AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

We're slowly making progress, and I'm really excited for getting to know our characters better and seeing them in different situations. You should know that I'm back to work and taking a class, so I'll write when I have the chance!

If you're familiar with Voyager, then you should probably know that I'm like an episode pirate. I may use bits, pieces, and ideas from episodes, but I probably won't follow any of them exactly. I'll also make up plenty of my own stuff as we go along. Please don't expect things to follow the show, exactly, in any way.

That being said, I do hope you enjoy! I thank you all for reading and reviewing. Some of your comments are really making my day(s)! Let me know what you think of the chapter!

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"Come in."

When Chakotay heard the familiar words, he stepped into Kathryn's ready room. She was leaned on her elbow, studying something on her computer screen. Beside her, there was a half-finished cup of coffee. Her hand rested on the handle like she was prepared to drink from the cup as soon as she remembered that's what she'd been doing.

When she saw Chakotay, she smiled radiantly and immediately got to her feet—abandoning coffee and all. She walked around her desk to close the distance between them.

Chakotay couldn't help but smile to himself. Her eyes positively shone when she was excited about something, and it always made him want to smile when he saw it.

"Well? Did you get our guests settled?" Kathryn asked.

"They are in their quarters," Chakotay said. "I just came down to get their combadges." He held out his hand to show her the two badges in his palm.

"What'd they say about their quarters?" Kathryn asked.

"Nothing, really," Chakotay said. "They both seem to be fans of looking out the window."

"For them, seeing space must be so very overwhelming for the first time," Kathryn said. There was enough awe in her voice that Chakotay could almost imagine that she was jealous of them. Kathryn loved adventure.

"Carol is a fan of coffee, so you'll have plenty to talk about," Chakotay said.

"Oh—I'll have to invite her to coffee one day," Kathryn said. "So, you're taking their combadges and then?"

"I'm taking them to the mess hall," Chakotay said. "To get them something to eat. Daryl is suspicious of the replicator. I'm afraid that—if I don't show them where to get food, he might starve out of suspicion."

Kathryn laughed and then her laugh dissolved into a sound of disappointment.

"Oh—I wish I had time to go with you to dinner," she said. "I'd love to sit and talk to them. Get to know more about them. Hear what their lives were like." She walked quickly around her desk again and then sat down at her computer. She held a finger up to him—a sign to wait. He'd stand there however long she liked. "The long-range sensors are clear and I took a break from reading logs. I've been reading about the Millennium Plague. The Araulians took us to the time period that started what our histories call the Era of New Life. Isn't that poetic?"

Chakotay laughed to himself.

She looked at him with expectation. She looked at him, practically, with stars in her eyes. She loved to learn things. Sometimes, he told her stories that his father had told him just to see her looking at him with that expression for the duration of the tale.

Right then, he wished he could think of anything to say to her that would sound half as poetic, to her ears, as the Era of New Life.

Chakotay smiled at her and leaned on her desk. The combadges could wait. Daryl and Carol, after all, probably needed some processing time before Chakotay took them into the hustle and bustle of a busy mess hall.

"It's very poetic. I don't know too many details about the era. I'm familiar with the basics of the Millennium Plague," Chakotay said. "An outbreak caused by a mutated virus that was the result of an experiment gone wrong."

"A botched attempt to create immortality," Kathryn said, more as a musing than as a way to finish what Chakotay had started. "If history is correct," Kathryn continued, and Chakotay understood full well that history may not be entirely accurate about that time period, "and the data recorded by our sensors is correct, then they were just at the start of the Era of New Life. It would have lasted approximately another ten years before the first major cities were constructed, the power grids were online, and people were starting to register with the census. Those like Daryl and Carol—who were in it since the beginning and weren't born during the Plague Years? They would have spent between twenty and twenty-five years of their lives in a world practically lost in time."

Chakotay smiled.

"And now they really are lost in time," Chakotay said. "And very much outside of the world as they knew it."

"I wondered if we'd see the reverberations of this in some way," Kathryn said. "The disappearance of two long-term survivors. I ran a scan to see if I could find any information on Daryl or Carol Dixon."

"I'm guessing that they weren't the heads of one of the major cities or anything like that," Chakotay said. "Otherwise we might have felt some of the effects even now."

"Nothing," Kathryn said. She shook her head. "They don't show up on any census."

"Well—it's for the better," Chakotay said. "It means that their loss will be minimal."

"I've only just met them," Kathryn said. "But now that I know their faces, I hate to think of them dying out there, alone somewhere."

Chakotay smiled at her. His chest ached because he could feel how much she was feeling. She was a wonderful captain, but one of the things that made her such a wonderful captain was that she was very empathetic. She made hard choices—and he'd already seen her make quite a few—and she took the consequences of those choices. But she felt everything very deeply.

Chakotay hoped he wasn't imagining it because he wanted to think she felt as close to him as he felt to her—because he wouldn't dare to ask her how she felt about him—but he thought she showed her emotions more freely with him than she did with anyone else.

And he wanted to make her feel better—even if her heart was only aching for what had happened in an alternate time that was now disrupted.

