ONLY THE MOMENT (con'd)

[one]

The creamy sands were turning to gold in the rays of the setting sun, and the foam on the lazy ocean waves glowed dusky orange and pink. Seagulls swooped and screeched overhead, alert for scuttling crabs, while pelicans scooped their dinners from the swells. Here and there a beached jellyfish gleamed, damp and translucent as a wave receded. A fresh, moist breeze rustled the sea grapes and sea oats, alive with the scents of brine and seaweed, of sand releasing the stored warmth of the day.

Chakotay sat in the path at the top of a dune about twenty feet from the coordinates he'd given to Kathryn, quietly reveling in nervous delight. He hadn't felt this excited about a date since he was a cadet, imagining what was to come, shivering with pleasant tingles over the entire surface of his skin-- He'd been feeling these intermittent waves of arousal for a month--every time he saw Kathryn, heard her voice over the comm, thought of her--but now he didn't have to distract himself with endless games of hoverball, now he could let his imagination wander down previously forbidden paths, let it draw delicious scenarios; now he could enjoy the blood thudding in his ears, the heat seeping into his groin, the light sweat of adrenalin, dried by the cool evening breeze off the ocean. She was late, but he didn't mind; it just gave his anticipation a chance to build even more--

The cries of the gulls and the steady surge of waves even on this gentle coast drowned out the hum of the transporter, so that his first awareness of her was of her figure forming in light. By the time he stood and brushed the sand from his clothing and started toward her she was looking about for him, and when she caught sight of him she launched into agitated explanation. "I'm so sorry I'm late! I was on my way to the transporter room when Admiral Paris called, wanting another download of my latest report, which he'd managed to delete before saving it, and I could hardly tell him he had to wait for a month--"

"Just stand there for a minute. Please." She obeyed, beaming. "I've always wanted to look at you like this."

"You've seen me in a sunset before."

"But I've never been able to look at you. You're beautiful, Kathryn. You're beautiful. I could never say that to you before, not like this. Well--only once." She wore a calf-length, sleeveless ivory dress that hugged her body or draped loosely in all the right places, topped with a gauzy flowered blouse that the breeze lifted tantalizingly away from her chest and shoulders. Her hair was unbound and slightly tousled with haste; delicate Bajoran jewelry flashed at her ears and throat and wrists. She was golden in the setting sun, and his heart swelled to know that she had dressed with this care for him. For him.

--Only once. And indeed she had seen that look only once before, in the moonlight, when she'd stepped out of the bathtub he'd made for her wrapped in only a towel, and he was standing so close she could feel his quickening breath on her bare shoulder-- She was staring, too, because the slanting light turned his skin to bronze, his hair to jet; he seemed to gleam. He was clad in cream shorts and a loose black linen shirt, and his hair was clean and soft and a little shaggy, because he hadn't had time to get it cut in the last few weeks. She'd rarely seen him in shorts, even on New Earth--it was chilly there more often than not, and he'd spent a great deal of time tramping through the woods--and she studied his legs, a boxer's legs, well-muscled, trained for stamina-- She blushed madly, relieved that he couldn't tell in the fading light.

"So are you," she said, and could see that she had moved him. He took a deep breath and the spell was broken for the time, and she bent down to remove her sandals. "A desert island? Really, Chakotay." He had found them an uninhabited barrier island off the Florida panhandle. The Gulf Coast, she knew, was one of his favorite places, and he was sharing it with her. With her.

"Two miles long and one mile wide and nobody on it but us." He stepped forward, a hand digging into a pocket. "I have a present for you." He fastened a simple chain of some sort of polymer around her neck. "It's an anti-mosquito field."

"I had no idea you were such a romantic."

"I am--this is proof. I want your hands all over me, not slapping away mosquitoes."

Her bold gaze swept him from head to toe. "You'd better have one, too."

"Believe me, I do."

She fingered the chain. "We lived in these things when I was growing up--we boast big mosquitoes in Indiana, too, you know. I presume, however, that four walls and a roof can be found somewhere on this island?"

"Right this way." He picked up her bags and headed over the dune.

Kathryn halted at the top of the rise. "Ohhhhh--" She hadn't had time to wonder what sort of accommodation he would provide, but she never would have guessed this. A log cabin, here in the middle of a sandy, windswept isle. For an instant she wondered if he had been crazy enough to build it himself. "You didn't--you couldn't have--" It reminded her, as she had no doubt he intended it to, of the cabin he had been designing on New Earth. He'd been so full of ideas on New Earth, brimming with plans that had never had the chance to come to fruition--

"I didn't know if it would be too much--too sentimental--" He stood just below her on the path, gazing up to gauge her response.

"Oh no. It's perfect--just perfect." It looked back and moved forward at the same time--so typical of him.

"How about a tour?"

"Lead on!"

Sitting room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom--cozy, practical, and tidy--also typical of him. He'd furnished it with comfortable, overstuffed chairs and sofa, several dozen books in a walnut bookcase, prints by artists she admired on the walls. She smiled when she saw the red rose by one side of the bed, a firm, roomy bed piled high with pillows--

Made suddenly self-conscious by the care he had obviously lavished on the place, by his quiet attentiveness to her reaction, she sought refuge in humor. "That bathtub looks big enough for two. You plan ahead."

"I didn't want Q to have all the fun."

"Some fun. He was in uniform, and I was up to my chin in bubbles."

"Well, I won't be in uniform."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Promise to kiss my feet?"

"Did Q kiss your feet??"

"Only one foot, and it couldn't have tasted very good--all soapy and bubbly."

"I promise to kiss both feet. In fact I promise to kiss every part of you."

"Every part?"

