Chapter 6. Cataclysm

B'Elanna woke to the smell of fresh bread and mushroom stew. Late afternoon sun slanted in through the guest room window, and she blinked, slow and stupid, watching dust motes float in the warm air. She hadn't meant to nap so long, but the time lag, the pre-dawn waking, and the miles of walking in fresh air had left her dead on her feet by the time she'd returned to the house. And, perhaps, her spent, futile anger had been the final blow to her stamina. She closed her eyes, remembering Tom's message, and her quarrel with Chakotay by the lake.

She couldn't hide in here until morning. She yawned, then rose quietly and rolled her head around on her neck, still groggy. The house was quiet, but the aroma from the kitchen told her Chakotay must be nearby. She went out to face him.

She found him out back, in the shade cast by the house. He was folded onto a low stool, leaning back against the building. She saw the glass in his hand before she saw his face. He'd found the bottle she'd hidden that morning, or had opened another. Apparently the heat of the afternoon had driven him to ruin good whiskey with ice.

She leaned back against the doorframe, arms crossed. Without looking up at her, he said, "Hungry?"

She shrugged. "I could eat. Smells good."

He smiled, but the grimness was back. "It's good to have someone to cook for. I'm glad you woke up."

She followed him back into the house. "Sorry about that." He waved her apology away.

"You were tired. Long trip, early morning." He turned to the stove, lifted a lid, stirred.

"And tomorrow I turn around and do it all in reverse." She was surprised to see him wince, and then dismayed to see his face go blank again as he lifted his glass and drank.

Fucking hell, she thought. It was becoming the refrain of her visit.

They ate at the table again, seated across from each other. He'd directed her to light candles while he sliced the bread and ladled stew into their bowls. He'd poured her a drink without asking, though she acknowledged that telling him to skip the ice as he'd been reaching for it had given him tacit approval to do so.

"So you're leaving tomorrow," Chakotay suddenly said. They'd been chatting about mutual friends, Voyager's former crew and their whereabouts, catching up on the gossip. She had not been surprised to hear that Mike Ayala had visited a couple months after Kathryn's death. He had not been surprised to hear that Harry Kim was three months into yet another deep space mission. She'd come close to strategically omitting the news that Naomi and her husband were expecting their first child, but reasoned that he'd be sure to hear it later from someone else. He'd grinned like a proud grandpa, then blinked back tears before swallowing what was left in his glass.

Now he was asking about her travel plans, like he hadn't known the itinerary all along. "Yes, tomorrow. Two weeks travel each way; I couldn't swing more than a month away from the project, not and get it done by deadline." She'd told him about work while they were walking to the lake, the next-generation transwarp engine that her team was refining, how once the technology was standard Dorvan would be a week closer to the Sol system.

He took a breath. "Well, it really was good of you to come so far for such a short stay. For this, for me." She could tell he was making an effort to be gracious but wasn't getting very far with it.

"When you invited me, I didn't think twice, Chakotay. I think a lot of the others would have done likewise. Why didn't you invite anyone else?"

"I did." She looked a question at him. "Tom."

Her face fell, jaw set. "Yeah. Well."

"Why didn't he come, 'Lanna?"

"You'll have to ask him," she bit out. "But I would imagine - " She looked down at her food and realized she wouldn't be able to choke down any more. Pushing her dish away, she took a deep breath and finished the thought. "We can hardly live together on the station, let alone for two weeks on a crowded transport."

"So, what did you do, flip a coin? Loser goes to Dorvan?"

Outraged and deeply hurt, she objected. "No! How could you think that of us, Chakotay? I didn't tell him not to come, and he didn't tell me he wouldn't go. It just … didn't happen."

"You don't talk about spending a month apart - it just happens? What do you two talk about these days?" She felt like squirming under his accusatory tone, and her anger mounted and grew focused.

