Though there's no physical way he should be able to be here, she isn't surprised to find him standing in her bedroom tonight. He sees it in her expression, which is devoid of surprise even in deep shadows. She doesn't bother calling for lights to see if he is armed. She trusts him too much for that – still. Instead, she slinks to him, presses her body into his space.
"Kathryn," he starts, feeling compelled to say so many things to her.
"Shhh." She presses two fingers firmly over his lips. "Don't talk."
He shouldn't let her do this, but she is her, and her mouth is on his. Chakotay wraps his hands in her hair, draws her body against him while his tongue responds ardently to hers. Her hand works access into the pants that fall open all too easily for her; the contact of her cool hand on his hot flesh is jolting. Her proximity was always, is always enough to arouse him, and he's hard within seconds. The moderate skill of her insistent fondling is almost unnecessary. All she has to do is to be her, and to be near him. It shames him that they have known each other for nine years now and she still doesn't know this.
She'd said no talking. Instead he undresses her with barely civil pacing, too easily uses superior strength to disentangle her and to push her back on the bed before she can do much more than start thinking of protest. His head is buried between obligingly parted thighs, the openness with which she welcomes his mouth on her glistening intimate flesh giving him chills of entitlement. He doesn't know who else she might have been with all this time that he's been gone, and it could have been several men for all he knows or has a right to question. But he does know that Kathryn Janeway doesn't just spread her legs like this, take an inherently vulnerable position like this for any man, and she does not clutch his head to her or writhe and moan encouragement as openly as she does now. When she tenses, bucks up into his probing tongue and mouth, coming undone for him, he knows that it's only for him.
He doesn't deserve it. Not when he's an undisputed criminal twice over now. But he loves her for it. He loves her for still loving him.
He should never have come here. But he would have died if he'd stayed away from her one night longer. When they're finished and the aftermath has been drawn out in whispered endearments, meaningfully idle caresses long enough, he makes himself rise. He's already stayed far too long. Security will be here any minute.
He doesn't know what he'd expected after what he's done. That she'd rail at him, maybe. That she'd kick him out or turn him in immediately. That she'd take him into her bed so easily should surprise him. Except it doesn't. Not really. He knows her too well for that. Unfortunately for both of them.
She wanted him to be distracted. She'll use the opportunity of him having to redress before he leaves. He almost opens his mouth to save her the trouble of going through the whole charade, but he doesn't. How can he deny her this? She's Kathryn. She thrives on having her morality tested. Chakotay wonders if she'll ever learn this about herself, but mostly, he expects the phaser to be leveled at his chest as he rises from beside the bed, pulling his pants back over his hips.
He somehow hadn't expected that her eyes would the one to cloud.
"I'm sorry, Chakotay."
He must know that she is. Tears glisten in her eyes, and tears are the signposts of remorse. Aren't they?
He fastens his pants before he responds. His smooth bronze chest gleams with their combined sweat even in fog-muted moonlight. "You did what you had to do, Kathryn."
His words resonate throughout the room. And especially throughout her head. She can't breathe. This isn't right. It isn't how things should be.
"I understand," he promises her. Of course he does. He always has – more than anyone. "And now I have to go." He starts to turn toward the door.
Janeway raises the phaser, takes a steady, warning aim that draws his attention. Her eyes are shining at him in the moonlight that fights its way through the fog for one triumphant moment. "I'll stun you." The curt shake of her head, the bite of steel in her voice is something so many of their enemies have received but never him. Never like this. "Don't make me…" she asks.
Chakotay is anything but concerned. He grins at her. That dazzling, dimpled grin that somehow only highlights the pain in his clouding black eyes. "Oh, I know you will." He takes a last look at her, but it's a moment he doesn't have so it's short. Full of regrets. They've always been so full of regrets. "I'm sorry, Kathryn."
He always says her name as many times as he can. Some things about him never, ever change. No matter what else does. Her eyes burn with remorse at what she has to do. He's halfway out the door when she presses the trigger.
The phaser makes an odd noise but doesn't fire. The power cell's been cut. And he just had enough time to clear the doorway and melt into the darkness of the windowless hall. He's already activated transport before she could chase him.
Damn him. Damn them both. He knows where she keeps her phaser. He got to it before she ever entered the house, cut the fuel line and rendered it inoperable – but otherwise unchanged – so as to avoid detection by her until she actually tried to use it.
