The BLTS Archive - An Apology by Hannah H. (hannah1971@aol.com) --- This one is in the formidable spirit of the "Apology" genre on a.t.x.c. (i.e., the follow-up stories after Scully and Mulder fight), and follows the "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "Investigations." It's not *entirely* an apology, and it's not *exactly* in the same universe as "Investigations," but it's Chakotay and Janeway as I know they should be. I dedicate it to Mitch Pileggi, who is giving my premenstrual hormone surge a good focus. And to Christine and Stephanie, who demanded that I post it even though I wrote it solely for their prurient entertainment. If others enjoy it--well, that's a bonus! Rated PG-13 for (what I consider) mild sexual content. Characters and Delta Quadrant ship, et. al., belong to Paramount, and no copyright infringement is intended. Regarding formatting--well, I've tried and failed in the past to get good formatting. If this is screwed up, so be it. Any interested parties can e-mail me and I'll gladly send the story to them ... --- She knew how she looked when the buzzer requesting entry to her quarters sounded. Sitting up in her bed against the wall, hair messed around her shoulders after two hours of unsuccessful sleep, covers rumpled around her. She felt the lines permanently forming between her eyebrows, and knew that the last week of sleep deprivation had left her looking anything but charmingly disheveled. If it were going to be anyone else on the other side of that door, she would have purposefully vacated the bed, wrapped a standard-issue drab robe around herself, and been standing with feigned but convincing assurance before the doors slid open. But she knew who it was going to be. And to put on that front for him would have been ludicrous. "Come," she responded to the repeated buzzer, and when the doors slid open Kathryn Janeway's suspicions were confirmed. "Hello, Commander." "Captain," Chakotay responded, and took a carefully placed, single step into the darkened room. "May I come in?" Kathryn nodded her response. She noted that he was wearing his Sandrine's civvies--the loose, cotton pullover of the same brown shade as the hardwood floors in Tom's bar, and pants of a color so nondescript it was an indistinguishable shade between brown and gray. Chakotay didn't know that Janeway recognized them as his Maquis clothes--so unremarkable, they were safe for any terrorist activity, from buying information off a wary barkeep to crawling through the underbrush on a Cardassian prison planet. They were the clothes Chakotay wore when he wanted to feel most comfortable--safest. "Is there something I can do for you, Commander?" Janeway asked quietly when the doors had closed behind her second. She leaned forward in the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees and motioning him to a chair. She wondered, momentarily, why she was continuing with the formalities in language while everything else in the room was cockeyed. He sat in the chair, facing his captain but distant enough from the bed that his face was barely decipherable. Janeway mentally railed against herself for not turning on the lights before he entered--what was she doing, sitting here in her nightgown, covers pooled around her feet, with darkness as an electric conduit between them? "Permission to speak freely, Captain?" Here it comes, she thought. Finally, here it comes. "Granted ... Chakotay." He began with a voice so low she had to strain to hear him. "I want to talk to you about what happened last week with Tom Paris. About what you and Tuvok did--and why I was left out of your plans. I want ..." "Chakotay," she interrupted before he could get any further. "I explained to you why we made the decision that we made--" "'We,'" he snorted. "'We.' That would be you and Tuvok, Captain." His voice was rising, and Kathryn drew in a deep breath. "You and your third-in-command. That is what I wanted to talk to you about. You and Tuvok decided to do this, and you decided to leave me out. I want to hear you tell me why, without that damned Vulcan standing behind your shoulder." She bristled a bit at the hostile reference to her old friend. "Commander, I told you why." She stood up and walked between the bed and his chair--carefully leaving two meters of neutral zone between her body and his. If she moved any closer, she would be sucked in with the power of a black hole. Stopping at the porthole, she crossed her arms again, watching the passing stars. She sighed resignedly. "We wanted as authentic a performance as possible from a key senior officer. We didn't want you to feel torn in your loyalties to us"--to me, she thought--"and to your former comrades in the Maquis." She heard him stand up, and felt the composition of the air change. It grew denser, and she felt every centimeter that he breached in his approach. "Do you mean that you doubted where my loyalties lay, Kathryn?" He was standing just behind her now, a little to the side, and she remembered the last time he had used her given name. // Weeks ago. A whisper, then, after his hands had been on her shoulders, and there was no turning back. His lips pressed against hers--her mind reeling--she felt the fingers moving down the front of her uniform, seeking--and quickly finding--the seam that held the unwanted barrier together. His hands had been hot and quick on her flesh, and his breath was warm against her ear when he whispered her name. "Kathryn ..." She had been overjoyed to hear it come from him ... a single response to her return to humanity, a first and single claiming of her after the horror of her transformation into another life form ... an answer to the fact that--for a brief