So, I have been wanting to do an Endgame-centric fic for some time, and I decided to finally get off my butt and get writing. I have played a bit with the timing of a few things, and of course our favourite Admiral makes an appearance. Follows the canon storyline of season 7.

And here we go!

Chapter 1: You Used to Love Me

Chakotay shifted before the door to her quarters, fidgeting with his jacket and pulling lightly on his ear. He had never been so unsure about stepping over that threshold in his entire seven years on Voyager.

Only this time, it's really her on the other side of that door, and she knows more about him than even himself at this stage.

He had made a point in the last few days of avoiding the older Admiral Janeway.

The look he'd seen in her eyes continues to haunt him.

And it won't leave him alone.

Because it wasn't anger, or even sadness. It was the haunted look in her pale blue eyes without their sparkle that told him all he needed to know about their future. And it wasn't pretty.

But he had to know for sure.

The doors opened unexpectedly in front of him. He is so sure that the expression on his face showed his surprise to the Admiral sitting on the sofa just a few feet away.

Her expression is almost bemused, but lacks the spark he'd come to expect when the Captain had graced him with a crooked smile.

'I thought I'd put you out of your misery,' she spoke in cool tones.

He stepped over the threshold, and took a breath. He's been in her quarters many times, but this time the atmosphere is so different.

It's cold.

'You knew I was standing there?' he asked, fidgeting with his ear again.

The Admiral raised an eyebrow eerily reminiscent of a certain Vulcan.

'I spent twenty-three years living next door to you, Chakotay. I have this uncanny ability to know when you are standing outside my door,' she said without an air of humour. 'Although, I will admit that I am slightly out of practice.'

His heart twisted painfully as he looked at the older woman before him. 'Can I sit?' he asked, indicating to the vacant space opposite her.

She shrugged in response. 'Chakotay long ago claimed that chair as his own whenever he was in here.'

Chakotay had never felt this uneasy in the presence of any Kathryn before. Temporal mechanics aside.

She flicked an invisible piece of lint from her trousers. 'Something on your mind?'

He cleared his throat, biting back the obvious answer.

The Admiral sensed his hesitation, and cut straight to the point. 'You want to know what happens between us.'

Her statement is blunt, and unassuming. It pierces the air in the room like a gunshot.

He isn't used to her being so forthright when it came to their personal feelings.

Hands twistied in his lap, he looked down to his boots. 'I need to know…if…' he trailed off, unsure of how to continue.

She answered without hesitation, but her words lack the venom he is expecting. 'You want to know what happens, so you can determine if your current relationship with Seven is what you want.'

He looked up at her sharply. 'How do you know that?'

'You used to love me,' she stated simply.

'Used to?' he echoed.

She laughed, and the hollow sound penetrated deep into his soul. 'Of course. You're forgetting that everything in this timeline echoes my own. Up until this point.'

He stared back, his brow creasing.

'Chakotay, look,' she inched forward on the sofa, and he can see the way the starlight reflects off her greying hair. 'Things happened in my timeline that I'm not proud of. I'm here to fix it. I'm here to get this crew home.'

He nodded. 'I know that.'

She stiffened, sitting back abruptly. 'I am not here to change the way you see me, or to help you figure out your relationship with Seven of Nine. Those are choices you need to make for yourself.'

He ran a hand through his hair as the Admiral stood up, crossing the room in purposeful strides. Her hand rested on the bulkhead near the window; the same bulkhead he knew used to hold a picture of the two of them.

He wonders briefly what happened to it.

The Admiral sighed. 'I've missed Voyager. More than anyone ever knew'

Chakotay swallowed down his pounding heart. 'What happened to us, Kathryn?'

'Kathryn?' she repeated back at him, spinning around to face him. 'You haven't called me that in years.'

He merely raises an eyebrow.

She turned back to the window, her eyes tracing the stars without really seeing. 'You married Seven.'

The blunt statement echoes off the walls of the darkened quarters.

'That's it?' he asked sharply to cover up his own unease.

The Admiral whirled around abruptly. 'Have you spoken to my other self about this?' Her blue eyes are hard and unyielding in the starlight.

'No,' his statement was almost contrite. 'I don't want to hurt her.'

She gives a sarcastic snort in response. 'That's kind of you.'

He almost misses the glimpse of vulnerability that fades across her features.

