Hello! Welcome to my latest chaptered Voyager fanfic. This is a bit of my own headcanon surrounding the daughter of J/C, my own original character. She's been around since I was about ten years old, and I'm finally bringing her out into the public eye - with a little help from an omnipotent being. Hopefully you'll enjoy this prologue and stick around to see what's next!
Starfleet Academy. Just two simple words, no big deal. Half the young adult population of the Federation called it home. It was a fixture on Earth, nothing special. And yet with just those two little words, her life as she knew it was officially...over.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"Don't you take that tone with me."
"This has gone on long enough."
"Take a good look, young lady, because come the start of term, this is your new home. Welcome to the Academy, Cadet Janeway."
Savagely, she shook her head to banish the words that echoed in her ears. She was still reeling from the horrific death sentence doled out by Starfleet's finest, and as she stared into the surface of this man-made pond, she glowered at the face staring back at her. Adding insult to injury. Despite her adamant insistence at every turn that she looked nothing like her mother, even she couldn't deny that reflection, and looking at it now, after the lecture she had received and the impending punishment that came with it, made her all the angrier. She was seething. It was probably good she was alone.
Until she wasn't.
"...Maiya."
At the sound of her father's soft voice, Maiya lifted her head, though she didn't turn around to face him. Instead, she let strands of black hair fall over her narrowed blue-grey eyes, and her hands fisted in the grass. Not even the sound of his footsteps or the feeling of him lowering himself a little stiffly to sit beside her could draw her gaze.
"I don't want to talk," she told him curtly. "Not right now."
"Tough, because I do."
Maiya snorted. "Sure. I seem to have no choice a lot these days, so why break from tradition?" Sarcasm rang unchecked through her voice, and despite her typical respect for him, she wasn't sorry.
"You're in this mess because you made a choice – a bad one. From where I stand, your right to decide anything is in serious jeopardy. The way I see it, you're lucky not to be incarcerated right now."
Here, she did turn her head slowly to take in the weathered, tattooed face looking back at her. She found none of the sympathy or camaraderie she expected, and it was a chilling sight. He was the one hope she had had for a stay of execution. Now it looked like he had defected, his gaze sober and unyielding. "...I must be imagining things, because it sounds an awful lot like you agree with her."
Her father shook his head. "I'm not bailing you out of this one," he told her. "And yes, I agree with her. As a matter of fact, I was the one who suggested it in the first place."
Maiya felt the blood drain from her face, and the expression she wore was scandalized as she shifted to face him in disbelief. "You? You? You, who left Starfleet, twice, are the reason I'm about to be walking around in a hideous grey jumpsuit, saying yes ma'am, yes sir to uptight protocol-obsessed bureaucratic automatons?"
"Yes," he stated quite plainly, not rising to the bait. "Maiya, you went too far this time. Stealing a shuttle was bad enough, but you could have killed someone in that crash, including yourself. This isn't a game anymore, and if sending you to the Academy is what it takes for you to learn that lesson, then so be it."
She turned her face away sharply with a harsh laugh. "Now you sound just like her."
Chakotay shook his head. "Maybe so. Look, whatever problems you have with her, she's still your mother and she still wants what's best for you. We both do."
"The admiral," she retorted with a bite, "wants what's best for her precious Starfleet. Don't kid yourself."
"If that were true," he countered dryly, "she wouldn't be sending you." She shot him a look, but he ignored it. Maiya-"
"Thanks for the pep talk, Dad. I feel oh-so-much better." Restlessly, she pushed to her feet. He followed her up, though, and came around to face her again. With one hand, he reached out and took her chin.
"I know this seems unfair, and I know there's a rift between the two of you, but you can't keep going on like this."
"Don't tell me; tell her."
"She's not nineteen years old."
"So that automatically makes her right?" she asked incredulously. Again he shook his head.
