The BLTS Archive - Touching Time
Third in the Touch series
by Azpou (azpou@aol.com)

---

Chakotay had sometimes wondered what it would be like to touch time.

He'd read about engineers having the opportunity to touch warp plasma,
had heard how it danced and jingled through your skin, made you
shiver right down to your very bones. Like liquid nitrogen, a soft
tingle against your body as it evaporated in the air, the feeling
more intuitive than real. A whisper, an echo of physical sensation.
Or maybe it was all just psychosomatic.

Beside him, Tessa sighed softly in sleep, her breasts rising and
falling gently as she breathed. He reached out, and stroked his hand
through her hair, loving the silken feel of it.

He loved her, more than he'd loved anyone in a long time. Three hours
ago, she'd been a respected scientist and member of the Anthropology
Society back  on Earth. They both had. Now, they were fugitives. He
didn't like the way she followed him into whatever madness Harry
proposed, but since life as they knew it would likely end within the
next twenty-four hours, somehow it didn't seem very important.

"Chakotay," she mumbled in her sleep, hand sneaking out from where it
rested under her face to touch his thigh.

"Sshh," he whispered, bending down to kiss her lightly on the cheek.
"It's okay."

She shifted, and rolled onto her back, her mouth opening slightly to
reveal her tongue.

Chakotay smiled to himself, and stretched lazily. He might be one of
the galaxy's most wanted, but it felt good to relax. Finally, now
that it was almost over. There was a certain freedom in knowing that
everyone in the galaxy was about to lose everything they'd known for
the last fifteen years.

He would yet wouldn't be sorry to put the last fifteen years of
history to rest. There had been good things . . . still were good
things. The last four years particularly, with he and Tessa together
and making love, even talking about and discarding the idea of having
children, but the previous eleven . .  . wasted, in an agony of guilt.

He still felt guilty, occasionally. But now that burden was Harry's
alone, and in truth, his rage was more than enough to carry them all.
There were times when Chakotay felt like an observer in his own life,
watching himself, and Tessa, being swept on downstream by Harry's
hate towards the inevitable waterfall. The cessation of time.

Their time, at least. Their future. And another, offered by the
survival of Voyager. How would it be? Good? Or bad?

Sometimes, Chakotay wondered if they were doing the right thing. He
didn't need to be versed in the philosophy of temporal logic to know
and understand the risk they were taking. Theoretically, they could
cause the downfall of the human race. A worst case scenario,
certainly, but even so . . . were their lives on Voyager worth that
risk? And such a small, minuscule risk . .  . to touch time and change
it . . . .

Chakotay didn't know about that. He did know that Harry wouldn't
survive unless he changed the course of history, that he would
implode with the stress and the bitterness, the hate and the guilt,
and eventually die a lonely death no matter how many people mourned
his passing. Even if Chakotay could live without Voyager, he knew
that Harry couldn't. And Chakotay had never stopped feeling that he
owed Harry peace.

And now they had the Borg transceiver. There could be no going back.

There was no time for doubt.

---

Chakotay's comm channel beeped, and he shifted enough to hit the
button on the table next to the cot. More awkward than comm badges.
Damn Tom Paris and his penchant for twentieth century kitsch, anyway.

"Chakotay!" Harry's voice was loud in the silence. "Get up here,
you've got to see this!"

Chakotay looked down at Tessa. She slept on despite the interruption.
He sighed, and quietly said, "On my way."

He stood and walked out of the room, already dressed, in dark leather
and thick fleece. Ready to salvage Seven and the Doctor from their
tomb beneath the ice. Harry's idea. Grab the Doctor and ask him to
pick apart Seven's skull so they could make use of her chronometric
node. Grave robbing. It went against everything he held sacred, but
Harry's sanity demanded it. And Chakotay had never been afraid to do
what had to be done, had never been one to hide away from unpleasant
tasks when circumstances demanded that those tasks be carried out.
For the greater good.

Or was it?

Either way, he was not looking forward to scavenging among the corpses
of his friends.

Harry stood in the cockpit, leaning over one of the small viewscreens
Tom had incorporated into the computer consoles. The twentieth
century design concealed technology that belonged strictly to the
twenty-fourth, after all.

"What is it?" Chakotay asked, noting the tension in Harry's posture,
the quivering of his hands, and the expression of dark amusement on
his face.

"Us," he said, shifting over so Chakotay could see. "We're famous,
Chakotay."

