Constancy

Disclaimer: *stage cough* Paramount owns it. That's the bottom line.

Chapter One

It had been years, but the homesickness still ached within her. It probably did for the entire crew . . . with the notable exception of Seven and Naomi. Possibly Tuvok and Vorik, as well, but even they expressed a desire for home in their own detached way. She wasn't sure if the holoprogam helped or hurt. It had been created so long ago that she barely had to think before entering the command.

Sometimes she haunted the holodeck like a ghost. The setting of the program was always at night, in the summertime with a gorgeous full moon, and for some reason she always wanted to wear a white nightgown like she had as a child. A ghost indeed.

It was her house, the one she had grown up in. It had creaky hardwood floors, sloping ceilings in the upper story and a huge stone fireplace in the living room. Oh, how she loved that house. They had moved out of it when she was only fourteen years old, and she had cried off and on for months before and afterward . . . she still considered it her home.

She remembered times when she had climbed out of her bedroom window to sit in the ancient oak tree outside and just gaze up at the stars and long to be there. At certain times it had the added purpose of a childish attempt to see with her own eyes where her father was. But then Star Fleet had asked him to take a job with the Admiralty at Headquarters, and thus grounded him. Her mother had liked the arrangement, but she had always known that her father loved space, and hated to be "dirtside" as he had always termed it. And she herself had felt the same way. Dirtside, grounded . . . it all had held negative meaning for her.

And here she was, Captain of a starship with the exploration opportunities of whole lifetimes before her . . . and she longed to place her feet on terra firma again. What a mere change of address could do to a person.

She had always had a penchant for walking barefoot on the grass as a child. She had given it up willingly in favour of space, but now she was in space and tramping through her holographic lawn in an attempt to gain something of home. Hypocrisy at its finest. Fate was like that sometimes.

The holodeck door opened. She never put locks on it -well, almost never- but she was unused to being disturbed. As it happened, the archway shimmered into view, opening to reveal an apologetic-looking Chakotay. Apology turned to slight surprise to see her standing barefoot with nothing but a white nightgown on . . . not to mention the fact that the full holographic moon was providing him with quite a silhouette. She made an effort to stand in the oak tree's shadow.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Captain," he said politely after a moment.

Kathryn Janeway smiled a small smile at him, hoping to diffuse the brief discomfort they both felt. "Don't worry, Chakotay. Sometimes I need disturbing. I can turn a little gloomy in here after a while. Was there something you needed?"

He smiled back. "I was going to ask you if you were up to Neelix's cooking this evening, or if you wanted to join me for something a little less suspect. If you don't mind my asking, what is this program?"

"I made it a long time ago. Six years almost. It's the house I lived in as a child. Sometimes it helps to come here when I'm homesick . . . and sometimes it just makes it worse. As for your question, I'm never really up to Neelix's cooking, so invitation accepted. Just let me change, all right?"

He nodded. "Certainly."

She left him standing on her lawn and went into the house to retrieve her clothes. She forced herself to take a deep breath. He'd never know it, but those little looks he often gave had a strange effect on her. That, and the idea of him catching her in her nightgown. . . .

With practised speed, she donned her outfit. When serving in Star Fleet, one had to learn how to dress quickly in the event of midnight red alerts and such. In this case, she merely didn't want to keep him waiting out there getting curious. She folded the nightgown up and tucked it under her arm, making her way out of the house.

"Computer, end program," she said as she exited, and the grass disappeared from beneath her feet and was replaced by the somewhat austere gray floor of the holodeck. "Why don't we have dinner in my quarters, since I have to drop this off anyhow?" she asked.

"All right," he said, "but I'm still paying for it."

She grinned crookedly at him. "Well that's good. I've spent all my rations this week."

"Just don't tell me it was all on coffee," he said mock-seriously as they left the holodeck.

"I'll tell you what I'd tell anyone else, none of your business. When did you get to be such a nosy First Officer?"

"Since I noticed my Captain has a caffeine addiction. And you're just noticing?"

She laughed at him. "Just what I need after discouraging holodeck programs."

"Caffeine?"

"Well, that goes without saying," she admitted, "but I meant you actually."

He rolled his eyes. "Well, at least someone appreciates me."

Always. "Trouble?" she inquired.

"B'Elanna. Being hardheaded about her reduced work shifts."

She nodded sagely as they entered the turbolift. "She's stubborn."

"Almost as stubborn as other people I know."

She looked at him askance as he gave the command to the turbolift. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"Yes."

"Does it have to do with my coffee?"

"Always."

She frowned at him. "The Doctor went to you, didn't he?"

"Well you wouldn't listen to him. . . ."

The Doctor had been after her to cut down her coffee intake, among other things. The Captain and the hologram had their differences, and decaf was one of them. As far as she was concerned, the stuff wasn't coffee . . . but he insisted that if she got more sleep, took more time off and drank less coffee she would feel a lot better. She wasn't out here to feel good. She was trying to get home . . . trying to get some peace.

"The both of you are getting worked up over nothing. I'm hardly that unhealthy, and coffee's the only thing that keeps me sane. I'm not even sure if it does that anymore, actually. And I would get more sleep and take more breaks if I could, but I have a ship to run."

The turbolift stopped, and she stepped out into the corridor, Chakotay following on her heels like he always did. She made her way quickly to her door, and punched in the access code. The door opened, and she looked back at him as she entered.

"And I'm taking time off right now . . . as much as I can before we run into the next anomaly or hostile species or . . . Oh! Oh no," she said with a slight laugh. "I'm not sure if I should turn the lights on or not."

"Why not?" he asked, glancing over her shoulder into the dark room beyond.

"Because I haven't been here in a while and it's in marginal need of tidying."

He placed a hand on her back and gently shoved her in the rest of the way. "No time like the present," he stated. "Computer, lights."

Her quarters had more than a marginal need of tidying. It wasn't that it was messy, it was just cluttered. Stacks of padds could be seen on every surface in the room, as well as a few books. There were the obligatory collections of empty coffee mugs sitting around as well as a considerable amount of clothing. She immediately began collecting the latter. She was usually a fairly neat person, but sometimes there was just no time for straightening up.

Chakotay merely smiled at her and began picking up padds, reading some as he went. "I never realized there were so many of these on the ship," he commented.

"Oh, leave it, Chakotay. It's my mess. You replicate dinner."

He began clearing the dining table. "I need somewhere to put it first."

"Touché," she muttered, moving into her bedroom with an armful of clothes. The Captain dumped it all on the bed. She'd sort it all out later. When she came back out, he was reading one of the padds, a wide grin on his face . . . the sort that said he'd just discovered something amusing about her habits or some such.

"What?" she demanded, approaching him.

He held up the padd, still grinning. "I never knew you liked twentieth century romance novels, Kathryn."

She snatched it away from him, putting on her best disgruntled expression. "I read what I read, and for your information, I like classical literature better."

"I know," he said, "but I have to wonder what you see in these. . . ."

She turned on her heel. "Are you insinuating something, Commander?" she asked primly, flinging the offending padd with a well aimed flip of her wrist to join the pile of clothes on her bed.

"I wasn't insinuating anything," he replied, moving around the table towards the replicator. "I was merely wondering why you liked them."

He was a bad liar. "Are you sure you really want to know?" she asked innocently, clearing some remaining objects from her couch as he operated the replicator.

It had its intended effect, and he glanced over his shoulder in surprise. He was ready and willing to hint at things himself, but when she did, he always seemed somewhat taken aback. She liked it that way, it gave her an edge over him. She always liked to have the edge.

Kathryn grinned at him. "I read them for the same reasons any other woman does. It's up to you to figure out what those are. Classical literature can be pretty stuffy sometimes. . . ."

This time he winced as he placed their meal on the table. There was wine, and the main dish looked something like ravioli, but it also looked slightly suspect.

"Chakotay, it's green," she stated.

He laughed. "It's pesto. Don't worry, it's harmless . . . unless you're allergic to pine nuts."

She sat down. It smelled good, at any rate, but various run-ins with Neelix's cuisine had taught her that "smells good" rarely meant "edible." For the Talaxian's benefit, she smiled through every meal, but rarely felt so enthused. Pesto was more approachable, at least.

"So what happened while I was in the holodeck?" she asked, preparing to taste her meal.

Chakotay shrugged. "Nothing special, except for terse notes to the command console from B'Elanna. She's convinced that we're all treating her like an invalid, but she can hardly expect anyone to let her go crawling through every Jeffery's tube on the ship when she's almost seven months pregnant. I can hardly believe she thinks she can do it. Everyone has to keep talking her out of heavy work, especially Tom. It's pretty odd when Paris is being the responsible one."

She had since pronounced the pesto more than edible. If one liked basil and garlic -and she did- it was quite good. "You should give him more credit than that. He's the one who has to deal with her up close."

He made a face. "Honestly, the only people on this ship who don't risk serious injury right now are you and Naomi. The Engineering crew is getting absolute hell from her."

"More than usual?"

"I guess. They don't complain too much, but I think that's because they're afraid that if they do they'll get hit in the head with a spanner while they're not looking."

She frowned. "Maybe I should speak with her."

"Just make sure you invite either me or Tuvok to speak with you."

"Why?" she asked, lifting her fork to her mouth.

"Because at that point she'll probably consider taking a spanner to you. The Doctor said she's having an unusually tough week. He wouldn't be specific, but I gather her hormone levels are through the roof . . . that doesn't mean she can go disobeying me though."

"Did she?" the Captain asked around a mouthful.

"No, but she's ready to."

"'Ready to' isn't really an offense you can punish, Chakotay."

"I'm not punishing anyone," he objected. "I'm just not going to let her get away with anything. How do you like it?"

She started slightly. "What?"

"The pesto."

She smiled slightly. "Oh, yes. It's very good. Chakotay, how come you never take much time off yourself? You're always after me, but you rarely seem to take a shift off either."

He shrugged. "I get enough time, and when you finally do take off, I need to cover for you, right? Don't worry about me, Kathryn."

God, she loved how he said her name. It was just the inflection, but there was something behind it that almost made her blush sometimes. At first, she had tried to convince herself that she didn't like it, but she had eventually given in. She didn't know what that meant, though.

"I worry about everyone, Chakotay. That's why I don't take much time off. It's my job to worry about everything."

"And it's my job to worry about you, so I suppose we should both stop trying to talk each other out of it," he said with a dimpled smile.

"Like you'd ever stop, even if I ordered you to get off my case." She took a sip of her wine.

"True," he admitted, sipping his own drink.

"Which is why I never have."

"Sometimes I wonder if you get some kind of backwards pleasure out of driving us all up the wall."

"You were avoiding the word perverse, weren't you?"

"Well, there's really no point in insulting you, is there?"

"No, there is not, and I know where to find spanners as well as B'Elanna does."

He smiled still. She had observed him smiling in her direction for what seemed like hours on end sometimes, and at the most inordinate of moments. Often, it seemed like there was no reason for it at all, but for some reason it comforted her that no matter how bad things got, he would always have a smile for her.

"Area scans picked up anything interesting?" she asked after a moment.

He shook his head. "It's mostly dead space out there. A comet, an asteroid that got knocked out of its orbit, a nice little yellow star with no M-class planets and a whole lot of hydrogen. Nothing exciting at all."

"How are we for supplies?"

"Well, Neelix hasn't lodged a complaint yet, so I'd say we're in decent shape."

"As anyone managed to kill the leola root in airponics yet?" she asked with complete innocence. It was an ongoing war to kill that dreaded vegetable. She never knew why she had approved growing it on the ship. She and the crew would have happily left it behind seven years ago, but had not yet been able to get rid of. Unfortunately, Neelix was aware of their little scheme, and always seemed to have a supply of the things ready to plant in the event one crop failed.

He shrugged. "They try, but Neelix always has more . . . and if he catches them shorting the nutrients he makes them eat it for a week. His scare tactics work pretty well."

"It scares me," she muttered. "That is exactly why I don't go there to eat. He always seems to be serving something involving leola root lately. I must say that I like pesto better."

"That goes without saying."

"Seven of Nine to the Captain."

Ah, interruptions. "Yes, Seven?"

"I thought I should inform you of what appears to be a temporal anomaly in our path."

"Can we go around it? I don't fancy taking any side trips this evening."

"The anomaly is highly erratic . . . which is the reason we did not see it on long-range scans. It seems to be moving to various points across the entire sector every few minutes."

"And at the moment it's in front of us," she stated. Damned ephemeral anomalies. Why couldn't anything out here stay the same for any appreciable amount of time?

"That is correct. How shall I inform the bridge to proceed?"

"It'll move out of our way in a bit, won't it?"

"I believe so."

"Just tell them to wait it out, though I'm sure Tuvok could have come up with that on his own. Thanks for notifying me, Seven."

"You are welcome. Seven out."

She made a face. "Even when I'm off duty I'm on duty. This is why I get no time off, Chakotay. I have to tell everyone what to do no matter what I'm really supposed to be doing."

"Complaint noted. I'll tell them to start thinking for themselves more often."

She took another sip of her wine. "Good. They're certainly comfortable enough on this ship to run it without me on occasion, so why don't they ever try it?"

He shrugged. "Because you won't let them. Seven only called in because she knew you'd get worked up later if she didn't tell you and ask you what you thought."

"Vicious cycle," she murmured.

They ate in companionable silence for a moment. Temporal anomalies aside, she found it peaceful for once on the ship. It was so often tense that it was second nature for her to be wound for battle all the time. She often gave herself headaches. She supposed it was like some muted paranoia on her part, always anticipating the next fight or the next lost shuttle craft . . . It was a hard habit to shake, but for the moment she relaxed. To hell with temporal phenomena.

Of course she couldn't ignore the thing. Apparently, she was the villain of the temporal tampering scene to some, so she tried to steer clear of time problems and obeyed the temporal prime directive as closely as possible. As long as she didn't end up fifty millennia as well as fifty years away from home, she was happy.

As long as she had a ship under her and a crew behind her, she was fine. There was always that chance of never seeing home again, but if nothing untoward happened she stood a good chance of getting there. She'd be rather elderly, but Earth was Earth, no matter how long you'd been around, and the Doctor was a walking text book on geriatrics. Provided nothing untoward happened. She wasn't quite sure about that condition as yet.

"What are you thinking about?" Chakotay asked quietly, breaking through her reverie.

"Temporal anomalies and how old I'm going to be when we get home," she replied quickly. "I hope the Doctor has as much data stored about geriatric medicine as he claims to, because we're going to be an old bunch after a while."

He shrugged. "I plan on not worrying about it until I start showing signs of arthritis."

She laughed. "That's a little short-sighted, don't you think?"

"Well, think of it this way, we once had a seventy-five-year trip, and in seven it's been pared down to about fifty. We might just get lucky again and end up with a thirty-year trip. You never know."

"No you never do, and that's what's wrong with this place. Nothing ever just stays the same anymore."

"Except for your coffee fixation."

"Will you leave that alone already?"

Suddenly the ship gave a lateral heave, causing the wine to spill and nearly unseating them. She gripped the edges of the table as the ship shuddered, and when she was satisfied that she wasn't going to fall out of her chair, she tapped her comm badge.

"Janeway to the bridge, what happened?"

The comm was silent. There wasn't even any static to be heard.

"Bridge? Lieutenant Tuvok?" she demanded again, shooting a slightly confused look at Chakotay. "Computer, is the comm system operational?"

"All ship systems functioning within normal parameters."

"Janeway to Engineering . . . anyone?"

Silence.

Chakotay looked as confused as she, and tapped his own badge. "Chakotay to the bridge. Chakotay to anyone, can you hear me?"

"Computer, who's on the bridge?" she asked, standing and trying to wipe up the spilled wine with her serviette.

"There are no crew members on the bridge."

"Then where the hell are they?"

"Unknown."

"Unknown?" she repeated, not quite believing the answer. The ship took a hit, and there was suddenly no one on the bridge?

"Affirmative."

"Who is on the ship?" she asked with exasperation. Had the bridge crew been transported out? Killed? Why wasn't Engineering responding? This had better not be another wholesale abduction of her crew, or there was going to be hell to pay. . . .

"Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay."

She opened her mouth to protest that. Just them? That was impossible! Her whole crew could not have disappeared in one second . . . but maybe they had been gone before that. What had hit the ship? Did that even have anything to do with it? They had to.

"That's it?" Chakotay demanded.

"Affirmative."

She looked at him solemnly. "We had better get up there."

***

Chapter Two

It made no sense at all. Internal sensors were working, external sensors, the comm systems, the helm, the engines, the weapons, everything . . . and yet no amount of computer diagnostics, scans or physical evidence provided any clue as to where the crew had gone or to why they were gone. Even the previously reported temporal anomaly was nowhere to be seen, much to the Captain's frustration. She had been fairly sure for a while that it was the root of their problems.

