I needed to give Chakotay a voice too, to fit with my endgame fix main story 'coming home with you' s/12310181/3/Coming-Home-with-You . However, I needed to see where the story was going to be able to voice his dilemma and difficulty. I have found this harder to do, partly as his characterisation is not so fleshed out in the Voyager series, so reviews would be helpful.

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Today is proving to be … unsettling. Least of all has been the physical entrance into the alpha quadrant, it is more the emotional turmoil of being at the end of a journey that I had gradually given up seeing the finish, the goal I finally lost sight of. I believe that I truly wanted us to fail, so that I didn't have to face this moment of ashes, made worse by my piecemeal knowledge of the alternate timeline, where I ruin at least three lives. Where Kathryn sacrifices her happiness for mine, and I wanted her to and accepted it. I pace around in my mind, a predator caged, waiting. Everything has changed. Since the admiral came I have known no peace. It is as my inner world has metamorphosed into a volcanic land, full of contrasts of ice and fire, with the ground uncertain below my feet. In my head, I am pacing, and the pads of my four feet are no longer sure of where they walk. I am no longer tethered to security of my dreamspace. If I am truthful, and I am trying not to be and realise I have tried not to be for some time now, my uncertainty has been nagging for longer. I have mis-stepped, I have purposely ignored my way and let a selfish desire for satisfaction in the present take me from my true path. Once the admiral came, I could no longer carry on blindly deluding myself, whichever outcome came. So I pace, hoping that I can tether my options together, bind them in a future where I am true to myself. I am unused to such uncertainty. Internally, I laugh wryly at myself, for the last seven years have always been uncertain in life or death, but not for the essential me. I have had peace subjugating my prideful nature to another's call, loping down Voyagers corridors, a cross the delta quadrant stars, following a spirt formed out of fire. Now I wonder if I have lost myself in that subjugation, and whether I can return to claim my individuality, or whether I lost myself when I strayed from that predestined path. Whilst my surface appears calm, inside my mind all is torment and tangle. I have a path to re-find.

I am trapped between two different gravitational pulls: one farther away and like a black hole, where I cannot see beyond the event horizon, one that I have felt for seven long years without knowing whether I will ever get to see beyond; the other very recent, closer, less powerful, but present and a safe landing – a small satellite or station, where I can see stability. I have wanted this safety and consistency, I had become adjusted to the safety, knowing the singularity was always there to admire and love at a distance, untouchable and unknowable, at enough distance to ignore the siren call. Oh, but how desirable. We both knew that to act on our feelings could well have unbalanced everything, risked the safety of those we vowed to serve, distracted us when all our concentration was required. I may have weakened, but she has been adamant, obdurate and constant. She had made a promise as penance for her decision, and nothing could take priority over its delivery. It was enough for years to know the potential was there, ready to be unleased when we were finally free, until my need for a safe haven and family tugged me away from that vista, until I thought I had seen her love elsewhere and suddenly fate presented an alternative. I let my mind and heart be seduced by this and freely and willingly followed the call, distancing myself from grand passion, turning my face from it, refusing to see, feel or hear. In doing so, I broke a promise that was central to who I am. Yet, I am still seduced by that need. Now, now I have also lost the balance between the two, and as if in a gravitational eddy, I oscillate wildly between. I know that I am going to have to make a choice and lose one. I am padding, trapped in the cage in my mind, a cage of my own creation. I know how to break free, but do I still have that bravery.

Seeing and hearing again, silent witness in her ready room to her discussion with Admiral Paris, she delivers us home, and yet goes on to barter everything she has wanted against our individual freedoms, she is as magnificent and irresistible as any force of nature, and I am humbled. For the last seven years she has put all the crew in front of everything else, and even now she risks her own future to guarantee ours by a show of power, holding voyager itself to ransom. If I am surprised, who has watched her turn into this captain of power over seven years, I can't imagine what Admiral Paris is thinking. I grin with both pride, and also the pleasure of the thorn she will be to the admiralty. If I am surprised by her planning to adopt Icheb, I quickly realise that the rainchecks I gave her, she was bound to fill elsewhere, and I am suddenly relieved that it was with Icheb rather than a new best friend, or alone.

