Disclaimer: The characters: Chakotay, Janeway, Tuvok and Paris belong to paramount, ironically StarFleet and the Federation do as well.

Angel of the North

This story takes place in an alternate universe, where Chakotay and Janeway meet about nineteen years before when End Game would have happened, and is set at about that time. It explores their relationship and lack of it. Knowledge of the book: 'Mosaic' helps, but is not essential, be warned that there are spoilers for the book, and some bad language.

Part 1- Changes

The hospital had that clean smell that could only mean that it was trying to cover up the smell of dying and rotting bodies. As he passed through the corridor, he noticed people sat on chairs against the walls, coughing and sleeping and crying and reading. He paid them little attention and tried to follow the directions a nurse had given him. The air was stale and sterile, and everything that he saw was white: the walls- white, the ceilings- white and the floors- off-white. Every corridor was like the next, the walls merged into the floors, merged into the opposite walls.

He entered the ward and carefully manoeuvred himself around a man in his early twenties shakily walking towards the water dispenser, relying heavily on a pole carrying fluids of medicine, for support. He looked into a room to the left as he passed and saw some poor sole strapped up to a life support machine, his breathing, his heart beat, his entire system done for him by a computer. What if there was a power failure? The thought crept into his mind, and the image of the life support failing came to mind, but then he remembered that they would probably have a back up generator, and the thought was wiped from memory. It was strange, the things that came to mind from having only two hours sleep in two nights.

It had been two nights since he'd been called and told that Ryan was in hospital. The first call, he hadn't thought much about it; he'd been in an accident, but was going to be okay. The second call had been from Tom, saying that his condition had suddenly taken for the worse, and so Chakotay had gotten on the first transport to Earth.

The transport could not possibly have gone any slower. It was strange that whenever he wanted time to just speed up and pass him by- it didn't, and when he wanted it to slow down, so he could take him to enjoy himself, it just seemed to go passed in a flash. This time the passing of time had been agonisingly painful.

He arrived at the correct room and looked in through the widow, where someone had left the shutters at the angle which was easily seen through. Ryan was in a bed, strapped up to one of those life support machines that was doing most things for him. His heart sank for a moment, he had hoped that by the time he arrived that he would be up and speaking, and joking about the accident- but he wasn't. He looked to the right, on the other side of the room, and saw his daughter sitting on her brother's knee, quietly being read to. After looking around the room once more he realised that their mother was missing from the scene.

"So you made it then," he turned at hearing her voice.

"I came as soon as Tom called me," he tried to defend him self; there were few excuses, "but you know how long it takes to get back to Earth from there."

She nodded, he wasn't sure if she had really heard him at all, as she turned towards the window and silently pressed her fingers up against the glass as she gazed across to the bed. "He came to for about ten minutes," she told him distantly, "he was hysterical; he was asking for you."

"I'm sorry I couldn't have been here," he said honestly.

Her eyes dropped and slowly she looked back at him. She looked tired and worn out, a mug of coffee in one hand, and the other hand fell from the window as she looked back round at him. "I said he was hysterical Chakotay," she said icily as their gazes met, "I don't think he would have cared had you been there or not."

He fell silent, they were both upset, and he knew better than to provoke her when she was already emotionally drained, and he could see she was already that. "What exactly happened?"

"Shuttle accident." She replied shortly. "He had a ruptured spleen, three broken ribs, a piece of debris sliced through his leg, narrowly missing an artery, and a second piece smacked into his arm and trapped it against the floor, shattering his arm into three more pieces than what he needs. It was the blow to the head that put him unconscious." She said, then paused as the memories of the doctor informing her of what had happened clouded her mind of a moment. "It was a couple of hours before the recovery team arrived," she said a little more heavily than before, "and by then he had already lost a lot of blood. After surgery he came to, as I said, but then slipped into a coma."

"Do the Doctor's know if he's going to come out of it any time soon?" his voice was soft and pained, and made her want to stop being mad at him.