He walked around her desk and rested his hand on her shoulder as a show of comfort. She didn't shake it off, and she didn't reprimand him for the affection. Instead, she reached her hand up and patted his.

"They didn't die out there alone, Kathryn," Chakotay said. "Even if they had—even in the version of history where, maybe, they died—they didn't die alone. They would've have been together until the end. They would have gone together." Kathryn smiled at him. Her features lit up with this alternate explanation of a reality that no longer existed.

"You think so?" She asked.

Chakotay nodded.

"I'm sure of it," he said. "And—maybe they didn't die in the Millennium Plague. Maybe the thought of returning to—to something like what they'd know before no longer appealed to them. Twenty something years is a long time. Maybe they just—settled somewhere outside of the majorly populated areas and just lived out their lives."

"Together," Kathryn finished.

"Together," Chakotay agreed.

"Oh—that's very romantic," she said. There was a slight upward lift in her eyebrow. Chakotay didn't know if there was a hint of teasing there, but he knew that she really did enjoy the sweetness of the thought. He patted her shoulder and pulled his hand away.

He never liked to linger too long. It was better not to focus too long on what you wanted, but would probably never have.

He cleared his throat to cover over the tightness that formed there at the simple thought of having a life that was as romantic as the one they'd just imagined.

"It doesn't matter anyway," Chakotay said. "They're alive now. Their history will be different."

"I looked for their children," Kathryn said. "But there are so many Dixons than any of these could be their children or grandchildren."

"They don't have any children, remember?" Chakotay asked. "Daryl said they died."

"They could have had more children," Kathryn said.

Chakotay nodded.

For whatever reason, he could see that it was important to her that they get their happy ending and absolutely anything that might entail.

"They might have," Chakotay said.

"But now they'll just—disappear," Kathryn said. "By now their children wouldn't even be showing up in our databases, would they? Vanished from history."

"But history that can be rewritten one way can be rewritten another," Chakotay offered. "Now the history of the Dixons left behind after the Millennium Plague may be different, but so will the history of the Dixons who travelled aboard Voyager from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant."

Kathryn laughed to herself.

"It's fun to imagine," Kathryn said. "Still—I do wish I was going with you to dinner. I can't wait for them to meet Neelix. He'll adore them, and I can't wait to see their reaction to him."

"Hopefully he at least serves them something edible," Chakotay said. "I really should get them an early dinner and return them back to their quarters as quickly as possible. I need to return to duty."

"Long-range sensors show nothing," Kathryn said. "You're on duty. You've simply been reassigned. Don't rush them through dinner. Take your time with them."

"Then why don't you join us?" Chakotay asked.

"I'm on duty," Kathryn said.

"You just said that long-range sensors are clear," Chakotay said. "And you just identified helping them get adjusted as duty. Why can't you do your duty just as efficiently from the mess hall as you can from your ready room?"

Kathryn sighed.

"Because I really need to stop reading about the Millennium Plague…and stop trying to predict how our little blunder with the Araulians is going to impact Earth's history…long enough to finish reading these reports. If I don't, I'll be up to my ears in reports and I'll have a half a dozen angry crewmembers waiting on replies about one thing or another." She hesitated a moment like she might change her mind, but then she sighed and shook her head before she reached for a PADD with some defeat. "No—I've got to finish this."

"Fine," Chakotay ceded, his own stomach twisting with disappointment for her. He knew, though, that if he offered to do some of her work for her, she'd just decline the offer with some speech about how a captain's life had to be nothing but work and unhappiness—even if she'd choose to use different words. "I tell you what. What if I were to take them to get something light to eat? Take them on a tour of the ship. And then they could meet you this evening for a private meal. A dinner or—or coffee—with the captain."

Kathryn's eyes lit up again and she put the PADD down for a moment where she'd been staring at the first page of a report. She smiled at him.

"That would be wonderful," she said. "We could have drinks and dinner in my cabin."

Chakotay nodded, pleased to see her smile again.

"I'll drop them off after your shift. Does 1900 hours sound good?" Chakotay asked.

"Perfect," Kathryn said. "Except—you won't drop them off. You'll stay and have dinner and drinks with us."

"You might want some time to get to know them alone," Chakotay offered, his heart kicking up a beat at the simple invitation to spend a little more time in her presence.

"I won't hear about it," Kathryn said. "You'll stay. Dinner and drinks. Besides—I want your opinion."

"On anything in particular?" Chakotay asked.

"Duty assignments," Kathryn said. "Carol and Daryl come from a time period where their every moment would have been occupied. Sitting still is going to be very difficult for them. The sooner they have something to do, the sooner they'll really start to acclimate. I was thinking we could talk to them. Figure out where they might be well-suited. Get them out to do a few shifts to see what they like. What they're good at."

Chakotay smiled at her.

"I'll be happy to help you come up with some ideas, Captain," he assured her. "Now—you need to get back to those reports so you're not tempted to cancel dinner. You don't want to disappoint our guests on their first evening here. And I'm going to take them their combadges. We might want to mute them for a while. I have a feeling they'll be using them a great deal just for the novelty of it."

Kathryn laughed to herself.

"Let them," she said. "The ship could use a little entertainment."