Post-Endgame, like just immediately post.

She still couldn't believe they had done it. They'd burst through the trans-warp hub back into a Quadrant they hadn't seen in 7 years. Then they attempted to re-enter lives that had been put on hold, rearranged, stopped, started, and transformed. It was exhilarating. And exhausting.

She'd spent the first 72 hours they'd been back in communication with StarFleet lobbying and haranguing and threatening and cajoling to ensure that every member of her crew was given the treatment that they deserved, whether they be Maquis, Equinox, hologram, Borg, or StarFleet. After at last receiving official assurances and official notifications of the statuses of each and every crewmember, she drank an entire bottle of champagne and slept for 13 hours. And she hadn't even had a chance to disembark yet.

That came soon after, amid press conferences and ceremonies. It was a whirlwind and it was glorious. Then everything slowed down. Crew members scattered, coming back to wrap up system repairs and analysis and reports. Most of the senior officers had stayed close, needing to be on site as analyses took place. Paris was barely tolerating anyone handling the Delta Flyer and Torres was not any better with her engines. It turned out almost every member of the crew was overly protective, even sentimental, about the machinery that had been home for so long. Janeway couldn't blame them.

She had been sitting in her office responding to a multitude of messages, requests, and repair schedules when she got a frantic call over the comm from B'Elanna. "Captain! I need you in Engineering." There was a pause. "If you can spare a moment, ma'am." She offered the last bit in case she was interrupting.

"On my way," she replied, jumping up and almost running to the turbo lift. There was only one crewmember at the Tactical station on the bridge who barely glanced up as she hurried through. "Aren't you still supposed to be on Medical Leave, Torres?" She asked through the comm, half in jest, half in concern.

"Yes." Her reply was irritated and almost bitter. "But we have a situation." There was the sound of some scuffling and then a "Stop! Don't touch that...so help me Kahless...brig...".

What in the world was happening down there? she thought. There were no major maintenance updates being done.

"Janeway to Chakotay" she asked via the comm. It couldn't hurt to have a little extra help.

"Here Captain," came the reply.

"Can you meet me in Engineering?"

"On my way. Anything of concern?"

"I'm not sure yet," she replied.

Entering Main Engineering, Janeway found the skeleton crew frantically working at workstations, with yellow lights flashing, a soft alarm chiming. There were two unfamiliar Ensigns in yellow uniforms standing sheepishly in the corner.

"Torres! Report!" The words were out of her mouth before the doors had closed behind her. She hurried to the console where B'Elanna was frantically trying to get things under control.

"These two," she jerked her head at the unfortunate Ensigns in the corner, "came on board under the order of some idiotic Admiral who told them to remove two of the isothermic bioconverters that were adapted with the Borg components." She gave them a look of absolute derision. "And they did. Without checking with anyone. And now the whole engine is about to overload because we can't get them back online fast enough to keep the energy discharge down."

Understanding immediately, she commed Tuvok to come immediately to Engineering as she took over the second terminal and started rapidly trying to align the converters back to working order. She cast a disparaging glance at the two young officers who seemed to shrink into the bulkhead even further.

"You should have immediately reported to the senior officer on board before trying a move like that," she chastised them as her fingers flew over the console. "You're going to be responsible to blowing the engines of a ship that just spent 7 years traveling 70,000 light years to get home. If this engine blows, I'll personally throw you in the brig, or whatever's left of it."

"We...The admiral gave strict orders...no delay...", they stammered.

"It was a breech of protocol and the Admiral knows that. You should have too. Now you know why we have protocols and that even Admirals shouldn't be bending the rules." The irony wasn't lost on her. Or on Torres, who shot her a side-eyed glance from her own console. They shared a small half-smile.

"Computer, restrict all access to ALL computer systems to anyone not on the Voyager crew list without verbal confirmation from myself or Commander Chakotay. Set an alert to notify me if anyone not on the crew manifest comes aboard."

'Acknowledged,' came the computers reply.

"This ends now," she muttered to herseld. "I'll be damned if this ship will be torn apart by blithering ignoramuses who don't bother to learn the systems first." She said it in explanation to no one.

To the two Ensigns, Torres snarled as the console below her started to smoke "The last officer who tried to do something like that to these engines ended up with a broken nose. You should probably thank the Captain that she got here before you got the same." The last half was said half-under her breath but they all heard it.

One of them made a sound of derision, a huff of contempt and B'Elanna spun around to glare at him. "I've been holding this engine together with spit, glue, and profanity for 7 years and you think you can just show up and disassemble it without knowing how these parts work? Hell, you can't even NAME half of these parts."

"Captain, I've almost got it but that console is about to blow," she half-yelled, coming towards the Captain, whose fingers were still flying over the console trying to compensate. Seeing what she meant on the screen, Janeway gave Torres a shove back away from her that sent the Klingon flying across the room just as the console sparked and a wave of energy blasted out, sending the slender Captain crashing to the floor as smoke filled the room.

B'Elanna glanced at the from of the Captain, prone on the ground unconscious with blood coming from a cut over her eye. She lay motionless. Torres took 20 seconds to finish at her console, which immediately whirred the alarms into silence, returned the lighting to normal, and restarted the hum of the engine. As she dropped to the ground in front of the Captain with a scanner, Tuvok and Chakotay entered. Kathryn Janeway lay on her back, slightly twisted onto one side, her left leg folded under her. Her uniform jacket was singed and slightly melted. There was a rip on one arm. Her skin was blackened on one side of her face and there was a bleeding wound on that cheek. Her eyes were closed but they could all see her chest rise and fall faintly.