And now he's gone. The transport will take hours to trace, and by then he'll be on his way out of the system again: out of her life again. But somehow, through her anger at being bested by him, at not having expected it, Kathryn's grateful that he spared her having to drop him. To turn him in. As she hurriedly dresses, Chakotay's scent clings to her. Their combined fluids are still a slick, accusing presence between her thighs. Part of her wonders if she'd known all along what he had done, and she curses herself for not knowing which betrayal is worse in the long run. Starfleet or Chakotay? Damn him to the Delta Quadrant and back for making her choose – and for ultimately not letting her in the end.
He knew she would betray him. He knows her too well.
Admiral Paris isn't happy when he shows sixty seconds later, arrives in the living room of a house devoid of fugitive. He listens to her explanation with silent disappointment, hands the phaser she surrenders to the head of the security detail to be examined. The security officers wouldn't dare question her. Paris is not a subordinate. He sees the residual sweat in her tousled, still-damp hair. The fading flush on her face and neck. Owen's piercing look tells her he wants to believe she wasn't complicit in Chakotay's escape, but the doubt is there.
It lingers. In both of them.
The rose tint of home is all but gone. When she visits every Sunday, the rural house in Indiana that was her childhood home is everything that she remembered – and everything that she had selectively forgotten.
The house is full of semi-strangers today. Phoebe is having one of her little art shows. Some of Phoebe's artist friends and teachers have come to sit and critique the abstract genius that is Phoebe. Staring blankly through swirls of color and texture that look at best like nebulae and at worst like children's finger-painting projects, Kathryn smiles politely. She sits next to Gretchen, warmly engages the various tortured souls in her mother's living room, hoping faintly that Phoebe appreciates the clout her sister's undeserving notoriety lends to her exposure. After exactly thirty minutes of discussion so pointless and esoteric it makes her skin crawl, Kathryn excuses herself to the kitchen, and Gretchen, unsurprisingly, follows her.
Gretchen hovers. Most times, she was too good to stoop to that level, but she has that way about her when she's worried. She still seems very worried. Gretchen always makes sure Kathryn's coffee cup is full. Between careful, planted moments of silence, she wants to know if Kathryn is seeing anyone.
"No time," Kathryn infallibly murmurs.
Gretchen perks up. Is the admiralty giving her work of any more significance, then?
"Not really. It's mostly busy work. But there's a lot of it." Finding Chakotay is a full time job in and of itself, she never adds. Her mother seems to know it anyway. The press sure as hell hasn't gotten tired of reporting on it yet.
When is she going to get a dog, since Molly is obviously too happy with her new family to ever take from them? Should they throw a party for Miral's birthday, or for Naomi's? Wouldn't Kathryn be happier if she could see them all more often?
She should really get better quality sleep. And try to eat more. Brownies and the vegetable bouillon she's so fond of living on lack crucial vitamins and coffee could never touch the health benefits of freshly squeezed juice: it's why her complexion is so pallid lately. Gretchen still keeps all three coming and in steady supply because somewhere deep inside she is insecure that Kathryn would come to see her so regularly if both weren't readily available. And if Kathryn doesn't come to see her, she won't be able to keep tabs on how she's doing. On how she's not doing.
Kathryn should really try the casserole her mother has offered her three times now, and it's the breaking point of thinning patience. Kathryn snaps at her, and Gretchen withdraws with pursed, offended lips to see to her guests, who should be leaving soon.
Kathryn's head drops to the cool countertop in self disgust. Her temper is out of control lately. Her secretary has gotten the brunt end of it, too.
Her mother means well, and Kathryn knows it. She'll apologize when Gretchen comes back.
It's Sunday afternoons that Kathryn remembers how her mother had never understood her the way that Daddy had. That's not to say that Gretchen doesn't know her eldest daughter. She does. Very well in fact, but she's never fully understood her. Not like she does Phoebe, who is more like their mother than she ever was Edward. Since Voyager, the divide has only grown worse. Kathryn is not the person who left this planet almost nine years ago. She came back rusty and out of practice at being a daughter. A sister. She's never been all that stellar at it in the first place but that's an admission she has yet to make to herself on any conscious level.
By contrast, Phoebe understands her too well. Phoebe, she's never been able to fool. It's part of the friction that's always lain between them, and it's never been more in evidence than today as Phoebe ambushes her older sister in the kitchen this dreary, rainy afternoon.
