Two

There was snow in Indiana on Christmas Eve, but compared to Paris it was just a smattering. The house was warm and smelled of Christmas: ginger and cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves - the same scent she could remember as far back as her memory would stretch.

Kathryn sat in the well of calm offered by the living room, dressed in an old sweater and jeans. Curled in her father's old armchair, a mug of mulled cider in her hands, she contemplated the tree. Gretchen, Phoebe and Kathryn's two nieces had already finished dressing it by the time she'd arrived, the whirlwind of the children's Christmas excitement so extreme that it had pebble-dashed her as she'd walked through the door and into the storm of their small hugs. It was only the second Christmas they had spent with their fabled, almost-lost aunt – last year she had been too much of a stranger for them to be comfortable in her presence. This year, it appeared, was different – which was wonderful, but also a little overwhelming. So it was that Kathryn had sought this little spell of solitude in the middle of the evening, though in the quiet she had somehow found melancholy rather than calm.

The door opened behind her. Kathryn twisted around the high back of her chair to see who it was and smiled at her mother.

"Do you need to me to do anything?" she asked, as Gretchen came toward her. "Sorry, I was just stealing a moment."

Gretchen Janeway shook her head and waved a hand as she settled into one of the other chairs. "It's all under control. Phoebe's putting the girls to bed – you might want to go up and say goodnight in a little while."

Kathryn smiled. "I will."

"Did you manage to get all your presents wrapped?"

"Yes, it's all done. Thank you for the loan of dad's study, and for the gift wrap. Oh, and I hope you don't mind – I used your terminal to call Bess. I wanted to talk to her in case tomorrow is too busy and I forget."

"Ahh – good, I was going to ask if you'd spoken to your godmother," Gretchen nodded slowly. "I thought you were up there a long time."

"Sorry. Next year I really will try not to leave it all until the last minute, I promise."

Gretchen smiled. "There's nothing to apologise for. We're just all glad to have you here. I was worried Starfleet wouldn't grant you any leave this year."

"I wouldn't miss another one of these for the world, you know that," Kathryn said, softly, gazing at the tree again. "Seven years in the Delta Quadrant without a Janeway family Christmas…"

"Did you miss it?"

Kathryn looked at her mother again, surprised at the question. "Of course I did."

Gretchen smiled. "Once you wouldn't have. I can remember a time when you were a teenager that you'd have given anything to knock this tradition on the head. Now what was it you called it? 'Outmoded nonsense', I think it was."

The younger woman smiled a little sadly, looking down at her drink. "Well, what do any of us know when we're that young?" she murmured. "I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else at this time of year now. Especially after not being here for so long."

"You didn't have any celebration of the sort on Voyager?"

"We had Prixin – a Talaxian tradition that Neelix introduced us to." Kathryn smiled slightly, remembering some of those occasions. "But it wasn't the same."

"Does it all seem a long time ago now? Everything that happened on Voyager, I mean?"

Kathryn's surprise continued. It had been a while since her mother had brought up the ship and her long journey home. "It does, in a way. Life back on Earth is so different."

"Do you miss it at all?"

She took a mouthful of her drink and swallowed before answering. She had the sense this was leading up to something, but couldn't imagine what. "Why would I?"

"It was seven years of your life, Kathryn. There must have been something good in it."

"It was seven years of guilt, duty and desperately trying to get my people home, mom. It's not something I'd willingly relive."

Silence drifted between them for a while, and then Gretchen said, "Do you know who I was just thinking about? That first officer of yours – Chakotay."

Caught off guard, Kathryn flashed her mother a look that must have been full of astonishment.

"I just wondered how he was," Gretchen continued. "Whether you'd seen him recently."

"Why do you ask that?"

Gretchen held something up for her to see. Kathryn frowned at it for a moment, and then realised it was one the notepads her mother kept by the communication terminal. Another old-fashioned habit Gretchen Janeway refused to break – using a real pen and paper to note down details she needed to remember. Her mother held the notepad out to her and Kathryn took it.

"Took me a while to place where I'd seen that before," said her mother.

