ONCE AND FUTURE CAPTAIN

Disclaimer: Characters are owned by Paramount and no infringement is intended.

Rated NC-17

Chakotay had never felt a transporter effect quite like the one that took him from Grycus Four. It wasn't as bad as the disorientation he'd felt combating aliens in his dreams, but it was close. For several long moments he felt himself suspended in the beam, a universe of gray tingle closing in on him. He had begun to be afraid and might even have started to panic had it not ended almost as abruptly as it began, returning him to the solid world of Voyager's transporter platform in a dizzying rush of pressure.

The faces that met him were ash-white, even Tuvok's but especially B'Elanna's--she looked terrible, as if she'd aged a couple of years since he beamed down half a day previously. She had been concerned about the strange emissions from the unusual dilithium deposits under the surface of this world, and they had been out of communication with the ship during the entire away mission as a result of the radiation. But the automatic signal boosters Seven had designed for their comm badges began to work right on schedule. After twelve hours, they'd heard the warning beep just before the ship began to transport them.

At first Chakotay didn't worry overmuch about B'Elanna's obvious distress. The transport must have been frightening for those studying the readings on Voyager's end, not only in his subjective experience of it. Glancing at Harry beside him on the platform, the first officer raised an eyebrow.

"Torres to bridge," B'Elanna whispered. "Captain, you had better come to the transporter room."

"Is there a problem?" Janeway's voice over the comm sounded different as well. Tired.

"I think I...solved an old mystery."

Janeway arrived very quickly. Chakotay realized afterwards that something in the tone of B'Elanna's voice must have alerted her and she must have dropped everything and literally run to the transporter room. He and Harry were still frozen in position on the transporter pad. The twisted look on B'Elanna's face, her mouth working slightly as if she was fighting to remain in control of herself, was alerting him to the fact that something was very definitely wrong.

As the seconds ticked by he took an internal inventory of himself. He looked at his hands; maybe the radiation on Grycus Four had exacted some horrible toll on him. He thought briefly of finding Janeway and Paris mutated into lizards all those years ago - but his hands appeared normal. There was no hideous scaling or deformity of his body that he could see.

And then Janeway entered - rushed in really - not her normal steady, clipped gate that conveyed purpose and resolution, but no panic. She gasped. Chakotay saw her eyes widen, and her hand flew to her mouth, as if she could physically restrain her response. She swayed slightly and he wondered if she was going to faint. His captain, the strongest women he knew. Her knees buckled slightly and he moved off the transporter pad towards her, intending to catch her if she fell. Always there to catch her if she should fall.

"Chakotay..." Her voice was rusty, as if she hadn't used it for a long time. She swayed again and then steadied herself, drawing the mantle of command back around her shoulders, but not before he had caught the wash of emotions that played over her face. Relief. The lifting of pain. Joy. And something he didn't want to define, even to himself, for if he did he would never be able to pretend he hadn't seen it.

She straightened. "Harry..." Her eyes shifted past him to Harry, who was still frozen on the transporter pad, watching the unfolding of reaction in the room.

Janeway's words disturbed the strange hung tension in the room, and the tableau fell apart like a house of cards. B'Elanna rushed towards him, flung herself in his arms. Even as his arms raised automatically to enclose her, the unsettled feeling in his stomach that had started with the strange transport, grew and coalesced. Something was very definitely very wrong.

B'Elanna released him and moved to hug Harry. His eyes met Janeway's across the room. Something was not right there either. Janeway seemed smaller, skinnier. Diminished somehow, as if some vital spark had been sucked out of her, leaving her drained and tired. The deeply etched lines on her face made her look prematurely aged.

"Commander, Ensign Kim," she said. "Have the Doctor check over you both, then report to my ready room. We need to talk."

Janeway must have warned the Doctor to keep his mouth shut, Chakotay realized. The normally garrulous hologram was as economical with his words as Tuvok. Somehow he managed to pronounce them fit without revealing the reason for concern.

Janeway was waiting for them inside the ready room, and waved for them to take a seat. Chakotay noticed she was still agitated, preferring to stand, or pace, the ever-present mug of coffee in her hand.

"There's no easy way to say this," she said. "So I'll just tell you. A while ago Voyager encountered a spatial anomaly. It didn't appear to pose a danger to the ship, but we kept our distance from it anyway. We had an away team down on the surface of the nearby planet and we needed to recover them before we went to investigate. Radiation on the planet's surface prevented us from recalling them early, so we waited. But a rift opened up on the port bow, too close for us to escape the pull. Voyager was sucked through. However, sensors detected no change, the rift appeared to go nowhere. We emerged in the exact same place that we had left. B'Elanna was concerned though, and Seven was talking about strange readings on the sensors, indications that the rift was temporal in nature. We tried to recall the away team, but the radiation prevented us from locking onto their signs. Or so we thought. We had no option but to wait for Seven's automatic signal boosters to kick in on schedule." She paused and took a gulp of the coffee.

Chakotay's feeling of unreality solidified. He was sure he knew what Janeway would say. He took a quick glance at Harry to see how the young ensign was handling this, and saw that Harry looked distinctly queasy. There was only one conclusion to be drawn.

"How long?" he asked. "How long have we been gone?"

"Nearly two years."

Two years. Harry looked worse then queasy now, he looked as if he were going to be physically ill. His complexion was as waxen as the corpses that the crew had obviously presumed them to be. Janeway noticed and ordered a glass of water from the replicator. "Here," she said, thrusting the glass at Harry. "Drink this."

Harry drained the glass and some of his color returned.

Janeway crossed to stand in front of the viewport. "When it was time to recall you, there was nothing. You were just gone." She paused, fighting for some sort of composure, and he realized that he and Harry were not the only ones struggling to keep control. "We searched," she said. "Seven ran every sort of scan that she could devise, but you both had vanished without trace. Eventually, we had to leave."

He longed to ask her how long they had remained in orbit, searching, but a part of him didn't want to know the answer.

"We declared you officially lost," she said. "We left you behind. We thought you were dead."

He absorbed her words and thought back to when he had left Voyager, eight hours and two years ago. He had received her briefing in the ready room, the one they stood in now. Essentially the room was unchanged from that earlier time; the normal clutter of PADDs still littered the desk, the ever-present mug of coffee. A Vulcan meditation candle stood on one corner of the desk and a small rosebush grew profusely in a pot; neither item had been there when he left the ship. Peace roses, he noted, and wondered if that was her memorial to him. A first officer lost in the line of duty.

