A/N: Right. With a bit of luck the insanity of the past six weeks is now over and I can start getting back to normal – and finishing this! Thanks to MissyHissy3 for her beta read!

Twenty Nine

The difficult part of love
Is being selfish enough,
Is having the blind persistence
To upset an existence
Just for your own sake.

Love – Philip Larkin

Mark drove them to the hospital. "I want to come," he'd said, once Kathryn had ended the call from Annika Hansen. All her instincts had told her to say no, but how could she? Why should she? It wasn't as if anything was going to happen during the visit that Mark shouldn't observe. He already knew the worst of what there was to know about her acquaintance with Chakotay and that would never be repeated, whether Mark was there or not. Yet the same part of her that had told her to keep Chakotay secret from her fiancé that first fateful night of their meeting whispered wordlessly in her subconscious once more. There was no sense to it, no form she could describe. It wasn't even guilt. It was something more fundamental than that.

This is mine, part of her wanted to say. You are known in every other part of my life, but this is mine.

Kathryn looked out of the window as the sprawl of Los Angeles scudded by in a flurry of buildings and traffic congestion. Then she turned to look at Mark, his familiar profile fading into silhouette as the evening drew on. She could tell he was tired, and beyond that he was also stressed: there were telltale lines tensing from the corner of his mouth that only ever appeared when he was preoccupied. She wondered when she had learned to read these minute yet familiar changes in his face – changes that he probably wasn't even aware of himself, but that had become, to her, an alphabet of semiotics as readable as the keys on a map. She wondered, too, what he could read in her when she thought she was silent.

It was probable, she realised, that this was the very reason why Mark had wanted to accompany her to Chakotay's bedside. To observe, in person, whether what she had told him aloud was the same as what she was saying in silence.

Kathryn looked out of the window again. She wasn't worried about Mark seeing Chakotay and her together. She hadn't been lying when she'd promised Mark she'd never hurt him again. She did love him, after all – if she hadn't she'd never have agreed to be his wife in the first place. And wasn't this familiarity that she had just described to herself perfect proof that theirs would be a good marriage? They knew each other, inside and out. They had built a life together, around each other, and the sum of the parts they had assembled over the years was too great to bring low in a fit of childish impetuosity, kicked over like a stack of wooden building blocks.

She tried to keep her mind on Mark, on the effect all this must be having on him. It kept the other thing at bay, the quivering that had started up in her heart when she'd heard that Chakotay was conscious and lucid. He was alive. He was going to live. Up until that point she hadn't allowed herself to consider that – in truth, she had closed off any avenues of thought that led towards Chakotay.

He wasn't hers to worry about.

Annika was standing outside Chakotay's room when they arrived. She looked even paler than her complexion would naturally allow for. Gaunt, too, Kathryn noted, with sympathy. Still, the younger woman smiled when she looked up and saw Kathryn coming, the expression turning a little fixed and quizzical as it took in Mark too.

"We got here as soon as we could," Kathryn told her. "Annika, this is my fiancé, Mark."

The pair shook hands as Annika said, "The doctor's in with him at the moment but you should go in as soon as you can. I'm sorry to make you come all this way when it's getting late, but I can't convince him that you're all right. He can just remember you screaming, and that you were covered in blood. So I thought, if he could see you for himself…"

Kathryn found herself reaching out to squeeze Annika's arm. "You did the right thing."

The door to Chakotay's room opened and a physician stepped out. He offered Annika a small smile and said, "You can go in now. I'll check back in an hour – call if you need me before that."

Kathryn glanced at Mark but he hung back. "You go," he said. "I'll wait out here."

"So will I," Annika told her.

It wasn't until Kathryn stepped inside that she let herself acknowledge it: that tremor she had been keeping at bay ever since she'd taken the call telling her he was awake. The door hushed shut and she found herself enclosed. She felt insulated from the world beyond, as if this room was a bubble kept apart from the rest of the universe. It was something to do with the quality of the silence here, and she realised that it was distinctly different to the last time she had set foot in this room.

She finally pinpointed it as an absence. The rising and falling sound of the ventilator had gone.

Chakotay's face had been freed from the machine's mask. The top half of his bed had been elevated slightly so that he was no longer lying flat on his back.

Kathryn walked towards him, following the same route she'd taken on her first visit, except that this time she was acutely aware of the audience behind her, two pairs of eyes she imagined were following her every movement.

For a moment Kathryn thought Chakotay was asleep. But then the toe of her shoe scuffed against the wheel of his hospital bed and the sound was enough to make him open his eyes. When they fixed on her she was reminded of how very dark they were: how very dark and how absolutely unlike any other pair of eyes that had ever held the measure of her in their scope.

Mark watched through the window as the man on the bed spoke. He didn't need to hear to know what Chakotay had said. He would know the shape of that word anywhere.

Kathryn.

Chakotay struggled to sit up, but Kathryn held up her hands – no, don't – and moved closer, rounding the side of the bed to stand at Chakotay's shoulder. Mark saw her bend forward slightly, diminutive beside the patient even though he was the one lying down. She rested her hand on his shoulder. Chakotay instantly reached for it, covering her smaller fingers with his larger ones. He was speaking again, but these words were not as easily lip-read. Kathryn shook her head, her words invisible to Mark's eyes.

Chakotay squeezed her wrist, her forearm, her shoulder. He brushed her hair back over her shoulder with his fingers, then framed her face with one hand. All this he did in the space of a breath, as if these brief touches were themselves an exhalation of relief.

Kathryn, he said. Kathryn.

Mark glanced down at his feet and dug his hands in his pockets. When he looked up again, Annika Hansen was regarding him with clear, assessing eyes. He smiled slightly.

"I think I'll go get coffee," he said.

She nodded.

"Kathryn."

He wanted to map every inch of her with both hands, just to be sure that she was real, that she was whole, that she really was here. Chakotay tried to sit up, but Kathryn rested one warm hand on his bare shoulder and gently pushed him back down.

"Chakotay," she said, her voice rasping softly amid the room's stolid quiet. "Chakotay, just lay still."

"You were hurt," he said. "All I can remember is… is…"

"Ssh," she soothed. "I'm fine. You see? I'm here, and I'm fine."

"But there was blood-"

Kathryn shook her head. "That was yours," she said, her voice still soft.

He swallowed, unwilling to look away from her face in case she turned out to be a phantom after all and vanished while his attention was elsewhere. He reached out, touching her arm, her hair, cupping her face. An emotion shot through her blue eyes, too fast for him to read, and he had the sensation of a door closing, or perhaps a light being switched off. She lifted her left hand and gently pulled his away. As she did, something glinted on her hand, the cold white shine of diamond.

Her engagement ring.

"How long was I unconscious?" he asked. The ache in his chest had been present since he woke, but suddenly it multiplied, making it hard to breathe.

"Three days," she told him, her voice catching slightly.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Her eyes fixed on his. Blue, so blue. "What do you have to be sorry for?"

"You were there."

Kathryn looked down at his hand. She held it between both of her own. "Do you…" she trailed off.

"Do I what?"

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

He shifted slightly. "Do I remember? Is that what you were going to ask?" When she looked at him again, Chakotay tried for a smile. "Yes," he said, softly. "I remember, Kathryn. I remember everything."

[TBC]