Kathryn stared at the surface of the pad, where a series of doodles had been scrawled repeatedly in pen. It was a recurring motif, tentatively geometric in design: a semi-circle, from which lines led – two curved closed, two curved open, five short and straight.

"Well, would you look at that," she murmured.

"It's his tattoo. Isn't it?"

Kathryn took another mouthful of her drink. "I bumped into him yesterday. In Paris, of all places," she shook her head. "Guess it lodged in my head more than I thought."

"He was in Paris?"

"Yes, on leave, he said. His ship's in for work."

"Didn't he end up with the Borg girl? Seven?"

"She's neither Borg, nor a girl, mom," Kathryn told her. "Annika. Her name is Annika."

"Was she there, too?"

"No, I don't think so. I'm not sure sightseeing would be her kind of thing."

"So what happened?"

Kathryn frowned. "When?"

Gretchen sighed. "When do you think? When you bumped into him."

"What happened? Nothing. We talked for a few minutes and then we went our separate ways, that's all. We were both busy." Her mother looked at her in silence for so long and so steadily that Kathryn felt herself bristling. "What?"

Gretchen shook her head. "You know, when you and Phoebe were teenagers, I used to ask your grandmother for advice. Mainly about the boys the two of you were forever falling in love with. I tell you, it was endless. If you didn't have a broken heart, it was your sister - and then I'd get her through it and it'd be you again. I used to be at my wits' end. You know one of the best pieces of advice she gave me, even though at the time I thought it made no sense whatsoever?"

"I don't know where you're going with this, but…"

"She said, 'Gretchen, it's not the ones they tell you about that you need to take notice of. It's the ones they don't talk about at all that you should worry about.' I didn't understand that one bit. But you know how I knew that Justin was the one for you? Because in all your letters home from the academy, you never really talked about him. Sure, his name came up as a result of your working together, but there was never anything significant, nothing really personal. Then, out of the blue over the comm., you told me you'd been out with him for dinner a few times. I'll never forget that conversation. Your eyes were the prettiest blue I'd ever seen. I finally got what your grandmother meant. And I knew, then and there, that this time you really were in love."

Kathryn rubbed a hand over her eyes. "Mom, please don't-"

"You never talked about Chakotay, Kathryn. You spent every day with him for seven years, but you never told me about him. Not the way you told me all about Tom and Harry's exploits on the holodeck, or moaned about Neelix's cooking, or sounded infuriated about the Doctor's latest demands. Chakotay? A line here and there, maybe, but nothing personal. And I always did wonder."

Kathryn shook her head, passing the pad back. "He was my second in command, mom, that's all."

Gretchen held up the paper in her hand. "Is that right? You know, if your father had ever absent-mindedly doodled a picture of his second in command on a notepad, it probably would have broken my heart, whatever explanation he'd given me afterwards."

Kathryn let the silence settle around them. She thought about shutting down completely - moving the conversation on, ignoring what her mother was asking. But suddenly, somehow, she found herself speaking, instead. "Nothing ever happened between us," she said. "It couldn't, not out there. And then…"

"Then what?"

"He got tired of waiting. And he met someone else."

Gretchen nodded. "I'm sorry."

Kathryn swallowed the last of her drink. "Don't be. My ship, my rules. He deserved to be happy, and I couldn't – wouldn't - give him what he needed. Apparently she could."

"How long is it since you've seen him?"

"I don't know, exactly. Over a year. And it'll probably be the same or longer before I see him again – if I see him again at all."

Her mother was quiet for a long time. Then she stood up and crossed to where Kathryn sat, running her hands through her hair the way she used to when her girls were children. "My beautiful girl. I'm sorry."

Kathryn took her mother's hand and looked up with a small smile. "I told you. Don't be. I got the ship home. I'm home. I'm here, with you all. That's more of a happy ending than I was ever expecting. It's all I need."

Gretchen nodded, though her face looked as if she might like to argue the point. But to her credit, all she said when she spoke was, "Thank you. For telling me about it. I've missed you, Kathryn. I've missed you talking to me like a daughter."

Kathryn kissed Gretchen's hand. "I've missed it, too."

[TBC]