But nothing seemed wrong beyond the fact that they were the only two people on the ship. Although that was more than a fair indication that something was wrong.

When they had reached the bridge, he had almost expected to find everyone there anyhow and that the ship's sensors were merely having one of their myriad hiccups . . . but there was no one there. There was also no evidence of a struggle, nor evidence of any known type of transport and no ship in the vicinity that could have caused such a thing. All the escape pods were still aboard, and the whole ship was pristine. No one had left, per say, they were just gone.

Kathryn sat in her chair, a hand to her forehead and her expression thoroughly confused. He was at the helm, having stopped the ship. There was no point in going anywhere, and it was prudent to stay in the general area of where they had lost everyone . . . or perhaps where everyone had lost them.

"Well, what now?" she demanded, throwing her hands in the air. "As far as the ship's concerned, there's absolutely no reason why the entire crew isn't here."

She hated not knowing what to do. Usually, even in the toughest of situations, there was some clue to follow, some course of action they could take . . . and right now there wasn't even a sensor ghost to point them in any direction. He didn't particularly like it either, but if they didn't find something soon she was liable to start climbing the walls.

"I have no idea. And what if they're not gone at all? What if we're the ones who have been . . . misplaced?"

She shot him a sour look. "That just makes it worse!" She rose from her chair and began pacing the bridge. He watched her silently until she paused, seeming to think of something. "You know, we might not be completely alone here."

He blinked. "The Doctor?" Why hadn't he thought of that? All things considered, the Doctor was just another part of the ship, and the ship was all there.

Without further words, they both rose and headed for the turbolift. Maybe the Doctor could offer a little insight about what had happened before the crew's disappearance. And perhaps he would be as confused as they.

The Captain snapped at the computer like it was at fault, as if it was hiding her crew intentionally. He'd often noticed her tendency to get more than mildly worked up when she thought any member of her crew was in trouble. Not that they know whether or not anyone was in trouble, but she always assumed the worst when she had no evidence telling her what was going on. She hid it well, but he knew her and he could tell.

"What if he knows as little as we do?" she muttered, looking at the walls as the turbolift started to move downwards. "Then what?"

He shrugged. "Well, it always helps to have a doctor around, at any rate. If he doesn't know what happened either, which I doubt he does, then we'll keep running scans. We can go to Astrometrics and do it from there . . . failing all else, we can wait it out," he added, using her previous words to Seven.

"Wait it out? Nothing ever got solved that way unless it's a moving object in your way."

"You can't solve something you know nothing about either," he replied as the turbolift came to a stop.

They stepped out in the same movement, and made their way to the Sickbay doors, which opened to reveal an empty room. The Captain moved forward, glancing around the corner into the Doctor's office, and sighing.

"Computer, activate the Emergency Medical Hologram," she said as Chakotay moved about the room, inspecting a few things.

"Unable to comply. The Emergency Medical Program has been removed from the holographic systems."

"What?" she demanded.

He looked over at her, shrugging. "The mobile emitter is gone. He must have been using it when this happened . . . whatever it was."

"Oh, god damn it!" she exclaimed, looking as if she wanted to level a kick at one of the Doctor's carefully arranged carts of instruments. "Now what?"

He was at a loss. "I don't know. We could always go to Astrometrics and run more scans. I'm as confused as you are, Kathryn."

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "More scans won't help anything. We've already scanned everything that can possibly be scanned. Maybe we should just go back to my quarters, finish our dinner and hope they all reappear again!"

"Maybe," he said, "but I think we should probably go back up to the bridge. It's probably not very smart to be sitting in the middle of open space right now."

She considered that, and nodded, starting out the door. "Where will we go then?"

"That little system with the G-type star. It's at solar maximum right now and blasting off enough plasma to keep us out of most trouble. We'll just hide behind a moon somewhere and hope no one gets interested." He followed her out.

"I'd feel that much better if it were O-type at maximum."

He snorted. "O-type? I'd probably stay as far away from it as I could. Those ones are beyond hot. We'd get our nacelles toasted."

"Voyager could take it, and the radiation interference would be something to reckon with. Have you ever been near and O-type star?"

"No," he said. "They're pretty hard to find, and the sorts of ships I worked with couldn't have gotten close enough to have a good look either."

"I saw one once," she said as they reentered the turbolift. "And it had a low enough luminosity that you could look at it a bit without getting your retinas burned off too. It was the colour of the sky, Chakotay. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen."

"I like yellow stars better," he replied. "Although they can be hard on your eyes. Bridge."

The turbolift started upwards, and Chakotay took a glance at his chronometer. It was almost 2100 hours. Naomi Wildman's bedtime, as well as that of anyone else with an early shift the next day. He was rather tired himself, but that could be attributed to strain. When he had invited the Captain to dinner, he hadn't counted on losing the crew in the bargain.

Kathryn's day off hadn't turned out the way it should have either. What should have been a day of relative rest was now just one more big thing on the plate for her, one more thing to worry about . . . something to give her that pinched look she always got when things turned strange. Once again, she covered it well, but little things gave it away. The way she held her head, the way she tapped her foot occasionally . . . it all pointed to worry. Perhaps she didn't cover it that well.

The novelty of being alone on a ship with Kathryn Janeway was not lost on him, and in any other situation he might have welcomed it. Of course she wouldn't have. She and her protocol. But right now was no time to be working himself into knots about Star Fleet regulations. What needed to happen was for them to reach that star system and to come up with something that might help them figure this mystery out.

"When I said I wanted a little peace, this is not what I meant," she muttered. "This just better not be Q playing tricks on me or something, or I'll brain him, immortal or not."

He hid a slight smile. She was rather funny when she was annoyed sometimes. "I doubt that it's Q. He's too egocentric not to have let us know it by now. He delights in having people annoyed with him."

"Plus he probably would have made you disappear too," she muttered.

Chakotay caught her meaning. Q's interest in her had always bothered him more than a little. It appeared to bother her as well, which was a relief. He didn't fancy having to compete with an omniscient being.

Wait a moment, compete?

He shook himself. Sometimes he did too much thinking for his own good.

She glanced over at him as the turbolift stopped and the doors opened. "Something the matter?" she asked, stepping out.

He followed right behind her as he often did. "No. I'm all right." He made his way to the conn station and sat down, keying in commands. As it had been before, the star he was heading for was issuing an impressive amount of electromagnetic interference as well as an awful lot of plasma. It was a good thing the ship was still in perfect working order.

Instead of sitting down, Kathryn stood directly behind him, watching the view screen as they approached the star. He glanced at her over his shoulder, and caught her in an unguarded moment. She let her stress show openly on her face as she watched the screen, unaware that he was watching her. It hurt in some vague way that she felt the need to hide it, even when they were completely alone. Maybe it was just force of habit, but what did she think she'd lose by showing him she was worried? Certainly not his respect.

He manoeuvred the ship to rest in the shadow of the third planet's moon, shielded from the radiation and plasma, as well as curious eyes that might find it interesting to see a mid-size ship with only two people on it. He looked beyond the moon to the planet below them. It was a hostile piece of rock, its atmosphere thick and consisting of mostly chlorine. Nearly as poisonous as a demon planet, but the fact that is had such a thick atmosphere provided something.

"Look," he said, gesturing. "Aurora borealis. All that plasma must be bouncing off the polar atmosphere."

"Northern Lights in the Delta Quadrant," she murmured, watching the play of greenish-white light at the planet's upper pole. "I always liked seeing them from above, but I've never seen them from the surface of a planet."

"Me neither," he replied. "I've never been close enough to a pole at the right time."

She sighed. "It's kind of peaceful looking . . . don't you think?"

He rose from his chair to stand beside her, and they exchanged glances for a moment. He didn't know why, but it almost seemed like she blushed slightly.

"It does," he agreed. "Everyone else should be here to see it."

She nodded. "Yes, they should. They've only been gone now for what . . . ? Three hours? When has it been long enough for me to start getting really worried?"

"I started getting really worried the moment the computer told us there was no one on the bridge. I'd be worried if they'd all gone missing for three seconds, let alone three hours . . . and I know you well enough to know you would be too. Maybe something will turn up . . . or maybe we just haven't thought of something yet."

"I wish Seven and B'Elanna were around. They think of everything."

He smiled slightly. "Well, I'm fairly certain Seven knows everything that you could possibly do with this ship . . . and B'Elanna would at least like to think she does. You've had your fair share of brilliant insights too, over the years, so I can put my trust there."

She smiled warmly at him, and then elbowed him. "So it's all on me now, is it?"

He shrugged. "Well, you can't expect much out of me, and I always thought you liked running things."

"What do you mean I can't expect much out of you? Ninety percent of my good ideas come from you! I just get the credit for them because I'm the Captain."

"That's my job," he said, looking around at the empty bridge. "Isn't it part of a First Officer's job description to fill in as the Captain's brain on occasion?"

She laughed slightly. "For you more than any other, since I'm out to lunch so often."

"So what are we going to do now?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically. She wouldn't really know either, but she'd come up with something just for the sake of answering a question. She hated unanswered questions.

"We could always go wander the decks with tricorders," she said with a slightly sad smile. "Who knows? It might turn up something that the internal sensors didn't."

"That's better than standing around here," he agreed.

Her hand strayed down to where her tricorder should have been, and then she looked sheepish as she noticed she was wearing casual clothes, just as he was. He walked over to the command console and opened the small compartment behind it, which contained a small medical kit and one extra tricorder.

"I've always kind of wondered why it's one medkit and one tricorder . . . as if that would serve for the entire bridge crew when we really needed it," he said, flipping the instrument open. "What should we scan for?"

She shrugged. "Temporal disturbance, subspace flux . . . I'm leaning towards that temporal thing. How could it possibly be a coincidence that Seven reports a temporal anomaly that's bouncing all over the sector and then the ship takes a hit and our crew goes missing? There has to be something there."

The scan of the bridge turned up nothing, as he had expected, and what little the instrument could see of the decks below them showed nothing either. "You forget," he said, "that was whole Universe is one big coincidence. There are only patterns because the same types of coincidences happen so often."

"Oh, don't you start on Chaos Theory to me, I know you don't believe in it."

"True, but a lot of people in Star Fleet like to."

"And you also know that I'm not one of them. I like to have my answers concrete, or no answers at all. What does that scan show? Anything?"

Chakotay shook his head. "Nothing from here down to deck three. Let's try four."

She began heading for the turbolift. "I'm just glad the lift systems are working. I don't have the patience for Jeffery's tubes right now."

He followed her into the lift, the tricorder bleeping intermittently in his hand. There was no temporal differential anywhere that the tricorder could see, no chromiton particle concentrations that stood out anywhere. Absolutely nothing to suggest that a temporal disturbance was at fault for the disappearance of the crew.

"Deck four," he told the computer, and the turbolift started downward. Lower decks came into the tricorder's scanning range, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything read the same, which meant that the time line was entirely stable. The only things missing from the ship were about one hundred and fifty life signs that should have been lighting up the sensors and the tricorder. There was nary an electron out of place beyond that.

The turbolift doors opened and they stepped out. The tricorder revealed nothing different from what it had read before. He shrugged eloquently.

"I can't tell you anything we didn't already know," he said, "and I have a feeling the lower decks are going to be no different."

"We should try them anyhow," she replied, glancing at the tricorder herself before turning on her heel towards the turbolift again.

And that was how they ended up on deck fifteen, with no more information than they had started with. They'd scanned every square centimetre of the ship -every cubic centimetre- and still nothing. Kathryn had a headache, if the fact that she was rubbing at her temples said anything. She and her endless tension headaches. It was a wonder there was ever a time when she wasn't having one.

Neither of them ever had much of an occasion to be on deck fifteen at any time, and Chakotay now concluded that it wasn't the most exciting work space ever. Maybe he should rotate the duty shifts a little more often . . . give some of the people regularly down there a break from the cramped, darkened deck. Provided people were ever working down there again.

He glanced at his chronometer. 2230. Late, when you had woken up at 0500. He was fairly certain that the Captain had gotten less sleep than he had, despite her somewhat enforced off-duty day. That was probably contributing to her apparent near-migraine.

"We should probably go get some sleep," he murmured as she paced around in front of him like a caged cat.

She stopped and stared at him. "What? How can we rest at a time like this?"

He looked dubious. "What time like this? Nothing's happening."

She rolled her eyes at him. "You know what I mean."

"No, I don't, and you can use all the sleep you can get."

"I won't be able to fall asleep anyhow," she muttered, beginning to pace again.

"Why don't you ever take a sedative?" he demanded. She was an occasional insomniac as well, but always refused anything the Doctor offered her. It was ridiculous. It wasn't as if it could hurt her. On the contrary . . . it would help and get her out of the habit of ingesting so much caffeine in order to stay awake.

"Because I don't!"

He shook his head at her, ruefully. "All right. You give me one good reason why staying up to all hours will serve anything, and I'll leave you alone."

She stopped pacing and glared at him, opened her mouth and then shut it quickly, continuing her pointless pacing.

"That's what I thought," he said. "Let's go back up, at least. There's nothing down here."

"All right," she agreed after a moment.

Amazing, he'd won an argument against Kathryn Janeway.

They entered the turbolift for what seemed like the hundredth time, he silently, she stubbornly so. She never liked to lose arguments. Not that she did lose them very often. It was a good thing that she even let people argue with her . . . unless she'd already made up her mind, because then she only shut you down before you opened your mouth. She had a stubborn streak in her as wide as Betelgeuse.

It was one of the many things he loved about her, even when it aggravated him.

They made it back up to the door of her quarters without incident, and she opened the doors silently, and he prepared to say good night and leave for his own.

"Chakotay," she said before he could get any words in, "this is going to sound strange, but would you not leave right now? I find myself a little afraid of waking up to find you gone too."

She said it with her back turned to him, one hand on the frame of her door. She was right, it was strange. It was rarely that she ever admitted she was afraid of anything, but he had to admit he understood.

"Kathryn . . ."

"Just stay with me," she said, moving into her quarters without a backward glance.

He followed her in, not really sure if he was going to stay there. On second thought, it was absolutely crazy to. Oh . . . it wasn't as if he didn't want to, by no means, and he hated to see her afraid of anything . . . yet, this just wasn't the reason he wanted to be staying in her quarters for. There was just too much to it.

"I don't know if that's wise-" he began uncomfortably.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Just humour me, all right?"

How could he refuse?

***

Chapter Three

Chakotay had stayed with her, much to her relief . . . and for once in her life she had discarded social embarrassment (What social embarrassment, after all? Nobody was on the ship) and saved him the discomfort of her couch by sharing the bed -since the couch was too narrow for him and it was her bed after all. It had helped that much more to know without any doubt that he was there, to hear his breathing when she woke up at intervals in the night. She whole heartedly admitted that she was afraid he'd disappear like the crew had, and he had allowed that he felt the same, roles reversed of course.

He'd protested of course, but, surprisingly, she hadn't been interested in his discomfort, nor her own. Kathryn Janeway did not like being scared, or unsure of things . . . and the only thing that was right on the ship was Chakotay. He was her constant, and she needed that. And upon first returning to consciousness, she realized that she had never felt more rested since coming aboard Voyager, despite their present predicament.

But as she slowly willed herself awake, she realized that it only took one person to be embarrassed. One of his arms was around her, as if to make sure she was there, and his hand rested just above her stomach. He was close to her, almost completely against her back, and she could feel his steady breath on her neck, which had always been a sensitive area. She wasn't used to such tactile contact, let alone from him, and her body was telling her that in no uncertain terms.

She tried, gently, to move his arm, not wanting to wake him and thus embarrass them both. He didn't wake up, but his embrace tightened, unwilling to let her leave. She suppressed a gasp as his hand moved upwards ever so slightly-

She didn't bother trying not to disturb him as she shot up and fairly crawled out of the bed, finding her knees in a state nothing short of absolutely useless. What kind of an idiot was she, anyhow? She knew it would get to one or both of them. Oh, Chakotay had tried to warn her, but no . . . she was feeling needy.

She sat slowly against the wall, trying to collect her fuddled wits and hoping desperately that he didn't wake up and find her thus bothered. She hadn't anticipated waking up in this state. Oh, but what a way to wake up!

She put her face in her hands for a moment. She couldn't let it get to her. No, she could not. Oh, she made her excuses . . . trying to blame Captain-subordinate protocol and whatnot, but really, it was her personal protocol that stopped her. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Putting her hands down, she let her eyes rest on him.

And she could have killed herself, but she wanted to climb right back in.

Slowly -oh, ever so slowly- his eyes opened. He didn't move or speak. He merely regarded her there, sitting on her bedroom floor in her nightgown with her face flushed and her eyes more than slightly fevered-looking as she tried to wind herself down from the feeling of having hands -his hands- on her . . . Even though, on his part, it had been unconscious. He coloured slightly himself.

