As soon as Chakotay and Kathryn were alone, later that evening, he reassured her he'd contained the situation with Paris. She looked uneasy and sighed, saying she just hoped he was right. Then, she initiated the conversation he'd been hoping to usher in himself, under very different circumstances and from the opposing point of view.

She said spending time together in front of the crew was a mistake. She told him point blank that they needed to stick to their routines of separate leisure time. Just breakfast occasionally and dinner once a week in the mess hall.

He began to explain his reasoning about making a gradual change so they appeared more 'friendly' with each other, but she dismissed the idea immediately. She said they'd just proved pretty conclusively that they couldn't control how others were likely to perceive them. They weren't skilled enough actors to hit the right level of friendliness without their familiarity with each other being all too evident. She was adamant she didn't want to risk it and couldn't see enough reason to anyway. They were fine as they were.

She was a worthy opponent in any debate and this was no exception, and with him, she had the added advantage of those diversionary tactics which had a one hundred per cent success rate to date.

She slid into his lap to straddle him and did that thing he loved where she held his face in her hands and slowly threaded her fingers up into his hair, before she kissed him hard, deep, long and demanding... And suddenly she was absolutely right, it didn't seem so important anymore. Why would they want to have to deal with other people's reactions? It could distract them from giving of their best as leaders. They had each other, that was what mattered.

A week or so later, Chakotay found himself sitting with Tom Paris to finish his dinner, after B'Elanna left saying she had something she wanted to oversee in engineering. It was the first time they'd been alone together since that evening in Sandrine's and Chakotay was all too aware of it. He was certain Tom was too. The minute B'Elanna had gone, Tom started to look around them, as if assessing whether or not they could be overheard.

Within seconds he began. "Look, Chakotay, I get it you know."

Chakotay met his direct, watchful gaze. "Get what?"

"I haven't said anything, not even to B'Elanna. You know that, right?"

Chakotay looked down and a muscle flexed involuntarily in his jaw.

"You'd know if I had, we both know that. So you can relax."

He looked up again to meet those cool, all-too-perceptive, blue eyes.

Paris seemed undeterred by the one-sidedness of this conversation and went on. "So you can stop watching me like I'm under surveillance or something."

"Watching you?"

"Yeah! You know what I mean! I'm sick of feeling your eyes on the back of my neck all the time."

Chakotay looked out of the viewport for a moment, then back at Tom. Tom seemed to interpret this as some sort of acknowledgement.

"And for what it's worth, I hope it works out for you."

Chakotay stood, and as he picked up his tray he looked across to reconnect with the helmsman's discerning gaze. If Paris thought he was about to open up and bare his soul to him, he'd be sorely disappointed. Still, he was profoundly grateful that Paris had kept his mouth shut.

"Good night, Tom."

Chakotay's tone was measured, Paris's subdued.

"Good night, Chakotay."

A month later, the Devore stretched Kathryn and Chakotay's arrangement to its limits.

She entertained the Inspector late into the evening.

Chakotay sat brooding in his quarters in the dark.

He hated everything about her plan, but he had to concede it might work. In any case, he hadn't managed to come up with a better one. Something in that arrogant bastard's eyes convinced him the Inspector had guessed the nature of his relationship with the Captain and was savouring every minute of the dangerous game he was playing with them.

On the morning of the final inspection, Chakotay hadn't been able to stop himself. As he watched her pull on her uniform jacket and apply her lipstick, the comment just issued from his lips. "If you'd been at liberty to introduce me as your partner, as well as your first officer, then you might not be finding yourself in this position."

She paused, then turned to fix him with a look of infuriating sympathy and a tinge of something else. "Do you honestly think that he would have behaved any differently?"

"Maybe." He studied the carpet, unwilling to see more of what her eyes held.

"It would have been something he'd have dismissed instantly, Chakotay. Or it would've just added another layer to his pleasure, in manipulating us both."

He said nothing more, but as he watched her walk out he knew somewhere in his darker self that she was absolutely right.

The Inspector left just before Chakotay would've found himself blowing the conceited shark and his ship to eternity.

She returned from the shuttle bay tense and flushed. She held his gaze and told him that she'd kissed Kashyk; that it had been necessary for the part she was playing. She was clearly more than a little nervous as to how he'd react, and that made him feel wretched. Why? Why didn't she feel confident he'd believe her? He had to believe her. He so wanted to believe her.

He disappeared into the holodeck for two hours.

When he came back he rang the chime to her quarters and stood dripping with sweat in the corridor for anyone to see, waiting for her to answer. When she let him in she didn't reference his indiscretion at all. She didn't resist either when he pulled her straight into the shower with him. He made love to her with a demanding and fired urgency she was unlikely to forget.

The days and weeks that followed were complicated.

Chakotay felt different.

Before the Devore inspector had succeeded in getting under his skin – under her skin – he'd been more content. His reservations about their situation had been under control.

Now, he found himself craving reassurance from her that their relationship was just that, a relationship, not just a convenient arrangement for meeting certain needs. Right from the beginning, he hadn't held back with her. She knew exactly what she was to him. Now, he found he was losing some of that sense of certainty he'd once had about exactly what he was to her.

On shore leave one evening he sat at the bar with Ayala in a gem of a restaurant, overlooking a spectacular canyon of yellow and orange-layered rock. He watched as Paris and B'Elanna seated themselves on the far side of the room at a small table, for an intimate, candlelit dinner.

