Previously:
Janeway has found out the shuttle has been losing power and is non-functional. Back at the SGC, she and Carter have started working together on the very same problem affecting the phaser. They soon discovered how Janeway had come to land in the wrong timeline and universe, and her true origin is finally revealed.
Thinking of Home
"A motorbike?" Janeway eyed the two-wheeler with a degree of apprehension she had not felt when going through the stargate. As a means of transportation, the contraption seemed to be a remarkably hazardous way of getting to Sam's house for the evening. "You've got to be kidding me."
Grinning, Sam offered her a helmet before straddling the machine and starting the engine. "Trust me. There's nothing to it. You lean with me," she shouted over the deep rumble that sounded like it emanated from a much bigger machine.
Resigned to her fate, Janeway put on the bulky protection and climbed on the small back seat, pondering the forces about to propel her head first down the mountainside.
"Hold on tight," Sam said quite unnecessarily. Kathryn gripped the woman's waist, hoping her left shoulder would handle the strain. To her relief, the drive started slow, Sam weaving down the mountain road at a sedate pace through the constant drizzle and pending dusk. Kathryn soon got the hang of leaning in the corners and she loosened her stiff hands. In response, the treed landscape rushed in a blur, as the bike accelerated in an awesome demonstration of raw power.
She was disappointed when Sam slowed down as they reached the town. The streets were mostly deserted, the traffic light. Maybe the winter weather explained the lack of people around, she thought as the bike crawled along residential streets lined with dark trees and houses. Less than an hour after they'd left Cheyenne Mountain, they stopped at the back of a one-storey house.
"That was fun." Janeway climbed off the bike on slightly shaky legs. She took the helmet off and shook her hair loose, still dazzled by the ride.
Sam pushed the bike into the garage off the main house. "I like the feeling of total freedom. You know, the fine line between control and…well…"
"Lack of control?" Janeway smiled, thinking of another speed aficionado of her acquaintance. She breathed in the sweet smell of the pine trees across the yard.
"Something like that," Sam retorted as they entered the house. They followed a short corridor before arriving in the kitchen. Sam put down the two helmets on the counter and unzipped her leather jacket. "I'll show you to the guest room."
"I don't want to impose on you," Janeway said, frowning. O'Neill had not too subtly devolved the responsibility of keeping an eye on her while off-base onto Carter. She was not sure if the woman was that keen to babysit her, and felt guilty to have taken so much of her time already. "I'll get back to the base this evening, using…" she searched her mind for the right word, "a taxi."
"A taxi? If you still want to leave after dinner, I'll drive you myself. If you can survive another bike ride," Sam said with a smirk.
She showed Janeway the bathroom, then opened the door to a small room with a single bed, a wooden wardrobe and drawn shades over the window. The cool air smelt stale as if the room had not been used for months. Janeway put her small bag on the bed. All she had was the borrowed uniform on her back and a hygiene pack she'd found in her VIP quarters at the base.
"Tomorrow, we'll have to be back at the base for your appointment with Janet before the memorial ceremony at ten," Sam said. "In the meantime, I'd like you to stay. I could do with a break, and you look like you could use one too, Captain."
They had spent the last two days discussing theories until the small hours of the morning and trekking to the shuttle several times in between. Over the past few hours, Kathryn had found herself staring at the same equations for seconds at a time, numbers and symbols whirling around her. Nothing made sense. Everything they'd thrown at the engines or the weapons had so far miserably failed. And without the shuttle engines working, there was only so much she could do to find out how to return to Voyager. Wherever Voyager was now.
"We'll have to wait for the shuttle capacitors to charge in any case," Sam added.
"You are right," Janeway said, making her mind up. "Thank you for the invitation. And please, call me Kathryn."
Staying at Sam's house would also help keep Doctor Fraiser away for the night. The bend of her left elbow was growing bruises at an alarming rate.
"That sounds good…Kathryn." Sam's smile illuminated the room. The woman had the brightest, most infectious smile Kathryn had ever seen. "Look, I haven't had the time to do any grocery shopping, so I'm afraid it's macaroni cheese or chicken curry for dinner."
"Whatever is easiest," Kathryn said, smiling in return as they walked back to the kitchen. As long as Sam didn't ask her to cook, she was going to do her best to relax and enjoy the company, despite the feeling in the back of her mind that it has been a mistake accepting Sam's invitation to leave the base.
###
During dinner, they avoided talking shop and science by tacit consent, instead exchanging memories of their childhoods and early careers. They had been born and bred in very similar organisations—Starfleet for Kathryn, the Air Force for her. Both their fathers had wanted and demanded the best out of their respective daughters.
