second chances - DA Kent

 

E-mail:	D.A. Kent
Rated:	NC-17 (You must be over 18 to read this!)
Date:	January, 2005
Disclaimer:	Star Trek and all characters therein are owned by Paramount. nd there’s not a thing we can do about it.
DEDICATION:	This story is for my dear friends Margie, who has waited patiently (well, mostly!) and Linda, who gave me this idea for The Ultimate Love Story – and for all of us who could have made those seven years better.
FURTHER:	This is a story in Three Parts.  Also, if you recognize a few lines from other episodes or movies, it was intentional.) You might want to watch (or re-watch) two episodes prior to reading this story: "Timeless" and "Endgame." It's not necessary to do so, however. In Parts One and Two, I’ve taken the liberty of repeating bits and pieces (lines and recaps) from these two episodes, but I’ve tried to do it from other perspectives we didn’t experience during the episodes themselves. I’ve also tried not to be tiresome about it, my intent being to have you experience it “again for the first time.” And, in Part Three, I’ve taken it all a step further. (Also, yes it's true – I've done the literary "no-no" and sometimes shown things from more than one POV. So sue me. I think J/C people will certainly understand what I’m talking about.)
ADDITIONAL NOTE:	If you don't want to read about death where J and C are concerned, then maybe this story isn't for you. However, rest assured they do not die unnecessarily or untimely. I promise you a great journey beforehand.

 
 
 
 

 
PART ONE

Chakotay knew it was time to return to his quarters and get some rest. He'd just spent the better part of the evening with Kathryn, and was watching her now as she went back to the dinner table to fetch the remainder of the bottle of wine they'd almost finished. Dinner was nearly two hours ago, and since then they'd worked out the plan for tomorrow. In less than ten hours, they'd be trying out that new slipstream drive for real.

"Here you go," said Kathryn, pouring half of what was left in the decanter into his glass.

"Thank you," he said, trying not to be obvious as he watched her move back to the couch. Over the years he'd gotten good at watching her when she was looking the other way.

She poured the remainder of the amber-colored liquid into her own glass. "At least we aren't starting our new journey with bad luck," she said, referring to the tradition of always finishing a bottle of opened wine. She smiled, and her voice dropped an octave when she spoke. "What are you thinking, Chakotay?" She sat back on the couch and pulled her feet up under her, as she gave him her full attention.

He was thinking that she looked so happy tonight, and that her smile was the best he'd seen from her in a long time. She hadn't smiled when he first arrived at her quarters this evening, though, not until she knew he wouldn't argue with her about her plan to attempt the slipstream drive tomorrow. He hadn't agreed with her decision wholeheartedly; he did have reservations. But he'd put those aside. It was her decision to make, and he'd known she would make the one she did. He also knew he wouldn't be able to dissuade her, so he'd gone along with her instead. It was best to stand united, to work together on this. He had stayed for dinner, and then helped her make the final preparations for tomorrow.

He was also thinking how beautiful she looked this evening, how wonderful it was to sit at the table and enjoy a final dinner with her in the Delta Quadrant, and how much he wanted her to be at his dinner table every night when they got back home. But only time would tell. That is, if they got home safely, if the slipstream drive worked, and if Harry's calculations were exact. Those calculations had to be on the mark, but no one knew that better than Harry Kim. It had even been his idea to do things this way. Harry was in Engineering right now, rechecking his method for sending the new phase corrections back to Voyager. He was going over them again and again to be absolutely sure he knew what he was doing.

Chakotay was also thinking he'd never tire of those beautiful blue eyes of hers, or of watching her move so gracefully, so determined, so captain-like and elegant, whether she was walking down Voyager's corridor or going to the dinner table to retrieve a decanter of wine. And he'd never tire of that special voice, Kathryn's voice, the one that was less guarded, more natural and sexy than the captain's voice. Tonight her voice was that special one that visited him in his sleep.

"Chakotay?"

"Sorry," he said, snapping back to the present. "Just thinking."

"Yes, I know," she said with a lilt in her voice and that wonderful mischievous smile he saw too seldom. "I asked what it is you're thinking about."

He grinned. Gods, she was beautiful. The room was still bathed in candlelight. Even after dinner when they'd settled on the couch to work, she'd not asked the computer for a higher lighting level, even though they’d had to strain their eyes every now and then to read something on a padd. But he'd never complain about that. Kathryn Janeway could wine and dine him any time she wanted. The important thing was that she'd continued to do so after he'd agreed with her decision. "I was just thinking about how beautiful you look tonight." There might not be a whole lot of time left for him to be honest with her, and he wouldn't lie tonight.

She blushed. Chakotay actually saw her blush! But she turned her head away and sipped from her glass.

After a moment, she turned back to him, Kathryn again. "It must be the candlelight," she said, but the tone of her voice told him she was pleased by the compliment. "But…thank you.”

He laughed. It was still difficult for her to accept a compliment of any kind. "You're welcome." He knew she was much more accustomed to being treated like a captain, even by him, than like a woman. It had been her decision, all those years ago. He'd wanted more, still did, but she'd told him it couldn't be, not until they were home again. He just hoped she still felt that way. Sometimes, like now, when he looked into her eyes, he thought she still did. He wouldn't ask, though, not tonight. She wasn't ready for him to step over that line. Instead, time would tell – and hopefully, very soon.

He and Harry would be in the Delta Flyer tomorrow morning at 08:00 hours, preceding Voyager into the slipstream, and while Chakotay drove, Harry would calculate the phase variance corrections and feed them back to Voyager. Then, if things happened the way they'd planned, both the Delta Flyer and Voyager would be home again by this time tomorrow evening.

The enormity of their undertaking was almost too much to comprehend.

Chakotay took a deep breath and looked around. He'd miss this, he and Kathryn alone in her quarters, having dinner by candlelight. And he’d miss seeing her every day on the bridge and often in the evenings at dinner, or in the holodeck, or in the mess hall. He couldn't get enough of her, never could, and never would.

It was only recently, in fact, that Chakotay realized he had more in common with Tom Paris than he'd realized, or would admit. Tom's whole life was here in the Delta Quadrant, everything he cared about – B'Elanna, and a job he liked and was good at. Chakotay's whole life was here in the Delta Quadrant, too, because Kathryn Janeway was his whole life, and had been for a very long time. In fact, he could hardly remember a day without her.

And if they got home and he discovered she had other things to do, like becoming a Starfleet admiral (something he knew in his heart would happen for her) and not having time for both her job and him, then he would more than likely wish they were back here in the Delta Quadrant. But it was time he found out for sure, one way or the other.

"Thank you for dinner, Kathryn, it's been a nice evening." He always told her that, and he always meant it. "But I should go." He sat his empty glass on the coffee table. "We both have to get up early tomorrow." He knew neither of them would sleep tonight, and truth be told, he'd rather stay right here, but he knew he wouldn’t be invited to.

"Yes, you're right," she said, putting her own empty glass beside his and unfolding her legs from the couch. She'd taken off her boots earlier, when they'd retired to the living area, and he was amazed all over again by how tiny she was, diminutive really. But he was the only one who knew that, except for maybe the Doctor, or Tuvok. Her presence was strong, so strong that whenever she entered a room, every eye trained on her. He'd seen that happen for years; it was never any other way. She was truly larger than life.

She stood and so did he. He towered over her, and nearly smiled again. But he didn't.

She escorted Chakotay as far as the door.

He turned, sensing that she wanted to say something. He knew the feeling. He wanted to say things to her, too. After all, tonight might be their last opportunity to be alone for a long time – forever, if the slipstream drive didn't work, or if Harry miscalculated the information he sent back to Voyager from the shuttlecraft.

There was only one thing about the plans they'd made tonight he would change, if she had agreed. He would put someone else in the shuttle with Harry and he would take his place in his command chair on the bridge, next to Kathryn. If they made it home, his place was beside her. And if they didn't, his place was still beside her. A part of him thought she'd intentionally put him in that shuttle so he'd have a better opportunity of surviving the flight even if she didn't, since the shuttle had a 40% greater chance of making it through the slipstream than Voyager. But she wouldn’t listen to his protests. She was adamant about it being this way.

She stopped at the door, but seemed to take a long time before looking up at him. "I want to say 'thank you,' but it seems…" she started.

"Unnecessary?" he asked, smiling down at her.

She smiled back. "Too easy," she said. "And not enough." Then she grew serious. "I don't mind telling you, I was afraid you'd disagree with my decision earlier," she said, looking away again. "And I need your support, now more than ever."

She'd said those very words to him once before, and it had meant more than he could say, more than he wanted them to mean, much more than he wanted them to mean.  "You have my support, Kathryn, today and always." He'd said those words before too, but she seemed to need to hear them again. That was all right – he'd tell her a thousand times more if that was all it took to make her happy, or to shoulder some of her burden.

She tilted her head back to look at him again, and this time she didn't look away. "There are a lot of things I want to say to you," she said. "But I think you know what they are, since you know me nearly as well as I know myself."

He knew a lot of them, yes. But there was one thing he wanted to hear from her lips, said with her voice – her deep, throaty, "just for you, Chakotay" voice. But he knew she wasn't ready to take that leap, at least not tonight. He could only continue to have hope for the future on that one – a future that might be right around the corner.

Still, there was something else he couldn't put his finger on. Suddenly, uncharacteristically, she wasn't looking away, and she wasn't moving back from him.

He looked deep into her eyes, and his heart leapt. She'd let down her guard just long enough for him to see the longing there, the ache, the desperate need that years of isolation and loneliness did to a person.

And he wanted to take away that loneliness, that desperation, more than anything he'd ever wanted before.

But one moment, one fleeting look or touch – or word – couldn't take away what four years, two months and eleven days had put there.

Oh, but how he wanted to try.

"Kathryn," he whispered, his voice tight.

She placed her right hand on his chest, the second intimate gesture she'd made this evening. The first was when she'd touched his face briefly before serving dinner only a short time ago. "Not now," she whispered. "Let's leave the words for another time." She tried to make her voice strong, but he heard it break nonetheless.

Her hand felt good, felt right against his chest, and he suddenly realized she wasn't pushing him away like she usually did. She was simply resting her hand there, touching him. She was still staring into his eyes, too, and devouring his soul.

He swallowed hard.

He covered her hand with his and squeezed, but he didn't move it away from his heart. She'd owned that part of him for too many years now to pretend otherwise.

She was still there, still touching his heart in every way possible, when he leaned forward slowly, so very slowly. As he lowered his lips to hers, she tilted her head just right to meet them with her own. She kissed him back, not shyly, not passively, but fully.

Chakotay felt his heart pound and his soul soar. This was right, so right. She was his soul mate, and if he had ever doubted it, he no longer did. As he reached out to pull her closer, she stepped up to him and gave herself to the moment, to loving him the way he'd always loved her.

Her lips were warm, soft, searching, welcoming, and her hand slipped around the back of his neck. The light scent she always wore engulfed him completely, accepting him as a willing captive.

Chakotay's knees grew weak. He wanted her. He wanted to do more, be more with her, but he knew that wasn't for tonight. She was, however, letting him know there would be another time.

Some seconds, minutes or hours later, he reluctantly separated his lips from hers, knowing that he had to. He had to.

She seemed just as reluctant to end the kiss, and that made his life suddenly complete.

He now had a new reason for wanting to get home as quickly as possible. Whatever awaited them there would be all right. She wanted to be with him, and was telling him so now. That was all that mattered.

The love he saw in her eyes, and tasted on her lips, was genuine. She'd given him a part of her tonight, a promise of things to come – a promise given freely and without hesitation, or reservation.

He’d lain awake many nights wondering if she still loved him, and now he knew she did.

Kathryn Janeway had just handed him her heart for safekeeping. And he intended to keep it and treasure it, always. They hadn't just shared a kiss – they had made a commitment.

The memory of the look in her eyes that night, the warmth of her hand on his chest, and the touch of her lips to his were enough to fill Chakotay's days and nights for many years to come.

*****

Chakotay looked out his window at the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. He was anxious for tomorrow to arrive, more anxious than he'd ever been for anything in his life, yet he was also oddly at peace with himself.

Whatever happened tomorrow, he would accept it. Anything would be better than living the way he'd lived for the past fifteen years. Hopefully, after tomorrow he'd have the chance to live them all over again, but differently.

Tomorrow was the day he and Harry had anticipated, and planned, for fifteen years. Tomorrow they would go home – back to Voyager.

And they would turn back the clock to fifteen years ago.

He'd done everything he'd ever wanted to do, and more than he'd hoped. He'd fought battles worth fighting, and won. He'd survived four years in the Delta Quadrant and met species he never knew existed. He'd beaten the Borg and other enemies, and become a stronger ship's officer because of it. And he'd learned to work in harmony with a Starfleet captain he respected. And loved.

