Thank you all so much for your kind words. I hope this next chapter delivers.

She has known she's pregnant for an hour and still Kathryn can't make sense of or find peace with the situation. There is no rule book for this, no lessons from command school that can truly apply. All she has to go on is the overwhelming feeling of guilt that has been her constant companion for the past year since Voyager has been stranded in the Delta Quadrant by her own actions. That feeling tells her she doesn't deserve to have a family, that it's a distraction from her mission and a disservice to her crew. A child will take away some of her attention, it will always hold her back from giving these souls she's responsible for her all.

And Kathryn's all is what they deserve.

But what about the baby?

Her hand involuntarily moves to cover her abdomen where the bloating she had dismissed earlier has now registered as her new companion. She's always wanted to have children, but personal tragedies and triumphs have always conspired against her. Now, it seems like the choice has been made for her, but how can she let it happen?

The idea that she would be able to walk to her quarters and be greeted with the sound of a laughing, thriving child while everyone else on the ship is faced with nothing but painful silence thanks to her choice makes her sick.

Kathryn can taste the guilt almost as badly as she did that first day after she destroyed the array and she doesn't like the bitterness.

The sound of Tom moving on his biobed across sickbay rouses her from her contemplation of herself and reminds her that the consequences of all this extend to him as well. He'd been hoping to get personal redemption out of this, a place in the history books… now she is going to have to tell him he is going to get a daughter out of it too.

This could have been worse… Harry could have been flying. Kathryn shudders at how bad that situation would have turned out. Having to tell Ensign Kim she was pregnant with his child would have ended in him dying, she was sure. Tom, well, she wasn't sure how Tom was going to take this news.

He had been right a few days earlier when he said that everyone had expected greatness from him. She could remember working under his father and hearing him talk with pride about Tom's latest flight sims or test results. She had moved on in her career by the time of his fall from grace so she hadn't seen the immediate aftermath, but she had met with Admiral Paris a few times in passing and the topic of Tom had been skirted over and avoided with such precision that she knew it was beyond a sore spot for the man. Admirals only avoided things that were painful, anything else they could deal with.

Now, while he certainly did have something to be proud of, breaking the threshold was no small matter, how was this lasting consequence of the flight going to color the experience? How was he going to take being forever tied to his captain?

My God, I'm having a child with Tom Paris.

It was like thoughts were not exactly hitting her in the right order.

Having a child together would completely change the very nature of the relationship between the two of them to a degree that at the very least would be highly frown upon by Starfleet command. Had they been in the Alpha Quadrant, there wasn't a chance in hell the two of them would be on the same ship anymore.

The hand that had been on her stomach now came up to the bridge of her nose, pinching it to stave off the growing tension there. Sitting and thinking and stewing was not getting her anywhere and her sense of morals was telling her that Tom deserved to know what was going on sooner rather than later.

But that would require knowing what she was doing, and she still wasn't there yet, was she?

No, this was too complex, too multi-faceted of a situation. This at the very heart was the dilemma that had haunted her her entire career: her femininity versus her authority.

As enlightened as Starfleet was, stopping to have a family would have meant it would have been years later for her to get her first command. Voyager would have never been her ship… she'd have been assigned the safe missions; the ones where the safety of the crew was almost always certain and mothers could always be returned home to their children. That wasn't her life though, that wasn't Kathryn Janeway. Kathryn Janeway longed for exploration, longed for the thrill that came with it, good or bad. She took it all in and thirsted for more.

But that didn't mean she also didn't want people to come home to, though. She wanted a husband, she wanted children. She wanted someone she could love and would love her in return.

She wanted this baby.

But there were a lot of things Kathryn Janeway wanted that she couldn't have.

Like, Mark.

Oh, Mark….

How she missed that man. He would have been the perfect counterbalance for her. Stable, secure, patience. He was a civilian and used to her almost manic work ethic. But it didn't bother him… he was used to it, and he somehow still loved her for it.

