Note: Setting, background, dialogue for the scenes in this chapter are from scenes of Full Circle, by Kirsten Beyer. As they were published, I treated them and the scene from Isabo's shirt as canon episodes, just as I did with actual episodes, filling in between the dialogue and extrapolating from her framework of prose. The woman's written some quality J/C, bless her, and as this was for Gates, who loves those scenes as well, I hope I did the core framework justice by using them to tell a bigger tale. No infringement intended.

~~J~~

My own orders, my concerns, aren't something I want to discuss with him just yet. He'll be leaving for his latest mission soon and there are other…matters…I want to see if we can resolve first. But it's not so easy just to deal with them head on. It never has been.

Dinner, at least, is easy. It's the one thing we do, have always done, well. Even in those first few weeks back on Earth, before he got around to telling me he and Seven had ended their fledgling relationship.

"Whatever happened with Captain Leona?" I ask, keeping my tone as light as the dinner.

"Nothing."

Hmm. Yes, it would have been hard when her ship, the Osiris, was recalled to Earth for an emergency overhaul only a month after she and Chakotay had crossed paths, I muse. It's a good thing I had my loyal secretary, Deacon, discreetly check into the Osiris's design specifications and discover that potentially fatal flaw in their engines.

I did it for him, of course – for Chakotay. If he was interested in the woman, and she blew up on some routine mission, what kind of a friend would that have made me, if I could have prevented it and didn't?

It's not my fault that in order to properly check the ship over, the Osiris had to be called away from where Chakotay was stationed at the time. If he'd truly liked the woman, wanted to pursue something with her, he could easily have looked her up later.

Apparently, he didn't.

And the overhaul remains my secret gift to him. He doesn't really know how to take gifts all that well. The last time I gave him a true gift, in fact, he sat speechless for the better part of five minutes before we were called to the mess hall for his surprise party. I see no reason to make him uncomfortable by telling him I'd recalled the captain's ship for his sake.

I feel his eyes on me. Almost as if he knows, can read my careful silence. Damn. If I look up while he's staring at me, he is going to know. He'll read the truth in my face…nine years have only increased his ability to do that.

Mercifully, he moves on. "What about you and Admiral Harlow?"

Or not so mercifully. The teasing lilt in his voice has me cringing.

Oh, God. He's heard the rumors by now…of course he has. It was something of a minor scandal when I caught the good admiral secreted in that alcove – with another woman plastered all over him – at a promotion party he'd invited me to attend with him.

I blame the shock for my instinctive response to that discovery. For the record, my reaction was not the explosive outburst so eagerly portrayed by the media; I did not pour an entire ice bucket on his and his other date's heads. It was half a glass of champagne…cheap champagne…and it was still too good to waste on them. I couldn't really have been less angry at the betrayal of affections that just weren't there for him, but it was a matter of pride.

And it's not a story I'm interested in telling Chakotay just now. Later, probably. Not just now.

I sigh heavily. "Let's just say I think there's a good reason he's been divorced twice. He didn't strike me as the type to do well in captivity." There. That's kind enough. Without being dishonest.

I can't tell, but he may look relieved at that. If so, he does a good job in discarding it faster than I can read and confirm it. "Any new prospects on the horizon?" he asks.

It's a light question. Just as light as mine have been.

"Not really," I answer, pushing food around on my plate.

"Good."

I stiffen briefly. What?

Easy, Kathryn. He didn't mean that. Not the way you took it, anyway. Best to keep it light, which is obviously how he meant it.

"Why good?" I ask, careful not to deepen my inflection or my gaze. Almost careful. Something might've slipped at the way he's staring back at me.

Silence. Hours and hours of silence. Or maybe just a minute of it. Either way, it's starting to feel a trifle more than warm in here. I meet his eyes. Can feel mine shining when I read the same questions, uncertainty in his. Say it, Chakotay. Tell me why that's good. Please.

I think it would be so easy to lean forward. To draw the truth out of him with a hand on the right part of his arm. Yet nine years of hard conditioning have trained me otherwise, and because I'm too afraid to be rejected and ruin the friendship that has endured all that time, through kicked up dirt and dust and hellfire, I look back at my plate, feeling a little sick and a little…sad…when he still says nothing.

I worry at the wineglass, toying with its stem. And almost jump at the shock of his hand on mine. It's still electric. Still tingles.

And it's the best he has, I slowly realize. Unless I'm waiting on another legend. He's got to be running out of those by now.

It's now or never. This or nothing.

Why should it be easy to get together when staying apart had always been so hard?

I squeeze his hand. Look up. Take a leap of faith that is far from easy. "You know, there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

"What's that?" His voice sounds as dry as mine. He looks as terrified as I am. It's bolstering somehow.

"We've been home for over a year and a half, and never once in all that time have you offered to take me to Venice."

All right, it's not even a question. But it's the best I can do, and he can't miss that. What it means. Now it's in his hands. He can choose to answer the question directly, or he can choose to break my stones about asking questions that aren't questions, and we'll laugh it off and things will stay exactly the same as they are.

He isn't looking at me. He's looking at our hands. I can't bring myself to take that as a good sign, have to drop my gaze as well.

Until he says, "I didn't think you wanted me to, Kathryn."

My heart soars. Because the rest of it, all of it…is easy now.

~~C~~

"When you get back, assuming nothing has changed for either of us, we'll meet in Venice."

It makes perfect sense. It's very cool and adult and logical. Almost Tuvok-ian, and I'd smile if this were another time, another place. Instead, I stand, hold out a hand for her to do the same. I let myself drown in her eyes.

I can't believe it was that easy – I almost laugh. Okay, it wasn't. It was hard, terrifying. We came very close to not telling each other exactly how we feel. Again. In fact, as usual, I'm not so sure I did tell her. Not in the kind of clear-cut words that would make this a done deal if she's still couching our future in terms of bargains and what ifs.

Ten months, we would be waiting. Ten months on top of nine and a half years we had no choice but to waste. Well…seven. The rest was my absolute and utter stupidity.

I stare at her. Really stare. Stare the way I've wanted to for almost a decade, and my eyes fall on that tight upsweep of red hair that looks so regal on her, that always did. It is, as it always was, a symbol of everything she keeps locked up inside of her, of how she guards her heart. Of how she's still doing it, to some degree. Guarding it. Not from me, Kathryn. Not ever from me.

Not anymore.

I used to imagine the ease with which I could reach over and remove those pins from her hair. To undo the last constraints that stand between us, both figuratively and literally, and to watch her come unraveled for me. She would let me. Right now, she would let me do it.

In fact, as I discover, when I do reach out and undo those pins…the movements are just as simple, as natural as I'd always thought they would be.

And so is saying this. "I let you go once, Kathryn." Once, twice – a hundred times too many. "Please don't ask me to do it again."

She shakes out her hair for me. Makes no protest, her eyes most definitely locked on my lips. "Come to think of it…"

Once, I imagined how it would be so easy to lean forward and silence her by closing those red lips of hers with mine. In fact, as I discover, when I do lean down and seal her mouth under mine…it is easy.

So easy.

~~JC~~