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Afterwards, I lay awake in his bed and watched him sleep. Funny, I think I always envisioned it the other way around: at the end of the day, I would fall into blissful slumber while he watched over me like a guardian angel. Maybe I spend too much time envisioning. I wanted us to be like an epic poem, but at the end of the day, we're just what we are. I don't know why that doesn't always seem to be enough.
Maybe because I knew I'd been wrong, eighteen months earlier and again eighteen hours earlier, trying to wipe the Doctor's memory instead of helping him through the painful conflict he faced. Seven accused me of letting my own prejudices about the Doctor's individiality get in the way, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have made the same choice concerning any member of my crew if it were possible. A lot of people can't tolerate the horror of choosing life or death for others. That probably costs Starfleet a lot of potentially good captains. Having lived through a similar experience with my father and Justin, and having repressed it for so long, I know that if I had to relive the situation, I would make a choice. It's a terrifying thought. No wonder the Doctor couldn't live with the knowledge that he had weighed two lives and selected one.
It was easier for me with Tuvix when I could rationalize that I was saving two crewmembers. There's something comforting in the mathematics- -the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. I'd like to believe that that was the principle I used initially in choosing to deprive the Doctor of his memories--that he was too valuable as an individual to this crew as a whole for me risk sacrificing over an esoteric point of ethics. Sometimes Vulcan logic can be very calming.
I'm a human being who is regularly asked to play God, even more so than the Doctor. I suppose all captains are in similar positions, but most of them have checks on them, admirals and review boards, Starfleet committees and Federation ambassadors. I only have myself and my crew. Sometimes I can't afford to listen to the latter. Sometimes I can't afford not to. Perhaps I should have gone to Seven to thank her for confronting me, but I didn't want to make a point of congratulating her for her self-righteousness, which is a problem as often as it's a benefit. I believe it was necessary to her formation of an independent personality among so many other individuals, but she needs to learn when to temper it. Seven challenges my assumptions as no one else ever has, but she's not a person with whom I can share companionable silence, nor quiet relaxation--the simple joys of being human.
Neither is Tuvok, though if I were still trying to rationalize my decision, he would have been the one I'd sought this night. In some ways Seven reminds me of my Vulcan friend. At the end of the day, there's still only one person in my little world to whom I can turn for a warm smile with no expectations. I should remember to thank him more often-- even more so than Seven. Of course he was the one I went to that night.
"You're awake," he said when I buzzed his door, stating the obvious. "I didn't think we'd see you till duty call tomorrow." But I'd slept for more than half a day after the Doctor sent me to bed. Chakotay must have been tired too, having been on the Bridge for two shifts.
"I left my book on the holodeck, so I got bored. Are you in the mood for a drinking buddy?" By way of response, he grinned and waved me in, heading to the replicator to get us drinks. There's a strange negotiation that goes on between us when we see one another off-duty. I can always sense him trying to gauge whether I've come to him as the captain or as his friend Kathryn. He responds very differently to the two of us, and becomes resentful nowadays if I try just to be myself, who is both of those people. I can't forget his coolness the night before we tried the slipstream drive, when I invited him to my quarters for dinner. We got business out of the way during the first ten minutes, but he never stopped speaking to me first officer-to-captain, not even when I stepped up the flirting and touched his face. We may have repaired our friendship after the incidents with the Borg, but I think Chakotay still doesn't completely trust the captain, no matter how much support he's willing to offer. This night I hadn't bothered to put on my uniform jacket or pips, so the distinction was clear.
"Whatever you said to the Doctor seems to have made quite a difference," Chakotay told me as he came across the room with steaming mugs. "He's not quite his old self, but he does seem like a new man from last week."
"I'm glad." That didn't cover the depth of the relief I felt, but I was too drained for eloquence. "I thought I'd made the wrong decision, again."
"You made the decision he asked you to make." Chakotay's voice was neutral as he put a mug down in front of me. "Irish coffee," he explained. "If the Doctor hadn't found the discrepancies in Harry's scans, he'd never have known what happened. None of us could have predicted how he would respond."
