Four months after Janeway comes home from her seven year adventure in the Delta Quadrant, she tells her sister the real story of her and her First Officer. J/C and a little C/7.

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager and the characters are the property of Paramount/CBS and I am only borrowing them for fun. I make no profit from this.

"Hey, Kath, are you all right?" said the familiar voice of the only person who still called her "Kath". It was a nickname given to her by her former fiancé Mark, and her sister had liked it. Everyone else called her either "Kathryn" or "Admiral".

"I'm fine," came the automated response. She was busy and really had no time to talk to her sister at the moment. Being an Admiral was quite stressful.

"Liar," her sister said as she sat down. "There's no way you're fine."

Kathryn reluctantly looked from the computer screen and at her sister. She drew a deep breath and said, "What makes you say that?"

"Because," her sister said, not noticing Kathryn's reluctance to talk, "you had lunch with a Captain today."

"And?" Kathryn replied. "I have lunch with my friends all the time."

"Aha," her sister said. "So you're nothing more than friends?"

Kathryn looked back to the computer screen. This was not a topic she was willing to discuss.

"Phoebe," she said, without looking from the screen, "were you following me?"

"No, no, I..." Phoebe started, trying to defend herself. She recovered gracefully by saying, "I was going to surprise you and join you for lunch but I saw that you had other engagements."

Kathryn just mumbled something that vaguely sounded like "All right" and turned her attention back to the computer screen. But her sister was quite persistent.

"And it looked like it ended badly," she said. "Want to tell me what happened?"

"Not really," Kathryn replied. She needed to finish reading these reports for tomorrow and she was in no mood to discuss her lunch with a particular Captain who had happened to be on Earth that day.

"Come on, Kath," her sister pleaded. "He's quite buff."

Kathryn resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead she said, "Buff?"

"Yes, hot, you know, lights your fire," Phoebe explained. "Makes you want to..."

"That's enough, thank you," Kathryn cut her sister off. "Why are you so interested in this?"

"Because you haven't told me anything about him," Phoebe said immediately, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"There's nothing to tell," Kathryn said. "We're friends, that's all."

"How did you meet? What's his name? What ship is he the Captain of? Are you seeing each other?" Phoebe just didn't stop.

Kathryn drew another deep breath to keep from losing her patience with the little sister. Their entire life, Kathryn had had to put up with her sister's endless questions, about everything.

"Where's dad? What's that? Can I stay in you room? When is dad coming home? Do you have a boyfriend?" Those were common questions when they were young. Kathryn had always tried to be patient with her sister, but sometimes Phoebe could be outright annoying. Like right now.

"Like I said, Phoebe," Kathryn said sternly, "there's nothing to tell. Captain Chakotay and I are friends, that's all."

"That was Chakotay?" Phoebe asked, with a little too much enthusiasm. "You never told me he was so buff."

This time, Kathryn did roll her eyes at her sister. She had talked about Chakotay before, a little bit. It was really impossible to leave him out of the Voyager story because he had been such a big part of it and such a big part of her life. But she had said as little as possible, only that they had become friends and had worked well together. Nothing more.

"I don't have time to talk about this now, Phoebe, I'm busy," Kathryn said, turning once more to the computer screen.

"I knew there was something more going on with him than you let on," Phoebe said triumphantly. "You talked too little about him when you were telling us the whole story."

"There wasn't anything going on then and there certainly isn't anything going on now," Kathryn said, sounding bored.

"I don't believe you," Phoebe insisted. "There's something you're not telling me!"

Kathryn sighed once more and leaned back on the couch. Of course there was something she wasn't telling her sister and she wasn't sure if she should or not. But she knew Phoebe wasn't going to give up, and maybe she would feel better if she talked about it.

"All right," Kathryn said after a while of silence. "I'll tell you everything, but be warned, it's quite a long story."

"That's all right," Phoebe said immediately. Kathryn wondered if she was really so interested in the story or if she believed her sister would feel better if she talked about this.

"It was all my fault, really," Kathryn began her story.

She told her sister about how she had taken Chakotay with her to investigate the plant life of a planet to see if they could stock up on fruits and vegetables. They were both bitten by insects and infected with a disease.

"We spent three weeks..." Kathryn started but her sister cut her off.

"You stayed there for three weeks and nothing happened?" Phoebe said, sounding quite outraged.

"I didn't say that," Kathryn replied calmly.

"But you just said that you're just friends," Phoebe said. "How is that possible? Are you blind? Crazy? Gay?"

"No," Kathryn said, "just listen to the story, Phoebe. We spent three weeks in stasis while the Doctor tried to find a cure for our disease. He was unsuccessful. He did however find out that there was something in the planet's atmosphere that kept the disease from progressing."

"Did you find out what is was?" Phoebe asked enthusiastically but suddenly her expression changed and an odd look crept over her face. "Kathryn, don't tell me you..."

"I did what any good Starfleet Captain would have done," Kathryn replied gravely. "And I don't regret it," she added in response to the serious look on Phoebe's face.

"So, what happened?" Phoebe asked. "You must have gotten off that planet somehow."

"Yes, we did," Kathryn answered. "My crew did exactly what any good Starfleet crew would have done, violated my orders and came back to get us, with a cure."

"How long did you stay there?"

"Six weeks."

"Kathryn!" Phoebe exclaimed.

"Wait for it, the story's not over," Kathryn said. "I spent my time trying to find a cure and Chakotay spent his time hitting on me."

It had been really sweet. He was constantly making something for her, a bathtub, a better headboard for her bed, a small necklace. And she loved it but she didn't get why he was doing it. The truth was that Kathryn had actually been too busy worrying about this disease to notice how interested in her he was.

"Then one night," Kathryn said, "there was a terrible storm. We couldn't do anything but hide under the table in the house. The next morning all my insect traps were gone, destroyed."

"Oh, that must have been terrible," Phoebe said sadly. "So you didn't find a cure?"

Kathryn shook her head. She and Chakotay had spent the day clearing away broken tree branches and picking plastic shards out of the grass. Kathryn wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to tell her sister what had happened that night. She had never talked about it, not even to Chakotay. But it was such an important part of the story that she couldn't really leave it out.

"That night my shoulders hurt more than they had for years," Kathryn said. By the time she had finished telling her how Chakotay had stood up, moved her hair out of the way and rubbed her shoulders, Phoebe was "ooing" and "awwing" and smiling in a dreamy sort of way.

"But that was too much," Kathryn said. "Because that's when I got it. He was serious about his flirting. So I stood up and went to bed."

"Kath," Phoebe said. "Are you crazy?"

"Sometimes I think so, yes," Kathryn replied. "Because I was only in bed for a few minutes."