Disclaimer: Characters obviously not mine. Copyright: Paramount/Christie Goldberg 'Homecoming'.

AN: Post-Endgame, several weeks, en route back to Earth in Chakotay's shuttle, The Alpha Flyer, Janeway and Chakotay talk.

It is the evening of the day they visited the monument on Tevlik's moon, commemorating the 4256 men, women and children wiped out by the Cardassian orchestrated attack on this Maquis safe-haven. My scene takes place where Goldberg leaves off in chapter 7 of her novel 'Homecoming' after they've visited the monument. The second part of my Chapter 2 follows the events she describes for Voyager's homecoming banquet, as I've continued her account of the banquet. Having said that, it's certainly not necessary to have read her novel to follow this.

The events in this story clear the way for my story 'A Whole lot of Nothing'. I started this one ages ago, but the other one kind of finished itself first. This story is the main course, that one is a fluffy dessert.

Thanks to Photogirl1890 for answering my plea on VAMB for help with spotting typos. Much appreciated. 10/2/14

Acceptance

Day 3 of Trip to Tevlik's Moon

Their empty plates had been pushed to one side, and they sat facing each other across the small table in the living area of the shuttle, each cradling a drink.

They had shared their thoughts about the day and about the monument itself and all it represented, and the conversation had taken them to places they'd never been before in all their seven years of quiet dinners.

Kathryn was staggered by how much he'd held back from her before, and by just how woefully incomplete to say the very least, the received Starfleet analysis of the Maquis and their strategies had been. Even taking into account some of the revisions and concessions that Starfleet Command had made in recent years, when relations with the Cardassians deteriorated and the Maquis had been exonerated, it was amazing how the reality of Chakotay's experience differed from, and at times directly contradicted, the version of events she had been fed at the time.

Furious with herself for having accepted Starfleet's version of events too willingly, she found now that she was also furious with herself for having been content to allow Chakotay to be so evasive on the few occasions that she had actually tried to ask him about that part of his life. Only now was it clear just how many partial answers he had supplied and how much he had simply left out.

She had respected his right to privacy and had presumed that he had wished to avoid reliving in the telling of them, events that were undoubtedly painful. Once he agreed to join her crew and embrace Starfleet values again, it'd been reasonable to assume that he would be keen to leave his earlier life behind and move on. He'd always seemed most comfortable in the present; he didn't seem like someone who spent much time looking back.

Now, suddenly, his attitude couldn't have been more different. The hours they'd spent down on the moon seemed to have completely dismantled the floodgates that must have been holding back his memories. As she listened, she discovered that during the short time he had been a Maquis captain, he'd had several lifetimes' worth of experiences; experiences she knew absolutely nothing about.

She was fast losing the sense of complacency she'd had about how well she knew the man sitting opposite her across the little table. All of a sudden the first three days travelling to Tevlik seemed like a different trip completely, severed from this new present by the time spent down on the desolate moon's surface. The more he recounted, the more she found herself thinking back, again and again, to the man who had materialised on her bridge seven years earlier.

Particularly shocking was the revelation of the sheer number of members of his cell who had been killed in the months prior to her following his ship into the Badlands. When he'd begun to describe these events, she'd sat in stunned silence for several minutes, unable to formulate any sort of sensible response. It was a wonder he could still remember their names; some of them had been with him for mere days.

Until that moment, he had only ever talked of it in general terms. The three-day trip from Earth to Tevlik had followed that similar pattern. Since leaving the surface of the moon in the late afternoon, however, things seemed to have undergone some sort of fundamental shift and he seemed willing to talk in terms of individuals and specifics. His habitual reticence evaporated completely, as he directed and dominated the flow of their conversation, turning their routine manner of interaction on its head. His mind seemed to be taking an inventory of his life in the Maquis and its significance and he seemed intent on sharing it with her.

The conditions he described in some of the outlying colonies – communities that had found themselves suddenly isolated and vulnerable when the demarcation of the demilitarised zone had been announced – were truly shocking. As were the conditions he had witnessed when his cell had liberated people from the 'displacement' camps the Cardassians had been responsible for. Hearing this from another source, perhaps it'd be possible to be sceptical - to dismiss it as exaggeration. But not coming from Chakotay. He was more prone to omission or understatement than to exaggeration.

"If Starfleet Command had known about the conditions in those camps the Cardassians were responsible for, about the brutality you describe, then…" she trailed off, feeling uneasy even as she spoke these words. "They didn't know, did they?"

He didn't reply. As she studied his face, everything she needed to know was there in his eyes already. Of course they'd known. He'd told them. Others like him had told them too, but such knowledge had been inconvenient.

The ground shifted a little beneath her again as the unpalatable taste of her own naivety made her slightly nauseous for a moment. Was it naivety? Or was it sub-conscious collusion?

He didn't seem to be surprised by her reaction. Did he think of her as someone who was particularly naive – too accepting of received opinions, not enough of a free thinker? Surely not. Surely she'd always maintained a healthy scepticism when it came to dealing with any large institution, Starfleet included.

She stood, her mind still off balance, to get them both another drink. She had found out more about his life in the last few hours than she had in the previous three days, perhaps even in the last seven years.

