They'd been in the game for too long.

Exhaustion was beginning to set in, but Chakotay refused to let his tiredness show up in his features. He had never lost to Tom before, and although the younger man was not showing any signs of slowing down, he knew that it would only be a matter of time before he started slipping.

They'd done this before, sat in a room and talked, challenged each other. In the beginning, neither man wanted to be in the same room unless it had to be in a meeting or official function, but ever since Tom's relationship with B'Elanna they'd had to amend their self-imposed rules. She was too important to both of them.

Their first meeting had been in the holodeck. B'Elanna had tricked them into that one, scheduling different dates with either of them in the holodeck, locking them in once they got in the same room. The setting had been a batleth court, with B'Elanna gracious enough to leave them two shining batleths in the corner. It was her way of saying "Fight it out, talk it out, you're of no use to me as enemies."

And so they did, for hours. They had fought, both clumsy with the unfamiliar weapon in their hands, providing them plenty of opportunity to duel with words as they did with their hands. They exchanged biting remarks along with large blows, but neither got to the point where they could cause some serious injury. They opened old wounds, bleeding out all the hatred until there was nothing more.

In the end, they'd talked and fought each other out. They still weren't the best of friends, but at least now they understood.

What had begun-as they both thought in their heads-as a fight for B'Elanna, ended in a resolution of sorts. Maybe not of friendship, but that of family. And not just as B'Elanna's family, but of Voyager's.

They were two members of the senior staff, looked up to by the whole crew. They would be stuck here in the Delta Quadrant for the rest of their years; it would do no good for any of them to hold grudges. If the two of them couldn't be friends, then they should at least show some respect for each other. It was their responsibility: to B'Elanna, to the captain, to the crew, and most of all, each other.

And so for the sake of the whole crew, they had at least tried to get along. They still weren't close—far from ibut they made it a point to schedule at least one of these "duels" in a month. Sometimes it would be in the old batleth court, or Sandrines at closing time. Maybe hoverball. They did have some things in common, and they used that as a starting point.

As much as they often used B'Elanna as a starting point.

Chakotay had come in here intending to make Tom face the inevitable: acceptance of B'Elanna death, cherishing her memory, and eventually moving on with his life. He didn't expect the meeting to be easy. In the course of their relationship, Tom had picked up on a few of B'Elanna's habits and steeled himself to be bodily thrown out of his quarters or have one or two things thrown at him. Tom wasn't the most patient man this days, a combination of stress and grief had given him the disposition of a mild tempered Klingon.

But it wasn't a Klingon that let him inside his quarters, but a broken man. And it was that broken man who had him questioning his well-meditated acceptance after six hours of talking.

"She's not dead Chakotay," Tom had said in the beginning of their session

Not dead.

Maybe if he were Tom Paris, with the resolve and blind faith of Tom Paris, he would believe that. But he couldn't have the luxury of blind devotion, not when there was a crew that he had to help get home. A captain who depended on him.

But he would have liked to believe.

Chakotay leaned back in his chair and thought of the young girl he'd met so many years ago.

"I almost turned her away you know."

Tom watched him wearily, not knowing where the conversation was going.

"After her first week in the Maquis, I almost sent her away. She was so young, just a year out of the academy. Alera found her fighting with some scavengers in a junk yard, took B'Elanna with her when she found that she was an engineer."

His mind pictured the young girl, while Tom leaned slightly forward. Although they'd talked of B'Elanna before, he'd never really been specific on how she came to the Maquis. He'd just assumed that she'd come to them and they just hired her.

"I remember thinking that she was so thin, almost skin and bones. She was working as an engineer in one of the seedier freighter services, they weren't known for feeding their workers. When B'Elanna told her that this was the only work she could get, Alera wasted no time in taking her. She didn't care about her temper or that she was a former Fleet, all she saw was this young girl who needed help."

Chakotay's became silent as he became introspective, and Tom spoke to reign him in.

"What made you want to turn her away?"

"What?"

"You said that in the beginning, you wanted to turn her away," he prompted. "What changed your mind?"

"She was family," he answered simply.

"I thought she was too young when she first came in. We'd had younger recruits, but most of them were orphans of the Dominion. They joined the cause to fight, and they had the experience with them. B'Elanna,.when she came in, she had hardly been separated from her mother. They might not have gotten along, but despite the bad childhood she'd led a comfortable life. Her house is related to the Martok's did you know that?"

