A/N: Big thank you as always to the fab MissyHissy3 for beta reading.

Chapter Five

Post-battle on Voyager, the crew moved around like somnambulists. A ship takes a long time to heal. There were no relief crews coming, no sister ships to take up the wing, no tricked-out space docks full of parts and engineers awaiting their arrival. There were only the same 150 crewmembers that had been in the thick of the firefight, and they were tired. Most were hurt in some way or another. Those who were ambulatory kept working regardless: it wasn't as if they had any choice. Neelix, his mess hall overrun by casualties, somehow still managed to make batches of soup and deliver them to the work parties spread out stem to stern. For once, no one found anything to complain about in its content. Their gratitude was as palpable as the slowly dissipating smoke in the ship's beleaguered corridors.

Mike ignored his cracked ribs. He was breathing pretty well, so he figured he didn't have a punctured lung, in which case they'd wait a few more hours. It wasn't as if he hadn't dealt with worse during his time in the Maquis. In fact, this was where those members of Voyager's crew who had first come aboard as renegades generally faired better than their Starfleet-trained counterparts. Work hard, work long, work hurt, work hungry. A mantra made more of necessity than ethos, but not one easily forgotten by either mind or muscle.

Ayala tried not to think too much about Chakotay, fighting for his life in sickbay. He'd spoken briefly to the EMH following the first officer's arrival there. Surgery would be difficult and ongoing, the doctor had told him. He'd also left the Lieutenant in no doubt that his presence was only required if Ayala himself required treatment. 'Sickbay is too busy for well-wishers', were the hologram's exact words.

He wondered if Janeway was having the same thoughts as he was. He saw her two or three times as he ricocheted between the bridge and whatever was next on the never-ending list of repairs. She was always on her feet and always had a PADD or a tool in her hand, even when Tom Paris physically forced her to a standstill just long enough to treat her arm. Ayala watched as the pilot helped her peel off her jacket. He had to cut her roll-neck at the forearm to get to the wound. The arm beneath was blue-black and badly swollen. Janeway barely seemed to notice, conducting a conversation with someone via her combadge and reading something on the PADD in her hand as Tom worked.

She reminded him of Chakotay. The thought made him smile.

Mike was working on the servos on the doors to turbolift two when his combadge burst into life.

"Doctor to Lieutenant Ayala."

"Ayala here."

"I thought you'd like to know that Commander Chakotay is out of surgery, Lieutenant."

Relief hovered around Mike's heart, but he knew better than to let it settle. "How did it go?"

"Well. With a less competent surgeon the Commander might have been in trouble, but luckily he had me. I've saved his leg. He's still got a long road to recovery ahead of him, but at least he'll be on it with both feet."

Mike rested his grubby forehead on his wrist, suppressing the bubble of involuntary laughter that rose up from his gut. "Great, Doc. That's great. Have you told Captain Janeway?"

"She was first on my list, obviously," said the EMH. "And let me pre-empt your next question by saying yes, you can visit, but not for another few hours. I've still got patients to deal with here, but most of them will have been discharged by 2000 hours."

"Got it," said Ayala. "Thanks, Doctor. For everything."

Once the conversation had ended, Mike let the humming silence of Voyager crowd in. He sat back on his haunches and let the tiredness wash over him as he stared blindly at the broken servo junction he'd been working on a moment earlier. He hadn't realised just how afraid he'd been until he knew for certain that there was no longer anything of which to be afraid.

After a few minutes, he collected himself and went back to work.

The crew did good service during the hours that followed. The transporters came back online. Three out of the full complement of turbolifts were back in operation. The lighting was back to normal on most decks and running at half-power rather than emergency on the rest. The replicators were functioning and the Captain issued a ship-wide announcement that there would be a ration amnesty so that every crewmember could have one hot meal of their choosing regardless of their credit status.

At 2000 hours, Ayala stepped out of the turbolift on deck five and entered a well of calm. Now that the ship was out of imminent danger, shift patterns were beginning to reassert themselves. They would be shorter for the next two days: all hands would be on a six-hours-on, six-hours-off cycle to allow everyone to catch up on much-needed rest. As a result, the frenetic activity that had filled the corridors for the past 12 hours had quieted. The hallways of Voyager were avenues of muted calm. Mike passed a couple of patched-up crewmembers as he entered sickbay but found that the Doctor had been true to his word. The place was very nearly empty.

Chakotay was in the smaller single-occupant room that doubled as an operating theatre. There was no sign of the EMH as Ayala walked through sickbay. Mike thought he'd probably deactivated himself to give engineering a chance to work out what was wrong with his mobile emitter. Ayala briefly contemplated reactivating him to ask for an update before he walked into his friend's room, but decided against it on the grounds that, hologram or not, the EMH deserved and likely needed as much post-incident R&R as the rest of them.

