Chakotay:

At 1930, I leave to head over to Kathryn's quarters, a bottle of wine in my hand. Just as I reach for the chime, the doors open to let Mortimer Harren back into the corridor. I can feel my eyes widening – of all the people on Voyager, he's certainly the last person I expected to see here.

"Commander," he greets me as he slips past, with more courtesy than I've ever seen from him.

"Mister Harren." I watch him go, completely puzzled.

"Come in, Chakotay, before you let all the bugs in."

Her words are echoes of those that I used to chide her with on New Earth. She would leave the door of our shelter wide open as she'd haul in research equipment every night, admitting a litany of insects that were a huge nuisance as we tried to sleep. Funnily enough though, none of the bugs we ever got stuck with were the elusive biter that stranded us there.

"I'm feeling lucky tonight," I hear her say, bringing me back to the present. She's standing at the replicator, a hand resting lightly on the console as she graces me with a bright smile. "B'Elanna took pity on her captain while I was away and completely refitted my replicator. What do you say we test it out?"

I can't help but laugh. "Trying to tempt fate?"

"No, just to have a dinner that isn't burned, melted or the exact opposite of what I asked for." She gestures for me to sit down, and orders, "Asparagus cashew rice pilaf and roasted vegetables for two."

We both watch with a morbid curiosity as the dish starts to materialize on the pad, waiting for liquid to start pouring off its front or for smoke to fill the room. But nothing disastrous happens, and instead, the sparkling blue light fades to reveal an appetizing dish that actually smells delicious. "Well I'll be damned…" she breathes, stopping herself just before she touches the dishes and instead grabbing a couple of potholders.

"I guess there's a first time for everything," I say, pouring out the wine as she sets the dishes down on the table.

She clucks her tongue. "We'll see how long it lasts."

As we dig in, I bring her up to date on what happened on Voyager while she was away. Not only did B'Elanna overhaul the captain's replicator, but Tuvok reviewed Seven's findings and decided against her recommendation to reorganize the weapons lockers. "He told me that 'the arrangement has been working satisfactorily for the past five years, so it would be a waste of resources to assign personnel to design new phaser rifle placements'."

Shaking her head, Kathryn chuckles. "Well, he is the expert."

Then she starts to tell me everything that happened on the Flyer, and how she hopes that, at least in the short term, she may have helped boost their confidence and perhaps bring them a little more out of their shells. She ends her tale with, "Though I didn't expect to see one of them again so soon."

Harren. "What brought him by here anyway?"

"Before we headed out on the Flyer, I offered to help him with his efforts to disprove Shlezholt's Theory," she says as she reaches for her wine glass. "Mostly, just to throw him off balance when I'd told him about the mission. I guess he decided to take me up on it." She takes a sip, then adds, "He stopped by to give me the data he already has."

While I'm no cosmologist, I've certainly heard of Shlezholt's Theory. "Not exactly light reading, is it?"

"No," she grins, "but if it helps bring Mister Harren back into Voyager's fold, I'm willing to put the time in."

"Why now?"

She frowns. "What do you mean?"

I asked the question without even realizing it, and I want to take the words back. But now that they're said, I press on. "This isn't the first time we've discussed Harren's issues, Kathryn. It's come up every time in his crew evaluation, even though you and I only saw it mentioned as part of B'Elanna's overall department report. So why are you only now taking such an interest in him? Because he was on Seven's inefficiency list?"

Kathryn stares at me. "Is that what's been bothering you? You think that I ignored the problem until she brought it up?"

My stare is unflinching. "Haven't you? I don't seem to remember you giving it two thoughts before now, but you've known he's been down there, hiding from the rest of the universe. And yet, when I suggest that maybe we should leave him and the others to their own pursuits, you accuse me of treating them like drones."

Her jaw drops at my allegation, which is made all the more vehement because the tone of those words from her still affects me. I can see her expression hardening, which is a sure sign that she's battening down her emotional hatches, and I can't let her get there. "Do you still value my opinion?"

My question stops her shutdown. "Do I value your opinion?"

Putting my fork down, I sit back in my chair. "Yes. Do you value my opinion?"

Kathryn:

I know he's been acting unusual lately, but this is out of left field. "After five years, why are you asking me this now?" I question.

Chakotay doesn't respond, but keeps watching me with an intensity that is unnerving. I really don't know why this is suddenly coming up. "Of course I do," I tell him, hoping to diffuse the situation. He still won't answer me, nearly immobile as he sits in the chair, watching me with a look that I don't think I've ever seen from him before. I can feel irritation starting to well up in me, and it takes everything to temper my voice when I challenge, "Why do you suddenly doubt that?"