Sam recounted her struggles to be accepted in a man-dominated world, where brawn still appealed more than brains to too many members of the military. "I got referred to as 'the chick', spoken to as if I was stupid or incompetent," she revealed, stabbing at a piece of chicken.
"It must have been very frustrating. We've met our share of misogynistic species, but I had not realised that attitude could still widespread in the twenty-first century. What about the Colonel?" Kathryn asked.
"He was less than welcoming at first," Sam conceded. "I actually offered to arm-wrestle him when we met, just to prove I could do the job," she added with a chuckle. "I quickly found out that it wasn't the fact that I was a woman that bothered him, but that I was a scientist."
Kathryn let out a deep uninhibited laugh all the more surprising because Sam did not think she laughed very often. Sadness and grief were wrapped around the captain like an old shawl that had become part of her life for too long to discard at the first sign of respite.
"That explains so much," Kathryn said, eyes crinkling.
Sam stiffened instinctively. "He respects what I bring to the SGC."
The ghost of a smile lingered in the corner of Kathryn's mouth. "He cares about you. And you care about him."
"That's our job as SG-1. We look after each other. He cares about Teal'c and Daniel too, as I do. Colonel O'Neill is a good officer and an exceptional team leader."
Sam could feel her cheeks grow warm. Oh boy, why did she have to sound so much on the defensive? Was their dance around a relationship that was not one so obvious? Was she living a lie staking a relationship with Pete? And who was she lying to the most?
"I understand," Kathryn said in a quiet voice. Her smile disappeared, and she focused on moving food around her plate.
Sam wondered about the sudden change in the woman's demeanour, but let it pass. After a few seconds where neither spoke, Kathryn started recounting a fanciful story about a race called the Ferengi and their treatment of their 'females'. Enthralled, Sam listened as the woman talked about some of the strange worlds and species that made what she called the Federation. Dinner had gone quickly as they'd swapped yarns, each more extravagant than the previous one. They retired to the couch in the lounge room making short work of a bottle of white wine, the conversation turning to the subject of Sam's motorbike.
Stretching her legs on the settee, Sam observed her guest unwind at the other end of the couch, left arm in a sling, right hand holding an empty wine glass. "You squealed the whole way to here," she said, finishing her own drink.
Kathryn jutted her chin in a pretend protest. "I am a captain. I can't squeal. It's a physical impossibility."
Jack had been right about Janeway. She was bright, tough, determined. But she was also funny and irreverent when letting her hair down. With a knitted jumper two sizes too big and her feet tucked under her, she also looked cute, captain or no captain.
"Did so. Well, maybe not the whole time, but remember that long bend to the right, followed by the two sharp left corners?" Sam used her hand to exaggerate the bike moves, just to see Kathryn's reactions.
Kathryn winced. "I prefer not. It reminded me when the inertial dampeners of the shuttle went offline one day. I ended being thrown against Chakotay, and he…"
Her face fell, and she sat up, cradling her glass between long fingers turning pale.
Sam hesitated to ask who was that Chakotay who could so easily sadden Kathryn. She got up to fetch another bottle from the kitchen instead.
She looked over the bottles on the rack, not wanting to leave her guest alone too long with her thoughts. What they needed now was a full-bodied red she decided. She had no doubt Kathryn was carefully refusing to dwell into anything too private, and heavily censoring everything else. She didn't mind. It was also second nature for her to avoid talking to close friends about what she was doing at the SGC, let alone to an almost stranger.
Starfleet. The Federation. Starships. Sam grabbed a bottle of Montelena Zinfandel, a birthday gift from her dad, and scored the top of the foil sleeve with the corkscrew. Those words sounded so exotic, so tantalising in what they brought to mind: a society of space travellers; starships big enough to raise families; humans only one of dozens of sentient species; technology well beyond her ken; peaceful exploration of unknown worlds.
It was not that her Earth was backwards, far from it. The Prometheus was promising to revolutionise space flight, even if the only Tau'ri spaceship to date was still going through testing. Learning to blend alien technologies had not been a walk in the park, and she was proud of what had been achieved in a few years. But it was not the same. She so wanted to be in the future Janeway was painting in the broadest of brushes. Because, right now, after the deadly debacle that had been the Alpha site, the thought of a place where there was no Goa'uld, no saving the universe 24/7, where she would not be expected to understand alien technologies at the drop of a hat and fix everything. Where she could maybe have a life rather than fight supersoldiers…
She yanked the cork out and red wine cascaded over her fingers, staining the kitchen top. Swearing under her breath, she cleaned up the mess before returning to her guest, bottle in hand.
