Delara

By Eydie Munroe

Disclaimer: It's been 11 years, but somehow Paramount (and now CBS, apparently) still owns them. Since they don't want to seem to do anything with them anymore, I'm taking the Voyager crew out to play. But I promise to give them only cookies and milk, and to have them home by eleven.

Note: This story was heavily inspired by the story "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by Mindy.

As it turned out, the sun went down only about an hour after they arrived, so after dinner they spent the night in, talking and laughing until they couldn't keep their eyes open anymore. They curled up together in the large bed, Kathryn again laughing when Chakotay mentioned that it was going to be hard to get used to having someone else there after sleeping alone for so long. But after finding a comfortable way to fit together they easily drifted off, and had the best sleep they'd had for a long while.

The next morning they awoke to the sound of birdsong as the sun rose, each admiring the spectacular view through the windows from the comfort of being under the blankets. Kathryn sighed when she felt him slip an arm around her from behind, her eyes sliding closed again as he kissed the back of her shoulder. "Morning," she murmured as she laced her fingers with his.

"Morning." He pulled her a little closer, nuzzling at her neck. "How'd you sleep?"

She smiled. "Like the dead." For the first time in weeks, Kathryn felt full of energy. "Must be all the fresh air," she told him as she rolled over to give him a kiss. "I feel great."

He chuckled. "Really? Because you look like hell."

She gave him a gentle shove in the shoulder. "You try sleeping next to a furnace and see how you look."

"I did. And I think I look pretty damned good in spite of it."

Deciding that it was her turn to play, Kathryn reached up and messed his hair, leaving it sticking out in all directions. "Nobody gets to look better than me in the morning, mister," she warned.

"Really?" Chakotay went to lift his hand to her face and brushed her side, pulling back when she suddenly flinched. "What?"

"Nothing," was her hurried answer.

He thought about it for a moment. She wasn't in pain, and it suddenly struck him. "Kathryn, are you ticklish?"

"No!" As soon as the word came out of her mouth, Kathryn realized that she'd given her answer too quickly and was busted.

He grinned, a devilish look in his eyes. "Yes you are." And to prove his point, he went back and tried again, laughing when she squirmed underneath him.

"Stop it!" she gasped between fits of laughter. "Chakotay stop it!"

"Oh alright." He pulled back, letting her catch her breath. "Want some breakfast?"

After showers and breakfast, they decided that they wanted to explore their new surroundings. Or more accurately, she told him she wanted to go exploring and bugged him until he relented – he'd have preferred to stay in bed with her. They found a number of well-worn dirt paths through the forest, which made it easy to move at a leisurely pace. They talked about anything and everything as they walked, touching on subjects that they hadn't really spoken about since their first year together on Voyager. And as the day wore on, both of them started to truly relax. Without any ship's business to worry about, and no crisis to be solved, it was easy to slip into thoughts of this being their true life, and the rest of it being a constant dream.

The path they were on took them into one of the upper elevations, where a few centimetres of snow had blanketed the ground of an open clearing. Kathryn grinned with delight, memories of childhood in Indiana flooding back to her. She and her sister would play in the snow for hours, one of the few times growing up that the young girl voluntarily spent any time outdoors. Her breath plumed out in front of her, and it was crisp in her lungs as she took a few steps into the snow, loving how it crunched under her boots. They were surrounded by snow-capped mountains, the treeline stretching no more than a kilometre above them. "I never thought I'd see another planet that's so close to Earth," she marvelled as she took in the view.

Chakotay kept walking past her, wanting to investigate a large flowering bush that was growing in the middle of the snow. It had a fragrant scent that reminded him of oranges, but the blooms were an emerald green and the leaves almost black in colour. He pulled the tricorder out of his pocket, and was just about to call her over when something cold hit him in the back of the head. Whirling around, he found his friend standing where she had been before, caught red handed as she was forming another snowball with her mittens. "Oh, you want to do that, do you?" he challenged, reaching down for his own ammunition.

Kathryn tried to flee, but only managed to get about three steps before he hit her squarely in the back. She turned around to protest, and caught another one in the chest that exploded up into her face. Sputtering, she told him, "That's a low blow, Chakotay – hitting a pregnant woman with a snowball."

"That's only because she started it, and she can't run away from me." His grin was lecherous as he started to stalk toward her, a handful of loose snow at the ready.

"Don't you dare!" she warned, backing away from him. He continued toward her, and she started laughing again. "Chakotay!" He picked up the pace, causing her to turn and try to run. But he was right, and she only got a couple of steps in before he captured her from behind, wrapping his arms around her just above the baby and whirling them around until they fell to the ground with a soft thump. Deciding to exact a little revenge, she scooped up some more snow and turned on him surprisingly quickly, but not fast enough that he couldn't grab her wrist before she could dump it on him. "You dirty…" He laughed, pulling her to him and kissing her hard to try and diffuse her. She pulled back with her own menacing look. "You don't fight fair."

