Especially Chakotay and me.

I didn’t keep logs on New Earth. Well, in the first few days, I didn’t keep meaningful logs, and then I stopped altogether. I want to put it down now, while its still fresh and I have the will to make a record. I have a feeling that in a few days it will be easier to pretend that it never happened.

Looking back, the thing that strikes me is that denial is something I do very well, almost as well as guilt. At first, I simply didn’t believe that we would be there forever. I was truly convinced that I would find a cure that would free us from the planet. Chakotay settled in right away, but he never pressed me to do the same. Apart from a gentle hint about "not trading the present for a future that might never happen" he let me go my own way. That was the first thing I learned about him on New Earth – he is a man of infinite patience.

So, my days were busy with tests and traps and calculations and forced good cheer, and the occasional visit from the little simian who shared our forest. Nights were another story. At night, all the doubts and uncertainties crowded in my head and demanded to be heard. Even at my age, there are monsters under the bed. My particular monster is named guilt.

The first night that I couldn’t sleep, I wrapped up in a blanket and slipped quietly, I thought, outside. Looking up at the unfamiliar starscape, I felt a huge pang of homesickness. Where was Voyager? Did they still see the same stars?

For all my efforts to be quiet, he heard me and came out also. "I can’t sleep either," he said.

My eyes were still gazing upwards. "Look at it," I said. "It’s so different."

He stood beside me, looking up but not touching me. After a moment he spoke quietly. "Not so very different. There are constellations. See? There, on the horizon. That’s a rose."

It took a moment to find where he was pointing, but then I saw it. "It does look like a rose." I was amazed, and delighted. "And there – look, it’s like the Big Dipper, only backwards." We spent the rest of the night sitting side by side on the ground, finding constellations. By dawn we had identified the Mouse, the Stallion, the Mountains, and half a dozen more.

The next night, we met again after moonrise and sat side by side on the ground. We made up background for each new constellation, and I began to realize that he was a natural story-teller. It wasn’t so much the actual words that impressed me as the sound of his voice, and how often we laughed that night. The one constellation we didn’t create a story for, though, was the Rose. Somehow we never got to it.

The night after that, we sat outside after dark by unspoken agreement and we began to talk about ourselves. Not about Voyager, or even the Maquis, but inconsequential things at first – things like being the oldest child, and parent’s expectations, and little recollections from childhood. Each confidence led to another one, and another.

People speak too casually of baring their souls, as if it is done simply, or without risk. We are private people, Chakotay and I, inclined to keep our innermost selves hidden. But in those warm, dark nights, we told each other things we had not shared with anyone else in a very long time, if we ever shared them at all. Shyly at first, the trust between us built night by night, a bit at a time.

I began to feel as if I were two people, the nighttime Kathryn and the daytime Kathryn. In the daytime, I could deny the reality of our situation, including the physical attraction that was growing daily between us. An admission that we were stranded was disloyal to Voyager, and an admission that I was attracted to Chakotay was disloyal to Mark.

In the night, though, none of that mattered. At night, there was nothing but the two of us, sitting on the ground, looking at the stars and talking.

Chakotay made no overt effort to change my daytime self, but he waged a subtle campaign. Every day he tried something to get me to focus on the present, and our needs for survival. He brought me grasses for analysis, to see if they could be cultivated to grain, and fruits and nuts and berries. He built me a bathtub. A bathtub. It’s in the cargo bay now, but I have no idea what to do with it. It’s too big for my quarters; I’ll probably have to recycle it for crew rations.

In the middle of our third week there, the first big plasma storm hit and destroyed my equipment. Despite the devastation, I still was not ready to admit that we were indeed marooned there. It was too great a loss to contemplate. A numbness enveloped me, a protective reaction, I suppose.

But it couldn’t last. The next night, after we cleaned up the worst of the storm damage, my neck and shoulders were stiff and he offered a backrub. I can still feel his hands on my skin, still remember how stealthily the sensation changed from therapeutic to sensual, how wonderfully close I came to giving into it. But, being me, when faced with the undeniable I tried to control it. That was when he told me the ‘angry warrior’ legend. I don’t think anything has moved me so much, before or since, and it was the mortal blow to my defenses.

Later that night, wide awake and troubled by something I couldn’t define, I slipped outside. This was one time that I didn’t want to wake him; I felt the need to be alone. I looked up into the sky and realized with a jolt that it was no longer strange. I knew the constellations, knew them well enough to judge the time by their position.

That was when I finally believed it. New Earth was my home. We were never going to leave. It was time to let go.

I don’t cry. I can count on one hand the number of times in my adult life that I have actually let go and wept. This was one of them, and I did not do it gracefully. The sobs tore the breath from my lungs and burned my throat. He heard me, of course, and came outside. Without saying a word, he held me closely while I cried out my grief. I wept for Voyager and Tuvok, for Mark and my dog, Mother and Phoebe, for everything and everyone I had ever lost. He held me until my tears were spent.

When I finally calmed, he took a step back and looked at me. Whatever he saw satisfied him, because he bent down, wiped my face with his fingers and said softly, "I’ll see you in the morning." Then he left me to finish my good-byes in private.