"Grycus Four... but we only beamed down this morning," he said and fell silent. The drumbeat of regret echoed in his chest. Two years. Two years had passed. He could see similar thoughts flicker over Harry's expressive face. Harry had been heavily involved with one of the Delaney sisters. He must be in agony, wondering if, Jenny, he thought it was, still missed him. He rather thought not. Time and the Delaney sisters march on and wait for no man.

"This morning," Janeway spoke up finally, "we passed a similar anomaly to the one two years ago. Seven wanted to investigate, so we held position a safe distance away. A rift opened and the two of you appeared shortly afterwards."

He asked her the stardate, not because he doubted her story, but because he was still desperately sorting through the fragments of the tale in his mind, trying to make sense, trying to tie the threads together into a whole.

Her answer only confirmed what she had already said; they were two years into their future. Two years had gone by; the ship had moved on without him and she had moved on without him as well. He wondered who had taken his place by her side. Tuvok, he supposed and the thought both comforted and hurt him. Comforted him that she had a friend, someone she could trust, and stabbed that it wasn't him.

And so much time wasted in his slow and steady insinuation of himself into her life. His master plan, although he hesitated to call it that. He had accepted long ago that he loved her, and when they were stranded together on New Earth he had thought that she might be beginning to care for him. But even the closeness they generated there had, at times, a forced gaiety about it. Two abandoned children playing Hansel and Gretel in the woods. They grew close, it was true, and once he had been a hairsbreadth from kissing her, from finding out, from knowing. But she had pulled away and his hands had dropped from her hair, her shoulders, to hang loosely again by his sides.

She was talking, he realized, something about quarters and their possessions. Harry left, swaying slightly into the bulkhead as he did, as if his disorientation in time had affected his place in space as well. Chakotay's gaze returned to the woman in front of him, weary-looking and strangely hesitant. He realized she had only a tenuous thread of her control.

"So I have..." she hesitated as she realized that she now had his full attention. "I kept some of your things in my quarters. You might like them back."

He nodded; he didn't really care about material items, he never had, but he wanted to get out of the ready room. He wanted to curl up on a bunk somewhere and absorb the strange shifting of time, come to grips with what had happened to him, and think about the implications behind what she wasn't saying.

Janeway had kept his things in her own drawers, not in the outer part of her quarters where she worked. He felt a bit strange when she invited him in -- he had never been in her bedroom before, had no basis of comparison for how it looked now as opposed to a few years ago. It was spare, even more so than her ready room, except for a few objects like the phonograph that he remembered from when they were stranded together.

There was a picture in a silver frame on her nightstand. He remembered the frame - for months she'd kept it in her ready room, and then at some point she had put it away. It made him sad to see that she'd gone back to clinging to memories of Mark. He'd hoped that she would let herself be happy in the Delta Quadrant - that she would go on with her life, stop living in memories. It was likely that her fiance thought her dead and had moved on with his life; surely she could do the same. Chakotay remembered the sparkling eyes of the woman he'd shared a home with briefly...he tried to look at her now, pale and uncertain, as she collected his things from a drawer, but the bed was blocking his view. He took a few steps closer to her, and as he moved, the picture on the nightstand came into clear view.

It wasn't Mark's photo in the frame. It was himself, out of uniform, smiling buoyantly, surrounded by flowers--the night of Neelix's luau, he realized, when Ensign Hickman had gone around with a holocam taking silly pictures of them all dressed up. He had tried to get out of having his picture taken, but one of the holographic women had come up to him and put another circle of flowers around his neck, and Kathryn had said, "Don't want to be seen getting leied?" He'd grinned irrepressibly at her, and Hickman had taken the picture before he realized it. How long had Kathryn had it on her nightstand? Since he'd disappeared, since some time afterwards? Or had she had it there before? He picked up the photo, tears starting in his eyes. So much time wasted...

He heard Kathryn start towards him, then stop when she saw what he was holding. Unable to meet her eyes, he placed it back on the nightstand and stared out the viewport. He could see her reflection approaching his, the effort to control her expression.

"I, uh, if you need something to wear," she began awkwardly, her voice shaking. "Most of your clothes were recycled, but I...I saved some of your..."

She didn't finish because they were both crying, as he turned into her arms and they finally clung to one another. She was surprisingly unrestrained in grief, fingernails raking his skin through his uniform. He was afraid he was hurting her, too, holding so tight, kissing her wet cheek. They sank to the floor and rocked together until his knees were raw from pressing into the floor and his back ached, and the front of his uniform was soaked through from her tears. He would have stayed on the floor with her anyway for as long as necessary, but she shifted and whispered, "Come lie down with me."

At first the request shocked him, although there was nothing suggestive in her tone, to his relief; his head ached, as did most of his muscles, and he felt thoroughly drained from the away mission and the events of the past few hours. He desperately wanted to sleep near her, to wake with her in this miraculous new world.

Kathryn opened another drawer and pulled out some clothing he recognized. "Here," she said without meeting his eyes. "I kept them. They smelled like you." He took the material from her, lifted it to his face. It smelled like her. She took one of the shirts back from him and retreated into the bathroom. When she came out, she was wearing it.

By the time he had finished washing, the captain was already in bed, on her back with one arm above her head, covers pulled up to her neck. At his approach she turned to the side, moving to make room for him beside her. Sitting, he pulled the blanket over his legs and slid in, rolling her a little, his chest pressed to her back. The bed was too small for them to lie in any position that did not involve full body contact. She pulled his arm around her waist, her hand holding his against her. Head beside hers on the pillow, her hair tickling his nose and chin. A blur as she turned, a quick brush of her lips across his. She half-smiled, ordered the lights out.

For a few minutes he lay awake, absorbing the sound of her breathing in the dark. Slowly the ache in his head faded, and he slept. When he woke, surrounded by the sweet scent of Kathryn Janeway in a dark room, he was disoriented until he remembered. A moment in the transporter, two years of his life erased. That jolted him a little, making her stir, her hips shifting softly against his.

"You're still here," she whispered.

"Did you want me to leave?"

"No."

He felt her roll over, put one of her hands on his shoulder, her knee on his thigh. When he kissed her, she slid her leg further around him so that they were pressed together. The transition from joy to desire was like liquid, swelling through him until the fullness ached in his lower body. He hadn't intended to try to make love to her, not like this, not so soon, not until they got to know each other again, but his body had other ideas and so did hers. He could feel the heat and growing moisture where she pressed up against him, rocking in an increasingly urgent rhythm. For a few minutes they went through the motions with their nightclothes on, then a communicator chirped.

"Tuvok to Janeway."

"This is Janeway." Her voice was low and hoarse. "Captain, the anomaly appears to have opened another rift."

"Is the ship in danger?"

