The Art of Hiding
By Ralkana

Disclaimer – I don’t own them; Paramount does. If I owned them, I think they’d have been much, much happier.

Comments and feedback to Ralkana47@yahoo.com would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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Kathryn leaned back in the swing, closing her eyes and allowing the sun to warm her face. It was so peaceful and quiet, but the tranquility didn’t extend to her own mind. She sighed. Her mind was never quiet, thoughts and memories whirling around, constantly forcing her to focus, never letting her rest. She’d thought maybe here, at her childhood sanctuary, she might finally find some rest, but apparently, that wasn’t going to happen. She sighed as she felt someone’s eyes on her.

“You might as well stop hiding and come out from behind the tree, now that you’ve ruined my solitude. Honestly, Phoebe, can’t—“ She stopped her tirade before it started. The step she heard was too heavy to be her sister’s. She tensed, realizing for the first time how isolated she was out here, away from the house.

“Hello, Kathryn.”

She was very glad her eyes were closed; it helped to hide the tears that sprang to them at the sound of his voice. God, she’d missed his voice.

“Chakotay,” she answered, aware that her voice was little more than a croak.

“I’m sorry to have disturbed your solitude. I just… I’ll go.”

She heard his footstep again, and gathering her strength, she said, “Wait.”

There was silence again, and she finally opened her eyes. He was standing before her, dressed in a light shirt and dark trousers, skin darker than it had been on Voyager, hair a little bit longer. He looked wonderful, and she felt like crying again.

“Would you like to sit down?” she asked, moving over slightly. With the barest ghost of a smile, he sat beside her, and the silence enveloped them. Kathryn thought of all the times they’d sat on Voyager in silence, in quarters, in the ready room, on the bridge. Never had the silence been this charged, this strained.

“How are you?” she asked when it became too much to bear. It was an inane question, one you asked an acquaintance, not one you asked the person who knew you better than anyone else in the galaxy.

Chakotay stared out at the fields of grain before them, not meeting her eyes. He tugged his ear, and she smiled faintly at the familiar gesture. “I…” His eyes flickered over to her, and then back to the land. “I think a better question is, how are you? You look tired, Kathryn.”

She nodded once, unsurprised by his ability to read her so completely with a single glance. “I am tired. Very tired.” Not to mention lonely and depressed, thank you very much. She stared at him, and he had no choice but to look at her. “Why are you here, Chakotay?”

He sighed. “I came to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Take your pick. Not telling you about it, letting you find out from the Admiral, giving up in the first place, breaking a promise—“

“That was a promise you couldn’t be expected to keep—“

“No. It wasn’t. I should have—“

“Chakotay, if you want to beat yourself up over it, go ahead. But don’t expect me to help you. I’m too busy beating myself up over it, okay?”

He sighed again. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t come here to start an argument. I… I came here to see… I’ve missed you, Kathryn. I wanted to see if there was any chance my best friend could forgive me…”

“How’s Seven?” she asked casually, but when he looked down and his cheeks flushed, she knew it hadn’t been the right thing to do. A wave of guilt washed over her.

“I… come on, Kathryn, you know… I don’t care how much of a recluse you’ve been, there’s no way you haven’t heard.”

She touched his hand, briefly. “I’m sorry. I do know. Not how it happened, but that it happened.” She chuckled a little. “Depending on which source you read, it was either an amicable parting of the ways or a messy, public knock-down drag-out breakup. I hope for both your sakes that it was the first,” she added. It was impossible to be angry with him when he looked so crestfallen; she was trying, but she couldn’t. He shrugged.

“More of the first than the second. It wasn’t easy, but then breakups never are. Not even if the relationship is one that never should have begun.”

Chakotay glanced over at her and noticed a tear sliding down her cheek. His stomach knotted and pain lanced through him. Reaching over, he gently wiped it away with his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and he closed his eyes.