Mike almost walked straight into Chakotay's room before he registered the scene in front of him. He just managed to bring himself to a halt before he crossed the threshold and then backtracked a few steps into the dim light beyond the observation window.

Chakotay lay on a biobed, his leg encased in what looked like a pressure cylinder. The top half of the bed was elevated and Ayala could see that his friend was awake. There was another person in the room, too. She sat at his left side, most of her body hidden from Ayala by the angle of the biobed. Kathryn Janeway had pulled a chair up beside her unconscious first officer, probably intending to be present when he came around after surgery. Her own exhaustion had apparently finally won out over her will, however, because at some point she must have leaned her crossed arms against the space at his side, rested her head against them and then fallen asleep. From where Ayala stood he could see that she hadn't had time to change her uniform and still wore the one Tom Paris had cut open in order to heal her injuries.

Mike wondered how long Chakotay had been awake. His friend lay, unmoving, watching his commanding officer's dirt-streaked, sleeping face. Then as Ayala watched, Chakotay slowly gathered up one of the blankets arranged across his body and drew it over her. As gentle as the movement was, Janeway woke, lifting her head and pushing her hair out of her eyes. When she saw that Chakotay was awake, she smiled. It was an expression of such brilliance that Mike even felt his own heart catch. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at Mike that way. More than four years, in fact. Chakotay reached out with one hand and cupped her face, a reaction that Mike had no problem understanding at all but that seemed to take both of them by surprise. Janeway let his hand linger there for a moment and then reached up to pull it away, holding his hand in both of hers. They began to talk, quietly, and Mike knew that he had already watched for too long. So he turned and left sickbay as quietly as he had arrived.

"I didn't ever want her to have to see me like that."

Chakotay was sitting on the sofa in his quarters, his healing leg resting on the coffee table. It had been two weeks since the first officer's surgery and he'd been discharged from sickbay but had yet to return to active duty. The enforced inaction was not playing well with the man.

Mike watched his friend's face. Chakotay wasn't looking at him, focusing instead on the chessboard they'd set up between them. It was the first time the subject of what had happened in that Jeffries tube had arisen. Ayala had begun to think that that they'd never broach it at all.

"It'd take more than a bit of blood to scare Kathryn Janeway," Mike observed. "Pretty sure she's seen a hell of a lot worse than that in her time."

Chakotay frowned, then struggled out of his seat and used his crutch to head for the replicator. "Yeah," he said. "She has."

Mike waited for Chakotay to elaborate, but he didn't. "Things were pretty bad there for a while, Cap. There were a few moments where I was convinced you weren't going to make it. You really think it would have been better for her not to see you at all?"

He could hear that Chakotay's tea had materialised, but his friend didn't turn around. He stayed there, his big shoulders hunched, his head dipped as if he was trying to avoid something flying low over his head.

"I know you think that what happened in that firefight… that it should make a difference," Chakotay said then, his voice quiet. "That it's a reason that we should just… dive in. But that's not how it works, not for her. It does the opposite."

Mike frowned, picking up a fallen pawn and turning it around in his fingers. "You're saying she thinks that the fact that any of us could die out here at any time… that's a reason not to…" he trailed off.

"Yes. And I know that you don't get that, that you don't understand why-"

Mike shrugged and put down the pawn. "Doesn't matter if I understand it. Do you?"

Chakotay turned around, looking out of the window at the starscape beyond with a frown. "Yes. I'm not saying it's easy to accept, but I get it. Because if that had been her, instead of me… if one day I had to watch her die…" he broke off and shook his head. "I don't know how I would cope with that. And she's been there before, Mike. I don't ever want to be the one to put her back there again."

Mike nodded. "Okay."

Chakotay offered a slight smile and made his way back to the sofa. "You were a real jerk, letting go at me the way you did."

"I know. Had good intentions though, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. And you know what? That thing you said, about us coming 75,000 light years and finding each other… I'd never thought of it like that."

Mike nodded. "It's pretty astronomical," he paused. "Actually, it's literally astronomical. That's got to mean something, right?"

Chakotay dropped stiffly into his seat. "Hope so."

"You willing to wait to find out?"

"Not sure I've got a choice."

Ayala nodded. "Just one of those things, right?"

"Yeah," said Chakotay. "Just one of those things. Is it your move, or mine?"

"Yours," Mike told him. "It's all yours, Cap."

[END]

Additional A/N: Readers that read this series the first time I posted it will know it originally ended with a post-Endgame story called 'Onwards', which I will re-post at some point. Huge thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed – I'm astonished at how many comments/faves and follows this little story has had! Much appreciated.