"Unknown, but unlikely. We have maintained the distance that Lieutenant Torres feels is more than adequate to protect us from its temporal effects. If we maintain our current orbit, we will be within full sensor range of the rift in approximately five minutes."

"Scan it when we come into range. I'll be there in a few minutes. Janeway out." She looked at Chakotay, tightened her legs around him and smiled.

"Later?" he asked regretfully.

"No. Right now." He stared at her. "There might never be a 'later,' Chakotay."

"What about...the bridge..." he stammered.

"It will still be there in five minutes." When he still didn't move, she murmured, "I don't want to rush you if it's not what you want - " And slipped her hand under his shirt. That was all it took to stop him from thinking.

The next minutes went by so fast that later he could not recall the details, which he lamented, afraid they couldn't have been very memorable for her. But he was too happy to regret anything, certainly not becoming her lover in the haste of that morning, clothes shoved aside and bodies smashed together, no more foreplay which was a relief to him because he doubted he would have been able to wait for her anyway. She didn't care--she wanted him to come inside her, and when she told him that, he obeyed her with what would have been embarrassing speed had she not been urging him on, hissing "Yesssssss," in his ear, her fingernails tearing at his back. Then she burst into tears, so his focus switched from how much he wanted her to how much he loved her, and he told her so while she cried. Both of them freed from similar prison sentences, even though he had lived with her beside him the past two years, with her just as unreachable to him as he had been to her. He ended up in the bathroom with her, stroking a washcloth over her face when Tuvok called again.

"Captain, we have analyzed the initial data from the rift. There appears to be a duplicate Voyager within the gravity well. However, sensor readings are erratic. I do not believe we will be able to tractor it out through the temporal distortions."

Another Voyager. His heart turned over in his chest as the final pieces came together. He looked at Kathryn, saw her face change from lover to captain.

"The rift. It split the ship." She made the jump in comprehension instantly. "We need to discover which rift caused the split." He could almost see her mind racing. Was it the first rift, those two years ago, or the one this morning?

She was pulling her uniform on, all business and efficiency again. He stood and watched her, even though he knew he had to follow suit and stand by her side on the bridge. But he regretted the loss of his lover to the red and black. Nothing resolved between them; he didn't really know how she felt.

She must have sensed his gaze, because she paused, her uniform still unbuttoned, the edge of the white Starfleet bra and creamy skin, still flushed from their loving underneath the red and black. "Chakotay," she whispered. "We're not going back now." And she kissed him, swiftly, hotly.

He had his reassurance. He turned to dress, as quickly as she, and hurried after her, past the bed rumpled and redolent with their lovemaking, out into the corridor and up to the bridge.

"Report, Tuvok." She snapped out the command when she was barely out of the turbolift.

"Sensors indicate that a ship is actually there. There is a temporal distortion that as far as we can tell indicates that either they are in a gravity well, or simply that we are looking back through time to ourselves."

Chakotay crossed to sit in his command chair. On the viewscreen, the familiar sleek lines of the ship were visible within the rift. He stared at the ship, wondering if he was on board.

"Astrometrics to the bridge." Seven's cool tones cut across the silence of the bridge.

"Go ahead."

"Captain, sensors indicate that that the other Voyager is in fact ourselves, one year and eleven months into the past."

Chakotay caught Janeway's eye for a moment, before shrugging slightly. He wasn't one to jump to conclusions, and although the facts seemed to be staring him in the face, he preferred to wait.

"Harry, can we get a message to them through the rift?" Janeway started to pace the deck in front of the command chairs. Chakotay was torn between watching the shift of lean muscles as they bunched the black uniform and watching Voyager, themselves, he reminded himself, on the viewscreen. "Give me a little time and I think we will be able to send a subspace message." Harry lifted his eyes from the console. He looked nervous, and Chakotay remembered that he had as much cause to want to contact this earlier Voyager as he did. That was their ship, not the one they currently occupied. This Voyager had pronounced them dead and moved on with their lives.

"Work on it, Harry. We need to let Voyager know we are here, so that she will hold position in front of the rift as we do."

She tapped her comm badge. "Janeway to Seven. Is that rift stable, or is it likely to collapse?"

"It appears stable, Captain. There is some fluctuation around the edges, but it is in no danger of imminent collapse."

"Keep an eye on it. Notify me immediately if it starts to change."

"Acknowledged, Captain."

"Commander, we need to talk. My ready room. Tuvok, you have the bridge."

He followed her into the ready room, knowing she was right, they needed to talk, but irrationally he found he didn't want to hear it.

The door closed behind him and she turned and was in his arms. Her arms slid around his waist, her face pressed to the front of the uniform. He dropped his face to the top of her head, letting her scent surround him. They stood together for a minute more, gathering the stolen time, time that strictly belonged to other matters. He wrapped the moment in silken skeins and placed it safely in his memory.

"It's your ship, you know." Her voice was muffled by his chest and realizing it, she moved away from him. Once behind her desk, she became the captain once more, not merely Kathryn, his lover.

"I know." He tried to stop his face showing any emotion.

"If we can get sensors working properly, or a message channel established, I'm willing to bet that they are right now working hard at locating their missing crewmen."

He nodded; it was likely, but their efforts would be concentrated on Grycus Four.

"The chances are that they have also seen us, much as we see them. Two years ago our technology wasn't far behind what it is today, but we have the better chance of getting coherent sensor readings. Chakotay, I..." She paused and the hesitancy in her voice alerted him as much as her words. "Chakotay, I have to try and send you back. You and Harry."

He didn't answer, knowing she was right, but he was unwilling to accept her words just yet. In the end, he just nodded again; an easy way out, he hadn't really agreed, had he? The implicit agreement he offered her seemed less binding than words.

She searched his face for a moment, and he realized that his passive acceptance hadn't fooled her, but he had more important things on his mind. In spite of their tumultuous loving, only an hour ago, he wanted reassurance.

She let him enclose her in his arms and raised her face for his kiss. He pushed her back against her desk, making sure that the imprint of his body was on her, just like the stamp of his lips was on her mouth. And just like his soul touched hers, deep down where it mattered.

She allowed the kiss for long moments before pushing him gently away. "Later, Chakotay. Later."

The promise was in her words, so he nodded, a more affirmative nod this time, and left for the bridge.

She stayed in her ready room for most of the shift, emerging only when Harry notified her that right now he couldn't get a subspace message through, but that it was possible to send a message buoy to Voyager.

