Chapter Sixteen

It seemed to Kathryn that they made love a hundred times, or at least that she experienced her release a hundred times, like the waves crashing on the shore.

They sailed the river in his boat, the way she promised him they would that last day on New Earth before they were saved. So many times over the long years, she had relived that day and their last moments together. She had perhaps never been fully conscious of it, but she had promised herself to him in that second before her comm badge chirped Voyager's return, when she said to him, "I'll have the river." They never would have that river on New Earth, but this one, she felt, was theirs alone, and just as beautiful.

She loved every part of his body; she could not believe that nature could have made a man like this. Every time she looked at him, she wanted him – and it was not enough to hold him, to wrap her arms around him and kiss his lips. She had to feel him inside of her, drawing out of her every ragged breath, every tortured cry until she was blissfully exhausted. If she could have accomplished the thing slowly she would have – if she could have learned his body the way she had learned his mind, over many days and nights of careful study. But all she had truly learned during this most recent phase of her life was fear. In one moment, the fear of never seeing him again had become greater than the older fear that had for so long kept them apart, and so this, finally, was the one she overcame.

There was nothing in the world more exciting than to feel his eyes on her, when she slipped off her clothes and jumped into the river; it was the way she had felt in another lifetime, that unearthly feeling of being watched, and of being wanted. In their first years on Voyager she had scarcely dared to hope that he wanted her. Most of the time she couldn't imagine that he saw her as anything other than an authority figure – but then she would feel that electric rush of his eyes on her back as she left the room, and it was all she could do to stop herself from turning around. She never did, not in seven years, and she had never had her confirmation. So this time, she did turn her head to look at him, and she saw his eyes, black with desire, staring at her body as if he could take her just by looking at her. It was enough to make her shiver, and she wanted him all over again, and had to have him – she had to feel his lower lip between her teeth, his tongue in her mouth, the throbbing readiness of his manhood pressed against her thigh until she guided him inside her.

He filled her so completely; with every motion he entered her more and more deeply. She so loved to be on top of him, to rock against that tremendous pressure until something shattered inside of her, and she cried out her orgasm and fell against him, her tangled hair falling all over his chest. And he would hold her in his arms, and she would feel his pounding heart, returning them to reality if only for a few brief minutes. His touch was the safest and yet the most dangerous thing she knew. She trusted him with her life but she was so out of control, she was Pandora, and nothing in the world would ever be the same.

Not throughout the day, nor on their walk back to shelter did they break their spontaneous vow of silence. She felt somehow that she had given up all of her physical inhibitions in exchange for a different kind of shyness, and everything she would have said in words was now only communicable in a look or a touch. The mere fact of walking with her hand in his was halfway unbelievable. She did not want him to see that it made tears come into her eyes – because this was the way she had always wanted to walk with him, for so long, wishing that there was some way on Earth or in the universe that she could walk with him instead of walking alone.

She knew she would have to say something, or he would wonder what was wrong. But even when night had fallen and they were lying together under this strange planet's stars, she could not find the words to break their silence. She was inexplicably overwhelmed by a terror that whatever she might say would take away or lessen what had happened between them. He must have sensed this in her, because he leaned in to brush her hair away from her face, and said,

"Well, I suppose we've found the ultimate way to settle an argument. If they had taught this tactic at the Academy, just think how often you and I would have agreed on things when we were serving together."

She closed her eyes. "Chakotay!" she said, in spite of herself, and in an instant her peace of mind was restored. "How do you know how to do that?"

"Do what?"

"How do you know what to say to me when I'm too afraid to say anything at all?"

He let his touch travel from her hair to her temple, and he thoughtfully traced the line of her chin. "You know, Kath, it's funny, but I'm not sure that I ever have seen you afraid before today. You're the bravest person I know."

"I guess I can stare down species 8472 with the best of them, but just don't ask me to try being in a romantic relationship."

He laughed. "Fair enough."

"My great-grandmother," she said after a pause, "was by most standards a superstitious woman. She believed in heaven, and hell, and she used to say that even if a person was good enough to get into heaven, there was no guarantee they wouldn't have to go back, to live another lifetime if there was something left unresolved. She used to tell us stories about the haunted souls who had to fall out of heaven, because something wasn't right, and they had to return to the world of the living to rectify it. But by then, they had become so accustomed to heaven that leaving it was the greatest torture it were ever possible to experience. She used to say that the thunderstorms of Indiana were the cries of those souls, being ripped out of heaven by the hands of God, and returning to a world that to them was only harshness, and violence, and grief. They couldn't see any of the joy in living anymore, because they had witnessed the incomparable peace of death."

He continued to stroke her hair. "She would tell you these stories when you were a child?"

"When no one was around to stop her, yes. But the strange thing is that even though I didn't believe her then, I think that I believe her now."

"What do you mean?"

Her eyes searched his face in the darkness. "I cant – be without you anymore. I'm not strong enough, not the way I was. I think that's why I kept pushing you away for all those years, because I knew that if I stopped, even for a second, that all of the strength I had would be defeated. That I wouldn't be able to come back."

"To what?"

"To reality, to a life without you, to the things that I've seen and the battles I've had to fight alone. I would be - like the thunderstorm. Only grieving, and unable to fight anymore."

She watched him struggling to understand. He held her face in his hands and stared into her eyes.

"Kathryn, you never have been without me. Don't you see that from the moment I met you I've been at your side, fighting the same fight. They say that physical intimacy changes everything between two people, but in the greater sense I don't believe it changes anything. Even when you refused my help or didn't want anything to do with me, I've still been there waiting for you, whether you wanted me or not. And I always will be. I won't deny that there have been times when I've been so angry that I've wanted to hurt you, and I know we've hurt each other enough, since this all began. But even then, even when I was furious with you I still would have laid down my life for you without a thought. That's what it means not just to love someone, but to believe in them. I believe in you, Kathryn. I believe that you were meant to do great things, to move mountains. And if you love me, then let that love make you stronger, because that's all it can ever do."

She held on to his arms, having never felt more frail in all her life.

"Please promise me that you'll never leave me."

It was a strange request, as she had been, and would most likely continue to be, the one to depart either for the call of space travel or the call of justice. But there was nothing more she wanted now than for him to gather her in his arms and say to her, over and over, "I promise."

And so he did, until she believed him.