"This isn't the first time," he finally says.

Now I'm confused. "What the hell are you talking about? Is this still about the Equinox?"

He shakes his head. "No, we're past that. But it's things like your decision to take those three out on the Flyer. I can barely get my opinions in before you're already dismissing them, without even listening to me."

Whatever control I've managed to have evaporates, and the anger starts to seep into my words. "So…what – I'm supposed to run all my command decisions by you now?"

"I didn't say that." Chakotay suddenly gets to his feet and moves a few paces away before turning back to face me. "But I can't do my job if you don't listen to me."

"I do listen to you."

"You didn't listen to me about the Nakan memorial!" he shoots back at me.

This makes me bristle, and I rise to my feet, my hands braced on the table. "Those people have every right to be remembered!"

"There are some things that don't need to be!" I can see that this has really hit a nerve for him. He seems to stop for a moment, more vulnerable than I've seen him in a long time. "I didn't see my family murdered, but I didn't need to see it to know it happened," he says quietly, his eyes boring into me. "And it doesn't make them any less gone."

His words stop me in my tracks. I was so traumatized by the flashbacks that I never even thought to consider that. My heart is racing, and I take a breath to slow down, knowing that we can't remain in this stalemate forever. As I stand there, trying to figure out what to say, something occurs to me. This can't just all be about a couple of incidents in recent history. As much as he'd like to make it my fault, there's something more at play here. "But that's not the reason you're mad at me now, is it?"

Chakotay:

My eyes snap back to find her still standing behind the table, hands on her hips as she challenges me. "What?"

"We've disagreed about my decisions before," she reminds me, "but this is different. It's personal."

My conversation with Seven when we were in the middle of the graviton ellipse suddenly leaps to mind. They'd manage, I'd told her when she asked if I would seriously consider leaving Voyager to work as a paleontologist. What I wanted always seemed to take a back seat. Idle words to a child then, but they mean so much more now. Would Voyager manage without me? Would Kathryn?

Pulling in a deep breath, I agree with her. "You're right. It is different."

She now comes over to me, resting her fingers lightly on my arm. "Then what is it?"

I have to turn away, unable to face her when I say, "I feel like I'm unnecessary. You probably wouldn't even miss me if I left."

Kathryn:

Those words freeze my heart in my chest, and my hand draws back as if it's been burned. "You're not seriously considering that." He doesn't answer me, and the feeling only gets worse. "Are you thinking of leaving Voyager?"

"No," he replies, "but I'd be lying if I said that the thought never crossed my mind."

Of all the things in the universe he could say, that one puts a knife in me. All these years, I've dreamed about not having to be in command anymore, of not being responsible for all these lives. But not once – even during the Void – did I ever consider leaving Voyager just for the sake of it. To save the ship? Hell yes. But never because I was bored or dissatisfied. "So what are you telling me?" I challenge him. "That you're not happy with your job? With me?"

Chakotay:

Now there's a loaded question. "No, I'm not happy," I confirm. "I've done everything I can to make this work, but lately you've been taking me for granted."

I can see that this statement rankles her. "I may have done many things in my life," she growls, "but I have never done that."

"Really? How many times have we met about something – argued about it – and then you've gone off and done what you wanted anyway?"

"Those were my calls to make."

My feet start to take me away from her again. "I am so tired of that excuse, Kathryn! If you want to play things that way, fine. But don't bother to bring me in on something if you're just going to pay me lip service."

"Stop acting like some petulant child!" she spits back at me.

"No, you already have one of those." The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, but I'm not necessarily sorry about it. "I want your respect, Kathryn, and I've worked hard to earn it. But now…I don't think it's there anymore."

Now she's mad. "How am I supposed to respect you when you do things like put your crew at risk for a childhood fantasy?"

God, she'd chewed me out after that incident. Told me I should know better than to endanger the crew in pursuit of my own puerile interests. "And what did you do?" I throw back at her. "You held Kelly's funeral while I was still stuck in Sickbay, when you knew I had more interest in him than anybody else on this ship!"

Kathryn:

And you deserved it! is the answer I want to hurl back at him. You nearly got yourself killed! But I can't. I may think petty thoughts, but I certainly can't allow anyone else to know that I have them. "This ship does not stop functioning when you're out of commission, Chakotay. And we certainly couldn't keep a corpse lying around, waiting for you to get out of Sickbay."

"Four hours, Kathryn! I was released four hours later! The man had been dead for three hundred years already – what difference was four hours going to make?"