"As if we weren't already," Chakotay said dryly, peering over Harry's
shoulder to watch the transmission being broadcast from Starfleet
Headquarters on all frequencies. "What are they saying?"

"Mostly it just details the charges against us," Harry said. "Theft,
conspiracy to violate the temporal prime directive, that kind of
thing. You and Tessa are named as my accomplices," he added, and
Chakotay thought he detected a hint of insecurity in Harry's voice.
"I'm the ring-leader, dragging you off on some deranged quest to
change history."

Chakotay smiled, and touched Harry lightly on the shoulder. "We're in
this together, Harry," he assured the younger man warmly. "I can't
speak for Tessa, but I'm not going anywhere." He endured the scrutiny
as Harry searched his face.

Harry smiled suddenly. "Thanks, Chakotay."

"For what?"

"For everything," Harry said expansively. For a second, he looked as
young as he had on the day Ensign Kim sent Voyager crashing out of
the slipstream. "I don't think I ever said that. Did I?"

Chakotay chuckled, pleased and surprised. "Not necessary. I
understand, Harry. You don't have to thank me. We're friends."

"No matter what," Harry said, his voice a touch wistful.

"No matter what," Chakotay affirmed, nodding firmly.

Harry looked at him speculatively for a long moment, and Chakotay
wondered what was coming. Then Harry said, "So if I were to kiss you
now, would you .  . . ?"

"Harry," Chakotay said, his voice low and surprisingly unsurprised,
shaking his head in refusal. "I'm with Tessa. You know that."

Harry held up a hand. "I know. I know. I'm sorry. I wouldn't want to
hurt either of you. You're both too important to me. I just need -- I
*need* --"

Chakotay reached out and took hold of Harry's hand, squeezing tightly.
"I know," he said soothingly. "It's almost over," he added, and
thought Harry looked a little calmer at the thought of being able to
finally rest. He suddenly wondered if their entire mission wasn't
some convoluted desire on Harry's part to simply die. Suicide. He'd
asked himself many times if Harry would ever take his own life, but
had always thought that surely there had to be easier, less
complicated ways to do it than this, and he'd let the thought go
without ever coming to a definitive answer.

They stood like that, locked in a ten-fingered embrace of
understanding for what seemed like eternity. Chakotay wondered if
Harry ever wondered what he might have made of this time, the last
fifteen years. If he hadn't been so consumed with rage, if he hadn't
allowed his guilt to overtake him. If he'd actually *listened* to the
therapists all those years ago, instead of simply mocking them.

Chakotay often wondered if he and Harry could have made something of
the years they spent together. If he'd been able to help Harry let
go, if he could have forced Harry to see the things and the feelings
that still existed beyond grief. But he'd been too wracked with his
own guilt to even try, and now Harry suffered the consequences of his
failure.

Mentally shaking himself, he cast the thoughts out of his mind, a
little sad that the coming end of life meant that he had little more
than wonders, and regrets. But there wasn't enough time for him to
engagein guilt, or wonders, or regrets, and he decided it was time
to get down to the business of ending the timeline.

"Starfleet's on its way?" he asked quietly, reluctant despite himself
to  break the moment.

"You know it," Harry said, his voice reverting to the emotionless
level he'd been using for so long. The years of suffering emotions so
overwhelming that the only way Harry could survive was to block them
out, until fucking Chakotay became his only outlet, had made Harry
outwardly numb. And then Chakotay had left, and suddenly Harry had no
outlet at all, and he'd become a robot.

Cursing himself for feeling so damn guilty, *still*, even after Tessa,
Chakotay said, "Then we'd better get moving. I'll get the equipment."

Harry didn't let go. "Just one more minute," he murmured. "Just one
more minute, together, like this. Please."

Chakotay debated the wisdom of holding Harry's hand for another
minute, and then shrugged, deciding in a moment of self-doubt that
perhaps they needed to *make* the time to think, and need, and
remember all that they'd lost, and all that they could gain. A pity
that they wouldn't be alive to see it.

"One more minute," he echoed Harry, his voice a whisper as he
remembered Kathryn Janeway and Orion's Belt. He thought that now she
might be smiling at them both.

They stood without moving for sixty timeless moments, and Chakotay was
very aware that he held the hand that would change history . . . and
so vicariously was touching time.

He'd never thought it would be so cold.

---

The End