“Spirits, Kathryn, you have no reason to be sorry. I wish… well, it doesn’t matter what I wish. The past can’t be changed.”

A laugh bubbled up and tore from her throat before she could stop it. He stared at her, surprised, and then his words echoed through his mind. He smiled wryly.

“Well, for most of us, anyway. Kathryn Janeway is – and always has been – an exception to the rules we mere mortals are slaves to.”

She laughed, but another tear slid down, and then another, and suddenly she was in his arms, held against his broad chest as his soft voice whispered soothing words into her ear. The crying fit came and went, as they did so often these days, and then she sat up, clearing her throat and wiping her cheeks.

“Thanks. I’m sorry,” she murmured, gesturing at his damp shirt. He grinned and shrugged.

“No harm done.” He tilted his head and stared at her, and though she was fine with it for a minute, she eventually smiled self-consciously at him.

“What?”

Chakotay shook himself out of it. “I’m sorry. I was staring,” he murmured. “You’re beautiful, Kathryn. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that.”

They both looked stunned at his words; he, that he had actually said something out loud, and she, for the same reason as well as the truth she could hear in his words. For the first time in a long while, she felt a tiny spark of hope within her.

“Of course you didn’t,” she said roughly. “I never let you—“

“Kathryn—“

“But that doesn’t mean I didn’t know, Chakotay. God, I must have seen it in your eyes a million times – and if you apologize for that,” she said quickly, seeing him open his mouth, “I may have to hurt you.”

He blinked, and then he laughed, shaking his head.

“What?” she asked after a moment. “You look puzzled.”

“I am. I’m not quite sure how to act around this… new you.”

“This isn’t a new me, Chakotay. It’s Kathryn. You remember her, don’t you? She’s been hiding a while, but she doesn’t have to hide anymore. You… do remember her, don’t you?” she repeated in a small voice. He returned her gaze, his dark eyes wide and bright.

“Of course I remember her. And you’re right; I haven’t seen her for a while,” he answered in a soft voice, and she could tell from his tone that he didn’t mean it as a rebuke. “Not completely, anyway. She’s been… hiding half in shadow, I think.”

She nodded, and they sat again in silence. It was much more comfortable and familiar this time. “It’s this place,” she suddenly said. When he looked at her, his eyes urged her to elaborate, and she smiled.

“You know, Chakotay, you’re a lot like this tree.”

His eyebrow rose, but he said nothing, and she laughed. “In a good way. Ever since I was a little girl, this tree has been the only place where I could come to work out my problems, to really laugh, to cry, to sing… my sister, she’s always been the one with the artistic temperament, which is a nice way of saying she used to throw a lot of temper tantrums. I’ve always been rigid little Kathryn, perfect Starfleet officer material. But here, I didn’t have to be. Here, I could be me. And though I haven’t really let me be myself for a long time, it was with you that I could get the closest to it out there. Thank you for that.”

He was quiet for a few minutes, absorbing her words. “Well,” he said finally, “I guess… I’m glad I could be your tree for you, Kathryn, on Voyager.” She laughed, and he glanced slyly at her out of the corner of his eye. “Though, I think I missed out on the singing part.”

She snorted. “Believe me, you didn’t miss anything.”

Chakotay laughed, and then his smile twisted bitterly, though he turned away, hoping she didn’t see it. Hoping in vain, of course. She saw everything.

“What is it, Chakotay?”

“Nothing,” he said nonchalantly, not wanting the spoil the friendly mood that had risen up between them. She was quiet, but he knew that she was waiting for an explanation.

“If I had been the perfect Starfleet first officer I often felt you wanted me to be out there, things would have been very different, Kathryn,” he finally said. "And I definitely wouldn't have been your tree." She stared at him, surprised, and he folded his hands in his lap and looked at them.