"This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager," she said. "This is a message for Captain Janeway." Succinctly she explained the time shift. "Commander Chakotay and Ensign Kim transported onto my ship yesterday. I believe they have come across from yours. In my time line they disappeared nearly two years ago after transporting down to Grycus Four. I'm asking you to please hold your position by the rift until we can figure out a way to return them to you."

Chakotay watched the buoy until it disappeared from the screens.

When his shift ended, she turned to him. "Commander, there are a few things we need to discuss. Would you mind accompanying me? We can talk over dinner."

"Certainly, Captain." The formal words conveyed none of his simple pleasure. There was nothing to discuss that hadn't already been said. She just wanted to be with him.

They walked to her quarters, side by side. He was too close to her, the proper command distance didn't allow for their arms to rock together as they walked, didn't mean that their hips would bump with each rolling stride, but neither of them wanted to move further away. Inside her quarters, she turned to him and pressed herself against him. The captain's cloak slipped and it was just Kathryn who raised her mouth to him. He wove his hands through her hair, freeing it from the clasp, and his fingers slipped up to the nape of her neck, massaging in small soothing circles.

He knew he had to ask her questions, not command decisions, those he was more fatalistic about, but Kathryn-and-Chakotay questions and affirmations. But right now, he just wanted to seize his opportunity with both hands, and lay her down on the bunk and cover her body with his.

She didn't stop him; her hands urged him on, running firmly over his clothing with a captain's assurance. She let him pull her uniform away, and shuffle her backwards, past the table where they had their working dinners, past the couch, around her desk towards her sleeping quarters. He banged his leg on her desk, and she took the opportunity to drop to her knees in front of him, pulling his pants down as she did, and rubbing his tingling thigh with gentle hands.

He pushed himself into her so that she buried her face in his groin, pulling down his briefs and pressing her face to the angle of hip and thigh. She sucked lightly on his leg, then turned and took him in her mouth. His knees buckled and he thought that he would come, there in her mouth, there in her living area, with his hands in her hair. She must have sensed his tenuous control as she moved away. Rising to her feet, she took his hand and started to lead him into the bedroom. He stumbled, his pants were still bunched around his boots, and she paused, waiting for him to kick them away.

He was ready for her, and could have thrust himself into her body in an instant, but he wanted to take it slower this time. He wanted a confirmation of love, not just a frenzied coupling. He knew that this Kathryn cared for him - he'd seen it in the tears and relief of the other day, but he wanted the time to let her body tell him.

He lowered himself to the bed and sat, leaning back on his hands as he watched her. She shed her remaining clothes quickly, and he grasped her hand, pulling her to him when she hesitated. She straddled him, pressing down where they touched. Chakotay gasped at the sensation of moist heat, a damp tangle of curls where they met. His hand touched her cheek, then skated down over a breast, brushing her nipple, pink and unfurling, like the buds of the peace rose on her ready room desk. His hand drew down over her belly to explore her folds where she straddled him.

She gasped at the pressure and moved to touch him. He felt her hands questing over his chest and move to his mouth. Lightly she explored his lips with her fingers, sliding the tips inside. He sucked on her fingertips and arched himself up, so that he slid through the slickness as she pressed lightly down on him.

"Wait," she said, her voice husky. "I have to tell you..."

And he knew of course, knew the words she had to spill, and knew that it changed everything and nothing but he wanted to hear her say them, as somehow he thought it meant that after they were spoken then there was no going back.

"I love you," she said, and shifted slightly so that he slid into her.

This time was slow. Slow enough to remember, thought Chakotay, as he pushed, into heat, into the slickness, into the impossible paradox of pressure and softness. She undulated over him, slowly. He let her set the pace, let her gasps guide his fingers, let her fingers slide over him too, trying to hold back, to let her get there first. And just when he thought that it was all too much, too much feeling, too much sensation, too much emotion, she threw her head back and shrieked. Loudly, in a jagged timbre of sound, that matched the clenching spasms of her internal muscles. And he added his voice to hers as the sight of her pushed him over the edge. Too fast, he thought, still too fast, but even as he came, deep inside her, he knew that he could never get enough, and that if time froze at this instant, leaving the two of them joined in eternity, it would still not be slow enough.

Later, she held him and spoke of reasons and whys and wherefores. "It was the message," she said. "You left me a letter, to read only if you were lost."

He remembered. Remembered making the message in despair one night. When she had pushed him away yet again. He had needed to speak words of love to her, to make it real for himself as much as her, and as she would not listen he had spoken to the console instead. A short message, simple, but in it he had said that he loved her, and always would and that he hoped she would be happy and think of him sometimes. He had often thought about deleting it, but in the end the half decision to spare her the knowledge had gone unresolved and the message had remained.

He stayed with her all night and later, he remembered that night as one remembers the shifting complexity of a dream. Lovemaking, both fierce and tender, words spoken freely and most of all, the scent and the touch and the taste of her. It seemed she would deny him nothing; the words he sought were freely given, she offered her body again and again in the face of his unquenchable need and she burrowed into his side when finally they slept.

He awoke and his first thought was that he was still here. He hadn't been snatched back to his real world with alarming alacrity. A comm badge was chirping, and he reached for it, unused to being roused from sleep by any badge that wasn't his own. She beat him to it.

"This is Janeway." Her voice was heavy with sleep, her limbs still entangled with his.

She listened to Tuvok's request for a moment. "I'll be there in a few minutes. Janeway out."

He pressed himself close to her for one minute longer, kissing her with sleep-slack lips. She returned the kiss, moving her hips subtly towards him, dragging her thigh over his.

"I have to go." Regretfully spoken.

"I know." A subtle push of his hips into her, letting her know what she was missing.

"I'll see you later." The implicit promise of more lovemaking, 'later'.

She was gone, the sonic shower taking away the scent of their night, the uniform taking away his lover.

He entered the mess hall for breakfast and looked around. Essentially the gaggles of crewmen were the same. He spied Harry, eating alone at a corner table and went over. He was eager to talk to Harry, and thought that the younger man might want to talk about the situation they found themselves in.

"May I join you?"

Harry looked up, his normally open face inscrutable. "Of course, Commander."

"I was hoping to talk to you as just 'Chakotay', Harry. I was wondering how things were going for you."

"Well, my two best friends have got so involved with each other that they don't have time for me. Jenny is now seeing Mike Ayala - and has been since a month after we disappeared. Ensign Lopez who has been working Ops seems to be making a better job of it than I ever did, and Neelix's cooking seems to have got worse, not better. Anything else you want to know?" Harry's flash of bitterness was unlike him.

Chakotay sighed inwardly. He had thought that Harry would be taking this hard and he was not wrong. Harry had made a slower transition to Delta Quadrant life than most. His stability and focus had finally switched from Earth and his family and fiancée, to the ship and his friends and relationships here. Having them suddenly upended was sure to rip the carpet from underneath his feet.

