A/N: Sorry there was no update yesterday.

Ten

One kiss ends and another begins. It's as if, now I've started, I can't stop. She tastes smoky – it's the whisky, but it's something else, too. Sadness, perhaps. I can feel it in her – in both of us, a sense of loss before the fact. Kathryn has her hand on my chest, bunching my shirt into a fist as she holds me to her. As if she needs to. As if there is any way I could let her go now.

I have to eventually, of course, and far too soon. Timing was never our strong suit, after all. I can feel Kathryn pulling back – gently, gradually, until at last our lips part and she sits back slightly to look at me with bright eyes. Her lips are swollen, her cheeks flushed, and if this wasn't now and if we were somewhere different and if we were other people, I'd be pulling her towards the nearest comfortable place to lie down right now. Instead I tug her toward me again, but this time so that her head comes to rest against my shoulder. I can feel her breath against my neck as she catches it. I have a sense that neither of us has experienced a kiss that intense in quite some time, but then I suppose that's not surprising, given that it has been more than a decade in the making. Over her head I can see the bar's grubby clock, leering at me. I wrap my arms around her, as if somehow I can insulate us from everything outside this moment, as if I can make us nothing more than two people in a dead-beat bar in a dead-end town who have nothing but each other, and nothing to worry about besides ourselves.

"There's nothing in your plan that can't be adjusted to accommodate both of us," I tell her, softly. "I'm coming with you."

Kathryn sighs, her breath washing against my neck. Then she pushes herself up enough to look at me again. "If the tables were turned – if you were the one going and I was the one asking you to let me come with you, knowing that neither of us would survive… Would you let me?"

I touch my fingers to her face, tracing the fine lines that unfurl from the corners of her eyes like the spun silk of a spider's web. She's beautiful. She always was. "Not in a million years."

She smiles. "And there's your answer."

"Kathryn-"

"Don't," she cuts me off. "Please, Chakotay. Don't."

I feel the passing of time like a blunt screw winding slowly into my chest. I've fixed my eyes on her face, but out of the corner of my eye I can see the chronometer, moving inexorably towards the point where she's going to leave me, and this time it really will be forever. I can't let it happen. Like it or not, I'm going with her, even if she doesn't realise it yet.

"Tell me about you and Seven," she says, suddenly. "What happened?"

There's no trace of recrimination there, either in her face or in her voice. Just interest.

"There isn't much to tell," I say. "We had a couple of dates aboard Voyager and then we got back to the Alpha Quadrant. It fizzled out pretty quickly after that. Events just overtook us, really. We cared about each other, but it wasn't anything more than that, in the end. Maybe if we'd stayed in the Delta Quadrant for longer – if we'd had more time together there – perhaps it would have worked." I trace my hand up and down her arm. "It was a compromise, for both of us. You understand that, don't you? For her, because her choices were so limited and for me, because…" I don't think I need to finish that sentence, and use the shrug it turns into to hold her closer against me.

Kathryn sighs. "There have been so many times over these past five years that I've wished I hadn't brought us back the way I did – when I did. Were things so bad out there, really? You could have had a life there. Seven could have had a life there. Knowing about the future meant we'd already changed it. There was no reason to believe her life would be in danger any more than it has been here. The others, too. Maybe we would have found a cure for Tuvok anyway, or maybe his disease would never have developed. Either way, life on Voyager wasn't nearly as unhappy as our lives have been since we got back."

She's right, but only because she's missing out one important point. We might have had lives, but she would never have let herself be anything but the Captain.

"You'll look after her, Chakotay, won't you?" Kathryn says then. "I know I don't need to ask, but… she's going to need help. She's going to need you."

"Ayala will help her," I promise. "I told you - I'm coming with you."

Kathryn pushes herself out of my arms and turns so that she's directly in front of me, half kneeling on her seat. She grips me by the shoulders for a moment so that she can look into my eyes. Then she leans forwards and presses her mouth to mine, opening my lips with hers and sweeping her tongue against mine with a passion powerful enough to send a thunderbolt sparking into my core. My hands find her waist above the belt of her leathers, where my t-shirt has been tied so that a fraction of her skin is naked to my touch. I feel her inhale, sharply, as my hands push up to brush across her stomach beneath the shirt. Then she pulls back, gasping a little.

"Another drink," she announces, shortly. "We've just got time for one more."

"I don't want another drink," I tell her.

She ignores me, scooping our two empty glasses up in one hand. "I'll be right back."

