Disclaimer: Voyager and its characters belong to paramount.

Chapter 7: Eat Or Be Eaten

Two years, eight months

As the final ball was pocketed and Voyager's pilot won the penultimate round a cheer went around the holodeck. Even Ayala who had just lost, clapped the winner on the shoulder and walked into the crowd with a smile on his face, knowing that there was a fate much worse than losing against the helmsman.

Tom was quick to realise his fate and a shiver involuntarily ran down his spine as he did so. She was sat at the bar, having been watching him lazily over a pint of beer, and for a moment there was a flicker of hope as he thought she might delay their match with another glass when she turned around and said something to Sandrine over the bar table. What looked at first like an order, he soon discovered was the placing of a bet, as the French hostess wrote something down in the book, and he heard Chakotay (who was seated on the stool beside her) utter the words: "no, I think he'll be out before then", purposely speaking loud enough for him to hear from the other side of the room.

Before he could look away, which he later wished he had have done, Tom watched his captain shoot her husband a cruel smile, "not if I make him suffer a little first." Swallowing hard he turned his attention to his cue, thinking that maybe it could do with a little more chalk.

She walked up to him from the bar in an almost seductive dance, swinging her hips just a little more than normal, taking her stride painfully slowly and keeping her eyes on his all of the time. "Are you sure you still want to play Tom?" Kathryn asked, standing on the other side of the pool table to her opponent. "You could just back out now, and we could announce the winner before anyone has to get hurt."

"Scared?"

Kathryn laughed but quickly sobered, "a little… I never like to see you cry."

"Trust me captain," he could give as good as he could take, "they'll be tears of joy."

Nodding her head to one side she took the offered cue from Neelix, "not when I've finished with you."

There was no denying that Voyager's captain was flirtatious, but they would have to invent a new word for the exchange that occurred between her and Tom Paris during a game of pool, whether it be a competition or a so called 'friendly'.

The pool tournaments had become an annual event, and there were always smaller competitions in-between whenever it was felt that the crew's morale required a boost. The smaller competitions were always fun, but Janeway never took part in them, so the winner was usually Tom if he was on good form, and people often took part in the hope of wiping the smug grin off from his face. The annual Voyager pool cup was equally as fun, but the final game which had so far always been between the pilot and captain, was always most exciting, and people watched especially to see their captain remove the cocky smile off Tom's face for anything up to three days.

Kes was standing beside Harry as they stood within the large crowd surrounding the pool table. "Ayala could have taken him," she pointed out as they both observed the two pool players set up and prowl around the table.

Harry smiled and turned to look at the ocampan, "sure, but that would have meant playing the captain."

"You think he chickened out?" she met his gaze, but with half an eye on the scene in front of them.

The ensign scoffed somewhat, "there's only two men on this ship who will take on the captain, Tom's one of them, and she's married to the other."

Kes laughed. "Do you think she'll give him any shots?" it was well known that the captain rarely missed unless it was on purpose.

"Well, she's letting him break," he noted, "and she's looking in a good mood, so she might let him pocket a couple of balls."

She nodded vaguely as no sooner had Harry finished his sentence, Tom leant forwards across the table with his cue to start the game.

Twenty minutes into the game and they were still battling away, much to the amusement of the rest of the crew who were still watching with anticipation. Chakotay had retreated to a near by table, where people had been kind enough to leave a gap for him to watch through. Tuvok was seated beside him, and B'Elanna opposite him, all three sets of eyes were glued to the captain as she announced the balls that she was about to pocket, and then proceeded to pocket them in succession.

B'Elanna turned to her best friend with a smile on her face as her captain took an unnecessary safety shot, that left Tom with a bewildered look on his face as he tried to work out how best to get out of it. "Married life to our captain must be interesting," she smirked.

Chakotay smiled easily, "I leant long not to challenge her in any kind of sport; she can get a little too competitive at times."

Tuvok characteristically raised an eyebrow, "I remember on one occasion during her first command, our ship was challenged to a race through a class three nebula. When we lost by two seconds, the then commander Janeway made the engineering crew practically rebuild the ship's aft thrusters, until their efficiency had been improved by 0.7 percent." He paused, "we won the rematch two months later."

The two maquis at the table with him grinned at the thought.