The woman from a future she would never get to see was still perched on the edge of the couch as if ready to take flight. Sam observed her while filling up both glasses again. Getting the woman to open up was about as difficult as getting Jack to talk about his own private life. It had taken Sam months to realise the man had a family—had had a family. She could feel the same invisible walls firmly in place around Kathryn.
Although, if her pink cheeks and cautious movements as she brought the glass to her lips were an indication, Kathryn's self-built fortifications were probably close to crumbling by now.
"When you first met General Hammond, you said you were a traveller. Where to?" Sam asked, settling against the padded back of the couch.
The woman lowered her gaze. "Earth. My ship, my crew, we've been seeking to get back to Earth," she said in a low raspy voice.
"Your ship?" So, there was a ship somewhere near the Alpha site. O'Neill had been right about that. "Where is it now?"
Kathryn's shoulders dropped. "I don't know. We were scanning the edge of the system for dilithium and I decided to investigate the planet where you found me. When I checked the sensors after the shuttle crash-landed, there was no trace of the ship, and it never answered our hails. I couldn't understand why at the time, but it makes sense if only the shuttle was caught in the wormhole. My ship is still in its own timeline and universe. Safe hopefully."
Sam could not help but feel disappointed. The shuttle looked like a neat piece of engineering, but seeing a ship from the future would have been something else. "What's its name?"
A longing smile came to Janeway. "Voyager. An Intrepid-class starship with a crew complement of one hundred and forty. The most technologically advanced Starfleet ship at the time of its launch."
"What happened? Why were you trying to get to Earth?" Sam asked.
"We found ourselves stranded…" Janeway gulped down a mouthful of wine before setting the glass on the table with a judder. "No, that's a lie. Five years ago, I stranded Voyager on the other side of the galaxy."
Sam's jaw dropped. "Five years? How long will your journey last?"
"Decades." Kathryn lifted her face, blue eyes hard as steel. "It will take us decades to get back if we don't find quicker routes."
Saving the galaxy as a member of a well-trained and highly skilled team with the backing of the mighty US military was one thing, but finding yourself marooned, a lifetime away from home, had to be heart-wrenching.
"So, imagine my surprise," Kathryn snorted, "when I discover I'm talking to people who can travel thousands of light years in an instant. They had to have access to the shortcut I had been looking for, I tell myself. We'd been in a similar situation before, on a planet called Sikaris, but this time, I might find a way to make it work."
She reached for her glass again and downed it. "And then I quickly realised I had stumbled into the wrong timeline, and not only that but the amazing transport technology you use is absolutely worthless to us. And now I am stuck here while my ship is somewhen else."
Sam cringed. "Doing it all by yourself must be hard."
"We might be alone, but Voyager is a good ship. We will get home."
Sam did not miss how Kathryn had deflected the conversation away from herself. The walls were up again.
"But enough talking about me. And you, how do you do it?" Janeway asked.
"Do what?"
Kathryn gestured to the room. "Save the galaxy from the Goa'uld during the day and come back home in the evening. It must be hard not to be able to share your experiences with anybody outside the SGC."
Sam looked around, seeing her house for the first time from an outsider's point of view: the shelves groaning under the weight of outdated science books discussing a universe devoid of intelligence except on a small and insignificant planet; a few photos of her in uniform with her dad standing proudly at her side, but nothing since she'd joined the SGC. The impersonal room did not reveal anything about who she was and what she'd been doing for the past seven years. Or where the rest of her life was heading.
"I don't spend much time here. I stayed at the Alpha site when I was working on the supersoldier weapon, and before that…I can't recall when I was last home."
She'd been with Pete, that she could remember. They had hardly made it through a rare dinner together before ending in bed. He knew about the Stargate program after the debacle with Daniel's ex-girlfriend-turned-Goa'uld but not the details of her missions or the precise dangers she faced every time she stepped into the stargate.
She sighed. Pete didn't really fit among stargates, murderous drones, time travel and starships. How could they have a future together if she couldn't share her present life with him? They belonged to two universes almost as worlds apart as Janeway's was from hers.
And, of course, the one man with whom she did share most of her waking hours, who belonged to space as much as she did, was out of bounds for those very same reasons.
"I feel more at home at the SGC than I do here," she admitted with a pang in the chest.
