Work Text:
It was over.
The transwarp conduit destroyed. The borg sphere obliterated.
Voyager's bridge was normally alive with computer beeps, fingers brushing against consoles, and murmurs of background conversations. But now, the space rushed with a deafening silence. When Seven stirred beside him, Chakotay's heart clenched in his chest.
It was over.
The journey completed. The Alpha Quadrant, suddenly, in a heartbeat, here...
Overwhelmed, Chakotay drifted in a trance away from Seven and down to the command well. When he came to a stop at his captain's left shoulder, they both stared numbly out at the fleet. There were at least 10 Federation ships out there. Maybe 15. Was one of them the Enterprise? He couldn't focus on one particular thing long enough to tell. It was all a jumble.
"We did it..." the captain whispered a soft breath. It sounded like she was still trying to convince herself.
Arms limp at his sides, Chakotay remained slack jawed. When he spoke, he barely recognized his own voice. "We're home."
But when she spoke, reality - potentially a new reality, a reality he'd convinced himself would only ever exist outside of waking moments, a reality he'd almost given up on - began to take shape. "We're home..."
And when he turned to her, there was a vibrancy in her eyes that he hadn't seen for months. It was more than astonishment. More than pride.
And when she turned to him, there was no captain. There was only Kathryn, open and hopeful and younger than her years.
Her eyes searched him, darting over every inch of his face, hair, neck, settling on his lips. For the first time in a long time, he could read her again. It was like a kickstart to the senses. A telepathic barrage of questions and promises and expectations with no trace of the doubts that had once fringed them.
Before any words could form in Chakotay's mind, let alone on his lips, the sound of a crying infant broke the still air.
"Doctor to Paris..." They could all hear the doctor's ear-to-ear beam of pride even over the comm line. "There's someone down here who wants to say hello."
Tom swiveled toward Kathryn so fast, he was lucky his chair didn't fly off its bearings.
"You'd better get down there, Tom," she cooed, with the kind of relaxed, loving smile that could only come from new life. Hoots and hollers from the other bridge officers serenaded Tom on his mad rush to the turbolift.
And then there was a soft hand on Chakotay's shoulder. "Chakotay..."
The one word - his name on her lips - sent him spiraling.
All at once, he remembered her flash onto the viewscreen of the Val Jean, gilded in commanding radiance. He felt the stilted breath on his cheeks when she stepped into his space for the first time, her chin tipped confidently up toward his. He saw the beautiful smile that brightened her face whenever she let down her guard. He heard her peels of laughter, like windchimes in a summer breeze, and the soft moan elicited by that first steaming hot mug of the day.
All at once, their situation hit him full force. They were home.
This is what they'd been waiting for through years of bated breaths. Of tenderness and tension. Of stammering. Of slipups and apologies. Of brushing fingertips. Of touch that never completed itself, but longed to.
This was the unspoken promise he'd clung to for five years. When we get home...
This was the oath she'd made with every crinkle of her ocean eyes, every palm on his cheek, every hand over his heart. When we get home...
And now, here they were. The realization that he'd almost given up, almost boarded up his heart, almost walked away from her for good when they were so close to that promise land... sent a chill down his spine and a rush of adrenaline through his system.
"Chakotay," she spoke again, a sheen in her eyes. "Would you like to take the helm?"
Not if it means walking one inch away from you, he thought. Because they were home... And he was never going to walk away from her again.
In a voice that sounded so foreign it couldn't have been his own, Chakotay rumbled, "There's something else I'd like to do first..."
Buoyed by the heady exuberance of the moment, he couldn't quite believe that his fingers were now tangling themselves in Kathryn's hair, cupping the back of her neck, pulling her toward him. He'd never been so bold. Not with tears on her face and his hand clasped in hers. Not on a sailboat after 3 glasses of champagne. And certainly not on the bridge, in front of the crew, in front of the entire Fleet...
But this time, swimming in those ocean eyes, Chakotay found himself lost in a bubble of time and space. Nothing existed here but the understated scent of Kathryn's perfume and the way her lips parted like passing clouds as they met his, the subtle shiver of her hips as his hand trailed lower. It was like a dream, blurred. Her breath on his nose like the whisper of some distant galaxy. The embrace of a longing so eternal that its fruition felt predestined.
And as Kathryn's arms wrapped around his neck, her lips forming into a smile against his tongue and her body finally melting into his, he swore on every lucky star in the sky that this was the dream, the reality, the promise that he'd hold close for the rest of his life.
Artwork by Jane_dee01