She shook her head, "the longer he stays under, the less chance…" she broke off as the realisation that he may die dawned back upon her, and she had to cover her mouth to muffle the sob, and turn away from him to prevent him from seeing tears begin to stain her face.

He went to her; he couldn't stop himself, and it was all that came to mind. She felt his arms wrap around her, and turned in his embrace to cry gently against his shoulder. "Kathryn, he's going to be fine," he attempted to comfort her, "everything's going to be okay," but she wasn't having any of his soothing words

"You don't know that," she said as she pulled away from him, and his arms dropped from around her. "How can you say that every thing is going to be okay? My little boy could die at any moment, how could anything be okay after that?"

His jaw hung, he had nothing to say.

"And even if he does wake up, I doubt this will be the last time that I'm worrying about him in hospital."

"What do you mean by that?" he was genuinely confused, but saw her attention drawn behind him, and he turned to see Aaron standing by the door after having come out of the room.

"Aaron," Chakotay said, a little startled to see his son after so long.

Aaron looked at his father for a moment with something close to hate and disinterest, before turning his attention to Kathryn. "Taya's getting tired, I thought that I should take her back home."

She frowned, "what time is it?"

"Twenty two hundred- last time I checked," he replied.

"God, yes, take her home," she looked disappointed with herself for having not kept track of the time herself.

He nodded and headed back into the room.

"Now that I'm here, is there anything that you need me to do?" he asked once the doors had closed behind their son.

She looked at him, for a moment having forgotten that he was there as all, "no, it's okay, I think I can manage everything."

He would have said something to the contrary, but thought against it. The door opened and they both looked over as Aaron walked through with his five year old sister held securely in his arms. "Hey baby," Chakotay smiled at his little girl, but she just looked right back at him with sleepy eyes, only a hint of recognition entering them.

"I'll take her straight to school tomorrow if you're not back by then," Aaron said as he walked past his father and towards his mother.

"Thanks honey," she leaned forwards and kissed her daughter's forehead, before reaching up, ruffling Aaron's hair slightly, and then kissing him on the cheek.

He smiled at her, and then stalked off down the corridor.

"She's grown so much since I last saw her," he noted as he ran a hand through his dark hair, "I don't know why I expected her to-"

"She's just tired," Kathryn interrupted him, "any other time and she would have been over the moon to see you again." She didn't know why she was bothering to try and make him feel better.

He didn't really feel any better and just nodded solemnly. They stood there, outside the room, to one side of the corridor, for a moment longer, neither speaking, and neither particularly comfortable with the silence. "Well I'd better-" she trailed off and pointed towards their son's room.

"Yeah," he snapped himself out of his quiet revere, "is it okay if I stay with him for a while?"

She thought about telling him to bugger off for a moment, but the StarFleet control kicked in at the last second and she just hesitantly nodded, "I don't see that it should be much of a problem."

Without wasting any more time, the two of them headed back into the room. Kathryn made a bee-line for the bed, and fussed with her son's covers for a short while, before deciding that they weren't going to get any more perfect, whilst Chakotay stood awkwardly by the door entrance. Reaching out, she brushed a stray strand of his dark hair to one side before straightening up. "You can take a seat if you want," she said as she glanced back round at him.

Quickly he scanned the room, and headed for the seat that Aaron had been sitting on with Taya. "Aaron said that he would be taking Taya to school tomorrow, Marner's right?"

She looked over at him and frowned for a moment, before she remembered, "no," she replied as she sat on the edge of Ryan's bed, facing him, "Archer's; it's more convenient as it's not too far from where I'm working, or from the boys' high school."

"Oh," he replied, "I'm glad that we had that discussion on where we were going to send our daughter to school, I can see that it really helped!" His voice dripped with sarcasm.

"We had that discussion a year ago Chakotay," she answered angrily, "things have changed a lot since then."

"You know it's not like there isn't sub-space communication to Trobhan," he shot back, "you can't cut me out of my own children's lives!"

"You cut yourself out," she said with a note of finality, but he wasn't finished.

"What happens between us is irrelevant, they're still my children as much as they are yours!"