It was hard to think of him in the past tense, but if this situation was doing nothing else, it was making her a realist, and she had to realize that, more likely than not, Mark was not going to be an option for her when they got home. Even if he did wait around for her, which, with a year having passed with no end in sight, was looking to be a long wait for him, would it be fair for her to expect him to handle the baggage that would come from this whole situation… be it a child or the scar of making the decision not to have it?

No, Mark Johnson loved Alpha Quadrant Kathryn Janeway, a woman who hadn't had to make the choice between death to a species or damnation for her crew, who hadn't made the command decisions where no one really wins, just her conscience manages to ache a little less.

Delta Quadrant Kathryn Janeway was someone he might struggle to recognize. She was becoming rougher, calloused… and penitent. She wasn't an idiot; she was aware of her tendency to seek absolution for her actions at the expense of her own self. She'd work herself to death to get this crew home. She'd already been chastised numerous times by the EMH for her inability to practice proper self-care, Chakotay kept a running tally of her coffee intake on a PADD and made subtle comments when she hit his unhealthy mark, even Tuvok would suggest she consider meditating from time to time (which really just turned into her taking a nap, but the point was he cared).

Not only am I wracked with guilt, burdened with command, but I'm only not dead because other people remind me to keep myself alive.

She just didn't want this crew to think less of her. To hate her even more than they must already do for stranding them out here. If she had this baby, would they assume she was settling in for the long-haul? She'd never been comfortable with Chakotay's discussion of a generational ship so many months ago because it made it seem like she would be accepting of the fact that they would be out here for a long time. She couldn't accept that, she wouldn't.

But it wasn't like she and Tom had gone out, had a few drinks, committed themselves fully to a life together, and then embarked on a passionate love affair they intended to cement together with a child.

We were lizards for God's sake.

That was it, really, they hadn't been in their right minds. They hadn't had a choice in any of this. This child, this girl, was a complete accident, and the crew would understand that.

Now she just needed to figure out how she could function objectively when she had a child to worry about. Kathryn knew that a mother's love was going to feel even greater than the feeling of duty and loyalty and protectiveness she felt over all the souls she was responsible for on this ship. She was already getting a taste for it now, a deep feeling in her soul that made her subconsciously move her hand up to her stomach every once in awhile in gentle reassurance for the life that was there. It felt wrong to her to favor anyone on the ship though, and she realized that, as a consequence of all this, her favor would, without a doubt, extend to Tom as well.

But could she honestly say to herself she didn't, just a little bit, already favor her senior staff above the rest of the crew? That she would drop everything if Kes needed her or give Neelix whatever latitude he required?

This would be different, though. This would cause a hesitation in her ability to place Tom in dangerous situations. She'd always second-guess herself before she sent the father of her child out on an away mission that might mean he didn't come back to his little girl. It would always require her to swallow more panic and nerve than she was already used to.

People assumed that her calm, steely resolve in battle meant that she didn't feel the pang of nerves, the contradictory icy hotness of panic every time the ship quacked for an unknown reason. The very opposite was the case. Kathryn Janeway ran the gamut of emotions every day, but years of training taught her to keep them closely in check. Her new situation would threaten that dynamic.

It would also give the hint of fraternizing with a crewmember.

It was a no-win scenario the more she thought about it.

So, what if she just stopped thinking about it for one second and just let her gut tell her what to do? After all, hadn't that been what she'd been relying on for the past year out here? Sure, she thought things through and used her mind, but so much of what got Kathryn through the battles, the hardest days during Voyager's journey so far had been instinct.

Go for it Kathryn. You know this is it and you know you want to keep her.

Tom couldn't sleep, not until he'd heard from the Captain, and he could tell that something was keeping her awake from the sounds of rustling fabric he'd hear every once-in-awhile. Plus, Kes and the Doctor playing divide and conquer earlier before reconvening in the EMH's office had been another dead giveaway. The worry that something had gone wrong in her treatment, that his action had scarred her in some way was leaving him remarkably unsettled and every part of him wanted to go over and check on her.

But wasn't how it was done.

