Disclaimer: All characters belong to Paramount, the order of the words belongs to me.
Rated R
As this follows on from "The End of the Rainbow", it is logical to assume that in my world, C/7 never happened. I'm pink; therefore I'm Spam.
Part 1: Waiting
The wood plane moved back and forth in repetitive rhythm, smoothing and shaving the timber. The fresh smell of resin, of woodshavings and sawdust filled the air, a clean warm scent, that blended with that of his own fresh sweat.
It was humid in the workshop. Chakotay stopped his movements long enough to rub his forearm over his face, the perspiration slicking the hairs on his arms. He paused a moment, eyes closed to the sun that streamed in through the open doorway. He could have closed the door, and turned on the temperature control, but he had spent too long shipboard in artificial environments. It was good to feel Earth's sun again, even though he sweated.
The fine powder drifted from his plane, falling though the shafts of sunlight to coat his boots. It was quiet in the workshop; the only sound was the rasp of his handtools, and an occasional sigh from the mottled hound that lay at his feet, so close that he had to be careful not to tread on her.
He exchanged the plane for a chisel, and bent to add another line to the etched pattern on the wood. The work was simple, and allowed his mind to wander, even as he poured his soul through his hands into the wood. For the first time in more years than he could remember, Chakotay was doing something purely for himself. He had no constraints on his time, no sense of duty, no responsibilities pulling him in directions he didn't want to go. He just had to wait. Wait and hope.
He was good at that, he thought wryly, as he etched a curving line on the smooth timber. His life was defined by other peoples' decisions. The destruction of his home planet by Cardassians had pushed him into the Maquis. Kathryn Janeway's decision to destroy the Caretaker's array had stranded him in the Delta Quadrant and forced him to once again become part of Starfleet. And Kathryn's decision that she couldn't violate protocol and take the relationship he offered had driven him into the position of waiting.
Waiting for Kathryn.
True, in the final two years of their journey, the two of them had come to an unspoken arrangement. One that he had initiated, one that allowed them a limited amount of personal freedom, and the physical expression of their love, even if it could never be spoken of.
Chakotay's hands stilled on the timber. His thoughts channeled him inexorably down a well-worn groove, as inevitable as a leaf being drawn downstream. Ah, those shore leave nights with Kathryn. Long nights of passion, and love expressed in the fullest sense, sweet sticky sex, cries of rapture, of completion, of satiation--but never declarations of love.
It had been five years into their journey when he took the risk. He had known she took occasional shore leaves purely for the purpose of finding a bed partner for the night. He, after all, took similar leaves with the blatant encouragement of the Doctor, who would call him into his office and hand-deliver to him an Interspecies Relationship Certificate. He'd always found that funny; sex reduced to a medical treatment.
But the Doctor had been blunt. "Sexual activity is necessary for humans," he had explained in a lecturing tone of voice. "Celibacy is not a natural condition, humans need closeness, warmth, and yes, physical release." And he had pushed the PADD into Chakotay's hands and told him, with a leer, to run along and have fun.
He knew, very early on, that Kathryn was given the same PADDs. He could tell when she had received one by the slide of her eyes away from his, her uncomfortable stance, as if her skin somehow didn't fit her anymore. But if she wouldn't have a relationship with him, what else could she do?
And then, in the fifth year, the Doctor had inadvertently given him the courage to try something bold. "Your leave and the captain's coincide, Commander," he had said. "Be careful now! You wouldn't want to find yourselves competing for the attentions of the same individual!"
He had let the Doctor's comment pass, but a daring idea wormed its way into his mind; once lodged, the idea ate away at him until he knew that he had to try. He would approach Kathryn on Kalama, pretending to be a stranger. No acknowledgements of what they were to each other on Voyager, they would simply be two lonely people wanting to share a night.
He had taken a terrible risk. Kathryn might have been insulted, or more likely embarrassed to have been caught, and could have rejected him out of hand. Taken to an extreme, their command and their friendship might have been compromised. Chakotay had known all of this and still, he had to try.
That was their first night together. Kathryn had wavered, but she hadn't rejected him. Catching his hand, she had played along with his introduction. The evening and night had been a slow slide to intimacy, a surreal night of love. They had been good together, as he had known they would be. But seldom was the first time perfect with a new partner. There were always the patterns to learn, the pleasure points to map - the pathway to fulfillment was never straight and smooth. With Kathryn though, the route was an easy one. Years of watching her, openly sometimes, covertly more often, had taught him an awareness of her soul, her mind, and her body. It had been simple to string that knowledge together and instinctively slide his hands and mouth along her body, knowing it was what she liked.
