Chapter Seven

They managed to locate the ridge again with little trouble, but it took more than three hours of walking before they came across a more gentle way down to the bottom than where they'd been before. Night was falling quickly, and the air turned quite cold. Fortunately, they stumbled across a small cave in the cliff wall that was big enough to hold them both comfortably, but so low that they could only sit up in it. Chakotay asked Kathryn to gather firewood while he looked for some suitable branches, and by the time she got back, he had managed to weave together a cover with the branches and bits of tent that they could jam into the entrance to the cave to hopefully keep some heat in and whatever creatures might roam the night out. It turned out that his luck in starting fires was much better on this planet, and before long they were warm enough that they could try to go to sleep.

While Chakotay dropped off rather quickly, Kathryn was not nearly as ready. It seemed that her streak of sleepless nights was not ending, and the time she lay there beside him, curled up and facing away, gave her mind ample opportunity to torment her yet again about everything – her bad decisions, her stress at not having had a vacation in years, and her latest fight with her first officer. The one that afternoon had been a doozy, much more personal than any one they'd had before. Those had been about her orders or her job performance; this one had been about who they were as people. I just want you to be human, played in her head again and again. You take stupid risks. You've been lucky.

Unable to sleep, she finally gave up and went outside, carefully replacing the makeshift door behind her. The wind had kicked up since they'd gone inside, roaring through the trees and bending them at impossible angles. She stood and stretched her cramped muscles, then tugged her jacket a little tighter to close the bottom and keep the cold air from getting in so easily. Her eyes drifted up from the treetops to the starfield above, clear and brilliant with no lighting nearby to get in the way. She tried to find Voyager amongst the manufactured objects that floated there, but was only able to identify the orbital platform. Everything else just appeared as satellites that roamed across the sky.

Kathryn wondered if Voyager would be better off without her, and not for the first time either. She'd thought it in the void, and she certainly had thought about it after the Equinox was destroyed. All the activity of the day had given her something to concentrate on other than her doubts but now, in the silence of the night, they were back with a vengeance. Merged with Chakotay's angry words to her earlier, Kathryn was desperately trying not to take them to heart, and to remember that under it all, she was a good person who was living in an insane situation. But that was where her thoughts landed, and she hated herself – both for allowing him to get to her, and for allowing herself to make him feel that way in the first place.

Is he so wrong? The idea jumped into her head without warning as she sat next to a tree trunk and pulled her knees close to her chest. You do test him, time and time again, and ask for nothing less than total devotion. She thought back to all those arguments in the ready room, where she'd pushed him until he acquiesced in order to keep the peace. And then she started to think about Mark, and realized that he had always done the exact same thing – said his piece, but then stood back and let her do whatever it was she'd needed to do. She'd always thought it was the philosopher in him, and that he really knew how to pick his battles. But then she realized that there wasn't much she'd ever compromised on. It's what made her a great starship captain, but it's also what made her a lousy partner.

And then on top of it all, she'd kissed her first officer. Or more accurately, Chakotay had kissed her and she hadn't objected. Kathryn tried to convince herself that it didn't mean anything – that it came from the high of having just cheated death. But her heart was a traitor, and refused to let her believe that was the only reason. Of all the stupid things to do, she berated herself. It's not going to solve a damned thing.

"What are you doing out here?"

His soft voice in the high wind still startled her, and she shivered as she felt him crawl out of the cave and kneel beside her. "Couldn't sleep," she mumbled, glancing at him for just a moment before her gaze returned to the shifting branches.

"Come back inside," he tried to coax her. "It's dangerous out here."

There was that word again. But this time, after hours of reviewing things, it hit ten times harder. "An appropriate place for a dangerous woman, don't you think?"

Chakotay sighed. Watching her for a moment, he saw all her classic signs of self-flagellation, and he instantly knew what it was about. "I'm sorry," he offered, resting his hand on her forearm. "I was angry."

"You had every right to be," she said, still not moving.

He sighed again. This was going to be harder than he had hoped. "Maybe," he told her, not wanting to lie, yet not wanting to start another fight, "but you have to know how much I respect you, Kathryn. You've kept us all alive where others would have failed years ago." Her head dropped a little, her focus now on the ground in front of her. "You've taken us farther than I ever could have."

Finally she looked at him, her eyes dark but sad. "I can't give up."

"I know that." His thumb started to unconsciously rub over the material of her sleeve. "I don't want you to."

