Day 24

It takes Ma'am the better part of the day before she finally makes it to sickbay. She's been kept apprised of Chakotay's situation, has been assured that he'll make a full recovery once the radiation has been cleaned from his body. She knows without a doubt that he's back in control of his faculties.

But still, she hesitates.

It's not his medical status or even the ship's status that's kept her away so long. She lies to herself and says she wants to be absolutely sure this immediate threat has passed, which, with the retreat of the alien vessel and the disappearance of the parasite in his head, seems to indicate that they're in the clear. But the truth is, it's going to be painful for her to look into the eyes of her attacker, knowing that he was wholly unable to stop from hurting her. She can't keep from rehashing every interaction they'd had in the last weeks, blaming herself for not noticing that something was wrong. And then, there's the other information she refuses to think about, will absolutely not discuss with him… She will not.

When she can no longer justify her absence at his side, she makes her way to where he is, hoping to keep the encounter brief.

"Kathryn," he says, sitting up slightly. He pinches his eyes closed and she understands he must still be fighting one hell of a headache.

She wants to go to him, it is an almost primal need for her to put a hand on his chest. But she finds herself rooted to a spot ten paces away. Her eyes dip to his hand, the one that had been so firmly clasped around her throat not long ago.

"I…" He sees where her gaze is fixed. "Are you okay?"

She nods.

"I'm not sure what to say," he begins. "I'm so sorry, Kathryn. There are no words…"

"It's alright," she says, stepping only slightly closer to him. "This wasn't your fault."

"I feel like I'm in a fog, but I remember. I remember it all. I remember what it felt like to have my hands…" he lifts them, stares at them, fingers spread. "To want to…"

She swallows back her hesitation and steels herself enough for the both of them. "I told you, I'm fine. You didn't hurt me or anyone else."

"I almost killed you. I wanted to kill you. I was so close."

"But you didn't," she reminds.

"Only because you stopped me. I felt its anger, so much rage at knowing it was going to fail. It wanted to… another moment and it – I – would have."

She licks her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. "You weren't in control of your actions, you can't blame yourself. I certainly don't."

He sinks back, resting his head on his pillow for a moment. When he speaks again, it's to the ceiling. "You're right," he resigns. "What happened on the bridge wasn't my fault, but certainly the things that led me to that point were."

"I don't understand," she says, drawing closer still.

"I should have known something was wrong. There were signs that I ignored."

"What kind of signs?" Ma'am asks, truly curious. She's feeling more comfortable by the moment and leans against the edge of his bed.

"For starters, the headaches. They were so bad, and yet, I lived with them for weeks. I never got checked out. I tried to, I think…"

"You were under the influence of the alien," she says. "It must have known to stay away from being scanned."

"Okay, then how about all the spying I was doing? I was so tired, I had been staying awake all night just… reading. Studying. Journals, personal logs, letters home. I read them all. Hundreds of things, from every member of this crew. Some of them going back years. Why didn't I question that?"

"It was studying us, learning everything it could," she says, her heart pounding. This is the conversation she desperately wanted to avoid."Surely it had a way to hide most of that from you."

"Yes, but I know things, Kathryn," he says, and she can't find a way to stop him. She should stop him, but instead she looks down to the floor. "Things I shouldn't know because of... because of it. Do you remember, in my office, during the middle of all this, how I knew about Harry's personal effects and B'Elanna's memorial flag? I knew because I had read Seven's report and Tom's letter to his father the night before."

"I do remember that. But I was about to tell you those things anyway…"

"I know that Jad Tabor and Olandra Jor are back together. She told him she loves him."

Ma'am can't help a small smile. "That's not such a horrible thing to know."

"Carlson," he says, lifting himself up. "He has a drug problem. We have to get him help."

She bites her lip. This news is disturbing. "We will. We will get him help."

"Oh…" he remembers, rubbing his forehead. "I drugged Neelix…"

At this, Ma'am's expression grows even more concerned. "You did?"

He nods. "He was going to rat me – it – out. That night we encountered turbulence while we were in the mess hall. I left a stack of padds when we bolted for the bridge. Neelix found them and confronted me about it. I snuck into Carlson's quarters and stole some of… whatever it is he has, then I drugged Neelix."

"Okay. So, you might owe him an apology," she says in jest. Despite everything she's just heard, and she's certain there is so much more, she wants nothing but to ease his guilt. "But he's okay now. No permanent damage done."

"I know things about you, too, Kathryn."

She lets his not-quite revelation hang in the air.

"It's fine, Chakotay," she says softly. "Really. You didn't choose to violate anyone's privacy."

"That thing. It was fascinated by you and by our relationship."

She thinks for a moment. "I'm the captain, it must have needed to know how I would behave and how to manipulate me. It was probably using our personal interactions to that end."

"Maybe. But I think there was more to it than that..." She watches him shake the thought away. "Regardless, I can't forget what I saw," he says. "I want to, more than anything I want to erase all of this from my memory."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. All you can really do is keep what you know confidential."

