My J/C post return fanfic is nearly linear, starting where endgame finished, but a J/C quick reversal in my first fanfic- s/12310181/1/Coming-Home-with-You.

I think my following fanfics prob don't need a read through of the initial fanfic first, but since i loved that, I would recommend that you do. Its always nice to see the J/C coming together! My profile is going to try and keep the timeline showing, in case you would like a to go with it from the start!

This is the new story arc, and is planned to be a multichapter multiperson view where we find out about a bit more about the admiralty plans, and what the future might hold. some new people are going to be picked up along the way, particularly TNG and DS9 though the voyager crew, and senior team in particular, will remain the prime focus.

We start with some personal thoughts to set the scene. But soon move into the action adventure.

Please comment! Constructive criticism always welcome

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Reflections 1

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Chakotay

Indiana has been all that Kathryn promised. It is a home for me with her family. A verdant place of wide blue skies and rolling farmland. It has space for me to breathe again and re-align with nature. Whilst Kathryn spends time with her mother, I have a chance to collect my thoughts before speaking to my spirit guide and maybe my father. I had lost sight of this part of me in the last few years of our voyage. Perhaps their counsel would have kept me from nearly losing everything. I still find it hard to accept my yearning for stability and a child caused me to turn my back on my love for Kathryn.

2 weeks. it has been two weeks since we started debrief, nearly three since we returned from the delta quadrant. As is the way with time, the delta quadrant seems so far in the past, yet only just left. life has fallen into a secure pattern for all of us. After the delta quadrant i think we all needed a time of familiarity and pattern and we achieved that.

As the command crew, we have worked with the senior team to create the stability required, organising events specifically aimed for different crew members preferences so all are kept involved. For us as a senior team, the regular early evening activities, the dinner night, the not-quite-sandrines with pool tournament, all these have given us a chance to stay a close family while also slowly spreading our individual wings.

For us as a couple, and as a small family with Icheb, we have found a happy balance of some privacy as well as consolidating friendships. Unsurprisingly, we remain closest to the alpha bridge team and the senior staff.

Some of the crew that I worried about, well, Seven to be honest, have been swept into this, living with Sam and therefore a girls night guest, and automatically going where Sam goes on the week unless she chooses otherwise she is relaxing into this. I have noticed that she doesn't hold a grudge with Kathryn, even if she is more reserved around me.

Kathryn is still doing too much, she is at the centre of everything.

That is the woman I fell in love with.

As well, the first tranche of the junior crew have finished their mandatory debrief and counselling with further counselling is available to them. now, they are deciding their immediate future with a year of leave, should they want it, and a years accommodation. According to section head reports and their self evaluation, a range of options are being explored.

Kathryn has wangled Harren his research post at the institute of cosmology - our first mover on. Since that black sheep mission, as she calls it, she has been protective of Harren, our most prickly crew member and for his part she has earnt his complete loyalty. I am sure that this research post will consolidate that, though I glazed over when they were discussing his thesis plans.

Most of the senior crew and a fair number of the rest are waiting to see what happens to Voyager and what Kathryn and I are choosing.

Old loyalties come first.

More junior crew than I expected plan to ship out on short range domestic missions over the next month just to test the water. they say to earth is too crowded and noisy, and doesn't thrum beneath their feet; that they have become at home in space. They will keep their rooms here, and all will try and come in for the two big ceremonies planned, as well as socialisng on their leave. Kathryn has made sure that they are not alone, and usually go in groups of at least three on these missions so that if they have a voyager flashback, there is someone with them. I also think that she is carefully choosing the ships and captains too. Clearly she denies all of this, citing individuality and free will. She sees that some crew will move away from us in spirit, and some will always be voyagers first, but she will always be there for them all.

One of the big events planned by kathryn is next weekend - and she is keeping quiet about it generally, but i think it might be decommissioning of voyager, I hope not. She has something to finalise, and then will tell me all about it. She wants me to give a spiritual thankyou as part of the event.

the other is the formal return ball and promotions fest in 2 months. A time for us all to demonstrate our improved dancing, thankyou to the dance classes Kathryn is running. The ball may not include the ex-equinox crew despite Kathryn's best efforts. we all know some formal sanction will need to be applied, they were starfleet officers and they were way beyond any line. She has reassured them that whether their future is within or without starfleet, that she will always have their back, in fact they and I think she already has made some preliminary moves.