And then one day he and Harry had made it back to Earth, alone. The slipstream drive hadn't brought Voyager home, but he and Harry had made it just fine in the Delta Flyer. And both of them still woke in the middle of the night with nightmares of Voyager's fate, nightmares about their friends and their captain and what had happened to Voyager after they'd lost communications.

Had Kathryn discovered that the drive wasn't working soon enough to order Tom Paris to drop out of slipstream? Had Tom been able to do it before Voyager had to crash land on the surface, any surface they could find?  Neither Chakotay nor Harry thought so.

After years of calculations and research, he and Harry both figured the ship had crash-landed on the first available site – in fact, based on the location where the Delta Flyer and Voyager had separated ways, they'd discovered an L-class planet near there from a map of that sector they'd bartered for in a bar on Betezed five years ago. All indications pointed to the fact that Voyager was stuck in a glacier in the Takara Sector just outside the Alpha Quadrant, where they'd nearly made it home that fateful day, after all. Further research had led them to a number of merchants who'd traveled close to that sector, and two of them had detected a huge mass of some sort buried beneath the ice not far from the trading post on that side of the galaxy. But no one was daring enough, or cared enough, to brave the freezing temperatures in that region to get closer. It was too risky, and for what? Even if the mass turned out to be a starship buried beneath the ice, it was probably so damaged it was useless anyway, even for parts.

The more they researched the location and questioned their theory, the more Chakotay and Harry were convinced that this huge, buried mass was Voyager.

Hopefully, Tom had been able to bring the ship in with as little damage as possible, but no matter, the ship was flying so fast the crash would have killed everyone aboard on impact. At least, hopefully they were all killed instantly. To think otherwise would bring forth a whole different set of nightmares, and neither Chakotay nor Harry could afford to think about that. They were barely living with the ones they already had.

But tonight would be the last night for nightmares. That thought alone brought Chakotay a small bit of peace in his soul. After tonight, he wouldn’t close his eyes and see Kathryn crushed beneath a bulkhead or buried under a collapsed console on the bridge or swallowed up by fire, ever again. Tomorrow he would find closure. One way or another, he and Harry would know what had happened to their family, and hopefully change all their destinies.

He thought of Harry again, and sighed.

After showing several top-level admirals where they'd pinpointed Voyager's location, Harry had begged for Starfleet's help in salvaging the ship, but was refused. It wasn't that Starfleet didn't care – Chakotay believed that even if Harry didn’t. There was just no sense in spending time and valuable resources trying to locate and rescue a dead crew. It was like Tom's stories about the sailing vessel that went down a long time ago, the Titanic, where it was decided to let the bodies rest in peace in their makeshift grave rather than attempt a futile salvage operation. Starfleet felt the same way about the Voyager crew.

But Harry saw it differently.

One day, Harry stopped trying to reason with Starfleet, and stopped asking for help. He turned his back on Starfleet and everything it once represented to him. If anything was to be done, if anyone was going to go back for Voyager, Harry figured he was on his own.

And since Harry had no one else on his side, Chakotay had stuck with him.

At first, even though Harry hadn't wanted to accept that their friends and family were gone, Chakotay sought to understand in his heart what had happened to Voyager, to Kathryn, and why it had happened. He visited his spirit guide often, but even she was of no help to him, on the rare occasion she showed up during a vision quest. No matter how hard he tried to make his heart and his soul accept that Kathryn was gone to him forever, he couldn't.

And then Harry started talking about going to the Takara Sector.

At first, they were just planning to find Voyager, to discover what really happened. And then Harry had come up with a better plan: They wouldn't just find their ship, they would turn back the clock, change history, and bring her home the way it should have happened in the first place. Now that they knew where to find Voyager, all they had to do was figure out how to go back in time.

And Chakotay would gladly trade the present for that future with Kathryn that had never happened.

Harry had been working on his plan to go back in time for years before telling Chakotay about it, for fear he would argue that what Harry wanted to do couldn't be done.

But Harry had been wrong. From the moment Chakotay first heard what Harry had in mind, he had listened. He'd asked questions and nodded thoughtfully, as was his way, and then he'd asked what he could do to help. Harry had beamed (the only time in the past fifteen years he'd even come close to it anyway) and they'd started to work on Harry's plan together. They would find a way to return to the Voyager, to make things right. They would save their ship, their friends, and their captain.

There had to be a way.

That was the first night since returning to Earth that Chakotay had felt alive, sitting with Harry Kim in that dingy bar in San Francisco, a place where no Starfleet person was bound to set foot and spoil their whole evening. The bar was only four kilometers from this very apartment, and he and Harry had sat there until 03:00 when the bar closed, making plans to return to the past.

Harry started to work even harder to alienate the problems with the phase corrections he'd originally sent back to Seven of Nine on that fateful day, and to correct them. Although it had somehow been important to Harry all along to come up with the right ones, even though it was way too late for anyone else to care what they might be, now it was vital.

And now, if all their calculations were correct and their dreams were destined to become reality, it would only be a matter of hours before they found themselves back on Voyager's bridge. They had to try, had to know for sure. If they didn't get back to Voyager, Chakotay wouldn't have anything to live for and, for a different reason, neither would Harry.

When they embarked on this journey tomorrow, they wouldn't have time to waste. Things would move very fast. They would have to get to Voyager quickly because they would be criminals by then. They'd be heading back in the Delta Flyer after stealing her from a Federation shipyard.

And they were going to steal a few other things, too.

Before they liberated the Flyer, they were going to take the Borg interface, Salvage Component 36698, which Starfleet had had in their possession for nearly a year. Starfleet Command had no idea what to do with a Borg interface, but Harry and Chakotay knew exactly what to do with it.

It was precisely what they'd been waiting for – their ticket back in time.

Chakotay glanced at the chronometer across the room. He and Harry were only hours away from committing acts of treason among other illegalities, after which both Starfleet and the Federation would be looking for them.

But none of that mattered; he'd been wanted by the Federation once before, as a Maquis rebel, many years and several billion memories ago.

Chakotay ordered a cup of herbal tea from the replicator and sat on the couch. His trip down memory lane was starting to make him weak with the usual regrets, but he knew he had to do this one last time. This was his last night for thinking about it forever.

Neither he nor Harry were getting any younger, but more importantly, the nightmares were becoming more than either man could take. And Harry's guilt was eating him up from the inside out. No matter how much Chakotay tried to convince him it wasn't his fault that all 150 of Voyager's crew had died, Harry became more adamant that it was. There was no arguing with him over it, and Chakotay had given up trying years ago. It was Harry's cross to bear, and no man could tell another how to carry his burden.

Chakotay sighed, and walked back up to the window. While the outline of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance was quite extraordinary to some, returning to Voyager was the only thing that could make his heart full again. His life was empty without Kathryn Janeway. The only time he felt alive was when he closed his eyes and remembered. He would see her face, her sparkling blue eyes looking back at him, that quirky smile, that confident captain's air that was always a part of her.

And of course he remembered the kiss. Always, the kiss. He squeezed his eyes shut and she was there, in the room with him. That was all it took. He saw the look in her eyes, felt the softness of her mouth moving against his, the touch of her hand on his chest, the musty smell of her favorite shampoo, the warmth of her breath against his cheek, and recalled the taste of her. He could still close his eyes and relive every nanosecond of it. That memory was all he had left to live for.

When he opened his eyes again, his heart was beating faster, just the way it had done then. He breathed deeply, trying to bring himself back to the present. Even after all these years, he could see her so strongly in his mind's eye, could feel her next to him at the oddest times. And then, reality would crash down around him, and he would be alone again.

Kathryn Janeway would be a part of him forever, no matter where he was or what he was doing. And while Harry needed to salvage his own conscience by turning back the clock for a second chance at saving Voyager and his friends, Chakotay needed to be with Kathryn. His home was with her, arriving back on Earth with her and Voyager, or dying with her – sometimes he didn't care which, so long as he was beside her. He just knew he couldn't live like this any longer, this life that wasn't a life. He needed to be on the starship Voyager, sitting beside the captain on the bridge every day and having dinner with her once a week, maybe more.

If they made it back to Earth together the next time, then he was sure this could become home again. But it wasn't home now, not even after fifteen years, not without her. This time, if she came home, he would, too. If she didn't, well…this time he wouldn't make the mistake of surviving without her.

Home is where the heart is, he thought bitterly. Who knew that such a tired old expression could hold so much truth? His heart was on Voyager, now and always, because Kathryn Janeway was there. His captain and friend, and the love of his life, was still on Voyager's bridge, and according to all of his and Harry's calculations, buried under a sheet of ice and snow.

Who could have known then that the journey was more important than the goal?

Chakotay dumped his empty cup into the recycler and took out his medicine bundle. He'd try to speak with his spirit guide one last time. If he died tomorrow, he'd never go through this ritual again. But even that thought didn't move him, didn't bring forth emotion. The only true emotion he had left in his heart was his love for Kathryn Janeway.

He sat on the floor and pulled the contents out of the pouch. He had to clear his mind, and tonight that wasn't an easy thing to do.

There were times when his memories were nearly more than his heart could take. Sometimes he missed Kathryn so much he would actually become ill, but he couldn't tell anyone. Harry might understand, but Harry had his own cross to bear, and so he never told a soul.

No, that wasn't quite right. Several years ago he'd tried to tell Deanna Troi, the counselor he and Harry had been assigned to. They still saw her at regularly scheduled intervals. It was best not to fight Starfleet's rules – to just go along and pretend all the counseling was a big help. Harry could barely manage to go at all, and often stormed out in the middle of his sessions. Chakotay did somewhat better, but only because he was calmer by disposition. Usually. But he had made the mistake once of actually telling Deanna about how he'd become ill from the memories (he never mentioned Kathryn specifically, though he later realized that Deanna knew anyway. Any empath with only half her abilities would sense that from him.) Deanna had encouraged him to talk further about his memories, but he'd refused. He was sure Deanna thought he was just being stubborn, or was afraid to speak openly about his feelings, but it was more than that. He never spoke to anyone about Kathryn, not even Harry. Kathryn was alive in his heart, and he refused to speak about her as though she were dead.

When he became sick from remorse, he would hole himself up in his apartment and wait until it passed. His body would sometimes rack with pain, he would be bathed in sweat, shaking, and he would have to wait it out, like one would a viral infection if there weren't a hypospray around. After a day or two, he would be back to normal. Until it happened again.

Some nights he would toss and turn, hearing her voice in his head –  her rich, creamy voice saying his name over and over again. Other times he would remember their last dinner together, the night before the fateful 08:00 slipstream flight. He could still see her face, framed against the candlelight, and he could hear her voice: "I know it's a risk – probably our biggest one yet – but I'm willing to take it. Are you with me?"

And he had responded: "Always."

Yes, always, Kathryn. I will always be with you.  I am with you now.

And she had let out a nearly audible sigh of relief. She told him she needed him with her, now more than ever. And he had nearly told her then that she would never be alone, for he would always be by her side. But he hadn't said it, because Kathryn Janeway’s first officer would never say such things aloud. But now, of course, now he wished he’d said what was on his mind.  One could never predict what morning might bring. He’d told her she looked beautiful, though. At least he’d done that much. He smiled, recalling the blush that had crept onto her cheeks before she turned away.

Chakotay left his medicine bundle open on the floor and ordered another chamomile tea from the replicator. His mind was working overtime, but he wasn't surprised. He was too keyed up, thinking about tomorrow, knowing that all the plans were in place, and that it would all be over soon. Maybe one more cup of tea would relax him enough to meditate.

He looked at the contents of his medicine bundle, strewn out on the floor. His eye went automatically to the lock of hair Kes had given him the day Kathryn had had her long hair cut, so many years ago. At first he'd been horrified when she told him she was going to cut it, but he quickly grew to love her new look as much as he had the old one. It was nice to see her hair down around her shoulders rather than up in a bun.

After it was cut, even before he'd seen it for himself, Kes had brought a lock of Kathryn's hair to him. She had smiled one of her knowing, yet innocent, smiles and handed it to him. "I thought you might like this," she'd said. The look in her eyes told him everything. She knew how much he loved the captain; he couldn’t lie to her about it. And so he had thanked her instead. That was all either of them had said about it. It was never mentioned again.

The strand of hair was tied with a green ribbon he'd taken from a decoration at one of the parties Neelix was always throwing for the crew. Kathryn's beautiful auburn hair, tied with a green ribbon. It belonged in his medicine bundle probably more than anything else that was in there. It represented all that he had become, and all that he still yearned for. It was also proof that she'd existed, for those times he awakened in the middle of the night with his heart pumping and his mind trying to tell him he'd imagined it all – the Badlands, Voyager, Kathryn Janeway. All of it.

And if he held it to his face and closed his eyes, he could still smell the shampoo she'd used every day. He could imagine her sitting to his right on the bridge, smiling at him. Always smiling at him.