Part of me wanted to let it drop, but part of me needed to pursue it, the same way Seven had felt it necessary to come to my quarters in the middle of the night to ask about the nature of individuality. I have sometimes wondered whether Chakotay's antipathy towards Seven stems from guilt over the fact that he nearly killed her, all those months ago when he evacuated her fellow Borg out of the cargo bay into space. Maybe it's just because she can make me rethink decisions that nobody else can, not even him. But sometimes I think he's stopped trying.
"Do you feel guilty for backing me up?" I asked, since I couldn't ask the other.
"No. I'm just worried about him. And about you."
This is why I come to Chakotay on these nights. It's an essential part of his duties as first officer, and he executes it without complaint. I couldn't have ordered him to be my friend, but I don't think I could do this job if he weren't.
I smiled at him. "I'm all right now. Just needed my EMH to function again. I've gotten beyond expecting comfortable answers to all my ethical dilemmas. Have you ever made that sort of decision, Chakotay?"
"About which lives to save and which to sacrifice? Yes." His eyes darkened. "I didn't deal with it very well at the time. But I survived."
"So did I." I remembered listening to a log of Captain Kirk's from a mission where aliens asked him to choose between the lives of his first officer and his chief medical officer--both his good friends. "Do you ever think about it now? Wonder if you should have chosen differently?" Kirk was spared the decision by Spock and McCoy, who refused to permit their captain to choose; McCoy almost died until another alien intervened.
"Once in awhile. It took a long time before I could let myself think about the people I lost." I wonder what I would do, asked to choose between Chakotay and my chief medical officer. I wonder whether, like Kirk's officers, they would find a way to take the decision out of my hands. I suspect I could choose...I would choose. That terrifies me as much as the thought of choosing between my father and Justin, because it could happen again.
"It took me a long time, too. But that's essentially what we did for the Doctor, isn't it? We gave him selective amnesia, and didn't restore his memories until sufficient time had passed for him to cope. There--I've rationalized the whole thing."
Chakotay was gazing at me the way he used to, with that warm, admiring look in his eyes--the look from before either of us became personally involved with the Borg. He still thought I had betrayed him, he could never understand that he betrayed me first. Still, his lips curved irresistibly; I found myself grinning back. "I'm glad. I'd hate to have to take you offline for maintenance, Kathryn."
"And you're the one who's always saying I need a break," I drawled. "Something other than curling up with a good book."
"Where did you get that book, anyway? The Doctor has been reciting Dante all day. It's beautiful poetry, but a rather odd choice to look for insight into his condition."
"The narrator spends his entire life in pursuit of an ideal. The struggle is what gives it meaning. It's always a struggle."
"Do you identify with Dante, or Beatrice?"
Now there was a loaded question if I'd ever heard one. Beatrice is a spiritual icon, an untouchable woman, and despite his poetry and passion, the man who loves her sometimes sounds like a zealot. I'd never pondered the extent to which Dante's feelings for Beatrice might have reflected Chakotay's for me, or mine for him. Never with that element of worship, perhaps, but the bond in the name of a higher purpose--the acceptance of the role of destiny in our union. Chakotay is a spiritual man, like the Italian poet. Less esoteric, more naturalistic, but he understands why I think of our mission as a quest. I think he's the only one who shares the sentiment.
The realization moved me, and also embarrassed me. "I don't identify with Beatrice," I said to cover it. "I'm not suffused with all the qualities that grace her. Only on good days."
He winked at me. "Today must be one of those days."
I really can't explain what happened next. Maybe I wanted to make sure he knew I didn't think I was Beatrice--I didn't want to be Beatrice, how could anyone help but feel unworthy? Maybe it was my recent, raw memory of Kashyk, or maybe it was having had to demote Tom Paris; several on the crew still haven't forgiven me for that, and things are tense among certain members of my senior staff. Maybe it was having pulled an all- nighter, then sleeping all afternoon. Maybe it was the memory of that cold night of the slipstream drive, when candles and cooking couldn't warm him to me. Maybe it was the pattern of destiny from Dante which seemed to apply so aptly to Chakotay and me. Or maybe it was just time-- now that neither of us feared for the protocol we'd already shattered in a hundred other ways, now that neither of us expected to regain what we had once been, nor did we resent one another for its loss.
At the end of the day, maybe what we had was enough.