"And Voyager has had a hard two years," Harry continued. "Look around the mess hall. You won't see Ken Dalby anywhere. He was killed on an away mission six months ago when some alien took a dislike to his uniform. And Cilla Cartwright was killed during battle when the hull breached on deck eleven."

Chakotay took a mouthful of his tea to avoid answering immediately. He tamped down his own simmering joy at being here, in this time, in the face of Harry's obvious discomfort.

"The Captain is trying to send us back." He offered the words to Harry even as he denied their meaning to himself.

"I know." Harry looked up before Chakotay could arrange his face into the appropriate expression. "I thought you might not want to go."

"What I want is irrelevant," Chakotay replied. "We're contaminating the timeline by being here."

"Are we?" Harry's turn to school his features into neutrality. "They thought we were dead. Missing. Unrecoverable. Who's to say this isn't the timeline meant for us?"

Funny how each of them was arguing for the outcome that they didn't want. Part of him wanted to seize Harry's argument with both hands and run to the captain with it. "Look, Kathryn," he wanted to shout. "We were meant to be here like this." But in his heart of hearts he didn't believe it to be true.

His comm badge chirped saving him from answering. "Janeway to Chakotay."

"Chakotay here, Captain."

"Report to the bridge. We have received a message buoy back from the other Voyager."

The message played out to its conclusion and Janeway raised her eyebrow at him. "She's right, you know. I have to send you back if I can. You belong on that Voyager, not this one."

"I know." He was quiet, hearing in memory the steady tones of the other Janeway, the one who was not his beloved. Or perhaps she was, but not now -- or no longer? The timeline confused his tenses. He glanced at his once and future captain.

She stepped up close to him, searching his face, trying to read him. He didn't try to hide his conflict; stay with her and their new life, or do the right thing and return to love long denied and suppressed, with the Kathryn who wouldn't let herself be with him?

She touched his face gently. "We don't know how to send you back yet, Chakotay. Don't start living in that time before it's happened."

He captured her fingers and held them against his cheek. "I know." But his expression was bleak, and he was already counting the hours.

Harry managed to establish subspace communications on the third day. Chakotay watched silently as the two Janeways discussed ways of transporting himself and Harry through the rift. He listened with half an ear as the two Sevens methodically discussed the stability and the slowly changing nature of the rift. He half heard the two B'Elannas arguing about augmenting the transporter beam. That fiery debate reached him through his fog of denial; B'Elanna even argued with herself, what chance did anyone else have of avoiding her sharp tongue?

And then suddenly, everyone was agreeing that tomorrow morning was the best time to make the transfer.

"I'm not leaving." He didn't know when his own desires had pushed to the forefront, shoving aside duty and correctness and the other Janeway's order, but once he had accepted that he could change things, then the decision to stay was automatic.

Her eyes found his quickly, looking at his reflection through the mirror she was standing before. Her hand paused in the air; she'd been brushing her hair, a towel wrapped around her body, one end tucked between the cleavage of her breasts, leaving virtually nothing to the imagination, and each time she raised her arm the towel would ride a bit up her leg, revealing just a hint of the curve of her upper thigh.

But it was not the eroticism of the moment that made him say what he said. It was the intimacy, the sheer joy he experienced as he watched her from the doorway of the bathroom. There she was, just brushing her hair. Doing her normal routine. Out of uniform. Away from everything that had separated them for so long. How could he relinquish this? How could he ever give her up?

"Oh?" She wasn't angry, or confrontational, as he'd expected. Probably just gathering more data, formulating her argument. She didn't know that there was no argument he'd ever listen to. It was done. The decision was made.

"There's nothing you can say to me that will change my mind. Give me a direct order. Go ahead. Throw me in the brig. Court martial. I don't care, Kathryn. Do you see that? I don't care."

He was behind her now, not touching, but he could sense the heat of her body, could almost feel the dampness of her skin. Her expression had not changed, and they stood for a long time just looking at each other through the mirror. Finally she dropped her eyes, and set down the hairbrush, exhaling a long, shuddering sigh before she surprised him by leaning back against him, taking his hands and wrapping them around her waist.

"Okay," she said, a whisper, but an unmistakable smile formed on her lips. He choked out a gasp of surprise and delight, moving his hands up her body and cupping her breasts. She inhaled harshly and let her head fall back on his shoulder as he peeled away the towel, running his palms over her nipples which hardened instantly.

"Look," he whispered hotly in her ear, and she opened her eyes a fraction, groaning at the reflection of the two of them, his huge, dark hands covering her nearly white breasts. He echoed a groan in response, moving his right hand down her body, over the bumpy ridges of her starkly protruding ribs, pressing between her legs, parting the folds and teasing the rigid bundle of nerves. She gasped and spread her legs wide apart, thrusting hard against his fingers. When he moved his left hand down her back, pressing her against his probing hand, she let out a sharp cry, her arms shooting out from her body and her hands slamming against the mirror in front of her. Undulating her body, bent over now but pushing back against him, moaning as he moved his hand down her back and lower, pressing two fingers inside her. Hot, wet, and she was shuddering instantly, arching her neck back as she still watched herself, watched him.

He concentrated on the image before him, seeing her in his arms, seeing himself moan into her hair as she panted, open-mouthed, her face nearly resting against the mirror, so completely passionate and beautiful - combined with who she really was, who he really was, where and when they really were, it made the whole thing tragically surreal. As she came with a wail, her knees gave out and they sank to the ground, where he rolled her beneath him and she tore open the front of his trousers, pulling him to her. He was inside her quickly, again, feeling still as if he were racing against time, insane, he had time now, he was staying, but still he surged into her as she dug her nails into his buttocks, urging him on with incoherent murmurs, and he shouted his release into her neck, collapsing against her.

Then he began to weep, really weep; nothing like this had ever affected him so, he was sure he was going mad. She hushed him softly, brushing her fingers through his hair and keeping her limbs firmly locked around him.

"Oh, god," he grated, unable to breathe, unable to let go of her despite the fact that he was probably too heavy, probably hurting her. She didn't seem to care. "I don't want to go."

"I know," she whispered, kissing his forehead. "I don't want you to." He pushed himself up and looked at her, tears raining from his eyes onto her face. "But she wants you to. She needs you to."

"You won't exist. You'll be gone - this whole universe."

The tears welled up in her eyes now. "You'll just be doing what I've been slowly doing to myself since you left, Chakotay. Do you have any idea how many times... how often I've thought about dying?"