"I didn't say that," he assured her, "but she's also not the one who barely escaped a one-way ticket to a penal colony today." Maiya scoffed, but he continued. "She cares about you, and I know you've never been able to see past what happened, but someday you have got to accept that there's more to it than-"
"Enough."
Maiya pulled herself away from his grasp and took a step backward. She brusquely gathered her hair over one shoulder, revealing part of her own tattoo on the back of her neck, before folding her arms over her chest and casting her eyes downward. Her pulse had quickened, and every muscle felt tight. She didn't want to have this conversation. She wasn't willing to have this conversation. Not again; not now. Kathryn Janeway was not her favorite topic of discussion at the best of times, and she certainly wasn't interested in going there today.
"I'd really rather be alone, if it's all the same to you," she stated after a moment without looking up. "I'm about to be inundated with people telling me what to think and how to think it. I don't need to start early."
"Maiya," he tried wearily.
"I'll see you later. Give the admiral my warmest regards, won't you? Be sure to thank her for this wonderful opportunity. Oh, and thank you very much, too."
"Maiya!"
But she had already turned and begun to walk, leaving behind her father and his ill-fated attempts at diplomacy. Sometimes she felt bad that he was in the middle of she and her mother, but after learning of his involvement in the debacle earlier, sympathy was in short supply even for a daddy's girl like her. So she stalked through the perfectly manicured park, not even knowing, or caring, where she was going. A hundred thoughts were running through her mind, most of which surrounded how she might escape her fate.
Her first thought was to find Miral, but she quickly dismissed that. While she was her closest friend and they had grown up together, Cadet Paris was on the cusp of graduating from the Academy herself. There would definitely be no safe haven there. There was her favorite fictive kinsman, Uncle Tom, but she somehow doubted he held enough influence to sway anyone's mind, let alone her own parents'. Under her breath, Maiya uttered a colorful Klingon curse as she paused in the middle of the path to rub at her face. Really, she could have used a punching bag right about then.
"Well well, someone's got a mouth. That's not very ladylike, you know."
Maiya jumped at the voice and whirled with a scathing reply on her lips for this latest intrusion on her much-sought solitude. The words died, though, and irritation turned to puzzlement as she blinked around. No one was there, and tension settled across her shoulders. Surely she wasn't hearing things now. That would be just her luck. Though it might get her a medical reprieve from the twenty-fourth century equivalent to military school.
"Up here, cuz'."
This time the voice came from beside her, and she turned to find a gnarled, old tree – and a young man sitting up in it, peering down at her in amusement. He looked just a little older than her, with a mop of curly brown hair on his head. Most importantly, she was fairly certain she'd never seen him before.
"Can I help you?" she asked impatiently.
"Nope." Nimbly, the man dropped from his perch into a crouch. He smirked up at her and rose to his full lanky height. "But I'll bet I can help you."
"I beg your pardon?" Ugh. A wannabe playboy, she thought, her expression clearly displaying the sentiment regardless.
"No need to beg, cousin. I don't mind a bit."
Cousin? That was a novel approach. And frankly, a little creepy. "Who are you, and why are you calling me 'cousin'?"
"Well, we might not be related by blood, but any kid of Aunt Kathy's is family of mine." Folding his arms, he leaned back against the trunk of the tree and crossed one ankle over the other.
"'Aunt Kathy'?" Wishing more than ever for a phaser (or a sturdy bat'leth), Maiya shifted a little and regarded the stranger through narrowed eyes. She knew her real cousins, Aunt Phoebe's kids, called her mother "Aunt Kathryn." In fact, nobody she knew ever called the woman "Kathy," not even as a pet name or a joke. But still, there was an oddly familiar note in it, like it came from a...story.
A story from when she was younger and the name, Voyager, didn't make her want to punch someone in the face. A story about a troublesome teenager with unlimited power over space, matter, and time.
A story about...
"Q," she concluded after a long stretch of silence. Standing in front of her, that stupid grin on his face, was the next generation of chronic thorns in the side of humanity. Q.