Title: Raindrops on Roses
Author: Ky (venom69)
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: Mature People
Summary: Now the crew waits for a sign.
Character/Pairing: Janeway/Chakotay
Spoilers: None... the show’s ended!
Warnings: Language, adult themes.
Author’s Notes: Found this in my unfinished pile and decided to knock it over. Was supposed to be smutty, but I really couldn’t be arsed. Many thanks, as always, to the lovely Kelly, for her kickass beta skills. Song belongs to Alana Grace.
Disclaimer: Usual guff. Not mine, promise to put them back where I found them.
Date: 12/03/09

***

Can I ask you a question please
Promise you won't laugh at me
Honestly I'm standing here
Afraid I'll be betrayed.

***

B'Elanna is the first to come and see her.

"I'm worried," She admits, wringing her hands as she tries to formulate her words. "I know that you couldn't do anything before... when this started... but now..."

Now they are home. Now there is a chance. Now the crew waits for a sign. Kathryn doesn't say anything as her Chief Engineer - soon to be ex-chief engineer - frowns.

"You have to do something about this." She finally blurts, never having been one to dance around the issue at hand. "You can't just sit back and watch it happen."

Kathryn speaks then, mostly because she thinks B'Elanna may burst a few brain cells holding her frustration in. "What would you have me do?"

"I don't know. Something. Anything!" She growls her anger away and clenches her fists. "They look ridiculous."

Kathryn couldn't argue with that. Though they may look ridiculous, they also looked predictable. Middle aged man with a stunning blonde half his age. And a virgin to boot. Could anyone else spell Midlife crisis?

"He's your friend."

"He's my big brother." B'Elanna corrects automatically. "Which is why I hate that he's doing this."

"Doing what, exactly?"

"Trying to move on. Trying to build a life with the wrong woman, when the one he wants is..."

"Available?" Kathryn offers.

"Yeah."

B'Elanna is right; she is available now.

Or rather, she will be in six weeks when Voyager has been landed and the debriefings are over. Six more weeks of wearing her pips like a shield of armour and she will be free to be herself again. She will be a woman again.

"If he's happy," Kathryn says 'if' because, even though she knew about it, she couldn't face having a conversation with Chakotay that involved yet another blonde in order to confirm the status of his emotional state. "Then who am I to protest?"

At the end of the day, she is the one that kept him at arms length for so long.

She'd always known that he might move on one day, she'd always expected it. Sometimes she'd see him looking at her with such heartbreaking longing that she wished he would move on, find someone else to love, someone that could and would love him openly in return.

But some days - usually the ones that had seen them escape death yet again - Kathryn would lie in bed at night and be comforted by the knowledge that he would, eventually, be beside her, underneath the sheets. She could imagine their bodies slick with fulfilled desire, imagine the whispered words of love and tenderness that followed their completion. On those nights, she could rub her own flesh to orgasm and that would be enough.

"You really think he's happy with her?"

The words break her thoughts and she wont lie. "No."

"Then stop it." The other woman prompts. "You can."

Kathryn doesn't respond, but she nods once and that seems to be enough.

The new mother studies her for a moment, perhaps trying to discern if her words have had an effect or not, before she rises and turns to leave.

B'Elanna pauses and hovers just out of reach of the door's sensor. She turns and frowns again, her ridged forehead crinkling further. "Do you really think the Admiral came back just to get us home a bit earlier? Or do you think she was trying to save you?"

She leaves and Kathryn is left with her thoughts, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Tom comes to see her next, but he just repeats his wife's argument. When Kathryn mentions that she's already had this conversation with B'Elanna, Tom looks genuinely surprised before his lips break into an impromptu smile. "I married a good woman." He tells himself.

"Yes," Kathryn agrees, wondering if she will ever hear someone - him - say the same about her. "You did."

When Tom leaves, safe with the knowledge that his Captain has heard all that they can say, Kathryn flops down onto her Ready Room sofa with a sigh and looks out at the stars that should be familiar but really aren't.

She is alone with her thoughts for almost a full hour before Ayala quietly chimes. Kathryn bites back her surprise at seeing him. Though she has interacted with him over the last seven years, he has rarely sought her out.

"What can I do for you?"

"I want to tell you something." Ayala stands with his hands clasped behind his back, feet slightly apart. The stance is so familiar that it almost hurts.