I have gradually felt more comfortable in my sense of self. More the real Chakotay, part starfleet, part maquis, part tribe: lover and family man, leader and tactition, all my disparate strands binding together. I would like to think it is mostly due to Kathryn, restoring my peace again. No longer the angry warrior, she calls me her proud and loving warrior, her brave and true warrior in the quiet times we share, in the laughter and the love, my spirits what crazy love!

it could also be due to the family life we have with Icheb, who i catch myself calling son as i teach him about the ways of my father, and as we gladly fix the indiana farmhouse for gretchen. Icheb who is happily part of our table in the evening, part of our storytelling, joining Naomi for some of the voyager evening classes and sometimes some of his academy class join us too. It makes me truly feel part of a family. there I was, worried that it would interfere with my courting of Kathryn, as if the 150 voyagers in this building don't already!

icheb and I have started to collect a medicine bundle for him, to help him reflect on who he is. I sense his uncertainty as like his mother he is a person of science. I have explained that however you vouch the terms, having a spiritual and moral guidance system will help to keep him true to himself.

kathryn has tentatively retried using her medicine bundle with varied success. She said her spirit guide was there, but was ignoring her and concentrating elsewhere. As she has no patience on the spiritual plane either, she quickly left. I hope over time that perhaps she can become more centred in the ways of my tribe. We have plenty of time.

Thinking of the kathryn, it is probably also the settling effect of the wider family, the babysitting Miral, the laughing dinners with the senior team, spirits but we have never done so much laughing. laughing and crying, for all of us our emotions are now on the surface. it is definitely due to the counselling that Kathryn was insistent on. Kathryn, who has refused medical input wherever possible, Kathryn who retreated in the void, Kathryn who is resolutely confronting her daemons too. Deanna is counselling us both separately, but tomorrow we start counselling together.

I think we are both nervous about this. Apart for a few minor conversations, we have steered away from contention since our abortive ready room fight.

It is also due to carrying on our command role, spending evenings wrapped around each other with PADDS, looking at potentials for the crew, making their readjustment to the alpha quadrant not just painless, but triumphant.

Voyager may well be a defining time for all of us, but life is not lived looking back into the past, we all need the fulfilment in our futures too. We cannot squander our present harking back to a past glory. Kathryn has ideas and plans that interweave many of us, yet setting us free as well. I see the admiralty beckoning.

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I hear Kathryn singing loudly downstairs as she helps Gretchen cook. Drawing me back into the present. Spirits, I cannot help but smile, she has a god awful, terrible singing voice, though her spoken word has that sexy rasp, and she is a terrible cook, but somehow, it is a joy to hear her do both of these things.

Gretchen feels she would cook better the old way, rather than with replicators. Treat cooking as a mixture of science and love rather than technology. they are making a spicy bean hotpot, and i agree that the smell wafting up the stairs is good.

This less pressured weekend with Gretchen is good. last time we were here there were so many people, so many emotions. this time, well we are family.

I hear icheb clattering back down the stairs and a shriek of laughter from kathryn follows. We both got pretty messy from working on the door into the barn, making it open and close easily. I guess he has showered and changed. I grin, my imagination can picture their interaction, he is strong for his slight build, and will have picked her up, treating her like a little doll, which they both seem to enjoy. She is then clearly moving into Mom mode, as i can tell the tonal cadence that is discussing academy work. this life is good.

I have also cleaned up and sitting on our bed, i reach for my medicine bundle and prepare to visit my spirit guide. It has been good to reconnect again.

