Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager belongs to Paramount, the writers, and whoever else can legally claim it. I am making no profit from this. The plot is mine, Paramount wouldn't want it anyway.

Episode: Worst Case Scenario (S3 E25)

AN: Yes, I already did one for this episode, although other than referencing a disaster on the holodeck it had nothing to do with the episode. I didn't see the harm in doing another fic off the episode, although I'll try to not make a habit of it, lol. After all, one of the main points of this for me was to force myself to write fics based off of more than just the 'top ten' J/C episodes. But I just had this thought the other night and had to write it, plus I don't think this episode is entirely overdone like Resolutions or Shattered.

Prompt: There was just something about his take charge attitude and aggressive demeanor that was incredibly attractive, and the leather pants sure didn't hurt.

Charisma

By Lady Callista

=/\=

Kathryn Janeway took a moment to appreciate the irony of the situation as she slowly walked down the familiar corridor of her ship.

She wore a yellow uniform with the single pip of an ensign pinned to the collar. And she was about to join one of her best friends in a mutiny to take the ship away from, well, herself.

She knew the program Tuvok had dubbed "Insurrection Alpha" wasn't finished yet, in fact at the moment Tom was being overloaded with helpful and not-so-helpful input on how to finish the program. But she only had an hour of holodeck time anyway, and she knew the narrative was at least that long.

She had debated with herself from the moment Chakotay first mentioned the program to her over dinner the night before, both wanting to see it and wanting to avoid it. In the end she had simply decided she was curious enough that she had to try it, although she wondered how disturbing it would be to see how Tuvok had viewed Chakotay and the others nearly three years ago.

She understood why Tuvok had been concerned. He wouldn't have been a good Chief of Security if he didn't worry about dozens of Maquis suddenly having free-run of the ship, especially when one of them had full command codes and the loyalty of the rest. He wouldn't have been a good Vulcan if he didn't consider and plan for all the logical possibilities.

Tuvok had actually advised her not to give Chakotay full access, offering to hold the codes himself, but Kathryn had known if they started things off that way any hope of her gaining Chakotay's trust would evaporate.

Although she could admit to herself that a possible mutiny had been a brief concern of her own, it had never been a serious one. From the moment she had met him, when he agreed to beam to her ship and then worked with her, to the moment he had sacrificed the Val Jean in order to save Voyager, she had gotten the sense of an intelligent and trustworthy man. Within a week of them beginning to work together, she had found him to be a loyal and thoughtful man, who understood what needed to be done and would help her in any way he could. And for three years, her original assessment of him had proven correct, although it had barely scratched the surface of how amazing a man he was.

Speak of the devil, she chuckled as Chakotay strolled up from behind and began to walk with her. "Commander." She greeted him, remembering her place in the scenario.

"Ensign. Where are you headed?"

"The bridge." She answered, trying to place what was different about him, realizing at once it was the aura of suppressed violence that seemed to encompass him. She realized few, if any, of the other people who had played the program would have seen the difference, but she knew him almost better than she knew herself. Although there was still something different about this Chakotay than the one she had known three years ago.

"Mind if I walk with you?"

"Of course not, Commander." Her voice came out with an edge of flirting, and Kathryn abruptly snapped her mouth shut. Where had that come from? Not that they didn't flirt and tease each other on occasion, but she would never have reacted that way to such a simple question from the real Chakotay.

"So, how's it going?"

"Oh, not too bad." She realized the flirting tone was still there. "And you… sir?" Her hesitation before adding the honorific came simply from how strange it felt to address him that way, not just because it was him but because she hadn't had to address a 'senior' officer in years.

She realized his personality subroutines had taken it differently when he suddenly smiled at her. It was disconcerting to see that smile on his face while his eyes were still cold. But his voice was warmer when he spoke. "I'm worried about you. Heard Tuvok has been giving you a hard time."

Kathryn felt a heat rise in her belly at the power and magnetism of his gaze, and realized that was the main difference between the real Chakotay and the one who stood before her now.

This man was still a contrary, still driven by fire and a willingness to break the rules to protect his people. Still driven by anger at a world he couldn't find his place in. Her Chakotay still had the same charisma, but it was tempered by thoughtfulness and an innate kindness. A powerful man, but one who was comfortable both in his position and his own skin. One who had found peace. Wait… Her Chakotay? Where had that thought come from?

"Ensign?" His voice snapped her out of her thoughts, and she realized she had been so preoccupied with considering him that she hadn't answered his question.

She did a quick scan through her memory for the question, and going with instinct Kathryn lowered her voice confidentially. "Sorry, just remembering the last dressing down he gave me. He's so unreasonable."

She knew from hearing the crew that this first conversation was an important part of the program, and that how it was played determined which side she would end up on. She also knew that the program was apparently much more fun if you were on the side of the mutineers, and a tiny voice also whispered in her head that it would mean she got to stay with Chakotay.

