Found:

"Did you get one of these?" B'Elanna held a PADD out to Tom. He examined it and started chuckling.

"In fact I did. I was just about to ask you if you had gotten one". Tom leaned closer to her to whisper in her ear. The Messhall was crowded and he didn't want anyone to overhear him by chance.

"I wonder what this is about? I've never gone to the Captain's quarters before."

"Well that's because you're not as privileged as some of us." Tom was teasing her and B'Elanna playfully punched him in the arm.

"Hey!" He exclaimed.

"Can't you two ever behave?" Harry came up to them. And put his tray down. They chuckled quietly in answer to his question. Harry seemed to be debating saying something. Tom looked at him inquiringly as Harry started,

"So, are you two doing anything after dinner?" Harry asked it a little too casually and instantly, both B'Elanna and Tom knew that he was fishing for information. And they knew why.

"Let me guess, you want to know if we got invited to the Captain's Quarters too huh?" B'Elanna's eyes twinkled as she made that statement.

Harry's face fell a little when he realized that they did, but then inexplicably, it brightened. Tom picked up on it. "Don't tell me you think that the Captain was planning to promote you privately?"

Harry turned red and looked down. B'Elanna started giggling.

"Yep, that's what he thought. You really are an eternal optimist Harry."

"Hey a guy can dream can't he?"

"Well that's about all you're going to get to do until you reach home. There isn't a place for another officer on Voyager, you have to accept that Harry."

"I know, I know I'll get it one day."

Neelix came and sat down at the empty seat at their table. He looked to the three officers like a cat who swallowed a canary. Tom took one look at B'Elanna and she knowing what he was thinking started to giggle. Tom joined her with an amused look on his face.

"Let me guess Neelix. You have somewhere special to go to after dinner tonight."

"As a matter a fact, I do. I have been invited………"

"To the captain's Quarters after dinner. We know Neelix." Harry finished for him. He was still kind of peeved that he was that transparent when it came to his emotions.

"Oh." Neelix looked crestfallen and everyone at the table knew that he had been hoping to be invited to a personal audience with the captain. But he brightened up as soon as another thought hit him.

"Does that mean that all of you were invited?"

"Yes." B'Elanna answered for them all.

"Mr. Paris" The Doctor came up to them waving a PADD. "I need your help, I have a dinner invitation for tonight……" Four PADDs went up in the air as he said this.

"Oh, I see that all of you got one too."

"Well," Disappointment lined the Doctor's tone, but he tried hard to underscore the hurt he felt that he hadn't been invited to give his opinion to the Captain on a variety of subjects personally.

"If that is the case, then I won't need your help anymore."

"Seven of Nine to the Doctor." His combadge activated with the call.

"Join us in the Mess Hall Seven and we'll talk about what you need to do to prepare for the after dinner festivities this evening."

"Janeway to Chakotay."

"Chakotay here."

"I need your help in my quarters."

Chakotay was trying hard to stifle a laugh, he had a sneaky suspicion he knew what he was being summoned for.

"On my way."

"And Commander."

"Yes Captain?"

'It's not funny."

Chakotay couldn't contain himself and snorted. In her quarters, Kathryn had tears coming down her cheeks, it was so ridiculous the predicament that she found herself in.

"Kathryn, why are you doing this?"

Kathryn shoved a plate in his arms which was already full with other dishes that had to be recycled because the desert that she had been working on did not come out as she would have liked it. He swirled his tongue in his mouth. It didn't come out as anyone would have liked it……except maybe a Bolian.

He piled the dishes carefully in the replicator and pressed the recycle button.

She turned suddenly to face him. In her hands she had the last of the failed dishes and a couple of PADDs that she had been trying in vain to put…….somewhere. Her expression went from exasperated to unreadable in six seconds flat. It was enough to make Chakotay pause. The space filled with silence as he waited for Kathryn to say something.

She put another expression on. It was one of bemusement.

"I thought that I could try to duplicate my mother's recipe, I mean how hard can it be to put a little more cinnamon in the original recipe of the replicator? That's what my mother's tastes like. The replicated apple pie with a little more cinnamon. But this thing has so much cinnamon in it that it's actually hot."