I've had just about enough of this pity party of his. "If you're so unhappy with your job, you should have said something. I'm not trying to make your life miserable."

He glares at me. "That's just it. You're not even trying." Without another word he departs, and silence fills the gulf he leaves behind.

How dare he? I don't know what his problem is, but why is it all my fault? Yeah, maybe I've been brusque with him this week, but it was important to me to try and make Billy and Celes and Harren feel like they're a part of this family. It was unacceptable to leave them to their own devices. And in my own defense, it worked. I'll lay bets that the Doctor doesn't see our resident hypochondriac for at least a few weeks.

I try to shake it off as I clean up what's left of our dinner, but our exchange continues to eat at me. It's unlike him to not say what's on his mind; if there's one thing that Chakotay's been good at, it's that. And it's not like we haven't had some good times over the last few months. So why this now? Does he think that he holds some sort of vaulted position around here? He gets access to me more than anybody else, but that doesn't mean he gets special privileges. Nor should he expect me to just genuflect to his wishes.

I grab the dish that holds the leftover risotto and throw it into the replicator's bay, hard enough that I hear the ceramic crack. Stabbing the button to recycle it, I stalk away, trying to turn over what happened in my mind. Let's back up a minute. When I wake up in Sickbay, he's distant. Even more so on the bridge the next day. We finally get to talk, and he pounces on me for not just my last decision, but for two more instances that happened a while ago. Tells me I've been ignoring him – hell, outright disrespecting him, though not in as many words. And it seems that he's been feeling this way for a while. So why hasn't he said anything?

Coffee will help me think. I head back to the replicator and order, "Coffee, black." The machinery starts to make an ungodly sort of banging sound, and whatever hope I have of coffee is dashed when the materialization finishes, leaving a puddle of chunky goo that even Neelix wouldn't drink. "Fucking replicator…" Deciding that maybe it's a sign, I quickly shut the lights off and head into the bedroom…not that there's any chance in hell I'll be able to sleep now. While I brush my teeth, I look up and see my reflection in the mirror, and a stray memory hits me that I haven't thought about in a long, long time.

When I was first officer on the Billings, there had been an incident in which we were playing cat and mouse with a pair of Cardassian warships who were way out of their territory and looking for a fight. They managed to severely disable our warp drive, and help was nearly two days away, if it had been coming at all. We'd transmitted our distress call just before communications were knocked out, so we had no idea whether Starfleet had received the message or not. With very few options, Captain Magrad decided to hide us inside an asteroid field while we tried to make repairs, knowing that the much larger cruisers couldn't follow us in without being destroyed. But I was severely opposed to the idea, thinking that we'd be much better off in a nearby emission nebula where they wouldn't be able to see us, though they would be able to follow us in if they wanted to.

It was the first time that we'd ever had a major disagreement since I arrived on board over a year before. I had great respect for Deirdre Magrad and her twenty-some years in the captain's chair, but in this instance, I thought she was risking our safety. And because our situation was so dire, me being me, I dug in and fought to try and get her to see my way. Truth be told, winning was the only objective I had, a glaring representation of my inexperience as an executive officer.

In end, she stuck to her guns, and we were able to remain holed up amongst the asteroids until a five-ship patrol finally came to our rescue. After the dust settled and the Cardassians retreated, she called me to her ready room, and it was not a pleasant experience. "I appreciate that it's in your job description to question my decisions," she told me as I stood ramrod straight in front of her desk, "but beating me over the head with your suggestions is not the way to do it."

"But Sir, I–"

"But nothing, Commander." She fixed me with a look that I'll never forget. "Your job is to show me elements of a problem that I may not be seeing in the heat of the moment, but never forget that it is ultimately my call to make. I am the one that will answer to Starfleet, so it is my decision." And then she dismissed me, leaving me the entire next day to stew in what had happened, and what I'd done without thinking things through. Fortunately, Captain Magrad and I never had an instance like that again, but I learned a valuable lesson that day about picking my battles. Maybe I would have eventually learned patience in that role, but I was only a first officer for a couple of years before I was offered the Bonestell.

As I stand here staring at my own reflection, it occurs to me how angry I was – both during the argument and afterward – because I'd felt that she'd dismissed my idea without giving it due consideration. Is this what Chakotay has been going through every time we butt heads? If I'm brutally honest with myself, he's right – I may have listened to what he had to say on the surface, but then I've gone ahead and decided what I think is best for this ship, and he's usually lost. He's been doing that job for a lot longer than I ever did, and if he feels even half of what I felt in that one incident, I now can see how his frustrations would add up. He's just very good at hiding them from me. Or at least he has been.

Shit.