He put his arms around her from behind, hands at her ribs, thumbs stroking the lower curves of her breasts. "Every part. Three or four times. And that's just for starters--" He kissed her nape and she sighed and leaned back against him, and his body's response was quick and urgent. "I want you," he said, pressing against her, "--in case you couldn't tell."

She had often thought of his voice as soothing, like velvet or an old flannel robe, but now, low and husky with desire, it wasn't soothing at all. "The feeling's mutual--in case you couldn't tell."

She turned into his embrace and met his searching lips with hers. And then she drew away, grinning seductively at his frustrated moan, all her self-consciousness banished. They'd done their share of flirting over the years, but this was better, making him squirm with a glance, making his eyes hot and his breathing deepen with a throaty chuckle, and all the while he was smiling that almost-smirk smile because he knew exactly what she was doing and he was loving every minute of it.

"Would you like some dinner?" he asked her.

"No, I had a late lunch with Mkali--during which I had to assure him several times that I was not usually so distracted."

"I'm flattered. What did he say?"

"That he hadn't noticed. Whereupon I told him he was making points in his first few days--a lot more than you did, I might add."

"Oh, I was supposed to lie to you. I'll keep that in mind."

"Just a little helpful hint-- Do you need dinner?"

"No, I'm not hungry." Except for you smoldered in his eyes. "It's a nice night--would you like to walk?"

"I wouldn't want my present to go to waste--"

The night was warm and breezy, the rising moon barely topping the lights of the weather sensor towers on the darkening horizon. A faint light yet suffused the sky, but the first stars were clearly visible; the splash of the waves was louder now, signaling the incoming the tide. Barefoot, she was considerably shorter than he, and made sure to walk a little higher up the slope of the beach to avoid a neckache, though not so high that they couldn't walk hand-in-hand. Their hands had clasped any number of times over the years, but they had never held hands, and she felt a silly rush of schoolgirl pride--he's mine--when they interlaced their fingers.

"How did you find this place?"

"My cousin told me about it--he and his wife came here on their honeymoon. You reserve the island and the designers put on it what you want, anything from a pup tent and a canoe to a full-service resort and marina. It's a combination of holo-imaging and solid construction, which you choose from a catalog or provide specifications for. I considered sending them specs on Starfleet issue shelters, but then I saw the cabin and couldn't resist."

"Oh, I like the cabin. It's rather less cramped, and it's wonderfully incongruous on an island with nothing but palm trees and scrubby little oaks. Chakotay, this must have cost you a year's back pay!"

"Only half a year's." He shrugged. "I wanted some real privacy."

She looked up in rueful apology. "I did have to tell Commander Mkali where I'd be, in case the comm system suffered catastrophic failure. And--I told Tuvok you'd be with me, in case Mkali needed further information from his predecessor--and because I just--wanted him to know. But he's sworn to secrecy."

"I assumed you'd tell Tuvok. How did he take it?"

"Completely unsurprised. Vulcans are very perceptive, you know. He wished us every happiness--" --wishing for them something he didn't fully understand, just as he didn't understand, but simply accepted, the quick, impulsive hug she'd given him in thanks.

They fell silent, communicating with the pressure of fingers and palms, now and then clinging to each other for balance though the sand was firm beneath their feet, laughing at their unsteady gait, looking at each other, then at the water receding into darkness, the vast ocean barely hinted at by sparkling starlight on the waves, then the moonlit glow of the dunes, and then each other again, sensing shared arousal. Their gazes strayed less and less and then not at all, and he halted and turned her toward him, his hands taut on her hips, but he did not pull her all the way to him, rather let her close the last distance, and her hands were behind his head, drawing his mouth down into a fevered kiss, and she paused only long enough to ask, "Are you sure we're alone on this island?" Breathlessly he replied, "That's what it says in the brochure," and she drew him down onto the soft white sand, and "Kathryn," he said, and then again, "Kathryn," and those were the last coherent words either of them spoke for a while, abstinence, longing, and weeks of heated anticipation conspiring to strain self-control to its delicious breaking point, and she greeted his ardor with surprise and delight and an answering fire, not expecting such passion in a man so generally calm and sometimes even passive, but he wasn't passive now, he took her and revered her at the same time, and though he tried to prolong the building pleasure her hands and mouth played a tantalizing game, and in minutes he was deep inside her and almost at once she was convulsing around him, her thighs a welcome, intoxicating vise, her head thrown back so that her throat glowed in the moonlight and her cries lifted into the night, and he gasped and drove deep and cried out, his face pressed against the curve of her neck, surrounded by the scent of her hair, his fingers digging into the sand.

When he could breathe again he rolled off her but gathered her into his arms, and she fitted herself against him, claiming him with a leg draped over his thighs. The clothing they'd pulled away made a small spread beneath them, and presently they shed the rest and lay still while the breeze dried their sweat and their tears and surrounded them with their scent.

"That was--explosive," Chakotay said softly. "There's no other word for it." Lovemaking had never been like this, not even when he'd been a raging mass of twenty-year-old hormones--never so urgent, so hungry, never so much loneliness banished.

"I think I saw stars," Kathryn said, with a soft, husky laugh. "I guess there's something to be said for anticipation."

"I guess so." He rolled them over so that he lay above her, his weight on his arms, his thigh between hers, warm and moist. "I've dreamed of this. I can tell you that now. I can tell you so many things now, about how I want to hold you, and touch you, and love you. I love you, Kathryn. You don't have to say it back, or feel the same, and I don't know if it's forever, but right now I love you the way I loved you years ago, and it gives me joy just to say it."