'The Chakotay in your timeline is dead.'

A flicker of pain passed through her eyes. 'What makes you say that?'

'I have a fair idea,' he countered, tugging the sleeve of his jacket.

He doesn't need to mention that he can see it written plainly across her face each time she looks at him, or that he notices the small scars on areas of her body that his Kathryn didn't have. Scars that show where she's tried desperately to save herself from dying along with him.

The Admiral came to sit down opposite him again. 'Yes, he is. Chakotay died six weeks after we made it home.'

He stared at her.

She sighed.

The silence stretches on.

'You're not going to leave me be, are you?'

Chakotay shrugged, and leant back into his chair.

The Admiral picked up a tea from the table that he hadn't noticed before.

The colour tells him immediately it's one of his own special blends.

She takes a small sip. 'Three years from now, Seven of Nine is going to die. She makes it back to Voyager, but we can't save her. You're with her until the end.'

Her slender fingers rub the area above her temple.

'Headache?' he asked softly.

She chuckled. 'This one is going to be the temporal headache of the century.'

He raised the corner of his mouth in a small smile.

He regarded her seriously for a moment. 'So, you have come back to save Seven?'

Her shoulders moved in a slight shrug. 'Yes, and no. By the time we get home, I lose twenty-two crew members. Tuvok is number twenty-three, and you make twenty-four.'

A candle flickers on the mantelpiece by her replicator, and he stared at it.

'I meant what I said,' she continued softly. 'I've come to bring Voyager home. All of her.'

His eyes flicked over her face, analyzing her features. He used to think he was pretty good and knowing when Kathryn was lying, but the Admiral was damned near impossible.

He narrowed his eyes. 'What about us?'

She chuckled humourlessly. 'Us? Really Chakotay, you should know that there never was an us.'

'Because I marry Seven.'

'Yes.'

He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. 'I can't believe that.'

'Well, start,' she snapped back at him.

'And what about after she died?' he ground out. 'What happened then?'

'Nothing,' she answered simply.

'Nothing happened?'

'No,' she answered again before pausing. 'Yes.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

The Admiral sighed loudly, closing her eyes. 'You came to me when you needed me, Chakotay.'

'I used you?' he asked with disbelief.

She looked at him squarely, dull blue eyes boring into his own. 'We used each other.'

The words echoed around his head, and he got up out of the chair to pace around the room. 'And that's it? How could I remain so,' he ran his hand over his face. 'So aloof from you?'

Her laugh was hollow. 'Sixteen years, Chakotay. And all we got out of it was fights, uncertainty and two unexpected children.'

'Children?' he turned to her with a puzzled look on his face.

She watched him closely before responding. 'Yes, but not in the way that you think.'

'I don't understand.'

She chewed the inside of her lip before answering him slowly. 'They weren't planned, but then again, none of what happened to use ever was. The first time it happened, neither of us knew until it was too late.'

'You lost it,' he stated simply.

She rubbed her temples again. 'There was an accident in engineering. We'd fought over it beforehand, we'd been running on triple shifts for days, and you didn't want me to be down there. It was a shock to us both. I didn't even know I was pregnant.'

He regarded her. 'How did that happen?'

She scoffed. 'Boosters that were non-existent. I haven't ever been on them. They give me terrible headaches,' she waved her hand dismissively. 'Of course, I didn't know you hadn't been up to date with yours either. It was surprising we didn't run into the problem earlier, actually.'

'I'm sorry,' he said sincerely.

'Don't be. I couldn't be sad over something I didn't know I had.'

'But it ruined us?' he asked.

'No, but you blamed me for it. It was six months before you spoke to me outside of the bridge, and another six before you came to my bed again.'

He reached out to take her hand, but she pulled back and turned away.

Instead, he sat down again. 'What about the second time?'

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. 'I knew earlier. I guess I learned to pay attention. We talked about it briefly, about whether I could Captain Voyager and be a mother. In the end, the choice was made for us; the baby was gone after twelve weeks. We never found out why.'

The silence stretched out again between them.

'Don't make the mistakes we made, Chakotay.' Her eyes were guarded as she looked at him sternly. 'If you chose Seven, that's your business, but leave Kathryn alone. Don't go to her, don't contact her and don't force her to watch you two together.'

'And why would you ask me to do that?'

'Because you used to love me,' she answered sadly.