VII
Janeway
It takes her four hours to work up the nerve to read the message she receives from Seven.
Nursing an iced coffee on the balcony of the guestroom in Tuvok and T'Pel's home, a red-gold canyon laid bare before her, various scenarios skitter through her mind. Maybe Seven is writing to call her out, rightly, on her neglectfulness. Maybe she's ill, or in trouble. Maybe they're giving her a hard time at Command, or wherever she is now. Maybe – maybe she and Chakotay are getting married. Maybe they want her to officiate, as she must have done in another timeline.
She stops herself there. Chakotay, at least, would never ask that of her now. He knows what he's done, even if Seven doesn't.
Except, she does. Seven's message reads, in its entirety, "I did not realize," and is signed Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01. Kathryn wouldn't have been able to parse it except for that sign-off, which is how Seven retreats from emotional declarations that leave her otherwise vulnerable.
She sighs. Her respite couldn't last, of course, but when she thinks of reaching out to anyone beyond the boundaries of this desert Eden, she feels exhausted. Vulcan has been restorative in ways she would have never expected. A welcome sense of calm blankets her like the arid heat, eases into her bones, quiets her riotous thoughts. Crewless, missionless, she hasn't found her purpose yet, but she has, perhaps, found herself again, or anew.
When Tuvok, himself restored by family and home, finds her curled up with these thoughts a while later, she tells him everything he's never asked her. She's sure he has guessed a fair amount, but she starts – where else? – with New Earth, and works her way up to her near-death experience; the letter from Mark; the slip-stream drive or, rather, the night before it; Chakotay's crazy gene and her breathless fear for him; all the unspoken things, her hand on his chest, his hands clasping hers, the long looks. The hope, and the void it left behind.
"In the future – in the Admiral's future," she tells Tuvok, because the Temporal Prime Directive can go to hell, "Chakotay and Seven were married. But Seven died. He was never the same, she said. She came back… Tuvok, she came back to give them a second chance. What kind of friend would I be to stand in the way of that? What kind of person would I be?"
Tuvok absorbs this information placidly, giving nothing away of what he may or may not have previously deduced. "Your theory, then, is that their relationship is somehow fated?" he asks mildly. "Because Admiral Janeway shared your same sense of self-sacrifice?" She feels herself redden a little. When he puts it that way, it sounds juvenile and unnuanced, which she knows is his point. He doesn't give her a chance to object, forging onward. "How will you respond to Seven's message?" he asks. Not will you, but how. And as he lays a rare steadying hand on her shoulder, she knows that he is right, as ever.
"You told me once that there was no one on Voyager you trusted more than Commander Chakotay," Seven says through the comm screen. "I did not fully appreciate, then, what you meant."
Kathryn holds her breath while she considers her response. In deciding to speak with Seven she had also resolved to be entirely truthful with her, intuiting that Chakotay had not been. Seven deserves better from both of them. So.
"You weren't supposed to," she decides to say, after a beat. "We were… I couldn't have done my job if Chakotay and I had become involved. Our feelings were," she chuckles darkly, "irrelevant. There was nothing we could do about the way we felt."
"But you had an understanding," Seven says, and it's not a question. Kathryn wishes she could spare them both the indignity of her honest answer.
"I… thought we did. I was operating under that assumption, yes. At some point, I suppose, he let me go without my noticing." It's a difficult admission to make. She forces herself to continue, having sworn that she would say this next part no matter what else happened in the conversation. "But, Seven, it doesn't matter. I didn't – I never spoke with him about it, after we got home, because your happiness is paramount. I would never jeopardize it. You deserve to have a normal life." The dire events of the Admiral's timeline, narrowly avoided, hang between them across subspace.
To her surprise, Seven visibly softens.
"Captain, I… I find it challenging to articulate what your support has meant to me since you freed me from the Collective. Suffice to say, I have noted your absence far more than I have benefitted from his presence since our arrival on Earth. As Naomi Wildman would say, we are… family. And –," she hesitates, seeming to choose her next words carefully, "And, if my experiences with Axum taught me anything, it is that some sacrifices are too great. If they can be at all avoided."
Kathryn is floored. She opens her mouth to speak, falters, closes her mouth again. She lifts her hands in a helpless gesture and says, finally, "Thank you, Seven."
The atmosphere lightens considerably, then. Kathryn asks Seven how she's been occupying her time otherwise, and Seven invites Kathryn to visit her at her new apartment. Seven's been in touch with the Doctor, who is in his element at Jupiter Station; Kathryn sends photos of Miral and laughs as Seven tries and fails to find a diplomatic way to describe the infant as something other than wrinkled and odd. Kathryn confesses, aloud for the first time, that she is considering staying on Vulcan. After longing for the plains of Indiana for seven years, she is taken aback by the rightness of the desert. Seven considers her for a long moment, and then says in an inscrutable tone and with the slightest of smiles, "I, too, believe that it suits you."