Note: Thanks for all the reviews! I know this isn't an easy read because it depends pretty heavily on foreknowledge of the books. So thanks for sticking with me. More soon.

Part 5

Harry sighed and stared at the kal-toh arrangement in front of him.

The holographic piano player continued to croon in a dark corner of the bar. A small handful of Alpha shift personnel had stopped by for a drink after dinner, but they were long since gone. At least until the end of the next shift, he was probably alone in the bar again. He ran a tired hand over his face, wondering if he looked as morose as he felt.

After B'Elanna had left, he'd slipped back to his quarters to change out of his uniform and noticed that the ship felt all wrong. Harry remembered times like these from their seven-year journey through the Delta Quadrant, rough nights when the Captain and her First Officer were at odds. Their moods affected the whole crew, whether they knew it or not. Everyone walked softly when the command team weren't getting along, afraid to tip the balance further towards open hostility. But now it seemed even worse, somehow. Janeway and Chakotay were together, and this difference of opinion over a policy matter had a definite personal edge to it. Harry prayed that the Admiral and the Captain would figure out how to find common ground, even if it meant sending Tom and B'Elanna back to the Alpha Quadrant.

He hoped that it wouldn't come to that, though. Having Miral around made Voyager seem more like...like home. Like it had been the first time in the Delta Quadrant with Naomi. Harry wasn't naïve about the dangers, not anymore, but if Tom and B'Elanna felt it was safe enough to raise a second child out here, he trusted their judgment. As far as he knew there was no specific policy about having families on this kind of deep-space mission. If there were, his friends would have been sent home already.

No, the problem seemed to be entirely Chakotay's, which was surprising. The Captain loved Miral with his whole heart, and would no doubt love a second child just as much.

Then again, maybe that was the difficulty. He couldn't bear to see the young family in danger and would send them home in order to keep them safe, in spite of how much he would miss them.

Harry sighed. The crushing despair Chakotay had experienced in the last fourteen months would have leveled a lesser man. Maybe this whole business with Tom and B'Elanna and the baby, along with the Admiral's sudden suggestion to move in with him, had pushed him right over the edge. He wouldn't send Janeway away to safety, but he could keep B'Elanna and Tom and their family out of harm's way. Looked at from that perspective, Chakotay's actions weren't so surprising at all.

Harry gave one of the kal-toh pieces an experimental nudge, half expecting the whole structure to come down. His mind wasn't on the exercise and he knew it. He wondered if Janeway and Chakotay were still in the Captain's quarters discussing the matter, or if Janeway had finally slipped away. Hopefully they were still together. He hated to think that this disagreement would sour their new relationship. Even worse, he hated to think how terrible Tom and B'Elanna would feel if that were to happen. Now that the command duo were finally together, no one wanted to come between them.

He drummed his fingers on the table, watching the kal-toh pieces tremble and shift. He was just about to delete the game and ask the replicator for another beer when the wood and glass doors swung open, and Admiral Janeway walked in.

Saddened by the knowledge that she'd left the Captain for the time being, Harry sat back to watch her. She was still in uniform, and she looked...perplexed. And sad. Unbearably sad. Her eyes scanned the room quickly until they fell on him, seated alone in a dark corner of the bar. She pulled up short, hesitating in the doorway.

Harry started to rise. "Admiral?"

She waved a hand at him. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I saw that the program was running and thought..." She swallowed hard. "I'll just go back to my quarters."

"It's all right," he said. Sensing that she'd come to the Holodeck to avoid being alone with her own thoughts, he took a careful step toward her, as if he were approaching a skittish doe. "I wouldn't mind some company." He shrugged toward the kal-toh pieces. "I never could get the hang of this. How about a game of pool instead?"

The Admiral paused, then nodded with a halfhearted smile. "I'd like that," she said.

They played in silence, moving around the pool table as they'd done dozens of times before, except that this time, Harry was winning. Usually she mopped the floor with him – with everyone, really, except Tom and Tuvok. Tonight, though, her mind was clearly a thousand light-years away...or maybe just a few decks.

After he'd defeated her a second time, she stepped back from the table, hands wrapped around her cue. "I'd offer best three of five, but I think it would be pointless," she said. "Maybe I'll just call it a night."

Harry suddenly felt as though he needed to keep her there and talking. It's what Chakotay would have done, he realized, and racked his cue. "How about a glass of wine?" he asked.

Janeway leaned her cheek against the pool cue. "It's late. I should get back to my quarters," she said. But she didn't move toward the door.

Harry let out a long, slow breath. "B'Elanna was here earlier," he said. "I know a little bit about what happened after the watch." He crossed to his former table, wiped out the kal-toh game and ordered a carafe of Merlot from the replicator. "How about that glass of wine, Kathryn?"