Kathryn went back to her work and finally found some place to put the PADDs. Chakotay knew that was not what was on her mind to say when she had turned around, but he decided to let it pass. He would know when it was time.

"Do you want my help for anything besides ruining my taste buds and cleaning up?" Chakotay placed his hands on hips and had a twinkle in his eye as he asked the question.

"What else did you have in mind Commander.?" Chakotay turned to the replicator and punched in a couple of commands. Immediately, the Captain's Quarters smelled of……

"You have a recipe for apple pie? Why didn't you just say so?" Kathryn put on an expression of mock exasperation when she saw the pie sitting on the replicator.

"You didn't ask. Besides, you're the Captain, you're in charge of this mission."

"Oh no, you were always in charge of the cooking remember?"

"That was only when we were planet bound. Since last year, I've had to live with your attempts to cook instead of using the programmed recipes in the replicator, so I figured well now I get to share the experience with the senior staff."

Kathryn swatted him with the towel over her shoulder for that remark. Chakotay grinned.

"Come on help me light the candles, and oh Chakotay chose some music for me"

Kathryn busied herself setting up and Chakotay followed her lead.

"Kathryn, you have pie in your hair. You may want to wash that out before your guests arrive."

"Thanks." And with that she hurried to the bathroom from her bedroom.

"Chakotay, don't forget your dish for tonight."

"I didn't."

He was lighting the final candles as the door rang.

"Come." He said without thinking and the door opened to reveal Tom and B'Elanna.

The sight of the Commander being so domestic in the Captain's quarters spoke a lot to both Tom and B'Elanna about the amount of times that he had been there previously doing the same thing.

"Hey you two, come on in. Kathryn's in the bedroom she'll be out in a minute."

The looks on their faces got to him and he started cracking up.

"Ensign, please. I thought that the pool had been cancelled, I didn't think that you would still have it running after all this time and all these……experiences in the past years."

Tom turned red, but fortunately Kathryn entered the room at the same time.

"What's so funny?"

"You don't want to know." Chakotay excused himself to go to the replicator and program his own contribution to the pot luck desert.

The door bell rang again and Kathryn welcomed Tuvok.

Eventually the rest of the senior officers arrived and joined them.

"It wasn't an easy task, let me tell you explaining all of you to the inhabitants of the planet in such a way that we wouldn't harm their natural evolution."

B'Elanna had everyone's attention as she related the story of how she managed to stay alive on the L-class planet where she and Harry had been stranded.

"He didn't get the Vulcans at all."

Tuvok's eyebrows rose at that comment.

"Naturally. Until one interacts with a Vulcan, it is very difficult for an emotionally charged species to understand how one's whole way of life can be guided by logic."

"One thing about Kellis. He was a quick study. I think he did a great job getting your character across despite not understanding Vulcans. But…" B'Elanna giggled. "He was a little off on the romance. Let's see, he had Tom and Seven kissing, he had Harry kissing the Delany sisters and the Captain and the Commander kissing."

The looks on four of the senior officer's faces as well as Seven's was enough to send B'Elanna into peals of laugher. The look that passed the Captain and the Commander's face was the one that caught Tom by surprise. They looked as taken aback as Seven did. Tom sat with his arm around his woman and wondered if he had been wrong about Voyager's top two officers all these years, maybe they are only just friends……….

Nah!

"The most interesting part of the narrative was his casting me into the role of the Borg Queen. Why did he make such an interesting character choice?" Seven leveled her question at B'Elanna who turned red.

Tom snickered and Harry was trying his best not to laugh out loud.

"Have I said something funny?" Seven asked her question to the Doctor.

"Trust me Seven, let it drop, you don't want to know." Came the reply.

"It was probably because he wanted to portray as many people from the crew that he found out about by going through the logs." B'Elanna tried in vain to come up with a plausible explanation.

Seven decided to let it go. It was probably better that she didn't know.

"What about me, what did he write about me?" The Doctor was very enthusiastic about his possible role in the play.