Not just because she was the Captain… Hell, he'd started to ignore those lines of protocol a few months ago after a couple of nights of pool in Sandrine's among the senior staff. He understood that sometimes she needed the crew to make the first move for her because she still wasn't sure where she stood with them… if they hated her or not. Not to mention the old Starfleet rulebook, but that was slowly loosening in Voyager's weird situation.

It worried him she walked around thinking half the people who served under her would spit on her if they could. It couldn't be a good feeling. It also really wasn't true anymore. Sure, people might never fully get over the choice Kathryn Janeway made on their behalf, they might feel she hadn't had the right to, no matter how much command structure had been drilled into them in Starfleet or, to a lesser degree, the Maquis, but they got it now. And, most importantly, the crew respected her for what they saw her do every day, work herself to exhaustion to get them home.

That was the beauty of this ship, somehow, amidst all this untold and never-ending danger they were finding themselves in (seriously, it was like every week they were one phaser shot away from meeting their maker), it was turning into a community where redemption and reinvention were commonplace. Tom knew that some people still didn't trust him, the Commander very quickly coming to mind, but at the same time he knew a lot of people did, a hell of a lot more than when he first stepped foot on this ship, and that meant a lot to him.

And he had the Captain's trust. That meant even more.

Or at least he had. For all he knew he'd accidentally caused her to permanently have gills and she was never going to forgive him.

When he finally hears her sitting up, sounding like she's preparing to get off the biobed, his first instinct is to head for the hills. Tom isn't proud of it. He's grown in a lot of ways on board this ship, he understands you have to own up to your mistakes and the consequences of your actions, but when it comes to women they're the one thing that always get to him, especially when they have the power to demote you. Her gentle footsteps coming his way making him gulp before he sits up, his eyes quickly doing a sweep of her approaching figure and finding the lack of gills to bring him a surprisingly tangible amount of relief.

"Captain, I'm…" He starts out uneasily as he swings his legs over the edge of his biobed so he's facing her where she's decided to sit on the one across from him. He sees that she's looking him over, checking to make sure he's ok and it makes him smile briefly, something she notices.

"Something amusing Tom?"

"Um, no ma'am, it's just nice to know you still care after I…" He trails off at that point, unsure what the best word to say in the situation is. He knows what he wants to say kidnapped you and forced you to mate, but he's not sure she's ready for the bluntness of his words. Janeway must sense where his mind is taking him, that jokes won't work in this scenario because she reaches out a hand and grabs his in reassurance, a gesture that almost surprises him.

"Tom, you didn't do anything. As far as I or anyone else on this ship is concerned, Tom Paris lost control of himself hours after he made that transwarp flight. What we saw was an evolutionary process happening in… hours-"

"That wasn't that pretty." Janeway had to chuckle at that, her hand gently letting go of Tom's and drawing back to her lap where she watched it for a second.

"Yes, that hadn't been that pretty, or left you in any sort of sound mind." Looking back up, a fierceness in her eyes that he was unexpecting and unprepared for, she met his and said the next words very clearly. "Nothing that happened on that flight is anyone's fault. We are Starfleet officers and sometimes the unexpected is part of the job."

"Captain, what is it you aren't saying?" Kathryn smiled, somewhat sadly, at Tom's cutting to the chase. She wasn't sure what she was hoping for in this discussion, maybe more polite small talk, more chances for her to use all the morale boasting-inspirational pep talk training she's had drilled into her. She should have known she wouldn't get that from Tom. For God's sake, Owen probably raised him on it.

"The Doctor informed me he let you know about the 3 offspring we had on the planet." Tom shifts uncomfortably at the sentence, his embarrassment clear. Oh, just you wait for it Paris, there isn't going to be enough room in this sickbay for you to get far enough away from me in a moment. "It would appear, that we have a 4th." Tom's blue eyes go wide, his brow furrowing with confusion and for a moment he looks around sickbay like he's trying to see the being she's talking about. "I'm pregnant Tom. It's a girl, the growth rate was apparently accelerated for a time, but she settled down at 12 weeks."

