A/N: Thank you very much for all the good wishes and reviews! Much appreciated. Thanks too, as always, to MissyHissy3 for the beta.

Chapter Nine

If I opened my heart there'd be no space for air
Because I wanted you

Weak – Skunk Anansie

Chakotay backed through the gym doors, letting them swing shut of their own accord with their old familiar clunk. He could tell immediately that there was no one using the training equipment, though he peered in through the door as he passed anyway. He hadn't expected to see Torres there, and nor was she. Still, he'd be surprised if she hadn't shown her face at some point. Whatever was going on with her, she'd yet to actually breach the terms of their agreement, although she'd have to be a fool to imagine that he hadn't noticed her marked reluctance to spend anything more than the bare minimum of time in her coach's company. And if there was one thing he knew B'Elanna Torres wasn't, it was a fool.

He'd asked around at school in the hope of catching wind of what was going on with her, but despite the cautious cast of his questions, her peers had still closed ranks, refusing to speak or even hint at anything that might be of use to him. Chakotay wondered briefly whether B'Elanna's reluctance to be here for any prolonged amount of time had anything to do with Kathryn's assistant, Tom. Her distraction did seem to have coincided with his arrival at the gym. Chakotay thought he should perhaps broach the subject with Kathryn – maybe the gift he was currently carrying towards her office would smooth the path of any questioning he might attempt on that score. She seemed particularly protective of Tom Paris, something he'd learned first hand as Kathryn had stepped between them during the unexpected altercation of their first meeting. It had struck him, then, just how small she was – he'd been caught off guard by the dichotomy between her defiant stance and her diminutive stature. The fire in her eyes had been coupled with a brief undercurrent of fear, too – as if, in the same moment that he had realised how small she was, she had in turn realised how large he was by comparison. But that hadn't stopped her putting herself in between him and that boy, positioning herself like a human shield against a looming tank, regardless of the disparity in their physical powers. And if actions spoke louder than words, that one had filled his ears with an entire aria, the myriad notes of which had resolved into two distinct chords: one, the knowledge that Kathryn Janeway would not back down from protecting those who required such even in the face of her own frailty and two, that Chakotay swore to himself he would never cause her to fear anything, however briefly, again. He would stand with her, not against her, for however long their path coincided, however tangled and uneven that route might become. Even if she did have a tendency to be soft toward hot-headed young troublemakers. But then, he couldn't pretend not to understand that, could he?

Chakotay arrived at her open office door to find the woman herself seated at her desk, staring at a sheet of paper laid before her as she drummed a pencil in a fractious rhythm against it. Her head was bent, chin resting on her other hand as she frowned distractedly at the blank page, apparently so absorbed in the wealth of nothing before her that she hadn't heard his soft approach.

"Hello," he said, unable to knock for the box he carried.

Janeway lifted her head with a jerk. "Chakotay."

He smiled slightly, though she didn't return it, which was unusual. She looked preoccupied, he thought, a trace of anxiety dancing around her blue eyes. He nodded at the empty page on her desk. "Hard at work?"

She looked down. "Oh, I was just…" She shook her head with a sigh. "Failing to do what I had set out to do, it seems."

"Happens to the best of us," he said, lightly. "You probably need a fresh cup of coffee."

"Hmm." She reached for the nearest paper cup, tipping its contents towards her and wrinkling her nose. "This one's died a death, I fear, and it's too late to go out for more now."

Chakotay lifted the box slightly. "Perhaps this will help?"

Kathryn looked at what he carried for the first time as she stood. "Is that… a coffee machine?"

He smiled at her astonished expression and stepped forward to put it on the desk. "It is indeed. I thought I'd do my bit for both the conservation of your sanity and the rainforest by bringing you this. No more having to go out for coffee every time you need one, no more drinking your favourite beverage out of wasteful paper cups: I brought mugs, too."

Janeway didn't say anything for a moment, just rested her hand on top of the box and looked down at it. She seemed slightly overwhelmed. Chakotay had the sudden feeling that he'd somehow put a foot wrong, although how he wasn't quite sure.

"You… bought me a coffee machine," she said, softly, still not raising her head.

"Oh, well – no, I didn't, actually. Annika didn't take it with her, and I generally only drink tea. So you don't need to worry about my wallet – it was either here or the thrift shop, and frankly, I thought that in this case, your need was greater."

Kathryn looked up with a frown. "Annika?"

Chakotay half-shrugged. "My partner. Ex-partner. I don't know why she didn't take it, but it seems to be working perfectly and she's cleared the place of everything else she wanted, so…"

He stopped. Kathryn's face had taken on an expression he couldn't rightly read but that for some reason put his stomach into freefall.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Janeway said, as she hurriedly flicked her gaze away from his and down to his gift. "About your – about Annika. I didn't realise-"

Chakotay shook his head with a smile, trying to dispel the sudden and inexplicable awkwardness of the moment. "Nothing to be sorry about. It was a long time coming."

She nodded, frowning again. There was still no smile.

"I've made you uncomfortable," he realised. "With this gift, I mean. I'm sorry."

"No," she said, quickly, looking up again.

"It's just that it's taking up good space in my kitchen, that's all, and I thought it might make your working day a little easier."

"It will. It was very kind to think of me, Chakotay – you were very kind..." He had the sense there were other words on the end of the sentence that she had decided not to say.