It seemed that she had that knowledge too and their bodies had meshed together in love, completing the circle of their relationship.
Or nearly completing, acknowledged Chakotay. For although he had known she would not want any verbal expression of love, he had reneged on his plan to keep silent, and given her a gift.
Traditionally, an infant of his people only received one name. But when the child reached adulthood, a second name was bestowed. In a private ceremony, between father and son, another traditional name was given, yet kept secret, until a man gave it as a present to the woman who would be his mate. It was symbolic, seldom uttered aloud, but it was the giving of a part of him that was considered most sacred. It gave his soul into the safe keeping of his mate.
On their first night together, he had worshipped Kathryn with his body, and offered his soul to her care.
He had felt her lips curve into a smile against his skin, then she had raised up and pressed an unsteady finger to his lips, to silence the words of love he had been fighting not to let spill. In the wash of city lights that suffused their room, her twisted smile, and the liquid shimmer of her eyes were his answer. At that moment, it was all she could offer him.
There had been four more nights since that one. Five times in two years. Five times to express that which could not be spoken of, five nights for joy and sex. Five nights when he was the happiest he had ever known.
In his workshop, Chakotay withdrew his mind from the reveries of that alien hotel room, and from memories of Kathryn. Fully aroused, he gave a wry smile for the inevitability of his next action and opened his pants, putting his hand on his cock. Stiff, shiny tipped, it stood out, achingly hard. He brought himself off with swift, efficient strokes - no sense in prolonging the pleasure, the only way he would find true satisfaction now would be when Kathryn came back to him.
His semen spilled over his hand to land among the woodshavings on the earth floor. This too, was the way of his people. If seed must be spilled, then it should be given to the earth, something he had missed being able to do in space.
The hound looked at him with sorrowful eyes as he tucked himself back into his pants.
"I know, Perdita," he said aloud. "But I'm still waiting for her. She will come."
The dog sighed and rested her nose on her paws. Perdita, he called her, when he called her anything. It meant "lost one". She had appeared one day, in the doorway of his house, starving and skinny. Her enlarged dugs told him she had puppies somewhere, so he had fed her, bread moistened with milk, nourishing food, so that she in turn could nurture her brood. She had eaten his food, and slunk off, with the cautious disbelieving air of one to whom life has delivered too many hard knocks.
Over the weeks that followed, Perdita reappeared more frequently, until one day, she never left. She had remained his companion and confidante since that time. Of her puppies, there was never any sign. Chakotay wondered if they were dead or taken, for surely this loyal animal would not abandon her young. One evening, when his own waiting was becoming unbearable, he cried for Perdita, and her puppies, lost or dead, like the Maquis, like those of Voyager's crew killed in the Delta Quadrant.
Perdita often looked toward the door, as though what she sought was only just out of sight, around the corner, and all she had to do was be patient. He knew how she felt.
The day that Voyager had returned to the Alpha Quadrant, precipitously flying in the underbelly of a Borg cube, he had gone to Kathryn's ready room, closed the door, and sealed it with a Maquis code.
Kathryn had looked up from her desk. Her face was wet with the tears she hadn't let herself shed on the bridge, and her radiant smile was for him alone. Even now, the captain was in control; even now, her celebration was a solitary one.
His heart ached for her, but now, he thought, the waiting was over. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon they would be together. Soon she would accept his name and they could love openly. He hadn't thought of what he was going to say, he just wanted to rock her in his arms, and whisper into her hair that it was nearly their time.
But although her eyes shone with feeling, she put out a hand to ward him off, when he would have approached her.
"We're home, Chakotay," she whispered, and the words hung in the air between them.
He approached her anyway, taking her hand and drawing her up and into his arms. But the hug was that of a friend, a first officer. He sensed she had something to say.
She had. It seemed the Maquis would go free - eventually. It seemed her crew would also not be allowed to simply step onto Earth and into the bosom of their families. First, they had to be poked and prodded, analyzed and scrutinized. And then, their lives would be their own once more.
"The circus starts tomorrow, Chakotay," she had said. "We must be ready. They will pry into a lot that isn't their business."
And he knew then, that the relationship of the captain and first officer would come under the microscope.
So, instead of taking her into his arms fully as he wished, he told her where she would find him. "When it's all over, Kathryn," he had said, "I'll be at my cousin's cabin in Arizona. I think I'll need some time to reconnect to the earth. I'll be there for six months after Starfleet has finished with me. Should you care to join me, you'd be very welcome."
"What will you do after six months?" she had asked. The implication was clear. She had six months to decide the course of their future.
