IX

Janeway

She is revisiting La Vita Nuova when she hears heavy footfalls from the direction of town and looks up.

Chakotay.

Her first irrelevant thought is that he has absolutely no tolerance for high heat. He's flushed, beleaguered, and it looks like he sweated through his shirt on the hike up. He's lucky, she thinks, that Tuvok's home isn't further along the ridge.

Well, she muses darkly, if he's here it can't be good. Briefly, she considers calling for Tuvok to insulate her from whatever is about to happen and then, rolling her eyes at the absurdity of this impulse, she marks her place in the book and shuts it, smoothing her hand over its leather cover for want of somethingto do with herself as he nears. Her breathing is shallow, and her second irrelevant thought is that she can't begin to imagine the look on her face right now. She hopes vaguely that it isn't horror, half-heartedly attempts to school her expression into something like polite surprise but is pretty sure she misses the mark.

He approaches her a little like one might approach a wild animal, and with a wry half-smile she realizes that nobody has told him how she's doing. B'Elanna is beyond furious with him, and he may not even know that Seven reached out to her. Tuvok would never betray her confidence even if it had occurred to Chakotay to ask him. He can't know that she's found, here in the alien desert, something like true peace.

After a moment of calm introspection, she decides not to make it easy on him just yet.

He stumbles through a heartfelt apology that, despite its lack of his usual finesse, touches her in a way she wasn't sure she could still feel after all this time and distance. Less than forgiving him, per se, she has simply come to accept that they will not be together after all, and that she should not, probably, expect him to apologize for living his life. It is an acceptance that was hard-won and for which she owes Tuvok her infinite gratitude and friendship, not that he didn't have both already. So she didn't need to hear Chakotay's apology, exactly, but it is nice, anyway. She has so missedtheir closeness, and even if she'd always felt that they were building up to something more… well, she has scrupulously not allowed herself to consider it in all this time, but maybe they can at least have this again, a friendship, not to mention freedom from a command structure –

– and then she hears him say I love you and the world sort of tilts on its axis.

If his words were tentative, the look he gives her now is searing and it leaves her a little light-headed. She is struck by the forgotten familiarity of feeling enthralled by him. After a beat, she realizes that he has stopped talking and is cautiously waiting for her to react. She blinks. Reminds herself to breathe. Sets the book down carefully beside her – sees him track her movements, take in the title of the book, and she wonders if it will ring any bells. Rising, she recaptures his gaze and asks in a stunningly measured tone, "Water?"

Now he blinks, nonplussed.

She takes pity on him. "You appear to be on the verge of heat stroke." She holds out her flask of cool water. "Have some."

He takes a few steps closer to her, moving into her personal space, and accepts the water. He drinks. Avidly, she watches his face, takes in all the familiar lines of it, the curve of his mouth, the dark heat of his eyes. She places one slim hand on his broad chest, traces the rough line of his jaw with her other. She never has been any good at keeping her hands off him. The look he gives her is one of deep uncertainty and wrenching hope; over the years, she has touched him often and for varied reasons, but rarely as prelude to anything more. She is a tactile person by nature, and she has hidden behind this rationale for a long time, but the truth has always been that she just needed to feel his comforting solidity beneath her fingertips. She sees him wrestling against his desire, now, as then, for her sake.

She decides to make it easy on him after all. She murmurs, "Thank you," and leans lightly into him, winds her hand into his hair and, on tip-toes, kisses him with all the pent-up hope and grief and hurt and fear and delight that she possesses, and her final irrelevant thought – or perhaps not so irrelevant after all – is that, in spite of everything, he feels like home.