I will probably never know what inspired me, but I kissed him.
It certainly wasn't like any of the scenarios I'd concocted for what our first kiss would be like. It was so quick and so unthinking, it could have changed nothing; I think we were both too surprised at first to react. I wasn't really uncomfortable, but my face started burning--I almost went back to talking about the Doctor just to get past it. Chakotay looked at me with this sort of screwed-up smile on his face, like he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined the whole thing. He didn't say anything.
Sometimes I get an inappropriate, detached glimpse into my own life. I suppose it comes from being a scientist, though I think it's more likely I became a scientist because I think this way. At that moment, I felt like I'd just conducted an experiment with inconclusive results. Burning curiosity compelled me to try it once more. I know that sounds ludicrous, but it's what was going through my head when I kissed him again. A little longer this time, our bodies a little closer, and he was a little more ready for it, which made him more receptive.
I stole a glance at him and he still looked like he wasn't sure what was going on. I found that rather touching. I only meant for there to be simple affection in the gesture when I stroked his hair. But it surprised him, and his mouth opened. Suddenly we were really kissing. And that was like all of those scenarios I'd concocted.
Still, it felt like an experiment. We'd triggered a reaction, now what were we going to do with it? Chakotay was still waiting to see what I was up to, he let me lead. I had my hands all over his face and neck before he even touched my hair. I was raking my fingernails across his chest before he stroked my breasts, very hesitantly, just around the sides. I was enjoying myself, but I also felt detached--calculating what risks I was willing to take and how he would respond, thinking as if from a distance about the captain and first officer of Voyager and the incredible journey which had led them to this moment. It seemed inevitable--apart from the very large reasons it was wrong, as well as the dozens of minor problems between the two of us as people. And it was very relaxed, because somehow I managed to convince myself that it was just another moment, not THE moment.
All that changed when Chakotay decided I wasn't playing, and really touched me.
It was my fault. I was being aggressive because he was so tentative--I guess he wasn't sure what I was up to. Neither was I, but since he didn't ask, I didn't ask myself either. He must have decided to see how serious I was, or at least how far he could get before I stopped him. I'd been rationalizing that I would stop in a minute, before anything got out of hand. Probably I assumed he would break away and say, "Kathryn, what are you doing?" and we'd laugh or talk or argue and that would be the end of it. But he didn't ask with words. Instead he pulled me into his lap and put his hand between my legs.
I know, I should have stopped him. But I was shocked to discover how good it felt, and how wet I was, and how easy it was for him to tell. I was too embarrassed to stop him right away because it would so obviously have been a lie if I told him I didn't like what he was doing, and I knew he would think I'd been merciless, kissing him like that. Maybe I assumed that once it got serious, I'd get out of the mood because I'd start worrying about the consequences. I'm saying "maybe" a lot, aren't I? I don't know why that makes me laugh. I guess I have to qualify everything or I'll have to admit what a good job I did lying to myself.
So I didn't stop him. Not even when my heart started pounding and I could hear myself making horrible little whimpering noises into his mouth. Nor when I had to stop kissing him because there was no way I could do that and breathe at the same time. I knew he was looking at my face, the terrible way I must have had my eyes and nose scrunched up and my mouth wide open--I didn't stop him even when I started crying out because I knew what was coming.
All those lines about writhing in fevered agony in "La Vita Nuova," as if Dante's agony were only of the soul--I knew that agony. What the hell was I thinking, trying to play Beatrice for all these years? In their era, I suppose the religious poets were right to decry the lusts of the flesh and sing of spiritual union, given the all of the tangible dangers associated with physical desire. But oh, how could I have kept up that same denial for so long? I'd been living in the wrong century, but it took Chakotay's hands to deliver me into this one. I arrived in the present screaming like a newborn at the top of my lungs.
I think I shocked the poor man, screaming like that. I could probably be heard in the hall--oh god, I could probably be heard on the bridge. It's a wonder the Doctor didn't pick up the sound through the computer and send a medical team to the quarters to find out what was going on. I almost ripped Chakotay's ear off with my fingernails since it was the easiest piece of flesh to grab--I didn't want a handful of uniform right then. When it finally stopped and I could control the shaking enough to look at him, as it became obvious that I couldn't pretend it hadn't happened, I got scared. If he'd said anything then, if he'd tried to make a romantic declaration or a lewd joke, if he'd apologized or praised me, even if he'd expressed surprise, I would have panicked.