"I-"

She scrambled to her feet, intent on making her way to the sonic shower as soon as possible and get the hell away from the look in his eyes. "Shh-hh!" she shushed him, nervous and showing it, much to her own disgust. "Don't you dare say anything!" She bent hurriedly and retrieved a fresh uniform from her open drawer. She always had extras in case she ran out of rations like she always did. "I'm going to take a shower."

Without further ado, she retreated from the room and from him.

Once inside the sonic shower, she allowed herself the time to do some real blushing. It was her fault entirely, or course, for weaselling them both into that situation. And he'd tried to warn her! Oh, what didn't she ever listen to people? Even when she trusted their judgement implicitly, she never really listened. Sometimes she just happened to agree with them.

Command and exploration were her forte . . . sexual tension that more often than not fouled up such commanding and exploring was most definitely not.

There, she'd admitted it! Yes, she was attracted to him! She almost always had been . . . but until now her subconscious had never figured out a way to make her really pay for covering it up for so long. And now she was alone on the ship with him, with no possible way of avoiding him or his eyes and no way of avoiding herself when quarters got too close.

The sonic shower hummed complacently throughout her mental tirade, removing the slight sheen of sweat she had developed seconds earlier. She just hoped he wasn't out there still. Could they just meet in the corridor like nothing had happened? Did he even know what had happened back there? He probably did. He was smart and he knew her far too well.

The shower turned itself off and she donned her uniform as quickly as possible. She was not going to turn hypersensitive today! She was going to march out there and face him without so much as batting an eyelash. Similar things had certainly been done before, and it had always worked. Today was like any other. She was going to be a professional out there, no matter what question lurked in his eyes.

After fixing her hair, she cautiously stepped out of the bathroom, and was relieved to find him gone. Not that she could avoid him for long, and not that she really wanted to, since the previous night's fear still troubled the back of her overtaxed psyche.

It didn't matter. Today, she was going to find out what had happened to her crew.

She made a point of picking up her tricorder, since she hadn't had it yesterday. She was going to go to Astrometrics and pick the ship apart atom by atom if she had to. It had to be that anomaly, despite the fact that the sensors showed nothing. Inside, there was a normal time line and outside, there was a normal time line . . . she was sure there was something more to it than that, something she was missing. . . .

The door chimed once and opened. They looked at each other sheepishly for a moment, until she spoke.

"I'm going to Astrometrics. I'm going to dissect this ship if I have to," she said, attaching the tricorder to her belt.

"It might not be the ship, you know," he said solemnly, watching her.

"I know, but it's a place to start. Like you said yesterday, it's mostly dead space out there." She finally managed to get the hold put on, and looked up at him. "Are you coming with me? You could run spacial scans while I do the internal work."

He seemed to ponder that for a moment, then nodded. "I'll come with you."

She suppressed a slight wince. "All right."

"But first, we're going to the Mess to get some breakfast." His tone brooked no objection.

She really didn't feel like arguing with him anyhow. She followed him out into the corridor and to the turbolift, not really fancying getting into a confined space with him.

Let it alone, she told herself. Today you are going to find out what the hell happened, and act like what happened back there is no issue, even if it kills you.

"Deck two," he said, about as noncommittal as one can be when giving an order to a computer. His expression was neutral as well, but she could see him watching her out of the corner of his eye. He and his expressions! How could he convey so much without even twitching an eyebrow? Impossible man. And nosy. The question would come at some point. . . .

"Are you even hungry?" she demanded. She wasn't, but a coffee would be nice. . . .

"No, but we should eat something anyhow," he replied. "You especially, since if I didn't bother you about it, you never would."

She shot him a look. "How do you know? I eat when I'm hungry. Right now, I'm not."

"Eat anyhow."

She pursed her lips. So he was going to be disagreeable? Well, he knew well enough that she could outdo him in that department. It was going to be a chilly day on the starship Voyager.

The turbolift halted, and the doors were opened. The hall was silent, as she expected it to be, but not as it should have been. The Mess Hall was always a hub of activity on the ship, even when it wasn't meal time. It was wrong in some vague way that she couldn't hear anyone's voice . . . more so not to have Neelix move directly over to them when they entered, ready to rattle off his often suspicious menu. She was surprised she missed that.

But the most salient feature of the Mess at that moment was the preponderance of trays still sitting on the tables. It had been dinner time for most, when everyone had disappeared, and evidence of the fact was everywhere. Most of the food was uneaten, and undoubtedly cold.

"We should probably clean up," Chakotay murmured, looking around. "Go make sure the stove burners aren't on."

She didn't expect them to be, since there was no burnt smell in the room as there would have been had one of Neelix's concoctions been simmering all night. She moved around into the galley, and found nothing out of place but a cutting board, a paring knife and a few leola roots. Something about that struck her as funny, and she laughed.

"What?" Chakotay asked from where he was recycling meals into the Mess Hall's replicator.

"I just had a thought. This is a perfect opportunity to kill the leola root," she replied as she put the knife and cutting board back where they belonged.

He smiled slightly, almost sadly. "Yes, it is, but I don't have the heart to do it when he isn't here . . . that and it's not as funny when you can't see Neelix angry."

She rolled her eyed, grimacing at him. "I can't believe you. You just guilted me out of saving us all stomach aches with one sentence!" She looked around at the galley, putting her hands on her hips. "I don't think there's much to do back here, really. I don't understand why Neelix likes it so much. It's almost cramped."

"Maybe we should expand the kitchen," Chakotay said, placing more trays into the replicator and watching them disappear.

"No, we need the common area. It's always crowded at meal times, and the crew's expanding too. Did you know that three more of the female crewmen are pregnant? Withing days of each other?"

"I did . . . aren't they all down in Stellar Cartography too? I thought that was a bit odd."

She came out of the kitchen, and proceeded to gather trays from the front tables. "I know. I thought so too . . . and if it was really any of my business, I'd ask the Doctor who the fathers are . . . Either it's just a coincidence or someone's cutting a swath down there."

"It's your business if you make it that way," he said piously, taking the trays from her as she approached. Oh ever-loyal, henpecking Chakotay. He was a fool sometimes, in that respect.

"That's the problem. I don't think I want to know. Before all this happened, I was going to look into finding some nice little planet we could take shore leave on. Everyone was getting pretty bored, and I didn't want it all resulting in a population boom on the lower decks or something. That, and we always need a little peace around here."

He looked around. "This looks pretty peaceful to me," he stated.

She was grateful he didn't make a comment about population booms. That had been a bad move of her part, considering her present mood. "Yes," she agreed, "but at a cost. When I said peace, I didn't mean complete silence."

"If I could forget the fact that we don't know where the crew is, this might not actually be so bad," he said, placing the last of the trays in the replicator.

She shrugged ambivalently. "That depends upon how you see it." She waited for the last of the uneaten food to disappear. "Coffee, black," she stated.

He directed a long look at her. "You should have more than that."

"Later," she replied, though it was entirely probable she'd never live up to that.

The hypocrite that he was, he didn't order anything but tea. He never took his own advice, and it bothered and worried her at the same time. He wasn't as bad as she was, but he'd steadily picked up some of her bad habits over the years.

"If we're just going to have drinks, we might as well go down to Astrometrics."

"Lead the way," he said, gesturing.

When they reached their destination, they both began their tasks silently, she running internal scans, he running the external ones. She modulated, re-modulated and even hit the console once, but it revealed nothing. Whatever temporal disturbance she had hoped to find was not there . . . and if her luck held out it was on the other end of the sector instead of there explaining her problem.

Chakotay didn't come up with anything of note either, or he would have told her. He pretended to be quite studiously applying himself to his work, but she could feel and see him watching her. She was trying to forget what had happened earlier that morning, but the look in his eyes clearly told her that he wasn't trying as hard as she. In fact, some of the looks he gave her made her want to scuttle out of the room like she'd done something wrong. And hadn't she?

Seven's holographic adventures notwithstanding -or maybe they were- she didn't really feel quite right working in the ex-drones domain without her knowledge.

Seven didn't know that she knew . . . she also didn't know that she had hurt two people in the process with her little experiments on the holodeck. The Doctor had moped around the ship for days until she herself had looked into what had caused Seven's near brain failure. It had made her feel strange, to see what Seven had been up to . . . and she was afraid to admit maybe even resentful.

On the other hand, could she blame her?

She winced as her finger connected a little too solidly with the console, facilitating an uncomfortable bending of the digit. Snatching her hand back, she did her typing with the other, shaking her injured fingers slightly. That was what ill-concentration got her.

"What did you do?" Chakotay asked, watching her favour the injured hand.

"I hit the console a little too hard," she muttered, uncomfortable being addressed by the main subject of her musings. Damn it, they'd been alone on this ship too long already. She was starting to lose her reserve.

He frowned quizzically at her for a moment, then turned back to his work.

The problem was, it was only her causing the problem. She was the odd element in this set up -getting both of them thinking about things they shouldn't. What should have been happening was the complete scan of the ship and the area. And that was, but nothing was coming up. Temporal stability inside, temporal stability outside . . . A thought came to her.

"Chakotay, have we compared the readings from inside the ship to those outside?"

He looked down at his console. "No. We don't usually anyhow. Why?"

"Let me see," she said, approaching his console and fairly forcing him to move aside. "Look at that. That's the scan of that G-type star outside right?"

He looked at it. "Yes."

"About ten hours have past, right?" she asked, fingered taping on the surface as her mind did the math.

He glanced at his chronometer. "I suppose."

"And if that's true everywhere, and that star is at maximum and putting out plasma at the speed it's doing, shouldn't the plasma it ejected yesterday be well out of the system by now?"

He looked at the readings, and then back at his chronometer. "Yes. Absolutely."

"Well it's not. Look at that. It hasn't even reached this system's excuse for an Oort Cloud yet. And our sensors, running on our time, are picking up its correct speed, but it's not going that fast. The sensors are lagging."

He shook his head. "So there's a time differential?"

"A big one, by the looks of this. Hours in here to the second out there, at least."

"But the time lines are stable . . ."

"Yes, but look. They're both stable, but they're different. We're just not used to seeing a stable time line within an anomaly! Usually they jump all over the place on you, but this one isn't. It's just as stable as the real time line! We just weren't looking for differentials between the ship and space, we were looking for disturbance, variance, and there isn't one! Just a simple differential!"

He caught her hands in his, belaying her enthusiasm at the discovery. "But that doesn't account for the lost crew. Shouldn't they be in this time line with us? And if that anomaly hops around like Seven said it did, why isn't it moving off of us?"

"It probably will, in a few of their seconds! The differential, Chakotay! What's a few minutes out there will be days in here!"

"That still doesn't explain the crew . . . or the lack of one."

She removed her hands from his. "That's what we have to find out. If there was a subspace disturbance at the time that the anomaly hit us, maybe it displaced them spatially too, and us and the ship just temporally. Who knows? The point is, I think we have the root of the problem!"

He smiled down at her, and her knees weakened slightly, along with a small piece of her defences.

"Who says most of your ideas come from me?" he asked.

***

Chapter Four

There was that gleam in her eyes that she always got when she had come up with something. Kathryn Janeway loved to solve mysteries, and it showed . . . even if she hadn't completely solved it. It was the sort of triumphant look that he loved to see on her face, especially in place of worry. If all it took was a strange temporal differential to make her happy, he would endure it for as long as he had to.

"So let's assume that the anomaly will move away . . . let's say in a few minutes normal time. How long would that be in here?" he asked.

She shrugged, glancing at the console. "I don't know. A couple of days?"

He nodded, taking that in. "But where's the crew? And why the hell is the anomaly only localized on the ship? I looked at the readings that the computer took before, and the thing was larger than the ship. It should be outside too."

She shook her head. "Those are the thing we have to find out, but if the crew disappeared when the anomaly hit us, who's to say they won't reappear when it moves away?"

"Nobody, but who's to say they will?"

She favoured him with a sour look. "Doomsayer. You're as bad as Tuvok."

"You wound me," he stated. "I like your idea better than mine anyhow."

"I should hope so," she said, colouring a little.

And that brought his brain screeching back to that morning. Waking up to see Kathryn beside him was one thing, but waking up to see her sitting on the floor looking like . . . well what she had looked like? He didn't know what to make of it, and he knew he couldn't drag it out of her. He didn't know who she was afraid of . . . him or herself? It would have been useful to know . . .

He realized he was staring at her, hence the tense condition of her shoulders as she turned back to her console, perhaps hoping she would notice something else there. Usually, he was fairly good at keeping himself from watching her for too long, but this time she had noticed and had assumed a defensive posture accordingly. She didn't hide her feelings as well as everyone thought she did . . . or maybe he was just around her too often.

"I doubt we're going to find much else here," she muttered, hands moving over the console. "Maybe something will come up later, but I think maybe we should wait this out and test my theory. If the crew turns up, we can investigate from there."

"So I guess we're stuck here for a couple days, then?"

She directed a long, unreadable look at him and then nodded. "That's what it looks like. There isn't much you can do when the anomaly you're in follows you around . . . that, and the edge of this thing is between us and space. Without eliminating some other possibilities, I don't really want to go on an extra-vehicular activity today. So yes, we're stuck with each other." She immediately looked like she regretted that choice of words.

"I could think of worse predicaments," he murmured, shutting down his console. "I hate to be redundant, but what now?"

She retrieved her coffee mug from the top on the console and took a long drink, looking undecided. "Take the time off, I guess, provided no one gets interested in a near-empty ship hiding behind a moon. I think we're a little too fast for them right now anyhow."

"I thought the regular time was faster," he said.

She shook her head. "You've got it backwards. I did too, for a second. We're the fast ones. You have to think of it in ratios. A second is shorter than an hour, but think of it this way . . . what we accomplish in an hour in here looks like it only took seconds out there, maybe not even that much. Regular time has been expanded so there's more in here, and less out there. It works out when you think about it."

He nodded. "I see. Where are you going?" he asked as she began to head out of the room.

She shrugged, not looking back. "The holodeck, maybe. I'll see you later, Chakotay."

And with that she effectively avoided any question he might have asked her. Kathryn had always been good at that . . . it was what made her a good diplomat, that ability to steer clear of unwanted topics. It was more than clear that what had transpired earlier was an unwanted topic. He wasn't even sure that he wanted to talk about it.

He left the Astrometrics lab with the intent of going to his quarters and reading some restful book. This was going to be a long wait, especially with Kathryn acting so strangely . . . all at once demanding constant contact and then freezing him out in one fell swoop. He knew she was complex, but this was ridiculous. Why couldn't she make up her mind, anyhow?

Nothing easily had was worth having.

He resolved to put it out of his mind. If she wanted to bring it up, then she would. It was unwise to push her, because then she would only dig her heels in further and get really stubborn. It would not be pleasant on the ship if she got too disagreeable, whether it was just himself or the entire crew there. She may not have known it, but she spread her bad moods around pretty effectively. The only people who might never notice were those on deck fifteen.

He entered the turbolift shortly, giving his order and waiting for it to begin its ascent. The Captain had been in a strange mood for a while now, homesick it seemed . . . with occasional unexplained bouts of asperity with Seven. Stress, but from what, he did not know. Nothing bad had happened to them for almost a month . . . the most notable occurrence being the apparent wave of procreation on the lower decks that had in turn had the Doctor making earnest comments about constructing a neonatal facility somewhere near the Sickbay. And that couldn't be categorized as bad at all.

She worried herself to death over everything, even if it wasn't worth it. This, in turn, worried him and when he said so she got obstinate, which in turn caused both of them more stress and worry. They were quite a pair.

And other times she seemed quite willing to go along with everyone's suggestions, which always managed to throw the whole crew off. That was probably the point of it all.

How many hours a day did he spend mentally grappling with the many, often endearing, vagaries of Kathryn Janeway? She occupied his thoughts for whole days at a time on occasion, and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. He had tried diversions . . . a few times in the form of other women . . . and it always came back to that vague -albeit carefully hidden- hurt look in her eyes when he did. She had practically lived a nun's existence for the past years, but the few times she had let her guard down had killed some part of him, because she never let that guard down with him.

Except for possibly that last evening . . . and the morning thereafter, if he had read that right.

Life on Voyager was one big if, all the time. What if the Kazon; the Vidiians; the Borg; unknown species attacked . . . who was disobeying this order, leaking that information . . . what the big news moving through the rumour mill was that week.

Every time they passed through one predicament, they invariably ran into another . . . to the point that even little Naomi was slightly jaded by all the excitement. Everyone but Kathryn, who kept that explorer's gleam in her eye and slogged through interminable hours of diplomacy and local customs just for the sake of one first contact . . . and who wandered the holodeck like a lost soul on occasion, it seemed.

But now he felt surprisingly peaceful, even while the huge if of whether the crew would turn up when the anomaly moved away looming over his head. For once he knew things wouldn't change too drastically for a while, if they were moving as fast as Kathryn claimed.

