#(since Tuvok knows her better than anyone -rueful tone-) and as they're talking the conversation gets more and more intimate...Tuvok is

[bumblingbabooshka]

Chakotay/Janeway/Tuvok relationship is about uncrossable lines and things not said out loud (because they don’t have to be? because you don’t want them to be? because it’d make it real?)

It’s about loving someone who you know is looking past you at someone else. A relationship that’s haunted by people that’re still alive somewhere. It’s about knowing that someone you’ve never met has a hold on this person you love and that you’ll never compare - how can you measure up to memory? It’s about drowning in guilt, about asking forgiveness from someone who can’t grant it to you (because even if they said those words “I forgive you” they’re not the person you need to hear it from, it wouldn’t make a difference). It’s about whispering the wrong name as you let yourself lean into them (just this once) and being met with a silence heavy with acceptance. A hand on the back of your head. Steady breathing in a dark room. It’s about trusting someone you’d never in your life trust, let alone love, under any other circumstances but because of some terrible miraculous trick the universe pulled on all of you (because of the deliberate actions of that hand, the hand that doomed you, that pulled you away from all that you knew, now threading its fingers gently through your hair) - you do. You trust this person with your life and it’s only in this specific circumstance that that could ever be possible. Should you be grateful for this? Would you trade it, to have your old life and loves back? It’s about gazing across the room at two people who look like they’ve known each other forever, talking softly, eyes fixed on one another, and feeling a panic you’ve never known before. Because who do you have besides them? What are your other options? It’s about loving people who you know could and would die at any moment. Out of duty, out of necessity, out of a love for something greater - there’s always something greater pressing down on all of you.  It’s about feeling very small under it. And very silly. This doesn’t matter, none of it does. Sometimes it doesn’t matter in the best way and you chase that feeling until it eventually runs out. And then, even when you’re drowning in wherever that leaves you, at least it’s better than being alone. Seventy years is a terrifyingly long time.