"Yes. I most certainly will, for the others." He meets her eyes, holds her there in an extended moment. "But for you…"

She bows her head. "Don't, please."

"I know about the struggles you're having," he says, no holds barred. "I wish you felt as though you could come to me. You know that I'm here for you."

"I do."

"Seeking help, admitting that this duty is too much for one person, it's not a sign of weakness."

"I know."

"And having feelings for me," he says with confidence in his voice, "maybe even being in love… wanting more from our relationship, having dreams for our future. Those aren't sentiments you have to keep bottled up inside."

Tears prickle behind her shut eyelids. Her throat tightens. He's halfway across this tenuous bridge now and despite every promise she made to herself before coming here, she owes it to him to meet him halfway.

"I know things about you, too." She feels herself drawn to look him in the eyes.

"You do?"

"I knew about the alien before you did. It's why I came to the bridge. It's how I knew to use an analgesic to give you back control."

"How? Tell me?"

"I was reading in bed, just a few minutes before Voyager made contact with the alien vessel. I looked up and a padd came… well, flying through the air and landed on the floor. It was a letter from you, from the future."

"What did it say?"

"Future-you alerted me to the danger we encountered this morning. But in his experience, I had let that craft onboard. The distress call was a ruse. In his timeline, when Tuvok and I and a few others went to greet them, we were attacked, overwhelmed by the same kind of creature that has been manipulating you. In short order, Voyager was intercepted by a much larger vessel and boarded.

"The unaffected crew armed themselves and fought back, but with a high number of casualties. They had trouble making progress because every time they'd kill one of the intruders, another crewmember would turn on them. It took a while, but eventually they figured out that these… things were time-shifters. The host would die, and the displaced parasite would jump to someone else, essentially appearing before they could be stopped."

"Keep going," he says. "What else?"

"Future-you wouldn't settle for killing the infected crew, so he ordered everyone to hide until a real plan could be made. In the process of gathering information, they realized that future-you had one of these things inside his head but wasn't affected by it. The only reason they could come up with was that he'd been using an analgesic to stem his headaches. The hydrocortiline was numbing the creature, rendering it unable to take control. Armed with that knowledge, they were able to fight back. But not before losing almost half the crew."

Ma'am watches his face while he processes the abridged information.

"What happened to you?" he asks, softly.

"At some point, there was a cease fire. We met in the brig, for the safety of both sides. The alien – I – offered a truce. I'd keep the crew that was already joined, future-you could have the rest. But he wouldn't agree." She looks to the floor. "I tried to kill him – to kill you. There was a struggle. He beamed out."

"That's how I lost my rank bar," he realizes, then his tone becomes urgent. "Did you escape? Did he save you?"

"No," she says, bluntly. "Neurazine gas. They filled the cell with it."

She watches as this news appears to physically hit him in the chest. His next words are hushed. "You'd have been overdosed. Like the one we found in the conference room."

Ma'am nods.

"B'Elanna?" His voice is still soft.

"Voyager was being flown to the aliens' home planet, where they wouldn't have stood a chance. She initiated a core overload and then ejected it manually at warp."

"But there was blow back through the housing," he realizes, voice grim.

Ma'am nods again, her stomach begins to churn. She hopes he'll stop short of making her think again of how B'Elanna would have died in that fiery explosion.

"I won't make you rehash anymore," he says, clearly sensing her unease and possibly reaching his own limit. "Do you still have the padd?"

She shakes her head, and it's not a total lie. The padd had vanished, though its contents remain safely stored within her personal files. "All of the objects we were gifted from the future have disappeared," she tells him.

"History didn't repeat itself."

"Thank goodness."

"What happened to them? Did they make it to that planet Harren spoke of?"

She considers her words carefully and decides to omit the smallest of details. She won't voice it, though she wonders for a fleeting moment if he succeeded in flying Voyager into the star, or if her intervention came in time to save him from such agony.

"They did," she says. "Those who were left, they would have survived. But it's not the kind of future that I want for this crew. It's not the kind of future I want for us."

The connotation of her last words hangs in the air. She waits a moment, expects that he will press her for more personal aspects of the letter. But when he doesn't, when he simply rolls onto his side and sighs, she finds herself longing to broach the subject. She can hardly believe the next words that issue from her mouth.

"I know how you feel about me, too."

His eyes lift up. "You do?"

"Yes."

"And… does that change anything?"

"I'm not sure that it can, at least, not right now. I hope you understand… even after all of this, nothing has really changed."

"I do understand," he says, reaching for her hand. His touch is warm, it settles her once again. "But maybe we could talk about these kinds of things more often? Try to get back to where we were, when things were easier between us? So that in the event we're whisked home tomorrow…"

"We won't lose any time?"

He smiles and his dimples set her heart ablaze. "Are you making temporal anomaly jokes?"

"No," she laughs. It feels so good to laugh. "I most certainly am not."