"No -" he stopped her with a cry, gathered her up to his chest, rolling over and clutching her to him, not wanting to hear this. He always knew that regret could kill a person; he'd just never seen it so clearly, never felt it so profoundly.

She propped herself up on her elbow, stroking his face lovingly, such a contrast to the horrors she must have felt. "I don't wish I had died. I don't want to - I'd never... do that. But I think about it, every day now. What it feels like. And every morning I wake up, and I'm surprised, because I think that one day I just won't wake up. I'll just slip away. And yet, here I am, every day. Just trying to get through it."

She took a deep breath, and moved away from him. "It's a horrible way to live. I don't want to live that way anymore."

"You don't have to -"

"No, I won't ever have to, Chakotay. I won't even have to remember it, or remember me like this. Because it won't have ever happened."

So sad, he thought. So gutwrenching to think that the best moments of his life would never have happened. Did that make them as unreal as a dream? Dreams are the only true reality at the time of dreaming. Would this experience feel that surreal to him later? Just another of his constant fantasies of Kathryn Janeway. He could never tell her, he realized. She could never know as they discussed command, the crew, ship's business, that he was looking at her with the knowledge of a lover. He couldn't ever tell her that he knew she cried deep in the back of her throat as she came and that she liked it when he took her hard and furiously. And he choked anew, as he realized that he was already thinking of being back; so much for his resolution of a few moments ago.

She was still talking. "I want you to tell her."

Fatalistically he thought that she always could read his mind.

"Tell her?" he said stupidly. "I've tried to tell her how I feel. She never listened."

Fresh tears started in her eyes. "No, I never listened, did I?" She said the words sadly. "Not until it was too late."

He tried one final time. "I won't go. I won't let this be wiped from the timeline."

She just looked at him, and he knew that she was as set in her decision as he had thought he was. Even now he could deny her nothing. "And what about Harry?" she said.

"He could go. I could stay," he began, but she was already shaking her head.

"And Harry goes back alone, and that reverts the timeline and then you and I still won't exist in this time. "Janeway will still think you're lost. Do you want that for her? Do you want her to suffer as I did?"

He reached for her, knowing that she was right. Ultimately he could make all the decisions he liked, but it wouldn't change anything, as Harry would return. Poor misplaced Harry, so lost in this time, would return and his report and his actions would change the timeline. Chakotay might still be missing then, but that wouldn't necessarily shape the 'now' that they occupied, here, now, lying on the floor in her quarters.

He reached for her again, needing the balm of her touch to tell him that there was indeed a 'now' at all.

She slid into his arms. "Do you understand now?" she whispered. "Do you see that it can't be any other way?"

He nodded, slowly. And this time his nod was his definite answer. He looked at her, committing her to memory, seeing her this way, flushed and sweaty after lovemaking. He pinched her nipple gently, absorbing the sight of his skin, tawny golden against hers, so white.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't want it either."

And just when he thought that they had no more tears left to shed, they were in each other's arms again, tears wetting the sides of necks, even as their hands stroked and moved once more. One final time. One last goodbye.

He stood on the transporter platform with Harry. There was nothing more to say. He locked eyes with her as the beam took them away. '"Don't forget," she had mouthed, "tell her." And then finally, "I love you."

His Janeway met them in the transporter room. Although Chakotay couldn't think of her as 'his' Janeway anymore, his Kathryn was back on her ship, and even now was fading from existence as that timeline shifted. He wondered if she would dissipate as in the beam of the transporter, or was she just not there any more. Was there a consciousness to fade and die?

"We have them." Ayala was working the transporter beam, and Chakotay looked across at Harry. Mike Ayala had been the person to replace Harry in Jenny's affections. Harry's face was set, and Chakotay wondered if Harry would ever be able to look at Jenny in quite the same way any more. Just as he would be unable to look at Kathryn.

Janeway stepped towards the pad. He swallowed and looked for emotion in her face, but it was only the friendly, professional face that he saw everyday. Maybe a flash of something deeply buried, but when she put her hand on his arm it was steady.

"Good to have you back, Commander. You too, Ensign. Do you need any time for anything, food, a change of clothes, or are you able to debrief now?"

The enormity of what he had lost was seeping into him with every one of her professional words. He had to swallow hard, twice, before he was able to answer her. '"Now is fine with me, Captain. Harry? What about you?"

Harry just nodded; he was looking at Mike Ayala at the transporter controls. Chakotay could only guess at his thoughts.

"My ready room then." Janeway nodded once, all red and black business, and led the way out of the transporter room, seeming not to notice that both of them trailed behind.

The ready room doors swished shut and she motioned them to a seat. "I'll read your reports later," she began, "but I am obliged to remind you about the Temporal Prime Directive. However, off the record, Voyager needs all the help she can get, so if there is anything you can tell me about areas of space we are better off avoiding, for example, then that sort of non-specific information could be beneficial."

Harry nodded. "We weren't there for too long, Captain," he said. "The Commander might have more information though, he spent more time with your counterpart than I did."

Chakotay's face closed over in remembered pain, even though he knew that Harry was referring to time spent in a professional sense.

"Commander," she was talking to him. "Are you all right?" She was standing too close, her hand on his shoulder.

"Yes," he said, harsher than he intended. "I'm fine."

"Good." She regarded him a moment longer, then started talking about reports, the integrity of the time line and specifics about Voyager and the last few days.

"Astrometrics to Captain Janeway." Her comm badge interrupted her mid sentence.

"Go ahead, Seven."

"The other Voyager is no longer on the far side of the rift."

"Thank you, Seven." She closed the link. "You may go, Harry. Take the remainder of the day off to recover."

"Thank you, Captain."

Harry turned to go. Chakotay got up to follow him, but was stopped by Janeway's voice. "One moment more, if you don't mind, Commander."

His nerves, already stretched to breaking point, jangled alarmingly. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take, talking professionally to the woman whom he had made love to only a few hours ago, who had held his head to her breast, stroking his skin. But he obediently sat back down.

Janeway seemed to hesitate. "Chakotay...is everything really all right? You seem disturbed. Did something happen in that future time that you're not telling me about?"

He strove to keep his voice calm, but it was difficult. He had promised his Kathryn that he would tell her what had transpired, but he didn't think he could just yet, not when it was all so fresh and raw. "No, Captain," he said. "Nothing."

She studied him a moment longer. "Good," she said lightly. "I thought from your face that something terrible had happened. Or maybe those future versions of ourselves are running amok and you didn't enjoy your stay. Have I turned into such a tartar?"

"No," he said harshly, and shut his eyes against the vision of Kathryn naked and tangled up in the sheets. "It's not that."