"You walked out on them," she continued to counter.

"I walked out on you," he replied venomously, "you're the one that changed!"

"It's one thing to move out of the house, but to move four light years away, it's a little far for a man who still wants to be actively involved with his children's lives."

"They could have called any time that they wanted," he insisted, seeing her mouth open to say something on that matter, but cutting her off just in time, "I did make an effort with the boys, but you used your usual tricks of manipulation."

"You left with hardly a word to either of them! They thought- they think that you don't love them anymore," her voice was strained, but then softened, "I can't say that I remained unbiased at the beginning, but I never said anything to make them ignore you as their father."

He stopped at her words, maybe she had a point. "Do you think-" his voice was much more gentle, "think that it's too late?"

She shrugged, "thirty percent chance that it is with Ryan, but nothing's stopping you with Aaron."

The thirty percent chance silenced him for a moment, sending a shiver down his spine as she cooling indicated that there was a thirty percent chance that he would- would what? Never wake up? Die?

"Maybe once this is all over the three of them can come with me to Trobhan," he said optimistically- on many counts.

She paused for a moment, letting out a sigh and nodded, "maybe. You can always ask them."

"And you'd be okay with that?" he couldn't say that he wasn't surprised.

"I can't see why I'd have any objections, providing its during the holidays; they miss enough school as it is accompanying me on some of my work excursions."

"StarFleet lets you take them?" he asked evenly.

She shrugged, "sometimes, but then I am an Admiral now, I more or less make up my own rules half the time."

He smiled slightly, "so how's that going?"

She sighed, "it's perfect because it gives the kids some sort of stability, the boys have been at the same school for some time now, and have good circles of friends. But then a lot of the work is boring and office based."

Chakotay shook his head, "I can't imagining you in an office- day in day out."

The corner of her mouth lifted slightly, before she consciously forced it back down, "I may get transferred soon, there's talk of me going to work on Romulus to assist the ambassador."

"Would it be for long?"

She shrugged, "maybe, maybe not."

"What about the kids? They couldn't go there with you."

"Aaron's talking about joining the academy, so he'd probably stay on Earth. Taya would probably go with me, the Ambassador already has children living there with him at the moment, and apparently hasn't had any large problems. Then Ryan, I've told him that he could chose between staying with his grandmother, and going with me."

"Sounds like you're giving it some serious thought," he noted.

Kathryn looked away from him and back at Ryan, "nothing's definite, and if things don't improve with Ryan then I'll turn down the transfer."

He clasped his hands together, and looked down at his entwined fingers. "But if Ryan does get better, and decides to go with you," he spoke down to the floor, "Romulus is six days travel from Trobhan, I wouldn't be able to leave the site for much more than a week at a time; I'd never get to see them."

"You don't see them anyway as it is," she pointed out.

He looked up at her, and for an instant their gazes met fiercely, before he looked back down at the ground, feeling very awkward. "I shouldn't have let it get as bad as this."

She looked around the room for her coffee cup, before spotting it on a table by the bed. Guessing that it was already cold, she picked it up as she stood, "I'm just going to get some more coffee," she explained, before leaving the room.

Once the doors had closed behind her, Chaktoay sat in his chair, in silence, for a moment longer, before he stood from his seat and moved to sit where Kathryn had been sitting only moments before. He looked down at his son. He looked like he was sleeping. One thing that hadn't seemed to have changed over the years was his son's face as he slept, he could remember the exact same expression being plastered over his face when he was a baby, only this time there was no dream filled twitching of his face, the only indication that it was in fact a coma.

Some markings on Ryan's arm caught his attention, and he saw what he assumed could only be the scars left from the injuries he sustained during the shuttle crash. The monitor by his bed flashed silently as it kept track of his status, and lights danced on the small device stuck on to one side of his forehead. There was a strap attached to his opposite arm, no doubt administering medication steadily into his system from the tube leading off to another device the other side of his bed.

