"You might like this." (Janeway & Chakotay)

Author's Note: This story takes place in the reset canon timeline established at the end of "Year of Hell: Part 2".

/

"It's beautiful."

Kathryn cradled her brand-new birthday gift in both hands and held it up to the light, making it gleam. It was a pocket watch on a chain, circa nineteenth century, just the kind of intricate antique that appealed to her love of history. It ticked softly in her palm. She smiled.

"I thought you might like it," said Chakotay. "There's a story that goes with it, you know."

"Even better. Fire away."

She curled up in her cushioned armchair with a glass of replicated champagne and listened as he told her a tale of a British navy captain who had brought his crew home against all odds. It might have been the synthehol or the lateness of the hour - this birthday dinner in her quarters had gone on longer than she'd expected - but as he spoke, with the watch ticking away in the background, she could actually feel that long-ago captain's determination to keep his crew alive, like a strong hand clasping hers as she held the watch. Had he taken the original version of this pocket watch for granted, as just another tool? Had he been tempted to trade it away in some foreign port as an unnecessary luxury? Or had he cherished it as a reminder of home?

He hadn't given up, though, and neither would she. If she ever needed strength, this watch would remind her. How exactly like Chakotay to give her that.

"How do you always do that?"

"What?"

"Outclass me with presents every single time?" She shook her head in pretend frustration. "You carved a bathtub for me on New Earth, for heaven's sake, and now this! I got you what, a holodeck time slot for your last birthday? I never know what to give you. You're insufferable that way."

She smiled to reassure him she was joking, but he was already smiling back. "What can I say?" He shrugged innocently. "I like holodeck time."

"Seriously though, this is one of the most thoughtful gifts anyone's ever given me. I don't have the words to tell you how much your friendship means to me. I just … I wish I knew how to show it as well as you do."

"Kathryn …" Chakotay's eyes and voice were both very soft. "You're showing it right now."

He looked down. Her hand was covering his. She'd placed it there without even thinking about it.

She'd always been a tactile person; touching someone's arm or shoulder or leaning into their space during a conversation came naturally to her. She knew it was different for him, but she'd never considered that it might mean as much to him as the pocket watch and its story meant to her.

"We're very different people, that's all," said Chakotay. "With different ways of expressing ourselves, and I'm grateful for that."

"Me too." She gave his hand a final squeeze, picked up her champagne glass and held it out for a toast. "To differences."

"To differences." Their glasses chimed together.

She had a strange sense of impermanence, like the opposite of deja vu, as if the champagne, the candlesticks and yellow roses on the table, the pumpkin soup and brown bread they'd just eaten and everything else about tonight could fade away any second, like that other captain's life had done four hundred years ago. Maybe the barriers between universes were thin tonight. Maybe she was just grateful for what she had.

Either way, this was a birthday she would not soon forget.