"Is this okay?" (Janeway & Chakotay)

Author's Note: This story takes place during the episode "The Fight".

/

"How are you feeling, Chakotay?"

"Like I got knocked out," he said, wincing and putting a hand to his forehead. "Which I guess I did."

When Kathryn had gone to check on her First Officer at the end of her shift, to make sure he was getting the rest the Doctor had prescribed for him, she'd found him in his quarters with his feet up and the lights turned low. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved that he was listening to the Doctor, or worried that he found it necessary. He was a better patient than she was, anyway (though this wasn't saying much). She kept her movements slow and her voice soft.

"Headache?"

"Mm. It'll pass."

"Ugh, I get those too. Computer, ice pack."

Beep. She took the bright blue bag out of the replicator as soon as it materialized, perched on an ottoman next to the sofa, and held the ice pack up to show him. When he nodded and reached for it, she pressed it to his forehead. He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a sharp hiss.

"Is this okay?"

"Yeah, sure. It's cold, that's all." He smiled ruefully as he took over holding the ice pack to his own head. "Means it's doing its job. Thank you, Kathryn."

"No problem."

"Really … thank you. I don't mean just for this." He shifted the pack, making the ice inside crinkle, so he could look up at her with earnest eyes. "If you hadn't pushed me … "

Being captain was a terrible thing sometimes. Ordering an exhausted, terrified man to return to his worst nightmare was a choice she wished she'd never had to make, even if it was the only way to save the ship. "I asked too much of you, I know."

"You asked just enough," Chakotay replied, his tone firm despite his weariness. "It was exactly what I needed. And if you hadn't reinforced my orders on the bridge earlier … if you hadn't trusted me, even when it looked like I was going crazy … we'd all be dead by now."

Kathryn remembered. There had been a moment, when Chakotay was swinging at invisible opponents and speaking in alien geometry, Tuvok and Kim were refusing his orders and Paris was listing a frantic damage report, when she'd been afraid that chaotic space would destroy them no matter what they did. Trusting Chakotay - and more to the point, trusting whoever was speaking through him - might be the biggest risk she'd ever taken. If not, it was certainly close.

"You did the same for me once, remember?" she said, smiling wryly to downplay her lingering fears. "When Kes fell into a coma from the Nechani shrine … "

She still missed Kes, and probably always would in some form. The faith it had taken to carry her through the shrine was harder to maintain when it came to letting her go.

"You went through that ritual to heal her, I remember."

"I let a poisonous reptile bite me, hallucinated for thirty-odd hours, and finally took her back into the same energy field that had almost killed her. You could have easily declared me unfit to command, but you trusted me."

"There was a logic to it," Chakotay said simply. "Order in the chaos. Like today."

"Exactly." Just as the Nechani spirits permitted only trust inside their shrine, the aliens living in chaotic space could only communicate with those who trusted them. Chakotay understood that as well as Kathryn did, despite their natural fears. Just when it felt like everything in the Delta Quadrant was out to destroy them, their choice to trust the unknown - including each other - turned out to save them.

"I wish Kes were here," she said. "Chaotic space would have fascinated her."

"For all we know, she might be." Chakotay ran one hand over the pattern on his sofa. "I believe the people we love are always with us in some form. I'm glad I saw my grandfather in my vision quest today, even though it scared me at first. I got to just sit with him in the forest and listen … I didn't do that often enough when he was alive."

The upholstery of the sofa and chairs was made up of brown, red and white zigzag patterns that looked as if they could have come from Dorvan V. They couldn't, of course; the Cardassians had destroyed his home and everything in it. He must have replicated it from memory, carrying his loved ones with him just like he said.

"I know what you mean," said Kathryn. "When I read my father's old paper books, I can almost hear his voice. And every time I'm in Aeroponics, I touch the flowers the way Kes used to do."

"She'd like that."

"I think so."

They sat together in the darkened room, listening to the hum of the ship's engine and thinking, not altogether unhappily, of the past. She should do this more often, she thought; normally she was afraid to stop moving, in case her depression caught up with her as it had done in the Void, but Chakotay's stillness was different. It was good for her. He was good for her.

"Kathryn?"

"Hmm?"

"It's good to have you in my corner."

Still thinking about boxing, was he? "Right back at you," she said, taking his free hand in hers. "Although, here's hoping we both get some rest before tag-teaming against the Delta Quadrant again."

The ice pack rustled as he leaned back and closed his eyes. "I couldn't agree more."