"You aren't happy here. Mom doesn't want to admit it, but I can see it."
Kathryn's only half listening. "What are you talking about?" she pretends to want to know.
Phoebe scowls. "I thought being away from us for so long would make a difference, but it hasn't. Nothing we do for you is appreciated."
Kathryn tenses painfully, her attention caught. Nothing they do for her?
"You're out of your mind, Phoebe," Kathryn frostily assures her. "And I don't really feel like getting into a shouting match with–"
"Too bad. Because I feel like having one with you." Phoebe ignores her sister's tightening mouth, satisfied with having her full attention for once. "You think by coming to dinner every week that it's enough. You act like letting her fill your belly and your coffee cup is this long-suffering ritual that you go through for her."
"That's abs–"
"You think pretending you think my art is a real career is the duty you owe to me as your sister," Phoebe continues. "You don't believe it, but you pretend you do. You show up to one exhibit a year, claiming work keeps you from the rest, and you somehow think that makes you some kind of saint."
"You can't be serious." Kathryn's eyes are wide and faintly incredulous. How could her sister possibly say these things? After all the support she's constantly showing her? "I stayed for the entire exhibit, didn't I? I even helped clean up aft–"
"Well from now on, Sis, save your false praise, okay?" Phoebe steamrolls right over her, her small Janeway chin jutting out in defiance. "I don't need your approval to validate my work. My career is just as real as yours ever was."
Kathryn's mouth falls open at that. "I never said it wasn't!" Damn it, all she'd wanted was a quiet Sunday afternoon in her childhood home. Is that too much to ask after being gone for seven years? Really?
Apparently so.
"Can you deny that it's how you feel?"
"Yes!" Kathryn lies defensively.
Phoebe smirks. It's not a pretty expression. Her silence is accusatory.
Kathryn takes a deep sip of lukewarm coffee, a tactical maneuver designed to buy time. She lowers her cup slowly. Speaks the same way. "I do think your art is…real," she tries.
"No you don't," her sister snaps. "But I've got news for you. It's a hell of a lot more rewarding than your desk job is."
A sharp piquing sensation thrums through Kathryn. No one anywhere in four quadrants is as needlessly provocative as her younger sister in one of her mercurial, artistic tempers. "What the hell is wrong with you tonight?" Kathryn asks as mildly as she can: it's not very. "Did you come in here specifically to start a fight?"
"Maybe you need one," Phoebe retorts.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"You're sleeping, Kathryn. You're walking around wide awake but you're asleep. I don't know what did it this time, or why or how, and it doesn't matter. Consider this your ice water, okay? Mom can't take much more of you walking around in a depressed haze. And it's starting to wear on my patience, too."
"You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about," Kathryn dismisses coldly, starting to tune her sister out. There's no reasoning with her like this. And the day her sister does something worthwhile like getting a counseling degree is the day–
"Really? Let me take a stab at it. You believe in Starfleet because Daddy believed in it. You wanted to follow in his footsteps because you idolized him. All your life, you've gunned for admiral because he was one. Because you told yourself he'd only have been away from us all the time if it was really important stuff he was doing for the Federation. Only now you've done it, and you've found out it isn't anything close to what it's cracked up to be."
Her sister is treading on very thin ice, and Kathryn's tone lets her know it. "That's a wonderful fairy tale, Phoebe, and thank you for sharing it with me but–"
"So your entire life-long lie of a dream is nothing but a disappointing sham. You're having trouble dealing with that. Okay. That's understandable. But you'd better find a way. Because watching you like this is killing Mom. And some of us aren't too far up our own behinds to see it."
If Phoebe wasn't so far off the mark that it's borderline amusing, Kathryn's neck would probably snap with the tension building in her entire body. Through her teeth, she grits out, "If something I've said or done has upset her–"
"Everything you say and do upsets her!" Phoebe shouts. "You're not happy and she knows it, Kathryn! For God's sakes, you really think coming here to rub her nose in it once a week is helping anyone?"
"I come here for her!" Kathryn retorts incredulously, feeling her blood pressure skyrocket with every passing judgment.
"And I'm saying don't anymore," Phoebe says coldly. "She'd rather get a comm. from you once a month if she could see you happy in it than have to worry about you in person once a week. It's killing her and she deserves some happiness after everything you and Daddy put her through. Damn it," Phoebe's hands slam angrily against the countertop as she demands, "how can you be this blind to the needs of the people who are supposed to be closest to you? How, Kathryn?"
