by Dakota

"You asked to see me, Captain?"

"Yes, thank you for coming, Admiral. Please sit down. May I get you something?"

"Thank you. Tea would be nice. I'm surprised you asked me to come to your quarters. It must be important."

Kathryn busied herself at the replicator as she considered how to respond to the Admiral's comment.

"It is but it's personal. I had a question about something you told me earlier."

The Admiral accepted the tea and took a sip. She had a feeling she knew which comment might have raised some questions with her younger self.

"You've already mastered tea the way I like it, Captain." The Admiral was watching for the flash of emotion that crossed the captain's face and knew that she was correct. "Ask away. I have some time now before I have to meet with the team in engineering again."

"Your voice when you mentioned that Chakotay had died just as you reached the Alpha Quadrant bothered me. It sounded like more than just the loss of a friend or crewmen."

"Ahhhh. You wondered about his death because of my voice." She sipped her tea. "I'm not sure how to respond. You know as well as I do that he was never more than a friend or crewman. What more was there I could feel?"

"That's what I'm asking. I know there was something more in what you felt but I can't figure out what it was."

"Carpe diem."

"What?"

"Carpe diem – seize the day. It's something I, we, learned long ago. At least we learned the words but you still haven't learned their meaning. Unless we're successful, it's a lesson you will learn slowly and painfully over the next ten or fifteen years. Maybe if I tell you a little more about those years as I lived them, you'll get a glimmer of understanding.

"I already told you Seven and Chakotay married and she died about three years in your future. He grieved for her but he also felt a great deal of guilt. He grieved because he loved her but he felt the guilt because she wasn't the one he had loved best. I think he grieved two losses during those months after Seven died, one he could acknowledge and one he might not have admitted even to himself. I didn't understand then but I did a few years later. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"After Seven died, you might think our friendship turned back toward what you've known these last seven years, but it didn't. It deteriorated. If you had asked me how that was possible a month before Seven died, I would have told you it couldn't, not and still have us functioning as officers. I was wrong. The crew had already watched our friendship fade to practically nothing, now they watched as whatever we still had turned into a mere shell. Oh, we still worked well together professionally but there was nothing between us. I don't mean there was just no strong emotion, no anger, no resentment – I mean nothing. No jokes, no informal updates about ship's gossip, no polite inquiries about our health, no polite little comments, just ship's business.

"Even the little niceties of etiquette between officers disappeared. He'd come to the ready room, say what he had to say and leave. Oh, we still knew each other better than anyone else – he would know if I had a question and wait until he had answered it, but no more.

"Tom and a few of the others tried to fix it, or to get us to deal with it, but there wasn't anything they could do and Chakotay didn't seem to think there was a problem. The day I knew something had to be done was the day he disagreed completely with something I had planned for a landing party. If I had to describe that disagreement in terms you can understand, I'd say it was similar in degree to my, our, decisions regarding the Equinox but with far less significant ramifications. He walked into the ready room, told me he disagreed with just about every part of my plan, listed his reasons, handed me a pad with his recommendations, turned and left. He never met my eyes; he never raised his voice. You would have thought he was telling me that I should choose the strawberry cheesecake instead of pecan pie.

"What really scared me was when I realized that it was true for me as well. I read his recommendations, made a few minor changes, then ordered him to implement them as revised – all without feeling anything. I was shocked at how we were interacting. I couldn't believe that he was to the point where he wouldn't even fight with me. He had challenged and fought with me from the minute he beamed onto Voyager's bridge. Now not even the safety of an away team could bring any emotion to the surface for either of us.

"At that point I truly didn't think the command relationship could survive if we didn't do something. I talked to Chakotay; he listened. I wanted to try to regain our friendship; he agreed. I invited him to dinner; he accepted. I invited him to play pool at Sandrine's; he showed up. I asked him to try if only for the sake of the crew; he made polite chitchat in public. It was as flat a relationship as it sounds. That went on for more than six months until he showed up one day in my ready room and told me it was a waste of time but he would continue as long as I insisted. He even waited until I nodded my head in acceptance before he left.

"Until right before he died, that was the last conversation between us that even hinted at being personal."

"How did he die, Admiral?"

"Chakotay led an away team to a planet where they picked up a nasty little virus. Oh, it was nothing the doctor couldn't cure but he used some native plants and Chakotay had a violent allergic reaction to something in the treatment. Again, it was nothing that the doctor couldn't handle. His recovery should not have taken more than a day or two longer than for a younger man, but he didn't recover. Chakotay had given up years earlier. He died five days after the away mission.

"I talked to him the day before he died, or rather he talked to me. For the first time in nearly sixteen years, he actually talked to me. All he did was ask questions and apologize – questions about what he had done that had resulted in the deterioration of our friendship and apologies for things he could not control. He wanted me to know that he wished he could have done more to make the last sixteen years easier for me. He apologized for getting so angry about Ransom. He apologized for telling me the legend of the Angry Warrior and for trying to move our relationship forward. He asked me to forgive him for those things and a hundred others. Then he had the nerve to apologize for not keeping his promise to stay by my side until we got the ship and crew back to the Alpha Quadrant. He actually apoligized to me for dying."

The Admiral finished her tea and stood up.

"I didn't know how to answer him that day. Even after all those years I still couldn't tell him the truth."

The Admiral started for the door but turned back for one final observation before leaving.

"You know, Captain, that man loves you, though I doubt even the gods know why, and I know you love him. It's not the things we do in life that we regret the most; it's the things we don't do. When this is over, tell him you love him. Don't think about it; don't consider rules and regulations. Just do it before all you have left are regrets."