That was it, then. It was over; they were home, at last. She'd expected them to be happy, and they were. They'd soon see their families, friends, loved ones, perhaps. But after seven years of hell, they weren't quite ready to leave… and for some strange reason, neither was she.
Before they were cleared to descend from orbit, Harry had asked if she had anyone she was looking forward to seeing—anyone special. She'd gazed at him for a long moment, wondering if the painful thrum in her heart was visible on her face, and said no, she didn't.
Voyager was her 'special someone', and as much as she had wanted to be home, had been obsessed with getting home for so many years, she wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to that relationship.
She'd spoken briefly to Captain Picard aboard the Enterprise, and she knew the admiralty had a promotion in store for her. That would be the final step: not only goodbye to Voyager, but goodbye to command, goodbye to adventure, and goodbye to all starships, forever. She wasn't sure she knew how to sit behind a desk and fill out papers all day, at least not without going crazy.
And then, of course, there was the embittered Admiral Janeway who'd brought them all home. She brought a whole new world of dread to the idea of gaining a rank bar, but the Janeway of the present wasn't letting her mind go there—not yet.
Per Starfleet Command's instructions, they were flying low along the river, approaching the forever-famous bridge. The helm could have been empty, really. Those 'instructions' had come in the form of an autopiloting program designed to take them on an exact course at a precise time. She watched, enchanted but terrified, perhaps more terrified than she'd ever been, as they soared through the dark sky.
The Golden Gate Bridge passed just beneath the ship, and coloured light exploded on the viewscreen. She had to forcefully stop herself from leaping to her feet and barking out the order to return fire, but as the adrenaline fog thinned, she managed to remember that they were only fireworks.
And they were beautiful. Reds and golds and blues and greens and white… so much white… They disappeared for a moment, and then the ground somersaulted disturbingly as Voyager flipped over backwards, returning for another pass. The bangs of the gunpowder were clearly audible even through the super-reinforced hull. As Voyager rolled, the lights changed their tempo, going off in huge clouds of sparks and the bangs pattered the ship like raindrops.
There—there were two of her favourite kind: the long waterfalls of copper ribbon, exploding out before streaming toward the ground. Long ago, Mark had picked up on her preference for the copper ribbons, and had pulled a few strings with a friend of his to get some extras added to that New Year's celebration.
Now, it seemed, he'd done it again.
They flew past the bridge again, and as the unmanned computer brought them about for another pass, Kathryn Janeway, captain of the Federation starship Voyager for one last hour was glad she'd forgotten how to cry.