Kathryn doesn't let herself think about that long, though, because she hasn't yet succumbed to tears and she's not about to do it now. "Oh?"

"Years ago the Maquis were on a raid and we rescued a few Cardassian captives. They hadn't been hurt," She can hear the unspoken 'yet.' "but you can imagine that they weren't exactly at their finest. We got them back to our ship and agreed to take them back to their planet. Among them was a beautiful woman that took a shining to me. I figured it was gratitude at being rescued. When she, uh, well, made a pass at me, I walked away."

He pauses and Kathryn cocks an eyebrow, silently waiting, almost afraid to speak and stop whatever thought Ayala has. He’s always seemed like a deep thinker to her and she has a feeling that interrupting him is not something that will help him express his thoughts.

"Chakotay told me that I shouldn't leave her. He didn't encourage me to do anything, but he did say that she could probably use someone to talk to. I spent ten hours talking with her while we travelled. She was the most amazing woman I've ever met in my life."

Her brow furrows and she wonders what he's telling her. "I dont-"

"I wouldn't have married my wife if it weren't for Chakotay."

“Oh.”

“He wouldn’t let me walk away from potential happiness. I figured I owed him the same.”

She can see where this is going and she’s not surprised. Ayala is right though; She and Chakotay have seven years worth of foreplay behind them, a few kisses on innocent lips wont change that.

She asks Ayala the same question she posed to B’Elanna. “What would you have me do?”

Ayala flushes a little and smiles softly. “Permission to speak freely?”

She should really say no. Really. If only for her own sanity. “Granted.”

Damn.

“Tell him how you feel. Give him the option. Let him decide what he really wants. Who he really wants. It’s not a real competition.” He shrugs. “If that doesn’t work, show up naked.”

Kathryn chokes on a little of her own saliva and her eyes open wide enough to hurt. Has he really just said that? She looks at the flush on his cheeks, darkening with every second of her silence, and knows that he has. What the hell could she say to that? She had - stupidly – given him permission to say whatever he wanted. “Thanks for the tip.”

“I hope it helps.”

She wont tell him that she’s contemplated showing up naked before. She’s contemplated a lot of things before. Some she may tell Chakotay, one day, some she will keep secret.

Ayala leaves as quietly as he entered and Kathryn finds herself alone, again, staring at the stars once more.

She wants to feel happy – she is happy, sort of – but she can’t help the frown that mars her features. She can’t help wondering how many of the crew have wanted to come and see her today. She can’t help but think her three guests were just the unlucky elected. But she knows they weren’t. She knows why they came and, honestly, she can’t say that she wouldn’t have done the same had it been B’Elanna and Tom skirting around the issue.

When her chime rings for the fourth time, she’s tempted to ignore the call and pretend she isn’t here. The computer will tell her visitor that she is hiding, though, and the Captain doesn’t hide.

She calls for entry, not bothering to stand. If she’s going to get more ‘friendly advice’ – and, with her crew? She is – then she may as well be comfortable for it.

When her guest enters and turns to face her on the sofa, a telling look on his face, she holds one hand up. “I know. I’ve gotten the message. If I decide to speak with him about Seven, I’ll do it on my own terms. I appreciate your concern and I appreciate the concern of the crew, but I’ve heard more than enough, thank you.”

Her companion opens his mouth to speak, but she’s having none of that now that she’s on a roll.

“I don’t know why you all seem to think that one word from me will sending him running from her side. He could be happy, you know? We don’t know that he’s not. And I’m not exactly unhappy, either, you know. I have…” What? What did she have? “…a good life. Why are you all so convinced that bedding Chakotay would make things better for anyone?”

He makes a second attempted and, again, she cuts him off at the knees.

“Aside from all of that, it might not work. I could very well offer myself on a platter, and he could very well be interested, but that doesn’t seal the deal. We might break up. We might decide it wouldn’t work. It might just have something to do with being on Voyager. Lord knows this ship can be full of sex-crazed ‘adults’,” she even makes the air quotes, God help her. “at the best of times. Maybe that’s all it is! It’s Voyager’s… pheromones or something.”

She’s spent too much time around Tom Paris, that’s for sure. Or perhaps just too much time thinking about this. Her I.Q. has dropped twenty points and she feels like she’s pleading her case to her damn mother.