Chakotay sipped at his tea, for a moment not remembering he’d ordered it from the replicator. Lately, his daydreams about Kathryn had become almost overpowering, ever since he and Harry had set an actual date for going back to Voyager. That made it all real again, somehow, and lately Kathryn hadn't been far from his mind at all.

If he and Harry failed on their mission tomorrow, if they were apprehended by the Federation and taken into custody, or if they died while trying to get back to the Delta Quadrant – or if they actually found Voyager but couldn’t reverse time, couldn't turn back the clock to fifteen years ago, that was all right, too. Neither of them would have to continue this dreadful existence any longer, or suffer the nightmares night after night. He knew Harry felt the same way. Deanna Troi called it "survivor's guilt," but it went a lot deeper than that for both of them.

Once, when he was still aboard Voyager, he'd asked himself how long he could wait for Kathryn to commit herself to him, and he'd never been able to answer that question. But now he knew. It had been fifteen years so far, and he was still waiting. He would wait for Kathryn Janeway for as long as it took, because there was no other choice. He would wait a lifetime, if necessary. He'd committed his heart to her nearly twenty years ago, and it still wouldn't give her up.

Chakotay sat beside his medicine bundle again and closed his eyes. He would venture into the spirit world now, perhaps for the last time. He took a deep breath. "Ahkootcheemoyah," he began, and his heart felt lighter than it had in a very long time.

Tomorrow he and Harry were going back to Kathryn, to Voyager, to a time of hope and fellowship, to a time fifteen years ago.

*****

Harry carried his cup of coffee back to the couch. He took a sip of it and put the mug down by a padd on the table in front of him. Taking a deep breath, he gathered the two nearest padds and started to punch in numbers on one of them. That was his life now, numbers. It was all he'd had for fifteen years, and all he'd wanted.

The cup of coffee was his third since dinnertime. It wasn't unusual for him to drink it until well into the night. He supposed he’d picked that habit up from Captain Janeway. That thought was about the only thing that could make him smile, and he smiled now. She used to drink coffee all day and all evening, even when the Doc and Chakotay reminded her to back off it. She'd agree, and then forget her promise the moment it was out of her mouth. It was the only promise she ever made that she had no intention of keeping.

But now he understood more than ever why she'd needed her coffee. It helped a person to keep a clear head, and Captain Janeway had worked day and night for over four years to find a way to get her crew home again. It was the guilt of stranding her crew in the Delta Quadrant that had kept her so busy, so intent, and it was that same kind of guilt, and thoughts of making things right, that kept Harry going now.

Captain Janeway had made a tough decision, the kind that few people would ever be faced with in a lifetime, by stranding her crew to save an entire race of people called the Ocampa. But it didn't matter that the decision was right, she still felt guilty whenever she looked into the eyes of a crewman who had family and friends back home. She'd felt the burden of command every day, and every nanosecond, of their years in the Delta Quadrant.

Harry knew about guilt. He'd killed those same 150 people. He'd promised his captain he would calculate a correct phase variance and report it back to Voyager so that not only the Delta Flyer would make it back home in the slipstream, but so would Voyager and everyone aboard her. Instead, he'd given wrong information and Voyager had crash-landed, killing everyone aboard instantly. He knew this as well as he knew his name. Captain Janeway may have stranded them in the Delta Quadrant, but it was he, Harry Kim, who was responsible for their deaths.

He sighed and ran his hands over his face, a habit he'd picked up fifteen years ago. He never went to bed before midnight, hoping he would be so tired he'd fall fast asleep when he finally turned in. But on the rare occasion he actually did fall asleep, the nightmares would wake him up and he'd have to deal with them all over again. Most nights he rarely slept, except in wee spurts. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a good night's sleep.

He took another sip of coffee. He drank it black, like Captain Janeway. He remembered how much she loved it, how she depended on it to get her through the lonely days and nights. Now he understood her loneliness, too. He even understood why she'd never let herself get really close to another crewmember, and why she wouldn't allow Chakotay all the way into her heart. She had to lose her guilt first, and that would only happen when she got her crew home again.

He had to get back to the Delta Quadrant to give her the right phase variance corrections this time. He wanted to return home the right way, with Captain Janeway leading them. And then maybe she and Chakotay could get on with their lives together. They both deserved happiness, and each other.

And maybe Harry Kim would get on with his life, too. Maybe he could find happiness at last. Maybe he would be able to look Chakotay in the eye again and watch his face light up when he looked at Captain Janeway. He missed that Chakotay, the man who had accepted all that life had given him, even with its limitations, and who had loved a woman who wouldn’t allow herself to love him back.  Yes, Harry missed that Chakotay – the one who was long gone now, and all because of a young ensign named Harry Kim.

Thinking back over the past few years, the last time Harry had seen that particular Chakotay was when he’d unveiled his plan in that seedy little bar in San Francisco, when he told Chakotay that come hell or high water or a Borg invasion, he was going to find a way back to Voyager, back in time, back to the morning of the slipstream drive. He, Harry Kim, was going to find a way to redeem some old mistakes.

Harry thought Chakotay would laugh at him or, at the very least, take one of his long tired sighs and explain how it wouldn’t work. Instead, Chakotay had listened carefully, asked the right questions, played Devil’s advocate at times, and then he’d finally grinned. He’d grinned that old Chakotay grin that Harry hadn’t realized he’d missed until that moment.

“I have no idea how you plan to do it, Harry, but maybe together we can figure it out. I sure don’t have any other plans for the next fifty or so years,” Chakotay had said. That’s when Harry knew that Chakotay was with him for the long haul, and that no matter who came into his life or what woman tried to get her talons into him, Chakotay would always belong to Captain Janeway.

At that moment, whatever reservations Harry had had about his plan working, disappeared completely. Starfleet and the Federation be damned, Chakotay was with him. Chakotay was family, and he believed it could be done. And that’s all that mattered to Harry.

When Harry explained to Chakotay how Seven of Nine’s cranial implant could be modified and used as a transceiver, an interplexing beacon, to receive new coordinates sent back in time to Voyager, Chakotay had asked how it was possible, and what they would use as a transmitter, but he’d not questioned Harry’s theory or his sanity, even when Harry said he didn’t have it all worked out yet. Somehow, somewhere, they’d find a transmitter.

Harry shook his head and brought himself back to the present. He sipped his coffee. It was hard to concentrate tonight, and he knew he should go to bed early to rest up for tomorrow, but he wouldn't. The nightmares would come, he knew. They'd come anyway, but he wouldn't make it more convenient for them by going to bed early. If he were lucky, he’d get a bit of sleep before they appeared, before he heard the terrifying screams of his friends as the ship crashed on the planet’s surface, and they met their untimely deaths. And all because of him.

Some nights were better than others. After they died, he’d wake up shaking and sweating, then he’d somehow manage to get a bit of sleep. Other nights, he relived it over and over and over again, and sometimes he even saw Captain Janeway working her console and yelling commands at her bridge crew up until the very last minute, still trying to save them even as the ship crash-landed on the planet below.

Harry flinched. Even awake he often saw it all in his mind’s eye. Only his work, his determination about going back to save them, made him get out of bed each morning.

Harry knew Chakotay had nightmares, too, but they never spoke to each other about them. It was just too much to live with night after night, and talking about them would only make them more real than they already were.

Chakotay had stood by him for fifteen years, though, when everyone else thought he was crazy – a man made crazier by survivor's guilt. But Chakotay knew the truth. He didn't blame Harry the way Harry blamed himself, but he understood why Harry felt the way he did.

There was something about Chakotay that was like a magnet where women were concerned. So many had tried to capture him with their looks, their words, their dreams. But he had ignored most of them and the couple he had paid attention to still hadn't replaced that spark he'd lost fifteen years ago.  Harry knew there was only one thing that would bring Chakotay's spark back, and that was being with Captain Janeway again. Young Harry Kim had thought he'd known what those two meant to each other once upon a time, but he truly hadn't known the half of it.  Now though, Harry was wiser in more ways than one, and he knew there wasn't a day that went by that Chakotay didn't think about her, or long to be with her.

Harry scrubbed his face again. This was it. All or nothing. Later tonight he would have the nightmares again, because they never stopped. But this would be the last night he'd have them. That alone was worth the risk he was taking tomorrow.

This time tomorrow night he would either return home with the rest of Voyager's crew at a time fifteen years in the past, or he'd be dead.

Chakotay thought a third alternative might be capture by the Federation, but Harry didn’t intend to be captured. Either he'd get to Voyager and Captain Janeway and make things right, or he'd die trying. He'd even figured the odds at maybe 60-40, and that was all right with him.

He took a deep breath and another sip of his coffee. The nightmares were about to end, once and for all.

He turned back to his padd. There was still time to double-check his figures once more before morning.

*****

Chakotay tossed and turned, turned and tossed. He'd meditated for an hour before bedtime, trying to reach his spirit guide, but failing. She was nowhere to be found tonight. He'd felt his father's presence, though, and that was good. His father knew he was doing the right thing, the thing that needed to be done before his soul could rest, and before he could join his people in the spirit world. His work here was far from done. Perhaps after he was with Kathryn again, his heart would allow him to search for his true calling.

Chakotay had told Tessa he needed to be alone tonight, the last night before the mission, and she'd said she understood. He couldn't bear to see her tonight, for her to expect him to make love with her one last time. He didn't want the responsibility of having to live up to whatever her expectation might be, or to feel the guilt he was sure he'd have about not only leaving her for Kathryn, but wanting to leave her for Kathryn. He'd leave anyone for Kathryn. Tessa knew that; he'd never lied to her. But seeing the hurt in her eyes was something he couldn't witness tonight. She would try to hide it, but it would be there nonetheless.

And he'd needed to be alone to meditate, to find as much peace in his soul as he could muster. He needed to be rested and ready for tomorrow's mission.

But now, even though he tried to sleep, his mind and his conscience were hard at work. His body ached for rest, but his empty heart and soul ached for Kathryn, as they did every night.

"Chakotay?"

She was calling to him. He tossed and turned and tried to find her. Now he was running through a forest on some unknown planet, yelling out to her, telling her to keep calling for him and he would find her. But she was gone, she said no more, and the entire forest grew suddenly silent.

"Chakotay?"

Now he was on board Voyager, running through the corridors, calling to her. He couldn't find her, and smoke was pouring forth from every Jeffries tube and conduit, making it nearly impossible to breathe. He had to find her, had to make her understand it wasn't necessary to go down with the ship, he wouldn't let her go down with the ship, even if he had to carry her out, with her kicking and screaming all the way.

Chakotay sat up in bed, struggling for breath, caught up in the sheet he tried to keep loose for times like these. He fought his way out of it, then sat on the side of the bed with his head in his hands, breathing heavily. He hadn't had this one for at least a month – Kathryn was lost or hurt, or stubbornly refusing to leave her ship when it was about to crash. He would call for her and she wouldn't answer. Then she'd call his name over and over, but would be gone before he could get to her.

He finally got his breathing under control and called for tea from the replicator. He stood slowly, knowing his legs would be shaky at first, as they always were after this nightmare, and moved to the replicator slowly. He was naked, having learned a long time ago that sweat-soaked bedclothes were more than a nuisance.

Moving to the window with his tea, Chakotay watched the lights twinkling in the distance. He was fifteen stories above the ground, which made it easy to look off into the night sky and think about Kathryn. Sometimes he stared so intently, he realized he was actually looking for her, and that would bring him back to the present.

Kathryn was out there, somewhere, and he was only hours away from seeing her again. He hoped. There were so many variables he and Harry couldn't account for, so many things that could go wrong. But it was too late to think about that. And it didn't matter anyway, because neither of them would back out of this even if they could.

He carried his cup back to bed and lay on top of the bedding, with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and saw her, Captain Kathryn Janeway, standing on Voyager's bridge with her hands on her hips, ordering Tom Paris to jump to warp drive – and then she turned and looked over her shoulder, to the chair on her left, and smiled at her first officer.

It was the smile he loved most, the one she gave just before her mouth turned up at the corner. And her eyes sparkled the way they did when she was feeling good, like they sometimes did when she invited him to dinner in her quarters.

Chakotay sipped his tea, then felt a rare smile spread across his lips as he watched her, standing there on the bridge. Suddenly, his eyes opened and dropped to just below his stomach where another reaction to her smile was starting. He sighed and put his teacup on the nightstand.

Once more, he told himself, reaching for his penis and lying back on the bed.  He would make love with her one more time in his mind, in his dreams.

After tonight, he would either be with her again or he would be dead. Harry hadn't fooled him when he'd agreed that they might be captured and held prisoner by the Federation. No, he knew they'd either make it back to Voyager, or die trying.  And that was just fine with him. He already knew what living without her was like.

He manipulated his penis as he drew her to him in his mind. For the last time.