Kathryn put her hand on Sam's arm, her face showing only concern. "My apologies. I didn't mean to pry."
Sam shrugged off the sorrow that threatened. "I should have stuck to beer, I think. What about we go outside and get some fresh air before we call it a night?"
"That's a good idea," Kathryn said in a good-natured tone.
They took their glasses and sat on the front steps, huddling under the throws Sam had brought with her. The clouds were thinning, the moon only a thin crescent. Kathryn lifted her eyes towards the shroud of stars blanketing the tree tops across the park, and grew very still as if mesmerised by the sight.
Turning away from the touchy subject of her non-existent personal life, Sam was happy to move the conversation onto the comforting world of astronomy. "When I was a child, all I wanted was to go there, among the stars. To explore strange new worlds, seek out new life. Entire civilisations even if I knew then they didn't exist." She chuckled. "I never imagined it was all so very real."
Kathryn did not react, her face turned to the heavens. Sam forged on. "You must have seen it often enough. You were born in Indiana, you said?" she prattled.
Glass shattered on the lower step.
"Kathryn? What's wrong?"
"I know it's not my Earth." Kathryn's voice broke, her hand clutching at Sam's arm. "But it's the same stars, the same sky. It even smells like home. It is home."
Tentative, Sam put her arm around Kathryn's shoulders. The woman leaned against her, shaking, and she held her tight, grieving with her friend for a place to call home.
###
Kathryn stared at the ceiling of the guest bedroom, clasping the broken combadge she had attached to a chain around her neck. She felt like an ancient mariner looking up to the night sky after days of heavy clouds and realising he had been blown way off course.
For the first time since she had sworn to get her crew back home, she wondered about what they would find at the end of their journey. Seven decades on, home was bound to wither into a memory of times past, more an idea than a concrete, familiar place. As alien, she realised with an aching chest, as the Delta quadrant was now to the weary Voyagers.
She pulled the chain over her head and put it down on the bedside table. Turning and tossing, she slid into an uneasy sleep.
###
"Commander, this is the sixth search of the star system you have ordered in as many days."
"And I'll order many more until we find something, Tuvok."
"All indications point to Lieutenant Torres's hypothesis being correct. The shuttle is not present in our timeline anymore. It is therefore extremely unlikely the result of this search will be any different from the previous five."
Despite his exhaustion, Chakotay stood from the commander's chair. The bridge's lights were dimmed, the only illumination coming from the bright star field outside.
"Are you suggesting that we abandon the search, that we slink away because it's just all too hard?" His words were too harsh, but he was not going to apologise.
"No, I am not," Tuvok answered in his usual calm tone of voice. "However, the number of ship's systems experiencing sudden drops in power is growing every day, the warp core engines are close to non-functional, and we are still short on dilithium."
"I know all that, Tuvok. What's your point?"
"It seems to me that you are considering when you will need to make the decision to continue on our long-term course to the Alpha quadrant."
Chakotay leaned into Tuvok's personal space. The Vulcan blinked. Chakotay perversely felt better at the man's unease and almost immediately regretted his childish behaviour. "And you think that time is close?" he asked, taking a step back.
"No, but I am not blind to your concern about the Captain's orders."
Chakotay turned away. He should have expected Janeway to have sent a copy of her latest orders to Voyager's Chief of Security. He had been willing himself to ignore them, to erase them from his logs since they had appeared on his personal console. If I go missing, do not wait for me. Continue your journey. Do not look for me. Get the ship home.
He had checked the recorded date. Kathryn had written that order a couple of days after escaping from the Void. Obviously, their little mutiny to prevent her self-sacrifice had only served to make her more determined to do so at a future occasion. Those were the words of a woman still close to despair, blaming herself for the crew's demise and keen for redemption at any cost to herself.
"There were three other crew members on that shuttle. We cannot abandon the search yet," he said.
"Indeed, Commander. The captain's order obviously does not apply in these particular circumstances. We can, and should, spend as much time as we deem necessary searching for them. It is what she would have done after all."
Chakotay found himself silently thanking Tuvok for his support. He dropped back in his chair, his eyes drawn back to the stars outside. They had a few days before the ship's systems went critical, according to B'Elanna. They would get Kathryn back home before they had to leave.
He had to believe that.
Note: Amanda Tapping talked about how she had encountered sexism in her acting career and was called 'the chick' in an interview at josephmallozzi DOT com/2009/03/30/march-30-2009-amanda-tapping-answers-your-questions/ (replace the DOT with … a dot, and delete the spaces).