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Summary: A series of chance meetings reminds Janeway and Chakotay of the inevitability of their relationship. J/C Post-Endgame

Undeniable

by Mizvoy

Chapter 10 (Chronologically)

September 15, 2379 (one year four months after Voyager’s return)

Mark Hopkins Intergalactic Hotel

When Kathryn Janeway walked into the lobby of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, she immediately regretted not changing out of her uniform before she’d left the office. While San Francisco’s populace was used to seeing Starfleet admirals walking around in their midst, most of the people in the lobby were from off-planet or from less cosmopolitan areas and were fascinated by the appearance of an admiral in their hotel after hours on a Saturday night. She could feel their eyes upon her as she walked quickly to the front desk, and she hoped that no one would recognize her as Voyager’s captain and try to engage her in a another conversation about her adventures in the Delta Quadrant.

She reminded herself that this time she was staying here in order to remain close to work, in order to be able to return to the office quickly in case dramatic and dangerous events unfolded in the Beta Quadrant. Her decision to do so was not unprecedented. Many admirals stayed in nearby hotels or took short-term leases on apartments when they needed to stay on top of a crisis and didn’t want to spent time commuting back and forth from home. No one need ever know that her original plan had been to meet Chakotay here. She tossed her head in confidence as she walked up to the front desk.

The young man at the desk looked up from his work and gave her a warm smile. At least he wasn’t intimidated by her rank, she thought. “How can I be of service, Admiral?”

“I’d like to rent Suite 818, if it’s available.”

The man turned to his screen and pulled up some data, frowning at what he saw. Before he spoke a word, Kathryn knew that he had bad news. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but that suite is unavailable. May I offer you the same suite on a different floor?”

She tried to keep her disappointment from showing as she thought through her options. She could change her mind, walk to the nearest transport station, and beam back to her neighborhood north of the city. Or she could take the suite he offered and continue with her plans. How much different would the same suite on a different floor be from the one she’d had the year before? Would being on a different floor make that much difference? “Which floor is available?”

“Suite 1018 is the very same layout, Admiral, but it has an upgraded whirlpool tub.”

Her eyebrow shot up. What could be better than a whirlpool tub? “I’ll take it,” she said, reaching into her shoulder bag to provide the credit reference he’d need.

“Do you need help with your luggage?”

She laughed, showing him the small shoulder bag she carried. “I’m traveling light tonight. And I’m sure I’ll find my own way, if you’ll just add a suitable tip for the bellboy to my bill.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He handed her the access codes for the suite and wished her a happy stay. Kathryn had just made her way to the bank of elevators when she heard someone calling her name.

“Admiral Janeway?” The desk clerk blushed slightly and was obviously awkward about announcing her identity in front of the lobby crowd. “After you left the front desk, I noticed that a message icon was flashing on my screen. The occupant of suite 818 left instructions that this message should be given to anyone who asks for the suite during his stay.” He smiled and gave her a wink. “Sounds strange, I know. If I were you, I’d just ignore it.”

She looked at the paper and felt the blood drain from her face. With great effort, she took the note and stammered her thanks, feeling more than a little dizzy. She had a good idea who the note was from, and she fairly certain what it would say.

She stepped into the elevator, pressing the button for the tenth floor and closing her eyes as the car passed the eighth without stopping. She walked to Suite 1018, noting when she entered that except for a change in the color scheme, this suite looked very much the same as the one two floors below. Everything was the same and yet different, she thought, her mind applying the same understanding to her relationship with her former first officer.

When she’d come to the Mark Hopkins a year earlier, she’d been anxious about her crew’s future and ready to face the mistakes she’d made in the Delta Quadrant, ready to accept and deal with her repressed emotions as her counselors had recommended. However, everything had gone terribly wrong, and she realized that she’d done little or nothing to change her bad habits of denying her emotions. Here she was, a year later, still struggling with the same problems because . . . because they centered on her feelings toward Chakotay.

When she thought about it dispassionately, the problem was clear. She was in love with Chakotay, and when she’d allowed herself to express that love for him, she’d thrown caution to the wind. Twice. But when the passionate moment had ended, when she had tried to try to bring that love into her “real” life, she failed miserably. Why? Was she such a prude that she couldn’t admit to having fallen in love with her first officer? Was she so naïve to think that his involvement with someone else, even Seven of Nine, would make her love him any less? Was she unwilling to admit, even to herself, that she was a flawed human being who could make mistakes? Did she really believe that she could simply force her mistakes to disappear by ignoring their repercussions?

“It never happened,” she’d told him the first time they’d made love, totally callous to his feelings and needs, focused only on herself when he, too, was hurting and needing comfort. “It meant nothing,” she’d lied, and he’d let her get away with it. If that were true, she chided herself, if it really meant nothing, then why does the memory continue to haunt me?