Minutes later, he finished his tea. He had to get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a very long day.
 

*****
 

Tessa Ormond rang the chime on Harry's door and waited until he bid her enter. She stood just inside the doorway until Harry glanced up from his place on the couch and saw her. Then he got the usual look of dread and something close to disgust on his face, and looked back at the padd he'd been punching. She walked into the room.

"I know you don't want me on this mission," she said without preamble. There was no need for pleasantries between her and Harry Kim. No need for her to pretend she liked him, since he never hid how he felt about her. She didn't actually dislike Harry, though, mostly because she could understand how he felt more than he'd ever give her credit for. She knew exactly what it felt like to pine for something so badly you could almost taste it. The only difference was that Harry's feelings had all that guilt mixed up with it. That's what added the top note of bitterness to everything he did, everything he had become.

"No, I don't," he replied instantly, not looking up.

Good. At least she didn't have to get him to admit it. Evidently this conversation was going to be honest and forthright from the start. But then, Harry Kim wasn't one to sugarcoat anything for anyone. What was it he'd told her once? He didn't dance. "I'm no threat to you, or to this mission," she stated.

"Right."

"I intend to help you. You could use a third person to help you accomplish what you want to do," she said.

"Chakotay and I can do it alone," he said firmly. "We don't need you or anyone else."

"I'm not going to try to stop him," she said.

Harry sighed, a long dreadful sound. "He needs to be focused on what he and I need to do."

He and I, she noted. Still. But that was all right, she was used to it. "He will be."

Harry ignored her and continued to study his padd.

She walked further into the room, knowing she was agitating him even more, but not caring. "I don't have the power to distract him, Harry. I wish I did, but I don't."

Harry stopped working for a moment, but didn't look up. He seemed about to say something, but decided against it and started to work again.

"Chakotay and I have been together for two years, Harry." Still he said nothing. "And in all that time he's never made love to me." That got him. He looked up. "He's slept with me and we've had sex." Harry looked away again, but she didn't care. "We very nearly made love together once. I think he started out thinking about me, but I quickly realized it wasn't me he wanted to make love to, it was her. As always." She was talking more to herself now than Harry, suddenly realizing it was important to say it all aloud. It was important to her. "When he opened his eyes and saw my face beneath him, the look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. No matter how much time we have together, Chakotay will only love one woman, ever. I know that." She swallowed the lump in her throat. One thing about it, Chakotay had never lied to her, and he'd never made her promises he wouldn't be able to keep. "That night he called her name three times in his sleep." She sighed. "Usually, it's only once."

"We don't need you." It was a statement, emotionless.

"I know that. Neither of you need me." He looked up. "I'm doing this for him. Because I love him, even if he will never love me."

"Right." He punched the padd again.

She took a deep breath. What was she doing here, anyway? It didn't matter how she and Harry felt about each other, and it shouldn't be important to tell him all this now. For some reason, though, she wanted it all out in the open. The three of them were about to embark on a mission that Harry and Chakotay had been working toward for fifteen years. She was just a third-party, someone who might come in handy. And she wouldn't see either of them again after tomorrow. "I want to help him get back to his beloved bridge."

Harry looked up once more. "He'll be there again. We'll get back." He was always so certain. It was all he had, she knew. That determination and certainty was what made Harry Kim get up each morning.

She turned to go, then looked back. "Harry."

He looked up with the beginnings of downright irritation in his eyes. He was busy, always calculating numbers, always looking for that perfect set of numbers.

She swallowed hard. Her throat burned and her heart ached, but she wouldn’t let Harry know it. "I'm no threat to this mission. The first time I heard him refer to her by her first name, I knew that." She looked away before Harry could see the tears in her eyes. "He says her name like it's a prayer,” she whispered.

Tessa walked out before Harry could respond, not knowing if he would have even bothered, and not caring. Because she knew she was doing the right thing.

If they were successful, the past fifteen years would soon be gone from the history books. They never would have happened anyway.

*****

After she had gone, Harry put his padds down and got another cup of coffee from the replicator. One more wouldn't hurt, even if it wouldn't help. Nothing helped.

He didn't know why she'd come, but evidently she had felt the need to do it. He knew she loved Chakotay, he could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. But Harry didn't care. Chakotay didn't love Tessa; he only kept her around to convince himself he had a semblance of a normal life. Harry also believed Chakotay let her stay around as a sort of cover, so other women would leave him alone.

At least Tessa didn't crowd Chakotay, or he'd have dumped her a long time ago – that much Harry knew for sure.

Well, who knew, maybe she'd come in handy tomorrow, after all.

Harry dumped his remaining coffee and the cup into the recycler and started for his small bedroom across the way.  His entire apartment was small, not much larger than his quarters on Voyager had been. He liked it this way. He owned nothing except a clarinet his parents had bought him a dozen years ago, thinking it might make him feel more like the old Harry Kim. He'd tried to play it once, when he was alone, but it had only made him cry. Now it sat in the corner of the room, out of the way. He never even glanced at it anymore. Other than his padds and his computer, a few clothes and personal items, Harry was alone.

He took off his clothes and lay down on the bed, and waited for the nightmares to begin.

*****

At 05:00 the following morning, Chakotay rang the door chime to Harry's apartment.

"Come in," came Harry's usual impatient tone.

Chakotay entered and sat his overnight bag on the floor, dropping his light jacket on top of it. "Are you ready?" he asked. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Harry when he wasn't scratching on a padd.

Harry glanced up. "Almost," he said, and nearly smiled. But that would be a stretch, because Harry hadn't really smiled for fifteen years, as far as Chakotay knew. Hopefully, today would change all that.

"So 'she's' still coming with us," Harry said, still working.

Chakotay sighed. "She's still coming along," he said. "She'll meet us at the shipyard." It had been a bone of contention between he and Harry for weeks now. Tessa wanted to come with them, to help them. What he and Harry were going to attempt wasn't going to be easy, if it was possible at all, and they could use all the help they could get. Another pair of hands at the shuttle controls might even be appreciated when things got down to the wire.

But Harry didn't see it that way. He'd never liked Tessa, and more importantly, he had always considered this mission his and Chakotay's, from the inside out. He didn't want intruders or do-gooders interfering. Six months ago, he'd been upset when Chakotay admitted that he'd told Tessa about their plans to return to Voyager. No one else knew about it, and Harry had wanted to keep it between the two of them. He didn't trust anyone else.

They were going to have to steal that Borg interface unit right out from under Starfleet’s nose, and the fewer people who knew about it, the better. They would need to steal a few other things, too, like the Delta Flyer, and Harry hadn't wanted anyone else to know their business.

If the truth were to be told, though, Chakotay thought the real reason Harry didn't like Tessa or want her on their mission was because he felt Chakotay's relationship with her was a disservice to Kathryn, that maybe Chakotay was even cheating on her.

 Strangely enough, Chakotay understood this. There were times he felt the same way.

Chakotay was not only the one other person alive who knew how Harry felt about going back to find Voyager, he also felt the same intensity about this mission as Harry did, even though it was for a different reason.

The only thing Chakotay had left to live for, the only reason he got up each morning, was thoughts of getting back to Kathryn Janeway.

*****

Harry glanced up at Chakotay.

He understood Chakotay's reason for wanting to return to Voyager, too. Chakotay had never told him specifically that he was going back for Captain Janeway, but Harry still saw the haunted look in Chakotay's eyes every day, and he knew Chakotay's love for her hadn't diminished a bit, even after all these years. She was as real to him today as she’d been fifteen years ago.

Harry knew Tessa was just a diversion, but he couldn't help it if he felt she didn't belong on the mission that would result in Chakotay being reunited with Captain Janeway. But if she was going, she was going. Harry wasn't going to waste precious time or energy arguing with Chakotay about it. Evidently it didn't bother Chakotay to have Tessa with them, and that was what really mattered. As long as Chakotay could concentrate on his job, Harry could put up with Tessa one last time.

And this was definitely going to be the last time.

Harry looked back at his padd and continued to work. Captain Janeway was the only woman he'd ever met who could keep a man loving her even after being separated from him for fifteen years. And the strangest part of all was through the four and a half years they'd all been stranded together in the Delta Quadrant, there'd only been a command relationship between Chakotay and Captain Janeway, at least as far as Harry knew. Maybe that was the real secret, thought Harry. Maybe Chakotay ached so much for what might have been he just couldn't forget her.

Harry knew what that ache felt like.

And Captain Janeway was pretty damn special to him, too. She had trusted Harry with her life, and the life of her entire crew. And 150 people were dead because of him, and because his captain had believed in him.

He wouldn't let her down this time.

"It's nearly time, Harry," said Chakotay. "You're sure we're ready?"

Harry knew that Chakotay was really asking if the final calculations were all set. After fifteen years, they needed to be. There was no more time left. "We're ready," said Harry, and disappeared into the bedroom to grab his overnight bag.

When he returned, Harry looked Chakotay in the eye. "You realize that after today, the past fifteen years won't have happened at all," he said.

Chakotay nodded.

Even though Harry had brought this up on more than one occasion over the years, it didn’t keep him from bringing it up again. He needed that confirmation.

"And you're still okay with that?" asked Harry.

"I'm still okay with it, Harry," said Chakotay.

Harry looked into Chakotay's eyes for a moment longer, as though searching for a weakness of some sort, or a wavering of his convictions. But Harry was satisfied with what he saw there. All that mattered to both of them was getting back to Voyager.

Harry nodded and moved to the coffee table to collect his padds and stuff them into his bag.

Today they would change history.

*****

It was simple.  Stealing the Borg temporal transmitter from Starfleet hadn't been difficult at all, even with guards hovering nearby.

Since he and Harry had always been careful about their plans, no one suspected a thing. They were just disenchanted and emotionally wrought near-civilians who had once had an unpleasant experience on a mission. A very long mission. So it was easy to talk his way past the guards, and into the control room where the Borg "device" was kept under tight security at Sector 3.12.

Chakotay took his carry-all case, and used the codes Harry had given him to break through the force field surrounding the transmitter. Then he exchanged his case with the one the Borg transmitter was in, reactivated the shields, and hung around for another fifteen minutes, looking and acting like someone who had nothing better to do than spend his day at Starfleet's research laboratory.

When he left the facility, he nodded at the guards, rounded the corner and took off at a run. Reaching the coordinates Harry had given him, he beamed himself over to Starfleet Shipyard Number 8 and hid behind a gutted Runabout for ten more minutes to be sure no one was following him.

They weren't. Yet.
 

*****

Chakotay ducked inside the Delta Flyer and locked the hatch. Tessa and Harry were already on board. They looked at him and he nodded.

"Let's go," Chakotay said. "No one suspects the Borg transmitter is missing, but that won't last much longer."

"I'm on it," said Harry, already working the controls at the main console. "The Flyer hasn't been taken care of properly," he said, powering up the engines. "It'll take awhile to get her up to top speed."

"Whatever it takes, just do it," said Chakotay. "When they find out the Borg component is missing, they'll know who took it. And the Flyer is the first place they'll come looking for us."

"Acknowledged," said Harry. "Don't worry, I'll get us out of here."

Tessa smiled at Chakotay, and he nodded. He knew this was the calm before the storm. Soon the Federation would be after them, and they would be catapulted to the top of the Galaxy's Most Wanted list.

But they were already one step closer to home.

*****

Harry was true to his word. He'd already figured out how to get the maximum out of the Delta Flyer, and he handled her like a pro. He'd waited for this moment for too long, had planned for it for too many years, to be unprepared for a sluggish shuttlecraft.

Several hours later, Harry wound their way through a cloud cluster that was only a light year from the Takara Sector. "We're almost there," said Harry. He'd long ago figured out the best way to get from the shipyard to where they were sure Voyager awaited them.

"How do you plan to get through the barrier?" asked Chakotay. There was an electrical field near the Sector, one that people on this side didn't tempt the Fates to cross over. And there was no need to; the only thing on the other side was a barren planet made up of ice and glaciers. Every time he’d brought the subject up in the past, Harry simply told him he had that part all figured out.

"We'll get through," said Harry. "You and I jumped through it fifteen years ago in this same shuttle."

Chakotay took a deep breath. Everything was coming back to him, every nanosecond of that fateful trip, and remembering it was more unnerving than he'd thought it would be. It seemed like only yesterday – turning to Harry in the Delta Flyer and telling him they couldn't go back for Voyager. Voyager had jumped out of the slipstream drive and fallen back into normal space, and they had to leave her behind. Harry had sunk to his knees then, a look of disbelief on his face.

There was no turning back, he'd told Harry. Even if Voyager could survive re-entry, the Delta Flyer wouldn't.  They would be ripped apart at the seams. In that moment, both their lives had changed forever.

Now Chakotay wondered if he'd done the right thing by saving he and Harry. Neither of them had truly survived after all, had they? The past fifteen years had been one nightmare after another. Literally.