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Akoocheemoya...

the chant flows effortlessly from me, and the birdsong of the Indiana dusk fades from me and I am again within my dreamscape. this time it comes to me as an orchard, a walled orchard. I am within, sitting under apple blossom. it is ordered, fruitful and beautiful. I am at peace here.

the walls are high, and i see nothing that is without. I am safe here. my wolf guide leads me to the heavy oaken door. we both sit on our haunches. I know what this is. it is the challenge, the challenge faced by kathryn and I to open fully to each other, and let whatever it is outside our dreamlike ordered state in. We are preparing to talk honestly to each other, and i know Kathryn will give me that choice to make. She is confident in her love for me, despite Seven.

I am afraid. Spirit sister studies me with those soulful eyes, and asks whether i fear that i do not love kathryn strongly enough. I have to consider this, I have no idea what truths Kathryn will tell me, but they are likely to be explosive, harmful to have been hidden deeply. No, there is nothing that I do not love her strongly enough that i wouldn't face up to. but there are some things that might change us irrevocably, and I am so damned happy in our love as it is.

She asks whether i could live with the door closed. This is simpler, i couldn't though as I want there to be truth and trust between us. Anything Kathryn feels that we need to share and understand, then I need to know. There are things I need to share and talk about. Riley, Kellin, Seven, all faces of the same coin. the maquis, my years delivering vengeance, not the hero that i think he makes me out to be. And things i need to understand better. Jaffen. she started to explain and split my world open. Tom Paris. the void. No, I need to open the door, let out the bitterness and hurt, and trust we can work through the tide of destruction it might unleash.

So, she asks again, do you trust Kathryn... I answer, unequivocally yes.

She smiles, a wolfish smile, and opens the door onto a landscape of hell. it is my homeworld post cardassian strike. all that i knew and loved burnt. I freeze at the sight, what have i opened up here.

I turn to re-enter the orchard, but it is no longer there. come, my guide growls angrily, baring her teeth at me. There is no way back once the door is opened, so i follow the path out of our village and walk through the catastophe of things that I have ever loved.

it isn't just my homeworld, starfleet head quarters are razed, new earth cabin is destroyed, borg walk across the scene arm in arm with cardassians, vidiians, hirogen. I am calling for Kathryn, but i don't find her.

As i walk, my guide asks me to name my worries, so I do, riley, kellin, seska, seven, maquis vengeance, tom paris, teero, the void, kashyk, jaffen and as i say them, they hurt less.

she asks me to name my certainties, and i name kathryn, my love, family both Gretchen and Icheb and also sekaya and Paka, friendship, B'Elanna, Mike, Harry and yes Tom, and i realise that there is growth in the devastation and that if i continue this path i come to open lands of green and beauty, part wild, part cultivated.

Be brave, my spirit guide instructs and runs ahead.

I look around, and the growth is everywhere, the desolation reborn, a vision ahead of me, Kathryn, clothed in stars, her hair foot length and flying free, smiling for me.

I feel her place hand on my shoulder and come slowly out of the trance to find her there in truth, a question in her eyes. we are both nervous about tomorrow, but i smile, and say 'be brave'. She drops a kiss on my head and we need no words. The spirit walk is for the walker to find their own truths.

Together we join the family downstairs for her bean hotpot. by the time I have got down the stairs we are laughing and teasing. It is surprisingly edible.

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Seven

my debriefing is nearly over, but I have increased counselling and medicals to attend, and i don't believe starfleet are that convinced that i should be allowed to leave. The captain vouches for me, but I am still clearly part Borg.

The debrief has been have asked me many time regarding my borg systems failures. That a different interlocutor may obtain a different response. They review my inability to follow the chain of command, seeking to decide whether this makes me a risk. Despite counsel from the captain to suggest that with hindsight and increases exposure to starfleet I might now reconsider some of those decisions, she is incorrect. My logic is impeccable.

i have freedom within the starfleet compound, but may only leave with the captain's express permission and accompanied by a member of voyager senior crew until further notice. I am permitted unrestricted access, however to the Janeway, Paris and Hanson residences by direct transporter travel. This allowance is inconsistent.

i do not intend to visit the Hanson residence again. My aunt Irene may have had good intentions, but I felt more like a specimen than a member of their collective. I am not sure whether I will receive an invite to the Janeway residence. My ill advised foray into romantic alliance appears to have weakened my position in the collective.

sharing a residence with ensign wild man and Naomi is steadying. I am obligated to the captain for this arrangement. Tal celes is more disruptive, however perhaps obtaining an understanding of her will aid my development as an individual. She has offered friendship and few have so openly done so.