"I–" This is absurd. Her sister is absurd. She always has been, Kathryn remembers now. Belatedly, she also remembers that sometimes the best way to handle Phoebe when she's like this is just to remain calm. It's rather like dealing with the mentally ill or making first contact through a faulty translator. Kathryn forces herself to speak slowly and calmly, using very small words. Unclenching her jaw just isn't going to happen, though. "Phoebe," she starts. "I don't even know where all this is suddenly coming from but–"
"It's coming from years, Kathryn! Forty plus years of you going through the motions with Mom and me and never letting us get really close to you!" her sister explodes in one uncontrolled burst, making Kathryn blanch.
"That's not true," Kathryn argues, white-faced and stunned. "You know that's not true!"
"What's true is that we never filled the hole that Daddy left for you," her sister says bluntly. "We tried, but we've never been able to do it – and now Starfleet isn't even enough to do it anymore."
"That's an awful thing to say, Phoebe Janeway. It's cruel, and it's unkind," Kathryn hisses.
Phoebe's wild curls shake softly around her neck and shoulders. "No, Kathryn," she tells her sister sadly. "It isn't. Not when it's the truth. I don't even think it's your fault, really. You and Daddy had this special relationship. You both tried to hide it, but no one could ever deny it. And ever since he's been gone, Mom and I haven't been enough for you."
Kathryn's stinging eyes shine with shocked emotion. "I do love you, Phoebe," Kathryn whispers, throat raw and tight under the unspeakable accusations her sister seems to be hurling at her out of nowhere. "I love both of you. You can't possibly believe…there's no way that you can doubt that."
Phoebe's hand slices exasperatedly through the tense air between them. "Oh for God's – of course not. Don't get all holier than thou on me. It won't work on me; I'm not your crewman."
Kathryn's head cocks sharply, her spine stiffening. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Fully realizing what she's just let slip, Phoebe ducks her head, pinches the bridge of her nose. She takes an uncharacteristically shaky breath before looking up again. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to get into – that's probably just my own jealousies talking. I shouldn't have brought that into–"
"Jealousy! Of my crew?"
Just how selfish is her sister?
She has the grace to back down from her rabid dog attack pattern, at least in these few seconds expressed her embarrassment. "It's just…they don't know you the way that I do. And I don't know you the way they do. They know some version of you we'll never get to see. Sometimes I just wish…" She stops herself while Kathryn stares on, incredulous, then thinks the better of it. Phoebe has never been one to hedge, and she is no more so after nine years. "I wish we could see the you that they see. The Kathryn that Daddy saw," Phoebe whispers.
"I don't have any idea what you're talking about." Her head shakes faintly as she tries to comprehend. She truly doesn't. "I'm me. I'm Kathryn – your sister."
"No, you're not. I don't even know who you are anymore. And this isn't even what I came in here to tell you."
"Then what is? For the love of quantum physics, please do tell me!"
Phoebe inhales again as her hands find the edge of the counter, seemingly to ground herself. "I know that you love us. Okay? And we love you. It's because of that that I'm telling you this. Go find the something that fills that hole for you. And do it before it's too late, Kathryn. For you and for Mom. Because I'm half afraid that it already is."
"Maybe that isn't possible anymore." The soft words are out of her mouth before she even realizes she's humoring her sister's insane fantasies about a reality only she lives in.
"Neither is making it back here from the Delta Quadrant in seven years," her sister retorts, unbothered by the claim. "But then you always did get what you wanted."
"Now you're confusing me with yourself," Kathryn snarls, pushed to her limits. That is a decades old button to push. It was Phoebe whose temper tantrums had always gained her everything she ever asked for. It was Phoebe's cute little screwed up, pouting face that always been indulged. Her curly hair shaking with tiny rage that had allowed her to go to art school instead of pursuing something meaningful. It was Phoebe who had all the attention and the boyfriends growing up and now she dares to stand there and say–
"Am I?" Phoebe Janeway has the most infuriating way of raising her eyebrow when she's mocking someone. It makes Kathryn see red. "Is it that captain of yours?" Phoebe pretends to ponder. "That Chakotay man?"
What the hell?
"Is what him?" She can't keep up with the ridiculous statements spewing from her sister's mouth.