The turbolift stopped almost abruptly, and he stepped out into the empty corridor. Except for the background hum of the ship, it was silent like it had never been. He was not averse to solitude . . . but usually even near the officers' quarters at the height of Alpha and Beta Shifts, there was at least one person there. In the morning it was always Kathryn walking in her somnambulistic way to the turbolift with a mug of coffee in her hand.

He entered his quarters and commanded the lights on, noticing a book he had never finished lying on his couch. He hadn't taken the time to read any more of it for what . . .? Two weeks at least. It was an ancient thing he had no recollection of procuring, but owned anyhow, and had decided to read more out of boredom that anything else. In fact, he hadn't read it in so long he forgot exactly what it was about.

There was a stack of padds resting on the small table near the door. Out of habit, he picked them up. Two Engineering reports and another positively caustic note from B'Elanna demanding to know who did he think he was? and did he think she was some kind of invalid? and to hell with the Doctor! ad infinitum . . . in a tone just short of using Klingon expletives as well as Human ones. It had proved pointless to try and convince her to the contrary, and so he merely scaled down her shifts in accordance with the Doctor's recommendations. The doctor claimed that B'Elanna had the strong constitution of any Klingon woman, but that she would ultimately give herself a partial abruption if she did not cease trying to lift heavy components without help.

B'Elanna and her contrariness. He didn't envy the Engineering crew, and certainly not Tom Paris, when she was in those kinds of moods. She was still perfectly capable of clouting someone with a spanner . . . or rather she would have been if she was still aboard the ship.

The Engineering reports were preemptive requests for deuterium surveys . . . and maybe some dilithium if they were so lucky as to run across some that no one had laid claim to. They and their deuterium. I seemed like they were always running out of it.

"Janeway to Chakotay."

He nearly jumped out of his skin. He was already used to the silence? "Yes?"

"What is there was a spacial displacement? What if the crew is somewhere totally different?"

She was worrying about it. As she should, but why call him about it? They both usually thought along the same lines anyhow, and he had considered that possibility. "Then we'll go looking for them, but we should test you theory first. It could just be that our time is so accelerated that they have yet to catch up with us even spatially."

There was an equivocal grunt. "I guess . . . do you remember when Naomi was born, and there were two Voyagers?"

"Yes, I remember how shocked I was to see two of you . . . but what has that got to do with anything?"

"I was just feeling nostalgic."

"You have nostalgia for that?" he asked incredulously, setting the padds down on the table. "You're running that holodeck program again, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

There was a slight pause. "Well why not? If there's anything I need right now, it's a bit of home."

When was it that she had stopped coming to talk to him about it? They used to sit in her ready room for hours -and in later years in either of their quarters- talking about what and who they missed and of memories . . . when had that stopped? Had they merely traded it for ship talk? Instead of talking about home and the people there, they talked of the ship and its people.

"Why don't we talk about it anymore?" he asked softly, thinking aloud.

"Pardon?"

"Home. We barely ever talk about it anymore."

"I don't know, Chakotay . . . maybe when I realized I was living the space-farer's dream and how ridiculous I really am. I chose the variable life, Chakotay, and here I am trying to find a little constancy?"

"You never chose to get stranded out here," he objected. Oh, habit! He was even defending her from herself? The woman muddled his wits like no one he had ever met. . . .

"I know that . . . but it's still hypocritical of me. My father would laugh at me."

"Your father would want you home and happy, and so do I. Feel homesick if you want to, Kathryn. I wasn't trying to say it was wrong. Everyone feels that way sometimes. You shouldn't think it's wrong either."

"The real kick in the pants is that sometimes I wonder if home's even all it's cracked up to be."

"We all do that too, Kathryn, including me. Especially me. What would I be doing if all this hadn't happened? Still fighting in the Zone? Or, had you been successful, serving a sentence? Weighing either of those against being here with you is ludicrous, because I know which one I would rather have."

"Me too."

He heard a door open over the comm link. "Where are you going?"

"The bridge . . ." she said, discomfort in her voice. "Chakotay, what if they never come back?"

"Then they don't."

"What would we do?"

She sounded so lost that it nearly killed him. She needed the crew like he needed her. Perhaps there was good reason being the traditional distance of a Captain from his or her crew, even if tradition hadn't seen this coming. He set the padds down, and almost without thought left the room.

"Chakotay?"

"I'll be here. If they don't turn up well . . . they don't. It's that simple. But I will always be here, Kathryn, and for my sake I hope you will be too."

He entered the turbolift and commanded the computer to move him to the bridge. He wasn't going to let her stay up there alone digging herself into depression. Not that she would. Kathryn Janeway was too strong for that, but he didn't know whether he was. She would never fully open up to him, but he could make do. As long as she would talk to him, he would make do.

The turbolift door opened to reveal the empty bridge . . . empty but for a small woman sitting in her Captain's chair, her chin resting in one palm as she gazed at the view screen. Clouds of solar plasma drifted out there, and the Delta Quadrant's attempt at an aurora borealis played across the pole of the planet just beyond them. The sensors saw past the differential, so the image was in real time instead of slower as it should be.

Maybe that was it. Everyone, including the ship, was seeing in real time except them.

Kathryn wore a pensive frown, though even then she was beautiful to him. She looked tired, but in the sort of way that softened the look in her eyes as she watched the screen. He knew that she knew he was there, but she didn't look up to acknowledge him as she usually did. He'd watched her for years . . . and her contemplative expressions still fascinated him. He wondered what she thought about when she stared into space.

He sat down in his own seat, his eyes still locked on her. Sometimes the need to just watch her was like hypnosis, something he just could not tear himself from.

"Thank you, Chakotay," she said after a long moment, still not looking at him.

"For what?" he asked.

"For putting up with me for all this time. I must be so infuriating to you." She smiled a crooked, joyless smile.

"You are, but it doesn't matter."

She glanced at him. "It doesn't?"

"Not to me."

She frowned. "Why, Chakotay?"

He hesitated. There was the obvious reason, but he wasn't sure she wanted to hear it right now, not in her present mood. He smiled at her, attempting to lighten things. "Because it doesn't, Kathryn. It never has, never will."

"I don't deserve that, honestly."

"Take it anyhow," he murmured, looking over at the screen reluctantly. "What brought you here?"

"I don't really know," she replied vaguely. "I just wanted to be up here. We pretty much live up here anyhow, so more time won't kill us."

"Apparently we have all the time in the universe," he replied, "until that anomaly moves off, of course."

She smiled again, this time with a little feeling. "Yes, I suppose so." She rose from her seat, moving closer to the screen. "I wonder if we're not so fast that the crew has noticed anything wrong? Assuming of course that they're only stuck back in normal time."

If they had, the more lascivious part of Tom Paris' mind was probably working in high gear. The Lieutenant got a mighty kick out of that sort of thing. He wondered if Kathryn ever noticed how off-colour Tom could be. "They're probably as worried as we are if they have."

"Except for Tuvok," she amended. "Though I think he's been living around nothing but we less restrained beings for far too long. I've known him a long time, and he's starting to slip sometimes."

"That's hard to believe."

"I'm serious! All I have to go on are his expressions . . . and the number of them has tripled in the past years. He used to be a lot more predictable."

"Tuvok is hardly the unknown element on this ship," he stated. "I'm more worried about trying to keep up with the rest of them." He stood also, gesturing around the bridge. "The bridge crew is so different from what they were like in the beginning . . . it's mind-boggling."

She smiled at him. "I know . . . even you, Chakotay, though you're more dependable."

"Is that a compliment, or an insult? Were you just avoiding 'predictable?' Please don't class me with the Vulcans."

She laughed at him. "Don't be so touchy." Impulsively -or so it seemed- she embraced him, turning her head to rest it on his chest.

He couldn't think of very much else besides that for several seconds, content to just hold her. He could smell the light perfume she always wore and underneath that, the scent of her . . . which was enough to make him wonder if having her so close was a good idea after all.

Something shook, and he wasn't entirely sure that it wasn't just his knees.

She laughed, though she didn't let go of him. "I think that was the ship," she stated.

"Oh?"

She drew away from him, and he had to school himself not to try to stop her. She looked down at the conn controls. "Yes, it was the ship. I think the anomaly is moving."

"Already?"

She shrugged. "I was just guessing before. It can move when it wants to, as far as I'm concerned. Ah!" The ship began to shake again, but it was no short shock, she was forced to grab the back of the conn station chair.

Chakotay stumbled slightly, reaching for a handhold on the console. "How long will this last?"

"Well, if the anomaly's moving in real time, and last time it moved on us it shook of a couple seconds . . . I should say a few hours."

"I'm glad I have a strong stomach," he said as the ship continued to shudder around them. "At least it won't cause any damage."

"Provided it only ever gets this bad," she replied, cautiously letting go of the chair and trying to make her way back to her own. She staggered slightly as she went.

"Why does that not fill me with confidence?" he muttered, still holding the shaking console.

***

Chapter Five

Under other circumstances, it might have been funny. The ship wasn't shaking too hard at all -more like a jerky vibration- and it caused both of them to wobble around like they'd had too much to drink, even making Chakotay trip once, at which point she had laughed. What wasn't funny was that it never stopped. There had been a ceaseless rattle throughout the ship for almost two hours now, and it was starting to make her nerves go numb . . . namely those in her left leg.

She was seated in her chair on the bridge again, not really wanting to try and stand with Chakotay watching her like a hawk to see that she wouldn't fall. She was a grown woman, and she didn't need his babysitting. She was sitting at an angle in the chair, trying not to be shaken out of it by placing most of her weight on her left hip, which, in tandem with the shuddering ship, was making her leg go numb.

Many years of living in space had taught her stomach to deal with the occasional vagrancies of gravity, momentum et al, and it was managing quite of its own accord not to turn itself inside out. She was glad that they had cleaned up the Mess Hall before, or there would have been a monumental mess -leaving the room true to its name.

Chewing on her lower lip, she fiddled with the command console, making sure that all this disturbance wasn't working pieces of the ship loose. She also shifted her position slightly, trying to relieve the uncomfortable pressure on her sciatic nerve. She grimaced as the feeling slowly returned.

Chakotay, who was sitting beside her like he always did, was reading a data padd. He looked up from it and at her. He had ESP or something. He wasn't even looking at her, yet he still managed to know when she made a face. Uncanny man.

"Something wrong?" he asked solicitously.

"No, my leg's just asleep," she said, trying to keep her voice level despite the ship.

He smiled a little. "Maybe you should try walking it off."

She gave him a cross look. "So I can fall on my behind and make a fool of myself for your benefit? I think not."

"Well, if you ever had the inclination to make a fool of yourself, now's the time. You know I won't tell anyone about it." He grinned openly now, looking at her through the corner of his eye.

His smile was positively subverting, and she wondered if he didn't know that full well and use it to his advantage. He used it on her at suspiciously regular intervals, and far too effectively for her comfort. Whatever quirk in his genes gave him those dimples should have been classified as dangerous to the mental stability of any woman around him. She was certainly proof of that, even if she bore such near personal mutiny with more fortitude than others.

"You'll tell me about it, and that's quite enough. I am not here for your amusement, Commander."

"But you do such a good job of it. Twentieth century romance novels indeed . . ."

An eyebrow climbed. "Indeed. Maybe I should go get one of them and read a part to you and we'll see who gets the last laugh around here."

He cast a startled look at her, and then another slow grin slowly spread across his face. "Sounds like a win-win situation to me, especially if it's one of the . . . good parts."

She gaped at him in turn. Brazen man! It wasn't that her sensibilities were that delicate, she read those books after all . . . but he was . . . well, he was usually more reserved than that. All this solitude was softening their minds more than a little, or at least hers. "Mister Chakotay, contain yourself!" she said, though finding it hard to be completely serious when he was grinning at her like that. That was the sort of look that made her forget that her ship might be being rattled to pieces. She was too rattled on her own. She was aware that she was blushing somewhat.

"It's hard to take you seriously when the ship is making your voice shake," he said in reply, "but your complaint has been duly noted."

"I should hope so," she said, as straitlaced an expression on her face as she could manage at that point, which wasn't saying much at all. The command console beeped, and both their hands went darting for it like they always did. Since she was the Captain, she got precedence no matter how fast he was. At least she knew she'd always win on that. She turned the screen toward her, reading.

"What happened?" he asked as she scanned it with her eyes.

"I think the anomaly has moved out of deck fifteen. The internal sensors noticed a change in how the ship was moving down there."

"That change being . . .?"

"It's not shaking like the rest of the ship."

"Will that cause any problems with structural integrity?" he asked.

"It isn't yet . . . I'm not reading any crew down there." Well, had she really expected to? It wasn't like anomalies were going to play fair just because she wanted it that way.

He shrugged. "Maybe we'll have to wait until the whole ship is free, or maybe until we are. Do you think the differential will cause any problems when it passes through the warp core?"

"Well, it didn't when it dropped on us, and all the systems on deck fifteen are fine . . . albeit to our perceptions barely doing anything at all." She leaned back in her chair, pushing the shaking console around so he could read it himself. "I have a feeling nothing's going to change down there for a long time."

"Nothing up here either," Chakotay stated. "I wish the ship would stop shaking though."

"I agree," she declared emphatically, preparing to rise from her chair. "I am going to the ready room to replicate something to eat. Do you want anything?"

His expression was ambiguous as he tried to hold the console screen still so he could read it. Finally, he nodded. "I'll come with you . . . do you have any rations anyhow, Kathryn?"

She attempted to rise from her seat, on leg still half asleep and both shaking with the ship. "Yes, it's a new week, after all."

"So it is," he agreed, rising unsteadily. "Do you need any help?" he asked as she wobbled across the bridge.

She looked back at him briefly, and then put her concentration back into getting one foot put before the other without falling. "Like you're in any position to help anyhow," she muttered, taking wide steps in order to prevent being unbalanced. It was harder with the limp she had acquired.

And suddenly, the shivering of the ship stopped.

She stood up a little straighter, looking at the consoles nearest to her. They didn't explain anything, but she wasn't going to protest if Voyager felt like giving them a break.

"Well, this is a relief," she said, turning towards Chakotay. "I wonder if-"

She never got to finish the question. The ship gave a heave not unlike the one it had the night before during dinner. She was pitched with full force to the floor, only having enough time to get her hands in front of her. Barely missing hitting her head on the rail, she hit the floor with a thud, opting to stay down until the ship stopped its newest assault.

It ceased as quickly as it had started, and she scrambled to her knees. Looking over at Chakotay who was rising to his feet with a bewildered expression on his face, she rose also, rubbing sore palms together.

"Let's hope it doesn't do that to us too often," she muttered. "Are you all right?" she asked him as he straightened his uniform.

"Fine," he replied. "Are you?"

"Sure, but I still want lunch. Come on."

"Never let a mere jolt deter Kathryn Janeway from her goals," he said, his tone faintly amused.

"Amen," she quipped, starting for the ready room door again. "Especially when it involves me doing something you nag me about, hmm?"

"Absolutely."

Her goal at the moment was to make it to the ready room without being flung across the bridge, and immediately thereafter to get a sandwich. Another coffee wouldn't have done any harm either. And she was going to go while the going was good, since the ship was likely to start shaking again sometime soon.

The ready room had become her unofficial living space more than once in the past years. She'd even fallen asleep there a few times, and the room was so familiar she could have found her way to and through it even if the ship had been pitch black. Chakotay was often a near-permanent fixture in there himself, whether delivering a report, trying to talk her in or out of something or just there for what seemed like the hell of it. She didn't mind that in the least, so long as she could reserve the right to kick him out when the mood took her.

She entered and went directly to the replicator, procuring an egg salad sandwich in short order. That was another blessing. The replicators were working. If they hadn't been, neither one of them were likely to eat for the duration of their little dilemma, or at least she wouldn't have.

"Do you want anything?" she asked, turning towards Chakotay, who stood somewhat behind her by her desk.

"No, thank you."

Ah, this was one of those "for the hell of it" times.

She went to sit on the couch, gesturing for him to join her. They sat like that often, usually with her either staring off into space or reading a data padd. This time she had a sandwich, but it was all the same. She found herself contemplating that. What did make it the same? Every day there was something different to talk about, but each time they would both sit, and he would watch her stare into space or read the padd or in this instance eat part of her sandwich. . . .

That was it. His eyes. They were always basically the same, watching her with that quiet intensity he always possessed. It was so familiar, yet slightly uncomfortable . . . because she knew he saved that exact look for her and no one else.

The ship gave a small shudder.

Chakotay broke his gaze and looked around. "It'll probably start again pretty soon."

She nodded. "I just hope too many things don't get broken in the process."

"As long as the ship holds out, we should be fine."

"I wish the crew on deck fifteen had turned up. I suppose I didn't really expect them to, though. Chakotay, did you hit your head back there?" she demanded suddenly, noticing a dark contusion forming right at his hairline. He should have told her that when she asked if he was all right! Of course all that boxing had made him a bit more tolerant to hits in the head than most, but she couldn't have him covering that sort of thing up.

