Chapter 25: Shattered But Not Broken

A/N: I've incorporated two out of the three little stories in the "Anson, Iva, Rory" universe into this bigger work so I figured it was time to do the same with "Shattered But Not Broken." Another take on what I wish had happened in that episode. Let me know what you think!

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"Should I go down to the cargo bay and get us another bottle?" she asked as they finished dinner.

He shook his head. "I still don't know how you figured out where I was keeping it. If I didn't know better, it is almost as if …" his voice trailed off.

"As if what?" she asked, watching him closely.

"Never mind. It's impossible."

"You're talking about that one time with the deflector dish, aren't you? When you went back in time and wouldn't tell me anything about it."

"I never said I went back in time."

"Then how can you explain how I knew where you keep the cider?" she countered.

"I'll bet Naomi told you."

"A good captain's assistant always keeps her captain well informed. But no, it wasn't Naomi."

"Then who was it?" he asked, a puzzled smile on his face.

"It was you," she said, leaning over to give him a kiss.

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His heart had stopped in his chest the moment he had walked off the turbolift and onto the bridge. He had known instantly that it wasn't his bridge, his Voyager. And then he saw her and he knew. The Kathryn Janeway that stared back at him with alarm wasn't his wife, at least not yet. She was younger, her hair swept back into a bun, and her face betraying only the slightest hint of inexperience. But most importantly she wasn't pregnant.

When he had gotten up that morning, he was fairly certain his wife had been pregnant. Hugely pregnant in fact. Which was why he had gone down to Engineering when the call had come in that there was something going on. As much as Kathryn loved to get her hands dirty, they both knew better. She had gone up to the bridge instead, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He should have known that the one time they had finally found a babysitter and were having a nice dinner to themselves would be too good to be true.

His mind reeled as he tried to take in what was going on but before he could, she had had him taken into custody. He tried not to smile at the absurdity of it all. It was as if he had gone back to square one with her, needing to convince her to trust him or to at least work with him in order to get the ship out of danger. It was a battle he thought they had put behind them almost seven years ago. But then again, this Kathryn was from a time almost seven years ago.

Slowly, he was able to build a relationship with her as they traveled through the ship. Every now and then she would laugh or say something that would remind him instantly of his wife. Even so, he had been struck by how much his wife had changed in the time she had known him. She had become much more comfortable in her role as captain. She didn't hold herself to impossible standards anymore and she didn't take everything too seriously. He could see that in this young captain, just starting to develop her own style and confidence.

He was careful never to mention anything about the two of them in her future. When she wanted to erase the entire timeline of their journey in the Delta Quadrant, it had taken a great deal of self-control not to tell her exactly what she would be throwing away. But he worried she wouldn't be able to understand it or appreciate it. After the first few hours they spent together, the Captain could only see the hardships and the suffering. He couldn't really blame her for that. In her position, he would have been terrified and would have tried every way he could to prevent what could only be seen by an outsider as utter catastrophe from happening.

And at first, she didn't want to know about the timeframes they kept slipping through. She had been content with the faint hint of context he could give her and tried to shrug off her curiosity. He could also see that just like his wife, the Captain was fighting off a time travel related headache. She knew the consequences of violating the Temporal Prime Directive as well as he did and he had only had to remind her a few times when she began asking him for more details about the world they walked through.

Eventually though, when their plan began to take shape, she pressed further with her questions. She wanted to know how he came to be her first officer, what happened to his ship, his crew and hers, and how they all came to be in the Delta Quadrant. He had simply held up his hands and told her that he couldn't tell her all those things, but she persisted. She wheedled it out of him the way his wife wheedled everything out of him, with a glare and a smile. Little by little he told her of the life he had lived in the seven years that separated them, of the decisions they made together that brought him to where he was and of the more difficult choices that she had made alone. All the while, the Captain listened quietly, her eyes searching his for further information about her future. Every now and then, he would catch her looking at his wedding band but she never said anything.

Almost everything around her seemed to spark a question in her and it was all he could do to keep up.

"Why don't you want your Captain to know where the cider is hidden?" she asked as he examined a gel pack.

He laughed and looked over at her far too serious expression. "It isn't really her I'm worried about. It's the rest of the ship."

"Once they know…" she nodded, catching on.

"Exactly. The stuff will be gone in no time."

Kathryn sighed as she watched him work. "It's strange to think about her, your Captain, that is and how she is me but different." She shook her head. "Does that make sense?"

"I suppose it does," he admitted.

"Are we really different? What is she like, Chakotay?"

"She's you," he said simply, "only a little older, a little wiser, and a little less…." His voice trailed off as he tried to find the right word.

"Uptight?" the Captain offered.

"Well, I wasn't going to say it, but yes. She is more confident now than when I first met her, more sure of her decisions. Almost nothing rattles her. And she has a wonderful sense of humor."

"She sounds much more comfortable with her crew and her role as captain than I am," she said.

"She worked hard to find a balance between being a part of the family of our crew and continuing to lead. It hasn't been easy for her but she has done a remarkable job," he said, smiling. "You're more like her than you realize."

"You think so?" she asked, almost shyly.

