Reward

A/N: I really don't intend to re-post all of my fic, not least because I think people will probably get very tired of me cluttering up the feeds with old stories. But xphile715 asked for this one, so here it is! It was originally posted in April 2014.

Original summary: "Post Endgame, Janeway prepares to become Admiral. It's her reward, and she should be happy. So why isn't she?"

The room was cold. Not just cold, it was sterile. Grey utilitarian carpeting, white walls. No decoration apart from the requisite insignia. It was something Janeway had forgotten. Voyager must have started out this way, too, she mused, but along the way, the ship had become home – not only that, homey. Not so here at Starfleet headquarters. Seven years ago this thought would never have even crossed her mind. But then, so much had changed, hadn't it?

Janeway was in a crisp new dress uniform, because during the years of Voyager's unplanned exile, Starfleet had had them redesigned. She looked down at herself. It was an improvement on the last one, though not by much. She'd always thought the outfit looked a little ungainly. It was the long tunic that did it, and unfortunately they'd seen fit to keep the cut.

An echo of noise swelled through the door behind her, the hubbub of many assembled voices in a large auditorium. Janeway squared her shoulders, but the sound hollowed her out. They were all there for her, and yet she felt more alone now than she had even in the Delta Quadrant.

Another door opened, this one on the other side of the small anteroom in which she so dutifully waited. Owen Paris appeared through it. He had greyed during the years of their journey – physically, yes - she'd been aware of that thanks to his efforts with Pathfinder. But he'd aged emotionally, too. It was regret for time lost, she surmised. She wondered whether the elder Paris saw the same in her. Today, though, he was buoyant. Janeway tried to match his mood. She should be happy. This was her reward. Why wasn't she happy?

"Kathryn," Owen said, holding out his hand to shake hers as he got closer. "How are you?"

"I'm well, Admiral, thank you," she smiled. "Slowly getting used to being permanently planetside again."

Paris senior nodded. "Always takes a while. For you, it must be even worse." He nodded towards the sound in the auditorium. "Five minutes. All right? Is there anything you need?"

"No, I don't think so."

He smiled and clasped her shoulder briefly. "Then I'll see you on the stage. They'll come get you when it's time. This is going to be a great honour for me, Kathryn. You, possibly more than any other, have earned this rank." He squeezed her hand again and then let her go. "Oh – and there's someone outside to see you."

Admiral Paris left by the same door he'd arrived through, holding it open so the person waiting outside could enter. Janeway had assumed it would be some official with last minute paperwork, or someone to tell her a piece of new protocol she'd have to observe. It wasn't.

It was Chakotay.

Her former first officer stepped into the room and let the door swing shut behind him. He was also in dress uniform – although she noted, without surprise, that it seemed to suit him better. Something hard settled in her throat as they regarded each other. They'd not been close for at least a year, and she thought their friendship had probably started dying even before that. And yet it was impossible to describe just how unexpectedly huge the wrench had been to go from seeing him every day to not seeing him at all. She doubted he'd had the same experience. He had other preoccupations, after all.

Chakotay offered a small, tight smile and crossed the distance between them. "Captain."

"Commander."

She had known he'd be in the audience – they all were, the entire crew, even those who had taken Voyager's return as an opportunity to resign their commissions. This touched her more deeply than she could express – that they, whom she had dragged through seven years of hell – mitigated, it was true, but hell nonetheless - would forgive her enough to see her honoured for that choice. But although she'd known Chakotay would be there, she had not expected him to make an effort to see her at any closer quarters than that. Since their return and since the events that had precipitated it – so closely linked to him, though to this day he did not know it and she was not sure she would ever tell him – they had made no attempt to stay in contact. Voyager had been put in for a re-fit almost immediately and so the crew had been moved planetside. There was no longer any chance of them bumping into each other, and neither had made an effort to communicate with the other. Why would they? They were no longer tied together by the vagaries of command. They were no longer needed by their crew and obligated by duty to cooperate. They were no longer required to mean anything to each other. And so, it seemed, they did not.

Now, as they stood in silence, contemplating each other with distinct unease, Janeway felt a new bereavement. His last word to her was the last time he would call her Captain. It was a ridiculous, inconsequential realisation, and yet it cut her to the bone, further delineating a creeping distance. Soon he – and all he represented – would be so far behind her as to be almost out of sight. She was being propelled forwards on a trajectory that was inevitable, but as clear as it was, she was no longer sure of her path. A few years ago, she would have told him these things openly and listened to him soothe her fears. But that was a long time past.

Chakotay's gaze flicked to the door behind her. "I just wanted to see how you are."

"Thank you, Commander – I'm fine."