"Never claimed to." He rolled her onto her back, now trying a little revenge of his own. Her hand-to-hand combat training meant she caught him in the same wrist lock he had used, making sure that his handful of snow never got closer to her than the length of her arm. "Now who's not fighting fair?" He saw her get a peculiar look on her face, and in one swift motion she unlocked her elbow and brought him down to her so she could kiss him again. Her arms wrapped up around his neck, and while he was completely distracted, she shoved a handful of snow down the back of his jacket. "Hey!"

She was laughing when he sat up, trying to grab the snow by reaching down his back. "I have to fight dirty," she told him as she took off her mittens and helped scoop out of the back of his jacket. "My mobility is restricted."

He shook the last of the snow out of his collar and fixed her with a look. "Really?" Before she knew it he was on her again, covering her with kisses and acting like a teenager. Her laughter was unbridled, loud and soulful as it echoed once or twice around them. After a little while he pulled back, taking a moment just to look at her. Her cheeks and her nose were red, eyes sparkling and hair spotted with bits of snow as it tumbled out over the ground. Running the backs of his fingers along her cheek, he whispered, "Did I ever tell you how beautiful I think you are?"

"Once or twice." She linked her hands behind his neck and pulled him down for another kiss. "But I'm not going to say no if you do it again."

He chuckled. "Is that a promise?"

Kathryn noticed the levity that was him now – a side of him that she had never seen before. They'd exchanged more than their share of innuendo over the years, but the structure of command and the need to appear professional had always hemmed their true personalities in. She was feeling it too. Years of living behind the captain's mask had trained her not to let her emotions go, and not to act on them either. But here, completely alone, they were free to act how they pleased. "Oh yes," she told him softly, fingers playing at the curve of his ear. "It's an iron-clad promise."

Looking down on her again, he really couldn't believe his luck. He could die a happy man now, knowing that she was just as attached to him as he was to her. It was the last piece of his life falling into place. After a few more kisses he asked her, "Are you hungry?"

"Starving."

He pushed himself back on his knees and got up, then took both her hands in his and pulled her upright. "How do you feel about some vegetable stew and rolls?"

She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him close. "As long as I don't have to cook it, it sounds perfect."

Delara gave her another huge kick, but since she was head down at this point, her feet pushed up into Kathryn's already compressed diaphragm and knocked the wind out of her. She started to cough hard as she tried to get some air back into her lungs. "What's wrong?" he questioned, his alarm jumping. "Kathryn?" She waved him off as the coughing started to slow, and her breathing started to return to normal. He was still holding onto her arm, which she then used for leverage when she was ready to stand up again. "What happened?"

"The baby just kicked me," she told him when she was able to, "right in the diaphragm." She coughed again a couple of times.

"Do you want me to call the ship?" he asked her.

"No. I'm okay." It took a few minutes, but eventually she was able to breathe more or less normally again. "It was easier when she was smaller, but she's running out of room now."

Chakotay looked her up and down. "If you're sure…" She gave him a quick nod that she was. "Okay. Come on – let's get back to the lodge so we can eat."

In the excitement of their day's exploration, their walk had taken them about three hours away from the tented lodge. As they walked hand-in-hand back along the paths it was starting to grow dark, and eventually the forest they were travelling through was lit only by Alkira's twin moons, which were both full. It cast a romantic glow over everything, making the frost on the trees and the ground shimmer and sparkle around them. "Naomi told me the other day that she thinks I should turn Cargo Bay Four into a daycare centre," she was telling him as they started the uphill climb that would take up the last hour of their hike. "And she wants to run it."

"She's going to be running the ship before you know it," he laughed. "What did you say?"

"I asked her how she was going to be captain and run a daycare at the same time. And you know what she told me?"

"No."

She laughed. "She said that when she had to be on the bridge, all of the 'old grandmas and grandpas' could take turns watching the kids for her."

He started laughing. "She's a born leader, that girl." After a moment he added, "We'd better be nice to her and Delara, or else we're going to be stuck on babysitting detail for the rest of our lives." He was suddenly pulled backward, and turned to find that she had stopped in her tracks. "Kathryn?"

"I don't know…" she said, her free hand clutching at the baby as she tried to figure out what was going on. There weren't any contractions that she could feel, but the pressure at the top of her birth canal was unmistakable. "I – I think she's coming…" she gasped, eyes wide with terror. "I don't know how, but she's coming!"

"What?" He looked down below her belly, but didn't see any sort of fluids. "Are you sure?"

Her breathing started to get heavy, and she grabbed hard onto his arm as the urge to push took her over. "Oh my god…"