Her vision blurred, but not enough that she couldn't see the earnest wonder in his eyes, the curve of his lips in a tender half-smile. She reached up and cradled his face in her hands, smoothed his sweat-damp hair, tousled from the tugging of her fingers. "It gives me joy to hear it. And--you won't mind if I say it back, will you?"

And his breath stopped and he spoke with barely a sound. "No."

"I love you," she said, and his smile faltered and then returned, but transformed into that smile, the one she'd seen only once before, on New Earth, shy but serene, and she did now what she had almost done then, pulled him close and took his mouth with hers and wrapped her arms and legs about him until he groaned and swelled against her and thrust inside her again and filled her, body and heart, with his warmth.

He tried to go slower this time but succumbed quickly to the demands of her hips and mouth and inner muscles; he finished first, in an explosion if anything more intense than the first, and sagged against her, clutching her to him, moving gently inside her.

When his arms began to tremble he shifted to one side, and was moved by her sigh of regret when he slipped out of her. "Sorry I don't have any staying power tonight--it's too overwhelming to be with you."

She brushed sand from his ear, and he shivered at her touch. "That's very flattering--but now I get your full attention, right?"

His grin sent a thrill through her. "Yes, ma'am--"

He had never obeyed her wishes with greater pleasure, nuzzling and fondling her all over, savoring the taste and texture of her on his lips and tongue, the firmness of muscle and the softness of skin against his palms and fingers. And then he began to laugh, his snorts into her belly tickling her and in turn making her giggle.

"What?" Though she loved his laugh, found it as infectious as his smile, she couldn't help but be bemused by hearing it under these particular circumstances.

"I'm sorry--I can't help thinking 'Oh Captain, my captain'--"

Her burst of laughter alternated with gasps and moans as he continued his explorations, fast and slow, sucking hard at first one nipple and then the other while his fingers teased and stroked and began to learn the way she liked to be touched, until she was caught up in her own explosion, and by the time her body shuddered to stillness he was ready for her again and she pushed him back against a dune and climbed on top of him, and he felt against his shoulders and back the pounding of the sea on the shore, and minutes later they both cried out, and then simply held each other while their heartbeats slowed and their breathing calmed, sated at last in each other's arms, drowsy with the warmth of the night and the steady rush of the ocean, the whisper of sea oats and grapes in the breeze, and just before her eyes closed she thought how right it was that they should fall asleep beneath a canopy of stars.

He woke to the sunrise and the woman he loved in his arms, eyes filling with the intensity of emotion that swept through him, and when she woke a few minutes later and saw his tears she let fall a few of her own.

He kissed her, and then said, "How about a swim?"

"You once told me you wanted to come home because you wanted to swim in the Gulf of Mexico again."

"But I didn't think I'd be sharing the experience with you."

"I'd love a swim, but I need a bathroom first. I don't suppose--?"

"Behind that dune--see the little flag?"

"You think of everything."

"That's what fine first officers do, you know--"

By the time she regained the beach after a visit to the facilities--not just a glorified outhouse, but a self-contained pavilion complete with hot running water and an assortment of toiletries and snacks--he was in the water, swimming and splashing and diving, obviously relishing the sensual, delicate embrace of the warm waves, gorgeously nude and reminding her of nothing so much as a bronze porpoise, or a lazy water god--though a god with sense enough to stay safely within the perimeter guarding against sharks and barracudas. She had slipped on her dress for the walk to the pavilion, and now she slipped it off again and started toward him, the sun warm on her bare skin, the sand massaging her feet and squelching between her toes.

He'd kept one eye on the beach, and when he caught sight of her he ceased his cavorting and simply stared as she approached, mesmerized by creamy skin, by hair of flame in the bright sunshine. "You could make a man drown, distracting him like that."

She waded out to him and pressed her hips against his beneath the steady swells. "I know how to do mouth-to-mouth--"

And the memory of terror flashed through his mind--Come on, Kathryn, breathe!--and he clutched her to him and kissed her with such desperate relief she might have just that moment come back to consciousness, to life, in his arms. And then he fitted himself into her and cupped his hands beneath her buttocks, and pushed off the shelf into deeper water, and the motion of treading water provided a teasing thrust as the sea caressed them from shoulders to toes.

She tightened her legs around his back. "I like this--you're very clever. Have you ever made love in zero-g?"

He nuzzled her earlobes, her neck, under her chin. "Yes. This is better. You're better. A lot of cultures have legends about seductive sea nymphs, you know. I think you must be one of them--"

When finally they came out of the water they slept a while on the warm sand, but at last, needing more substantial nourishment than what the pavilion offered, they rinsed off and started for the cabin clad in only the basic necessities of clothing, gazing appreciatively at the various curves revealed by open shirt and blouse, by the molding of fabric against groin and thighs by the breeze. When they reached the cabin Chakotay gallantly offered Kathryn the first shower, but then couldn't stand to be deprived and got in with her, his touch gentle and slow because she was sore but making her pant nonetheless, and he did the same when she returned the favor.

"God, Kathryn, you make me feel like a teenager. Well, Academy days, anyway."

"If you were this active in your Academy days it's a wonder you passed any of your classes--"

Eventually they got around to rinsing and drying and slathering lotion on each other, and then raided the kitchen for sandwiches and coffee and ice cream, coming together for kisses and then parting to take a few more bites of a different sort of sustenance. "We have an aircar if you'd like to go somewhere for dinner," he suggested, "--New Orleans, maybe, or Miami--"

"Yes! I want to go on a date with you!"