He shrugged, reaching up to touch the new bruise. "I guess. It's all right though."

She frowned at him. "Well, at least you didn't cut yourself. I'll get a dermal regenerator and see if we can't fix that," she muttered, rising to go to the replicator once again.

"I don't need it," he stated.

"Too late," she replied as the instrument appeared. She came over to him with it, and sat back down. "Next time, tell me when you get hurt." Making him turn his head, she ran the regenerator over the swelling bruise, which started disappearing immediately as the broken capillaries were mended.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied quietly.

Their faces were inches from each other, she watching his minor injury disappear and he very obviously trying to find a safe place for his eyes. She almost smiled at his discomfort. He deserved it for the novel comment. Satisfied that the contusion was healed and that he had been sufficiently punished for not telling her about it, she sat back down, giving a nod.

"That ought to do it," she said, placing the dermal regenerator on the table.

He swallowed. "Thank you," he said. "And the crew will come back."

"Your optimism is appreciated," she said, retrieving her unfinished sandwich. "But I'm afraid that I can't share it."

"I think Tuvok has become a bad influence," he said, rather obliquely.

"Hardly. I'm just considering all possibilities."

"And dwelling on the bad ones."

"Maybe. It doesn't matter. I'm just in a strange mood today," she replied, taking a bite of her sandwich.

"I noticed," he said gently.

She nearly choked for a moment, and then regained her composure. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That I noticed that you're in an odd mood today. It honestly wouldn't take an empath to see it, and I'd like to think I know you relatively well."

She laughed mirthlessly. "That's part of the problem. You do."

"Then I'm probably right when I think I know what's bothering you."

She fought not to blush. "Possibly, possibly not. The fact that you're pressing the issue isn't helping."

"Who said I was? And why can't I press the issue, assuming we're talking about the same thing?"

She shouldn't have let the conversation turn this way! The minute she let her guard down, only the slightest bit, he was there trying to get her to say things that she did not want to talk about! It had only been this morning, but why couldn't he just let it drop and save them both all the trouble?

"And if we are," she said between clenched teeth, "who's to say that I'm going to talk about it?"

"Well nobody," he replied, "but we'll never get it out of the way, now will we?"

She frowned at him, setting her plate down with deliberate care, holding his eyes with a glare. She folded her hands in her lap. "Well, what do you want out of the way?" she asked.

"I want to know why you always feel the need to hide from me when things get tense. Do you think it's any easier for me than it is for you?" he demanded.

No, she didn't think it was easy for him either. What wasn't easy was maintaining a command structure when one's relationship with one's second-in-command was in question. The rules had been written for a reason, even though hers were far more stringent than anything Star Fleet ever came up with. Where was the line?

And were they an exception, due to location? She'd bent other protocols -more important protocols- pretty effectively before, why not this? Because it would change things, compromise her command, their friendship, the crew's respect . . . or would it? Was she so afraid of that change?

What was so inherently wrong about the idea? She had been alone a long time, and she was hardly made of stone . . . ice, maybe, but not stone. It bothered her to have it hanging over them . . . first the attraction, the friendship and . . . what? It would bother her more if one day that love she saw in his eyes every day was gone.

But were they only setting themselves up for a fall?

"What you want to know," she said slowly, "is what scares me? Am I right?"

He nodded wordlessly.

"What scares me, Chakotay . . . is losing what I already have. To wake up and find you gone; to wake up and find you there; to find out one day that you don't love me; to find out that you do . . . do you see that?"

He smiled gently at her, and she nearly lost her resolve to conduct herself like she was in control. "I can't say much about the first two things. That all depends on circumstance, but what I can tell you-"

She put her fingers on his mouth, shutting him up. "You don't get it. I'm not sure I want to know what you can say about it. That's the problem. That and protocol."

He took her hand in his. "To hell with protocol. Honestly, Kathryn. To hell with it. That's the last thing we should worry about."

She turned her eyes to the view port, watching a cloud of solar plasma drift by the ship, obscuring the stars beyond. "Where's my crew?" she demanded softly, drawing her hand out of his. "Nothing matters if we don't find them."

"They will be back. I hardly think our ridiculously good luck would give up on us now. They're probably stuck out in some temporal limbo, waiting to catch up with us. It's probably happened before."

She smiled slightly. "I'm sure if I went mucking around in the Enterprise's endless reports I'd find something like this. When I studied all that at the academy, I was pretty sure no one would ever see anything that at least one Enterprise hadn't seen. The Caretaker chose to prove me wrong."

"I think the Enterprise got pulled all the way out of the galaxy once."

"But they at least got pulled back. That happened for a benign reason."

"The caretaker wasn't really out to cause trouble . . ."

She shot him a sour look. "Probably not, but can we agree that he did?"

He nodded emphatically. "Oh definitely, but it's not all bad."

"No, I suppose not."

The ship shivered again, various things in the ready room rattling at the disturbance. She grabbed her empty plate quickly before it fell to the floor as the shocks intensified.

Chakotay looked around, wincing slightly. "I think it's working itself up to something a little bigger this time."

The ship continued to shudder almost violently, steadily getting worse. Kathryn had to fight slightly to stay seated as the shaking continued to intensify. She doubted they could get to the bridge now, even if they had to.

The computer called an automatic Red Alert, the klaxons sounding.

"Warning. Structural integrity on deck fourteen has been compromised."

Deck fifteen wasn't moving with the ship, and was causing stress on the structure above it. She should have seen this coming when the sensors had first reported the condition of that deck. What would happen if the ship was shaking like this when the anomaly was moving by the warp core?

They had to go to the bridge.

***

Chapter Six

For a moment he had wondered if she was going to try to "define parameters" again. She was such an unfathomable woman. Most of the time she avoided talking with him, but in sparse intervals she decided to say something, and make him that much more confused. Unfathomable.

Having since decided that she needed to be on the bridge, she was trying to get there, but hardly successfully, since the ship was shaking violently that the bulkheads were groaning in protest. He just wanted to make sure she didn't fall back and split her head on something.

Kathryn was making slow progress towards the door, having to find a handhold every time she moved forward. He followed along behind her with equal difficulty, ready to catch her should she come flying backwards like she nearly had a moment earlier. Ever the daredevil, she took the opportunity of a small lull in the ship's assault to make a mad dash for the door only about two metres distant. She made considerable progress before the ship's renewed shuddering caused her to have to hold on to the doorframe.

He expected her to go through, but instead she waited for him, watching him clumsily make his way to her. When he did, she realised that she had taken all the handholds in the vicinity, and gave one up to him, nearly falling as she did so. Barely thinking, he put a steadying arm around her waist as she nearly toppled backwards into the ready room.

"Damned anomaly," she muttered, reaching again from the doorframe and pulling herself toward it. "It's like trying to walk up a wall."

He was momentarily distracted by the fact that she was pressed against his side, but quickly avoided staring down at her as he was wont to do sometimes. "You first, I guess," he muttered, pushing her forward through the door, but keeping his hand on her back in order to brace her for the trip into the wider expanse of the bridge.

"I have to go to the Ops console," she muttered, preparing herself. Of course she picked the farthest station from them. She likely to knock herself out on the way. "You go to Tactical."

"We probably shouldn't try to walk there," he said seriously, watching her make her awkward way to the rail just beyond them. She was going to fall. . . .

"And what? Crawl? I think not, Chakotay," she said, the ship's shuddering making her voice unsteady.

"It would be safer," he said, pushing himself out of the doorway. It almost felt like the floor was uneven, and maybe that his legs were a bit numbed. He supposed that was possible, all the same. She had made it to the rail, and seemed to be hanging on for dear life, looking back at him skeptically.

"If it's safer, why don't you do it?" she demanded.

"Because I'm not," he replied firmly. "I was suggesting that you take the safer route."

"You damned hypocrite. Were you always like this, or just lately?"

He reached the rail and stood beside her, looking down unintimidated into her glare. "I don't really know. Probably since I decided that it was my job to take care of you."

"And when was that?" she asked, going hand over hand along the railing to the upper part of the bridge.

"The moment I beamed onto this bridge and had the death glare turned on me. Basically the moment I met you. The fact that you saw fit to make me your First Officer made it easier, so I can thank you for that, among other things."

The ship shuddered violently, forcing both of them to brace themselves against the rail. He began moving around the rail as she had, angling for the Tactical console.

"When we first spoke," he continued, "I thought to myself, 'if she wasn't such a hard-assed Star Fleeter, she would make a hell of a Maquis.' And you would, even though I know you'd never do that. You're still a hard-assed Star Fleeter."

She had made it to the Ops console, and was pulling herself around it labouriously, glaring at everything in sight. She then turned the glare on him. "Thank you," she said acidly.

"The point is, Kathryn, that no matter what you say or do I will always be on your case about everything. If you order me to leave you alone, I'll just go off-duty and keep going. That's just the way it is."

Various parts of the Tactical console were lit up with warnings. Thankfully, it showed no outright hull breaches yet, but definitely some spots that were close to it. Deck fifteen was going to be torn off the ship if the shaking didn't dissipate. Deck fourteen wasn't in good shape either.

Kathryn let out a small laugh, looking with narrowed eyes at the blinking Ops console. "What do you know . . . the anomaly's moving up. It'll be into Engineering soon."

"Do you think that will cause a problem?" he asked.

"You tell me . . . It shouldn't if it goes by fast. It seems to be moving in hiccups. As long as it doesn't stop in the middle of the core, we should be fine. B'Elanna is always a stickler for core reinforcement, so it should be safe. The systems on decks fifteen and fourteen are fine. It's the hull causing problems. Damn!" She stabbed her finger angrily at the console.

"What?"

"The systems down there are so bloody slow that they probably won't receive my commands for another hour! We'll have to survive without forcefields for now."

"You can forcefield the upper decks. I'll fiddle with structural integrity, you put 'fields over the weak points. We'll fort-up here."

She looked at him. "If I 'field the turbolifts and the Jeffery's tubes, we'll be stuck up here."

He shrugged, looking down as the integrity controls were displayed on the console. "There are worse places. We could be in a Jeffrey's tube."

She smiled her crooked smile. He loved that smile. "True," she conceded.

Not that he would have especially minded being stuck in a Jeffery's tube with her . . . he shook his head. Too much thinking. He needed to leave it alone. She had asked him to, hadn't she? It was always like this, his mind wandered and it all came down to the fact that she didn't want to chance it. She was too firmly ensconced in protocol, "parameters" and comfortable friendship to take the chance and break their constant inner monologue to that effect. Kathryn Janeway liked her constants where she was personally concerned, even while she called herself an explorer. And he was the hypocrite?

The shaking of the ship lessened slightly, at least enough so that they could walk with relative ease. He moved away from the console and walked over to her. She was working quickly to pretty much "nail down" every bulkhead in the ship, paying special care to Engineering and the things contained therein. She glanced at him, and shied away slightly when she realized he was right at her shoulder.

He was reminded of another time, when she had been clad in nothing but a bath towel, gesturing frantically for him to turn the light on the trees. They had seen the small primate the first time then . . . but he had been too distracted by one bare, pale shoulder to even really notice when the creature had left. And she'd seen him looking at her like that, and shied away accordingly, fighting to hold the towel higher. Her "knots getting knots" and the first time he had ever touched her in any way but to get her attention . . . and . . . damn! . . . Kathryn in her nightgown on the holodeck with the full moon directly behind her. . . .

"Chakotay?" she said, staring back at him. "Something wrong?"

"New Earth," he replied truthfully. "And the holodeck." Why lie?

She flushed slightly, frowning at him. "There was nothing wrong with New Earth," she muttered, looking back down at her work.

"Do you ever wish we could have stayed there?" he asked quietly, staring ahead at the view screen as Voyager shook beneath them.

"It's probably disloyal . . . but yes, I do. I wanted to try those tomatoes," she added a little petulantly.

"Kathryn Janeway, gardener extra-ordinaire," he said with a chuckle.

She grinned. "Well, it beat moping about my wrecked equipment."

He sighed. "I never got to build you that boat."

"Well there was the holodeck-"

"I know, but it wasn't the same. You wanted to explore the river."

She turned, reaching up to put a gentle hand on his face. When had she stopped doing that? Started doing that? It killed him every time. She smiled sadly at him. "That's hardly something to feel bad over. I like space better, even if it does give me hell every so often."

It was all he could do not to turn his head and kiss her hand. Instead he took it in his own and held it, marvelling not for the first time at how small it was. This hard-assed, death glaring Star Fleeter was so small. That was part of the reason he had such a compulsion to protect her.

She sighed, drawing her hand away from his, and turning back to look at the screen. The bridge still shook. He had forgotten about that for a moment. He wanted desperately to beg her to take the chance . . . but refrained. She wouldn't want him to.

"That plasma seems to be doing its job. No one's decided to come have a look anyhow. I think those clouds are even serving as a buffer for the ship. We'd be getting a lot more trouble out of this without it."

He smiled. "A good place to hide then."

Voyager's shaking began to intensify again, and both of them put steadying hands on the console. She made a wry face. "On the other hand, it may not be helping that much. The anomaly's moving up through deck thirteen now. I hope the warp core can take it."

"The computer hasn't complained yet. That's always a good sign."

She moved past him, using the console as support.

"Where are you going?" he asked, watching her stumble.

"To sit in my chair," she replied primly. She stumbled as she said it, which made him laugh. That's what she got for playing pompous. "I'm a hard-assed Star Fleeter, after all. I should be where I belong. If it wasn't so hard to walk in here, I'd go into the ready room for a coffee too." She frowned slightly. "I think I may have 'fielded that bulkhead. Damn."

He grinned maliciously. "Aha! How to keep the Captain away from her replicator!"

"You had damn well better forget about that, mister. That'll earn you a stay in the brig for mutiny, or at least a sound beating."

"Last time I checked, Star Fleet prohibited corporal punishment."

She moved awkwardly to the lower part of the bridge, gripping the rail as before. "Yes, but they don't have to know about it, do they? Never come between me and my coffee."

"It looks like you came between you before I could," he retorted, holding onto the shaking Ops console.

She made a face at him. "Don't get smart with me. That happened for as good reason."

The console beeped, and Chakotay looked down. A slow grin formed on his face. "Kathryn, you were worrying about nothing. You do that a lot."

"Pardon me? What do you mean?"

"Life signs on the lower decks!" he declaimed, stabbing a finger at the reading. "Human . . . and here we go, Klingon, Vulcan, Bajoran, Bolian. Engineering's out of it."

She grinned. "What's their condition?"

"Stationary. They aren't moving at all, like the rest of the ship. They're alive though."

She laughed triumphantly, clapping her hands together once, and then snatching at the rail when the movement unbalanced her. "That is more like it! You were right, Chakotay. I think they only had to catch up with us, even though they haven't yet. When the anomaly passes through the bridge, we should be put back in the right time. That's some of the weight off our shoulders." She sat heavily in her chair, sighing loudly.

"Let's just hope the hull doesn't breach," he muttered. "The warp core is all right. The anomaly passed right through it."

"Good," she said in a clipped tone. "I don't think this shaking is going to let up any time soon. It's annoying, and I'm starting to get a bit dizzy."

"We'll probably feel this for about a week after it's done," he said, moving around the console and taking an unsteady step towards the railing. "At least the anomaly isn't really pulling the ship with it, or we'd be in trouble."

"Maybe it would take us home," she grumbled, crossing her arms about herself. "Ha! Wouldn't that be ironic? We end up home in pieces!"

"You're getting morose now, Kathryn," he said, a warning tone in his voice as he walked along the railing. "This will let up. We'll probably have micro-factures and things like that to take care of, but that's nothing."

She was looking away from him, intent on the screen. "They're red," she stated.

He was finally seated in his chair, looking across at her quizzically. "What're red?"

She gestured at the view screen, her hand shaking in tandem with the ship. "The aurora. It's red now . . . or pink, I guess. Whatever."

He looked. The pole of the chlorine planet was awash with deep pink and white light that swirled slowly over the darkened hemisphere. It reminded him of opal, with blue-gray cloud lit slightly by the atmospheric reactions and red, white and some green shimmering across it.

"Hmm, that's something," Kathryn stated. "I think later I'll make a holodeck program and see that from the right side . . . minus the hostile atmosphere. Would you like to join me for that?"

"Certainly. That would be nice."

"Maybe we could have dinner on the holodeck," she mused. "I always liked that."

"We'll do that then," he agreed, smiling. "When the ship stops shaking."

"When the ship stops shaking," she echoed with a nod, "and when the crew is back."

Well, at least she wasn't going to try to study it, which was hardly beyond her. She was scientifically curious to a fault, and he had a feeling she'd be tracking their little anomaly as long as she could.