Suddenly he was over whelmed with a pang of regret, of if-onlys- that maybe if he had have been there, he could have prevented the shuttle accident. He'd been over whelmed with such a feeling many times in the past two days- hence the sleepless nights, but this time, having seen his son in person, and seeing him in such a venerable state, the feeling was much worse. On Trobhan, he'd been able to fool himself that he hadn't been away that long, but returning to Earth, eight months later, he started to see the differences and the similarities to his last return to the planet after the Cardassian war.

The faces of the people that he passed in the streets were still as glum and as miserable as when he'd left. The buildings that had been knocked down after that Cardassian attack had still not been rebuilt, but instead a memorial site had been put in place. There was still heavy security every where that he went, still many unnecessary procedures to go through, to get from place to place. The planet and the people hadn't recovered from the war, and already, after only being back four hours, he started to realise that he hadn't really recovered either.

He turned at the sound of the doors opening, and saw Kathryn enter with a fresh mug of coffee. She flashed him a brief smile as he noticed another coffee in her other hand. She made her way over to him, and insisted that he stay where he was when he started to stand. He accepted the coffee that she offered, "thanks," he said sincerely, realising that he needed the beverage after missing so much sleep, and she sat down on the chair he'd been sitting on.

"I'm sorry about earlier," he apologised, "you're right, I shouldn't have moved so far away."

She shook her head, "I think we both needed the space, the kids didn't," she added as an after thought, "but I think we did. The Cardassian war changed a lot of people, it changed us, it changed our relationship, and some of our principles, I don't think we could have worked out the changes together."

He sighed, damn her for being so- he trailed off. So Kathryn. He grinned ironically; some things would never change about her, both good and bad. "Shame it took my dying son to make me realise that I needed to come back," he said bitterly.

"What went wrong?" her voice was barely a whisper.

He gazed across at her, hearing the pain in her voice and shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he said quietly, trying to clear up in his own mind exactly what it was, "I could say that it started as far back as eleven years ago, when the Cardassians attacked my home world. I could say that it was the regret of not joining the Maquis, but I reasoned with myself back then that I would have greater regrets leaving my family. Then I went and did it anyway," he said, gritting his teeth slightly.

She looked up at him, not waiting for her turn to speak, but waiting for some sort of understanding of what had happened.

"No, I think it happened when we were serving aboard Voyager together, when the war broke out," he said, for the first time knowing for certain that it was that moment when war was announced four years previously that had been the cause. "I didn't really notice it at first, but as we got further into the war you started to shut me out more and more. I tried to get you to open up to me, but then after a while I guess I kind of gave up. Then after Tuvok died, and you went on that Cardassian killing frenzy, I saw a side of you that I had never really seen before. I knew that part of you was there, I just didn't expect to see it."

He paused briefly. "And in the last two years of the war, we'd more or less reached a point where we no longer behaved like husband and wife. We were just the commanding officers of a ship, with our crew being our sole priority," he saw he mouth open to say something, but continued before she could, "I'm not saying that it shouldn't have been like that, we made an excellent command team, it's just somewhere we failed to keep a balance. Every argument on the bridge ended up in our bed and when you weren't speaking to your commander, you stopped speaking to your husband. You stopped telling me that you loved me." He paused briefly, "we stopped making love, it just became sex, and only to appease me or to get me to agree with a decision you were about to make."

"It's not like you objected though, is it?" she cut in harshly.

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded, "I'm not saying that it was all your fault Kathryn. There were things that I should have done-" he trailed off before adding, "that I shouldn't have done."

There was a long and painful silence, that seemed to stretch an eternity, Chakotay was the first one to break it. "What happens now?"

She looked at him and frowned.

"I don't want you to go to Romulus," he explained.

"It's not final," she sighed, "but even if it was, we'd work out a way for the kids to get to see you."

"It's not just that," he took a deep breath, "Romulus is too far away, and if you're spending most of your time there, then it means that- it would be too difficult for us to work things out, maybe get back together."

Her head shot up at that, "and what makes you think that there's any chance of the two of us getting back together?"

"We've been married for seventeen years, we have three children together, we can't just give up on that!"