He grinned, charmed, and after he made the reservations they napped a while and then went for a walk to work up an appetite. Over a sinfully self-indulgent meal of which not a single ingredient was replicated, they talked with an ease they had never known, with an awareness of the new freedom between them, of absent barriers. They reflected that the previous month had given them time to become accustomed to the impending change in their relationship, so that when they came together there was no awkwardness between them, only comfort, no time wasted on warnings that she was temperamental, or that he was sometimes too reserved and self-sacrificing--they knew all that, they knew everything--and yet this sensation of falling whenever their glances met, ridiculous to feel it at their ages, after knowing each other so long and so well, but it was there. They flew back through the starry night and walked along the beach again and swam in the moonlight and joked about whether they were ever going to make love in bed, and as the sky turned pink and lavender and gold with the dawn and the seagulls filled the air with their plaintive cries, at last they made their way back to the cabin and fell asleep curled together, his face pressed against her hair.

Kathryn woke first about noon and tottered out to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, reminded by various aches and pains and tender spots that even in this day and age human bodies pushing fifty needed a breather now and then. At the same time, she wondered lasciviously how soon she could ravish him again, and wondered also whether he too suspected that at times they weren't making love with each other but simply having sex, slaking a long, dry thirst for the physical and emotional release they had tasted only briefly in seven years. There was something to be said for a lover who was both human and real. Modern men were rather more knowledgeable than nineteenth-century holograms--though teaching Michael a few things about a woman's body had had its attractions--and she and Jaffen hadn't had long enough together to learn what each other's species found pleasurable--only long enough for her to be reminded of what she'd been missing. Just how far Chakotay and Seven had taken their physical relationship she didn't know, but they hadn't been together very long either, surely not long enough for Seven to be comfortable with sex when it was so new to her. I guess there are a few things about him I don't know after all. We're a pair--best friends who couldn't talk to each other about their respective love lives--

She heard him stirring in the bathroom, and a few minutes later he came in wearing nothing but a robe and a smile. "I woke up to the aroma of coffee, and for a minute I thought I was back on New Earth with you." He kissed her forehead and her mouth, then opened her robe and kissed her breasts before pouring himself a cup and buttering some toast. She retied her robe, but he said mischievously, "Why'd you do that?", and she smiled and opened it again, releasing the sash of his for good measure. They looked at each other with a frank admiration they had never been able to show or even allow themselves before, letting each other know they were noticing, and enjoying each other's reaction to being a focus of desire.

They relocated to the sofa and she rested her feet in his lap, whereupon he began to massage them, working the kinks out of her arches and toes. "You haven't kissed them yet," she said. "You promised."

"I'm waiting for the bathtub." His hands traveled up her calves, kneading tight muscles until she sighed, but no farther, for he was as tired and sore as she. "I suppose it would be crude to make a joke about pon farr and seven years. I feel as though I've just been through it--I'm completely drained."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. If I'd known it was going to be this good I wouldn't have left you alone all these years."

"If I'd known, you'd have had to fight me off. And I'll return the compliment--you're in great shape. You must have lost ten pounds in the last month."

"Hoverball." He looked at her meaningfully. "A lot of hoverball. A lot of accumulated tension, you know."

"How nice that you had time for it--I didn't. I was constantly buzzed on coffee."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

Which was a colossal lie, and she threw a pillow at him. "It's a little late to try to make points."

He handed her back the pillow so she could prop against it. "Well, I hope the last couple of days have helped you alleviate your accumulated tension--"

"They have indeed. Maybe we should have tried this way back in the beginning--we might have avoided a few major rifts later on."

"Or they might have been even worse than they were."

He said it lightly, casually, but something in her face told him the conversation had just taken a unanticipated serious turn. With effort she said, "I never really apologized for relieving you of duty when you were only doing your job."

His smile was filled with resigned exasperation. "You can't let us just enjoy this for a while, can you? Why do you have to jump headfirst into the most difficult subject?"

"We said we were going to talk. Don't you want to clear the air?"

"I didn't know it was cloudy." She looked dubious, impatient, and at length he shrugged, willing, for her, to get the worst bits over with. "You came close enough."

"I hated you then." She spoke in blunt challenge, as if testing him, testing whether they could really move on from their former relationship. It was also a confession, that invited him in his turn to confess any equivalent wrath. He smiled gently, recognizing that she had been in a state of combat readiness for so long it was going to be hard for her to let it go.

"I didn't hate you. I would never hate you. But I didn't know you then, and that was worse. And--I was a little afraid of you, and for you--afraid of what you might do if you really had shut us all out."

"It took you a while to trust me again after that, didn't it?"

In his eyes was a yes. "Well, I had to re-earn your trust a time or two."

"True, but you were always acting from admirable motives. Have I ever seen you at your worst?"

His gaze briefly dropped. "I'd say being made to look a fool by Seska was a low point."

"You had company. She made us all look like fools. No, I mean--" Her voice trailed off, and it was her turn to look away.

"You mean have I ever lost control."

Her response was tight, clipped. "Yes."

"No--not like that. But I don't have your drive, your force of personality. There are times I envy you that. And I never came face to face with a temptation that severe."

"You didn't feel the same sense of betrayal I did."

"No--not in that visceral, personal sense. Not from Ransom."

Abruptly he focused his attention on her ankles and calves, obviously regretting adding that last phrase; but she wasn't going to punish him for honesty. "From me," she whispered. He did not speak, and she accepted the answer implied by his silence. "Thanks for not holding a grudge."

That elicited a smile. "Kathryn, if we hadn't learned to forgive each other we'd never have made it past the Kazon, much less all the way home."

"But that one took a while, didn't it."

"It took you a while to forgive me after Scorpion."

"Yes, it did. Maybe even until Unimatrix Zero. Does that mean we're even?"

"It means we understand each other."