Quartering me with Sam, Naomi and Tal was a considered move on her part. They show me how to advance my humanity. I see the close mothering bond between Sam and Naomi, and realise that in part this was my relationship with the captain. That when I commenced a relationship with the commander, this prior commitment should have inhibited me. Sam to some extent mothers myself and Tal. Tal is demonstrating new love for me through her relationship with Billy Telfer. I understand how misadvised my foray into a relationship was, that I had not the emotional maturity for the relationship I attempted. In another timeline, though, I had the opportunity to learn and develop. In another timeline, at least for me, it was successful. I wish I could delete this knowledge.

I took the Captain with me on friday to discuss future options within starfleet this is currently waiting on my medical clear, as well as assurances of my safety.

It seems that the removal of my failsafe has been an error, as the device didn't entirely do as the doctor had predicted. My most common emotions are anger and annoyance followed by anxiety. These are a disturbance to my efficiency, and distressing. They also make me more of a liability in public. Hence further medicals and counselling, including a diverse array of techniques.

I believe that I should limit my social skills to known voyager crewmembers, with some exceptions, and advanced academics. However, I will work to regain social skills and composure.

Indeed, when the captain is with me, I have a reduction in the disturbing symptoms post failsafe removal. I have noticed a similar decrease in anxiety in all crew members after she speaks to them. In every week so far I believe that she has managed a personal word with everyone, and more time with those who require it. I do not keep track of her moves, however, I notice that there is more confidence facing the future once she has considered options.

Since I believe my value is recognised in the work I perform, the captain has suggested some projects to showcase this. Firstly, that we hand pick a team for me to work with on maximising civilian - she was very firm that it should be civilian- use of nanoprobe technology perhaps medical, with joint working with our doctor. This pleases both of us, as it gives us both a research element to the week, and we find each others company congenial.

Secondly, she recommends also that I should also spend some time attending starfleet senior staff briefings in Borg studies, so that we can be prepared for potential scenarios and in particular look for early detection. This, she announces, has a dual function, firstly it allows senior decision makers within starfleet to come to know me without concern, and will allow my greater freedoms in the future, and secondly, will allow starfleet to develop possible options for defensive preparation against a superior hostile force. Again, she cautions that I shouldn't at this stage seek to work on offensive strategies. I am not surprised, Voyager has always aimed to seek peaceful solutions and use defensive strategies if these fail.

Thirdly, I can use the data that Mr Paris acquired during his warp 10 flight, and my astrometric skills to make a functional database for the delta quadrant with a team of analysts. Pulling together with the information I might have from the Borg, that which we acquired whilst there, and then consider working further on suggestions for a return to the delta quadrant by the federation if that becomes viable. This would potentially to make an alliance with some of the species we encountered.

I would mostly be working in starfleet itself initially whilst the work is evaluated, reporting directly to Kathryn. However, there is a potential to take the work elsewhere in the future, such as Vulcan or Jupiter station, if human exuberance is too tiresome. This currently is the case. I find the crew patronising and tiresome in their attempt to provide unwanted comfort following the disruption of my dating progress with the commander.

The captain suggested that if there were a voyager relaunch, or a federation science vessel with a significant number of voyager personnel, she would make it her personal responsibility to enable me to reach the stars again, when my readaption is complete.

I am not starfleet trained, so an alternative suggestion would be to complete fast track science training in starfleet to be commissioned. I will not take this route, I do not believe that the training will enhance my knowledge.

Since i do not require the same amount of leisure time as the other crewmembers, I would initially work on all three initial options. We will start next week on assigning teams, with any voyager crew that wish to join the astrometrics project. I believe that this will initially be satisfying and useful.

The captain will debrief my work fortnightly, allowing me freedom of development in the interim. If she has made such detailed plans for all her crew, she must have been busy indeed. However, I wonder whether it is a sign of her continued patronage to my development.