"Then what? Chakotay, obviously something is upsetting you. Did we have a disagreement?"

"I said, it's nothing." It was a raw shout, and she could hardly fail to notice that he was lying. Nothing to say right now. The best days of his life had come down to this. Nothing. Never existed. Never happened. "Permission to be dismissed."

"Yes, you can go. Take the rest of the day off." She reached out a hand and patted his arm, but ignored his outburst for which he was profoundly grateful. "I'm here if you want to talk."

Talk? He wanted to talk all right; he wanted to talk of love and the future, he wanted to talk of lying in her bed, with her head on his chest. He wanted to talk about dreams and visions, love and sex, now and forever.

"Thank you, Captain," he said formally. "I'll see you tomorrow." He left. There was nothing else he could do.

She knew that there was something very wrong. She could see it in his rigid stance and the way his eyes slid from hers. But if Chakotay wouldn't talk to her then she had to find out by other means. She hadn't ordered Harry to tell her, she had asked him, and she hoped that he could appreciate the difference.

Harry was fidgeting, trying to avoid her eyes, "I think you should ask Chakotay, not me," he said finally.

"I did ask him. He didn't answer me. That's why I'm asking you. As his friend, Harry. And as mine."

The ensign's eyes flashed at her momentarily. Then he resumed looking at the floor. "All right," he said finally. "I'll tell you, because he's someone we both care about. But - Captain, if you take this to him as his commanding officer -"

"Harry."

He moved out of the rigid official stance, looking at the ready room ceiling rather than the floor. "Uh, Captain..." he began, and fell silent again, pacing. "OK, then," he said slowly. "I don't know all the details of what happened between you and him."

"I take it we must have disagreed pretty strongly about what to do about the time rift."

Harry looked straight at her, startled by the question. Then he smiled sadly. "You thought you and he had a fight."

"Didn't we?"

"Not that I know of. Well, you probably did in the end. He didn't want to come back here. I think you pretty much forced him to."

"He didn't want to come back?" She was mystified. It would not be like Chakotay to be afraid of the risks, and she couldn't imagine that he'd feel responsible to those alternate future versions of the crew - not when he had so many obligations in this timeline. "Was he afraid it wouldn't work? Or he wanted to help them rebuild in that future?"

"I don't think he was thinking about that."

"Then what was he thinking about?"

The ensign shifted uncomfortably, shrugging. "I think all he was thinking about was you. The other you. That's all he really cared about. You too, but you convinced him he had to come back even if it killed you."

Finally she understood what he was trying to tell her. "We were lovers," she said - flatly, she thought - and was startled to hear her voice crack.

"Uh - yes." Harry looked relieved that she'd chosen the word, rather than waiting for him to characterize her relationship with Chakotay.

"How long?"

"I don't know. I mean, he stayed in your quarters the whole time we were there."

She tried to make light of it. "Surely not the entire..."

"From the first night." He was absolutely serious. "You - the other you put us in adjoining quarters, but he never slept there. Captain - "

"Yes?"

Harry's expression remained uneasy, even though he knew she believed him. "I just want to make sure you realize it wasn't just him, you know? I saw the look on your face when he first stepped off the transporter."

"I see..."

He cut her off, looking her straight in the eye this time. "I saw you together. You loved him..."

"Thank you, Mr. Kim." She held up a hand to silence him, wishing it didn't look so defensive but unable to prevent herself - she needed him to stop. "I'll talk to Chakotay."

"Captain - " Harry looked frightened. "You know how much he's hurting..."

And he thought she might make it worse. It hit her abruptly that the junior officers might view her restraint not as propriety, but as that same defensiveness, the barricade she had erected to protect her command. That was what Harry thought - him and Tom and B'Elanna, probably the Doctor, probably Neelix. It was what she was teaching Seven by example.

It was intolerable.

"I understand, Harry." She wanted to get him out of there before her voice started shaking. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yes, Ma'am." He was backing hesitantly toward the door, staring intently, apparently realizing that he had wounded her but unsure how to remedy the situation without making matters worse. "I, uh, sorry about it all. Goodnight, Captain."

"Goodnight." The moment the doors hissed shut, she sank down on the couch and let her head fall into her hands.

What was she going to say to Chakotay? And how? Would it be better to go to him now, while she was as fraught with emotion as he was, or to wait until her control returned - would that be too much like the captain speaking?

"Computer, location of Commander Chakotay."

*Commander Chakotay is in holodeck two.*

"Is anyone else in holodeck two?"

*Negative.*

She hit her comm badge before she had time to change her mind. "Janeway to Chakotay."

"Chakotay here." Very quiet.

"Can we talk, Chakotay?"

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"Do I need to come to your ready room?"

"No. I'll come there - unless you'd rather meet me somewhere else."

"Here is fine."

In the minutes that it took her to traverse the bridge, enter the turbolift, and drop several decks to him, she did not permit herself to rehearse any speeches. She found him sitting on the ground of a planet she didn't quite recognize, a cool evening that smelled like autumn on Earth, but the plants were different. "Computer, lock the door," she ordered before walking over to sit beside him. "What did you want to talk about?" he asked her after a moment. No name, no title - waiting for her to set the agenda.

"Is there anything you want to talk about, Chakotay?"

She watched longing twist his mouth. He said finally, "I don't think so."

"Will you try? Before I have to assume that you liked my older self better than me?" She'd hoped to make him smile, but his expression was so bleak that she wanted to put her arms around him, hold him against whatever it was she had done to hurt him so. "Chakotay, what happened between us in that other timeline?" She tried to keep her tone light, to let him know that whatever he said, she would believe him and he could tell her about it without fearing her reaction.

But he couldn't answer her, couldn't even look at her. Shaking, his eyes and jaw clenched shut. She saw a flash in the distance, the beginning of a plasma storm, the shriek of a primate, and realized abruptly which planet he had recreated on the holodeck.

It would be so easy to pull back, put up the barricades of protocol in the guise of salvaging their working relationship. But if she did that, she would destroy everything else between them, everything she had never acknowledged yet found herself unable to renounce. She said his name, brokenly, so that he would hear the catch in her voice and not shut down as he had this morning to keep her from hurting him again. Tears spilled down his face when he looked up at her.

"It's worse than you think..." he started to choke out, but she slid into his arms so that he would know that he did not have to speak. That future version of herself would have held nothing back. How many times could he open his heart, only to have to close it down again?

As if to answer her question, he spoke. "I love you." She started to say his name, but he silenced her. "No, you have to let me tell you, so you'll know, if I disappear tomorrow. It wasn't a fair thing to say in a postmortem recording. I promised her I would tell you. Maybe if I'd told her before, she wouldn't have done what she did..."