At her request, I craft a gift for voyager and crew, a celebration, but truly it is for her and made with love. It is a voyager shaped pin, with the motto "For I dipt in to the future, far as human eye could see; Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be." very finely written in a spiral on the front, and on the reverse, it will have the name and rank and position of each crew member. It may well be my last gift ever that Kathryn will accept from me and I have poured my heart into it. I pin it to her with pride for her achievement, her accomplishments and for being part of this. And when she is in my arms, thankful, and the scent of her fills my nostrils, when I feel the true softness of her within her hard carapace camouflage of captain, then I know all hopes of safety elsewhere is a delusion and I am bonded unbreakably to this woman. I wipe tears from her face and she clings to me, and I know that we could throw all caution to the winds and finally leap from this barren precipice into the maelstrom together. I cannot tell if she whispers she loves me, or whether that is the seductive delusion of my own minds devising. I brush my lips across her hair feeling worlds stilling and time pausing before with a rush all of space and time returns, and she steps back into reality. She sucks with her a piece more of me than she had before. More and more of me has been sucked in bringing me inexorably to the event horizon. if I let this happen, who will I be?

Spirits, she has been successful, and the admiralty have freed and retained all the maquis and equinox crew. She has ensured safety for Seven, Icheb and the doctor, all through her nerves of steel and ability to take negotiation to the very wire. She is a captain to make us all proud. My PADD is going crazy with reuqests for information, and I reassure privately and generally, suggesting everyone waits for an announcement, when has the captain ever let us down. She is our leader, our strength, our trust is implicit. Together we are the glue that binds this voyager family together.

She finishes talking to the admiral and I am amazed by my audacity, as I have captured her in my arms, swung her as I wanted to for many years when I imagined us reaching earth. It is an expression of unadulterated joy. Swung her as I failed to do, when instead I was at Seven's side. Swung her as I wished it was me as I had watched jealously as Harry – Harry! – did just that as she thanked us all on the bridge. I think that moment was my true wake up call. I am not sure quite how my daydreaming and sleepwalking has got me into this precarious position, or how I am going to safely extricate myself. But for now, I am swinging Kathryn in my arms laughing with her that she has cowed the admiralty, through Owen Paris, into confirming the maquis are free. I think that when I place her down, I might try for a kiss, on the cheek? On the lips? My senses are overwhelmed with Kathryn. Spirits, I have been such a fool to think that I could ever live fully without this woman by my side, the padded animal in my mindscape growls, and eyes the cage menacingly. I start to bend down towards her, pulled towards the singularity.

And at that moment of revelation, I look up and see Seven. It all comes crashing down again. I am caught between past and present, and unable to look at the future. Kathryn twirls out of my arms, and it feel as if it is out of my life, my orbit, my possibilities. Her vibrancy fires me, and I look at Seven, icily collected and wonder what fire my lie at her core for me to explore. Her words, though, act more like cold water after a prize fight, did she really consider me a criminal? Is motherhood so far from her desires? Have I misread my hopes in this relationship for stability, family, pride? Without voyager, what do we share?

I fail to talk to Kathryn, meeting only the Captain. After a pause, I return to the bridge and distract myself with last running orders, reassuring all the more easily worried members of our crew. I programme in all the pins for the places we will stop and present them to the crew. I Ok the holoimagers and recorders along the planned route with Tuvok, trying not to read too much in the elevation of his eyebrow and questing gaze. He has always seen too much.

Seven does not communicate and I reflect on the simple nature of our dating so far, our interactions limited still to either crew based level, or the four dates we shared, but nothing inbetween. I compare this with the near flirtatious, nature of our near permanent encrypted messages between the command team that has persisted through the seven years. I should not compare, it is not fair. I know that there is only one of them that … I let the thought trail off and busy myself with the organisation of the crew, preparing to leave, packing, writing the final reports. I have also learnt how to sublimate emotional excess into duty. In my head, though, there is still the relentless padding of my caged soul, I feel each footfall with the beat of my heart.