"Not very much. Nothing, actually. Maybe we never talked about anything anymore, except Miral. Maybe that's where I fucked up my marriage. Or maybe after living with two Klingons for seventeen years, life with just one bores Tom to tears." She snapped, lashing out defensively. "Why are you pushing so hard on this? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we can't all have fairytale marriages with our soulmates!"

His head jerked back as if she had belted him one. He carefully placed both palms on the table, then rose to his feet. "I'm sorry." He looked at her steadily and she quailed inside to see him so wounded by her outburst. "You haven't disappointed me, B'Elanna. Never think that. I'd have no right." Then he turned back to the kitchen. She sat alone at the table feeling shamed, confused, and remorseful.

When he returned to the table, though, he read disapproval in her glance at the fresh ice in his glass. "Relax. It's just my second one."

"Second this afternoon, maybe. How much are you drinking these days, anyway?" She'd seen him hit the bottle hard, back in the Maquis and a couple times even on Voyager. She knew he could drink a lot and still function, but that didn't mean it was healthy.

"Not enough," he said bitterly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm still walking around making bad decisions, aren't I?"

"Drinking more won't help with that," she said wryly.

He snorted. "It will with the walking around part." And they found themselves laughing, although neither really thought it was funny.

By the time they stopped laughing entirely, they were seated in front of the fireplace, glasses in hand - he'd topped hers up - bottle on the floor at their feet. The short sofa had cushions piled against one end, next to a small table with wire-rimmed spectacles, so old-fashioned she thought they were decorative until he placed them on his nose. Damn, that's a sexy look. The thought flashed through her mind as he lifted the bottle to read the label.

"2383."

"Huh?" She was still looking at his face. Better back off on the booze, Torres.

He pointed at the date on the label. "Twelve-year-old scotch. Classic."

"That was Kathryn's idea, wasn't it?" she guessed. "To buy it years ago, knowing it would be the perfect age for your next big anniversary."

"Yup," Chakotay acknowledged easily. "She was always the planner, between us." Then, after a beat, "For all the good it did, in the end." He placed his glasses back on the end table, bent over to set down the bottle, and then stayed there, resting his face in his hands.

B'Elanna's heart broke, seeing her friend in such despair. "Come on, Chakotay. Don't." He didn't move. "Don't," she urged, with more vehemence. "It did entire quadrants of good. Don't talk like her life was a waste, damn you!"

His voice came muffled through his hands and through his tears. "Not hers, 'Lanna. Mine."

"Oh, for Kahless's sake, now you're just being maudlin." Exasperated, she stood and began to pace before the fireplace. "Chakotay, I get that you're grieving. Of course you're grieving. But you are still alive, with decades ahead of you and a lot of people who love you."

He raised his head slowly to watch her. "None of that helps now. She died too young, but … I'm too old already. Too old to start over, to rebuild it all."

"What do you have to rebuild? You could go back with me tomorrow and they'd have you in the big chair again by year's end." But he was already shaking his head no at her words.

"I resigned my commission, 'Lanna."

"Ask for it back! They shouldn't have accepted your resignation so soon after losing your wife - that was unconscionable, honestly! Owen never would have pressured someone in your position to make such a big decision -"

"Nobody pressured me, all right? And I don't want it back! I only stayed in so long to please Kathryn!"

That stunned her into stillness. His career in the captain's chair had been illustrious, record-setting. She spun on her heel to face him. "To please Kathryn? How can that be? Your careers kept you apart as much as together all those years!"

"Exactly, B'Elanna! Exactly! That's what she wanted!" he roared. Now he surged to his feet, pulling at his hair with both hands. She suddenly knew with razor-sharp clarity that she was hearing what he had never told anyone: the truth about their fairytale marriage.

"The love of my life! I knew it was her from the first day we met. I spent seven years waiting for her to love me back - not because I wanted to but because I couldn't do otherwise, no matter how hard I tried to stop." He threw his arms wide. "Then the miracle happened, and we were home, and I was free, and she was free too - we could love each other, we could marry … and she never -" Ragged sobs were tearing out of him now, fists clenched against his eyes like he could hold them back by brute force.