"Oh Gods, Kathryn. No," Phoebe moans, sagging theatrically before Kathryn's disbelieving eyes. "Anyone can see he never deserved you. Don't you know that by now? Love is about putting the person you love ahead of everything else. Even warped ideals about duty and loyalty. I know Daddy's version of love screwed you up enough to think that's all you deserve but it's not."
"Now you're just being–"
Her sister talks right over her, intent on having her say. "You never noticed, but Mom at least modeled how to love someone unconditionally. There aren't any price tags attached to her love, but you never did pick up on that."
"You can't even believe the ridiculous things you're–"
"You deserve someone who's going to understand you the way that Daddy did," Phoebe's steadily-rising voice drowns her out. "But more than that, someone who's going to worship the ground you walk on in spite of that, and one that would never do anything to hurt you. For a while there, I thought you saw that. I thought Mark…" Phoebe shakes her head in dismay. "Well, that ship has sailed and this one… Drop this guy, Kathryn. Seriously – forget him. He's not what you need. It's love like that, love with conditions and boundaries that destroys you from the inside out."
"This from the girl who never did know appropriate boundaries even when they were slapping her in the face!"
"I don't pine away after someone who clearly doesn't love me enough to be worth pining for, either."
"This week," Kathryn snarks, too incensed to bite back on it.
Phoebe only laughs. "This decade you mean. I was sixteen. But thanks for rubbing my nose in it again."
Kathryn inhales sharply. How? How is her sister always bringing out the absolute worst in her? How? "Phoebe, damn it, I'm sorry. I didn't mean–"
"For God's sake, Kathryn," her sister plows over her feeble attempt at an apology, uninterested, "if you're being that bitchy it only means I'm hitting a nerve. A deep one. And that's my whole point. I'm trying to tell you that you've suffered enough. It's been enough. Even Daddy understood that Starfleet can't give you the kind of fulfillment a family can – somewhere inside of him he knew it. If it isn't a family you want, so be it. But there has to be more for you. Go find your more. Because the you that came back isn't the you that anyone wants or needs in their lives. Least of all your family or even your former crew."
Kathryn almost smacks Phoebe at that last one; she almost hauls off and slaps her like they're twelve and ten again. She opens her mouth to growl, hell, to scream back all the reasons that what her sister so ignorantly commands her to do is impossible, why she's dead wrong about the assumptions she's making, about Daddy, about Chakotay, about everything, damn it, but she isn't given the chance. Without another word, Phoebe snatches what's left of her sister's half-eaten brownie, popping it whole between her coral-stained lips as she stalks out of the kitchen, triumphant in a battle Kathryn had never fully understood the rules or aim or provocation for.
Kathryn's left brownie-less. Delusion-less. Kicked in the gut and stripped raw the way only her sister could ever make her.
She's wrong. She's so wrong. About all of it. The little monster known as her sister is just better at putting on a concerned show than she is. Phoebe's sound kiss to her mother's weathered cheek, her promise to meet Gretchen for their usual Monday lunch date carries through the hall and into the kitchen where Kathryn sits numbly, trying to digest the indigestable. It only adds insult to injury.
She's a decent sister. She's a very good daughter, though she will admit she was a better captain than she ever was anything else. She got her people home – most of them – and she is a good mentor to them now. She is, damn it. She is. They still need her, even if her mother and sister don't. She repeats the truths she knows to be indisputable fact over and over as she sits there with stinging and empty eyes, trying to reconstruct her infamous composure.
Somehow, none of it quite rings true. She can't quite make herself believe. Anger eats away at the lining of her churning stomach, pitching and roiling within her.
She's going to strangle Phoebe the next time she sees her. This time, she really is. Her tirade was cruel and entirely uncalled for. It was. Kathryn is going to wring Phoebe's pretty little–
Because those are good, decent, Starfleet and sisterly thoughts. It's the drop that overflows the bucket.
For the first time in almost two years, Kathryn sits in a room by herself and cries until her nose runs and her cheeks burn red with irritation. Until there's no moisture left and she isn't breathing without great, heaving hiccups of misery. It feels surprisingly good to wallow in self-pity.
When Gretchen appears in the doorway, she takes one look at her eldest daughter. Hard lines grief have etched across her features melt in instant empathy, her thinning arms opening in that unconditional way Phoebe had thrown up in Kathryn's face not ten minutes earlier.
It sets her off again, almost ruins the comfort of burrowing into her mother's neck and crying like she's twelve years old again.
Almost.