She was touched, and humbled, by his acceptance of a part of her character that even she didn't always like--though she suspected that he understood her better than she understood him, and always would. "You've certainly seen me at my worst."

"I've also seen you at your best."

That touched her, too--a different kind of honesty, of generosity. She lightened the mood before she started to cry. "I'd say you can be plenty forceful when you want to be." His eyebrows rose. "Not only Equinox, but Maquis rights and privileges, alliance with the Kazon, Scorpion, Omega-- You talked me into violating a Starfleet directive that time. And you flat-out mutinied in the Void." She cocked her head in sudden curiosity, and he wasn't surprised by what she said next. "But you never tried to talk me into violating a mere protocol."

"I wasn't going to risk the deepest, richest, most important relationship of my life by pushing you to do something you believed was wrong. But--" Her left heel seemed momentarily to require extra effort, but when he continued he met her gaze directly. "--I won't deny that I've wondered now and then whether I was right to keep my distance."

She could count on one hand the times in seven years he had asked her for reassurance. "You were--but the price was awfully high."

"Probably not as high as you think. I was at peace on Voyager--with you--for the first time in my life. You can't really know what that meant."

"Maybe not, but I know what we both gave up after New Earth. I remember how close we were there, and how far apart afterward. You haven't loved me like that all these years, have you."

"Do you think I could have looked twice at Seven if I had?"

"Yes, I do--because you aren't the type to pine away for something you can't have."

He admitted to some surprise that she understood him quite so well. "You're right, but the answer is still no, because you can't sustain an emotion that intense indefinitely when it isn't nurtured, when it doesn't have anything to feed on. I can't, anyway. That isn't an accusation or a complaint--that's just the way it was, and I accepted that."

"But you wanted it to be different."

"Sure I did, but it if had been you wouldn't have been you."

She retrieved her feet and sat back against the pillows, conceding the impossibility of provoking an argument with him unless he was in the mood for it. "You aren't going to let me feel guilty about hurting you, are you?"

"Why should you? What would be the point? You didn't make your decision with the aim of hurting me. What else would we have done--promised to wait for each other? That would have just set us up for even greater guilt whenever one of us got lonely beyond bearing. We needed room to make what lives we could."

"You had let go of hope we'd get home."

"I never let go of hope we'd get home. But I did accept the possibility that we could build a satisfying life in the Delta Quadrant in a way you never did."

"And if that meant getting involved with other people--"

"We were the healthier for it. And besides--you didn't love me at all, did you."

How strange that after all this time his blunt perception could still startle her. But we never talked quite this candidly before. "No, not the way you mean. Not like this. I couldn't. But on New Earth--I was partway there, and in this last month--I seem to have picked up where I left off."

"I'm glad."

"So am I." And then more softly: "So am I." She shifted about so she could nestle in the crook of his arm, slipped her arms about his chest and felt his sigh.

We got lucky, she thought, lucky in our timing at last. Six months earlier her grief for Jaffen would still have been too raw. Three months earlier he would still have been with Seven, and homecoming might have cemented that relationship instead of opening the door to this one. Three months from now, or six--who knew? They might have had another ferocious quarrel and be merely coexisting in a cold, distant silence. Another traveler, interesting to one or the other of them, might have come on board.

One of them might have died.

We got lucky. And it's our turn now.

"Looking back," she said, "I can see that my, um--"

"Lovers," he supplied helpfully, with an amused twinkle in his eye.

Always blunt. "Lovers." She felt sheepish and at the same time silly for feeling it. "Mine reminded me of you."

"Mine reminded me of you. Well, except Riley after she assimilated me."

"Thank you for that qualification." Her arms tightened around him. "It hurt to see you with her, even though I didn't have any claim on you. And I'm glad I don't remember that Kellin woman, because I'm damn sure it hurt to see you with her."

"I wasn't too happy about Kashyk, especially your inviting him to remain on board ship." He strove for lightness, but the bitter edge in his voice betrayed him.

She drew back indignantly. "Two kisses. Two kisses! That's as far as I got with Kashyk."

"But you wanted more."

"That's for damn sure. I wanted what you'd had."

"Is that as far as you got with Michael Sullivan?"

The laughter was back in his eyes and she knew he was teasing again. "Michael never bothered you at all, did he?"

"He wasn't real, and you never forgot that. That poor guy was separated from you by a higher wall than I was. I wonder if he's pining for you in his holographic oblivion--" When he continued, his voice had grown quiet. "And then there was Mark. For years there was Mark."

"You turned to others when I most emphatically turned away from you."

"I was loneliest then."

"Seven?"

"Yes. It--hurt--to see you with Jaffen. I could live without your love as long as I didn't have to watch you give it to someone else. I felt--I'd lost you a little, lost your companionship, your friendship. Seven offered me that."

She couldn't resist a little understated wickedness. "And a little more."

His gentle smile told her he didn't mind. "And a little more."

Serious again, she said, "That woman wasn't me. It never would have happened if I'd been myself."

"I know. I knew it then. And I liked what I saw of the man. Maybe that made it worse--I don't know. Anyway--to see you look at him in a way you'd never looked at me--" His shoulders moved in a half-shrug. "Seven looked at me that way, for a while."

"You looked at her that way, too. It was hard, sometimes, to see you with her. You were so relaxed, in such a good mood--everybody noticed it. And it wasn't because of me. I missed you feeling that way with me."

"I missed feeling that way with you. And I wonder now if seeing you with Jaffen, and watching you lose him, made me want something more in a way I hadn't in a long time, something I knew I could never have with you. And when that something presented itself--" He kissed her slowly, deeply. "Right now I'm very glad it didn't last."

"I have to ask--who broke up with whom?"