She listened to him with half an ear as they entered the turbolift, and gave the correct responses as he began to lay out his problems with Tuvok, Janeway, and the state of the ship in general. She pledged without hesitation to go along with him when the time came.

She had to check herself from striding to the command deck as they entered the bridge, and turned towards one of the aft stations. As she began to set up the program that would allow her to place the crew quarters on lockdown as Chakotay had ordered, an irreverent thought caused a wry smile to cross her face.

Apparently the question of whether she would serve under him had just been answered.

=/\=

"So what did you think of Tuvok's program?" Chakotay asked with a grin as they reclined on her couch after dinner that night. They'd had a working dinner, discussing the upcoming crew evaluations among other things, but now as they relaxed with cups of tea he couldn't help but ask.

"What makes you think I tried it?" Kathryn asked with a smirk, her mind racing. She had spent the hour between her holodeck time and their dinner relaxing in her bathtub, her thoughts racing about what she had experienced on the holodeck. But she wasn't sure she was comfortable sharing her conclusions with him.

"Well, I know you had an hour of holodeck time this afternoon." Chakotay chuckled. "And although I didn't bother to check what program was running, I think I know you pretty well. You were so curious last night when I was telling you about it, that I can't believe you didn't try it out."

"Busted. And it was… interesting." She gave him a half-grin. "You haven't run the whole program, right?"

"No." He shook his head. "Only about the first five minutes, like I told you last night. Once I realized what it was, well, I wasn't really sure I would want to see 'myself' like that. And now that I know it was Tuvok who wrote it, I really don't want to see it."

"Oh, I don't know, you could have come off a lot worse." She chuckled at the memories, her mind flashing back yet again to his leather pants and take-charge attitude. Heat rose to her cheeks as she remembered one of the little fantasies she had dreamed while in the bathtub a little while ago.

Chakotay's eyes widened as he saw her blush, and he could feel his heartbeat accelerating. Her tone of voice was teasing, but there was a heat in her eyes that he had only ever seen brief flashes of before. He tried to think of a way to maintain this line of conversation without her retreating behind her command mask. "You mean Tuvok doesn't just have me kill you?"

She laughed. "Oh, no. You actually offer all the Starfleet personnel who aren't already with you a choice of joining you or being dropped off on a nice planet somewhere. Then me and Tom come back from our trip, and we try to take the ship back. I don't know if we succeed or not, that part is not written, but I'm sure we do."

He laughed with her. "So apparently Tuvok knew me well enough to know I wouldn't just kill everyone, but not well enough to know that I would never try and take over in the first place."

Kathryn laughed with him for a moment, shifting to lean back on the couch, her bare feet propped up on the table. Then she said quietly, "I never thought that you would."

"Because I was smart enough to know that my 40 people could never have run the ship?" Chakotay asked lightly as he rose to get himself another cup of tea.

"That was part of it I suppose." Kathryn replied, her barely-touched tea cooling in her hands as she watched him cross to the replicator, her eyes zoning in on his butt and wishing it was encased in tight brown leather instead of loose black polyester. She closed her eyes and shook her head to clear the image.

Although she had been attracted to him from almost the moment she met him, that attraction had been buried under layers of duty initially, and later woven into a deep friendship. She hadn't really realized until today that one of the things that had allowed her to bury it had been the changes in his personality. Although she loved him for his kindness and sensitivity, his respect for her position… Her thoughts ground to a halt when she realized she had just thought that she loved him. She knew she did on one level of course, but it was a level she had always locked away, and since she couldn't make the first move…

"Kathryn?" Chakotay asked after she had been silent for over a minute. Her face was a study in changing emotions, and despite how well he had come to know her he couldn't imagine what she was thinking. He knew what he hoped it was though, and he wondered if she was distracted enough by her own thoughts to answer him without censoring herself. With that in mind, he asked softly "What are you thinking about right now?"

"How amazing you look in those leather pants."

His dimples burst to life even as her face turned as red as her uniform. That wasn't quite what he had been hoping she was thinking, but it would do. "I'll have to wear them for dinner sometime." He knew better than to push her too far, but his heart filled at the compliment.

Her blush deepened, and he watched as something else he couldn't understand crossed her face before she said quietly, "I was thinking about how different you were back then. All that anger, so much closer to the surface. That energy that just swirled around you, that attitude that said you were in charge, you knew best, and you would get what you wanted."