Tom shook his head, amazed that something of that import could escape him.

"That's part of why her family found it difficult to accept her. A Klingon noble house suddenly has a half breed in their bloodline. And to make it worse, her mother's sacrifice was thrown in her face when her father left. They'd accepted her into the house, but never let her forget who she was."

Tom's heart broke in hearing this, knowing all too much how that was like.

"This was the first time that B'Elanna would be away from the life she knew. She was always well cared for, from her home to the academy. She might have been starving at that hell-hole of a job that she got, but there was still a good chance of her going back. In the Maquis, she'd be branded a terrorist, stripped of her Federation rights and completely disowned by her family. I didn't think she knew what she was giving up then, or that she was old enough to make that kind of decision."

Tom gave him a bitter smile. "You tell B'Elanna that?"

"Are you kidding? She would have ripped my tongue out," he laughed. "I'm not that stupid. Anyway, I never told her. Her first run lasted a week, a pick-up that went bad. By the time she came back, she was much a part of the crew than any of the old ones were. And that's when I saw."

"B'Elanna took to the Maquis like lost child who's suddenly found a home. I read through her profile that first week, she's never fitted in anywhere, from Kessick to her two years at Starfleet."

"You learned all of that in a week?" Tom cut in. It had taken him a year to coax out any personal information on B'Elanna, and they'd had to be stuck in a mine with her split up in two species!

"Don't look so surprised, being a former instructor at the academy has its perks. You'll be amazed at just how accurate those psychological evaluations are", he paused, remembering

"What I read was the profile of an angry girl eager to get away to seek acceptance. One who had a lot of potential, but was never given any chance to try because of her temper. The academy would have been her chance, but she gave that up."

"They were trying to turn her into something she's not," Tom defended hotly

"They were trying to turn her into an officer Tom, that's what Starfleet does. She was just too hot-headed to figure that out, as she is with everything else that she does. She's dealt with everything through her anger, and yet when she came to us, her anger left her wide open. Every one in the Maquis was angry, what she felt was nothing new, but this wasn't what we saw." he argued, the happy memory now tinged with pain

"What we saw was a young woman in need of a family, and in the span of one week, we became that family. She became a respected engineer, a trusted confidant, a valued member of our group. I was about to tell her, but I looked in her eyes, and saw how much she needed us, more than we needed her. It didn't matter to her what she could have thrown away, because what she'd gained in the Maquis was something bigger, a family."

"A family," Tom said, cutting into his interlude "You didn't throw her out because you thought she was family."

Chakotay tensed when Tom's voice got decidedly higher.

"Then you'll understand it if I tell you that she's my family, that she's my home. That I just can't walk away from her when every single cell my body is telling me that there's still hope-"

"Hope on what Tom?" Chakotay cut in. "That she's still alive? That she's still out there somewhere, waiting for us to come pick her up? B'Elanna's a fighter, but if she were truly alive she'd have found a way to contact us by now."

Tom stood, unrepentant, purposefully knocking over his coffee table in the process. "And what do you care!" He shouted. "You gave her up after two months. You and Harry and the Captain. You went inside your damn quarters and had your spirit guide rid your conscience of any guilt. You cut your loses and decided she was dead. I'm not going to do that, I'm never going to abandon her!"

Chakotay watched as Tom lashed out on him and the captain, venting out all the anger and frustration he felt for the past four and a half months. This wasn't how he'd meant for him to talk, but it was certainly a start.

At last, Tom ran out of steam and slumped onto his bed.. He looked at his chronometer and saw that it had been seven hours, a whole shift spent in Tom's room.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was exhausted.

"She's not dead Chakotay" he heard Tom say, tired but with no less conviction.

"Would you rather have the alternative? You heard what Neelix said, these people are bounty hunters and slave traders. If they hadn't killed her, then she might have been sold as a slave."

"All the reason why we should hurry back and save her," Tom reasoned, "I would have taken a shuttle, but I know you and the Captain would shoot me down even before I made it to warp. All I'm asking is a little help in finding her."

Chakotay sighed. Seven hours. Seven long hours. He never actually thought Tom would win.

"She's alive Chakotay. Call it instinct or some Klingon myth, but she's alive and I can feel that. She's not dead," he said "She's alive and she wants to be found."