It was a presumption and he knew it. He turned his back on her and poured two glasses, allowing her time and space to think, and sat down.

When he felt her hand on his shoulder, he relaxed. "Thank you, Harry," she said softly, and sat opposite him, toying with the stem of her glass. "Can I ask you a question, off the record?"

"Of course."

"What were those fourteen months like?" she asked. She looked away for a moment, but not before Harry caught the shimmer of tears in her eyes. "What was it like when you thought I was..."

Harry blinked. "Am I the person you really want to know about?"

Janeway closed her eyes. "No." She shook her head. "Hugh told me about the drinking and the depression," she said. "I need to know from you, from his friend, what it was like." She looked back at him, her eyes free of tears now, but filled with pain and confusion. "What was he like, Harry?"

Harry sipped his wine, letting the rich taste roll over his tongue and stalling for time. The fourteen months had been hard on all of them, and not just because of Janeway's apparent death. Letting his mind wander back through the crises and the emotional trauma, Harry realized that he probably needed to have this discussion almost as much as she did, but for very different reasons.

He squared his shoulders and set the glass aside. "Chakotay was...broken," he said softly. "And none of us knew why."

Janeway's eyes closed again. "That's the same word Hugh used when he talked to me."

"We could see it at the memorial service, but no one knew how to approach him. We didn't know what to say." He licked his lips. "To be honest, we were all a little afraid of him."

Her eyes snapped open in surprise. "Of Chakotay?"

Harry nodded. "He was so angry. I'd never seen him like that. I didn't want to make anything worse for him, so I didn't even try to talk to him. Your sister did. She was the only one."

"What did she say?"

"We don't know. You'd have to ask her. Or him."

Janeway nodded and waved at him to continue.

"We weren't even sure who he was angry at. You, for going alone. The Borg, for what they did to you. Or..." He glanced up at her.

"Or at himself, for not being there to protect me."

Harry nodded. "We thought maybe that's why he started drinking. To dull both the anger and the self-blame."

Janeway took a long sip of her wine. "How bad did the drinking get?"

Harry spread his hands flat on the table between them. "He never came on duty intoxicated, I promise you that. Hungover and looking like a targ's breakfast, yes. But never drunk. Not once."

To Harry's astonishment, Janeway turned a half-smile on him. "He knows I would've haunted him if he had."

Harry chuckled in spite of himself. "Probably so. And he kept it in his quarters, as far as anybody knows. He was self-aware enough not to demean himself in front of his crew. None of us ever had to cover for him or make an excuse for him. He never missed a single shift."

Janeway looked up sharply, frowning. A memory of The Void and Janeway's months-long absence from the Bridge sliced through Harry's thoughts, and he drew in a sudden breath. "I didn't mean-"

Her jaw clenched. "It's all right. Go on."

"We knew he was hurting, but no one could talk to him about it. Maybe if B'Elanna had been there, things would have been different. But he was trying to get through his grief on his own, and we could all see it wasn't working. He was cold and distant...and erratic."

Janeway sipped her wine. "I know about the Orions."

Harry nodded. "Tom and I talked about it then. We hoped maybe he could work through it on his own."

"What made him stop drinking?"

"The Borg. As soon as we detected them, he forced himself to detox so he'd be ready for them. But he refused to take the easy way out of that, too."

Janeway nodded. "I've talked to the Doctor. He told me Chakotay preferred to...'sweat it out,' was the phrase."

"Right. And when he came back on duty he was...hard." It was the only word Harry could think of that encapsulated the anger, the determination and the lust for vengeance that rolled off of Chakotay in waves then, every minute of every day. "Hard as a rock. Uncompromising. Demanding – of everyone, but himself more than anyone. Tom said he hadn't seen him like that even in the Maquis."

"And he started making mistakes."

"Yes. He led the fleet into a trap in the Azure Nebula. Tom says that caused him to slip into a traumatic and delayed shock from the Orions, the drinking, the detox...and your death." Harry knocked back the rest of his wine and refilled his glass. "Fortunately, I don't remember any of that."

Janeway reached out and covered his hand with hers. "He almost got you killed."

"He did get a lot of good people killed. I was lucky." Harry's voice was foreign to his own ears, husky and dark.

"Are you still angry with him?"

He shook his head. "If I were, I wouldn't be here. I understand now what he was going through, and I respect him more for getting help and pulling himself out of it. I've forgiven him. But it hasn't been easy."

"For any of you."

"No."

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Janeway finished her wine and excused herself to the bar. When she came back with a bottle of Scotch and two small glasses, Harry gave her a grim smile. "This is probably the best idea you've ever had, Admiral."