He had shrugged. "Then, I guess, it's up to Starfleet."
Starfleet had kept him occupied for four months, two weeks and a day. Then he, and the rest of the Maquis, had walked free. He spent a day with Tom and B'Elanna, before going to his cousin's cabin, set low down on a bajada in the Sonoran desert, where Arizona meets Mexico.
When he inquired of Starfleet as to Captain Janeway and the rest of the 'fleet crew, he was told that most of them were currently on extended leave, after which they would take up their next commissions. When he inquired specifically after Janeway, the aide told him that he could not divulge her whereabouts.
So the waiting began.
His cousin was understanding of his need for solitude, and left him pretty much alone, apart from a few polite invitations to join him and his wife, Keana, for dinner. Keana normally came up to the cabin once a week to bring his groceries, and then she would bustle around, doing a bit of tidying for him. She managed to bring him news of the outside world, interspersed with chatter about her family.
"Little Kol fell in the creek yesterday," she would say, and relate to him a funny story about her youngest child. And, "Starfleet plans on naming one of its lecture halls, the Voyager Hall, after you."
"Not after me," he would correct automatically. "After the ship." After Kathryn, after all of the crew.
Keana would shrug as she filled his cooling unit with produce from her garden. "Same difference. I heard that they were considering promoting Captain Janeway to admiral." Her dark eyes would regard his shrewdly, searching for some reaction.
"I'm not surprised," he would answer mildly. And the intricate patterns in the wood would suddenly require his total and absolute concentration.
He knew that Keana was seldom fooled, but she normally sensed when he didn't want to be pushed further.
One day she asked him, "How long will you wait for her?" She stood closer to him than normal, her small heart-shaped face peering up into his, dark eyes darting over him.
"Six months."
"And then?" Her concern enfolded him; he had been at the cabin four months and two days, through the long golden days of fall and into winter.
He gave her the answer he had given Kathryn. "Then, I guess, it's up to Starfleet."
"She will come to you. She is not a fool, I think."
Her certainty warmed him, and he gave into the impulse to gather her into his arms, seeking momentary comfort from this serene and loving woman. "Thank you."
She hugged him back, pressing her cheek against his chest, then she moved away, as if she were afraid that the chaste and comforting hug could become something more. With a wave, she left him alone again, and he went back to waiting.
His days drifted by in a surreal lethargy, a haze of sun-warmed days working in his woodshed, and soft velvet nights when he felt his aloneness more keenly. He had always loved winters in this part of the world, when the blistering desert summers faded and muted to halcyon warmth, when the short umber days gave way to clear and silent nights.
Then after a simple supper, Chakotay would pour himself a drink and sit outside on the cabin's verandah, under the traditional latticework of ocotillo stalks. He would swirl his drink, sipping it slowly, and stare out into the indigo night, letting himself absorb the sensations that only total stillness and silence can bring. Perdita would sit by his side, her mottled hide shivering in reaction to the coyote's howl, enticing her out into the night. She never went of course. There was a wisdom about her, one that undoubtedly told her that she would be torn from limb from limb by those same enticing coyotes and left on the bajada for the sun to bleach her bones to pale.
The desert was like the Delta Quadrant. A stark beguiling beauty that hid a myriad of dangers. Things that hurt, that wound, that kill. But also signs of hope, small things that flourished in the harsh world. Chakotay would watch a cactus wren, nesting amid the spines of a fleshy saguaro. And the saguaro in turn growing to maturity protected by the thicket of a palo verde.
Chakotay found his own peace during these nights. He would stroke Perdita's ugly head and tell her about the Vidiians, the Kazon, the Hirogen, and the Borg. He could almost believe she understood for she would occasionally turn her head and swipe his hand with her raspy tongue when he told her about something ugly. And she would whine and press her thin body against his legs if he cried. He cried often - for Kes, for Joe Carey, for the Maquis, for Kathryn. For decisions made that were wrong, and those not made that could have been right. And for the right decisions that were so hard to live with.
Under his hands, his carving took shape. A large piece, one that he estimated would take six months to complete. And at the end of six months, if she had come to him, then it would become a present for his mate. If she chose to stay away, then he would burn it.
Three months became four. He had visitors of course, some prearranged, some unexpected, that would make his heart leap in anticipation for the suspended second when he thought it might be Kathryn. B'Elanna came often. Sometimes by herself, or with Miral, sometimes Tom came too. She was settling into Earth and motherhood with equal grace, but Chakotay hoped that neither would blur the fiercer edges of her personality. Miral didn't need a milky weak mother; she needed a warrior, true to her own dreams. Harry came, shyly holding Tal Celes' hand, a new love born out of Delta Quadrant dreams and Alpha Quadrant reality. And Mike Ayala came in a broken man, nursing the wounds from the loss of his Starfleet lover--the man had gone back to his previous partner.
