QUINTET
Five drabbles for J/C
vanhunks
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Janeway and Chakotay.
Summary: Kathryn, only at the end of their journey, reveals her feelings for Chakotay.
Mostly PG!
***
HOPE
"Why, Kathryn? Why now?"
Her eyes bled her regret and her heart compelled her to speak even as she knew that it was too late.
"To save myself the future sorrow of never having told you. Forgive me."
"You know what you have done?" Chakotay asked.
The hard armour that shielded his heart against the pain released one plate, then another. He tried to recapture them, but in vain.
"Yes," came her reply, soft, uncertain of hoping, yet there. "It is all I have. Without it I shall die."
"Then I tell you that you leave me without a shield…again."
***********
FEAR
She had exposed his heart, yet her victory was without joy. It left a bitter taste that lingered long after she shattered his armour.
"Then I tell you, Chakotay, that I am yours. Wherever you go, with or without me as a part of your life, I am yours."
"You set conditions on my love?" he asked, stunned.
"No boundaries. I have no power which I can exert, or command. Yes," she sighed. "No boundaries…"
"I leave here, live my life without you in it, knowing you love me. That is what you want?"
"That is what I fear, Chakotay."
***
SURRENDER
His hand reached to touch her cheek. Her fear had lain exposed. He could trample on her as she had on him, he mused. He could walk away from her, just turn and leave.
Her eyes begged. He wondered whether the asking had come too late. He had despaired many times as she held his heart hostage.
A mere fluttering of her eyelids, uncertain, gently closing at his touch like a curtain of finest silk.
More times than he could dream, he had dreamed of this moment of Kathryn's surrender.
His cry when it came, was not one of victory.
******
TOUCH
His were not the hands of the pampered. They were rough hands, calloused skin that had seen years of toil on her ship. Now his palm caressed her cheek, his free hand tenderly taking hold of hers. How had she yearned that his fingers lace through hers and she'd know she belonged in his heart!
"You can see into my heart," she whispered. "I feel…protected."
"I've wanted to be like this, with you…always."
Sighing, she felt the deep thudding of his heart under her own palm that had come, like the gentle dove of peace, to rest against his chest.
*****
POWER
He could feel her breath on his skin. This close, the downy hairs on her cheeks rose and fell with her pulse. He stared, transfixed by her allure.
Want and need fused to electrify every nerve in his body.
Her eyes, from which regret once spilled, now seized him and pulled him into a maddening, swirling vortex of passion. A pained cry escaped his lips as he exploded, thrown into a merciless shower of stars. He drowned, welcoming this wondrous conquest.
Strange, he thought, this conquest. They barely touched, separated by a hair's breath.
He came, yet Kathryn never moved.
***
vanhunks
February 2007