Frowning, she asked, "Then what do you want?"

Her question caught him by surprise. What did he want? He had thought about it so many times, usually in the nights he spent alone in his bed, unable to sleep for one reason or another. You, was his first thought, but he didn't say it – they were in no place right now to bring up those old feelings again. To end this journey, was the second, but there was only one resolution to that problem. Now that she'd forced the question, he couldn't nail it down to one thing. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "A lot of things…but none of them that I can do anything about."

Her eyes locked with his. "Sounds like a tough place to be in."

"It can be." They gazed at one another, realizing that this was another step taken on their road to rebuilding. "I try not to let it, but sometimes it's overwhelming."

"I'm sorry too," she told him softly. "I've been taking my worries out on you, and I shouldn't be."

Chakotay offered her his hand, which she took without hesitation. "So have I. We've got to find a way to live with each other without doing that."

She nodded. "We'll find it."

A roar from a new wind gust caught their attention, their eyes jumping up as the trees bent anew. In the distance, they could hear snapping branches, and they were vulnerable. "Come on," he said, tugging on her arm. "Let's go inside before something drops on us."

The idea of a house dropping on the wicked witch flashed through her mind, but she decided not to mention it. They were making tentative progress, and she didn't want to spoil it. Letting him guide her with his hand, she turned around and crawled back into their shelter ahead of him. Then he secured the makeshift door back in place, sealing out most of the wind and a lot of the noise.

Chakotay moved to settle in against the far wall, but saw that she hadn't moved. Now out of the cold, she started to shiver uncontrollably, her hands trembling in front of her. "Come here," he told her, reaching out and pulling her against him before she could argue. Her hands were freezing – she must have been sitting outside longer than he had guessed. Before she even realized what he was doing, he reached over and opened the front of her jacket, pushing it back off her shoulders and snatching it into his lap. About to protest, Kathryn stopped when she saw him also remove his own jacket. The similar designs, with their matching components, meant that the jackets were able to be joined like sleeping bags, and it would allow them to share body heat more efficiently.

Once they were joined, he reached over and wrapped Kathryn's jacket back around her shoulders, pulling her close as he flipped his own around his back. Pulling them down onto their sides, he rocked forward to let the edge of his jacket settle against his back, then rolled down to tuck it in behind him. Wrapping his leg around hers let him pull her even closer, then he took her hands and pressed them flat against his chest, covering them with one of his own. He drew an involuntary breath when her fingers touched his skin, and she immediately tried to pull them back. "I…"

"Shhh..." He strengthened his grip to hold her in place, his other arm curling around her back and pulling her closer. "Relax."

As the heat from his skin start to seep into her fingers, she indeed felt her muscles start to let go of their tension. After a few minutes the shivering subsided, and her eyes started to droop as her body warmed up. Kathryn looked up to find that he was watching her carefully, concerned that what he was doing might not be enough. "Thanks," she whispered, her head falling to rest on his shoulder.

"What have you been worrying about?"

Her head lifted again. "What?"

He pulled her a bit closer. "You said you've been taking your worries out on me. What have you been worrying about?"

Kathryn debated whether or not to tell him. Her pride wanted to maintain the status quo, but even she had to admit that it wasn't working for them. So with a great deal of effort, she took him up on his offer, and talked about everything that had been weighing down on her the last few months. She even found herself fighting back tears once or twice, though in the dark of the cave, he couldn't see them. He could hear them though, and Chakotay very well knew how bare she was laying herself before him.

When she stopped talking, he needed to say something. "Kathryn, I wish you would have told me this a long time ago, but I do understand why you haven't." Bracing himself, he suggested, "Maybe we need to meet for an hour or so every day, so we can start dealing with all this."

"You mean like a counselling session?"

"It could be. We could ask someone, maybe Tuvok, to be a neutral party. But I was thinking that we could start out just as friends talking…see if we can't make it work without outside help."

Kathryn thought about it for a moment. The idea definitely had its merits. "I like that idea."

He let go of a held breath, and smiled to himself. A small victory, and he was happy to take it. "Thank you." The chill seemed to have left her fingers. "Are you warm enough?"

She nodded, settling her head against his shoulder again. "I'm good now."

"Why don't you try and get some sleep."

Kathryn curled up in his warmth, grateful for his body heat. As she drifted off, she felt a lot better than she had a couple hours before, and yet she wondered why her relationship with this man had to be so damned complicated.