The next morning was different. I was different. The residual sadness was there, but at the same time, I was free. For the first time in memory, I had no obligations to anyone but myself. I felt almost weightless, in need of an anchor to keep me grounded. Without clearly articulating the thought, I realized that for the first time in my life, all I had to do was… to be. No career to build, no tests to study for, no goal or objective other than living as best we could manage. It was liberating but a little frightening. I wasn’t sure who I was without Starfleet to define me.

During those next days, as I got to know myself, I also began to notice Chakotay more. Even so, neither of us wanted to rush into anything. We knew that proximity and lack of alternatives would bring us together eventually, but we wanted something more. We wanted to build a relationship.

So we lived and worked together, and continued to learn about each other. Each day became a day of discovery, not just about the planet, but about ourselves. We learned the little things about each other, the things that come only with time and attention. Like the expression he gets when he is amused but trying not to show it. It’s a very tiny change in his eyes and the faintest hint of a smile…he somehow learned to tell the difference between when I really have a headache and when I’m just annoyed by the failure of the universe in general to cooperate with my plans. We learned the little things…food preferences, daily routines, all the minutiae that comprised our life there.

We began to watch each other when the other wasn’t looking. I would find excuses to seek him out during the day, and then stand at a distance before he noticed me and just look at him. Sometimes just stand there a while and then leave without ever talking to him. He was beautiful to watch, and images of him began to populate my dreams at night. I was falling in love, I realized, in a leisurely slide that was as scary as it was pleasant, and I savored every moment of it.

Another night came when I couldn’t sleep, although this time the monster under the bed wasn’t guilt. After tossing and turning for a while, I went outside to look at the sky. Even though the sky cloudy, the Rose was visible, and I stared at it for a long time.

He came out so quietly I didn’t know he was there until I felt his arms slip around me from behind. He held me close, and I leaned against him. It was a first for us, but it felt natural, and very good. "We haven’t got a story for the Rose," I said.

"I found something. It’s not a story, though." And then he said,

I turned in his arms so I could see his face. The undisguised tenderness in his eyes was perhaps the most wonderful gift I was ever given. There was nothing else to do but to kiss him. His arms tightened around me and mine around him, and we stood in the moonlight and kissed. Kissed as if it was the first time ever. It felt like that, it felt new and bubbly as if we were the first two people to ever try it. When we finally broke apart, I hugged him tightly. I was so filled with happiness that I thought I might burst.

We probably would have tried it again except that the little simian came running up, chattering at us anxiously. When we didn’t break apart, it ran up my leg and began pulling my hair. The only times it had ever behaved like this was when a storm was imminent, so we paid attention. Within moments it was raining, and we were soaked before we made it inside. It turned out to be a simple rainstorm, though, not a major plasma storm, and by the time we realized it, the mood had been broken. I went alone to my bed that night, but in the certainty that I would not sleep alone the next night.

The next morning he asked me to come inside and give my opinion on his design for a boat. We were joking a bit, but I suggested we could take a camping trip up the river. He made a joke about taking the bathtub along, and I said I would have the river, and it was all quite light. And underneath the banter, we both knew that after last night, things would be different.

And then, practically in mid-sentence, Tuvok called. He was coming for us, they had a cure. They would be there in 30 hours.

My first reaction was shock, and I numbly agreed that we would be ready for the ship when it arrived. My second reaction was anger. How dare he interrupt my plans? Indignant, I looked up at Chakotay, and froze. He was already looking at me with a sad little smile.

"Damn," was all he said, and then he walked out of the shelter and into the woods.

It took me only a moment to realize what he was thinking. We were returning to Voyager; we were the captain and the first officer again. A romantic relationship between us on the ship wasn’t strictly against regulations but it was a very bad idea. He had commanded his own ship and knew the truth of that as well as I. The strain of balancing the professional obligations and the personal feelings almost always destroys the relationship and in our case, that would mean destroying the command team with no replacements available. It would be hubris to think we were the exceptional pair that could beat the odds and make it work. We owed our crew better than that.

I don’t cry. I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually wept. This was one of them. Quietly, this time, and not for long, but with as much pain as before. Then I began the business of packing.

By the time he returned from the woods I was back in uniform, my hair up, and had several crates ready for transport. We didn’t discuss it at all, just went about crating things up as if we had planned it all along. We worked until well after dark, then ate a quiet meal. While he cleared the table, I wandered out side and looked up. In a few minutes he joined me.

We spent our last night on New Earth as we had spent so many nights, lying on the ground looking up at the stars. We held each other, as much for comfort as for intimacy. The night was clear, and all our constellations were vivid in the sky. There was a lot of silence between us that night, and when we did speak, it was of the mundane. Should we leave the tomatoes or try to transplant them or just uproot them? The grains we were trying to cultivate, would they grow in airponics? Then we would taper off to silence again, listening to the sound of the breeze and each other’s breathing.

It was after one of these silences that he turned his head, and I followed his gaze. He was looking at the Rose. "There’s another stanza," he said quietly.

"And fare thee well, my only love,

After that, we said nothing until dawn, when Voyager arrived.

-the end-

Sequel:  A Red, Red Rose