On a personal level, I am grateful to the captain. my predicted awkwardness following her relationship with my beau has not materialised. I am not naive enough to consider her a non-combatant however, It is clear that without overtly interfering with the relationship I had with the commander, her commentary, declaration of love and body language all were tactics that led to his termination with me and a very swift acceleration of cordiality with the captain. Due to her importance in my collective, I have no option but to comply and allow this relationship without further interference. I remember, however.

I see the captain regularly socially, as she holds court at 'girls night' at our accommodation, where her sister joins us, and sometimes the delaney sisters. I may ask them to join me in the astrometrics project, despite their inefficiency. I find that I grow used to their communication, and notice the intelligence that their gossip hid from me. Also, I seek to keep some of the collective of Voyager with me. I also attend the thursday mess dinners, and the velocity games. I continue to play velocity with the captain, but have been unable to beat her as yet.

Other than that, I attend the lecture series for alpha quadrant adjustment, most commonly escorted by the doctor and Icheb. Icheb joins us weekly to regenerate, as i have a double alcove in the apartment, which necessitated a move to the ground floor.

I tend to avoid the commander. I cannot help but feel that our relationship was inappropriate for him to enter, considering the love he holds the captain. We never discuss that in the alternate timeline we turned this relationship into a marriage. Thinking about his motivation is not an efficient use of my time, and is irrelevant and distracting to my current position. I find that i have an antagonistic sensation when his name is mentioned.

This brief foray into the human interactions of intimacy has determined that I shall be slow to repeat the exercise. The captain tells me that it is early days, but i know that perhaps i was more involved than she would like to believe, that she is resolutely blinded to any ill effect for me.

So when the captain asks me after our friday meeting whether i think that i can be at peace in the alpha quadrant, and have my needs met. I answer in the affirmative. i have the prospect of gainful employment that meets my scientific curiosity, with a mentor that I respect. i have the option of colleagues that i will build an acquaintance with, that we should work collectively together. I have a family, both that of voyager, in particular with the captain, Sam, Naomi, Icheb and Tal, but also under the captains direct request, I am progressing with the Hansens. i believe that I also have the starts of friendships. Yes, I am content with life in the alpha quadrant.

However, i do not say that I would prefer still to be on voyager in the delta quadrant with chakotay as my pairbond.

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Nechayev

We have kept the Voyager crew cushioned, for the most part, from the current turmoil within starfleet. We all need a reminder of who we used to be in the more innocent times before the cardassian/dominion war.

As a federation, we allowed our overwhelming desire for peace to turn Spock's credo into our mantra

'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'

and placed our need for peace for all the other worlds to allow us to do nothing for those in the demilitarised zone until the outrage of the maquis moved some of us to work behind scenes.

After then end of the conflict, seeing the mistrust and disarray that cleaving to spock's words bought us, some of us determined that we should always balance with Kirk's

'the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many' .

That it is as important to balance individual needs when making grand policy. We need to find leaders that understand the fluidity of both these concepts, and can apply them wisely to situations they have not faced before.

We see that we have a leader, forged in the delta quadrant, one that can train others to think in that way too, as there are at least two firm candidates for advancement.

We are quite a quiet and disparate few admirals, mixture of ages, but all gradually linking together as we can see that starfleet is standing at a crossroads. not just starfleet, but the whole federation. The choice is increased militarisation, or return to the original principles of the federation, one government promoting universal liberty, rights, and equality, and sharing our knowledge and resources in peaceful cooperation, scientific development, space exploration and defensive purposes. Starfleet being something significant in the last three.

There has been exponential militarisation as we were so close to overwhelming defeat from the dominion, and knowing of the Borg also has the war-war crowd baying for the finances and the go ahead. But voyagers 1 ship against the Borg takes their wind away, and it says cleverness and defence are still our way.

So we look for some wise heads and bright heroes who can be the face for our future, can help safely navigate us through turbulent times where internal strife might rip us apart. There is a bigger picture, and many threads.

For now, I will invite anonymously Captain Janeway to join the exclusive 'Captains of the deep' club and see where the ripples of that little stone may take us.

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This chapter had undergone a bit more of an edit as recommended! Please comment.