyes and sought her own, that almost constant smile hidden in his expression.

Kathryn waited patiently for him to speak first, not trusting herself to be able to start this off on a good note. Thankfully, Chakotay caught her reasoning and obligingly began.

"So how many crashes does this make?" he grinned wryly.

"Seven." she replied instantly. She doubted it would be impossible to forget. At the more solemn tone in her voice, Chakotay easily switched to a more appropriate reaction.

"Look, Kathryn...there was nothing-"

"You've tried that excuse too many times now, Chakotay." she interrupted. The worry and anger she had pushed away a few minutes before was quickly returning. Chakotay wrinkled his brow, the pain apparently gone from his head thanks to some medication the Doctor forced on him. He was obviously rather confused,but unfortunatly, that just frustrated her further for reasons she couldn't understand herself. "It's not going to work again. Don't keep pushing these incidents aside!"

Chakotay's face had gone stone-cold in misunderstanding.

"Kathryn, you can't possibly believe that every crash is my fault!" he exclaimed.

"I never said that, and you know that's not what I mean!" she shot back, sitting up as straight as a poker in her anger.

"Then what?" his dark eyes met her own, both flashing with the intensity of lightning.

"How can you possibly be so lax in these cases? You were seriously injured, only recently healed thanks to the Doctor, and you were barely conscious only an hour or so ago!" she looked at him in disbelief, and threw her hands up in exasperation. "And all this after you went off on some fool mission you coerced me into allowing you to go just for an abnormal anomaly! With, might I add, a rather turbulent storm heading for that exact location!" She looked imploringly at him, most of her piece said.

Chakoay was quiet. "I don't know what you want me to say. It was an accident. You can't expect every away mission to go off without a hitch." he treaded carefully over this new ground.

"That's not an excuse."

"Kathryn, I'm not trying to make excuses! I'm trying to show you that nothing we could have done in that storm would have done any good!"

"Oh, there's always something!"

"Kathryn, you're being unreasonable!"

"Oh, and you aren't?" She fired back.

"It was a simple mistake!"

"Like hell it was!"

"Why arey you making such a big deal out of this? I'm alive, and we can replicate a new shuttle without much trouble-"

"Damn it, Chakotay, I refuse to lose you! I couldn't survive it!"

Sickbay sank into dead silence. Cakotay stared at his captain, eyes wide and unblinking. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kathryn clammed up quickly, not even daring to look at her first officer after that breach.

"...K...Kathryn?" his voice carried all the confusion and questioning that she was not ready to answer. Janeway closed her eyes and got off of his bed, not even wanting to look at him as she quickly stepped out of sickbay.

The doors closed behind her just as swiftly as she had swept out.


Author's Comments:

As promised, the second part. Part three may or may not also be up tonight, but that depends on if I feel like writing on this fandom or on my Sherlock story. Either way, I will post again, just maybe not this one. I hope you enjoyed anyway!

Please review, as this is the first time I have tried dialogue between these two. I'm still trying to figure out how to write them when they're not internally monologueing all day. Thank you!

-Fang