"You and the captain have known one another a long time then?" B'Elanna asked, although aware that they were friends from the beginning of their journey through the delta quadrant, she had never really considered how they knew each other, or what had caused them to form what appeared such an odd companionship.

He nodded, "I was assigned to captain Janeway's first command, and secretly ordered to observe and report back on her performance."

"So I'm not the only captain you've had to spy on?" Chakotay asked good naturedly.

Tuvok shrugged, "no. And captain Janeway was about as pleased as you were when you discovered the truth of my assignment."

B'Elanna laughed, "did you give her a good report though?"

"Far from it," he replied honestly, "I found that she was rash in making decisions. Over friendly with members of the crew. Too quick to make judgements about people who we encountered…" He glanced across at the woman who had surprisingly become a close acquaintance of his over the years. "I recommended that she not be given another command. I am glad that Starfleet ignored my recommendation, as captain Janeway has become one of the finest captains I have ever served with."

"Don't Tuvok," B'Elanna held a hand up, "you'll make me cry."

Chakotay chuckled, "I can't believe that she agreed to work with you after the bad report."

"She didn't exactly agree to have me on her next assignment… Admiral Paris didn't give her much of a choice though."

A cheer went up around the table and they both glanced across to see Kathryn smiling triumphantly. "Best of three," they heard Tom plead.

She rolled her eyes, "you sure you can take another defeat?"

"I don't intend on letting you win a second time," he set down the challenge.

"That implies that you didn't give me your best the first time Mr Paris," she picked up the chalk and took it to her cue.

"I was warming up," he explained, but no one was in any doubt that the beads of sweat running down his forehead had been from near exhaustion of possibly giving it too much effort.

"Bring it on," she accept the challenge with a wicked grin.

It didn't take long for her to thrash him, probably having sensed that it was getting late, and deciding that she would quite like to get back to her quarters sooner rather than later. Turning down the offer of best of five, she accepted back the small cup that had been replicated two years previously for the first tournament, made a small humorous speech about how good it felt to put Tom in his place for another year, and then left the holodeck with her arm around Chakotay's.

"How did you get so good at pool anyway?" he asked as they walked down the empty corridor approaching their quarters.

She shrugged, "a master never reveals their secrets."

They stopped by the doors as he entered in the entry code, "I'm sure I could get you to reveal them to me," he gave her a seductive look.

"Oh really?" she took a step inside and pulled him with her, "and how exactly do you intend to do that?"

He pressed his lips to her neck and pushed her gently against the wall as the doors closed behind them, "I have my ways," he muttered before capturing her lips with his own. Before she even knew what had happened, their clothes had become a mess scattered from the living area to the bedroom, and they were both lying naked in tangled sheets as he forgot entirely about getting any sort of information from her, and was telling her and showing her how much he loved her.

/\

Two years, eight months and three weeks

Kathryn sat alone in her darkened quarters as she stared out of the view port. Noah was being taken care of by Celes who she'd called only moments ago asking her not to drop off the two year old for another couple of hours. She had left the bridge sharp at the crew changeover, not wanting to stay there a minute longer than she had to. She was so mad, so angry, so furious that she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. But years of Starfleet training meant that she sat on the couch in her quarters, as cool as a cucumber.

Hearing the doors swish open she knew that it was him, but she didn't look around.

"Computer," he sounded confused, "lights."

"Delay that," she cut in before they had even flickered into illumination.

Chakotay turned in the direction of her voice, and finally saw her silhouette against the starlight through the view port. He frowned, "Kathryn?"

"Please go."

"Is something wrong?" he made his way further into their quarters, but something about her posture made him stop after only a few steps.

"You could say that," her voice was ice.

"Is this about the Borg cube?"

She looked round in his direction, "you tell me."

"I'm sorry. I was wrong about them." He said, disappointed at himself for having been so quick to trust a people that he hardly knew, and to then have that trust just as quickly thrown back in his face. "I had no intention of going against your orders, but once they had entered me into the link I wasn't in control of my actions."

"It's not that," she said darkly.

Chakotay's gut knotted, and he had to remind himself that she didn't know, she had no way of knowing, this was about something else. "You're going to have to help me out here," his voice sounded helpless.