She glared at him, her eyes boring holes into his, "give up? You're the one that walked out."

"And you've already agreed that we needed that space," he insisted.

"Yes," she said exasperatedly, "but a little warning would have been good, instead of me just walking in on you in the bedroom with your bags already packed."

He fell silent, and with him saying nothing more to provoke a retort, she too stayed silent for a while.

"I never stopped loving you," he tried again, "even when we were arguing, or not talking to one another, or when I left, I never st-"

"Chakotay, stop," she shook her head, her expression pained as she looked away from him.

He climbed off the bed and kneeled on the floor in front of her, reaching a hand up to turn her face towards him. He looked at her, and noticed that she had tears in her eyes; she was crying. "What's wrong?" he asked softly, but his question just caused her to cry more heavily, and she looked away from him. "Kathryn, don't shut me out, please."

"It's my fault," she blurted out, still refusing to meet his gaze, "it's my fault that Ryan's in hospital now."

"Your fault?" he asked, confused, "how?"

"He found out that… that I had had a miscarriage, he was angry with me when he ran off and stole the shuttle." She paused and gulped in a large amount of air, "when the medics finally found him, they said that he had come close to alcohol poisoning."

Getting over the knot in his stomach he gently caressed her upper arm, "you can't blame yourself for his actions."

She looked back at him, "you noticed the markings on his arms right?"

He nodded, "from the accident?"

She shook her head, glancing over at his lifeless body, "the doctors think that they're self inflicted- how could I not notice something like that?"

"He's sixteen, you can't be there every hour of every day," he pointed out.

"I should have at least tried," she insisted, "he became moody, and more intolerable than usual when you left, but I didn't even try to help him!"

"Kathryn, don't blame yourself for all of this," he pleaded gently, "I'm the one that started all of this; I'm the one to blame. If I hadn't have left, Ryan would never have done any of that stuff; maybe you wouldn't have miscarried."

She looked a little shocked when he mentioned the miscarriage, having not been completely aware of herself telling him that. Their gazes met for an instant, "it wasn't yours," she replied simply.

"Oh," he didn't have much else to say; he didn't know why he had expected her not to have started dating other men in his absence, except for the fact that there had been no other women for him. He looked down and nodded almost to himself, "this other man- are the two of you still together?"

"It was Brendan- before you ask, and no, we're not," she said as she looked down at him, biting her lip, not entirely sure if she wanted to continue, but decided that he needed to know everything. "I was already a month gone with his child when you left."

His head shot up, and he looked at her for a moment as the words registered with his brain. Slowly, he stood up and moved away from her, shaking his head and turning his back to her. He covered his mouth with his hand, pulling at the skin on his cheeks slightly, with only one thought running through his mind. She had blamed him!

"You-" he turned back round to her, his mouth wavering as his brain thought of something to say, but failing miserably. Suddenly some things started to make sense, the nights when she hadn't bothered returning home for the night; he had thought that she just couldn't bare to be anywhere near him, but she had been with him! He had gone to her office on several occasions, to surprise her with flowers or take her out for lunch, and he had always been there. He had just assumed that they were working on something together, but now he realised that they had been having an affair. Then there had been the week away that she had told him StarFleet was ordering her on, and he had called up her secretary who hadn't seemed to known anything about it.

"How long were you having an affair with him?"

She bit her lip, "four months, before you left, then another three after you'd gone."

He sucked in a breath, sure, the problems had started well before then, but that didn't mean that she had any right to cheat on him. "For the past eight months," he started in a louder voice than was totally necessary, "I've been thinking that there was something wrong with me! I mean, what kind of guy leaves his wife and children; his four year old daughter, just because things are getting a little tough. And then there's you, fucking one of my best friends, blaming me for all of our problems."

"It wasn't like that," she strained, standing from her seat.

He shook his head, "I don't need this right now," he held up a hand, "I'm going to check myself into a hotel, I'll be in tomorrow morning to see how my son's doing."

With no further exchange of words, he left the hospital room, knowing that if he stayed they would just end up in a shouting match.

End of part 1