"Seven actually said the words, but she said them because I'd been putting more and more distance between us, postponing dates, and so on."

"I hope she did it gently."

"Not very. Tact isn't her strong point--though she tried." He said it with affection. "But she told me she'd learned a lot--most importantly that with me she didn't come first."

"But surely she understood that in our circumstances you had to put your duty to the ship and crew first. She'd seen you do that for years--she'd seen all of us do that."

"But the way she saw it, she came in not second, but third."

He was looking directly at her, and she said softly, "Oh."

"She was right. It was very perceptive of her. She also realized that for her I was a substitute for Axum--that's who she really wanted. I think we were both relieved when we ended it."

"Maybe he will find her someday--there are other transwarp hubs out there--" What he had said finally registered. "You were relieved? I was so relieved I didn't even want to think about what it meant. I couldn't help wondering if I'd made a terrible mistake all those years before."

"You didn't make a mistake. You weren't ready, you weren't comfortable. It was early in our journey and we didn't know what was ahead. You weren't as experienced, and even after New Earth we didn't know each other as well as we came to later. You can only make the best decision you can at any given time, choose a course and try not to regret it, and deal with the consequences when they happen."

"But from some choices there's no going back. If things had worked out differently you might be sharing this little hideaway with Seven."

"There's really no going back from any choice, is there? You make a new choice to undo what you did before, or to start again. There was no time on Voyager when it could have been like this between us--so easy, without a lot of issues getting in the way."

"No, I'd have been torn between my job and you, and I'd have felt guilty about not being totally committed to either."

"It isn't possible to be totally committed to one thing. If you are there's nothing left for anything else."

"I don't seem to be good at maintaining that kind of balance. I want to be completely the captain or completely the lover."

His grin was quick and lecherous. "Okay by me."

Presently, the taste of him still on her lips, she said, "What do you want?"

"I want you. Do you know how often I've dreamed of days like this?"

"When?"

"When did I dream?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Mostly on New Earth, because we were so comfortable with each other there. I kept hoping-- And then after we talked, I was sure that in time you'd--feel about me the way I felt about you. But then we were rescued, and I tried not to dream anymore."

"You were a rock when we got back."

"I wanted to be there for you. You still needed a fine first officer."

"Most first officers don't have to serve with that kind of emotional burden. I'm sorry you had to."

"I like a job with a challenge."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "I think I will not try to uncover the many layers of meaning in that statement." When he issued no denial, she shot him a mock glare. And then she said quietly, "I dreamed of you most after I heard from Mark. I never told you--that he said he hoped I would find someone else. Part of me kept telling me I had, but the other part of me told me that, protocol aside, I needed you too much as my first officer to risk complicating that relationship more than it already was--assuming, of course, that you were even still interested." He said nothing. "You were then, weren't you?"

"Yes. But if it was a struggle for you, it wouldn't have worked any better then than it would have after New Earth."

"I know, but it still hurts to think of the time we lost, the time I cheated you out of."

"You lost out, too."

"Yes, I did."

They were quiet for a time. And then he said, "I've got a question for you. If our journey had continued--do you think you might one day have been ready to let go of this particular protocol?"

She did not reply at once, but he could tell she wasn't offended by the question. At last she said, "You don't know how many times I asked myself that question. I never answered it. When we established communication with Starfleet, sometimes I felt that the end was in sight and we might be able to have a future together after all. More often, though, it was a reminder of all those protocols, of a standard of conduct that our situation had occasionally tempted me to set aside. But I can tell you this-- There were times when you left my quarters after dinner that I wished you hadn't." He made a little sound of surprise, and she pulled away from him so that she could search his face. "What is it?"

"I-- It's nice to hear you say that. I wondered-- I mean--candlelight, soft music-- I couldn't help wondering if there was a date element to those dinners--to some of them, anyway--even if the centerpiece was usually a stack of padds. But I didn't know, and until now I didn't realize how much I wanted to."

She drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to ignore the growing heat of embarrassment in her face. "It was a pleasure to have a man over for dinner and a little flirtation. Not too much, not too far, just enough that I didn't feel quite so--celibate. I was using you, in a way. It wasn't at all fair to you--especially when I burned the roast."

"You didn't hear me complaining."

He'd smiled at her jest, but he wasn't talking about pot roast now. "No. I never heard you complaining--never heard you asking for more than I could give--even though from a certain point of view you had a right to."

He frowned. "Not from my point of view. Kathryn, I wanted you, but I wanted us to be together in the right way, in joy, not confusion. There are good reasons for most protocols."

"Of course there are. But there are also good reasons for breaking most of them, and you've never hesitated to break one if you thought you had grounds."

"That's true. But it would have taken two to break this one."

"Oh, I don't know! It wasn't the everyday running of the ship I'd have worried about, not after so many years together, and the crew knowing each other, knowing us, so well. It's the crises. It's what might have happened to our judgment if we'd let ourselves feel even more for each other than we did. And it's no good saying well, we could have tried it and if we couldn't separate the two we'd stop. That would have been very difficult to do, once we'd taken that step."

"Agreed."

"We'd have had to be as coldly honest about our personal relationship as we are--or were--about our professional relationship. I'm not sure that would have been healthy. People need privacy, but for us privacy would have been a luxury we couldn't afford." He listened quietly while she talked it out with herself, actually articulating her internal debate for perhaps the first time. She propped her chin on a knee and read behind his silence. "You'd have wanted to anyway."

"Yes."

With one word he rendered her objections insignificant in the face of mutual determination. "And I like to think I'm not afraid of risks. What would you have done if I had never decided to take the chance?"

"What I was already doing--trying to live a life. Trying not to wish for something I couldn't ever have."

