Final Frontier
Chapter 4
Chakotay blew out a long breath. "No, this has been a whole new level of crazy," he admitted, taking support from the wall himself. "Safe and sound at home, right?"
"No kidding. What time do you think it is?" she asked.
"O'dark we should be in bed," he joked, then ducked his head with an embarrassed smile at the amused look on her face. "The display on Seven's regeneration unit said 0135."
They were quiet until their smiles subsided. Awkwardness floated between them.
"Nightcap?" he said at last.
"I wouldn't say no," she answered and accepted the arm he offered. They moved toward the wide front doors of the laboratory building in no particular hurry. Kathryn stifled a yawn as the doors opened.
"Maybe I should let you get some sleep. Somehow I thought this thing with Seven would be an easy one for you to resolve. I should have known better," Chakotay said as they stepped outside into the misty early morning darkness and the permeating scent of eucalyptus.
"Do you honestly think," came the soft voice at his shoulder, "that I'm letting you go without talking about what went on earlier this evening?"
He would have showed her his dimples if she'd been looking, but in spite of her forthright words, she was examining the ornamental grasses between the labs and the residential structure. "I was rather hoping you wouldn't," he answered.
"Wouldn't what?" she asked in sincere confusion, still facing forward as they walked but finally looking up at him.
"Wouldn't let me go," he said, meeting her blue eyes with the same gaze of radiant certainty he'd shown her a few hours ago. Her face changed, opened.
"How do you do that?" she asked.
"Do what?"
"How can you look at me like that, like nothing's happened?" she said, putting her other hand on his arm. "I was afraid you'd have had enough of me for one lifetime, and you look at me like we'd just been – oh, I don't know, walking along the beach hand in hand all this time. How can you not be changed?"
He'd opened his mouth to answer her when the doors to the residential complex slid open. The elderly doorman looked up. "Good evening Captain, Commander," he said automatically, taking in their famous faces with a good imitation of disinterest as they moved silently to the turbolift. Once inside, they stayed quiet, awkward with each other again. Her door was one of four opening onto the small turbolift vestibule in the center of the top floor. She stepped forward, put her palm to the entry pad to open her door, and gestured him inside. They stopped as the door slid shut.
"It's not that I'm unchanged," he said at last. He reached down for her right hand, testing its weight and warmth with his, remembering the handful of times he'd held it, how he'd wondered if he ever would again. "And it's not that I haven't made mistakes. We've hurt each other. I haven't forgotten. But," his voice caught and he paused to press her hand to his chest. "I look at you now, Kathryn, after everything we've been through, and suddenly I remember why we fought so hard to get home."
She swallowed hard. "That may be," she said, looking down again, as if she didn't trust herself to meet his eyes, "the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."
He took her chin in his right hand and brought her head up so that he could see the tears she was fighting so obstinately. "If it really is," he told her, brushing his lips across the bridge of her nose, "it won't be for long." And he leaned in to take the first real, sweet kiss from her lips.
When they pulled apart, she sighed deeply and rested her head on his chest, letting her arms sneak around him. "Just this," she said into the black gabardine.
"Just this?"
"Yes," she nodded against him. "So many times out there, all I wanted was this, just to put my arms around you and lay my head right here. Oh this feels good."
He snugged his arms around her and kissed the top of her head, then kissed it a few more times just because he could, and her hair was soft and smelled better than anything he'd ever been near. "You could have, you know," he whispered. "I would have been happy to hug the captain as much as necessary."
She chuckled. "I know you would have." She pulled away enough to see his face. The tears were gone, but her face had changed. Something hard had dropped away. To him, she looked much more like herself. "But it would have been acknowledging a relationship that I could never pursue any further, not out there. I couldn't bind you to me, even that much, when that was all I could offer you. It wouldn't have been fair."