time, anyway--she had actually been Tom Paris' mate. It--he--had swept over her in her quarters the evening before she was set to return to command, and two days after Tuvok had informed her that she had a spy on the ship. She hadn't encouraged him since. // "Commander," she replied now, soaking in the heat from his body. "I knew where your loyalties lay." In a brief, searing surge, she wished he would get it over with. To make his move, to stop toying with her. She had seen the briefest of glints in his eye when he entered her quarters, and she knew that the anger masked a more violent need. She wanted to feel him swoop down over her again. She wanted thoughts of Voyager and Tuvok, Mark and Starfleet to be crushed under the weight of his body--she knew he wanted it, too, and by the expression he wore when she risked a glance at him, she realized he knew what he was doing when he came to her at 02:00 hours. He didn't answer, so she continued with another deep sigh, accepting that she was going to be toyed with for now. There was something that needed to be gotten out of the way, first. "What I couldn't tell you in front of Tuvok--what I've wanted to tell you for the last week--is that we planned this ruse with Tom's cooperation ... before." There was no doubt he understood the significance of the word. "And I couldn't call off the plan. Tuvok would have wanted to know why ... And how could I have explained it? It would've looked like ... " She paused, knowing with dread the effect her words would have on him. " ... you were seducing me to cloud my judgment." She glanced at him again, and saw the hard line his mouth became. "And even if Tuvok hadn't been involved," she blazed forward, "I couldn't have called off the plan based on ... what happened. I think that, from your own experience as a captain, you know that." He released his breath, and she heard the coldness melting in his voice. "Because you have to do what's best for the ship, right?" He gave a rueful chuckle. Kathryn knew the worst had just passed, and the dance was about to begin. She gave him one of her patented Janeway half-smiles, and was secretly thrilled to see him return it. Turning to face him, she felt the lines smooth from her forehead as the tension left her body, to be replaced by ... a different, more delicious kind of tension. She watched his hand move up to catch the single lock of hair that fell in front of her left shoulder. Twisting the golden-brown strands around his thumb and forefinger, Chakotay continued, "It was a good idea, however, to tell the crew that I knew about the plan, Kathryn--I have to give Tuvok credit for that." He rubbed his thumb and finger together, and Kathryn heard her own hair crinkling in the caress. "Yes, it ... umm ... was." The heat from his body was migrating into hers, and she leaned in towards him, watching him with wide eyes. "A good idea. We wouldn't want you to .. mmm ... seem out of the loop, after all." "No, we wouldn't." He released the lock of hair and watched it fall back down her shoulder, then reached around to thread his fingers into the mass of hair down her back. "I want to ask you one more question, Kathryn." Leaning down so that his face was mere centimeters from hers, he brought a second hand up to twine in her hair. Too much time went by, and Kathryn finally tried to speak. "Wha--what?" A single thumb traced the outline of her cheekbone. When he asked the next question, he breathed into her open mouth. "Do you now know where my loyalties lie?" His intense brown eyes stared down into hers, and she would have laughed in relief if it wouldn't have been so inappropriate. "Oh, gods, Chakotay," she sighed. "Yes. ... Yes." When his mouth finally covered hers, and his hands moved from her hair to her shoulders, Kathryn knew that her life on Voyager had changed irrevocably. She brought her arms around his back, and--very, very briefly--didn't rue the day that they had encountered the Caretaker. --- Kathryn watched the sleeping form of her first officer--now her lover. She hadn't thought it could get better than the first time he had ... come to her, but somehow, it had been. In her quarters, out of their uniforms, they had forged a deeper understanding of what their connection meant. Captain and first officer. Lovers. If it hadn't been in such dire opposition to everything Starfleet prescribed, it would have seemed laughable in its simple logic. A captain and her first officer, lovers. She brought a hand up to her face when she realized she was blushing, and cringed a little when the echoes of some of the more crazed things she had said--and godawful sounds she had made--returned to her. She wondered all over again at his ability to drive her into insanity while maintaining almost rigid control over himself, waiting for her. As if his telepathic ears were burning, Chakotay's eyes opened, meeting hers instantly. "What are you thinking about?" She gave in to the joy again, chuckled, and gave him his answer. "The same thing I was thinking about last week. Commander," she intoned seriously, "you performed ... wonderfully." Laughing, he pulled her back down to him, and Kathryn again took the opportunity to marvel at his blissful self-control. --- The End --- NOTE: Yes, I know this goes against several aspects of canon--namely that Janeway and Chakotay aren't lovers (to our knowledge), and--more seriously--that everyone on the ship knows that Chakotay was out of the loop. I changed it b/c I think TPTB made a serious mistake--now Chakotay appears weak to Starfleet and Maquis alike. As far as I'm concerned, hell--it didn't happen! ;-) As the country song goes, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!