Chakotay took a deep breath as she turned her head to look into his eyes, the spark of attraction that had always been between them snapping to life in an instant. "You had the same energy, minus the anger driving it." His voice was as soft as hers, and when he reached out hesitantly to take her hand she gripped it firmly. "I've never had a problem following someone if I believed they were right. If I believed they had the determination and capability to do what they wanted. And the look in your eyes when you stepped between me and Tom, your body language when your shoulder touched my chest…"

Kathryn looked deeply into his eyes. "I knew if I didn't start out strong, you would end up in charge. Sometimes I wonder if that would have been a bad thing."

His eyes widened in shock, wondering if he was imagining the secondary way that statement could be taken. His answer was careful, able to be interpreted in whichever way she saw fit. "We're in this together. I fully believe that you will get this crew home, and I'll always be here to help you do it. Whatever you need."

She chuckled humorlessly. "My needs are the same as yours."

He could swear he stopped breathing for a minute. The look in her eyes, and the flirty tone in her voice, were unmistakable. Yet she had never before responded to any of his mild, testing advances, and he had always backed away, worried about damaging their working relationship, and more recently their friendship. Despite the spark between them, he had assumed she just wasn't interested in him, or she wasn't willing to date someone under her command.

The only time she hadn't backed away had been on New Earth, and in retrospect he had realized that was likely because they were the only two people there combined with the fact that they were outside of the command structure. But now he was wondering. He let his feelings show in his eyes even as he responded testingly, "How do you know what I need?"

She smiled. "It's right there in your eyes. The man I met three years ago wouldn't have given up on it."

Okay, it was official. There was no way he was misinterpreting what she was saying. But he still couldn't understand what had changed. Why was she suddenly making it clear? He stopped beating around the bush. "I haven't exactly given up. But I respected you too much to push when it was obvious you didn't feel the same way I did."

"I don't think you know me quite as well as you think." Kathryn shifted closer to him.

"You might be right." He admitted even as he reached out to trail his fingers along her cheek. "Why now?"

She leaned her cheek into his touch. "Because seeing you like that on the holodeck brought back everything from when we first met."

His eyes widened. "Since all the way back then? But you never said…"

"I think it would have been a disaster back then." She grinned. "The crew would have reacted… well, badly. I also didn't know you well enough to know if you would be able to respect me as the captain if we… By the time it would have worked, you had backed off. And then there was New Earth, by that time I was so used to hiding my feelings that it took too long for me to let them out. Then we were back on Voyager, and you backed off again."

"If you had given me any indication…" Chakotay trailed off, aghast at what she was saying. Could they really have been together for the past year? Then something occurred to him. "I may have backed off, but I didn't exactly hide my feelings. You could have gone after what you wanted too. I hardly see you as the type of girl who believes the man has to make the first move."

"No officer may pressure a lesser ranking crewmember with a sexual or romantic advance."

His mouth dropped open. He recognized the quote immediately from when he had gone over Starfleet's fraternization rules over a year ago, but hadn't ever thought that she would try to apply it to their situation. It obviously wasn't being pressured if the other person had admitted to having feelings for you. He belatedly closed his mouth, then opened it again and said with all the shock he felt, "Seriously?"

She gave him a small smile. "Chakotay, I had to be sure. Starfleet will disapprove as it is, for two reasons. The first being that although a captain and her first officer are not explicitly forbidden from having a romantic relationship, it is strongly frowned upon. And it could be a really bad idea, especially out here, where you can't exactly be transferred if something goes wrong. And the second reason…"

"Is that I'm a Maquis who was supposed to be your prisoner." Chakotay said with understanding.

Kathryn nodded. "Those two reasons will be bad enough, but if I initiated the relationship and went directly against the rules, well, the punishment for that is rather severe. If I'm going to keep the Maquis out of prison when we get back, I have to give Starfleet as little to gripe about as possible."

Chakotay groaned even as he tipped his head until their foreheads were touching. "I feel like an idiot. I went over those rules last year, I should have realized…"

"I kept hoping you would, but at the same time figured that it probably was smarter for us not to be together. Starfleet really will have a fit, and it certainly won't be easy to keep our personal lives separate from our duties."

"I'm more than willing to try if you are." His dimples flashed as he raised both his hands to cup her cheeks.

"Is that an advance, Commander?" Kathryn gave him a cheeky grin.

"Oh, am I not being clear enough?" Chakotay grinned back as he leaned in and kissed her softly.

The kiss spun out, years of pent-up longing finally released, and when they finally broke apart each was gasping for breath.

"I really must remember to thank Tuvok for writing that program." Chakotay said when he could finally talk again.

She gave him a mischievous grin. "Wear the leather pants for dinner tomorrow. Although I can't guarantee how long they'll stay on."

His eyes widened with delight as she leaned in to kiss him again.

=/\=

FIN

AN2: Apologies if there are more mistakes than usual; I've got a bad cold, and cold medicine makes me a little… well, special. I did actually have a friend read this over to make sure it made sense, but she's not really a beta so all mistakes are definitely my own.