He sympathized with her professed dizziness -the ship's constant shuddering was beginning to bother him more than a little, giving him slight vertigo even when he sat down and it was hard to look at anything for long. It was better than being flung around like they were sometimes, anyhow.

It turned out to be one of those moments that fate wanted to impose irony on him. The ship almost seemed to make a short leap forward, causing Kathryn to be unseated and fall unceremoniously to the floor.

Not really thinking about how he was likely to fall also, he rose from his seat and extended his hand to her as she attempted to rise. Another shock hit, and she fell almost straight into him as she got onto her feet, nearly knock them both back down.

He could tell she wanted to pull away, but the floor was a little too unstable for that, so she merely held onto his arms sheepishly as he kept them from falling by bracing himself against the command console. Suddenly she laughed, almost giggled.

"We are a pair!" she said mirthfully. "It's like the blind leading the blind, though in our case it's unsteady holding up unsteadier . . . if that's even a word. I don't think it is. I think with another good jolt we'll both end up on our behinds."

He used his free arm to pull her a little closer to him. Almost immediately he was thankful he had, because the ship jumped again. Not that he really wanted to let go of her, he moved her with a steadying arm towards her seat as the ship shook.

"This time try to stay in-" he began.

It seemed almost as if the ship was flung on an angle. He was holding onto the console, and was able to keep from falling . . . but she went flying straight past her chair before he could grab her again, and hit her head with a sickening sound on the railing beyond. She cried out once, and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

His heart was in his mouth and in his shoes all at once, and he scrambled precariously over to her, thwarting the ship's shuddering in his blind concern. She appeared to be unconscious, or almost so, and there was a deep gash across her forehead which began to ooze deep red blood. He gathered her into his arms and held one hand to the cut, hoping to stay the bleeding until he could get the medkit.

"Kathryn!" he said desperately, trying to wake her. "Kathryn!"

She groaned, trying to lift a hand to her forehead. She groaned again, opening her eyes to look blearily up at him. "I think I hit my head," she said thickly.

The ship rocked again, and he clutched her to him. "You did," he managed, "and you're bleeding. I have to get the medkit out." He placed her in a sitting position against the rail and the raised portion of the floor, looping one of her nerveless arms around it for her.

"There's blood on your hand," she mumbled, reaching her hand out first for his and then to her forehead. "Blood in my eyes . . ."

"Try to stay seated, Kathryn, and stay awake."

"My head hurts too much to fall asleep. What about the anomaly?"

He moved backwards slightly, reaching for the compartment behind the console. "To hell with the anomaly," he said, blindly grabbing for the medkit, and pulling it out in short order. He crawled back over to her and opened it, pulling out the gauze pads, the small dermal regenerator and the hypospray that contained the painkiller. Perhaps with that she would stay lucid until the anomaly was gone and he could find the Doctor. He pressed the gauze to her head and fumbled for the regenerator.

The ship shook a little harder.

She gasped at the pressure on her wound, but submitted without comment, watching him with glassy eyes. She was concussed. He had done enough boxing to recognize it by sight only. He couldn't let her fall asleep, especially not with a bleeding head wound.

She frowned slightly, raising a hand to fend him off. "I'm all right, Chakotay. Check on the sensor readings and see if the anomaly is still moving."

"That is the least of my worries. Hold still." He took her chin in his hand, turning her head slightly so her could run the dermal regenerator over the cut. It was too deep to heal completely, almost to the skull, and bled profusely. She could faint from the blood loss if he didn't at least close part of it.

"Go check it," she commanded, jerking her chin away.

"Hold still," he countered. "Here." He pressed the hypospray to her neck. "Does that help?"

"Yes," she said, her eyelids drooped. "This is going to be a hell of a headache."

"Stay awake, Kathryn," he said, running the dermal regenerator over her wound again. "You have a concussion, you have to stay awake until we can get the Doctor's help."

Her head lolled to one side, and she looked at him with yet-glassier eyes. "Easier said than done, Chakotay."

***

Chapter Seven

She knew that she couldn't fall asleep, and at least the incessant shuddering of the ship was helping somewhat, but the pain in her head was that somnolent kind that makes one want to close one's eyes and sleep. It was one of the many impractical bodily responses to blows to the head. The last thing she needed was a nap.

Despite that, it was hard. Her head throbbed and her eyelids were leaden. Whatever painkiller Chakotay had given her was either not strong enough, or it was wearing off already. The only other medication in the medkit was a true analgesic, and would put her to sleep faster than anything else.

He had managed to close her cut somewhat, or so he said. The bandage around her head was getting damp, she could tell, from both her cold sweat and the blood that still escaped the wound. She had to give him due credit though, he was hardly a doctor, and at least he wasn't panicking. Not that she expected him to. He was almost always calm, and usually trying to mediate her when she got too worked up.

After he had patched her up, he had finally gone to check the sensor readings . . . under slight duress because she would not leave him alone about it. The little leaps they had experienced were a result of a similar set of movements by the anomaly, the bottom edge of which was now somewhere between decks nine and ten. It was making faster progress than she had expected.

Reinforcing the structural integrity fields and forcefielding the delicate parts of the ship proved to be more than useful. The higher decks were faring far better than fifteen and fourteen, which were still experiencing structural stress. Life signs continued to appear on the lower decks as well, all alive and well, but not moving. She hoped when the anomaly passed out of the bridge, it would leave them in the normal time line.

She had moved -well had been moved- to the command chair, and sat in it rather listlessly, most of her energy going into staying in the seat and none going to sitting straight. Her lethargy was getting to her, and sapping her strength. Damn the bulkhead 'fields, she needed coffee. She blinked slowly, fighting to not just let her eyes stay closed.

"Stay awake, Kathryn," Chakotay said firmly from one side, where he was reading the command console.

She attempted to straighten her posture. "I am. I am. Any change?"

He shook his head. "Not really. It's still moving up though."

"Good," she grunted. "I won't have to do this for too much longer then. I've functioned with a concussion before. I can do it this time," she said staunchly, as much for her own benefit as for his. She wasn't quite convinced herself.

He smiled a little, not looking up. "I'm sure you can."

Well, he was convinced. It didn't take much to win his confidence, that was for sure. Such faith. He was crazy.

She squinted her eyes shut painfully. "Thanks. Ugh, I feel like I would if B'Elanna ever got to me with a spanner. I am not going to relish having to wrangle with her again."

"It's better that never having to," he replied.

"Yes, but I'll be thankful when that baby is born. At that point she'll be too distracted to cause trouble. She'll make a great mother, but she is not meant for the childbearing part of it."

He chuckled. "And if the look in Tom's eyes when he talks about baby names is any indication, he'll be too distracted to even fly the ship in a straight line."

"Poor Tom. I think his nerves aren't what they used to be," she said sagely.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing. He could use a little rattling. It'd be good for him."

"You have to have some sympathy for him."

"I do, but he's still too sure of himself."

"Oh, well," she sighed tiredly. "That's just the way he is. It's hard to imagine him any other way . . . just like it's hard to imagine B'Elanna being completely agreeable to everything." Her eyelids drooped. God, she was tired. . . .

"Stay awake," he said almost immediately.

"I am," she replied in a fatigued tone.

Voyager still rattled, but it didn't seem as bad as it had been. Maybe the unmoving decks below were ameliorating the effects of the moving anomaly, sort of like an anchor.

It was like having five headaches at once . . . like the time those aliens had experimented on the crew and had chosen to drive a few metal rods into her skull . . . but that time it didn't make her sleepy, it only made her mad. And she knew she couldn't sleep, not now. She'd go into a coma or something, and probably give Chakotay a heart attack while she was at it. She didn't want to wake up in Sickbay and see that forlorn look on his face that he wore every time something was remotely wrong with her. Poor Chakotay. Why did he saddle himself with her?

You know why.

Damned inner voice. She had one too many of those.

And it wasn't like she never felt the need to hover around in Sickbay when he was hurt or ill or anything . . . she did it to the point where the Doctor forbid her to set foot in the operating area, especially when Chakotay was the person occupying the surgical bed. Now did that mean something? That gripping fear she always felt when he was the least bit at risk, her mind scrambling to find what it was she wanted to say. . . .

She put a hand to her bandaged forehead. A headache upon headaches.

Damned ship, why wouldn't it stop shaking? She could hear the bulkhead panels rattling in their slotted places. What isolinear systems the ship had were probably being shaken all to hell as well. They could fix it, she supposed, they always did. B'Elanna not only babied the warp core, she babied the entire ship . . . That was it. B'Elanna was in charge of the ship, and she was in charge of the crew . . . and Chakotay, he was-

He was shaking her, the idiot. And she was just starting to feel better. No! She was just starting to fall asleep! She was the idiot, and that's what she got for letting her mind wander. She pushed at Chakotay's hands where they gripped her shoulders.

"All right, all right! I'm awake," she said forcefully, almost trying to command herself to live up to the statement.

"Are you sure?" he demanded, his voice close. He was right in front of her, one knee bent and his hands still holding her shoulders. She nearly laughed. If it wasn't for that, she'd probably fall out of her seat. Oh, God, the headache. . . .

"No, I'm not sure," she groaned. He would know if she was lying anyhow, damn him.

He stared at her, the intense look in his eyes making her blink in slight bemusement. Next time, she would avoid blows to the head. He looked frightened. "You have to stay awake, Kathryn, and you know I'm not going to let you sleep."

She squinted her eyes shut, feeling her head falling forward. She couldn't help it, her muscles wouldn't work. "I know, I wish I could say the same for me. It's hard to concentrate, Chakotay." She was mumbling. "Hard to talk, I just need to rest for a second-"

"Oh, no, you don't," he said, pushing her upright, and grasping her chin in order to make her look at him. "Stay awake . . . damn, I never thought I'd be wishing that there was more caffeine in your system."

She giggled slightly. "Me neither. I'm feeling a little light-headed too."

"I noticed. It's probably the blood loss and the blow."

She nodded. "Mmm-hmm, and the shaking ship. I was already dizzy before this."

He was still there in front of her, only now he was holding her hands instead of her shoulders. Poor Chakotay. It was probably hard to deal with a concussed Captain. She'd return the favour some day. They already owed their lives to each other several times over, what could one more hurt? She smiled at him wearily.

"I'm sorry," she stated. "I'm so much trouble."

"Don't be sorry. It's my fault you hit your head. I should have held onto you a little longer."

Ah, irony. She laughed. "I'm sure you wouldn't have minded that."

He frowned, shaking his head. "Kathryn, I-"

She put her hand over his mouth. That was one way to shut him up anyhow. "That's all right, Chakotay. No need to try to excuse it. I know how it is. Did you know that I wanted to climb back into the bed for a moment this morning?"

He turned his head so he could speak. "Kathryn, you shouldn't be saying things like that when you're not fully-"

"Defending me from me, huh? And what? You don't want to hear that?"

"I didn't say-"

"Then don't," she said decisively. "And I'll shut up too, since you think I should. A hit on the head doesn't change the facts, Chakotay, and I am in full possession of my faculties."

"You are not, you're nearly unconscious."

"So? My unconscious could say a few things too, and you would be half so calm if it did. And it's not your fault that I hit my head. It's the anomaly's fault for shaking my ship to pieces. No, our ship, I suppose . . . or B'Elanna's ship. That was what I was thinking about when I was going to fall asleep. She has a strange relationship with that warp core . . . it's almost like she practices being a mother with it. It's sort of funny."

"It is, but you concentrate on staying awake," he said, rising unsteadily to his feet.

She shifted slightly in her chair. "I think I'll concentrate on not falling out of my chair."

"That too."

She groaned. "I don't have the energy. Remind me never to get a concussion again."

"No problem, just stay awake for this one."

"I'll see what I can do."

He was a pest sometimes, but now was one of those instances where his implacability would come in handy. She wasn't going to last long if he stopped nagging her to stay awake. His expression was so worried . . . even when he was trying to stop her from saying things she probably shouldn't. He did that so often . . . Chakotay was always protecting her . . . even from herself. He was so good. She loved that man, she honestly did. . . .

She shook herself, the fleeting thoughts leaving her. She was going to fall asleep, and where would that leave either of them? He wouldn't have a heart attack, he'd have an aneurism and she'd have to wake up and deal with that. She needed the Doctor. It was hard to think, hard to hold any thought in her mind.

"Chakotay, where's the anomaly?" she mumbled, looking over at him.

"Deck five."

"Wow. I think I lost some time there when I was off mentally exploring space. When did it get all the way to deck five?"

"When you were staring off into space," he replied quickly, smiling slightly.

"Huh. This has more going for it that I thought." She looked around, having trouble focussing on anything. "Has the ship stopped shaking?"

"For now. I think the lower decks are buffering us."

"That's what I thought. Are you sure you aren't telepathic or something?"

"I'm relatively sure, yes, though I'm not an authority on the subject."

She shot him a cross look. "I don't care for your tone."

"Congratulations."

"Pardon me?"

"You're always alert when you argue, so I might as well try that."

She looked at him for several moments silently, trying to direct her attention away from the steadily increasing pain that radiated for her forehead inward. Chakotay knew her too well. When had he learned so much? That was an obtuse question. They'd commanded the ship together for seven years, and he'd certainly made enough of an effort to know her.

He didn't know that much. He didn't know how many times she had contemplated the locks on the holodeck, wondering at what they would enable her to do if she were so bold . . . how so very often she contemplated the locks on the ready room, as well. What was it about the ready room? They spent too much time in there, far too much time sitting close together on that couch talking about this and that until they were forced to break whatever it was that slowly formed between them. It was that familiar tension that made her fidget in whatever chair she happened to be sitting in at the time. Captain Kathryn Janeway did not fidget.

She slowly came to rest her chin wearily on her fist, gazing at the opalescent planet displayed on the view screen. They just had to wait here for that anomaly to pass through deck one and out of the ship, and see what happened.

"When that anomaly hits us, we should probably stand up in the middle of the bridge," she muttered.

He frowned questioningly. "Why?"

"Well, when Tuvok shows up, he'll probably be sitting in this chair. It wouldn't work to try and occupy the same point in space as anyone. The middle of the bridge is usually clear."

"You might be right," he said, looking around at the empty bridge. "At least we'll be able to. The shaking has stopped."

"Hmm," came an affirmative sound that she had no recollection of wanting to utter. "It still feels like it's shaking a little doesn't it?"

"I told you we'd still feel it afterward."

"Yes, you did."

The command console beeped. "The anomaly's in deck three and still rising, the Doctor's mobile emitter and comm signal are on the sensors now."

She sighed, a little pained, letting her eyes close slightly. "That's good."

"Stay awake."

"I am. Leave me alone."

"No."

She sighed again. He was so persistent. That was probably a good thing, since if he wasn't, he'd have probably given up and left her long ago for more tractable company.

Hard-assed Star Fleeter. Maybe he had the right of it.

"Chakotay," she said, "did you know that you're absolutely crazy?"

He laughed fondly. "Many people have said so before you, so I suppose I do."

"No, I mean it. I have no idea what to make of you sometimes."

"The feeling is mutual."

She smiled softly. "Oh, you know me pretty well, I think."

"You still confuse me at every turn."

"I'm sorry."

He shook his head at her. "Don't be. I like you that way. Keeps me on my toes."

"Chakotay, you don't suppose Tom will leave this alone, do you?"

He looked slightly startled. "No, I doubt it."

"The problem . . . is that there's some truth to all his speculation, isn't there?"

He'd have choked if there was something to choke on, she was sure. Instead he cleared his throat uncomfortably, his already dark complexion turning slightly darker in embarrassment. Strange man. He wanted to talk . . . yet he didn't? She supposed she was the same way though . . .

"I don't know, Kathryn . . ."

"Oh, you do so. Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"Hardly."

"Do you think I'm immune to everything? Do you think I'm made of stone? You know full well what your little looks can do to a woman, Commander. You use them often enough. I am not insusceptible, no matter how much effort I put into getting around it."

He grimaced. "Kathryn, you really shouldn't- Not until the Doctor-"

"Ludicrous man," she muttered sourly. "This has nothing to do with my concussion. You're just uncomfortable. This is probably the best time to air all our angst anyhow, before Tom reappears and starts poking into everything again. Like I said, you're crazy."

"I must be," he said, staring at her. "I'm wondering if it isn't me who got hit on the head."

"You did. Before, remember? Perhaps both our brains have been rattled."

He glanced at the command console again, and sighed. "Deck two," he reported.

"May as well stand up now," she said, putting her hands on the arms of the chair, ready to push herself up.

"Let me help you," Chakotay said, rising swiftly to help her get out of the chair.

She accepted his assistance silently, allowing him to put a hand under her arm as she rose stiffly from the seat. She was immediately assaulted by such vertigo that she had to cling to that supporting arm for dear life. Perhaps standing wasn't such a good idea after all. Wavering, she felt stomach do a strange flip flop, whether from the dizziness, Chakotay's arm that was suddenly around her waist, or both, she didn't know.