Chakotay's jaw tightened and he looked up and away from her, taking in the black sky beyond the windows. Here she was, finally held close, and still talking about the proper distance between them. This woman was going to drive him mad forever, if he was lucky.
"If you want me to endorse your decision, well," he shook his head and looked back to her. "I won't. You never let me decide what was fair. I would have been happy with something well short of an intimate relationship – well, maybe not happy, but reasonably content – if you'd just let me in far enough that we could comfort each other like this. I was so starved for touch. You were too. I know it. It caused far more trouble than it prevented, staying apart the way we did." His hands had fallen to her waist and he held her there, his fingers almost reaching each other around her narrow middle.
She pressed her lips together. "But don't you see, it couldn't have stayed that way. Once we were like this - " she rubbed his back to emphasize their physical connection, "it would have become a game. How far can we go? Where are the limits? Why are there limits? Those infernal parameters you so dislike. It would have destroyed our friendship." She dropped her eyes. "I was afraid it had destroyed our friendship anyway."
He had no wish to argue with her. All that was over, although a game of How far can we go? sounded pretty damn good right now. He leaned forward to touch his forehead to hers. "It's in the past, Kathryn." They stood like that for a long moment, absorbing each other's scents, feeling the warmth they had denied themselves seeping through the thick wool blend of their uniforms.
"So tell me about this house," she said at last.
"House?" he said, baffled.
"You said earlier," she dipped her head then smiled up at him, "that you would be in command in our house. Not an apartment, not a ship – a house. Like you'd thought about it and decided on a house."
He grinned and took her by the waist with one arm to walk her toward the windows and the sparkling view. "I didn't have anything very particular in mind. Just a place big enough for all the children."
He was rewarded by her low laughter. "And where are you planning to get all these children?"
He pulled one of her hands to his mouth and kissed it. "First things first. I have to seduce their mother."
She wiggled her fingers against the stubble on his jaw. "If your seduction techniques involve more debriefing jokes…" she began, but he silenced her by almost lifting her off her toes for another kiss, more demanding than the first. "Well," she said with a sharp intake of breath when he lifted his mouth from hers, "that's an improvement on your technique."
"Glad to hear it," he said, turning his head to look for the door into the adjoining bedroom that must exist, ready to sweep her up and carry her away. Then he felt her pull away a little and looked back, instantly alert to a change in her mood. He had waited – they had waited so long for this. From one heartbeat to the next, he found himself terrified that something would yet happen to shatter the crystalline perfection of this moment. "What is it, Kathryn? Are you okay?"
She smiled a little – that was a relief – but glanced off toward the night sky again, fingering the shoulder seam of his uniform. "I don't know how to say this," she told him, "I feel a little ridiculous…."
"Whatever it is, it's okay," he said. He could feel her shoulder blades through the back of her uniform, reminding him just how slight she was. He marveled again at how much this small person could endure, and achieve. He couldn't imagine anything she could say that he couldn't solve for her, for them. "Just tell me."
Kathryn swallowed and looked up at him without raising her head, then down again. "I'm nervous."
Chakotay was glad she couldn't see his smile as he leaned in to kiss the top of her head. He of all people should know that she wasn't the sum of her publicity, that she had vulnerabilities, that she was in fact human underneath the public persona that had media vans lined up outside Starfleet headquarters every hour of the day and night for the last week, angling for a glimpse. She was too good at showing no weakness. She'd even made him forget, especially in this last hour as she'd once again charged out to save a crewmember, abandoning the turmoil in her own life and mind the moment duty called. He looked around for something less awkward than the Le Corbusier chairs, where he could draw her down to him, cradle her, speak soft, gentling words, but there was nothing. The penthouse implicitly communicated that it was not a place for cuddling.
Kathryn shifted in his arms, and he realized that his extended reflection wasn't helping matters. He kissed her forehead and said, "Let's get out of here."
"What?" she exclaimed. Now she was looking at him fully, confusion mapped across her face, and something he'd seen in her too rarely to be sure that he'd identified it correctly: fear. He cupped her face in one hand.
