I was rewatching Voyager, and there’s an episode early in the first season where they encounter a spatial rift and make contact with that Romulan… Since they couldn't return home through the rift, as it was out of sync with their own time, the Romulan suggested he could warn Starfleet in the future not to send Voyager on that mission, thereby preventing them from getting stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Chakotay immediately disagrees, arguing that their presence there had already interfered too much with the quadrant for such a change to be made. Later, in the episode "Shattered," he says something similar to Janeway when she nearly breaks down upon learning of the tragedies that occurred in the Delta Quadrant and considers an idea like the Romulan's: preventing it all from happening. He reminds her of the lives they transformed and the people they saved. Well, Chakotay is an altruistic man, of course, and naturally considers the impact Voyager's absence from the Delta Quadrant would have (even though, in "Timeless," he throws all temporal guidelines out the window and alters 15 years of history). But I think that, subconsciously, Chakotay wants to be right there, beside her on Voyager, stranded in the Delta Quadrant, because that is where he found the best chapter of his life. In the episode "Night," when Janeway falls into a deep depression and dwells on the mistake she made by condemning them to the Delta Quadrant, Chakotay consoles her with that same argument, and I’m sure he did the same every time she lamented the incident. When they were stranded on New Earth, Chakotay acted like the happiest man in the world. They were stranded, potentially left behind forever, but he was… simply happy. Regardless of whether it was romantic or platonic (though I vehemently disagree that it was platonic), there is one thing no one can deny about Chakotay: he is eternally devoted to Janeway, she is his greatest idol and closest friend, and she is the person he loves.