"If I'd never taken the chance, I'd have lost you, wouldn't I?"

"Never as your first officer. Never as your friend."

"And if you'd met someone as special to you as Jaffen was to me?"

"You left Jaffen."

And she said, understanding, "And you left Riley Frazier."

"And I always would. But Kathryn--" he added, his tolerance for going over old ground for the moment exhausted, "--you do realize that I plan to take liberties with you now that I never did before."

"Oh?" She went along with his change of mood and struggled up out of the cushions to straddle him. "What kind of liberties?"

"Those liberties, too." His eyes were bright, his hands warm on her waist and thighs beneath her robe. "But I'm going to tell you I miss you, and worry about you, and I'm going to show you I do. No more stoicism. I'm going to rub your back and shoulders when you're tired and tense, and I'm going to hold you when you're sad, and I might even say to you one day that part of me wishes you weren't a starship captain, even though the other part knows that if you weren't, you wouldn't be the woman I love. And I'm going to ask you to be careful, to come back to me. All those things I couldn't ever let myself think before, much less say or do."

She kissed him gently on the forehead, then the lips. "It will be nice to hear them--and those backrubs sound wonderful-- What is it?" --for his face had taken on an odd expression.

"I was thinking--how much I'll miss being a part of your daily life."

"I'll miss having you as part of my daily life."

For an instant he wished things hadn't changed, but then she smiled and the thought vanished. "I guess we'll be using all our comm rations."

"We should have a big backlog."

"I guess so." Then, refusing to be downcast for long, he added, "On the other hand, it will be nice not to get chewed up and spit out into little pieces when we disagree. You'd never treat your--um--"

"Lover," she supplied with a throaty purr.

His grin was exultant, his blush utterly charming. "You'd never treat your lover the way you treat your first officer."

"You'd never treat your lover the way you treat your captain!"

"I suppose we'll have an easier time of it here."

"Yes, because we'll hardly ever see each other." She blinked back a film of tears. "I'm really aware of that now. I don't like it."

"I don't either--but I can't wish we hadn't taken this step."

His face asked the question, and she answered it firmly. "I can't either. I guess we just haven't yet found a way to have it all."

"We can have it all for the next twenty-seven days--"

--and their robes were soon cast aside, and they came together there on the sofa, and the long, lazy afternoon slid into a long, lazy evening and then into morning, and the days passed in meandering walks criss-crossing the island, and firelit suppers on the beach, and backrubs while torrents of rain hammered on the roof, and lengthy conversations and quiet periods of reading or dozing on the front porch in the evening breeze, the constant rhythm of the waves providing a background accompaniment not unlike the throbbing of starship engines. Living together came easily to them; they settled quickly back into the patterns they'd learned on New Earth, as if that intimacy had been normal and familiar and all their years apart an aberration. In the second week they tore themselves away from their idyll for day trips to climb Mayan pyramids and hike in the Appalachians, and air-skim the vast Everglades and haunt the cultural and historical offerings of the old District of Columbia, delighting in the opportunity to be tourists and explorers together, after so many years of rarely leaving the ship at the same time.

Relaxation, however, was a skill Kathryn had never mastered, and when she began to worry that an inconvenient emergency mission would bring the world crashing into their retreat, Chakotay hastened to reassure her. "I have it on good authority that it will take an invasion by Species 8472 to interrupt us." At her querying look, he added smugly, "You aren't the only one who can pull a few strings, you know."

At once she knew. "Tom and B'Elanna and Owen, bless them. And you, for recruiting them."

She envied him his ability to sleep through the night without dreaming of decaying warp coils and declining food reserves, through the crash of thunder and the glare of lightning without starting up ready to shepherd Voyager through an ion storm. More than once he found her on the porch at daybreak after she'd spent the wee hours reading while he burrowed deeper into the covers. Eventually, however, the sun and sand and clouds and sea--not to mention his regular ministrations to her shoulders and back--began to work their soothing magic; she learned to sleep more than a few hours at a time, to shut off the worry alerts, and he stopped comparing her muscles to tightropes and guitar strings.

They visited family--Kathryn's mother and sister in Indiana, Chakotay's cousin in Ohio, his sister in Lima--showing each other off but self-conscious in each other's presence until it became clear that everybody liked everybody else--and of course everyone wanted to know how long they'd really been together--

"I'm not sure my sister believes me," Kathryn said as they strolled her mother's neighborhood in Bloomington hand-in-hand, trying to walk off some of the welcome-home feast while at the same time escaping the aunts and uncles and cousins for an hour.

"She probably can't understand how you resisted me all these years," he said, waggling his eyebrows.

She put her arm around his waist. "I'm not sure I understand it now," she said, sincerely, and his grin changed from naughty to boyishly shy. He planted a kiss on her forehead and then reclaimed her hand. "Are you any closer to deciding what you want to do, now that you can choose?"

"See you as much as I can in the next six months," he said at once. "In the meantime I'll stay a while with my sister and her family, getting to know them again, and then maybe I'll go to Trebus and see what I can do to help." He had already donated half of his back credits to the rebuilding effort on his home colony. "After that--I don't know. I could transfer to another ship if there's another captain who'll have me, or try for promotion, or I could teach again at the Academy--they're always looking for field veterans. If I do go back to the Academy, will you come home to me?"

"Of course I will, but Chakotay, I don't want you to chart your course around me."

"Why not? Kathryn, I've waited for you for the better part of seven years. I'm willing to do a lot to make this work. If we're both aboard ships we'll never see each other. If I'm not, we can meet now and then in between your assignments. I'm used to seeing you every day. It isn't going to be easy to be light years away from you instead of in the next chair."

