VI
Chakotay
He decides it might be best if he eases himself out of the relationship with Seven. Give her time to adapt, get her sea legs (Earth legs?), recognize for herself that she doesn't need him as fiercely as she'd thoughtwhen they arrived. He thinks it is a kindness.
This plan backfires spectacularly.
She's naive and uncertain but she's observant as all hell and she doesn't appreciate being coddled or pitied or whatever the hell he's doing. She may not have the insight into the human condition to divine, in a vacuum, the thing driving him to guilty distraction, but she can tell when she's being lied to.
It's taken him a while to sort out his unruly thoughts, but the truth is that on some level he'd felt like maybe Seven could free him from the heaviness of all of his and Kathryn's combined history and desire and duty. A fresh start amidthe ship's general air of stasis, stagnation. At some point, he'd stopped thinking about home and all that it represented, and had begun to settle in on Voyager for the long haul.
He'd given up.
And isn't that exactly what Kathryn had unhappily accused him of doing on New Earth.
But, also Kathryn, once: Everyone is lonely, and all we have is each other. I think eventually people will begin to pair off.
And did he ever. And ever since, in trying to do the right thing, he has been inexcusably unfair to Seven. His cowardice looms large between them. They both know he owes her an explanation, and so he takes a deep breath, and begins with New Earth. By the time he's made his way up to the events of her malfunctioning alcove, the conspiracies, the wedge driven, however briefly, between Kathryn and himself, Seven is white with carefully controlled fury.
"I have wondered," she begins, voice taut, "why the Captain, who has guided me through every other stage of my human development, has been so absent since we came to Earth. Now I believe I understand."
"Seven –," he tries, but she turns away from him and strides rapidly to her alcove.
"You have cost us both a valued relationship with Captain Janeway," she grinds out. "Please be elsewhere when I have finished regenerating." She steps into the alcove and is, for all intents, gone.
He should feel relieved, maybe. The decision is out of his hands, just like that. Instead, he feels suffocated by every wrong choice he's made since he met Kathryn Janeway. Since she told him she didn't have Mark to hide behind anymore and he'd stood before her more or less mutely, realizing only much later that she'd been pleading with him to give her a reason to let down her shields, to let him in.
Maybe they'd both been waiting for the other to take charge of the situation. To make a clear overture. Because Kathryn always seems so certain of everything, so resolved, this possibility has never occurred to him before now.
He'd never wanted to hurt either of them, and now he's hurt them both.
Exhaling harshly, he begins collecting his scant possessions from around Seven's quarters. He has been careful not to get too comfortable here, acting the part of guest more than lover.
Of course, she'd noticed this, too.