Chakotay had been willing, even anxious, to talk about the problem with her, to help her work through her confusion. But she’d done what she’d always done to him, what she’d learned to do in the Delta Quadrant—deny her feelings, ignore her needs, focus her attention on other issues—all the things the counselor had told her she needed to stop doing. And because of her stupidity, their friendship had all but died. She’d withdrawn from him, hesitated to contact him about anything, stopped turning to him for advice and reassurance, failed to respond to his tentative efforts at communication.

She’d thought, wrongly, that his absence from her life would lead to his absence from her heart. Monterey had proven that assumption wrong. Their friendship hadn’t diminished at all. They’d slipped easily into their familiar banter and trust and joyously into each other’s arms. The problem had been her wrong-headed reaction to their love for each other, her refusal to even discuss their feelings.

She remembered waking up next to him in the cabin after the storm had passed, opening her eyes to see him staring at her with raw fear in his eyes as he waited for her inevitable refusal to accept the truth, her unwillingness to acknowledge and deal with reality. She hadn’t let him down.

“Dear God, not again,” she’d cried, pulling away from him as the realization of what she’d done set in.

“Kathryn, we need to talk about this. We need to face it, not run away from it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” She’d gotten out of bed, wrapping a sheet around her, hurrying to get away from the look of despair on his face. “You have to go. Right away, before Retta arrives.”

“This isn’t a casual affair, Kathryn, and you know it. We love each other, and we’ve loved each other for years. We can’t go the rest of our lives denying it.”

“I can.” She’d glared at him, wanting desperately to blame him for what had happened, yet knowing that everything had been by mutual consent, that she’d wanted him just as much as he’d wanted her. “We missed our chance. It’s too late.”

He’d continued to try to reason with her as she’d moved away from him, simply refusing to listen. He’d explained to her that he couldn’t move ahead with Seven while his feelings for her remained unresolved, that she couldn’t hope to find someone else until she’d found a solution to the bond that kept them attached to each other. He was right, she realized, looking around the strange, yet familiar suite. His presence here was her chance to set things right, to face him and settle things once and for all.

Kathryn dropped everything but the slip of paper on the coffee table and sank into the sofa’s cushions. Chakotay had come to the Mark Hopkins. In spite of her protests that she wouldn’t follow through on their planned meeting, wouldn’t join him this weekend, he’d come anyway. The question was, why was he here? Did he think she would change her mind and surprise him? Or had he come, as she had, to put closure on their failed relationship forever?

Kathryn opened the slip of paper and studied the long alpha-numeric sequence in surprise. She’d expected a letter of explanation, a tearful farewell, or a love note, but not a puzzle to decipher, and she frowned as she looked for a clue to its real meaning. Then she realized that it was a code, all right, but a door code, not an encrypted message, and that it was the door code she’d last used on Voyager, the same code she’d used the previous year when she’d occupied suite 818. The message meant that he’d hoped she’d come. Why else would he have left this note for her?

It was more than a message, she realized. It was an invitation.

She wadded up the paper and tossed it onto the table. There was no way she would be with him this weekend, no way should would resume their affair. For seven years on Voyager, she had resisted the attraction she’d felt for him, and she had resolved to resume that avoidance at all costs. They were both involved with other people and should, at the very least, extricate themselves from those commitments before they began another one, especially one as volatile as theirs had the potential to become.

The problem was that she wasn’t sure that she and Chakotay could sustain a long-term relationship. People who were in love needed to be together, did whatever it took to find time for one another. She and Chakotay had gone weeks at a time without communicating a single word, months without seeing each other, and yet . . . yet, she felt, always, the connection between them. Their passion had always simmered just beneath the surface, ready to overwhelm them like teenagers once they acknowledged its presence. Kathryn had always avoided losing control of herself, of giving in to physical passion, but with Chakotay she relished it, dreamed about it, thirsted for it. Once she’d tasted his love for her, she wanted more.

She stood up and walked to the window, leaning her face against the cool glass. All these years she’d attributed her feelings toward him as simple physical attraction. Almost every available female on Voyager had been drawn to him, and she had told herself that her fascination with him was just the same as everyone else’s. Or was it?

Could it be that she was truly in love with him? She’d told him she was, when he’d confronted her in Monterey, but she had later convinced herself that it was his intoxicating presence that had made her say those words. She couldn’t believe she was in love with him, didn’t want to believe it. What she felt was just pure lust, she told herself, an animal reaction to his incredible sexuality and physical beauty. They could never have been friends as long as they had been in the Delta Quadrant if a love this deep and abiding had been present.

