Insaneway

*Seven and Chakotay having their “second date”...* Scriptwriters: kiss twice and the captain will call you to the bridge. Jery ​​and Robert: But it's their second date… shouldn't they sit down and have a romantic dinner? Writers: We don't have time for this big nonsense we've come up with, I don't know what to do, you two clearly don't know either, Seven and Chakotay don't know either… no one is comfortable with this shit, so let's just stick with these two kisses, then the captain will call you to the bridge and Chakotay will say some nonsense. To fill this ridiculous romance we've invented we're going to create a very dramatic death for Seven in a few years and you two will at least have something to do on screen arguing about it. Someone backstage: I told you this romance idea was shit! One of the writers, massaging his temples: Shut up!

CHAKOTAY: But what I do makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it? Every time I do something that adds a personal touch to the shelter, you resist it. JANEWAY: Sometimes it feels as though you've given up, that you're focused on making a home here instead of finding a cure that will let us leave.

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.