Maybe they should have died, too, along with all their friends and their captain. They'd all been in it together, from the moment Voyager and his Maquis ship had entered the Badlands and were thrown into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker. They'd fought all the battles together, and celebrated the good times as a group. Maybe he and Harry weren't supposed to be separated from the rest of them. At least that's how it felt to Chakotay, and he knew Harry hadn't dealt with it any better over the past fifteen years, maybe even worse. At least Chakotay didn't carry the kind of the guilt with him that Harry did, the kind that ripped a person to pieces.

Chakotay suddenly felt anxious. Would they be able to save Voyager, or had they been lying to themselves for fifteen years by making promises they couldn't keep? Maybe it was impossible to go back and do it all again. Maybe they couldn't turn back the clock and live the last fifteen years differently, after all.

Maybe this was all wrong.

Chakotay took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. He and Harry had waited for this day too long to let anxiety overtake him now.

The next several hours would tell the tale.

*****

Harry and Chakotay moved forward slowly. The ice wasn't easy to walk on, and their anti-gravity suits made it more difficult. This was an L-class planet, and the gravity wasn't what they were accustomed to. The region was also covered entirely by ice, and had a Celsius factor nearly off the charts.

Chakotay kneeled on the ice and brushed the top flakes of ice with his glove, holding his tricorder close to the surface. The readings were right on target. Voyager was directly below them, buried beneath nearly 20 meters of ice. And the glacial fractures were stable enough for he and Harry to beam inside the ship, after all. The ship hadn’t moved in fifteen years. When it crashed, it was embedded in the ice, and over the years more ice had frozen up around it. Voyager was a frozen tomb.

Chakotay closed his eyes briefly, trying to center himself. Fifteen years of thinking and planning still hadn’t prepared him for what he was feeling now. And he wasn’t even inside the ship yet.

After contacting Tessa to let her know they were ready, he felt the familiar tingle of a transporter beam.

Hopefully, he and Harry were not only one step closer to their past, but one step closer to their future, as well.

*****

Harry and Chakotay materialized inside Voyager’s main corridor, near the auxiliary computer command center.

"Not exactly the way I remember it," Harry said, as they walked forward.

Though it was frozen, Chakotay was able to reset the interface with the power cell he’d brought along, but it wasn’t enough.

They’d hoped to find each crewmember’s location and the status of the entire ship through the interface, but the power cell wouldn’t prolong the link. The neural gel packs were frozen solid, and Decks 9 through 13 had collapsed on impact, becoming Deck 10.

Yes, it had been bad enough to kill everyone on board instantly.

He and Harry were going to have to do some legwork, literally walk the ship to find Seven of Nine, and he would also have to go to the bridge to access the last commands made from the bridge to determine Voyager’s exact location when she dropped out of slipstream and back into normal space.

As if he wasn't going to the bridge anyway, he reminded himself. No matter how bad it might be, he had to see her. He had to know how she'd died. He'd had fifteen years to think about her, wonder what her last minutes were like, what she'd been thinking, doing. He had to know what had happened to Kathryn when he wasn’t there to protect her, when he wasn’t there to die with her.

He and Harry split up, with Harry heading toward Engineering to see what condition the warp core was in, and to pull up the last phase corrections B’Elanna had gotten from Seven of Nine. He had to make sure they’d actually used the ones he originally sent back. He needed all the facts before he could plan for a new future.

Chakotay headed for the bridge.

His heart started to beat faster and his legs dragged with every step he took. He had to find her, but he didn’t know if he could stand seeing her if she’d been badly hurt. He should have been here for her, with her, when their ship crashed. It had been his ship, too.

Kathryn had been his best friend, his captain, and the love of his life. His biggest regret was that he hadn't been with her, even when she died, even though he was still convinced she'd planned it that way by assigning him to be on the Flyer. That knowledge had brought him a lot of anguish over the years.

The ship looked the same, yet not the same. Voyager was dead – everything about her was dead. Chakotay remembered how alive she’d been when Kathryn Janeway was alive; the ship had pulsated with energy, just like Kathryn.

He stopped outside the bridge and used every bit of physical strength he had to force the doors open. And then he stepped inside.

It was dark. Evidently Harry hadn’t accessed the emergency lighting yet, but there was no guarantee it would power up anyway, not after fifteen years.

Chakotay swept his wrist light around the bridge. Consoles had blown out, bulkheads had collapsed, and fire had erupted in the aft section, but hadn’t spread too far. He stepped over two frozen bodies on his way to Harry’s old station. At least he knew Harry wouldn’t be there, but he didn’t look too closely at the faces of the crewmen on the floor. He didn’t want to think too much about what had happened here. He didn’t have time to indulge in old nightmares anymore.

The Flyer had already dodged Federation ships a couple of times just getting here, but Chakotay knew Harry’s smart maneuvers wouldn’t put them off for long. Starfleet knew they were up to no good. They wouldn't have use for the Borg interface unless they intended to change the time line. And even though the Federation didn't quite know how to use the interface, they knew what it could be used for – and they would assume that the two misplaced ex-Voyager crewmen who’d had a great deal of experience with the Borg would know precisely how to use it.

He and Harry had to make the best of their time here, and stay moving. There was no time for thoughts about what should have been. They were here for a second chance at making things right.

He stepped over Tom Paris, lying propped against the rise to the uppermost section of the bridge. No time to think, he reminded himself. Tom looked asleep, that was all. No time to think about how he’d died.

Chakotay moved across the bridge, and there she was.

He stopped dead in his tracks. No matter how prepared he thought he was to see her again, he wasn’t. Nothing could have prepared him, he suddenly realized.

Kathryn was lying on her back, one arm thrown above her head, one leg bent to the side. Ice chips and frost covered her eyelids and the rest of her face and body. Her eyes were closed, as though she’d just lain down and given up. Her beloved ship had crashed, her crew was dead, and the captain had, of course, gone down with the ship.

But he knew she’d done everything in her power to save them all. He knew she’d tried, that she’d died trying.

He’d spent the better part of fifteen years imagining her body hurt, burned, damaged. He wasn’t prepared to see her so whole, still so beautiful, even in death.

He knelt beside her body. Tears came to his eyes, but instantly froze from the cold. He wanted to lie beside her, reach out and wrap his arms around her, and pull her cold body close to his. He suddenly wanted to give up, to stop fighting it all. He wanted to lie down beside her, right here on the bridge they’d shared for so long, and could for eternity.

He heard her voice inside his head, the night before the fatal slipstream flight.  "Dinner plans?" she’d asked him after the crew celebration.

"Date with a replicator,” he’d replied.

"Cancel it – that's an order."

"Aye, aye Captain." He’d been more than happy to cancel it.

She’d walked off with that sly smile on her face and he had grinned all the way to his quarters. Did she know then that she’d kiss him later that night?  He didn’t think so. No, he was sure she hadn’t planned that kiss, but had for once let her emotions lead her.

“Kim to Chakotay.”

The sound made him jump. “Chakotay here,” he said. His voice sounded calm, he thought.

There was a pause. “Are you all right?”

Chakotay took a deep breath. So, Harry knew. Was it that obvious he’d found Kathryn? “I’m fine,” he lied. “What is it?”

“I’ve found what I need in Engineering. The entire warp core shut down upon impact. I’m on my way to Sickbay to find the Doc,” he said.

Chakotay wondered how Harry could sound so unemotional. But maybe the only way he could get through it all was to put up a wall between his heart and his emotions, and just get on with what needed to be done.

Chakotay only wished he could do the same.

“I’m leaving the bridge,” he told Harry. “Seven's not here.”

“Better hurry up and find her,” said Harry. “We don’t have much time.”

They both knew that. But Chakotay also knew Harry was trying to get him to snap back to matters at hand. “I know,” he said softly.

“We’ll do this, Chakotay,” said Harry. “We’ll get her back.”

It was the first time Harry had ever spoken directly to Chakotay about the captain. This was as direct as he’d ever come, anyway.  It had the desired effect. Chakotay shook his head to clear it, and stood. “I’ll meet you back in the Flyer,” said Chakotay, breaking the connection with Harry.

“I’ll be back, Kathryn,” he whispered to the woman he loved with all his soul, the one he now knew he couldn't live without, wouldn’t live without for another day. "We'll be together again. I promise." One way or another, he thought.

Though his legs had suddenly become rubber and he felt physically weak, Chakotay left the bridge and headed for Astrometrics. Seven probably never made it that far, but she’d more than likely been going that way when Voyager crashed.  Hopefully, he’d find her somewhere in the corridor.

*****

Ten minutes later, Chakotay leaned over the body of Seven of Nine. She’d gotten as far as the Jeffries Tube just down the corridor from the bridge when Voyager crashed.

Chakotay closed his eyes.

It had all happened quickly, just as they’d suspected. Still, it was difficult to see the proof of that in front of his eyes. He thought of Kathryn again and fought hard to push her out of his mind, for just a little while longer. If he could only get through this with Harry, he would be with her again.

He tapped his combadge and asked Tessa to lock onto the transporter relay and beam Seven of Nine to the lab.

He told Tessa the truth when he asked her to make it quick. It wasn’t exactly a happy reunion.
 

*****

After Tessa transported and secured Seven’s body in the frozen compartment Harry had readied for her, Chakotay headed for Sickbay where Harry had already activated the Doctor after rescuing his mobile emitter.

How good it was to hear the Doctor’s voice again!  Who would have known his patronizing tone would ever be such a pleasure to hear?

 But he and Harry were on a mission. There was no time for pleasantries.

As Chakotay was about to enter the room, he heard the Doctor question Harry.

"Ensign?"

"I go by Harry now,” said Harry, with no trace of emotion in his voice. Chakotay was used to it, but the Doctor seemed to be trying to adapt to the new Harry Kim. Chakotay understood.

"I demand an explanation,” said the Doctor.

"I'll give you one,” said Chakotay, as he moved into the room. “We're here to change history."

As Chakotay walked past the Doctor, the celebration the night before the slipstream flight jumped into his mind. Sometimes the past crept up on him at the worst, and most unpredictable, times.

The entire crew had gathered in Engineering and Kathryn had given them a little pep talk, captain to crewmen. There had been champagne. No one knew it except her first officer, but Kathryn had used all her remaining replicator rations to produce just enough champagne for everyone to enjoy. If they didn’t make it home the next morning, she was going to drink Neelix’s coffee the rest of the month, just so she could give her crew an evening of celebration.

Of course, she had explained to Chakotay beforehand that it was a non-issue, really. After all, with Harry’s careful calculations, they would make it home through the slipstream and the whole replicator rations system wouldn't exist anymore. She'd smiled at him, with a twinkle in her eye.

He heard her voice, always heard her voice, in his head….

 "…the next generation of interstellar propulsion – the quantum slipstream drive." And Kathryn raised her glass to toast the slipstream drive and her stalwart crew.

Even now, Chakotay felt an intense pain in his heart, the pain of loss. All he could think of was Kathryn’s frozen and still body lying on the bridge. He closed his eyes and fought to bring himself back to the present.

*****

“Where are we?” asked the Doctor, after the three of them had transported to the Delta Flyer.

“In the Takara Sector, just outside the Alpha Quadrant," said Chakotay. It seemed strange to explain to someone else what he and Harry had been involved in every single day for such a long time. They explained quickly how the Doctor and the entire crew of the Voyager had been buried inside a glacier for fifteen years.

The Doctor seemed almost touched that Chakotay and Harry had returned to Voyager, but added that Starfleet had taken their time finding them. Harry seemed to relive it all over again when he told the Doc that Starfleet had given up the search for Voyager over nine years ago, even when he had begged them to keep it alive. The anger in Harry's tone brought it all back for the two survivors now. When every Starfleet admiral stopped taking Harry's calls, he'd resigned from Starfleet.

The Doctor was grateful anyway, and Harry assured him that he and Chakotay were not here to salvage his program. They were here to stop this from happening in the first place.

And then, to the Doctor's amazement, Harry said:  "We're going to send Voyager a new set of phase corrections."

Yes, that's what they were going to do, Chakotay thought. A new set that Harry had been working on for over ten years.

A new set, the right set this time.

*****

Chakotay and Tessa beamed to Voyager's bridge, leaving Harry to begin preparations with the Doctor.

He had steeled himself to see the dead and frozen bodies of Voyager's bridge crew again, but when they beamed over, all the bodies were gone. Chakotay looked at Tessa, a question in his eyes.

"I beamed them to the Doctor's Sickbay," she said softly. "I didn't think you needed to see…them…like that again."

"Thanks," he mumbled before turning away. She'd known, too, then. Like Harry, she'd understood how difficult it had been for him to see Kathryn again, lying dead and cold on the bridge. She'd been so alive the last time he'd seen her. He shook his head. Tessa was asking him about the sluggish instrument controls, and he forced himself to answer her. Yes, Voyager was a state-of-the-art ship of her time.