She picked up the bag and went to the bedroom to change. But first, she thought as she gazed longingly at the whirlpool tub, what harm could there be in putting off her confrontation long enough for a relaxing soak? Without hesitation, Kathryn began running the water and drizzled in some bubble bath.

The powerful jets of water and the perfect warmth relaxed her and helped her think through her feelings toward Chakotay. Of course she loved him, as a friend, and needed him, as a confidante. He’d proven that he was absolutely trustworthy and, even better, willing to adjust to and compensate for her erratic behavior. He had an instinct about her needs that was borne of long years of service under her command and a careful study of her character.

But, he was so much more than just a handsome man and a wonderful first officer. He was a man of peace who exuded a dangerous power and tendency toward violence that she found fascinating and exciting. When others misconstrued his loyalty toward her as weakness, he’d been so sure of his own value and strength that he’d simply shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes,” he’d explained, “accepting the appearance of weakness is the surest sign of strength.” His calm exterior and generous nature masked a remarkable intelligence and profound intuition that made him a challenge to talk to and argue with. And his simple lifestyle was actually so complex that she still was unsure she understood it, after eight years as his friend.

She felt much better after her bath. The silk shirt felt cool and comfortable compared to the scratchy fabric of her Starfleet uniform, and the slippers were a welcome relief from the high-heeled boots she habitually wore. A quick look at herself in the mirror showed her a woman who was aging gracefully, she thought.

A few minutes later, she stood outside the door of suite 818, but Chakotay didn’t answer the chime. After waiting a few moments, Kathryn realized that he was probably asleep or that he’d disabled the chime because he didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone. That’s why he’d left the code for her, so she could come in when she wanted to. She closed her eyes briefly, visualizing the data printed on the slip of paper, and then punched the sequence into the security panel, walking into the quiet room when the doors slid open.

She immediately saw his silhouette against the huge windows where he sat motionless, deep in meditation, on the flokati rug. Their weeks together on New Earth had taught her to respect this curious practice and to let him complete his sessions without undue interruption. More than once, she’d come across him in some remote idyllic spot where he had been sitting for hours without moving and barely breathing. Once, she had hidden in the nearby trees to watch him, amazed at his total concentration and complete oblivion to his surroundings. This deep contemplation, she thought, was the secret to his calm steady personality, to the quiet self-assurance that drew her to him.

Not wanting to disturb him, she crept into the room and sat down facing him, crossing her legs and leaning against the window, desperately trying to center herself, to prepare herself for what she had to tell him. Soon he would open his eyes and smile at her, and she would have to resist the urge to simply respond to his magnetism, to steel herself against the electricity that flowed between them. She closed her eyes and waited patiently, breathing deeply and relaxing her tense muscles as her pulse slowed.

Whether the vision that came to her was a repressed memory or a fragment of a drug-induced hallucination, she would never know. She remembered lying on her side in sickbay, immobilized by excruciating pain from the spinal clamps and the cortical implant installed by the Borg, unable to breathe, unable to move, totally helpless against the technology that had been drilled into her body. The Borg had been able to dampen the physical pain of assimilation while she’d been on the cube, but she and the others had been gradually losing that benefit since they’d beamed back aboard Voyager. What had been, at first, discomfort was turning into agony.

She could hear the doctor and Tom Paris working feverishly on Tuvok in the critical care bay and the groans of B’Elanna on the biobed behind her, but because she was lying on her left side, she could only see the grey wall in front of her. She was back on the ship, but not back as its captain as much as a seriously injured former Borg drone. She longed to hear the familiar throb of Voyager’s warp core, to feel the gentle vibration of the decks beneath her feet, to sit in her command chair and monitor the repairs. She wanted to roll over and tell her chief engineer that everything would be all right and to ask the doctor about Tuvok’s condition. She wanted to walk through the passageways giving out encouragement to her crew. She wanted to take a hot bath. She wanted to have a cup of coffee. She wanted to talk to Chakotay.

Frustrated, she closed her eyes, focusing her mind on her heartbeat and the steady shallow rhythm of her breathing. Then, she felt a warm hand cup her cheek. “Don’t open your eyes,” Chakotay said, his voice soft, his face inches away from hers. “Just relax and breathe.”

“The ship?” she croaked, trying not to move. “The crew?”

“Everything’s fine, Kathryn. I’ve taken care of the ship and the crew. You take care of yourself. You can trust me, you know.”

“I do trust you.” She tried to relax, but grimaced as the spinal clamps pinched her nerves and sent waves of nausea ripping through her. “I think I’m going to throw up,” she warned him.

He lifted her slightly, helping her aim for a basin he’d pulled from under the bed as she vomited a disgusting viscous liquid into the container. Chakotay consoled her, “Once the doc gets Tuvok stabilized, he’ll take care of you. It won’t be much longer now.”