So that was what had created the Kathryn Janeway he had loved in that other reality, the one who had not known what those words would mean to her until she could never return them--he was sparing her that pain, a gift to that future version of herself, who now would never exist. In a way, he was killing the woman he'd loved - making her an impossibility. No wonder he was in agony.

"I'm the same person as her," she whispered. "There aren't two of us, Chakotay."

"There are two of you right now in this room, Captain." The bitterness with which he said the word made her clench her eyes shut.. "I know you think that you can just decide not to feel something and you won't. But it wasn't like that, and despite what she did to me, I couldn't stand to see you hurt like that - "

"I can't stand to see you hurt like this." He was still protecting himself, trying to withdraw from her. Janeway took his face between both her hands, pressing her cheek against his until their tears were mingled. "I'm not two people. She and I are the same. Everything she told you about how I felt is true."

Absolute silence for a moment, then Chakotay was crushing her in his arms. His hands stroked her face and hair. He didn't say another word, did not make a sound until much later; it seemed to her that time suspended itself. She lifted her face and kissed him. Then he pressed his lips to her neck just below her ear and she moaned and melted against him, a rush of warmth coursing down her throat through her torso.

Chakotay hesitated, and she wondered if he felt a sense of infidelity to her other self. She felt strangely nervous - he'd made love with her in that future that no longer existed, he had some idea what to expect from her, but she had no idea what to expect from him. He mumbled, "Still hurts."

"Let me help."

"Because you're still the captain?" he asked.

"Because I love you."

"No," he whispered, unable to fully believe her words. "I haven't gone yet, you haven't lost me. That's what makes the Kathryn I love."

"She loved you before you left," she said. "Didn't she tell you that? We're the same. Let me..."

Her words were cut off as finally his mouth moved, shifted up her neck and hesitated. She moved her face to his. "Please," she whispered to him in a broken voice. "Let me love you now as I did then."

He let her move her lips over his. He saw her eyes drift shut, but kept his open, afraid that this, like before could be another unreality. Her hand reached for the fastening of his uniform. "Show me," she breathed into his mouth. "Show me what I like."

She finally managed to undo enough of his tunic to slip a seeking hand inside. "What was it like?" she asked, "our first time? Was it fast or slow? Show me..."

He choked. Her hand was sliding over his chest, smoothing his skin. Just like that earlier time, Kathryn's hands slipping under his shirt. Suddenly he couldn't wait. He reached for her, pulling aside the clasps of her uniform. She helped him pull her jacket off, as impatient as he, and he groaned as he pushed his hands under her tank, onto that impossibly soft skin. As fast as he went, she went faster, pulling his clothes off, shimmying out of pants and underwear.

He had lost all coherent thought, the twin pulses of need and fear predominant in his mind. Need - he needed her and once again she was here with him. Fear - he was scared that even now she would change her mind and turn away from him. He was consumed by the primal need to be inside her; if he could bury himself deep within her then it would be all right, he would really believe that here, in this time line, she wanted him and loved him too. He pushed her back onto soft grass, dimly wondering in the back of his mind if some events never changed in any time line, but played out repetitively. This first coupling would be as frantic as the previous one.

He couldn't wait and moved between her spread thighs, pushing blindly, seeking entrance. For a panicked minute he thought she was resisting him, that she didn't want this, she wasn't ready, that really she just did this to give him comfort but then she shifted slightly and he sank down into her, into her body, and the heat and the warmth and the moisture that was Kathryn surrounded him.

He found he was sobbing, wetting her neck with tears that fell unchecked, crying her name even as he moved inexorably towards his own climax. Too fast, he thought, too soon for her. But she was moving with him, meeting his frenzied thrusts with her own sharp movements. Even through the urgency small differences registered. This Kathryn was softer, rounder of breast and belly than the wraith of her counterpart. But the mewling noises from the back of her throat as she urged him on, throatily crying his name, were the same.

He came too soon for her, but he was profoundly relieved as he emptied himself deep within her. She couldn't go back now, not now that they were joined, fluids mingling stickily between them. Her hips still undulated, seeking fulfillment even as his stilled. He lifted himself up, enough to insinuate a hand between their bodies and find the place that he knew would send her over the edge. A few circles with gentle fingers and she was coming, convulsing around his softening penis, her hair over her face, his name thrown to the soft air of the holodeck.

She cried afterwards, much as she had done before, completing the mirror of their joining. Great gulping sobs shook her, yet she clung to him and tried to reassure him through hiccupping breaths that it wasn't him, that she was crying with the relief of it all because she truly hadn't realized until that moment just how much she needed him.

"I love you," she kept saying through shuddering breaths, and he held her close and murmured the words back to her, rhythmically stroking her wet red hair from her face, and lapping the salt tracks from her cheeks. He was reminded of that earlier time, that future time, when he had soothed as she sobbed after their joining. Then he had washed her face like a child's, erasing red eyes and telltale signs of their loving before she went to the bridge. Now, although he could have called for water and a soft cloth from the replicator, he was content to hold her, and let the knowledge that she, Kathryn Janeway, in this time and this place loved him, permeate into him.

She raised her tearstained face to him. "Was it like that?" she asked, "was it that urgent?"

He nodded.

"Tell me about it."

"We slept in your bed the first night. I held you all night, and in the morning we moved together. I kissed you."

"Then what happened?"

"Tuvok called you to the bridge."

"So I went?" She seemed disappointed.

"No. 'We have five minutes,' you said. And it was like this."

She sighed, a small sound of acceptance and understanding that yes, she would have been that desperate and needy of him. "The second time?" she stroked his face with damp fingertips. "What was that like?"

He took a breath to answer her, to relate how slow and perfect it had been.

"Tuvok to Janeway."

"Janeway here." She wrapped her hand around his neck, holding him to her when he would have pulled away.

"Ensign Okala is waiting for her holodeck time. She informs me the holodeck privacy lock is on. Do you need any assistance?"

"No, thank you, Tuvok." She looked around the holodeck, as if sealing it in her memory, then gently moved out from underneath him. Standing, she picked up her clothes, gesturing for Chakotay to do likewise. "Give me a site to site for the Commander and myself, direct to my quarters, then Ensign Okala can have the holodeck. Make sure the time she lost is reallocated back to her."

"Acknowledged, Captain."

As they materialized in her quarters, she pulled his head down to hers. He wrapped himself around her, his heart singing as he realized that she wasn't going to pull away.

Her mouth curled slightly. "About the second time," she said.

FIN

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