Kathryn looked at her watch. "Oh. I didn't realise the time," she said. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to run." She turned and picked up her bag, "I'll set the machine up tomorrow. Thank you so much, Chakotay. Have a good evening, won't you? "

And with that she was gone, leaving him with the impression of a faint smile and the idea that she hadn't quite been able to look him in the eye as she passed.

Kathryn did not go straight home to Pasadena. She left the gym craving the kind of space she knew how to find in only one place. Instead of heading south from Maywood she turned west, driving into the dusk with her hands stiff on the wheel, ignoring the clamour of the traffic around her. She drove until she hit Santa Monica and then headed north along the Palisades until she reached Topanga, where she found a parking place just as the first stars began to force their way through the kaleidoscope of sunset. Here she climbed out of the car and slammed the door, feeling as if her lungs had been frozen since she walked out of the gym; as if she had not taken a breath for moments, for hours, for years. She stepped onto the sand and struck out along it, the shouts and whoops of the evening surfers wheeling around her as surely as the calls of the sea birds overhead. The waves crashed against the shore, curving inland with their perfect, continuous right break, over and over, over and over, breathing in and breathing out, angry and beautiful and endless and with nothing to apologise for, for they simply were.

It wasn't until she'd reached the lagoon that Kathryn gulped a full lungful of air, a harsh gasping intake that burned in her throat and wracked her chest. She stood there, feeling herself shake with an emotion she could not and had no desire to comprehend. She opened and closed her fists, taking a hold of this thing as if she could shake it by the throat until it was forever still.

At length the tremors stopped. Kathryn shut her eyes and then opened them again, tipping her head back to watch the cosmos gradually stud the sky with stars. What distances the spaces between those lights represented, she thought. What voids, that were in themselves such a magnitude of lack that not even loss could take hold between them. What she wouldn't give for that abject nothingness to fill her here and now. But all that was echoing in her empty places were B'Elanna's words. They ricocheted around her head, over and over in different timbres but with the same sharp edges, and the worst thing was that the words were not strangers. They reverberated not only through recent minutes but also through distant years, and not only in B'Elanna's voice but in her own as well. It was a voice that she had spent years learning to live with, to push into the background, but now here it was louder than ever, as fresh as if the thought was new.

This is your fault.

You did this.

This is your fault.

Kathryn clenched her jaw, staring at the water at her feet, at her uncertain reflection in the gathering dark, as if the woman floating there could tell her the secret behind making oneself anew. Something in her was cracking open and she could not afford to let it. What was sealed behind that wall was too great to let out and this fissure in her heart was threatening everything she had built on the level ground she had convinced herself stood in front of it. She couldn't fall apart. She never fell apart, not even when the world itself was falling apart around her.

There must be a way of solving B'Elanna's predicament. Kathryn refused to believe there was nothing she could do to help her, to change this outcome. Whatever it took, she'd find a way. A scholarship out of town, perhaps, a long way away? Perhaps Owen could help on that score. Kathryn wondered what B'Elanna's ambitions were, and realised with shame that she had never asked. Chakotay would know, of course. He would have-

All he can see is you.

She put her hands up to her eyes, pushing her fingers over her lids until colours sparked against them, but still those words lingered in her mind. Was that true? It wasn't, was it? The girl herself had pointed out that Chakotay was simply naturally selfless. He'd go out of his way to help anyone who needed it. It wasn't her. It wasn't her.

If only he hadn't chosen that very evening to bring her his ex-girlfriend's coffee machine. On any other day, it would have been just another sweet gesture from a man whose first instinct was always to be kind. But coming so soon after the assault of B'Elanna's words and that last sting in their tail as she'd left, his sudden appearance bearing that gift had been too much. It had hit a nerve, one that had still been quivering when he'd casually dropped in that he was now without the girlfriend Kathryn had been deliberately picturing him with for weeks.

Not that this change altered anything, of course. Why should it?

All he can see is you.

She shook her head, dispelling the echo for what it was: a passing shot spoken by a disgruntled teenage girl.

It meant nothing at all to Kathryn that he was single, did it? Why would it?

Because you like him, came the unbidden honesty of her next thought. Because you like him more than you should, and because the idea that he might-

Kathryn took a breath, pushing the thought away. This was ridiculous. They worked together, that was all. She had Mark, she had her entire life mapped out before her with Mark. So she found Chakotay attractive. What woman wouldn't? It was nothing but a temporary weakness that she had to overcome. So she had noticed him, and perhaps he had noticed her. So what? It didn't mean anything other than the fact that perhaps, finally, finally, she was really and truly moving on. Part of her was waking up, a part of her that had been dormant ever since her world had last fallen apart around her ears.

The fact that she was waking up now – well, that must be because she and Mark had decided on a date for the wedding. If that wasn't proof to all – her mother and sister included – that she had put the past behind her, then surely nothing would be.

Kathryn sighed. Above her, the stars were winning the sky, hinting at a future while standing surety for an enormity of history she could not comprehend. Her own future was waiting for her and she was determined not to jeopardise it any more than she would have willingly tainted B'Elanna's.

Chakotay was a colleague and she would treat him as such: a colleague, and nothing more. Coffee machine or no coffee machine.

[TBC]