One glowing day Sarah Carey had come, nervous and unexpected, holding the hands of her two boys. As the boys ran dizzy circuits over the shining desert surface, Sarah and he had talked about Joe, raising his spirit between them, so that it hung incandescent and tangible in the evening light, the dead briefly brought back by the words of the living.
Four months became five.
Keana asked him again, when she brought him food. "What will you do in a month's time?"
And again he gave her the same answer. "I guess it's up to Starfleet."
Once more, his life's decision was not his to make.
Spring brought changes to the desert. The ocotillos sprouted fuzzy green leaves, coating their bare brown sticks. Grass grew in the cracks in the desert pavement; the chollas sprouted brilliant jeweled flowers. The rain fell softly and the air was humid. It was too hot to work in his woodshop, so he moved to the verandah, where he could see the path that led to his door. For she would come soon and he didn't want to miss a moment of her presence.
He had been at the cabin for five months, one week and three days, when he saw a figure on his path. His heart turned over once in his chest and then started pounding double time. Even at that distance, even though the figure was small and indistinct, he knew.
Beside him, Perdita lifted her head and whined softly.
He thought about going inside and having a shower - he was sweaty from the humidity and this day would surely end with lovemaking. He thought about preparing food for her, he thought about hiding his carving, her gift, but in the end he did nothing, simply paced to the end of the verandah, and stood waiting.
The figure drew closer and he could see the sun glinting off the fox red of her hair. His chest hurt with the effort of breathing, the ache was gone, but his swelling heart left little room for breath. He couldn't take his eyes off her, simply watched her walk slowly towards him. The wooden railing dug into his palms, but he scarcely noticed the pain. He could see her clearly now, see the face of his beloved, thoughtful, not smiling, her face arranged in neutral lines.
Kathryn reached the two steps that led up to him, and paused. He hadn't moved, somehow he couldn't take the few steps toward her. This final move had to be hers.
Once again, this was not his decision.
He felt the infinitesimal tremor in the wooden floor as she approached, and he turned to face her.
Her hand rose, hovered in the air between them, then touched his hair. "It's longer," she said, and traced its waving length, where it hung down, below his collar.
"Yes." Somehow he forced the word out, over the slamming in his chest. For he couldn't read her, had no idea what she had come to say. For the first time in over seven years, Chakotay found he couldn't sense what she was thinking, what wheels turned behind those piercing blue eyes.
She took a step forward, another, so that she was close to him, close enough to rest her cheek on his chest. Her arms slid around his waist.
"Chakotay," she whispered, and he felt her breath burn his skin through the thin shirt he wore. "I've missed you so."
He tilted her chin up with gentle fingers, so that he could see her eyes, and finally read the truth in them. She was clear eyed; no tears from his strong Kathryn, there seldom were, but he hoped that what he was seeing was real, and not a projected fantasy born of his own longing.
Stretching up, she fitted her mouth to his, kissing him softly, on the edge of his lips, then sliding over, taking his lips with the assurance he remembered from their nights together.
His control shattered. He gathered her fully into his arms, grinding their bodies tightly together, running his hands fiercely over her shoulders, back, buttocks, taking her mouth with a ferocity born of need and the long, long wait for this moment. Tongues met, mated, dueled, matching their hands that roamed. Chakotay was shaking as he fought to control his reaction, trying desperately to mute his urgency into a state where words could be said first, and maybe, finally, promises made and their lives aligned.
Kathryn seemed to sense his intent, and she eased away from him, softening the kiss, fading it into a gentle drift of lips, a mingling of breath.
"You said I had six months," she said softly.
He nodded. She had come to him, within that time.
"Will you show me inside your home?"
Taking her hand, he led her inside, and they kissed again on the threshold, and he eased her slowly out of the dress she wore, keeping his lips pressed to her throat, subsuming her essence. They kissed again, languorously; Kathryn pressed against the kitchen table, as she unbuttoned his shirt to absorb his heartbeat through her palm. In the bedroom doorway, as he pulled her underwear from her body, he kissed her with love. And finally, on the bed, as they lay naked together, at the moment of their bodies' reunion, they kissed again, and this kiss was one that Chakotay dared to think may mark the completion of their journey toward each other.
© Shayenne, October 2002 Please email me to post/distribute elsewhere.