When they needed a command code to access key data, he started for his command chair. He didn't think; he just went. His old command code would probably work, and he could download the information from his old terminal there.

But when he sat in the chair, his body nearly went limp inside his suit. He hadn't expected to feel this way, to feel so much at home, so tired, so emotional – all at the same time. Suddenly, it felt as though he'd never been away. The chair still molded to his body, still fit his body exactly as it had before, even through the thick suit he wore. Tom should be just ahead, and of course Kathryn should be just to his right, giving orders, making decisions, taking a stand. She was always forced to take a stand. They'd met so many alien peoples and cultures, and they never knew in advance what was in store for them. Kathryn had made many decisions in those four and a half years that had no basis in traditional Starfleet teachings. Because they were situations Starfleet had no knowledge of, there was no way to prepare their commanding officers for what lie in store for them in other quadrants, other universes, that no one from the Alpha Quadrant had visited before.

But somehow, Captain Kathryn Janeway had pulled all her internal resources together, listened to her senior staff (sometimes) and used whatever part of her Starfleet training she could to make the right decisions. And those decisions were usually the best ones, and always honest. And, of course, there were times when she went strictly on instinct, a captain’s gut instinct.

Chakotay had known her job was difficult, but his respect for her position only increased after he and Harry had made it home again and he had time to reflect over those years from a distance. She'd had no time to play or laugh, though she'd forced herself to take a break from time to time. Even she had known she had to take a step back and relax a bit; the trip home could take a very, very long time.

Chakotay had never once believed it would take 70,000 light years to get home, he realized later. He always knew they'd get home well within their lifetimes. Captain Janeway wouldn't have it any other way.

But later, back on Earth in his apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay, he realized that Kathryn Janeway had always had her doubts. While she'd spent every day encouraging her crew, making them believe they'd get home soon, giving them every reason to hope, she'd had her own questions and reservations – about their chances and about her own leadership abilities. She'd been damn good at keeping her crew alive with that hope, though; it was one of her strengths.

She'd even convinced her first officer there was a way home just around the corner – it was always just around the corner. But in retrospect, he saw the questions in her eyes. And the disappointments the crew experienced along the way were even harder lessons for their captain.

Maybe that was one reason she'd made the decision to take the slipstream flight, even with that point four phase variance that Tom and Harry had discovered in their flight simulations the night before. Even when he went to her quarters to discuss the slipstream flight, but found she'd set the table for dinner as she'd originally planned. When he told her there were too many variables, he'd looked her in the eye and saw she'd already made her decision. He saw, too, that no matter what he said there'd be no discouraging her. So, he hadn't tried. Instead they'd had a wonderful dinner, soft music, lighted candles, wine, wonderful conversation. And a kiss. Always, he came back to the kiss.

Later he had questioned himself, too. Had he wanted to deter her from that flight for his own selfish reasons? Had he been more frightened of losing her if they got home again than he was of never having her by staying on Voyager, lost in the Delta Quadrant with her?

Maybe she'd finally come to the end of the road for hopes and dreams, and it was time to do something about it. Maybe she thought it was her last chance to do something right.

This time Kathryn, he thought, you'll get your ship home.

Chakotay looked up. Tessa was there, watching him.

He reached over and touched his console. It was sluggish too, but when it blinked on, there was an active file on his display. He touched the button without thinking.

It was her voice. The file was full of static and the resolution could be made better, but he couldn't move. His entire body stopped, his heart, his breath. His mind.

"…should our luck run out…I'd like to say for the record the crew of Voyager acted with distinction and valor…"

Of course, it would be just like Kathryn Janeway to record this message with her dying breath, just to let anyone who might find them know what sort of crew her people were.  No, she didn't record this with her dying breath, he suddenly realized. She'd recorded it earlier, probably the evening before. Probably after their dinner, after the kiss….

After he left her quarters, she found herself alone and the demons of the night came to her. She'd known all along what a huge gamble she was taking, that they just might not make it home in the slipstream after all. And she'd taken the time to record this message.

"…should our luck run out…"

Oh, Kathryn….luck had a lot to do with it, yes – but you were our luck, you were our leader. And you always did what you thought was best, all the way to the end, he thought.

She'd been the sort of captain Starfleet wanted all their commanding officers to be, trained them to be, and hoped they'd have the discipline, stamina and code of ethics and honor to be throughout their distinguished careers – the kind of captain who not only went down with the ship, but left a recorded message about the bravery of her crew while she was at it.

Just as his heart started to beat again, and anger was beginning to rise in his chest – anger that he created out of desperation so he wouldn't feel the sort of emotion that would tear him apart – he heard a voice.

"Are you all right?" It was Tessa.

He'd forgotten she was there. Again.

"Yes," he lied. "It's just the last time I was in this chair they were all here. Alive." It was true.

But Tessa knew what it was that had turned Chakotay's face ashen. She knew whose voice that was in the recorded message. And if she hadn't known before who it was Chakotay still pined for, she would have known now, instantly.

That female voice had been commanding, sincere, certain, and yet sexy, all at the same time. This was a woman, a captain, who’d known how to command a starship, have a wonderful man fall head-over-heels in love with her and keep him wanting her for fifteen years after he’d last seen her. This was a woman she, Tessa, could never top in any way, shape or form.

Even though she’d always known this about Kathryn Janeway, she was shaken by hearing her voice, nonetheless. But she forced her own voice to be firm now, when she turned to Chakotay. "We're here to get them back."

He nodded, and forced himself to go through the motions of setting his tricorder to scan for the information they needed from the console, then rose. He turned away, quietly taking large breaths of the cold, cold air. He had to shake this torment and focus on the fact that they were here to change history, to make sure none of this had ever happened. Finally, he got himself under control.

Tessa was standing quietly behind him. He turned to her, told her he was getting "last minute jitters" and "cold feet" but although the jitters part was right, he wouldn't turn around for anything. He knew now, without a doubt, he couldn't live another day as he had for the past fifteen years. Either he would be with Kathryn again, or he would die trying.

But Tessa wasn't to be taken in. She knew exactly what was going on in Chakotay's mind, and in his heart. She knew him well; she loved him. But he would never love her back, no matter how much time they had together and no matter how good she might be for him, or to him. Although he had her, she would never have him. She would never be Kathryn.

Tessa swallowed her hurt. She had made the right decision to be here. At least she could help make Chakotay happy by helping him to return to Voyager, and to his beloved Kathryn. "Your heart has always been here, on Voyager – that'll never change. This is where you belong," she said. And she meant every word of it. She'd known it since the day she met him, but she had seen all the proof she needed only moments ago when she saw his face and his reaction to Kathryn Janeway's words coming from that console.

And although she told Chakotay that perhaps they would meet someday in the new future that awaited both of them, she knew they wouldn’t. And even if they did meet, he would pass her by without a backward glance. After all, he would be with his Kathryn.

Chakotay was going to get a second chance to be with Kathryn Janeway, but Tessa Ormand would never get a second chance to be with Chakotay.

She tried to lighten the moment by asking him to show her his quarters, and when he declined she knew it wasn't that his quarters was a mess, as he’d said. It was because this was a part of his life she didn't belong in, a private part of his life that belonged to Kathryn Janeway, and not Tessa Ormand.

But she wasn't bothered by that, not now. She'd seen that look on his face, and she knew more than ever that she had to let him go.

*****

Harry Kim had never been on a mission like this before. Everything he did now mattered.

Ten plus years of calculations and exactitudes didn't matter anymore. Planning didn't matter anymore. It was now or never.

Harry Kim also knew with absolute certainty they'd either make it back to that fateful day and bring Voyager home again, or die trying. No matter which way it went, he couldn't live one more day like he had the past fifteen years. That time was past. The nightmares were over, finally.

Harry shook his head, and snapped back to the present.

"When did you embark on your life of crime?" asked the Doctor, watching Harry out of the corner of his eye.

"When I heard about this little gem," said Harry. He showed the Doctor the Borg Salvage Component 36698, the interface that had been found in the Beta Quadrant by Starfleet. Harry remembered the first time he heard about it, because he immediately knew how it would fit into the plan that would bring he and Chakotay back to Voyager, back to this moment. He knew how this little piece of technology could help them change the past.

Now here they were, at the top of the Galaxy's Most Wanted list. He sighed. Well, that was all right. Very soon it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Harry had to send the right phase variance corrections this time. He knew the magic numbers. He’d worked them out a long time ago, and had spent years testing them.

Some people would question the ethics of turning back time, of affecting so many people's lives, and destroying fifteen years' worth of history. But not Harry. He knew the current time line only existed because he had made a colossal mistake fifteen years ago. He was the sole cause of the past fifteen years being what it was, he told himself over and over again. It kept him sane.

Harry Kim asked the Doctor to make a decision. Either he was with them, or he wasn't. If he didn't want to be involved in changing history, Harry would take his program off-line.

The Doctor replied, "To aid an honorable thief, or spend eternity in cybernetic oblivion. Let's tempt fate."

And Harry Kim smiled.

*****

Harry had never known a moment more important in his life than the one coming up.

Of course, there had been one other such moment, fifteen years ago when he'd sent the wrong phase corrections back to Voyager. But he hadn't known then what that mistake would cost him, would cost all of them.

He swallowed hard. There was no room for error this time. There would be no third chance.

Harry excused himself, telling the Doctor he had something he had to do, while the Doctor was attempting to pinpoint Seven's time of death down to the millisecond, if possible. The timing had to be perfect. Harry was going to recalibrate Seven's cranial implant, and use it as a transceiver for the new set of phase corrections. He'd worked the numbers for years. It all had to take place in just under four minutes for everything to work out the right way this time.

After Harry re-routed the new numbers through Seven's cranial implant, Seven would immediately tell Captain Janeway about the new set of phase corrections and, given that there wouldn't be enough time for anyone to validate that the new set of numbers were from Harry Kim, the captain would be forced to use them. She would accept that they were more than likely from Harry since he and Chakotay no longer had a communications link with Voyager. She would assume that Harry had figured a way to communicate with them through Seven's cranial implant.

And indeed, he had. But it was fifteen years later, not the minute or so later that Captain Janeway would believe it to be.

Janeway would tell Seven to enter the new set of phase corrections because, although she didn't like accepting things at face value, she would also know her ship and her crew were in grave danger. At that point the slipstream would be near collapse, and Tom would more than likely have already lost helm control, or would soon, because of an overload in the quantum matrix.

There was no turning back, and the point-four phase variance was going to be their undoing if the captain didn't take that leap of faith and trust that those phase corrections were being received from the Delta Flyer. And that's just what Harry was counting on.

Harry Kim to the rescue.

It might be fifteen years later, but it just couldn't be too late. Harry's very soul depended on today being the day he came through for his captain and his crewmates.

*****

Harry was speaking softly into the console across the room. "If you're watching this now, that's all changed. You owe me one," he said.

The Doctor called to him. It's time, he told Harry.

"Be right there," Harry called over his shoulder.

Harry turned back to the small viewscreen in front of him. "Gotta go." Then he reached up and pushed the button to end the recording and hold it for future transmission.

He wondered if his message would ever be delivered.

"What was that all about?" asked the Doctor, as Harry moved over to help with the final preparations before sending the new set of phase corrections back to Seven of Nine.

"Oh, nothing," said Harry absently. "Letter to a friend."

*****

Chakotay sat at the helm of the Delta Flyer.  The time was near. After all the years of getting to this point, it suddenly seemed like it hadn't been all that long ago. He'd sat at the helm of the Flyer then, too. And when he and Harry had had to complete their journey through the slipstream, leaving Voyager behind, his heart had nearly broken then and there.

And Chakotay remembered Harry’s face well. Something very real had died in Harry that day. He was never the same afterward, but had spent every waking moment trying to figure a way to get back to that time, to do it over. To fix it all.

And now, finally, that time had come.

Chakotay took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Indeed, that time had come.

Tessa was behind him, monitoring tactical and navigation. She'd wanted to be here, he told himself. He was glad she was here, yet a part of him wished she'd gotten angry instead and walked out. It was the guilt, he knew – the same old guilt he'd felt for over two years. He didn't love her. He couldn't love her. He loved only one woman.

And he was going to be reunited with her soon.

He took another deep breath, then rose from the console. "I'll be right back," he told Tessa as he moved past her and into the double-bunk compartment of the Flyer. It was a bit tight, and meant for two people in the best of times, but it had a computer console. That was all that mattered.

Chakotay engaged the console and stared into the monitor. He only had a couple of minutes to do this.

*****

Tessa was glad to have a moment alone.

She was still glad to be here, and sure she was doing the right thing.

Going back to a time well before she met Chakotay was better than living with him now, knowing he would never care for her as much as she needed him to. She wished it could be different, but it would never be. Kathryn Janeway was everything Tessa Ormand was not, and then some.

