Six
A/N: Sorry for the prolonged delay and for how short this is. I struggled with this one, for some reason, and RL is a bit demanding at the moment. Hope there's something worth reading here.
Chakotay watched her through the screen. In truth, he was less surprised that she remembered that night than he was by the fact that she was choosing to bring it up now: or indeed, ever. He'd always suspected that her memory wasn't quite as blank on the events of that evening as she'd seemed to want him to believe. None of the other crew who had partaken of the Hashete beverage in equal quantities had experienced that particular side effect, for example, though plenty of them had been as inebriated. It seemed unlikely that only her memory would be impaired. Not that he had been inclined to push her on it. What good would have come of that? Besides, he had been keen to put the incident out of his own mind, too, and had had no difficulty understanding why she had found the obfuscation necessary.
Kathryn wasn't looking at him, was instead studiously regarding something on her desk, a sight line that drew her attention away from him with an air of concentration that furrowed a line between her eyebrows. It gave him a vague sense of déjà vu, her sitting opposite him having initiated what could be expected to be an awkward conversation. She'd been out of uniform then, too, although in less relaxed attire than she wore now. His eyes drifted across the coffee-coloured wrap crossed over her chest. As modest as it was, it left her neck bare. The material shone slightly in the muted light of her dimmed quarters, the refractions casting fluid shadows against her skin. He wondered how it was that she could still be so beautiful, despite the long, hard years of their exile. It was distance that allowed him to think this: something he had not contemplated for a long time. It was strange, too, he thought, that at so great a remove she felt more approachable than she had for months, possibly years. He watched a slice of her loose hair – far shorter now than it had been at the start of their journey – fall slowly across her cheek. Chakotay wondered if the sensation of its touch on her skin reminded her of the same thing that it did him. He was too far away, this time, to brush it back the way he had that evening.
He was surprised to realise that he wished he wasn't.
Pushing her away that night had not been difficult. The touch of her lips against his had taken him by surprise – a permutation he hadn't seen coming until it was too late and that he would have avoided, for both their sakes, if he'd been less distracted by her subdued demeanour. Chakotay was so used to her being in control that seeing her otherwise was discomforting. Crouching there, in front of her, he'd been unexpectedly reminded of the woman that existed beneath the uniform and the burden of her constant, prolonged command. He'd seen that vulnerability very few times, and to that point when he had it was always in the aftermath of her recovering herself: a glimpse as the armour sealed shut again. But just then, she was in the midst of it, and seeing her that way had moved him enough that he'd let his own guard slip. He hadn't realised he was reaching out to touch her until his fingers were already in her hair. He hadn't seen the danger, either, until she'd asked that whispered question.
"Why are you so good to me?"
There had been no chance to hide his unwitting answer. He'd been told before that he was a terrible liar, precisely because the truth was so often there in his eyes before he'd even said a word. He knew what she had to have seen there, and it was barely a second later that she had leaned forward to seal her lips against his.
Kathryn Janeway was drunk, she had repeatedly made it clear that the thread between them could never be made shorter than it currently was, and the respect he had for her was absolute. For these reasons it was not difficult to push her back, despite how warm her lips had been, how perfectly they fit against his and despite the tiny, tantalising brush of her tongue against his bottom lip as she'd parted hers, clearly wanting something more. There was no other response he could have made at that moment.
Her face, though, as he'd done it, had made his heart ache. It was a look of utter disgust and humiliation directed squarely at her own self, and he hated to see it from her, who continually gave so much and yet always judged herself so harshly. Chakotay had turned away, steeling himself to leave her here with her horror, wishing he had never had the idea of escorting her back to the ship: that he'd simply called for her to be transported directly to sickbay. He'd tried to reassure her after her stuttered apology, made for the door, telling himself not to turn around…
…but he hadn't made it. He'd cast a glance back over his shoulder and what he'd seen had stopped him dead. She was the picture of despair, and it was a sight that rang a plangent note in his heart, one that resonated through every nerve he had. He didn't want to leave her like that. He couldn't leave her like that. He wanted to hold her: in truth, had wanted to hold her for a long time. At that moment, the thing that he had told himself was exactly the wrong thing to do became the only thing he could imagine would make any difference. He couldn't bear the idea that she thought she was not desired, because for the life of him, he could not remember ever wanting anyone more, or so completely, or for so long.