She laid back gingerly, Chakotay arranging pillows behind her as he lowered her gently onto the bed. “Chakotay, I’m sorry for taking you away from the bridge. You must have a million things to do.”

“I had to make sure the three of you were all right. You, especially.” He smiled at her, and she thought she could see the affection, the love, in his eyes. “Rest. Focus on getting better. I’ll send reports along as soon as the doc thinks you’re ready.”

“Sooner than that,” she ordered, and he laughed. She stared at him, realizing how much she depended on him. “What would I do without you, Chakotay?”

“I hope you never find out, Kathryn. I hope we’re always together.”

She looked up, the world suddenly blurred with pain that made her head spin. “I want to tell you . . . ,” she started, only to have her eyes squeeze shut. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, that she needed him. “I . . . oh, God.” She felt a terrible throbbing in her right temple that seemed to echo through her head and ripple down her spine.

“Rest now, Kathryn. Once you recover, you can tell me.” He looked up toward the back of sickbay. “Doc? The captain needs you! Her pain has worsened.”

“Don’t go now,” she mumbled, trying to keep Chakotay’s attention as the doctor stepped between them, hovering over her with a medical tricorder. “By then . . . too late . . . I’ll lose my nerve.” She heard the hiss of the hypospray and slipped into a blessed unconsciousness.

She’d never found the courage to ask Chakotay if he’d really been with her in sickbay or if she’d hallucinated. From what she’d pieced together from her subsequent examination of the fragmented internal sensor logs, he’d been off the bridge several times between their return from the Borg cube and the time when her implants had been removed. Where he’d gone had been lost or unrecorded as the ship underwent its extensive repairs.

She’d wanted him to be in sickbay with her, she’d longed to hear his voice and to be comforted by him so much that she believed he had been there, if not in body, then in spirit. The memory was so real that it didn’t matter if it wasn’t true. In her heart, she knew he’d come to check on her. He’d always been there when she’d needed him most.

Tears in her eyes, she was suddenly aware of her surroundings again, aware of Chakotay’s presence right in front of her, so close that she could reach out and touch him. She opened her eyes and studied his face, feeling an overwhelming rush of emotion as she accepted the truth at long last. She loved him. She loved him with all her heart. And she’d hurt him time and time again by denying her true feelings for him.

“Kathryn?” He was smiling at her, his brown eyes warm, the familiar dimples on full display, and she felt her heart flip over in an irrepressible response. “You’re really here?”

Every thought about ending their relationship, every carefully planned word of her farewell speech was immediately forgotten. This, she realized, is what she’d secretly hoped for when she’d decided to spend the night in San Francisco. Somewhere deep inside, she’d thought he might be here waiting for her and that the fates would bring them together as they had so many times before.

This, she realized, was the moment they had been heading toward for more than eight years, the decision point, the crisis of their friendship. The next few moments, their next few words would decide the nature of their relationship for the rest of time. Would they move forward together or apart? She knelt in front of him, cradling his face in her hands as he put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer, his eyes wide with pleasure and surprise and love.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” she smiled. “You’re really here? When I told you I wasn’t coming?”

“I’ve never given up hope,” he admitted, a shy look in his eye. “And I’ve never stopped loving you.”

“I don’t think I have a choice about this, do you?” she asked as she kissed him, her body already responding to his caresses. “I can’t escape my love for you, Chakotay. If I’m going to keep my sanity, I have to face the truth.”

Later, when they were tangled together on the bed and on the verge of sleep, she turned to him with a smile of disbelief on her face. She had never meant to admit to herself how much she loved him, much less declare her undying love to him as she had time and again that night. She had certainly never meant to continue their affair. All that had changed. Now that she’d tasted this forbidden fruit that had tantalized her for seven years, she was powerless to resist it. She wasn’t even going to try.

Their eyes locked, and she saw in his face the echo of her own guilt and helplessness and love, and she saw the fear that once again she would deny reality and run away from him. She smiled and kissed him deeply, refusing to listen to the ridiculous thought that told her this was wrong, that loving this man was unacceptable. She would never hurt him again, she decided. She would never again deny that she loved him.

“What are we going to do about us, Chakotay?” She snuggled against him, burying her face in his chest. “You’re with Seven. I’m with Randy. I’m about to leave for the Beta Quadrant for who knows how long.”

He felt a splinter of hope pierce his heart. She was willing to talk about it. She wasn’t going to pretend that she didn’t love him, that their attraction was nothing more than curiosity and lust. Yet, he was just as helpless as she was in the complexity of their tangled lives, just as perplexed by how they should proceed.

He looked down at her, his heart so full of love he could hardly breathe. “I don’t know what we’ll do, Kathryn, I really don’t. But we’ll think of something. There has to be an answer.”