Tessa sighed. She thought she was prepared for this, and in fact was probably as ready as she could ever be. But it hurt, just the same.

In a few minutes they would get this show on the road.

*****

"Chakotay, it's nearly time!" Tessa's voice came from the command center of the Delta Flyer.

Chakotay told her he'd be right there, then turned back to the monitor. "I won't remember any of this, but I wanted you to know how things are." He hit the button to end the recording, then reached up and encoded the message so it would be transmitted at the appropriate time.

He wondered if his message would ever be delivered.

"What was that all about?" asked Tessa, as Chakotay moved back to the helm to help her complete the final preparations.

"Oh, nothing," said Chakotay absently. " Letter to a friend."

*****

The time had come, and Harry was more than ready to be done with it all and get back to that slipstream flight. This time it would happen very differently.

Geordi LaForge had come after them, just as Harry and Chakotay had known he would, as they'd known many of Starfleet's best would try.

It wasn't surprising that Geordi had figured out where they were going immediately, and reached them first. He'd always studied Harry and Chakotay closely, and they knew he'd be the least surprised that they'd had something up their sleeves. He knew they couldn't forget the past, and had never told them things would get better, the way most people had.

Harry and the Doctor were nearly ready to send back the new set of phase corrections. Chakotay and Tessa were ready at their stations, waiting – waiting for Harry to do his job – when Geordi showed up. Now they were stalling Geordi, but Harry knew that wouldn't last long.

Suddenly, the Doctor extracted the numbers they were all waiting for from Seven's cranial implant, and Harry loaded them in. He told Chakotay they were ready, and finally – finally – Harry sent the new set of phase corrections back to Voyager, with less than four minutes to spare before the flight turned bad.

But nothing happened!

The Flyer's engines were down and Chakotay was declining LaForge's offer to be locked onto with tractor beams and be saved, and Harry Kim had once again sent the wrong phase corrections back to Voyager!

"We're still here! Why are we still here?" Harry yelled to the Doctor.

The Doctor didn't know what went wrong, and Harry didn't either – except that he was once again a failure.

History was repeating itself. It had taken him ten years to make those corrections. He couldn't fix it in the three minutes he had left! Voyager was going to crash-land again, and Harry Kim was going to be responsible for killing 150 people a second time!

The Doctor begged Harry to get hold of himself, but Harry was way past that point. He'd barely lived with himself for killing 150 people the first time. If he did it again, he wouldn’t survive a second time.

Suddenly the Doctor thought of a new angle, one that Harry Kim had never considered. "Is there a way to get them to abort the slipstream drive?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes!" The suggestion immediately lit up Harry's eyes – and his mind, already full of calculations, knew exactly what to do! He'd spent so long trying to figure out how to make that slipstream flight work he'd never even considered aborting it before the problems occurred.

Taking the Doctor off-line so he could use the holo-emitter to generate more power to the transmitter, Harry keyed in the last set of calculations he'd have time to send.

This was Harry Kim’s last chance to change history.

And as the calculations were accepted on the other side of the timeline in the Voyager, Harry slammed his fists against the console and screamed "Yes!" as his world disappeared with him in it.

Harry’s years of perseverance had paid off.  This time he hadn't let his captain and crewmates – his family – down.

*****

Captain Janeway stared at Seven of Nine. "Does Harry know how to access your Borg systems?"

"No," said Seven of Nine.

The captain looked away. "He must've found a way," she said more to herself than anyone else. Harry had sent the wrong phase corrections, but since all communications with the Delta Flyer had ceased, he had to have found another way to send the right ones.

And since they were nearly out of time, there was not another option but to trust they were from Harry and accept them.

After ordering Seven to enter the second set of corrections, Voyager immediately dropped out of the slipstream, and the drive itself shut down completely. There would be no more attempts to use it, not today, and maybe not ever.

The captain was not exactly happy when she explained to Ensign Kim over the newly re-established comlink that they'd entered the exact phase corrections he'd sent to Seven of Nine, and those calculations had shut down the slipstream drive. But when Harry sounded confused and said he hadn't sent any phase corrections to Seven of Nine, Janeway immediately knew that some divine intervention, some guardian angel, had been involved – either that, or some menace who didn't want them to get home again.

One thing was for certain – she'd sure as hell find out who was responsible for this if it took a light year to do it.

*****
 
After thanking her crew for their hard work and dedication, Captain Janeway ordered her first officer and Harry Kim to report back to Voyager with the Flyer. They could take an hour to freshen up, then report to the bridge for their regular duty shifts. There was no reason not to continue on as usual. After all, it seemed they wouldn't be getting home any time soon.

At least everyone was safe and sound, the captain told herself, as she walked down the corridor toward Astrometrics where she and Seven were going to go over all the data from the slipstream attempt. Things could have been a lot worse. If they hadn't used the new phase corrections from their unknown friend, they might not have survived this, according to Seven’s latest theory.

Captain Janeway always had to talk herself through these disappointments. She’d gotten good at it over the past four years.

As she walked through the doors to join Seven at her console, the captain finally acknowledged the knot in her stomach that usually warned her about things she didn't want to know.

She had a feeling there was a lot more ahead of her before the day was over.

*****

It was several hours before Captain Janeway's questions had all been answered, even if there were still some answers that weren't complete. She and Seven had gathered all the information there was about what had happened.

The bottom line was that ten years had been taken off their journey as a result of their little sojourn earlier today.

That, and one other oddity.

Kathryn Janeway strolled through the nearly empty corridors of her ship, carrying a tricorder. She'd downloaded something she wanted to share with Harry Kim, and according to the computer, Ensign Kim was alone in the mess hall.

She’d already ordered the dismantling of the slipstream drive, and B’Elanna had overseen the process before turning in for the night. Perhaps someday they’d be able to use it again, if and when they learned more about it.

It was 02:00 and everyone who wasn't on duty or in the holodecks was asleep.  Kathryn knew why Harry was alone in the mess hall. She'd often worked there herself over the years. It was a good place to think. And right now Harry Kim was trying to figure out why his original set of phase corrections hadn't worked, and why that mysterious second set from some unknown being had interfered.

And she was going to explain it to him the only way she knew how – by telling him everything she knew, straight up. He deserved to know it all.

Taking a deep breath, she entered the mess hall.

Harry Kim looked up from his lone vigil at the computer console in front of him. He was tired, and Captain Janeway immediately recognized the desperation etched on his face. He looked like a little boy who was trying to figure out how to make his science project work before school started tomorrow morning. His face was also filled with fear – fear that he had nearly done something unimaginable. She knew that feeling because she had often been where he was right now.

Harry realized he had nearly killed 150 people, but what he didn't know was that he'd also saved them.

When she greeted him, he stood, an ensign greeting his captain, but she told him to relax. She was here as more than just a captain tonight. It was 02:00 and time for some truths to be told.

"I just came here to try to figure things out," he told her, after taking his seat.

Ah yes, she'd done the same thing many times.

His face was in pain and he couldn’t look at her when he told her he'd nearly killed them all. She understood.

But then she'd pulled up a chair beside him, and in a soft controlled voice explained who their Guardian Angel had turned out to be – his name was Harry Kim.

She explained to Harry how Seven had found a Starfleet Security Code embedded in a transmission that was captured from this morning's disastrous slipstream attempt. It had a temporal displacement, generated from sometime in the future – ten or twenty years from now, it was impossible to be sure when. There was a log entry encoded in the telemetry – from Harry Kim to Harry Kim.

She explained to Harry how he had at some point come through for them all. She tried to convey to him that that was what mattered. Whether he'd agree or not was his cross to bear; she couldn't be his conscience. Harry would have to make peace in his own soul for what he didn't do, and for what he did.

Harry seemed confused by it all, as she knew he would be. She had been too, but of course she'd had hours to consider this, to think about it, to make sense of it. It involved time paradoxes, something that could nearly drive her crazy. The past's the future, the future's the past….it always gave her a headache.

She smiled at Harry when he questioned everything, when he asked her if by saving them all in the future and bringing them back to the past, the future hadn't really happened at all. Or had it?

"My advice in making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple – don't even try," she said, handing him the tricorder.

Harry would have to make sense of this in his own way, and in his own time. He would have to figure out where his place truly was in this family, on Voyager.

The captain smiled at him. Harry Kim's message to Harry Kim belonged to Harry, and he could do with it as he pleased. It was his personal letter from the past. She had played it, of course, and she'd never been prouder of him than she was today. Young Ensign Harry Kim had grown up to be quite a man. He was haunted by ghosts and his own conscience, and he'd quit Starfleet over it, but he couldn't leave behind the ideals he had joined Starfleet for. They were imbedded in his soul.

And that's what Starfleet was really all about, she thought. What was in one's soul.

 Captain Janeway left Harry to his own thoughts, and his message from the past. He probably wouldn't sleep tonight. She'd checked, and thankfully he had the late shift tomorrow.

The captain left the mess hall and started for her own quarters. It had been a very full day, and she was exhausted. She, unlike Harry, had the early shift tomorrow, for which she could thank her thoughtful first officer.

She thought of Chakotay and smiled.

Ah well, at least he and Harry had returned to them. She wondered briefly what had happened to Chakotay over those now-lost years, and if they had been important ones to him. Had he met someone, loved someone?

Her heart nearly stopped beating. Here she was, thinking about things she didn’t want to know about.

Even though she’d kept Chakotay at arm’s length for four years, she couldn’t imagine him with anyone else. Maybe that was the way of….things. She wanted him, truly, but she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of a love life when she was to blame for stranding so many people so far away from their homes and loved ones. Perhaps it was self-punishment, but that was the way it was, nonetheless. She didn’t deserve Chakotay, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be in a relationship where his other half couldn’t give him all of herself.

She had a crew to get home first.

And if he was still there when they got home again, and if he still looked at her with desire in his eyes, they would talk then.

She suddenly remembered the kiss from just last night and nearly stopped in her tracks. Had it really been just last night? It seemed so long ago.

She shook her head as she continued down the empty corridor to her quarters. That kiss had been a promise of things to come. She’d intended to let him know how she felt, and that more than anything she wanted them to try life out together when they got home again. She’d told herself they would get home through the slipstream drive. Well, she’d been kidding herself again, hadn’t she?

That kiss had been worth everything to her – all the years in the Delta Quadrant, losing Mark and her years at home – it had suddenly all been worthwhile, and she'd realized it was meant to happen. She'd never believed in coincidence, had she? And she’d seen hope in Chakotay’s eyes last night, too. He still loved her, she saw it, felt it, tasted it in his kiss.

Tears stung her eyes, and she pushed them away with all the strength she had left. Well, they were back to square one now, weren’t they?

She wouldn’t lead Chakotay on, wouldn’t give him false hopes for a future she was unsure of again. She wanted him to be happy, and that meant letting him go if he found someone else to love.

She just hoped Chakotay would understand that, and try to forget about the kiss, about what she’d promised him last night. Right now, she was back to being a captain again. Being a woman would have to be put on hold once more.

The sudden pain in the pit of her stomach and the stab in her heart nearly made her miss her step. It was real. Her love for that man, her need to be with him, was as real as anything tangible.

She forced back the tears she felt gathering behind her eyelids again, and tried to ignore the years’ worth of emptiness and loneliness she felt deep inside.
 

*****

Harry Kim sat alone in the mess hall long after he'd played the message from himself, from fifteen years in the future.

Perhaps the captain was right about temporal paradoxes. Trying to make sense out of them was annoying, nearly impossible, and could drive a person crazy.

Somehow, some way, he had come through for Captain Janeway and for his friends on Voyager. In the end, he hadn't let them down, after all.

Had he?

It was too hard to comprehend, too complicated to understand. And it would need a lot more thought. He scrubbed his face with his hands.

Harry took the tricorder and his computer and started for his quarters. Thankfully, he had the late shift tomorrow.

Somehow he didn't think sleep would come easily tonight.

*****

Kathryn Janeway entered her quarters and glanced at the chronometer across the room. It was 02:30 and she had to get up at 05:30. Well, 06:00 if she rushed her early morning rituals and only had one cup of coffee in her quarters.

She shook her head. Half an hour wouldn't make that much difference to her, and that extra cup of coffee would certainly make a difference to the rest of the bridge crew in the morning.

She gave a small smile in spite of her lousy mood and the feeling that she'd just lost everything that meant anything to her personally. Tom Paris always claimed he could tell how much coffee she'd had that morning by the way she walked onto the bridge.

"Computer, set alarm for 05:30," she said, as she unzipped her uniform jacket and started for her bedroom. Even a bath would have to wait.

But before she reached the doorway, her attention was caught by a blinking light on her computer console. There was no reason for that light to blink. Messages from the crew were routed directly to her command console on the bridge, not to her personal computer in her quarters. Messages from her senior staff were usually sent directly to the computer station in her ready room, but she could access them from her bridge console if need be.