"Or the worst," she quipped. "It remains to be seen." She poured two shots. They each knocked back their drinks and stared at each other across the table. "Ready to tell me the rest?" she asked, refilling their glasses.

Harry felt the cringe cross his face. "Orcas Island."

She nodded. "Orcas Island."

Harry sighed. "He just...disappeared. I was still recovering, Tom had his own problems to deal with, B'Elanna was gone, Tuvok was on assignment, Seven was in Sweden..." He fingered the etchings on his glass of Scotch. "Everything and everyone just drifted away."

"But Tom found him."

"Only after searching for months and finally contacting Sveta." Harry pushed his drink away, suddenly sick to his stomach. "He was a mess when Tom found him. Skinny and dirty and mentally unstable." He gave a low, humorless chuckle. "When Tom told me about it, I thought it all sounded like an assignment my Mom would give her eighth-graders back home. 'The Ways of the Plains Indians.' The Native American had gone native. Nice cliché."

"You were disappointed with him."

Harry nodded. "We all were. And shocked he wouldn't come back, but wouldn't tell anyone why." He eyed Janeway warily. "That's when Tom figured it out. That you and Chakotay..." He hesitated.

She nodded her acceptance. "Go on."

Harry leaned across the table. "Then it all started to make sense. The drinking, the revenge, the mistakes... He was in love with you, but he'd never told anyone and so no one new why he was so broken. No one had any patience with his behavior, and he had no one to help him. And that's why he fell apart."

She touched his hand. "It's all right, Harry. I know you would have all been there for him, if you had known."

He nodded. "And I know this is going to sound selfish, but... If he had just told us, maybe he could have been there for us, too."

She withdrew her hand. "What was he like, when he came back on duty?"

Harry smiled. "Better. He was back to the Chakotay we all remembered. Sadder and wiser, but solid. I think...I think maybe he came back to honor you and to take care of all of us. It's what you would have wanted, and he came back determined to make sure we would be safe." This time, Harry reached out to touch her hand. "And I think maybe that's why he reacted the way he did to Tom and B'Elanna's news."

Janeway sucked in a sudden, sharp breath. "How much did B'Elanna tell you?"

"That she's expecting again, and they asked the two of you if they could stay. You offered a way to make it work, but the Captain reacted badly to the idea."

Janeway stood up and wandered to the pool table. Leaning against it with her back to him, she rolled a ball across the felt, bouncing it off the far rail and watching it careen back to her. "I think I've made a terrible mistake."

Harry rose and crossed to her. "What makes you say that, Admiral?"

Her voice, when it finally came, was one he'd never heard from her before. Soft, hesitant, small. "I made an assumption I shouldn't have made," she whispered. "Then I did something I swore I'd never do to him again. I made it personal. And now...I'm not sure I can make it right."

He leaned against the pool table next to her. "I'm sure Chakotay didn't mean to hurt you, any more than you meant to hurt him. He loves you," Harry said quietly. "He always has. And you love him." She turned to stare at him, but didn't deny it. He risked a hand on her shoulder. "You've been through The Void, the Borg, the Devore and the Equinox, and you still love each other. I can't imagine you'll let this change that."

She nodded. Then a slow, sly smile spread across her face. "What's an unexpected pregnancy between friends, right?"

Harry snatched his hand away. "You...you aren't-"

Janeway laughed out loud. "No, I'm not. And you, Lieutenant, are far too easy a target for me."

Harry exhaled in a whoosh. "I guess I always have been, haven't I? You'd think years of practice with Tom would have negated that."

She cocked a challenging eyebrow at him. "Are you saying Tom's teasing is equal to mine?"

Harry grinned. "No, Admiral. Never."

"Good." She stared up at him for a moment, then placed a hand on his cheek. "Thank you for this, Harry. You've given me a lot to think about."

He nodded. "Glad I could help, Admiral."

She nodded back, a swift dip of her chin, and looked around the Holodeck. "You've been drinking alone tonight, Lieutenant," she clucked. "Bad precedent for a senior officer."

He shrugged. "Tom and B'Elanna are obviously busy, Seven's with Hugh, the Doc's being recalibrated..."

"Isn't there someone else you'd like to spend time with?"

He shuffled his feet. He'd forgotten how perceptive she was. "I have been seeing someone," he said vaguely, "but she's on Beta shift right now."

Janeway patted his shoulder. "You should talk to your CO's about getting that switched, Lieutenant. I happen to know the First Officer has a soft spot for star-crossed lovers. And beneath that gruff Maquis exterior of his, your Captain is a hopeless romantic."

Harry chuckled. "I'll talk to them right away, Admiral."

-END part 5-