"I see her passion in your eyes, her excitement about exploration…"

"Do you really have any time to explore if you are working so hard to get back home?" the younger woman asked, frowning.

"Of course we do," he assured her. "We are seeing things that no one else in our civilization has ever seen before and might not see again for hundreds of years. We feel it is our responsibility to continue exploring and discovering, even though we are facing a long journey back to the Alpha Quadrant."

"It is going to take you…" she stopped, "…us a very long time to do that."

"We know," he said, handing her the hypospray.

"You might not live to see Earth again."

"I know." It was a thought he didn't like to dwell on. There was a very good chance that he and Kathryn would die on Voyager, not of the many disasters the young Captain seemed to think they would face, but of old age. Seventy years was an incredibly long time. It was one of the reasons that it had been so natural for Voyager to progress into a generational ship. His children might have to carry on their mother's mission to finally get her ship home. His wife had thought that was an incredibly large and unfair burden to place on the shoulders of two and soon three children. But he had reminded her that it was just their children; it would be all the children on the ship. With each passing year more and more families had begun and new lives joined their crew. And of course, everyone joked that the Captain and First Officer were single-handedly doing their best to turn the ship into a generational one.

The young Captain had left it at that and they had continued their work, returning to the light banter that she seemed more comfortable with. It wasn't until everything had been dealt with and they were standing in Engineering ready to attempt their plan to put the ship back together again that she pulled him aside.

"Mind if I ask you one last question?" she asked, a smile playing on her lips.

"Will I have to break the Temporal Prime Directive to answer it?"

"Maybe, just a little." She paused as if making up her mind about what she wanted to say. "For two people who started off as enemies, it seems we get to know each other pretty well. So I've been wondering. Just how close do we get?"

He should have known this question was coming. For all the differences they had talked about between his captain and the one standing in front of him, they were still exactly the same. Of course she would want to know.

He couldn't see much harm in telling her, not then anyway. The timeline was going to reset and if all went as planned he would be the only one to remember what had happened. And if not, she deserved to know why he couldn't take his eyes off her.

He had taken a deep breath. "We're married. We have been for over five years in my time." He watched as her face slowly lit up into a smile and he could tell that she had been hoping he would say that. He subconsciously turned his wedding ring around on his finger.

"And are you happy?" she asked and he could hardly believe it.

"More happy than I could have ever even imagined possible," he smiled.

"Do you and she have children?" she asked.

He nodded. "We've got two adorable children, a son and a daughter, and..." he smiled as he looked at the slender form of the woman next to him, "another one on the way. You, that is, my wife is convinced that this one is going to be a girl too, but I'm still holding out hope that our son won't be completely outnumbered by his sisters." He looked up to see her gazing back at him intently, smiling slightly as she envisioned her future.

"It didn't take you long to convince me to marry you, did it?" she asked softly.

"No, it didn't. I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you, but you were more focused on getting the crew back home. It wasn't until we were trapped off the ship for an extended period of time that you finally came to terms with the fact that the feeling was mutual. We began our relationship about two years into our journey in the Delta Quadrant. We were married a year and a half later and Anson was born a year after that."

"Anson?"

"Our son. He's five."

"And your daughter?"

"Iva. She's four and she looks just like her mother," he smiled.

"Those are beautiful names. Do you have any in mind for the new baby?"

Chakotay laughed. "My Kathryn has been pestering me for weeks on that one. We can't seem to agree on anything because she is so convinced that we are having another daughter. She loves the name Rory, though."

"I think that is a lovely name," the Captain said, placing her hand on his arm. "And I think she is right, you know, about the baby. My mother could always tell if she was having a boy or a girl."

"My wife keeps reminding me of that too."

Kathryn shook her head and looked about the room. "It all seems so remarkable, so perfect that I can't even imagine how I'm ever going to get to that point."

"You will, don't worry," he assured her.

"Well," the Captain said as she straightened her shoulders. "I guess I have a lot to look forward to."

"We both do," he smiled.

She held out her hand and he shook it. "See you in the future."

###

"Kathryn, what are you saying?"

"What does it sound like I'm saying?"

"You remembered? You remembered everything I told her?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes," she admitted almost sheepishly. "No one thought I would. When you reset the timeline, everything went dark and we returned to the moment right before …" she sighed. "Right before everything went wrong. I didn't notice anything odd at first, but then I kept having these moments of déjà vu. Only it wasn't because I had never experienced those things before. Just little instances where I remembered when you and I passed through a particular timeline. At first I thought it was all a dream."

"You remembered going through the ship and visiting all those different parts of your future…" he held his head in his hands. "Temporal investigations is going to lock both of us up for a very long time."

"Very funny," she said as she put her hand on his cheek. "I remembered what you told me about how I would grow into my role as captain, about how our ship would survive out here, about how you fell in love with me…"

"Kathryn, this happened almost six years ago. Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

"I told you that night when you asked how I knew where you hid the cider."

"I thought you were kidding."

"Obviously not."

"I can't believe you remembered," Chakotay said, still unable to fully comprehend what she was telling him. "Do you have any idea how that was even possible?"

"Oh I can't tell you that," his wife said with a smile. "Temporal prime directive."

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