Who would have sent a message directly to her quarters? It was very unusual. Over the years she’d received a couple of sensitive tactical updates from Tuvok, and a couple of private messages from Chakotay. One of those immediately came to mind – one that he’d sent her just after they’d returned to Voyager from New Earth, a day or so after their heart-to-heart talk about how things had to go back to the way they were before. She'd made it clear to Chakotay that they had to maintain a command relationship. It was a decision she still questioned, and often regretted. He hadn't been happy about it, and didn't really understand her decision, though he said he would respect it. That message was the only one she’d kept in a personal file, to hold onto when she needed it most.

She blinked the tears back yet again. This seemed to be the night for it. She sighed. She was tired and overly emotional, a trait most of her crew wouldn't attribute to her. They hadn’t made it home as she'd hoped they would; she still had the responsibility of 150 crewmen on her shoulders, and tonight she felt the weight of it even more than usual.

On top of everything, she had just made the decision to give up all thoughts of ever having a life with Chakotay.

She stood rooted to the spot for a very long moment, still staring at the message light on her console. Something tugged at the back of her mind, but she was afraid to let it come forward. That message couldn't possibly be from…no, she wouldn't even think it.

Kathryn took a deep breath and sat in the chair in front of the console. She certainly didn't need another surprise; she’d had too many of those for one day.

When she hit the play button and saw his face, her heart fluttered once and then began to beat hard in her chest. He was older here, but his eyes said it all. They looked through the screen at her with such love she felt her heart would break.

He’d sent her a message back in time, just as Harry had sent one to himself.

She sat still and watched his face, listened to his words. And loved him more than she’d ever loved him before.

“Kathryn, I don’t have much time. If you’re watching this now, then you know what happened. You know that Harry and I made it back to Earth, and Voyager didn’t.

You also know that we changed history today.”

He looked deeply into her eyes, and she could feel the intensity of his gaze slam into her heart.

“My people believe that each soul can only belong to one other. Your soul is the mate to mine, Kathryn. Believe that if you believe nothing else. And if I ever questioned it in the past, I’ve had fifteen years to be sure.”

He looked straight through her, into her heart. Kathryn blinked back tears to clear her vision. She had to see his face.

“Harry is returning to Voyager to relieve his conscience, Kathryn. I’m going back to be with you. There is no one else for me but you, so know this: I will wait forever for you to come to me. I may stumble and fall from time to time, but I ask you to pick me up when I do. Be patient with me. Love me if you can. And forgive me if I fail you, or if I walk away in frustration..”

He leaned even closer to the screen. Unknowingly, Kathryn leaned forward, too.

“I will never forget that kiss, Kathryn. It will stay inside me forever, even when you’re not with me. I know this to be true. Fifteen years has only made me love you more.

I'll make you a deal: don’t pretend we’re not meant to be together, and in return I’ll give you all the room you need. It’s all right to look at me now and then with love in your eyes. I’ll know that you mean it, and I won't ask you for more than you're willing to give.”

He swallowed hard.

“I miss you, Kathryn.”

His voice nearly broke, and Kathryn’s heart was beating so fast she could almost hear it. Then he reached out his hand and touched the screen. Kathryn automatically touched her palm to his. If she didn’t know better, she would swear she could feel the heat of his palm against hers. “Chakotay….” she whispered.

He pulled his hand slowly away, and turned to someone off screen. “I’ll be right there,” he called, then turned back to Kathryn.

“I won’t remember any of this, but I wanted you to know how things are.”

Then he severed the connection.

Kathryn sat still for a very long time. Tears ran down both cheeks, but she didn’t know it, and she didn’t notice when her blue tee shirt became wet with her tears. He loved her now, and after fifteen years, he’d continued to love her.

Finally, after what seemed hours but was only minutes, Kathryn stood. Her body was stiff and sore, and she felt as though she had been dragged through a keyhole, or worse, been engaged in battle with four Klingons simultaneously on the holodeck.

He loved her. Still. Even now, and then too.

She made her way to the bathroom and ran water in the tub. She needed a bath, after all. She had to take a few minutes to relax, and maybe have a good cry, here alone in her quarters where the captain could be a woman for just a few minutes.

But more, she had to think about Chakotay’s message.

*****

Chakotay couldn’t sleep. He’d tried, twice. But his mind was racing and he’d had far too much caffeine. On top of that, he had the early shift with Kathryn tomorrow.

Today had been one bad day all around. First, the slipstream drive hadn’t taken them home the way it was supposed to. Then Harry had sent back the wrong phase corrections and someone or something else had sent a second set of calculations that had knocked them out of the slipstream and shut down the drive.

And Kathryn and Seven of Nine had spent all afternoon and evening in Astrometrics trying to figure out what went wrong.

Or right.

All day he’d had a strange feeling that this was meant to be. He couldn’t put his finger on it; it just felt right.

That didn’t mean Kathryn Janeway would feel the same. In fact, he had seen the disappointment in her eyes when he stopped into Astrometrics earlier. He’d wanted to see her alone, to tell her again that they’d get Voyager home another way, but that for some reason it wasn’t meant to happen this time.

But Seven had been there, and he couldn’t think of a good reason to pull Kathryn aside to speak with her, since they were both so involved in their quest for information about what had happened. Maybe she needed some time alone, and some sleep, and he could talk to her about it tomorrow. He just wished he could make her understand it wasn’t her fault. None of it was her fault.

He ordered a cup of chamomile tea to calm him. He had intended to invite Kathryn to breakfast tomorrow morning before their duty shift, but she rarely wanted to meet for breakfast anymore. She usually had coffee in her quarters instead.

He’d find a way to get her alone, though, to see how she was handling the disappointment. Where there was a will, there was a way.

Chakotay sipped his tea, closed his eyes, and tried to forget about the kiss. Had it been only last night that she’d kissed him? It seemed like much longer somehow. A lot had happened since that kiss. Not only had the slipstream drive collapsed, but along with it went the hope that they would soon be home and he and Kathryn could start a life together.

That was the real reason he couldn’t sleep. He glanced at the chronometer across the room and took a deep breath. 03:30. He had to get up in two hours.

Kathryn would expect him to go back to the way things were between them before the kiss – just as she'd once before expected him to put his feelings on hold for her.

After they'd returned from New Earth she'd put the command structure back in place and thought he could just go on as though nothing had happened between them. He'd agreed with her decision, but his heart hadn't forgotten, and his soul would forever be linked to hers. He understood they were meant to be together, that their souls were linked, even if she didn't. Maybe someday she would listen to her heart.

And then last night she'd kissed him, after all this time. That kiss had changed everything for him. It had given him hope. For those few short hours between the kiss last night and the slipstream attempt this morning, his heart had been full and he had felt alive for the first time in a very long time. He’d nearly forgotten what that was like. He'd left Kathryn's quarters last night believing they would be together soon, very soon.

Now, the disappointment hurt more than he thought it would. He’d had his heart set on the future, and now he had to be content once more with the present.

Taking a mind-clearing breath of fresh air, he finished his tea and put the empty cup in the recycler.

As he tightened the cord of his robe and started back to bed, the door chime rang.

Chakotay stopped. Who would be visiting him in his quarters at 03:45? If it were an emergency, he would have been contacted through ship’s systems. But everything was quiet.

“Come,” he called.

To his utter astonishment, Kathryn Janeway walked into his quarters. He was so surprised he couldn’t speak. She even had that little smile on her face he loved, and her eyes shone as she looked at him. Her arms were held discreetly behind her back.

“I thought you might be awake,” she said in the voice she only used when they were alone and she was feeling good, the one that drove him crazy and made his nights easier to bear.

He nodded. His throat was so tight he couldn’t speak.

She slowly pulled a peace rose from behind her back and held it out to him. His heart was racing in his chest, and he tried to swallow. Finally, he managed to reach out and take the rose.

“I remember how much I appreciated a peace rose someone once gave me. It meant that I wasn’t alone,” she said. Her eyes were trained on his. “I just thought it was time I said ‘thank you’ for all you do for me, Chakotay, and for always being there." She paused only a moment before looking even deeper into his eyes, and straight through to his soul. "I do need you, you know.” There was a certain emphasis on that last part that wasn't lost on him. She looked down for a moment, and Chakotay wanted to move to her, to hold her, but of course he couldn’t. Even if she’d allow it, he was rooted to the spot.

Finally, when she looked back into his eyes he saw everything he would ever need in his lifetime reflected in them. “Someday, when the time is right, I’d like to get back to all those things we didn’t say last night, if that’s all right with you,” she said.

He could only nod, and stand there like a fool, holding the most wonderful gift he’d ever received, a gift that was much more than just a flower – just as the one he’d given her once-upon-a-time had been more than a flower. She really had understood that after all, he now knew for certain.

“All right then,” she said lightly, and turned back toward the door with a spring in her step that was too fresh and rested for nearly 04:00, especially just after their near-disastrous experience with the slipstream drive so many hours ago. He knew she had in many ways experienced a worse day than he had, and she couldn't possibly have gotten any rest, either.

“Oh, by the way,” she said, turning back, “How about joining me for breakfast this morning, 06:00 in the mess hall,” she said more than asked. But then, she knew she didn’t really have to ask.

He nodded again, then swallowed hard and managed to say, “See you there.”

She smiled. “We might not have made it home this time, Chakotay, but we will,” she said. "We will," she repeated in that voice that left no room for questions, and he knew she was promising him more than she was saying.

He nodded yet again, and Kathryn Janeway left the way she’d come.

Chakotay sat on the chair nearest him and looked at the peace rose he still held in his hand. If it weren't for this, he would believe the past few minutes had been just a dream, hadn’t really happened at all.

But they had happened. He held the proof in his hand.

Maybe he and Kathryn would have a second chance to be together one day, after all.

When he could gather himself up, Chakotay stood and carried his rose to a small vase with his tribe's sign for hope painted on the side of it. Naomi Wildman had made it for him not long ago. He poured a bit of water in it and set the rose inside, then carried it to his bedside table.

He had just over an hour to grab a few winks before getting a quick shower and meeting Kathryn for breakfast.

It was imperative he rest, too, because the captain would accept no excuse for his being tired during duty shift, even if the excuse was having breakfast with her.

And for the next hour Chakotay slept soundly, with a smile on his face and a peace rose in a vase with a sign of hope on it sitting nearby.
 

PART TWO
 
 

It was nearly 11:00 hours and she had a staff meeting in an hour. Captain Kathryn Janeway put her head back against the arm of the couch in her ready room. Her headaches always came at the worst possible times.

She could ask the Doctor to give her something for it, of course, so she could use the rest of her time to prepare for the meeting properly, but that would mean giving the Doctor ammunition to tell her how she wasn't taking care of herself, how she drank too much coffee, how she didn't eat properly, how she hadn't shown up for her latest medical examination….no, she wouldn't call the Doctor. She'd get through this one alone.

She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. Somehow Chakotay always made it sound so easy, but she was never able to focus well enough to clear everything out of her mind. Instead, every possible thing ran through it, over and over again. She sighed and sat up. It was no good. And she had no more time to waste.

Tapping her combadge, she stood and moved to her desk on the lower level. "Janeway to the Doctor." She was the captain of this vessel, after all. And she certainly should be able to get relief for a headache without feeling guilty about it.

"Doctor here," came the immediate reply.

"When you report to the briefing room for the staff meeting, please bring your medkit with you," she said, a command and not a request.

"Are you hurt, Captain?" he asked, concern apparent in his voice.

"No," she said easily. "Just bring a hypospray that can rid me of this headache," she said.

"Hrumph, another headache…" said the Doctor.

"Yes. Thank you. Janeway out," she said, severing the comlink.  She took a deep breath. Some things never changed, no matter how many years they were in the Delta Quadrant. She walked over to the familiar viewport, and looked at the new set of unfamiliar star systems that whipped by. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the same set for very long. "Seven years…" she said softly. Next week it would be seven years since she'd stranded them all in the Delta Quadrant.

Sighing, she moved away from the viewport and ordered a cup of coffee from the replicator. Some 21st Century study had shown that caffeine helps to get rid of headaches. She shook her head. No, some things never changed. She was unconsciously arming herself with information to hand the Doctor when he reprimanded her later. And he would, as usual, shoot down her theory with his superior knowledge about medicine, and tell her how archaic the medical knowledge of the 21st Century was.

Well, time to buckle down and prepare for the staff meeting, headache or no headache. She sat in her long-familiar chair and gazed at the monitor in front of her.

If that truly was a wormhole they'd detected yesterday….she took a very deep breath and tried not to get her hopes up.

Too many attempts to get home and too many failures over these past seven years made her weary. But of course if there was no hope, there was no reason to get up in th