"Well actually,…." B'Elanna hesitated before she continued. "I didn't describe you to him. I just thought it would have been easier to leave you out of it." The others smiled as the Doctor looked crestfallen.

"The thing is while he got it, he didn't get it. The more I think about it the more I think I understand why that was the case. He had some prescription of how emotions should be played out; of how connections should be made manifest, but when I came along and our logs came into play he tried to make sense of our connections by making it fit into his mold. But it didn't fit. I guess in a way he sensed how close we all are and was trying to portray the emotion or logic of all the different types of love that he heard. But he portrayed it as romance only. Deep friendships, devotion to duty, loyalty; they are the quiet aspects of all love, and not as overly dramatic as the romantic, because you need to know background first and he only got snapshots, not the behind the scenes actions that would make the quiet aspect as dramatic as romance. That's not in our logs."

B'Elanna's head was furrowed, she was deep in thought and her brain processes were going. Tom realized that she was treating this like an engineering puzzle to figure out. Something had happened when she was a muse for this playwright, something that had touched her deeply. He hadn't realized how much she was digesting the experience until she was speaking.

"The funniest thing was that all the time I kept looking at all the kissing and all the dramatic romance that was going on, I knew that all of you were quietly efficiently doing your jobs, worrying and waiting, trying to keep hope alive that we were not lost to you. I know that I've done it enough times over the years."

At that, B'Elanna seemed to snap back and take a look around her. The other officers were sitting looking at her with rapped expressions on their faces. Their expressions were ones of shock and she understood why. She was so caught up in trying to analyze and to understand the experiences that she had on the planet and she was so comfortable with all the members of the room, that her musings were done aloud. It was only when she realized what she had done, she began to feel self conscious and she searched her mind desperately for something to say to lighten up the mood.

"Or maybe you didn't need to do that, maybe the Doctor has come up with an Emergency Engineering Hologram plan that would replace me if something to happen." B'Elanna smiled ruefully as she said this statement and prayed.

The doctor seemed to pick up on her prayer. "Well there's an idea that I hadn't thought about, but in all fairness I don't think that will ever happen. I'm not programmed to curse in Klingon or any other language for that matter."

"And for that reason alone lieutenant you are irreplaceable." Tuvok finished the sentence for the Doctor. B'Elanna looked at him in amazement

"Hear, hear" Tom said squeezing B'Elanna just a little tighter. He was so happy to have her back.

B'Elanna stole a look at Chakotay. For some reason she had avoided looking at him when she had first started speaking. He was staring at her and even though he wasn't smiling, the naked pride and affection that shown from his eyes touched her deeply.

The Doctor was continuing, "Although I think I can manage to program an Emergency Operations Officer Hologram and I definitely can program one that has better skill playing the clarinet."

"I don't think you'd want to do that, why waste all that hot air needlessly." Harry shot back.

The rest of them dissolved into giggles. Kathryn was sitting on the floor next to Seven and the Doctor as she looked at her senior officers sprawled out on her sofa and chairs, laughing and talking. She was glad that she had decided to do this.

"Good night Captain, Commander. Sleep tight." B'Elanna playfully punched her lover's arms as he made that statement. They were the second to last people to leave the Captain's quarters, and she knew that Tom was implying something in his statement, something that the Captain and the First Officer would obviously get.

"Tom, I don't date crewmen"

"Yes Ma'am. Sorry Captain, Commander."

"Goodnight you two." The two officers stood with straight faces as if he said the most natural thing in the world and waited for the door to close.

As Tom and B'Elanna left, they were puzzled. How could they miss what he had implied?

As soon as the door swooshed closed, Kathryn and Chakotay collapsed on the dinning are chairs around the messy table and began laughing. It was laughter full of relief and quiet joy over what they had heard and shared with their senior officers.

"That Helmboy!" Kathryn said with one of her famous looks on her face; the one that she normally reserved for Tom when he was being his most mischievous.

"Well you started it." Chakotay charged.

"What are you talking about?" Kathryn asked.

"You took forever in that bedroom, if you had come out a little sooner….."

"If you hadn't sent me there….."

"If you didn't have pie in your hair….."

"If the stupid replicator would have gotten the recipe right…."