"Are you all right, Kathryn?" Chakotay asked with his usual concern.

She patted his shoulder reassuringly with a free hand, but shook her head. "Not really." She closed her eyes painfully, and let her head rest against his chest as she tried to collect her wits. "Sorry, Chakotay."

"That's okay, just don't fall asleep."

She smiled, not opening her eyes as she felt his arms go around her. "But it's such a good place," she murmured, still holding on to one of his shoulders.

She felt his arms tighten slightly.

"Ah-ah," she cautioned in a tired voice. "Don't get too comfortable. As soon as this damn anomaly passes through, I'm going to Sickbay where the Doctor can put me under observation and let me sleep."

"I never thought I'd hear of you going to Sickbay willingly," he said.

"Well, there's a first time for everything. Isn't there?"

She felt him rest his chin in her hair. The last time he had done that . . . had been on New Earth. It had partly been her fault of course, that little moment and the awkward one thereafter, when they both realized what was happening. Sort of like the regular ready room problems, only a little more acute. And what had stopped them then? They were more alone at that point than they would ever be again, including now. They feared they'd lose what they had.

At the moment her skull was pounding too much to really think too hard about all of it, but her current location was more than enough to set her mind wandering. Locks on the doors indeed. Why even bother? The crew would know quickly enough . . . some jaws would hit the floor, not a few eyebrows would hit the roof, and Tom Paris would be grinning like an idiot throughout as he collected all the rations he won in his betting pools. Damn those pools.

She became aware after a moment that the hand that had previously been on Chakotay's shoulder had wandered a bit, and she was now tracing his tattoo with her fingers while she looked up at him in bemusement. He merely looked slightly astounded.

And then something seemed to rush up at them from the floor, and her world went blissfully black.

***

Chapter Eight

From the smell of things, he was in Sickbay. The place always smelled of antiseptic, which though slightly acrid, was what a medical facility should smell like, after all. He'd been woken by a sharp hiss right below his ear, or rather by what that hypospray had injected into him. He was loath to open his eyes, since even with them closed he could tell that the room was garishly bright, and his head hurt like hell. The Doctor even now had no appreciation for the occasional sensitivity of his patients' eyes.

Someone was holding his hand, and he could tell from the slight calluses that it was B'Elanna. She disliked Sickbay, and usually only turned up there under duress. Something was wrong. She would only be there if she was worried about something.

From the low beeping sounds of a tricorder coming from the other side, the person there was the Doctor. He opened his eyes experimentally, and immediately squinted them shut again as the harsh Sickbay lights stabbed at his eyes.

"Turn the lights down!" he heard B'Elanna snap.

"Computer, reduce lighting by fifty percent," came the Doctor's pithy rejoinder.

That was much more bearable, and he opened his eyes slowly, seeing both of them staring down at him as his eyes focussed. His head was pounding, and his mind was clouded with sleep. He imagined that was how Kathryn felt.

Kathryn.

He attempted to sit up. "Where's the Captain?" he demanded. He only succeeded in getting up on his elbows before he was pushed back down by two pairs of hands.

"Slow down, Chakotay," B'Elanna said gently. "She's all right."

"Ugh," he replied, feeling only a little more relieved. He closed his eyes painfully, and then turned his head to look at the Doctor. "What happened?"

"You dropped out of thin air onto the bridge, as I understand it," the Doctor replied, waving his scanner around once again.

"I think you even managed to shock Tuvok," B'Elanna said from his other side, "and you nearly gave the rest of us heart attacks. What the hell happened?"

He ground his teeth against the throbbing pain in his skull. "What happened to the Captain? She hit her head."

"So I noticed," the Doctor said curtly. "It was quite a blow. I was able to stabilize her though and close the wound, however both of your brains had for some reason been deprived of oxygen and blood for quite some time. You've been down for two days recovering. I haven't yet found an explanation for that."

"The anomaly must have bisected us. Our hearts and lungs were thrown out of sync with our brains, I guess. All I remember is that damned anomaly rushing up at us from the floor. Are you sure Kathryn's all right?" he demanded again.

"Anomaly?" B'Elanna cut in curiously. "What anomaly?"

"Will you give me a painkiller?" he asked plaintively. "The temporal anomaly that the ship encountered. It jumped right on top of us, throwing the ship, the Captain and me into a faster time line. When it moved off, I guess we slowed to normal time. Ha, Kathryn was worrying about nothing." The Doctor helpfully applied another hypospray to his neck and his headache immediately abated.

B'Elanna showed slight comprehension. "Well that explains a few things."

"Like what?"

"Well, that night the ship gave this little shake . . . and then suddenly we were at full stop behind a moon, every dinner in the Mess Hall had disappeared, there were structural problems on the lower decks, and every loose object on the ship was forcefielded down so solidly that everyone was stuck standing wherever they were until Tuvok got the computer to turn it all off. And then you two dropped in, unconscious. If you were working that much faster than we were, it accounts for some of that. We've been trying to figure that out for the whole two days you've been recovering."

For a man who had been sleeping for two days, he didn't feel very rested. He wanted to sit up and see Kathryn, wherever she was. Undoubtedly on that damn bed on the surgical bay. Even when he knew she was all right, seeing her occupying it made him panic . . . like it was inherently wrong that she should ever have to be there. It was his job to keep her out of it.

"Why are you here, B'Elanna?" he asked after a moment. "You never come here unless you're worried."

She glanced at the Doctor, and then at him sheepishly. "We've been on vigil . . . and it's my turn. You gave us quite a scare. You both nearly had brain failure for a while . . . we . . . we almost lost the Captain."

That did it.

He shot up from the bed and succeeded in evading both of their efforts to force him back as he made a blind push for the surgical bay.

He stopped dead at the end of the bed, gripping the console with white-knuckled hands as his knees nearly gave out. Kathryn lay there, pale as death with at least four separate monitors attached to her forehead, temples and neck. It was his job to make sure things like this never happened to her. She could be in a coma for the rest of her life, have brain damage . . . she could still die there. Unwillingly, he let out a sob.

Two strong arms embraced him, and B'Elanna put her head on his shoulder, trying to console him. "I didn't lie," she murmured softly. "I said she'll be all right, and she will. She just needs to rest."

He hung his head, grinding his teeth together. "This is my fault," he said. "I should have held onto her until the ship stopped shaking instead of making her go back . . . I should have held on . . ."

"Shut up," she said in her usual brusque fashion. She was like that, even when trying to comfort people. "Shut up, Chakotay. It is not your fault. And she'll be all right."

"That shouldn't even be in question!" he exclaimed, breaking away from her.

B'Elanna merely looked at him carefully, resting her hands on her pregnant belly and watching him rather sorrowfully. "What happened, Chakotay? What did you say? What did she say?"

"What did she say? Spirits, B'Elanna! She doesn't have to say anything!"

"Calm down, Commander," the Doctor insisted, approaching him. "You're still not fully recovered from this. Don't strain yourself."

"Easy for you to say," he muttered, though he did make an effort to compose himself. "What really happened to her, Doctor?"

The Doctor shrugged. "The same thing that happened to you, only doubled with a bad concussion. You have my assurances that she'd suffered nothing permanent. She only needs more rest. She's exhausted. Did she even sleep while you were in that anomaly?"

He made a face. Did she sleep? Oh yes, she had slept, and she woke up looking at him with the sort of expression he'd only ever dreamed of seeing on her face. "Yes, she got some rest, I think, but that's not enough to make up for all the stress we were under. We didn't even know if you would all reappear again and for a while it looked like the ship was going to shake itself apart. And she had a concussion."

"What about you?"

Him? Now he had probably gotten less rest than she . . . he'd been awake at odd intervals during that night, trying to force himself to calm down and detach himself from the sensation of having Kathryn curled against him for the whole night. He nearly hadn't succeeded. A cold shower would have done him immense good at that juncture. He shrugged. "A little. Not much. It doesn't matter. When are you going to wake her up?"

"I could right now . . . but it's probably best to let her have a few hours of natural sleep first, which I'm letting her right now. That's part of the reason why you need to calm down. You'll wake her up."

His roiling thoughts calmed somewhat, and he looked guiltily over at the pale woman sleeping just beyond. Natural sleep. That meant something, didn't it? He wondered if she was dreaming. "All right. What am I supposed to do now? I need a shower . . ."

"You will stay here until I'm satisfied with your brain wave readings," the Doctor replied in a clipped tone. "And I'll thank you not to disturb my other patient."

"She could probably use a little disturbing," B'Elanna muttered sourly.

For her troubles, she got two glares.

The Doctor retreated into his office, leaving them to stand beside the surgical bed, Chakotay watching its occupant, and B'Elanna watching him. She glanced at the Captain, who slept on.

"She snores," she said with slight amusement.

"Only when she sleeps on her back, and sometimes not even then," he replied quietly, his attention only barely divided.

"How do you know that?" B'Elanna demanded suspiciously.

"She falls asleep in the ready room a lot," he replied, oblivious to what her tone implied.

"Ah, I see," his longtime friend replied ambiguously. She frowned slightly at him, sighing. She contemplated him like that for several moments, then let out a breath. "You love her a lot, don't you?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied without hesitation.

"Why don't you tell her?"

"She knows."

He knew that she knew . . . Kathryn tended to avoid it at all costs, except for that one strange moment on the bridge when her concussed psyche had gotten away with her vocal cords. She never fully told him her side of it. He didn't really know how she felt . . . except for that ever present saccharine tension between them. Chakotay knew she felt that. But was that it for her? Was that why she stayed away, because it meant nothing else?

B'Elanna turned her strange expression on the woman in question, her hands coming to rest on her hips in typical B'Elanna Torres fashion. She sniffed. "Maybe she's the one who needs some sense knocked into her."

"Leave it alone," he said. "She only gets stubborn when you push her, and I don't need her railing at me when she thinks I'm putting you up to things."

"Nobody puts me up to anything," she objected. "Your persistence amazes me sometimes, Chakotay. It amazes all of us."

"Many have lost in the betting pool already, huh? The one concerning how long I would last at this before I gave up?"

She grimaced. "How do you know about that?"

"I'm not as blind as you think I am . . . and your husband can't keep a secret to save his life. He's never come right out with it, but we know what he's up to when he holds his little parties on the holodeck, and why everyone suddenly clams up when we arrive."

"And you nearly always arrive together," she murmured.

"We work the same shifts, B'Elanna."

"And you, this ship's whole Personnel Department embodied, has nothing to do with that?"

"The Captain and First Officer usually work together, B'Elanna," he reminded her.

She snorted indelicately. "Oh yeah, like you couldn't stagger the shifts and have a senior officer awake for every shift. Harry may basically be senior staff, but he's not cut out for the graveyard shift. You're so transparent."

"So are you, B'Elanna, so are you."

The door behind them opened to admit a tired-looking Tom Paris who grinned at them wanly as they turned towards him.

"Aha," he said softly, "Sleeping Beauty number one is awake. Come on B'Elanna, your turn's over, and you need a rest. You've been in here all day . . . I heard you pretty much fought Harry off at phaser-point when he came to relieve you."

She looked at him skeptically. "You're the one who needs a rest. I'm fine."

He chose that unfortunate moment to yawn. "That may be true, but I've only got me to worry about." He looked pointedly at her expanded waistline.

"Well it's your fault," she muttered as she passed him.

He gave a bark of laughter. "Oh yeah! Like I broke my own bones!"

Chakotay just shook his head at them and turned back towards the Captain as B'Elanna left the Sickbay. Tom came to stand beside him, watching the Captain sleep as well. For once, his expression was solemn. He made a slight face that Chakotay couldn't categorize.

"She'll be all right, Chakotay," he said. "You can take my word for it, I hope."

He nodded slightly. Tom, famous for his flippant attitudes, could also be credited with a surprising amount of levelheadedness when it all came down to it. He worked well under pressure, unlike some people. Tom would not make light of the Captain's condition, not now. However later, in hindsight, Chakotay was sure the pilot would come up with something brash to say about it all. But not now. For now, he'd only make fun of things that did not matter.

"B'Elanna was very worried about you," Tom continued after a moment. "It's good to see you awake, Big Guy."

"I'm not sure if it's good to be awake," he said under his breath.

"Don't worry about her, Chakotay. She's all right. Hell, she's indestructible! You should know that by now."

Chakotay looked at the younger man. "You're worrying about her."

Tom rolled his eyes. "Of course I am! I'm the one who hauled her in here when her brain started failing. The difference is that you have guilt. I'm an insensitive idiot and I can see that. What happened, Chakotay?"

"Temporal anomaly."

"Uh-huh, and what else? Did you say something to her? Did she say something to you?"

Chakotay rounded on the pilot, glaring. "Why do you always ask that?! Like it's any of your business what the hell happened or didn't happen!"

Tom made silencing motions with his hand, glancing over at their prone captain. "Shh! You'll wake her up! And it's our business because we're the ones who're going to have to coax you both down from whatever frosty, uncomfortable attitude you're working yourself into. And she'll wake up and feel the same way and you'll both start freezing the bridge for a week. Whatever happened to her, it's not your fault."

"You should stay out of it! All of you," Chakotay said in dangerous tones. It was none of their business! None of it! Not New Earth, not the ready room, not the anomaly, none of it! Why wouldn't they stop and just let them work it out themselves? He had seen this coming. He knew Tom and B'Elanna wouldn't stay out of it.

"Well it's damn hard not to notice, Chakotay. You both might as well be screaming it at the top of your lungs. And I hardly blame you. She owns every room she walks into, and everyone in it, without even trying. Even when she's unconscious, she owns the whole goddamn ship just by being here. The difference is, the rest of us can ignore it sometimes, you on the other hand, never can. That is what everyone on this ship knows, Chakotay. Especially me."

"Why especially you?" he grated.

Tom shot him a long-suffering look. "You're denser than I thought. I told you she owns everything she looks at, didn't I?"

"Lieutenant you are-"

Tom finished it for him. "-out of line and married. I know. Do you want to know why I'm married? Because B'Elanna makes me forget about Kathryn Janeway's crooked grin and all the interesting ways she finds to walk over to the ready room. That's the end of it. That's the line. Now I'm going to shut up before she wakes up and kills us because of it. You should do the same."

Chakotay fumed. Tom Paris was more than out of line. Did B'Elanna know the gist of what had just passed there? Did Kathryn? Spirits, everything got more complicated by the second.

Tom looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "Go sit down before you pass out."

Chakotay was not in an obliging mood, and stood stonily in his place, fighting the urge to deck the wayward pilot standing beside him watching the exact same woman as he. He was feeling belligerent. He usually tried to avoid that. The real problem was that he felt possessive over something that he did not possess.

Damn that anomaly! Damn it to every hell ever conceived by sentient minds! It was changing too many things too fast. Kathryn making more admissions in an hour than she had in her entire life, even unintentionally, and then B'Elanna and Tom picking away at the whole thing relentlessly and Paris . . . Damn him!

Damn him mostly because he was right.

Kathryn owned him. Owned his soul in the profound way possible.

That was why he never gave up on her, and always stood by hoping that some day . . .

Kathryn stirred on the bed, frowning slightly in her sleep. The headache must have been terrible, even in sleep. Needless to say, he was surprised when she cracked one eye open and looked at them.

Tom turned around beckoning to the Doctor. "I thought you said she was going to stay asleep for another few hours," the pilot said in a low voice as the hologram approached.

"Not with you two having an argument right over my head," she said in tired, acid tones from where she lay. "What was that all about?"

"Nothing," the both replied at once.

"But it was worth arguing over?" she asked, squinting against even the dimmed lights in the Sickbay. "Oh, God, my head . . ."

"Your head indeed," the Doctor muttered as he pressed a hypospray to her neck. "I'm amazed at how much abuse a human brain can take sometimes.

She groaned slightly, letting her head fall back on the pillow. "Chakotay . . . ?"

"Yes?" he asked.

She closed her eyes wearily. "Just making sure you were there." Then came one of those saccharine moments that he revelled in even when he hated it. She sighed, breaking the uneasy silence. "Now what the hell happened? How's the ship? Where did that anomaly go?"

"The ship's fine, and who gives a damn about the anomaly?" Chakotay asked.

"I do. I want to make sure that damned thing doesn't drop on me again."

"It won't."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

"I think it's out of the picture," Tom supplied helpfully. "I don't think the sensors have picked up anything besides a whole lot of solar plasma. Why the hell were we there anyhow? The ship moved so fast I nearly fell out of my seat."

"Well, we didn't want anyone getting curious about the possibilities of a ship with only two people on it. That was before we figured out that we were going to fast for everyone."

"Ah, I see. Well, vigil's over I guess! Time to spread the good word!" And with that the pilot left. What exact "word" he was going to spread was still in question.