B'Elanna couldn't tear her gaze from his agony, his collapse. "Never what, Chakotay?" she heard herself say, and shuddered, dreading the rest.

"- never wanted what I wanted. Not completely. Not enough. Children. A real home together."

He circled the couch, stumbling, half-blind with grief and heartache, a grotesque echo of the shaman's dance that morning. He halted, his back to B'Elanna.

"Me." The single word emerged like a detonation. "She … never entirely wanted … all of me."

"Chakotay," she pleaded, walking around to face him. "Come on. Anyone who saw the two of you together … you were crazy about each other. She loved you. She did - don't ever doubt that."

"Then why." He bit back the rest, his lower lip between his teeth.

"Why what?" She reached up to yank his hands down from his face. "What, Chakotay?"

Her verbal prodding and her touch suddenly unleashed in him something feral, ferocious. "Why did she stay so distant for so long? Why did she put Starfleet first, every fucking time? Why did she take other lovers? Even back on Earth, 'Lanna!"

His words and the wild expression on his face shocked her so badly her defensive reflexes failed her. The next thing she knew, his bulk had her pressed against the wall by the fireplace, his hand at her throat.

"I was always faithful to her, once we could be together." His voice rasped, low with fury. "I never once looked at another woman. But now - "

Her breath was coming in gasps, drawn almost painfully past the pressure of his hand against her windpipe. His eyes, still red with weeping but hooded now with desire, were locked on her mouth. She bared her teeth, suddenly seized with the impulse to sink them into his jaw.

"What is this?" she snarled, clinging with growing desperation to her anger and impatience - all an act, she realized, a pitiful covering for her deep attachment - and attraction - to her old friend. "What are you doing?"

He raised his gaze, and her pulse quickened at the laser intensity of his black eyes. Evidence of his rising desire nudged her abdomen. She gasped again and felt a rush of heat in her loins. This can't be happening, she thought. This is Chakotay.

A long-suppressed memory rose from within and flooded all her senses: Voyager, Engineering, an alien-induced hallucination drawn from deep in her subconscious. "I want you. I've always wanted you," he'd said. "You feel the same way too."

She did. Her body screamed for his. She watched in fascinated horror as his nostrils flared, knowing he was catching her scent, that her body's reaction spoke in a language he couldn't fail to notice. His fingers tightened infinitesimally on either side of her throat, and he raised a trembling left hand to grip her shoulder hard.

"B'Elanna," he muttered, eyes searching her face. She watched the struggle playing out on his: want, confusion, raw pain, then back to desperate hunger, pleading without words.

Almost, she gave in. Almost. She couldn't say after just what had stopped her. She would hope, later, that it was her marriage vow, but she suspected it was something even older: the debt of loyalty she owed to Kathryn Janeway. All she knew in the moment was that whatever Chakotay was seeking with such voracious need in his eyes, it wasn't her, B'Elanna Torres. Not really.

She let her lips close over her teeth, gathering herself. Then she pulled the mask of anger back over her features and knocked his hands away with a sudden violence that he didn't try to resist. He took a step back, putting space between their bodies. Still, her own blood ran hot, and she had to resist the instinct to drop into a fighting crouch, prelude to Klingon mating. Instead she stood straight and square and merely stared Chakotay down. After a long moment of burning eye contact, he turned his face away and let out a sigh.

When she felt sure he had accepted the impossibility of whatever had just pulled them so close to the brink, she finally dared to slip past him and stride wordlessly from the room. Closing the guest room door behind her, she considered locking it but knew she had far more to fear from herself than she ever would from Chakotay. A deep and helpless rage rose within her, for Kathryn Janeway and whatever had made her so callous, so selfish and unfeeling and detached from the man who loved her …

Suddenly she saw herself in those adjectives and heard for the first time the bewildered pain in Tom's last message to her … and the dam broke within.