"It won't be easy seeing someone there besides you." Her hand tightened on his. "I know, let's resign and be merchants and scavengers like Neelix."

His eyes searched her face, and he said seriously, "The day you really mean that, you let me know."

"You'd do that?"

"To be with you every day, to go to sleep with you every night, wake up with you every morning, touch you a hundred times a day, see you smile, hear you laugh, make love with you day after day--" He drew a deep breath. "You bet I would, in a nanosecond."

She did not reply, but she held his gaze for a long time, and presently slipped her arm through his and walked a little closer. He was flexible enough, she knew, to reinvent himself yet again and make a success of it, to find opportunities for the exploration and interaction with other cultures he lived for even while toting up balance sheets. But she wasn't. Give up Starfleet, give up Voyager? No, not even for him, not when her commitment to both had only been strengthened by coming home. But someday, maybe--? Life, as she well knew, could take the most extraordinary turns--

As time grew short their days began to take on a poignant quality, the colors of sky and sand and waving sea grasses seeming less bright, the cries of gulls sounding half-hearted and mournful. The mood for travel left them and they spent all their time on the island, in long walks and long silences, sometimes simply holding each other, as if storing up sustaining memories of physical contact; their lovemaking became bittersweet. Though they would see each other during the next six months those visits would not, could not have this same intensity.

On their last full day--she would beam back to Voyager at 0800 tomorrow, after one last sunrise--Kathryn, packing a box of souvenirs, became conscious of Chakotay's absence from the cabin. Going in search of him, she saw him standing on the same sandy ridge where he had waited for her to appear, in partial silhouette against the afternoon sun, staring out toward the sea. She started along the dune path and came up beside him, an affectionate hand on his back.

"You've been pretty quiet today."

"So have you." He looked down at her, at the sunlit highlights in her hair, longer now and floating freely in the breeze. He gestured to the sand and she sat, and he sank down cross-legged beside her. "This mood reminds me a bit of those last thirty hours on New Earth."

"Me too."

"I've been wondering--if this is all we'll have. If it's just--" He stopped, unsure of the best way to say it.

"Getting it out of our systems?" After a moment he nodded. "Is it for you?"

"No. No. But I'm not a Starfleet captain."

"You soon will be, if that's what you want." She nudged his shoulder with her chin. "If Starfleet knows what's good for them."

His smile was genuine, and pleased, but short-lived. "During White and Boylan's wedding, I was thinking about us, wondering if that was in our future."

Very softly, she said, "So was I."

"I just need to know--what to hope for."

It was a simple fact that she would never again need him as much as she had needed him these past seven years. Without the impetus of that need, and under the strain of distance, would desire and affection and the beginnings of love fade away as well?

"Will we live happily ever after--together? I can't answer that right now." Like New Earth, this island paradise existed outside their normal lives. She would never regret what they'd had here, but at the same time she couldn't yet say whether it would survive. "Our lives are a muddle, you're at a crossroads-- But do I want to see you again like this? Oh yes."

He pulled her into his arms. "I'll miss you, Kathryn. That doesn't begin to express it."

"I'll miss you." She returned the embrace with equal force. "And that doesn't say what I feel either."

"Promise you'll call as often as you can?"

She laughed through welling tears. "Is every day too often?"

"Every day is just right."

She had thought that once she was no longer his captain she would stop feeling responsible for his safety, stop feeling as though she had to protect him. She couldn't have been more wrong. "That merchant shipping idea is sounding better by the minute."

"Just say the word."

Her wistful smile said she wasn't ready for such drastic change, and that she knew he knew it, but also that part of her wished she was, and he knew that, too. "Facing the press and the brass and the stress of not being able to do my job while the ship is under a microscope--all that will be easier because I'll know you're still with me, in a way. Just don't be surprised if half our calls consist of you listening to me vent."

"Well, I've had a lot of practice at that, you know."

"So you have. Hey--if this doesn't work out, will you come back and be my first officer?"

He met her gaze directly. "Yes, ma'am."

The quiet fervence of his response surprised her. "You don't really think we could, do you?--go back to business as usual in the aftermath of a dream?"

He shrugged lightly. "We did it before."

"We didn't have any choice, and even then it was one of the most wrenching experiences of my life."

"Same here, but in this case we wouldn't be forced into it--the circumstances, and our reactions, would be entirely different. Let's just say I'd be willing to give it a try. It might work even better, now that we've--gotten this out of our systems."

"Well, it isn't out of my system yet--"

Her kiss was deep, possessive, and long, and at its conclusion he touched his lips gingerly as if to make sure they were still there. "Remind me to return that favor later."

"Count on it." She pushed away from him and stood, brushed sand from her legs, and held out her hand. "Time to go, lover. You still have to pack, and then say good-bye to me properly."

He grasped her hand and pulled himself up. "Yes, ma'am, but I should warn you that I can pack in about five minutes, so that good-bye is going to be a lengthy one. --What?" She was looking at him rather quizzically.

"'Lover' doesn't sound quite right. It's too--ordinary, somehow, for what we've been to each other. But I suppose all lovers believe they're the only ones who've ever felt this way."

"Well--how about 'soulmate'?"

Through new tears she smiled that radiant smile he loved so much, and rested her palm against his cheek. "That'll do," she said, her voice rich and full, "and that will never change, no matter what happens to us as lovers."

And his own eyes filled and his heart lifted to hear her affirmation that in the striving for something more they would never lose what they had always had. "No matter what happens." He tipped her face up and kissed her slowly, suggestively. "Now, what do you say you finish up your packing, so we can get started on that good-bye--on the beach, under the stars?"

"You do think of everything--"

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© 2002 by Karen A. Beckwith

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