Chakotay approached the bedside, and Kathryn immediately held her hand out. After a slight hesitation, he took it. She squeezed his fingers, closing her eyes again.

"Well that was interesting," she murmured.

"To say the least."

"Still with me for that holodeck thing?"

"Of course."

"All right then. Now if you two gentlemen don't mind, I want my uniform," she commanded, looking down at the Sickbay gown she was wearing.

The Doctor made a tsking sound. "I don't think so, Captain. Both of you are going to have to stay here a while . . . I'd say one day of observation should do it."

Kathryn rolled her eyes. "Well, at least everyone will still be here."

***

Chapter Nine

All this time off did have its upside. She got a lot of reading done, and had commandeered the Doctor's work console in order to start the outline of her holodeck program. It was easier when she didn't have to dictate the whole thing to the computer, which would only give her a headache.

The Doctor often extolled the virtues of modern medicine -he himself being a product of that- but for all that refinement, no one had as yet come up with a painkiller that worked when you needed it to without putting you to sleep. She squeezed the back of her own neck, hoping to ward off the tightness that was slowly forming there from bending over padds and low consoles all day. That was another thing. What had ever happened to Star Fleet standard ergonomics? What was it about the Delta Quadrant that made the ancient work ailments of carpal tunnel syndrom, tendonitis, tenosynovitis et al crop up? It was maddening.

She didn't like being cooped up in Sickbay, no matter how reasonable the Doctor's motives were. She wanted to go to the bridge, Astrometrics and Engineering and make sure everything was all right. And she wanted to find that anomaly and see if there was a pattern to the damn thing's vagrancy. If there was, she was going to drop landing buoys all over the sector so that no one else had to deal with it.

Chakotay on the other hand was taking it much slower. It drove her crazy. He read a few reports, maybe did a little work himself then either downloaded a book onto a padd or retreated into a corner for some meditation. He also seemed to get a big kick out of her fights with the Doctor over her uniform. She did not like Sickbay gowns, and her recovery would hardly be hindered by a change of outfit . . .

"I thought I asked you to stay off my console," came a crisp, annoyed voice.

The EMH was back from whatever house call he had been engaged in. It was a fact that he had told her to follow Chakotay's good example and take it easy, but she was not in the mood for that, and whatever sedative the Doctor had slipped her that last night had made her sleep so long that she felt she had to make up for it. That, and she'd had three cups of coffee . . . only in that afternoon. Tom Paris would have described her condition as "wired."

"Yes, you did," she replied, still tapping away at the touch panel.

His holographic eyebrows climbed. "And?" he prompted her.

"And I'm not leaving. This isn't straining me, Doctor, I'm fine. In fact, this is recreation," she said, gesturing at the screen.

The Doctor was looking at the replicator opposite to them. She couldn't see it from there, but the hologram had good eyes. "I see someone has been using the medical replicator for coffee."

"Yes, and it was rather good."

"Commander," the Doctor said plaintively, turning his head to where Chakotay was sitting, reading yet another book, "why didn't you say anything to her?"

"Because I'm smarter than that," came the oh-so-rational reply. "Never talk to her about coffee in the morning. Only after lunch."

Kathryn glared at both of them from the desk chair. "Don't give away too many secrets, Commander," she cautioned. "I can only bear so much."

"Oh, I'm not, don't worry."

The Doctor continued to direct a reprimanding gaze at her until she gave up and vacated her -or rather his- place. They were right, she supposed . . . though she felt absolutely fine. In fact, she rarely felt better.

Staying in the Sickbay was not her idea of a good way to apply such energy. Seven would have agreed, and called it "inefficient." High support from that particular party, and the ex-drone's opinion held some sway with the Doctor, too. But that was underhanded. A bored, machinating Captain should not take advantage of her crew's biases.

But she'd been in there all day!

"You're a lot of help," she said to Chakotay as she passed him where he sat. They had at least procured some chairs for their day-long stay. That was something.

"The Doctor did ask you to stay off that console," he murmured.

"Partisan politics, Chakotay-"

He smiled his disarming smile. "Kathryn, I've been a shifting partisan of one sort or another all my life, what's to stop me now?"

"Your unfailing loyalty to one Captain Janeway?" she said in a wheedling tone.

He snorted. "My unfailing loyalty is to keep you from making bad decisions and getting yourself in trouble. Nowhere in that does it say I can't disagree with you."

"Turncoat."

"Thank you."

She scowled at him a bit more, and then burst out laughing. "I'm going to get you for that."

"May I live to see the day."

The Doctor looked up at them from the office, through the transparent partition. "Am I going to have to separate you two?" he demanded.

They both turned a bit sheepish, he wincing, she blushing. Idle banter of course, but it always turned somehow, didn't it? That was the problem with the ready room. "Idle banter" occurred in there, and there was rarely someone to break into it before they had to themselves.

She couldn't very well run the ship from Sickbay, as much as she might like to do just that, and the Doctor -when in a sour mood- was probably not above declaring her unfit and having her restrained. And knowing the shrewd EMH, he'd even get Tuvok to agree with him. Certainly Chakotay would add his own two cents. Nosy.

Running the ship was exactly what she wanted to be doing. Of course, Tuvok and whoever else he got to help him oversee the ship could do the job and do it well . . . yet she wanted to put this behind her. The anomaly and the shaking . . . both that of the ship and her personal protocols for that entire day-long stretch she had been stranded with Chakotay. Stranded in the relative comfort of the ship to be sure, but stranded all the same.

It bothered her. Was some solitude all it took to make her seriously consider discarding a set of rules -"parameters"- that she had held steadfastly to for years? The space faring traditions of centuries were ingrained into Star Fleet as a matter of course. In the very old days, room on spacecraft had been scarce . . . and with mixed crews, the basic motto of those space-faring people had been "check your libido at the door." When the ships got bigger, it was a matter of professional decorum, and still was, to some degree. It was easy enough to make excuses when she had that and someone waiting on Earth, but now she only had the former . . . And as for libido, that was not entirely it, now was it?

Complicated.

She collected a rather large pile of padds and dragged the light chair across the floor to sit between the two beds. If she couldn't have a real desk, she would improvise. She sat, scanning over the padd in her hand . . . though not really focussing while her thoughts ran in different directions, entirely. She fidgeted slightly, a habit she had only procured between six and seven years ago. Even now, she rarely caught herself doing it. It only happened when she thought too fixedly about one ever-smiling First Officer in her acquaintance. . . .

She looked up from the report she had been trying to read, fixing an exasperated glare on the opposite wall that was really meant for herself. This happened far too often. It accounted for most of the time she spent in the late hours trying to finish her work, such unwanted daydreaming.

Ah . . . daydream?

She shook herself slightly, and looked back down at her work. Astrometrics report with Seven's terse, pithy style practically jumping off the small screen. No anomaly to be seen within range, temporal or otherwise. An errant asteroid that wasn't due to crash into anything of note for a few hundred cycles through that M-class system . . . and one very odd eccentric planet that had been thrown out of its system some millennia ago. There was the requisite hydrogen and helium as well as small puffs of cooled solar plasma that was escaping the aforementioned star system. All in all, preferable to many things she had seen in the past. Empty space rarely attacked one's ship, after all . . . though with her luck, it would happen eventually.

"Something wrong?"

She jumped slightly, putting the padd down on the biobed beside her with a resounding thump. Just when she was finally getting focussed, he had to talk again. It was like the ready room, only without a door. "Pardon me, Chakotay?" she asked, slightly annoyed, though more with herself than with him.

He looked at her from where he was sitting, his expression just on the edge of a frown. "I asked if something was wrong. You looked uncomfortable. Is the headache coming back?"

She schooled her expression. "No, I'm all right. My neck's a little stiff."

He eyed her warily. "Anything I can do?"

She really had to school her expression. They both knew what happened when he tried to help with tense muscles, though a shoulder rub would have been nice- "No, I'm fine. It's not too bad."

Chakotay looked somewhat relieved. Relieved? "All right, then."

His tone, however, was disappointed.

She picked up another data padd, and glanced at it, realizing she had read the same report before. It was an Engineering report . . . judiciously laced with comments to the effect that with more time, one B'Elanna Torres could have made more progress. She snorted. B'Elanna . . . she knew Chakotay wouldn't budge about her shortened shifts, so why did she think that her Captain would? Here sat the hard-assed Star Fleeter, after all. She picked up the next report in the stack, and turned her eyes to it as she put the other in the "read" pile.

As it happened, it wasn't a report at all.

It was a twentieth century romance novel.

She looked askance at Chakotay, pursing her lips. How had he contrived this? It had to be him, or else he was putting B'Elanna up to things again, taking advantage of her natural need to meddle. She was happy that data padds were made to be so lightweight.

The data padd hit her First Officer in the back of the head with a resounding and satisfying thwack. He jumped, looking back at her in surprise and then reaching down to collect her weapon.

"What was that for?" he demanded.

She merely looked at him with a stiff expression that belied her inner amusement.

Frowning, he looked down at the padd in his hand. His puzzled expression rapidly turned neutral, the corners of his lips starting to tug up in a smile.

"Do you have anything to do with that?" she asked, gesturing.

He put on a studiously innocent expression. "Not a thing. I've been here the whole time."

"Uh-huh, so who's your assistant?"

He held up his hands. "No one, I swear."

One eyebrow twitched upward skeptically. "I see. I'll find out eventually. I always do. So why did you choose this inauspicious time to bother me about my tastes in reading material?"

"Why is it inauspicious?" he asked.

She grinned wickedly. He had an imagination, let him think of something. "Oh, I think you can come up with things much worse than anything I can."

"Oh?"

"Don't provoke me, Commander. I know where you live."

He waved the padd in her direction, eyes gleaming. "Are you sure you won't read to me?"

She blushed slightly. "Read it yourself," she retorted. "That's torture enough, I should think." Did she really just say that? Her vocal cords were on some kind of mission to bereave her of any last shred of dignity she had left after this ordeal.

Thankfully, he didn't reply, merely settling in his chair again and going back to reading whatever it was that he had been reading before. He smiled that infuriating smile of his the whole time, and she wondered for a moment what exactly he was thinking about.

No! She didn't want to know.

She didn't.

"Computer, what time is it?" she demanded.

"The time is 1900 hours."

Chakotay looked at her from his chair once again. "High time for some dinner, I think."

She rolled her eyes. "Dinner? I'm not hungry. You go right ahead without me."

"I don't think so. You're going to eat something."

"I told you, I'm not-"

"I'll call Neelix," he threatened, "and the Doctor. They'll get you to eat."

She held up her hands. "Truce! All right, I give up. I'm still not hungry though. Just get me a salad or something. You have the rations, right? I don't want to put you out for meals. . . ."

"It's all right," he said, rising from his chair.

Unfortunately, he was intercepted by the Doctor who bore towards him with a tricorder. Chakotay was forced to sit back down and submit to the scan, which the Doctor frowned at a few times. In the end, the hologram just shrugged.

"I'm releasing you, Commander, under the condition that you stay off-duty until tomorrow morning."

Chakotay looked inordinately pleased with that, and thanked the Doctor quietly as he rose to collect his things.

"Hey, what about me?" she asked. No way was she going to stay in here any longer than she had to, even if it meant she couldn't go to work until the next day. She didn't refute the sense of keeping patients for observation, and had submitted to it before, but she was not in the mood to be cooped up at that moment.

The Doctor directed a long, admonishing gaze at her, then shook his head ruefully, scanning her with the tricorder slowly and deliberately. He flipped the instrument shut with a fell practised flip of his wrist. "You also, Captain, are fine. But rest tonight. I'm sure I'll hear if you do otherwise, from one source or another."

She barely heard his censure as she sprang up to collect her things and leave.

It was somewhat later when she found herself straightening up her quarters once again. She'd never really gotten around to that. Hell, she'd never even made the bed. After thankfully putting on something other than the Sickbay gown, she sorted out which clothes could be recycled and which would have to be washed. The large stacks of padds she collected into piles, deleting their dated contents as she went. She recycled all her empty coffee mugs.

These tasks completed, she sat heavily on her couch, glad to have everything back the way it was supposed to be.

Well, maybe not everything.

What had happened three days ago? It was like New Earth, only every feeling condensed into one rather disconcerting day. At least on her side of things. Protocol was such a malleable thing under certain circumstances . . . Unfortunate, since she found her footing unsteady so often with him. With the whole damned thing. She was a Star Fleet Captain, and she had to uphold the principles of that organization, be they written or merely taken as a matter of course.

She was Kathryn Janeway, and she was stranded out there in more ways than one.

Was she just being delusional? Letting his smile and awkward moments make her read things into their "idle banter" that just did not exist? Were they both fooling themselves? He by believing she would eventually make her choice, and she by believing that he would always wait for that? Was she ever going to own up to it all?

She would own up to it right now, if only to herself. She loved him, it was quite simple, yet so complex that it could be accounted for more than half of her frequent headaches. How long had she known that?

And when had she decided to keep it to herself?

Oh, they all knew. Maybe they didn't know that it was anything beyond physical attraction, which was there as well. Perhaps they did. B'Elanna and Tom, while annoying, were astute enough to figure it all out.

She was letting her thoughts run away with her again. Constant, constant trouble, that.

The door chimed politely.

She rallied herself out of her slight daze. "Come in."

And sure enough, there he was, dressed in some loose casual outfit that showed just enough of his golden-toned chest to keep her on an edge the whole time . . . trying to keep her eyes where they ought to be. He smiled at her. "Dinner, Kathryn?" he inquired.

She rose from her seat. "All right, but I'm paying this time."

He shrugged. "Have it your way. How's that holoprogram coming?"

"Umm? Oh, fine," she said, heading towards the replicator. "I won't be finished for a while though, so don't get too anxious."

He let out a breath. "I'm not," he murmured.

She opted for the salad he had mentioned earlier, punching at the controls. "Did you read B'Elanna's report?" she asked.

"That one to you? Yes." He guffawed slightly. "She's not very subtle, is she?"

"I haven't known her as long as you, Chakotay, but I don't think delicate suggestion is one of her strong points. Her sense of diplomacy can be likened to the spanners you insist she's so fond of. That's why you and I make the first contacts, not B'Elanna."

There was a pause in the expanse of room behind her. "Kathryn . . ."

She abandoned the replicator for a moment, turning to look at him. Whatever amusement he had felt seconds before was now replaced by a serious, almost reverent look on his face as he gazed at her. "Kathryn, if you don't mind, we need to talk."

"About what?" she asked just as seriously.

"You know what."

"You're the one who wants to speak. Don't avoid it."

"All right," he said, appearing to steel himself. "I want to talk about what happened that morning with you, and I want to know what you meant when you told me . . . what you told me. You may not even remember."

She resisted the urge to wring her hands nervously. She hated being nervous. "I remember," she said quietly. "And I meant exactly what I seemed to mean. However, I didn't say-"

"I love you, Kathryn," he blurted suddenly, interrupting her.

The inner workings of her mind almost ground to a halt. He . . . loved . . . her. He did. That was something, but should she- could she- She couldn't just brush that off, not when it was so important. So important. And she loved him. But could she tell him without making him expect that she could-

Her slow, somewhat shocked thoughts were interrupted by his desolate expression. Had she been staring and thinking too long.

She let her breath out in a long sigh, and met his eyes carefully. "Chakotay, please don't take this to mean anything more than it does right now-"

He turned his eyes away from her.

"-but I love you too, Chakotay."

Chakotay stared at her in astonishment, shaking his head slightly.

She reached out a cautioning hand. "But, Chakotay . . . Chakotay that doesn't mean we can-"

His kiss pulled no punches, and she knew the second part of what she had said had not reached him. In point of fact she didn't care at that moment, willingly submitting to his lips and his hands as they drew across every tight nerve like a harp . . . until it got a little too far, and she had to push him away. She gulped air, having to hold onto his arms to stay upright. She was smugly pleased to note that he was a little out of breath as well.

"Cha-kotay," she breathed, "not that I don't appreciate that, but now is not . . . it just doesn't . . . I have to work myself up to this, Chakotay. I can't just go rushing headlong into-"

"Why not?" he asked.

"I may be an unpredictable Captain . . . but where these things are concerned I have to get used to things. I'm used to being your friend, Chakotay. I'm even used to all the tension you so liberally demonstrated there . . . but I need time."

He muttered something under his breath, dropping his head to rest his forehead in her hair. He wrapped her in his arms. In no uncertain terms she could tell he did not like her reluctance not to just forget everything and head backwards into the room beyond . . .

But Chakotay was her constant, and she wanted him to stay that way as long as possible. Nothing else stayed the same, but that didn't mean it had to happen all at once. Like looking for a piece of home on Voyager, she needed to find some constancy amongst the tumultuous life that initially, she had chosen. What she did not choose were anomalies.

She rested her head against his chest, unlike him just content to be held.

"Just make sure you stick around, all right?"

The End

***

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