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It starts as an ordinary, lighthearted argument, sitting together on the side of his desk as Kathryn piles padd after padd on top -- more work than any mortal could finish in four days, and he tells her so.
"Give some of it to someone else," he suggests. "You could put Tuvok in charge of coordinating the engineering reviews. And you could ask Seven to report on the power consumption. While you're at it, you could ask Seven to be a little friendlier when she comes storming into my office demanding that I discipline some hapless ensign who doesn't work fast enough for her exacting standards."
Kathryn groans. "Seven and I have had this discussion before. I guess that's why she's coming to you now. See -- she obviously believes you to be a fine first officer."
"Thanks a lot."
"So I have confidence in your ability to keep this schedule. I'll ask Neelix to bring you some lunch."
"Small consolation."
"We can play Velocity when you finish."
"Sure. Wait till I'm too tired to see straight, then make me a challenge."
She grins mischievously. "Well, is there anything else?"
"You could let your hair grow."
He speaks with a wink darkening half the room as casually as the words pass his lips. It's an old fantasy, one he never dared voice when the desire was acute, now meant as a backhanded compliment. For a moment he thinks Kathryn will laugh, taking this plea as lightly as she has his other complaints.
But her smile falls away, and suddenly she will not look at him. He feels his jaw tightening, his teeth gritting. Hard to believe that after all this time, she will not let him joke about what never was. But nothing has changed, not for her. After all. He turns his condemnation inward, using it to quell the anger that in past months has replaced the pain.
"I didn't think you still..." Her voice, very soft, interrupts. He glances at her stricken features, realizes he has misread her displeasure. She has her lower lip caught between her teeth, and her eyes are round, glossy. Not shutting him out, but holding herself in.
Still. So much meaning in that single word, even without the rest of her sentence -- that she knew, that she noticed the change, that she felt loss. It should be vindication, yet he feels only sorrow and anger, at her and at himself.
How could they have brought one another to this point, when a small flirtation can reopen a chasm between them? He could never bridge it, because she would never let him take the final steps across, but he learned to move parallel, so that sometimes they can almost touch one another across the distance. And that is mostly enough to sustain them. Mostly.
Without thinking -- as spontaneously as he phrased the jest about her hair -- he takes her hand, pulling it from her lap to hover between them. "I didn't think you still cared," he finishes the dialogue, turning the words back onto her, gently, so she will not misunderstand the query as an accusation. Kathryn meets his glance warily, catching his eyes then looking quickly away as if something has caught her interest on the far wall.
He waits. He thinks that perhaps he should push -- now he knows he pushed too little in the past, when she took his hesitation for uncertainty rather than nervousness. But he is no longer certain, not after all that has passed between them, and he can see that she is nervous now, so he says nothing more.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs after a minute while she looks at their hands together in the space between them. A frightening phrase, which might be meant to erase the past, but might be used to reinforce its results. Kathryn retreats back into silence, and he knows he must push -- he must know which part she is sorry about.
"I'm sorry too." The same uncertainty is plain in her gaze. "I should have told you sooner. I didn't think you wanted me to."
With his other hand, he reaches to touch the ends of her hair, though it is no longer hair of which he speaks. His raised eyebrow makes her smile, but the smile constricts the shape of her eyes, welling tears at the corners. He touches her there too, bringing away a finger damp with moisture.
"I'm not sure what I wanted." Her grip tightens on his palm. "Or maybe...I can't say I could have done anything differently. Even if I had, before, it might not have changed anything. We'd have had the same arguments about the Borg, and the Equinox, and it would have been much harder..."
He wants to ask before what. He does not know when she dates the chasm -- he has assumed for a long time that it must always have been there, from their roles on the ship, because to believe otherwise would mean to blame himself for not stepping across at a critical moment. So much has happened to them, getting stranded, being recovered, not talking enough, talking too much, turning to others at the wrong moment. Looking back, he cannot see any clear moment of fissure.
Perhaps there never was.
Their hands are still joined in the space between them. He wants to pull Kathryn toward himself, slowly, with words, but he does not know how dangerous that might be. "Is it too late now?" he asks, afraid of her answer but needing to know. If she says yes, he will have lost little -- only the possibility that his own conclusions have been wrong. If she says no...
"Is it too late?" As he did earlier, she turns the question back onto him. So after all this time, it is his demand to answer. A rush of air fills his lungs. He had not realized he was holding his breath. Not too late. Now he is certain that it will never be too late, not for him.
But he is still cautious, unable to forget the searing pain that kept him awake for what seemed months on end, when he doubted her, as he supposes he must always now. So much damage that can never be undone. He doubts he is strong enough to live through that pain again. His side of the chasm is safe. He has learned to live with where they are.
It has not occurred to him before that perhaps she no longer can do the same. In the midst of his suffering, perhaps he refused to notice that she had changed.
And perhaps some changes might be better -- even if they can never go back, they can go forward together. Still. Mostly. After all.
He smiles again. "It's not too late for you to stop cutting your hair."
It might be the wrong thing to say -- to put so much emphasis on the physical -- but Kathryn nods as if she understands, and winks back.
He reaches once more to touch the long maple-colored strands by her neck, tentatively, afraid she will think he expects too much before either of them has had time to adjust to this sudden miracle. But her decision seems as firm as the hug she gives him, arms around his neck, bringing their chests together so that he can feel her heartbeat.
"It'll grow," she promises.