She'd done it. She, Kathryn Janeway, had done the impossible and gotten them home. But as she stood staring out into the familiar quadrant she's longed to find for so many years, she begins to wonder at what cost. Looking around her she's glad to see the smiling faces of her crew, no- her family, staring back at her.
She couldn't have done with without every one of them, and at this moment she knows that she should feel overwhelming joy to have survived this impossible trek and returned, but as she looks at the beaming faces of her crew, she notices the one person's face she longs to see the most is turned towards another. Her heart sinks with the realization that she's too late, what the Admiral had predicted had already come to fruition. She sees Seven gazing lovingly into Chakotay's eyes. She would have liked to have seen Chakotay, to study his face to see if, after seven years of avoidance and determination, she still holds any piece of his heart, but her eyes are blinded by tears as the Admiral's words echo in her head. "Chakotay and Seven", she wonders to herself.
Kathryn turned to Harry, fighting to keep a tight control over the captain's mask she has so meticulously maintained through this journey, "Commander, I'll be in my ready room. You have the bridge. Try not to let us get lost again." she commanded with a regretful laugh before fleeing the bridge.
Sitting in her quarters that night, she was finally able to reflect on the past 48 hours. He future self and appeared out of nowhere to try to save her crew. But Kathryn had a sneaking suspicion that the Admiral had an alternative motive, but it appeared it was still too late. Chakotay had moved on and found happiness in the arms of the blonde 'bombshell' of a borg. She had always thought she would be happy for him in Chakotay had decided to add himself to the 'pairing off' that had seemed to slowly occur over the past seven years, yet for some reason she was deeply saddened by the recent turn of events between her Borg friend and steadfast First Officer.
Trying to ignore the vice-like grip that his happiness seemed to have on her heart, Kathryn decided it was best to try and condense as much information as possible to have available to present to the Federation first thing tomorrow. Even though Voyager was still several days away from Earth, she knew that there would be several meetings in person and over comm before official celebrations could be held to welcome the long lost crew.
As she sat at her desk and went over the countless logs, data reports, and trade negotiations from the past seven years, emotions that she had kept in check for so long came flooding back. Here was the very first log from the day she had set off to capture the rogue Marquis ship, the day Naomi Wildman was born, the day Kes sacrificed herself for the crew had become more like her family, the countless near-death (or death in some cases) experiences, and tucked away, hidden deep in the hundreds of reports on file she found one titled New Earth. She gasp when she realized that this was the log she had written upon returning to the ship. Opening the file, tears fell unbidden as she recalled their initial stranding, Chakotay's joy at surprising her with that wonderful tub, the night of the Angry Warrior story, and finally that fateful comm from Tuvok declaring that he was on his was to save them from their gradual domestication. She had hated herself in that moment for being sad that she was about to be ripped from their tiny Eden and back into the real world, but she was the captain. Sacrifices must be made.