Thirty Two

"We should speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

Edmund, King Lear

Chakotay couldn't concentrate. This was the first time in years he'd had literally nothing to do but read and he was wasting it staring into space. He sighed and pushed the folio-sized edition of Shakespeare's plays to the edge of the bed. The doctors had warned him that he'd frequently be tired, but this was like no exhaustion he'd ever experienced. The anaesthetic in his system was dragging on him, making him sluggish and dozy. He'd wake feeling refreshed, only to find himself nodding off fifteen minutes later. It was frustrating and in some ways even more debilitating than the actual gunshot wound.

He felt like an old man.

The pain, though pushed to the far edges of his consciousness by the drugs, was still ever-present. His chest felt constricted and his breath was constantly short. He wondered if this was just because he was in recovery, or whether it was something he'd have to contend with permanently from now on. He hadn't asked, mainly because he didn't want to confront the probable answer, not right now. It would only force him into thinking about the future and at this moment there was no point dwelling on the idea that a one-lunged man in middle age probably wouldn't make much of a high school phys ed teacher, let alone a boxing coach. Better to focus on the here and now. Better to simply be relieved that he was still alive.

Besides, avoiding the future also meant preventing himself from considering another date that was slipping quickly closer. Kathryn Janeway's wedding was now less than two weeks away. Chakotay had tried to stop thinking about her. He knew she'd been right to gently suggest she should stay away from now on. There wasn't any more for them to talk about. They had let something happen between them that should not have happened. What had then occurred in the aftermath didn't change anything other than to outline just how different their lives were and would always be.

Still, his mind kept bringing her back to him. He saw her hair glinting in the sun as she swung that sledgehammer. He saw her watching B'Elanna give that presentation. He saw her standing in front of his bookcase in that dress, the silk of her bare shoulder-

Chakotay shook his head and reached for the book again. He had to stop this circular train of thought, because it was just pointless. He had to shake this off.

Do you love her?

B'Elanna's voice echoed unbidden in his head. Chakotay stared out of the window. Did he? Of course not. It was a heartfelt but overly simplistic suggestion from a teenager caught up in her own unexpected romance. He knew from experience that desire, however powerful, did not equal love. You had to know someone to truly love them. He didn't know Kathryn Janeway, not really, and now he never would. He just had to accept that and move on. It was a blessing, too, wasn't it, that there hadn't been the time to know her better, given her commitment to another man. It also, he reflected, showed Kathryn's wisdom in her decision that they should not see each other again in the wake of the trauma of the shooting. Let the dust settle. Let the heightened emotion of that night – in all its forms – reduce in its magnitude. Let them get past this and return to their normal lives.

It will fade, he told himself. It will fade.

A new memory chose that moment to take him by surprise: of her in a hardhat and work boots, face covered in site dust but alive with a wide smile as she clasped a mug of coffee between both hands.

"It's nice to see you smiling again," said a familiar voice.

He hadn't realised he had been. Chakotay looked up to see Annika standing at the foot of the bed, smiling back at him. A pang passed through his chest, one he recognised as guilt rather than pain. He looked at his watch, lying on the unit beside him.

"Hello," he said, "I didn't expect to see you. It's only 2pm. Don't you have clients?"

"I had a cancellation so I thought I'd come see how you were doing." She walked around the bed and kissed him on the cheek.

"You didn't have to do that."

"I know I didn't have to," she said, taking a seat. "I wanted to."

"Annika…" he began, and then stopped.

Annika looked up at him with one eyebrow raised. "Yes?"

Chakotay shook his head. He'd been on the verge of broaching a subject he'd been mulling over for days, but he was no surer of how to now than he had been when he first started thinking about it.

"If there's something we need to talk about, Chakotay, then we should talk about it."

He let out a sigh of laughter that hurt his chest. "Avoidance never has been your thing, has it?"

She shrugged slightly, crossing one slim leg and clasping both hands over her raised knee. Chakotay wondered if this was how Annika sat in counselling sessions. "I always find being straightforward is a better option than prevarication, you know that."