"If you just made the standard pie instead of experimenting, then Tom wouldn't have made the comment that he did"

Kathryn was silent at that and the thoughtful look that she had on her face before the others came to her quarters, was back.

Chakotay knew that now was the right time.

"Why did you do this Kathryn? It's not like you."

Kathryn had been staring at him intently when they were bantering back and forth, but now she looked down and slowly began gathering dishes to recycle. Chakotay could tell by the look on her face that she was also gathering her thoughts. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at her. All of a sudden Kathryn stopped and stared directly at him.

"I was just so glad to have them back that I wanted to do something special for our family. We've lost 16 people after I destroyed the caretaker's array and I have never cried over them. I've grieved, but as a Captain, not as a friend. But yesterday when we thought they were lost, I grieved as both and I cried. The part that was their friend, cried."

The look on her face was haunted and familiar. He remembered at once where he had seen it. Kathryn was a woman whose emotions ran the full gamut along her face when she was with him. Sometimes he couldn't remember some of them, but there were others used so infrequently and at times when she allowed herself to be the most vulnerable, that he never forgot them. When she found out that she had lost Mark, she had worn that same expression. He was quiet and gave her space to continue.

Kathryn got up and placed the dishes in the replicator. He handed another set to her, but he didn't get up from where he was sitting. She cleared the table and wiped it down. He realized that she was still gathering her thoughts and as she was doing so, he was gathering his….about her. About this amazing woman standing in front of him, this woman who was his Captain and his best friend.

Finally she sat and looked directly at him. "I've always been comfortable with the distance between Captain and Crewman. It helps in dealing with things like ordering one of your crew to die to save others or to deal with the inevitability of losing people in space. But being here Chakotay, being alone in this quadrant, I've grown to depend on all of you. There is a connection here between myself and the senior staff of this crew that is as deep as the one I have to my own family. I hadn't realized that until I sat in my ready room and cried for two of my senior Officers. And now I just wanted to do something, to let them know that they are treasured members of my family, before I have to be the Captain again and put them in harm's way, for the sake of all of us."

Chakotay took her hand and she held on to it as if it were her lifeline. And given everything that he was seeing on her face, he supposed it was.

"Why your quarters?"

"I wanted it to be personal. You and I share so many meals here, I wanted them to know a little part of Kathryn in the midst of Captain and I figured this was an OK way to do it." Her voice was soft as she answered.

"Besides" Slowly her grin turned a little wicked as she thought of something.

"I don't want you always showing me up. I mean after having dinners and lunches in the Commander's Quarters, one would wonder why the Captain despite everything they've gone though wouldn't have them over in her quarters for at least a drink or desert."

"I thought that B'Elanna told me that Tom, Harry and Neelix had been in your quarters before."

"That was only when they were researching something for me and we just happened to meet here, it's not to say that I had specifically invited them."

"Well I haven't either."

"What?"

Chakotay smiled at her shocked face. "I never entertained any other of the senior staff or anyone else in my Quarters Captain, they're my private domain."

"But Chakotay, I can practically walk in and out of there anytime I please, I've been in there so many times. I even know what's on your mind by examining the state of your quarters."

We've stormed in each other's offices, lives and quarters uninvited, each knowing when the other needed it.

Chakotay couldn't say where that thought came from, but it formed his mind and with it brought a bittersweet sense of déjà vu. He stared at Kathryn and really saw her, all of her. The woman who had stormed into his life to capture him physically had captured him spiritually by asking him to join her on this journey.

Chakotay's face was deadpan as he said, "I think that says a lot doesn't it Kathryn?"

Three years ago, I didn't know your name……..

And now six years later I cannot imagine one day without you.

Her voice and her thoughts coming back to her

And she knew why:

………whenever you need to, you can read this and know that as I have promised you, I am with you.

Always

Kathryn held their joined hands up and entangled their fingers, like their individual journeys through this quadrant, they were together.

It was his voice and his words that enabled her to say to him,

"I think it says everything." Kathryn held him with the look. The look that she gave him on New Earth when they were doing the same thing.

The End:

Part 21: A Mile in their shoes.