Kathryn looked away, his feigned ignorance only worsened her bad mood, "are you sure there's nothing you'd like to tell me about what happened on the planet's surface?"

He almost lost his breath, and struggled somewhat to regain it. "Whatever you think you know…"

"I'm not stupid Chakotay," she cut him off, "I saw those looks you exchanged during the briefing, the way you discretely touched one another, the way you looked at her; you were infatuated with her…" she paused for a moment, "you slept with her didn't you?"

"Kathryn, I didn't know what I was doing," he was quick to defend himself.

Quickly she was on her feet, "sure, that's your excuse for going against my orders and reactivating the Borg cube. But I know you were perfectly in control of your actions the entire time you were on that planet!"

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he closed the gap between them.

"And yet you did," she slapped away his hand when he tried to reach out to touch her, "why the hell did you do it?"

His jaw hung for a moment, he wasn't sure even he knew the answer to that question, "I don't know," he told her honestly.

"You don't know?" she repeated, shooting him a disgusted look, "you'd better give me a better explanation than that."

"It just happened," he realised there was no good defence for his actions, so telling her the truth was really his only option. "You know that to help me heal faster they entered me into a shared conscious with a small group. I only agreed to it because they promised me that it would only be a temporary link. What they didn't tell me was that there would be a residual sharing of thoughts, senses and emotions… Riley was there, and offered to explore them with me," he swallowed hard, "it didn't mean anything," he insisted, "I wasn't thinking straight, if I had have been then I would never have allowed it to get that far."

"Have you finished?" she asked calmly.

Chakotay realised that he was losing her, and felt powerless to do anything about it. "I'm not trying to excuse what happened," he insisted, "all I can do is promise you that this will never happen again."

"Until the next time you stop thinking straight," she shot his own words back at him.

"I don't know what else I can say Kathryn…"

She looked away, "then leave."

"Kathryn I love you," he wanted her to believe him so much, it broke his heart to think that she might not.

"That's obviously not enough though is it?"

He reached out to her, but she pulled back from him completely, and at a loss of what else to do or say he allowed his arm to drop to his side. They'd had disagreements before, he'd done things wrong before, but it had never been as bad as this. He wasn't sure if it was something she was likely to get over in a few weeks, months or even ever, one thing he knew for certain was that she would be using the incident against him for a long time to come. Deciding that there was little more that could be done or said at that moment in time he followed out her previous instruction and left.

/\

Three years

Chakotay sat on the floor with his son as they built up a castle from large interlocking bricks. "Where are you going to put that one?" he asked moments before the toddler started to chew the plastic, "very funny," he smiled, receiving a giggle in return.

Noah put the brick on the next layer of the wall, although it was inline this time it was placed somewhat randomly, and it was such randomness that was the cause of the many holes pitting the wall. "Very good," his attempt to be supportive sounded much more amused as Noah picked up the knights on horse back, much more eager to play out a battle than build the castle.

The doors to the quarters opened and he turned as Kathryn entered. "How are the repairs coming?"

She started to remove her jacket, "you know B'Elanna, she's got repair teams running smoothly, we should be running at maximum capacity within the next few days." Walking over to the replicater she asked for vegetable soup, "you're down on the rota by the way."

He frowned, "you didn't try and get me out of it?"

Kathryn took a sip of her soup, "she wanted to put us both down; it was eat or be eaten down there. I'm sorry," her grin betrayed her apology.

Climbing up from the floor he headed over to the replicater himself, "how's our Borg?"

She sat down at the table, "I don't want to hear any more of your 'I told you so's," she warned, "but I think just as long as we don't run into any more Borg activity for the next few months, then it might give us enough time to integrate her into our crew."

Chakotay rolled his eyes as the tea he had asked for materialised. "I'm not happy about her being onboard," he repeated many of his earlier words, "but I promise that I will try and support this decision."

"You're a really bad first officer, you know that."

"How come?" he sounded offended.

Not sure whether or not it was worth giving her reasons to someone who had already heard them before she just gave him a semi-serious glare. "You constantly disobey my orders, you don't even agree with most that you go ahead with anyway, and when we do agree then I always feel like there's something wrong."

He laughed heartily, "most other captain's would say that a voice of reason like myself makes the best first officer."