“Are you finished?”

He makes it sound like she’s full of hot air. Maybe she is. But she’s not finished, not be a long shot. She does want coffee, though, and that’s going to trump the woes of her non-existent love life. “Yes.”

One hand holds a PADD out to her. “I have the report you asked for, Captain.”

“Oh…” Shit.

Tuvok doesn’t say a word.

Bless him.

She says a quiet ‘Thank you’, not quite looking at him, and wonders if the deck plating could open up and swallow her now. He places the report on her coffee table and leaves as though she hasn’t just made an ass of herself.

He’s a good friend, he’ll pretend this never happened.

But, even still… shit.

She wants to ask if her day could get any worse but, really, asking that questions usually gets her wounded, so she wont bother. She reads over the report that Tuvok left, not really reading and nothing even close to comprehending. She trusts that he’ll remind her of anything she missed, if necessary, and she leaves her thumbprint on the bottom and abandons the sofa for her desired coffee.

The chime goes again. She bangs her head against the top of the replicator unit, but that only makes her suck in a sharp breath of pain and sigh. What now?

“Come in.”

‘Now’ is Chakotay. She knows it’s him even before she turns around.

“Is it being temperamental again?”

The question is posed with light-humour. A shared joke between friends. Friends. That was the joke, not some comment that alluded to a time when he wanted to have dinner with her, wanted to spend time with her, wanted her at all.

She doesn’t respond to the familiarity of his comment. She turns, shrugs one shoulder and offers a half-assed smile. He wont buy it, but she doesn’t care. She notes the report in his hand and feels a slight pang of sadness that he sought her out because of Voyager, not because of the tattered remains of their… whatever the hell they have. “How is everything?”

“We’re in reasonably good shape, all things considered.”

She wonders if he really means the ship. She wonders if he even knows where her thoughts have been all day. Probably not. “I suppose Starfleet will be pleased.”

He looks at her, in that annoying way that he does. The one that makes her feel like he’s trying to read her mind and her heart, while still being able to hear her voice. “I thought the Captain would be, too.”

“It’s been a long week.” It’s been a long seven years, too, but he knows that just as well as she does.

They’ve been dancing in circles for so long. And not just in the romantic sense. Their lives have been a precarious balancing act for years, everyone’s has. Trying to stay alive was the order of the day. They wanted to get home; they wanted to survive more.

“It’s been a long journey.” He corrects.

She opens her mouth to say something to him, the words of their friends running through her mind, but it doesn’t happen.

There is still that part of her that screams you don’t come first. They do. She wonders if that part of her will always be there. She wonders if her entire life will be forever dictated by what is best for the crew – even if they wont be her crew anymore, soon.

Despite that thought, and that part of her, there is something new in the mix. A voice – one that sounds horridly like the Admiral she does not want to become – that says, screw it. Screw them. No, screw him.

“We should have dinner.” He says, breaking her potentially ravenous thoughts.

The request surprises her. She wasn’t sure how well their conversation had been going, not that they had really been doing any actual talking per se, but that pretty much says it all, she thinks.

She can’t have him, not like she wants.

But, if his friendship is all she can have, that will have to be enough. She will take what she can get, if only because she doesn’t think she deserves more than that. “When?”

“August third.”

Forty-three days from now.

He wants to schedule her in? Try and find time for her amongst his busy life? The life that he will share with Seven. He wants time to find a home, find a job, enjoy his girlfriend for a while. And then he will see her, when he has time. When it is convenient. In forty-three days.

Oh.

No, not forty-three days.

Six weeks and one day.

Twenty-four hours after she is free.

“Okay.”

***

She has been free for twenty-four hours.

Six weeks worth of debriefings and questions and fears and hopes and futures and it’s all over. All said and done. Not quite wrapped in a bow, but over nonetheless.

And so she sits across from him, a bottle of wine between them, their meal simmering in the kitchen.

Kathryn hasn’t spent six weeks fighting for the safety of the Maquis, not like she’d always expected. She’d been questioned – grilled – about her gained knowledge from living and working with so many of them for so long, but no one sits behind bars on this night.

They are free, too.

