#miacooper

From/for @mia-cooper.  476 words. She stumped me for days with her choice. First person to identify the episode for this missing scene gets to pick the next one.  Enjoy!

He remembers feeling warm skin under his fingertips – still new and exhilarating and so worth the wait. Oh…and the wanton way she moaned his name, syllables vibrating through her throat, imperceptible to his ears but music to his lips.  He remembers that too.  

It wasn’t their first time, but nearly so, and definitely the first time he had kissed here there, in that wonderful spot just below her ear along the side of her flushed neck. She tasted sweet in that place, her flesh tender under his mouth. He found it so heavenly in fact, that he lingered just a bit longer than he might have otherwise - and now he’s glad that he did.  Because this is how he wants to remember her, full of life and blushing with pleasure.

Not still and solid.  Blasted back and instantly gone.  Not turning cold under his two fingertips in that same, delicate, life-affirming spot he had enjoyed mere hours before.  No.  He refuses to remember her like that.

It is days later now.  The crisis has passed and he’s dealing with the aftermath.  He can’t yet bring himself to look at, let alone wear, the pips his first officer has left on the ready room desk – without so much as a blink of emotion. Someday he will have to don them, but not today.  Certainly not tomorrow either.

He has just committed her body and the bodies of several others to the stars. Everyone is grieving, confused and angry. Most notably his helmsman who has found it so impossible to maintain composure that he’s been relieved of duty. Chakotay doesn’t have that luxury.

Then he remembers.  Kes.  She had spoken to him, trying desperately to unravel her own mystery in the midst of ship-wide crisis.  He had felt badly that he couldn’t help her but in a flash he realizes she may be able to help him. She will be jumping again soon, ahead to their past.  Maybe she can relay a message.

He rushes to sickbay where she has been unconscious, hoping he is not too late.  She awakens only briefly, shivers, and then she is gone.  He holds his breath - waits a few moments – but nothing changes. He returns to his quarters and finally loses all ability to cope.  Sobbing, he falls to the bed.  Exhaustion overtakes what is left of him.

When he wakes in the morning, she is there.

Undershirt?

Fuck.  Really?  Undershirt @mia-cooper?  How do you headcanon anundershirt?  Ugh, it’s a good thing Ilike you, and I’ve had a beer.

*cracks knuckles*  Undershirts.  They’re grey, at least for the 24thcentury folks. Black was so 23rdcentury.  They come in the tank top orcrew cut variety.  If you’re feelingslinky you can weasel the replicator to make you a crop top or a spaghettistrap version, but those aren’t exactly standard issue.  24th century officers have to wear a turtleneckAND a uniform jacket over top.  Dress inlayers peeps, it’s the responsible thing to do.  What else, what else… They get recycled morethan any other part of the uniform besides socks, cause sweat.  And if they’re shown in public, getting laidis about a 98% probability – newsflash, they’re sexy as hell.

Wow.  I can do betterthan that.  Ok, ok.  I’m going to headcanon a SPECIFIC undershirt.

Tom Paris has a lucky shirt. It’s the one he was wearing when he and B’Elanna were stuck in the EVA’sand he was pretty sure they’d recover his corpse in it.  Spoiler alert, she says she loves him and they’re rescued.  So, now it’s lucky.

They get back to the ship, he’s still grinning about heroxygen-deprived confession and how he’s totally gonna tap that marry her someday and is about to chuck it in the recycler when he stopped a moment andthought, “Hey.  This is a prettyimportant piece of clothing.  Maybe I’llhang onto it.  Cause I do superstitious shitlike that.”

So he washes it, or wears it in the sonic shower, or whateveryou do to get stuff clean (does anyone know?) and he shoves it into a drawer.  The next time he’s called to go on an awaymission, or something super-duper important he throws on that shirt.  Itbecomes a custom.  Makes him feel secure,protected.  It’s like wearing a hug.  

He’s in it for the betterpart of a year during the Year of Hell, though he doesn’t remember now.  He donned it on the trip to the Demon planet,the first flight of the Delta Flyer, when he tries to blow up the oxygen miningfacilities on the water-planet (oops, demotion), during the attempted use of the Quantum Slipstreamdrive (so he did, actually die in it).   Are you getting the picture here? This shirt isn’t actually so lucky, but eh, it’s important to Tom.  By the time he and Tuvok are rescued from theplanet with the gravitational well (where time is moving super fast) that shirthas just about had it.  Much to his dismay, with B’Elanna’s convincing, he admits that it’s no longerup to wearable standards.  B’Elanna,sympathetic to her boyfriend’s obsessive goofy ways, cuts off a sleeve for him tocarry around in his pocket.  So that’swhat he does. It makes him smile, shuttup. 

Fast foward:  A month before Miral is due to be born, Tom bleaches what’s left of theshirt, cuts it into strips and replicates yellow, pink and green dye.  He dyes that freaking shirt with his ownhands, forgetting to use gloves of course and he’s rainbow-colored for a week, as are the table, the floor and door he hung the strips on to dry.  Then hegets a needle and freaking thread and hand sews the strips into a tiny littlequilt.  He uses one of B’Elanna’s grey maternity crew shirts asthe backing.  To tell the truth, it’spretty crude, like 7th grade home-ec crude.  But he doesn’t care.  He figures it’ll help to keep Miral safe and have a part of them with her all the time.  Of course, it’s her favorite and she drags itaround until she’s too old for those things, but even then it stays near her always.  

25 years later, Miral sews a bit of it into her weddingdress.  When the time comes, she weaves a strip into her own child’s blanket. 

AND THAT’S HOW YOU HEADCANON A FUCKING UNDERSHIRT.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway Characters: Chakotay (Star Trek), Kathryn Janeway Additional Tags: Adult Content, Episode: s07e25 Endgame, Fix-It Series: Part 3 of Vignettes Summary:

Hope is a hard thing to kill.

Fortunately I subscribed to miacopper, or I wouldn’t have seen this right after waking up!