I'm a little confused, but perhaps for once she just needs a little Dutch courage, and who am I to begrudge her that? I'm in shock myself, so maybe another shot of hard liquor really is what we both need. I sit back, trying to catch my breath, glancing around the room, although of course no one's noticed the floor show. It's that kind of place, I guess. I glance at the chronometer again and realise that there's less than ten minutes until we have to leave. The patrons waiting to be served are three-deep in front of the bar and there's no way Kathryn's going to get to the front, order and back to me again in time. I stand up to look for her in the crowd, but I can't see her, and that's when it hits me.

Of course I can't see her. She's gone.

Cursing, I push past the table so violently that it tips up, almost going over completely until I catch it and ram it back down again. At the door I scan the streets left and right, but there's no sign of her. My heart sinks as I realise I don't know where the ship she's booked passage on is berthed – I know the name, the Yal Morn, but there must be a hundred ships or more touched down in this dust bowl, and I have no way of knowing where to start.

I run, ducking and weaving around the hulls of a dozen craft, big and small. She told me she had an hour but that we only had 47 minutes, so she'd left 13 minutes to reach the ship. She called it a freighter, so it must be one of the larger ones, and given that it must now only be 20 minutes from departure, you'd expect it to be a hive of activity – the last lot of cargo being loaded, the rest of it being locked down. That doesn't narrow things down much, but right now I'll take anything I can. Most of the larger ships are further out – makes sense, they generally need more room to manoeuvre. So that's where I head, kicking up dust.

I keep scanning left and right, but I can't see her. All I can hope is that's because she knows where she's going and she's trying to keep out of sight, rather than because I'm going in completely the wrong direction. I break out from beneath the wing of an old Bajoran runabout and ahead of me I can finally see activity – there's a crew loading crates up the ramp of a huge old hulk that has definitely seen better days. I run up to them, out of breath and wishing that universal translators were an affordable enough accessory to be one of the gadgets bouncing around in my pockets.

"The Yal Morn?" I ask, pointing up at the gaping ramp behind them. "Is this the Yal Morn?"

One of the men – I assume it's a man, although for all I know in their species deep green spines and a neck that looks as if it could bench-press a targ are distinctly feminine features – shakes his head. He replies in a string of something guttural that I can't translate, but it's clear this isn't the ship I need.

"Where?" I ask, pointing down the line of huge ships. "Do you know? The Yal Morn – where is it?"

In answer he points into the indistinct distance. I run, waving a brief thank you behind me. A shout echoes behind me, but I have no idea whether it was a warning or something else. I've passed two more silent ships before a blast of hot air rips along the ground toward me, filling my eyes and nose with dust so that I stumble and almost lose my footing. A rumble follows, a spinning whirr that I recognise as a large pair of engines in pre-flight mode, and suddenly, there ahead of me is what has to be the Yal Morn. Her cargo ramp is still down, but there's no sign of anyone on the ground except a lone workman, buffeted by the force of the twin engines either side of the ramp as he checks off points on a battered old PADD.

I reach his side. "Is this the Yal Morn?"

He looks up at me warily.

I point up at the ship. "Yal Morn?"

He nods and relief flushes through me. I turn toward the ramp, but in a second a large hand has clamped itself to my bicep. I turn back and he's holding up a device between us. For a split second I think it's some kind of weapon, but then he starts to speak and I realise with relief that for him, a universal translator is standard kit.

"Who are you? We don't take passengers."

"I'm here to join the passenger you do have. Kathryn Janeway."

His eyes narrow. "I don't have anyone of that name on my manifest."

I kick myself – of course she'll be using a false name. "Come on, you know who I mean. The woman passenger – you must know, if you don't usually have them."

Something crackles on his chest, a burst of static followed by a barked instruction that must be coming from the flight deck. He presses a button on the radio hanging around his neck. "Ready here," he replies. "All checks green."

He lets me go and pushes me back slightly, away from the ramp. The engines have taken on a different timbre and as he moves, the ramp begins to lift.

"Wait," I say, digging my wallet out of my pocket and pulling a credit chip out of the secret pocket right at the back. "I have to get on this transport. There's a bar's worth of latinum on this. I'll give you the access code if you let me aboard."

He eyes me again. He's big enough that he could easily cave in my skull with the side of his hand and steal the card anyway, but that wouldn't get him the pin. He reaches out and takes the card.

"Go on then," he says. "Tell me the number."

"Not until I'm aboard and we've lifted off."

He laughs, a sound the translator interprets as a series of unsettling growls.

[TBC]