“I… I would have kept a proper distance, reminded you of every rule and procedure and protocol.” He spat the word out as if it were distasteful, though she doubted he realized he’d done so. “I would have admonished you about mingling and socializing with the crew, would have reminded you to keep a proper distance and act like a Starfleet captain at all times. We wouldn’t have shared countless meals and stories and jokes and rumors – oh, you would have heard the rumors, and you would have heard them from me, but they would have all been done up in an itemized little report for you, under the heading of personnel issues.”

She stared at him, astonished, and he smiled sadly. “I thought outside the box, Kathryn. That doesn’t mean I didn’t know what was in it. But you know what? If I had been the perfect Starfleet first officer, I wouldn’t have been your first officer. I would have stepped down from my position about, oh, three weeks after I accepted it. If we’d been in this quadrant, I would have requested a transfer off your ship. And there was never a time after that when it would have been okay for me to be your first officer.”

He didn’t go into any more detail, but he didn’t have to. She understood perfectly. “Three weeks?” she whispered. “That soon?”

Chakotay nodded solemnly. “Yes, Kathryn, that soon. So, I wasn’t him, for which I am profoundly glad, because otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation, sitting out here in the shade of your tree. I wasn’t the perfect first officer, and you weren’t the perfect captain, and we certainly didn’t have the perfect crew. But we did what we had to and became who we had to in order to get home, and look – it worked. We know that, and the brass knows that, and that’s why none of us were punished, Kathryn.”

She gave an amazed little laugh. “Is that what you think? You think none of us were punished? We were all punished out there, Chakotay, especially you and me, and I am the one responsible for that.”

“Kathryn—“

“Every time I went to bed alone. Every time I sent you to your quarters alone. Every time I watched you try to move on… when I watched you walk off my ship with Seven of Nine on your arm… you don’t think that was punishment?”

His eyes narrowed and darkened. “Then why, Kathryn? Why did it have to be that way?”

“Because I didn’t know how to make it any other way, Chakotay!”

They stared at each other, both breathing heavily, anger snapping between them like an elastic band. Suddenly, he leaned in, quick as a cobra strike, and captured her lips in a hungry kiss. Her cry of surprise was lost in the kiss as he expertly coaxed her mouth to open beneath his, nibbling and sucking at her full lower lip. His hands moved of their own volition, one to her shoulder and the other wrapping around the back of her neck to hold her close to him while he plundered her mouth. Hers followed, one tangling in his thick, soft hair while the other gripped a hard, muscled bicep.

Just as suddenly as they had joined, they broke apart, and Chakotay moved as far away from her on the swing as he could, looking anywhere but at her.

“I’m sorry, Kathryn. I—“

“No. It was my… I mean… I – Chakotay?”

“What?”

”Why the hell are we apologizing?”

“Kathryn?”

“You just told me you’ve wanted to do that since three weeks after you came on board my ship, and I’ve wanted to do that since about two weeks after that, so why in God’s name are we sorry?”

They stared at each other in silence, neither one of them sure how to start the conversation they both felt was desperately long overdue. Finally Chakotay took a deep breath and opened his mouth, only to stop abruptly when she placed her fingers over it. She stood then, crossing her arms over her chest.

“No. No more talking. I, for one, feel we’ve had enough profound discussion under this tree today, and I am starved, and it looks like it’s about dinnertime. Let’s go, Chakotay.”

His eyes widened, and she knew that he thought she was running away again.

“Stay for dinner?”

“Of course.”

She glanced at him, and he could read the uncertainty in her eyes so easily. “Stay the night?”

“Kathryn?!” When she didn’t answer, merely waiting for him to reply, he nodded, suddenly speechless.

“Chakotay, do you have any plans for the foreseeable future?”

He smiled then, a clear brilliant smile that melted the last of her fear and indecision. “I’m free.”

“For how long?”

“Oh… forever.”

She grabbed his hand and hauled him up out of the swing. “No, you’re not. Not anymore.”

They made quite a romantic picture, small and large, light and dark, walking off arm in arm through fields of gold lit by the setting sun. But of course, there was only her tree there to see them.