He nodded, no smile softening the hard line of his jaw. For a second she saw that he regretted being there at all, and knew that was her fault. But she didn't know how to cross the chasm that had sunk itself between them.

"I'm sorry, Chakotay," she said, with uncharacteristic awkwardness. It had been some time since she had spoken his name. "I'm a little… It's just the waiting."

He did smile at that, the ghost of a gesture that made her think of other, less lonely times. "You'll be fine."

"Will I?"

"Yes," he said, the grace of his simple confidence a measure of strength in itself. "You've earned this, Kathryn. Enjoy it."

She clasped her hands together. "That's what everyone keeps saying - that I've earned this. How did I do that, Chakotay? By dragging the crew – our crew – across a distant galaxy? By losing them seven years of their lives? By letting some of them die?" She shook her head. "I'm not as sure of this promotion as everyone else seems to be."

"You earned it by being a steadfast officer. By doing your best under the most extreme of circumstances. By getting us home."

She made a sound in her throat. "You know, lately I've been wondering if that's my epitaph. Already written and just waiting to be chiselled into the headstone - 'She was a steadfast officer'."

He frowned. "Would that be such a bad thing to be remembered for?"

Kathryn looked down at her hands and felt the well of emptiness sink a little deeper. "If that's all I have become… then yes, I think that would be a very bad thing." She reached up and pinched her shoulder in a gesture he must have seen a thousand times over the years. "I guess I'm just not sure that an Admiralty is the reward I really want. Years ago, yes. Now…"

"It's not all you are, Kathryn. It never could be. Climbing the Starfleet ranks doesn't preclude you achieving everything else you want."

She tightened her jaw in the vague motion of a smile. "No," she agreed. "But I think that's another ship that's sailed, isn't it?"

A guarded look entered his eyes. "What do you mean?"

She sighed and dropped her hand with a shake of her head. "Ignore me. I'm just wound up and fractious. It was good of you to check on me, Chakotay. You didn't have to, and I doubt anyone else would have realised I needed checking up on in the first place."

"I'm always here for you, Kathryn," he said, softly. "I told you that once before, and I meant it. I always will be, no matter where I am."

She took a breath, words on the tip of her tongue that she only just managed to hold back. A burst of applause sounded from the auditorium behind them, a wave of anticipatory sound that washed over them both and made her feel suddenly desperate.

"Did I-" she stopped, shaking her head at her train of thought.

"Did you what?" he asked.

Kathryn looked up at him. The guarded look was still there, but beyond it was something else. Her friend. The one who had given up his ship to stand beside her for seven years, through thick and thin, through good and bad. The constant that was so ubiquitous she had ceased to properly value it until it was no longer there. The man she missed, deeply. So deeply that the shock of their separation was still making itself felt: would continue to make itself felt, she suspected, for the rest of her life.

"Did I… misunderstand everything between us?"

He stared at her for a moment, as if mentally altering direction. "No," he said, after a pause. "We were just - victims of circumstance."

She nodded. "And," she went on, unable to stop herself, "if the circumstances were different?"

Chakotay frowned. "What circumstances do you mean?" he asked, carefully. "We're no longer in command together."

She shifted, uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Chakotay. Forget it. I think I'm just…"

"Are you – are you talking about Seven?" he asked a second later, realisation dawning on his face.

The door behind them opened. A straight-backed cadet stepped through it. "Captain Janeway? The ceremony is about to start, if you could follow me, please?"

"Of course," she said, incredibly relieved at the interruption. "Commander – please excuse me." She nodded at Chakotay and walked towards the cadet.

"It's over, Kathryn."

His words stopped her feet.

"Getting home changed everything. Don't you think I would have told you, otherwise?"

"Ma'am," the cadet prompted, a little anxious. "They're waiting. If you can please…"

She turned.

"Go be an Admiral," said Chakotay, with the faint trace of a smile. He walked away, disappearing through the other door.

"Ma'am," the cadet said again, a little desperately.

"Yes," she said. "I'm sorry, cadet. I'm ready."

Janeway walked out to a standing ovation, led by her own crew. They lined the front four rows, and as she looked down at them, she saw Chakotay walking swiftly to take the space left for him. He was already clapping as he moved, the gesture adding to the cacophony of sound that swept the auditorium. She saw Tom Paris and B'Elanna; she saw Harry and Ayala; Samantha and Naomi; Vorik, Tuvok, Seven of Nine and even the EMH, his mobile emitter working to keep him a part of this crew. She saw all the faces that had been her only family for so long. The sound of their appreciation filled her empty places, buoying her up the way they had for seven years.

And at their centre was Chakotay, looking up at her with a smile that spoke a thousand words.

You are not alone, it said. You never have been.

[END]