But he just moved me to the side a little, picked up my mug and handed it to me. I took a long drink--my throat really hurt from yelling like that. He watched me, like he had before. When I finished, I handed the mug back to him and he put it back on the table. Then I kissed him again. This time I didn't bother to pretend it was an experiment, and neither did Chakotay. After a few minutes of licking his ear where I'd scratched him, listening to him groan while he clutched at me so that I thought I was hurting him, I decided there wasn't enough skin and pulled my own t-shirt off. Chakotay pulled his off too, but then he pushed me to my feet and started dragging me toward his bed, kissing me as we crossed the room. We got sort of jammed in the arch between the living and sleeping quarters, or maybe he planned it that way. When he realized I was trapped against the bulkhead, he dropped to his knees, pulling my pants off as he went. His teeth helped take my underwear down. He buried his face against me, so completely that he couldn't have been able to breathe, then he slid a few centimeters and started kissing again.
I'm not usually someone who can get there twice in five minutes, but he sounded like he was enjoying himself, so I let him. I started working one of my legs free from my panties so I could get it over his shoulder, then I put one hand on his head which he seemed to appreciate so I put the other one there too. I underestimated him, and myself, but then I'd never done this with anyone standing in a doorway with the lights on full, so I could see his concentration, and his pleasure. Chakotay kept his eyes closed and moaned almost as much as I did, rolling with it when I pushed at him. I had more warning and he kept me right on the edge for long time, probably so that he could listen to me howl like an animal. When I finally got there I slammed my head back into the bulkhead, so I was dizzy and breathless, which made it more intense. It might have made me sick, too, except he picked me up and carried me to bed.
Once he got there, he lay me down while he made sure I was all right, then stripped off the rest of his clothes. I spread out for him before I even touched him, and he took the invitation--leaned over me to push right in. From the noise he made, I thought he might finish the second he started--it had to be sensory overload to go from tight Starfleet underwear into the heat of sex without any time to adjust, even without thinking about the implications of what we were doing.
I should have known Chakotay would be thinking, though. He rasped my name, the first word either of us had said since I kissed him. "'In the book which is my memory, on the first page of the chapter that is the day when I met you, appear the words, "Here begins a new life."'" The first line of "La Vita Nuova," from the prose section of the narrative rather than one of the sonnets, more elegant in its original language which I cannot read. Yet I had never noticed the complex meter of the translation, the rise and fall of the words ripe with promise. There was barely a transition as Chakotay stopped talking and started to move inside me. My breath had already been knocked out by the words when he closed his eyes and showed me what they meant to him, as if I could have had any doubt, at the end of that day.
It was rough, not at all what I'd expected, but it was wonderful. Chakotay seemed determined to slam any residual chastity out of me. After all that giving, he pinned my arms down with his, tensing all his muscles as he drove his point home. I would have been very sore if he hadn't gotten me so ready, but my back still burned from the friction as I rubbed into the bed, grateful for his pillow which protected my head from pounding against the wall. He was very forceful but somehow not selfish: he was trying to tell me something. When he stopped right before he came, I heard the one distinguishable phrase he uttered: "Oh God." I don't see how the ancient poets could have helped but approve.
He wanted to talk again afterwards, but I kissed him some more until he shut up. His hand got heavier and heavier on my back until he stopped moving it altogether. Snoring has its own meter, and at the end of the day, that can be as eloquent as epic poetry. That is something I suspect the Doctor will never understand, the miniscule consolations of being human which make up for almost everything; I wonder whether Seven will ever understand. Chakotay understands, and has tried to tell me, for years now. I still have to thank him.
But right afterwards, I let him sleep, for me as well as for him. Sometimes it's easier to cultivate fevered passion in dreams, or silent contemplation. Dante kept his love alive for decades that way. I wonder how long I would have lasted. Maybe I would have started writing poetry, or painted Chakotay's face from the book which is my memory. But I'd rather keep it in my eyes, under my hands. His sleep renews me for the new life tomorrow.