"This place," he gestured to the elegantly appointed penthouse, with its marble walls and platinum fixtures, "it's making me nervous too. Let's go to my quarters. They're a little more… humble," was the word he settled on. "More like us."
The word "us" restored the smile to her face. He slid his hand down her arm and gripped her hand to lead her back to the turbo lift. She came willingly, following him in almost the same position he'd occupied so often with her, snug at his shoulder. This was so strange to him, this Kathryn who seemed unsure of herself, that he found himself glancing back at her as they crossed the room. Right now there was something about her almost like – and the thought nearly stopped him in his tracks – Seven. He glanced back again and the answering warmth in her eyes strengthened him. No, not like Seven, not inexperienced and uncertain, but a wise, grown woman afraid of putting her most valued friendship on the line, right now, for a future she could not see clearly. He could relate to that.
The trip to his floor was short and the hallway mercifully empty. Neither of them was in any condition to explain why they were hurrying to his quarters, hand in hand, in the wee hours. When the door slid shut behind them they stood looking at the far less intimidating furnishings: a desk and chair, a small couch, and a view toward the city rather than the bay.
"Better?" he asked.
"Yes," she acknowledged with a firm nod, "although you know, that's not really what was bothering me."
They were simply standing side by side, still holding hands. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles but made no other move toward her. "Do you want to talk about it?" he wondered.
She squeezed his hand. "I don't really know what to say. Just that this has been so long in coming – I didn't really think it would come, after a while. I don't know how… I don't know how to be someone else with you. What if this is a complete disaster? Ahh!" she cried, letting go his hand and pacing a few steps forward, one hand to her forehead and the other on her hip in one of her classic dilemma poses. He could almost number them. "What's wrong with me? This is so unlike me. You must think they've drugged me too!"
He stayed where he was. Let her come to him, when she'd fought off this demon. "No. I think you've borne more than anyone should be expected to bear. And now that the possibility of a different life is in front of you, the idea of letting go of what's kept you alive the last seven years is too much."
"What's kept me alive the last seven years?" she echoed without turning around, letting her hands drop. "What's that? My own stubbornness?"
He took a few steps forward to stand even with her. "No, Kathryn. It's us. The team that we are together. That's what got this crew home. And I'll admit, if I thought that going through that door," he gestured with his head toward the bedroom, "carried any real risk of destroying that team, I'd be afraid to do it too."
Kathryn's eyes followed his to the dark opening into the bedroom.
"The final frontier," she murmured with a little laugh.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Oh nothing," she said, offering him a tentative smile. "Just something Picard liked to say in his lectures." Finally she turned to him. "Nothing we faced out there scares me half as much as the possibility of losing you. I realized that when I thought you were getting involved with Seven. I was willing to turn myself inside out, maintain any kind of façade, no matter how painful, so long as I didn't have to face a future without you." She said the words with her usual, casual bravery, head high, but such a look of sadness that his kind, expressive eyes filled with tears. He put his hands on her shoulders, pressing his fingertips into the back of her neck to make her shoulders relax and her head loll gently to one side. "Oh," she moaned, "how do you always know just how to do that?"
He stepped in to bring his lips level with her ear. "Kathryn," he whispered, "I will never willingly be parted from you. We're in a dangerous line of work and I know we'll both face risks, but this," and he pulled back just enough to place another sweet, perfect kiss on her lips, "is a sure thing. Okay?"
Her eyes cleared and she nodded. "Okay." The unwelcome, unfamiliar emotions were still there, welling up in her, but she trusted him. He had followed her, and she had followed him, into greater danger than this. And he was right. If there wasn't safety here, beside him, then there wasn't safety anywhere. This was one risk she had to take, for all the other risks to be worthwhile. He turned her with one arm and led her across the room, under his arm, close to his heart, through the darkened doorway, into the future.