He looked at her, noting the sudden stiffness in her shoulders and arms. Annika had a knack for withdrawing into herself, of pulling down an icy shield that separated her from the world and rendered her unreachable. When they'd first started dating he'd hoped he might be the one to melt it, or at least to be the one person with which it would prove unnecessary. But it was a defence mechanism, he had realised, a way of pretending she was impervious to everything outside her own self, and as it had turned out and entirely unintentionally he had provoked its use more than he had made it defunct. On more than one occasion he had felt tempted to point out the irony of her profession versus her personal demons on this score, but even at the height of their most heated arguments he had held back. Even in anger there was no excuse for cruelty and Chakotay suspected that Annika's profession had grown out of insecurity more than it had self-assurance. It allowed her to closely observe others, after all, and perhaps in doing so she was attempting to convince herself that she was no different to them.

The pang of guilt came again. Chakotay wondered why he hadn't acknowledged that sooner or asked what had happened in her past to make her so aloof and distant, but he also realised that it would have made little difference if he had. They had tried enough times to know that knowing each other better made them less of a whole, not more of one. It was what made this conversation inevitable: if not now, then some time.

"All right," he said, crossing his hands over his lap. "Since the shooting you have been wonderful. I don't know what I would have done without you, Annika, but…"

"But?"

"I don't know what you're expecting from me. From this."

She watched his face, her blue eyes clear. "Is it inevitable that I must be expecting something?"

He sighed. "I didn't mean that to sound accusatory, or cold."

"It didn't," she said. "I believe we've already established that I'm the one here who does not appreciate prevarication."

Chakotay laughed to himself a little. "You never liked making things easy for me, either."

She smiled. "Life isn't easy, Chakotay. Why should anything in it be different? We live, we learn, we adapt to those lessons. And I've learned plenty just from visiting you every day. I did miss you. I do miss you. But why would I want to be with someone who seems to be preoccupied with someone else? I think I deserve better than that. Don't you?"

He stared at her. It occurred to him then that perhaps what he had assumed was a weakness was in fact strength of a sort he simply hadn't recognised. He wondered what else he'd underestimated about her. Chakotay took Annika's hand. "Yes. You do. You deserve much better."

She glanced away. "There were some good things about us being together. Weren't there? There must have been some."

"Of course there were. Two good people can't make an entirely bad relationship. But…"

"But," she agreed. Then after a moment she added, "I've got a date with Andrew on Thursday."

Chakotay grimaced. "You definitely deserve better than that."

"We'll see. I'll come tell you about it."

He was surprised. "You will?"

Annika raised another perfect eyebrow. "Did you expect me to be so heartbroken that I'd never want to see you again?"

Chakotay let out a laugh and then shrugged, revelling in a sudden feeling of acute relief. "You could be right about this no prevarication policy of yours."

Annika smiled.

"With any luck, though," Chakotay went on, "you won't be visiting me here any more anyway. The doctors are talking about giving me the all clear for discharge in the next week or so."

"What?" Annika's face took on a look of concern. "But you're not well enough to look after yourself, not yet. You had major surgery less than a month ago. You can't be in that apartment on your own. Surely the doctors must realise that?"

"I'm not going back to the apartment. I've been talking to Sekaya. I'm going to go visit with her for a while, in New Mexico. They've got a spare room and it's quiet there. I won't be on my own. I'll go as soon as the doctors think I'm well enough to make the journey. I've got an old friend willing to drive me. I want to be out of here by this time next week at the latest or I'll go insane."

Annika nodded, a delicate frown creasing her forehead as she watched his face.

"What?" Chakotay asked. "I think it's the perfect solution, don't you?"

"You leaving the state? It's avoidance, is what I think," Annika said, bluntly. "And-" she added, as he took a breath to protest, "if you follow my statement by asking what you could possibly be trying to avoid, that would be denial. But I know how much you hate it when I analyse you."

[TBC]