He'd put so much into the stolen kiss that followed that he'd felt her tremble against him, warm and soft and supple in exactly the way he had always known she would be, beneath it all. Breaking away from her then had been against everything his heart and body were telling him, but he'd done it. The guilt had set before he'd even made it out of her quarters. For sure he had over-stepped the mark. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to regret it.
The feel of her lips on his had stayed with him for a long time. Chakotay had wondered if the same were the case for Kathryn, a suspicion he'd tried not to dwell on but that reoccurred to him every time her gaze slid in the direction of his mouth as they spoke, something that seemed to happen with increasing frequency after the events of that evening.
He'd waited for her to bring it up. To sit him down at a table, to look him in the eye and tell him that they needed to talk about what had happened. She never had, not for that night, which both surprised him and didn't in equal measure. He'd waited until he'd given up waiting, until the latent anticipation and the frisson that existed between them became something else: something faded, something jaded. Chakotay recognised, with sadness, that this evolution had always been inevitable in the situation that they were in: the situation that she, in truth, had chosen for them. If Kathryn had come to him the day after those kisses, if she had come to him at any number of points when they had almost crossed the line she had drawn between them, if she had ever said 'Chakotay, I want to try this, I want to at least try'… But she hadn't, and he understood why while also recognising that this had been their downfall. His regard for her had and would always remain undiminished, but life could not exist in a vacuum. They had tried that experiment and reinforced the scientific reality. Four years had passed, four years of hardship and difficulty, of incidents that sucked a little more of the oxygen out of the sealed, invisible sphere in which they kept what had unexpectedly budded between them. Four years of something deliberately stunted before it had had a chance to bloom, until they rarely even opened the door to it anymore, aware that each time they did, more escaped than was replenished, because straying near that invisible line inevitably became about what they could not do, instead of what they could.
Chakotay did not blame her for the decision she had made. He had loved her for it, in fact, because how could he not? This was who Kathryn Janeway was, a monolith to a promise made at the start of an unbearable journey that she was nonetheless determined to bear. It was symbolic of her spirit, that determination, that single-mindedness, so how could he reject that?
But still. Life could not exist in a vacuum. And outside of one, change is inevitable, unstoppable, irrevocable.
Yet here he was, watching her through a viewscreen, feeling almost close enough to touch despite being lightyears away, and he remembered how her skin had felt under his fingers, how her mouth had opened under his, remembered how he had imagined pressing her back against those cushions instead of letting her go. Wanting, now, to cross that line, to wrench open that door, even if it resulted in that final breath of oxygen being lost at last.
"Kathryn," he said, quietly, to her turned-away face. "Kathryn."
He saw her draw in a breath, her chest swelling as it filled her lungs. She looked at him, her eyes serious and glittering, mourning something that neither of them had ever properly named. Then her gaze strayed from his, and he knew she was tracing the lines of his tattoo. Her jaw was a line carved in pale marble, and he knew what it felt like to run his fingers over its planes.
"You're too far away," he murmured, not certain he'd even said it loud enough for her to hear.
She moved her gaze back to his. "It's too late," she said, just as quietly. "I should let you go."
"It's not too late," he told her, "and I don't want you to let me go."
"Chakotay-"
"Come here, Kathryn. Just get on a shuttle, and come here."
She shook her head - a tiny movement - blue eyes huge, luminous with something else now, something he'd provoked in her before at least once that he knew of. "I can't."
He nodded, still watching her. "Sometimes," he said, softly, "'I can't' does mean 'I don't want to.'"
She exhaled, a soft, shaky breath he couldn't see snaking out into the air of her quarters. "I have to go," she said. "Goodnight, Commander."
He smiled, watching her close that invisible door. "Goodnight, Captain."
[TBC]
