Star Trek Voyager: Here I Stand

Here I Stand, Part 1

Part 1

The full moon, hanging low over the bay, was too bright.

Maybe the champagne had gone to his head.

Maybe the stifling air inside the ballroom, heavy with the scents of too many flowers and too many warm bodies, had overwhelmed his senses.

Maybe the occasion, the joyous wedding of two old friends-turned-lovers, had hit just a little too close to home.

Maybe the quick succession of all three, like a rapid-fire jab and uppercut combination, had simply sent him reeling.

Chakotay leaned against the balcony's stonework and stared out over the water.

Maybe it was that dress.

That silky-soft, shimmering, silvery dress that bared more glowing, freckled skin than he'd seen since...

He sighed.

It was definitely the dress.

He was always conscious of her when she entered a room, but that dress... It sent him into a state of hyperawareness that he couldn't shake off.

He'd thought Kathryn was off-planet on Starfleet business and wouldn't make the wedding of Tal Celes and Billy Telfer. So when she'd strolled into the chapel on the arm of yet another slim, slight, fiftysomething man...wearing that dress...he'd had to hold himself very still indeed to keep from outwardly reacting.

Inside, though... Inside, he'd fought down a sudden combination of mixed surprise, panic and raw desire. The young woman at his side had looked up at him with concern. "Chakotay?" she'd whispered. "Are you all right?"

He'd forced himself to smile for her. "There's someone here I didn't expect to see," he replied. "I'll be fine in a minute." He leaned down and kissed her jet-black hair to distract himself from the sensations churning inside him. When he looked up again, he'd caught familiar blue eyes on him, stormy with some emotion he couldn't quite identify.

The wedding ceremony was a blur.

He drummed his fingers against the stone and tried to remember any of it, anything all. The vows were lost to him, but he could picture with perfect detail the way she glanced at him when Seven began to sing during the ceremony. The wrap had slipped from her shoulders. The balding man had reached back and pulled it up again, tucking it around her, his bony fingers brushing against her pale, smooth skin.

Chakotay had to avert his eyes and collect himself before he could face the front of the chapel again.

It was the first time he'd seen her in a month. It wasn't that he'd been avoiding her, exactly. They'd crossed paths now and then, but he spent most of his time holed up at the Academy or his isolated house in Big Sur. She was away from her San Francisco office almost as much as she was there, and when she was on the Starfleet grounds she was just as busy and sequestered as he. Aside from a few Voyager gatherings, he'd barely seen her in the nine months since their final post-Delta Quadrant debriefings.

He missed her. He missed their working lunches and casual dinners, missed their long, rambling conversations, missed the way she made him laugh in spite of himself. He even missed their arguments, as venomous as they could sometimes be.

Tonight, more than anything, he missed the tantalizing feel of her body, small and strong, next to his.

She seemed to harbor no such longings. She'd turned up at their crew's various social functions with a succession of similar-looking older men, differentiated only by their professions: A doctor, a well-known novelist, a politician. Chakotay didn't recognize tonight's companion, but he was sure to find out eventually - if not from her directly, from Tom and B'Elanna, who seemed to always know who she was with and how long they'd been dating.