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We begin the tour of the ship with a visit to sickbay to see B'Elanna and her baby, then we will progress round to give thanks to all in Voyager and deliver our own voyager medals. Whilst Kathryn has rubbed off on me, I see the reverse has happened too. She has the spirit of us all and Voyager in mind whilst we do this. She is still weaving our threads together, a close family that the newly changed future will not dismay. When I watch her, I am at peace.

However, when we speak, then all that has been and not been between us rises up and chokes my words. So, when in the turbolift she tells me she wants to talk and make sense of our seven year relationship, neatly package it up no doubt, and stuff it in a cargo box with all my hopes and dreams, I respond through my self-enforced cage of bitterness. She is right, we do need to talk, but in her determined eyes, I see her decision still based on self sacrifice and I am angry, so angry that as soon as the turbolift doors open I stalk ahead of her to sick bay. Be damned with her blasted protocols, she can follow me for a change. The anger is quick to leave as I hear her near running behind me to keep up, so when she stops, I stop, and when in her eyes she is begging forgiveness and a truce I let it go. I realise that much of my anger is due to shame at my lack of honesty to two women who matter to me, and honesty to myself. She is right, before I can move on, can sort out this tangle, I need to talk honestly to her first. I need to be honest with them both and I have no idea where that starts or ends.

All thought is driven from my head though as we hear the loud wailing of a child, a clearly Klingon child, and I am sure the world is aware that a warrior has been born! Miral, daughter of B'Elanna, daughter of Miral. The last baby to be born on Voyager on this journey. As I think this, the image of a chubby boy of my colouring comes into my head, the child of my heart and my dreams. As I look at Kathryn holding Miral, my eyes see only the child that we haven't had, that we may now never have in her arms. When I take the/our baby from her, our touch resonates with this potential that we had and is currently lost. This baby that between us we have contrived to deny. I hug Miral close to me and let my tears drop onto her soft fuzz of hair, and whisper the traditional blessing of new life into the tribe. New life that I currently feel I will never engender. Oh spirits, Please, I am a poor mockery of the man I should be, the only crewmember to return diminished in their eyes rather than enhanced. Let me have hope for the future, hope for a new life.

I suddenly hear Kathryn bidding to be godparent and I look up outraged! Surely B'Elanna, my little sister will allow me this role, that Miral will be part of my tribe too. I am not disappointed, B'Elanna has us both and the doctor as godparents. Whilst Kathryn distracts the doctor, I talk to B'Elanna about a traditional ceremony I would like to perform to welcome Miral both to the Voyager tribe and then to my own. I get agreement that this can be in the early part of this evening's festivities, and PADD Chell to tell him of the extra toast to be made, and Harry so that he is aware of a transient change in programme for my blessing. I am so proud of B'Elanna and the person she has become, blending her fearsome Klingon warrior strength with her intelligence and human compassion. We joke and laugh at how I never imagined to be sitting with her on a Starfleet ship as commander and chief engineer and holding her baby. At a gentle snort from Tom, I turn and congratulate him too. We have long recovered from our initial animosity. Kathryn's first reclamation project is an unmitigated success. I clap him on the back, and suggest that we wet the babies head at the first moment available to us, another traditional custom I tell an unbelieving B'Elanna. I will always be available for them, I promise.

I notice Kathryn has been gone with the doctor for a while, and as if she is also aware of how long she can be out of vision before I worry, reappears. 'Its nothing', she says, 'temporal migraine' . I let it go, but she must be lying as she never admits to anything. I would question more, but Naomi, Voyagers firstborn, and Sam join us and w start the image-for-posterity merry go round, and the captain is in organising mode. Time to present some medals. As I get the medals, and hear the bravery in Kathryn's voice when she is congratulated on her motherhood, I realise that the chubby baby may not only have been in my mind all these years. I can feel the wind is changing, my mind drifts free nd the cage expands, and all I see as I hand medals pins to the captain are her delicate fingers, pinning them to chests, delicate fingers that I want to hold in my hands, that I want to feel on my face, tangle in my hair…

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