This was a breathtakingly beautiful place. It was a place they would never return to in their lifetimes, and Kathryn was sitting in her quarters, reading some dry old book while he was here with his friend, whom he loved like a brother, but who couldn't be expected to make up for Kathryn's absence. She belonged here, sharing this with him.

Life was too short for this sort of foolishness. He was too old for it.

"How was your evening?"

"Good, but there was a hole next to me in that restaurant that kind of distracted me."

"Oh? A hole?"

"Yes, a hole."

"What sort of a hole?"

"A hole about this height… and about this wide, shapely legs, elegant, expressive hands."

"So, Mike wasn't feeling talkative tonight then?"

"You should have come down, Kathryn, it was a beautiful place, truly. We don't often come across planets that conform so closely to our ideas of natural beauty, or make us re-evaluate them even. It's a shame you didn't see it."

"Well, I can always take a look first thing before we break orbit, if it's really as spectacular as you say."

"I guess." He studied the carpet.

"What?"

Like you don't know?

"That isn't really what I meant."

"Look… I don't see the point in dwelling on things that aren't possible. You know how I feel."

"Yes I do, but I'm not so sure the reverse is true."

She put her book down. "Just say it, Chakotay."

He seated himself next to her and exhaled before he began. "I just don't think we need this secrecy anymore. It's time we dealt with the crew's reaction and moved on."

She rose and moved towards the replicator. He waited. When she'd returned with a coffee for herself and a tea he didn't want, she fixed him with that gaze that saw right through him. "I'm sorry if this isn't…. enough…. for you anymore." She didn't look sorry. She looked resigned, disappointed in him.

"Kathryn I …" He reached for her hand; it was stiff in his. "Of course, you are enough for me. You're all I want and there isn't a part of me that isn't yours."

"But?"

He sighed and looked away again, unsure for a moment of exactly how to go on from here. "I guess I just wonder why it's still so important to you to keep our relationship a secret."

"We've been through this before. You know why."

"No, actually. I don't. Not any more."

She bristled visibly and swallowed. Her lips became a thin line. "What do you mean?"

"Well, we were both worried about whether we'd cope with the demands of command and of a relationship, and I think the last two years have shown that those concerns, though understandable, were unwarranted. We've managed just fine. More than fine."

"But that wasn't the only reason."

"No, of course. You were worried about the crew's reaction."

"And aren't you?"

"Honestly? No. I just don't think it'll make much difference to anyone other than us."

"You don't know that."

"Of course I don't. But I just wonder sometimes why you're so determined to keep this secret now? What we have here, well…for me…" He paused.

"Go on."

He sighed, and held her hand firmly, hoping the warmth their connection could generate would do something to dissipate the increasing tension of this conversation. "For me, it's a strength. I see it as a strength that we have each other. And I wonder about… whether you do too."

"What do you mean?"

When he spoke again, his voice was lower, even gentler, as he did all he could to prevent his next question being received as an accusation. "Well do you? See this as something that gives you strength or… as something else."

"You mean you believe I think our being together is evidence of a weakness on my part?"

Her defensive tone saddened him. He was silent for a moment and held her gaze. It was too late now, so he ploughed on. "Well, do you?"

She didn't reply immediately and looked away to a point just above his shoulder to watch the stars passing, before finally answering. "No. That isn't how I see our being… together."

It twisted something inside him that after two years she could still hardly bring herself to say it out loud. "Then how do you see it, Kathryn?"

Her eyes found his again. Suddenly, everything he could see there made him wish he'd just kept his big mouth shut.

He was pushing her and that wasn't wise. It ran the risk of her withdrawing. He hadn't thought this through. Ever since she'd finally let him in after the shuttle crash two years ago and he'd opened his soul to her, he'd had no strategy with her other than to love her as much as she'd allow him to.

She didn't answer his question. He didn't press her again, but he knew he needed an answer at some point, because he honestly wasn't sure how she did see their being together anymore.

The following days were demanding for both of them. Seven inadvertently helped the Doctor access some specific memories they had deleted from his programme. It had been all they could think of to do, when his reflections upon the consequences of his decisions about the triage of patients had caused a conflict in his programming that couldn't be resolved. After much debate, the Doctor and Seven persuaded Kathryn to allow him the time to try and resolve it himself. Consequently, senior members of staff took shifts baby-sitting him in the holodeck, while the ethical debate raged between his subroutines. Kathryn took the lion's share.

Even though Chakotay knew Kathryn was shattered, she made a point of finding time to talk to him every night. She came to him even if it was so late it was already early, just to hold and be held. She gave more, with such tenderness he was humbled. And she clung to him like he was her lifeline sometimes. It was an answer of sorts to his question that had hung between them; it meant something and it made him feel better.

A week later, she was forced to dress up and play a part in Paris's holodeck programme in order to come to the aid of some photonic, alien life forms. A few hours later, she discovered Chakotay had some pretty involved fantasies about peeling her out of tight-fitting dresses.

For the first time in five years he was late for his morning bridge shift.

Three months later, he almost lost his sanity fighting and then giving in to the attempts at communication of a species that were unable to make contact except by tapping into the most chaotic part of his mind.

He was terrified his ravings would scare her into retreat from intimacy with him, but she supported him unreservedly throughout the whole ordeal. She held him as he faced the demons that visited him in his dreams afterwards - demons that abandoned him sweating and trembling. When he awoke to find she'd stuck with him, quite literally, he was at once ashamed and so profoundly grateful.

Ashamed he had asked for more, when she was giving him so much already. And grateful that he still had the love of this incredible woman who held them all together with her sheer willpower some days.