His seemingly painless transformation from Maquis captain back to Starfleet officer was all the more surprising now. He had agreed without hesitation to her suggestion that they combine the crews, and that had been more than enough at the time, given how traumatic that whole period had been for her. Once he'd accepted, she hadn't spent time reflecting on what his particular anxieties about the situation might have been.

Now, it was truly puzzling. How had he squared it with his conscience?

She passed him his tea and sat back down opposite him. "How did you feel when you became part of a Starfleet crew again? When you agreed to lead a Starfleet crew again?"

"There was no choice there for us, for me, you knew that. So I did what I had to."

"But it was difficult?"

"In some ways, yes. But I was lucky in other ways, wasn't I?"

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't have to report to Starfleet Command again."

"You mean because of our isolation?"

"Yes, that was part of it, but it was mainly because there was only you. And that wasn't hard. You've always had my respect."

"Almost always."

"No. Always."

"Do you mean to say you didn't actually embrace Starfleet's principles again at that time? You just did what was expedient?"

He sighed. He looked so tired, so utterly weary.

"It was never a question of embracing anything again. I'd never rejected Starfleet's principles; I rejected Command's failure to honour them, to apply them in practice. Your destruction of the array demonstrated to me that you weren't afraid to make the sorts of decisions that Command had balked at. I followed you out there, Kathryn, not them. Surely you realised that?"

Something in his dark eyes drew her in and she understood. Finally.

Surprising as it might seem to him, she hadn't actually realised before that it had been her decision to destroy the array that had secured his cooperation and his respect. Had she done so, it might have helped her chip away more effectively at the weighty burden of guilt she'd carried for seven years as a result of that decision.

Her ego was not sufficiently large for her to have attributed his cooperation to his respect for her, and her alone. Federation Diplomats' and Starfleet Command's under-reporting of the truly complex dynamics of the conflict he had just left behind in the Alpha Quadrant had meant that she had underestimated the depth of his disillusionment with the organisation. As a consequence, she had presumed that he had been willing to pledge his allegiance once again, without significant hesitation. It simply hadn't occurred to her that his assessment of her as an individual had been a deciding factor.

Also, when it came to the specifics of the events on Tevlik's moon and of the erecting of the monument itself, all had not been as she'd imagined. The monument had been erected by Sveta and surviving members of the Maquis; Kathryn had presumed it had been Starfleet's doing.

Apparently not.

He told her flatly that Starfleet had yet to get around to commemorating these dead. Surely they would do soon? He seemed unconvinced. Starfleet's neglect in this was shocking.

It was also shocking to be told that the number of dead included a large number of families; women and children who had made the supposed safe-haven their home. Apparently it hadn't been an exclusively military installation.

In the fourth year of their journey in the Delta Quadrant, when they had first re-established contact with the Alpha Quadrant, Chakotay's first letter had been from Sveta. When many other crewmembers had received letters of relief and delight from loved ones who'd presumed the worst, he had received news from Sveta of the massacre, which represented the near annihilation of the remaining Maquis, and he had had to tell his crew. He had told Kathryn about it in very general terms at the time. He had seemed more comfortable talking to her about her own letter. She knew that he and B'Elanna had lost close friends, but she had never realised quite how many until now.

Neither had she realised how close Chakotay had come to being among them. He explained that if he hadn't been hiding in the Badlands that day, he would have been operating out of this base and his name would undoubtedly have been among those inscribed on the solitary standing stone of this monument. The same could be said for the other Maquis members of Voyager's crew.

A memory of something he'd once said to her on Voyager, after she'd played him a communiqué from Admiral Hayes, came to the forefront of her mind. Hayes had enquired after 'the status' of the Maquis.

"I don't think of you, or B'Elanna or the others as Maquis. I think of you as part of my crew."

"You may have forgotten, but we haven't," he had replied.

At the time, it had jarred slightly with her. She'd felt foolish for a moment, uncomfortable, but had fast dismissed it as insignificant. Now, it seemed like it had been a rare, candid moment she should have taken more notice of.

Visiting the site of the monument had proved emotionally draining, as revelation after revelation eroded her sense of wellbeing. What on earth must it have been like for him?

He expressed surprise at just how completely isolated the monument was – no sign whatsoever that there had ever been a base, a settlement of any kind at all. It seemed the Cardassians had held fast to their scorched-earth policy; they'd been as efficient in their destruction here as they had been on his homeworld. He said he hadn't expected to recognise nothing, not even the shape of the landscape.

They waited for their drinks to cool, and she was just about to ask him about how he was finding life back in the Alpha Quadrant, when he began to volunteer information. He said he was finding it hard. He told her of his uncertainties about accepting Starfleet's offer to reinstate him.

This was a disappointing blow. She realised she'd been presuming he would accept. After everything he'd shared with her that evening, his hesitation made so much sense now, and hearing him explain his reservations filled her anew with admiration for how he was handling all this uncertainty in his life; handling it like he did pretty much everything, on his own. That was something to address with him soon. Soon, but not now. This really wasn't the right time.

He'd invited her here though, and he was talking to her. A lot. That was surely evidence of something.