"Most captain's haven't had to deal with you," she shot back, but her grin belittled the counterargument. A short silence over took the two of them as he took a sip of his tea. "Any idea how Neelix is doing?"

"A good first officer would know, wouldn't he?" he pointed out through narrowed eyes.

"So that's a 'no' then?"

"If you admit I'm a better first officer than Cravit, then I'll tell you," he decided a little bit of bribery was in order for the maintenance of his dignity.

"Sure," she shrugged her shoulders, "you're a better first officer than Cravit."

Pausing he gave her a long look, "you were fairly quick to admit that…"

"Cravit was really bad. Now are you going to tell me about Neelix or do I have to go down to the mess and find out myself?"

He considered drawing the game out for a little longer, but he thought it might turn sour if he wasn't careful and so decided to just get to her point. "He's going to miss Kes, we all will, but he's keeping himself busy, you know what he's like."

She nodded then flashed her husband a brief smile, "how's Noah been this evening?"

They both looked across at their young son playing contently by himself on the floor. "He's good. Sam came over with Naomi for a few hours," he started to tell her about the afternoon, "I don't think I've spent time alone with them in a while, and it's amazing how fast Ktarain children grow; Naomi is already so much more advanced than Noah, despite the fact she's about six months younger. I always thought they might grow up almost like older brother, younger sister… but I think it's going to be more like she's the older sister." Chakotay looked back round at her and noticed that her attention had wandered off elsewhere as it seemed to so often these days. "Kathryn?" he called to her a couple of times before she noticed him.

"Sorry?"

"You looked miles away," he smiled, "if you're worrying about the ship again then don't, we've got a good crew, and with me helping out with repairs tomorrow we'll be ship-shape in no time."

A small grin tugged at her lips at his joke but she shook her head, "I wasn't thinking about the ship," she looked up at him and caught his gaze, "I was thinking about us."

He didn't do or say anything for a long moment, then he finally nodded, "what about us?"

"I want a divorce," she told him directly.

A sudden lump caught in his throat as he heard her say the words out loud for the first time. It hadn't been easy over the last three months, after having gotten over the hurdle of being unable to talk to one another they had finally started to rebuild their friendship and trust. Their disagreement over what to do with the Borg hadn't helped matters, but they had made a reconciliation a few days previously, and he had hoped it wouldn't hinder the progress they had made, hoping that they would be able to regain what they had lost.

"I don't want to lose you Kathryn," he stated, his voice almost a whisper as he felt that it was all he could manage.

She paused, "fortunately for you then, what I want and what's best for us aren't the same thing." He shot her a completely baffled expression. "To be honest, us getting intimately involved on board this ship wasn't the best of ideas, and marrying as quickly as we did has become an unnecessary complication." He could feel a but coming... "but I'm pregnant."

It felt like someone was twisting his gut she said the words. If he had have heard those words about six months ago, he would have been over the moon, but to hear them now, and to hear her insinuate that it was the only reason that she wasn't going to go through with her wish to divorce him… it wounded him in ways he didn't know he could be. "How long have you known?"

"About five weeks," she answered, "I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I've decided that I want to have his baby, and I don't want to do it alone again."

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he frowned.

"I was still too angry with you," she paused, "I still am."

Looking down he ran a hand across his face, "if you don't want to be with me, how can we possibly make this work?"

Cradling the warm soup in her hands she brought the cup to her lips, "you should move back in within the next few days, so at least we're living together when we tell the crew we're expecting a baby."

He'd been hoping for her to tell him she wanted to make another go of it for a long while now, but as she was finally conceding he only felt sick to his stomach at her proposal. "Please at least tell me that you still love me."

"Of course I do."

"Then say it."

"Chakotay…" she said in exasperation, but trailed off, with no obvious sign of intension to finish off her sentence.

He stood sharply from the table causing her to flinch somewhat at his sudden movement. "I don't know who you think you're fooling by doing this Kathryn," he leered over the table, "but this crew are going to see through this façade the minute you tell them that we're expecting a baby."

With an obvious anger he headed over towards the doors of her quarters, "where are you going?" she called after him.

The doors opened, "to pack," he explained before disappearing through the temporary opening.

To be continued.