To Feel So Much

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.

Chapter 3

Barely three days later, Chakotay was sitting in his chair on the bridge when the turbolift doors opened behind him, and he heard Ensign Kim speak.

"Captain on the bridge," Harry announced, his voice almost squeaky with barely contained joy. As one, the bridge officers rose and turned to acknowledge Captain Janeway who greeted them with her familiar half-smile and a nod of her head. The Doctor had argued with her relentlessly about returning to her quarters and then about returning to duty, but, in the end, he had eventually yielded to her stubbornness, refusing for some inexplicable reason to take the ultimate step of relieving her. She looked tremendously different from that night in Sickbay. There was a hint of color in her cheeks, her eyes were once again bright and inquisitive, and her hair swung bouncily around her face as she walked, alternately hitting her cheeks and flipping back. Yes, despite the fact that she was still painfully thin and that there was a somewhat pinched look to her lips, she looked basically as she always did. She looked like the indomitable, self-confident, intrepid Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager. She looked ready to take on the next anomaly that popped onscreen or to do battle with the latest hostile alien race of the Delta Quadrant.

Chakotay sat down and averted his head. She walked jauntily to her chair and settled herself in, turning to him with her heart-stopping smile.

"Good morning, Commander. It's good to see you." Her voice was formal, but there was something new in it—a kind of softness, a barely repressed something. And she was still gazing at him in anticipation, perhaps expecting him to be as happy to see her as she was to see him.

"Captain," he said flatly, continuing to gaze at the calculations he was idly inputting onto the console in front of him. There was a moment of dead silence on the bridge. He could feel the entire bridge crew carefully taking in and analyzing the interaction that had just occurred between the two of them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kathryn's smile vanish as if it had been suddenly transported, and the gleam in her eyes darkened. She was quiet for several long moments before she spoke again.

"Do you have anything new to report regarding repairs to the ship, Commander?" Her voice was even and cold.

"I will have updates within the hour, Captain." He still refused to look at her. He knew if he did he would break down. He had to stop her from destroying him any more than she already had. He had to take his heart back. Even if it meant hurting her in the process. She would get over it—she always did, she always managed to carry on without him. She carried on with her own ideas, her own plans without his approval and often even in the face of his blatant disapproval. And next time she entertained some idiotic plan to get herself killed, he wasn't going to be the one standing in her way.

He would never beg her for anything again.

There was virtually complete silence on the bridge for almost an hour, with only a few necessary comments springing to life and quickly being hushed after cursory explanations or commands. When Ensign Kim received departmental updates regarding the repairs to the ship, Kathryn quickly downloaded them into a PADD and took off for her Ready Room. Meanwhile, Chakotay slumped back in his chair in relief.

The day tiptoed by with agonizing slowness, broken only by occasional reports from Engineering and one from the Doctor detailing the recovery of B'Elanna and Tuvok, who were expected back on-duty within the week. Kathryn had not emerged from her Ready Room, although Neelix had thoughtfully delivered lunch to her, and Chakotay wondered vaguely if the Doctor had a hand in that. Usually it would have been him forcing her to stop working for five minutes to eat something.

Five minutes prior to his shift ending, he received a PADD that Vorik had personally walked up to the bridge. After perusing its contents, Chakotay sighed. There was a new and potentially major malfunction in the warp core resulting from their encounter with the Borg. Major enough to possibly entail having to replace half of the dilithium in usage. He sighed again. Just another consequence of the deadly game they—she—had played.

After scanning the information, Chakotay looked up at Vorik, swearing he could detect worry behind the matter-of-factness of his eyes. "I'll take this report right to the captain," he assured him. Vorik nodded and headed back to the turbolift. Chakotay stood, rolling his neck and shoulders to relieve the stiffness of having just remained in essentially the same position for over five hours. He heard his joints crack and winced. He was certain that everyone on the bridge had heard the protests of his middle-aged body and glanced at Paris, expecting some type of acerbic remark. But, for once, Paris appeared oblivious, and, instead of gaining a momentary reprieve from his duty, Chakotay headed reluctantly towards the door of the Ready Room.

She answered the chime immediately, and he stepped in, feeling almost lightheaded and heavy with dread simultaneously. She was sitting at her desk with one fisted hand resting lightly on the tabletop and the other tapping commands into the raised console in front of her. She looked up briefly when he entered and then quickly shifted her gaze back to her work. But not before he saw that her eyes were watery and her nose was red. Her clenched hand held a very obviously used and crumpled tissue.

Chakotay mentally kicked himself and even considered doing it literally.

"What is it, Commander?" Pure command tone, not a hint of the emotion that was displayed so transparently on her face. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, setting the PADD on the desk.

"Ensign Vorik just delivered this to me. We may have a serious problem with the warp core," he said bluntly. She reached for the PADD and studied it for a moment. Then she briefly closed her eyes, shaking her head wearily.

"Is there anything else, Commander?" Her dismissal was painfully clear.

Yet he hesitated. Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, there is definitely something else.

I love you.

I need you.

I don't know how to live without you, Kathryn.

But I also don't know how to live with you.

Of course, he couldn't say any of those things to her so he remained silent and quickly strode out of her Ready Room before his heart took his mouth hostage and any resulting casualties would be on his conscience.