She's never really known Tom Paris to be completely at a loss for words. In fact, that was what many commanding officers in his personnel file had always commented had been one of his downfalls. In this moment, however, he doesn't appear to be able to formulate anything to say. He's looking back at her now, his eyes slightly shiny but she can't pinpoint why. He keeps glancing down to her lap where he now knows his child is before looking back at her face, almost as if he's trying to reconcile the two realities. It's almost 5 minutes before he finally says something.

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"That last hour you spent over on the other biobed, that was you trying to figure out what to do about all this, wasn't it?" Kathryn sighs, not wanting to revisit her hour-long hell, but also knowing she has to grant him whatever he needs to process this.

"Yes, yes it was. Having a child while being the most senior officer not only on this ship but in this quadrant, isn't an easy decision to make."

"It's also not easy when you carry a shipload of guilt on your shoulders." Instinctively her eyes narrow and her command façade prepares to come out, ready to tell him off for daring to touch at something so personal, no matter who he is, but then she really looks at Tom, and she sees something in his eyes she hasn't seen in someone in a long time, understanding.

"Yes, you're right, there are a lot of factors I had to consider. How it will impact my ability to command, how other species we run into might see me, how this crew will view me having a child with a subordinate, and that doesn't even begin to hit on how I'll actually manage the day-to-day things like feedings and diapers with morning briefings…" She trails off, thinking about all the replicator rations a nursery and childcare require and silently groans. Tom once again stays silent for a moment, still not entirely sure what to say but clearly not going through the same mental acrobatics as Janeway had earlier.

"Look, I'm not going to lie to you and say I think I'm ready to be a father. We both know I was in a penal colony just over a year ago and before I had this breaking the threshold project to work on I wasn't exactly winning any best in class award, but there is one thing I can tell you that I am definitely sure of, this crew has the utmost respect for you Captain. They see what you do for us every day at the expense of yourself and it makes them realize how hard all this is for you… and they want to see you happy just as much as the next person. So, if you're worried about them, don't be." It wasn't intentional, she swore she wasn't in control of it, but Kathryn felt a small tear trickle down the side of her face and she found herself ducking her head quickly to hide it, knowing that it wouldn't help but trying to anyway. Brushing it aside, she looked back up at Tom, a smile on his face of reassurance.

"I've decided to continue on with the pregnancy," She told him, before quickly realizing she should add an addendum. "You are by no means obligated to-"

"No, no, Captain, stop." Tom's smile was sadder now, but it was still truthful. "I said I might not be ready now, but I can be. And I always told myself if I was given the opportunity to be a father I'd be damn sure I'd put my all into it." Kathryn sensed there was something there, something in the dynamic of the Paris men that put a fire under Tom when it came to this subject. Her impulse was to let it go, but it occurred to her that understanding who Tom would be as a parent would be something she'd have to get to know, in addition to a great deal of other things about the man. Tom Paris might very well end up being the strongest relationship she had on this ship.

This was not what she'd expected when she'd met him in that penal colony.

"Well, I guess that means we're going to be parents." It's the way she says it, the soft tones, the timid emotions finally gone between them and that Janeway voice of certainty that come out of her mouth that suddenly seems to bring them both an extreme amount of peace with the situation. Well, at least for now. Tom is sure that by the time he's alone in his quarter's he'll have some sort of epic meltdown that might involve a stash of ale he keeps hidden in the cargo bay next to the Commander's and a cry in Sandrine's. For Janeway, she knows her brain won't keep her worrying at bay for years to come and if it manages to stop for the pregnancy, it will only get worse when she actually has a child to look after.

"Wait, did you say it was a girl?" Tom's comment, spoken with a hint of humor and feigned horror draws Kathryn out of her thoughts and back to reality.

"Yes, yes I did."

"If we're not back on earth, she needs to be locked in the brig at 18 for her own safety… and my sanity"

"Tom!" Finally, the Captain lets out a laugh, a real one this time, quickly followed up by more light-hearted comments from Tom and in his lab, the EMH smiles, finally one concern down, still several more to go.