Owen told her it was because of ‘time served.’ After hearing of the various crises’ in the Alpha Quadrant, she thinks it has more to do with Starfleet’s general lack of time and resources to actively deal with the issue, as opposed to time served. She wont complain.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come tonight.” He tells her quietly, watching her over the rim of the bottle.

Kathryn had thought that the red wine mightn’t have been a good idea. But momma had raised her well and you didn’t go to someone’s house for a meal without some kind of offering, regardless of the fact that it could lead to her being intoxicated and somewhat less than respectable. Not that she needed any liquid encouragement to do something stupid – like jump his bones.

They hadn’t seen much of each other since he’d first asked her to share this meal with him. She’s seen him on the grounds of Headquarters a few times, but never long enough or private enough to have any kind of conversation beyond pleasantries.

Now, though…

He’d sent her a message three weeks ago, with his new address and a time. He hadn’t signed it, hadn’t addressed it to her. But the date had been there, and she’d known.

She hadn’t told anyone of her plans, had barely let herself think of them. She’d gone through the motions of her debriefings, found herself a small apartment in the city to rent, spent time with her family and friends, and tried to come up with some kind of plan for what she’d do now that she was free.

And here she was.

“I said I would.”

“That was on Voyager, though. It’s… different, now.”

It is different, for more reasons than one. But she’s not quite ready to go there yet. She changes the subject smoothly and pretends she’s not a chickenshit for it. “You have a nice home.”

“It’s too big for one person, but I like it.”

There is was. Everything she wanted to know answered with something that could barely be called a sentence. How anti-climactic.

He mightn’t have known it, but he’d just effectively given her the easy way out. She could nod and smile and make a comment about the aesthetics of his dining room, or she could nail his ass to the wall and grill him incessantly about his tendency to screw anything that was blonde and had a pulse.

She never was one for the easy way out, though. “I imagine Seven would think it was an inefficient use of space.”

“She hasn’t seen it.” He shrugged. “So I guess it doesn’t matter what she would think. I’m glad you like it, though.”

He seems to be about as eager to have a no-holds-bar, lay all your cards on the table type discussion as she is. Which leaves them in the exact position they’ve been in for years.

Kathryn has a sudden image of the two of them, in a decade, sitting across from each other over a bottle of wine, still skirting over the issue. They’d have more grey hairs, more worry lines, different lives, but one thing may always be the same.

And she’s just not up for that shit.

“Do you want to have a relationship with me, Chakotay?” On the outside, she is perfectly calm. The poster woman for poise.

However, she is fairly certain that she is also about to wet her pants. Her palms are sweaty and her heart is slamming through her body, reminding her of two things; the first being that she is too old to feel like she’s back in High School, asking a boy out. And the second is that, if he doesn’t say anything really, really soon, she may be forced to hurt him.

Chakotay, for his part, just looks like he might be suffering from heart failure as he blinks mutely at her.

Great.

Apparently she has more luck with killing him than getting him into bed. Why isn’t she surprised? “You can say something…”

He does have the good grace to flush with embarrassment. Smart man. “Sorry. I’m a little surprised by what you said.”

“Someone had to say it.”

“Yes.”

Was he trying to give her a headache? “Yes, someone had to say it or yes…” She makes a hand gesture that is either signifying of everything they could be, or an early warning sign for a stroke.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Stroke it was, then. Did that mean they were dating now? “So what now, then?”

“We could have dinner.”

She raises an eyebrow and almost smirks. “Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”

“Well… okay, I see your point.” He shrugs. “The ball is in your court, Kathryn, it always has been.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.” It sounds self-deprecating, she knows, but it’s also very true.

If he’d pinned her to a wall and screwed her three ways from Sunday, they would never have reached this point at all. Things would have been different. A lot of things.

Of course, if he’d done that too soon in their friendship, he would have been up on charges of assault. But after the first year or so, she would have been fighting him only to get his pants off quicker.

Either way, leaving it up to her clearly didn’t work well for them.

He doesn’t really comment on her admission, though. Maybe because he really does want to see her naked, or maybe because he’s just too nice for his own good, sometimes. “Do you really want to talk about the past right now?”

Honestly? “No.” She’s got better things to do now, it seems.

“What would you like to talk about, then?”

Kathryn knows full well she really is going to give him a heart attack now, but she's okay with that. “Let’s discuss what you’re making me for breakfast.”

Yep. There it is.

***

End