"Engineering to SickBay. The Captain's been injured. We need a transport to you now," Torres ordered. As the Captain dematerialized in front of them in a blue haze, B'Elanna sat back onto her heels and sighed. She pushed a hand to her forehead to brush back her hair and looked up at Tuvok and Chakotay with a look of disbelief. "She pushed me away from the console," she said. "I tried to warn her that it was going to overload and she didn't move, she pushed me out of the way." She was trying to make sense of it, and slowly things clicked into place. The Captain knew that it was going to overload, and she kept B'Elanna away from it, trying to complete the task until the last possible minute. She glanced up at Chakotay and understanding crossed his features. She saw his jaw clench and him swallow hard. He hadn't even asked how the Captain was. Normally wild horses couldn't keep Chakotay out of SickBay when the Captain was there. Their arrival into the Alpha Quadrant had changed every reality this crew was sure of. But she knew Chakotay well enough to see the flash of panic in his eyes and read the worry in his stance.

"Aren't you on Medical Leave?" Chakotay asked abruptly.

"YES! At least I'm supposed to be, if idiotic ensigns would stop trying to destroy my ship," she declared.

"Perhaps you can begin from the beginning?" Tuvok asked in a calm fashion. He was, as usual, the only person in the room who wasn't roiling with emotion. B'Elanna in anger, the Ensigns in fear and anxiety, and Chakotay in a flat out panic that he was trying to not let anyone see.

B'Elanna quickly recounted the story to them, finishing with "The Captain restricted access to the ship to only previous crew members, so there are about to be a lot of pissed off brass coming your way."

"Indeed," Tuvok replied.

"In addition," Chakotay added, "we need to decide what to do with them," he gestures to the two cowering officers, and whichever officer sent them."

"Throw them in the Brig for all I care, but I suggest we get them off the ship before the Captain regains consciousness...for their own safety," Torres replied.

"You, Ensign..." Chakotay addressed one of them.

"Ensign Sineth, Sir," he replied.

"Which Admiral ordered you here?" he demanded.

"Admiral Brock, sir," was the reply.

Chakotay and Tuvok exchanged a look of agreement. "Ensigns," Tuvok started. "You will accompany me to the Transporter room. You are to transport back to the station, report to Admiral Brock, tell him what occurred here, including the considerable restraint of Lieutenant Torres in not disciplining you in person, and tell him to expect a communication from Captain Janeway or her representative as soon as she regains consciousness. Under no circumstance are you, or he, to return to Voyager at any time. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," they stammered. As Tuvok gestured to escort them out, one of them, the one who had huffed at her earlier commented under his breath "I wonder what happened to the poor sap who let her break his nose?" he joked derisively.

B'Elanna, who had clearly heard what he had said jumped to her feet and intercepted him before he left the room. "Chakotay?" she called.

"Torres?" he replied in question.

"Am I definitely off duty right now? I'm definitely on Medical Leave, and definitely NOT completing a duty shift, correct?" She asked, hoping he would understand.

Chakotay didn't fully understand, but did know his old friend well enough to know she was about to do something very unbecoming a StarFleet Officer. "Definitely, Lieutenant," he replied. He watched as she stomped up to the Ensign who had picked up his pace to get across the room following Tuvok when B'Elanna stepped him front of him and swung her fist into his face.

"Joe Carey was definitely NOT a poor sap. He was the finest of officers and a good man," she said simply. She left the man fingering his nose with tears and blood running down his face as he hurried after Tuvok, who had not stopped to watch her intervention.

Chakotay had stood, silent, tall and dark and angry. His presence intimidating but quiet. He and B'Elanna watched Tuvok escort the young men out of Engineering. He gave the room a once over and nodded to the remaining crew patching up Engineering. "I'll be in SickBay," he said. "Call me if there are any problems."

Chakotay gave his old friend a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. He turned and hurried out the door. B'Elanna thought this was strange, his silent reaction, and letting Tuvok take charge. She wasn't sure what sparked this reaction, this lack of emotion from Chakotay. She mulled over this as she put Engineering back to rights with the help of a couple officers.

Not quite an hour later she was hurrying down to Sickbay. Her body was making her VERY aware that she had just had a baby, and that said baby hadn't eaten in a while.

She hurried in the doors and made a beeline for the Doctor's office, where he had been keeping an eye on Miral while she put out fires, literally it turns out, in Engineering. The baby was asleep in a small cot but was stirring. She grabbed the baby and settled into the chair in the Doctor's office.

She watched from behind the window as the Doctor treated the Captain. She was awake and moving, much to the consternation of the doctor. Chakotay stood to one side talking quietly to her, probably trying to get her to stop moving. B'Elanna smiled to herself at the familiarity of the situation. She watched as Tom moved back and forth between the Biobed and the medical console following the Doctors orders. She settled back with the baby at her breast to watch the dance in front of her.

—————

"Captain, if you would just stop moving-" The Doctor's hand went to her chest to push her back down onto the biobed. "I could finish this scan and treatment and discharge you."

Janeway sighed as she flopped back down. "Doctor?" Chakotay asked from her side.

The doctor shook his head in consternation. "She has a concussion, a fractured Zygomatic arch, a full thickness laceration to her forehead, plasma burns to the chest and arm and a shock wave pneumothorax. She'll be fine...IF she let's me fix it. She is completely unreasonable. If I hadn't spent the past 7 years patching her up after one emergency after another, I would think that the concussion was affecting her critical thinking processes." He gave her a disparaging glance. "But since I DO know her, I can tell it is just her familiar obstinate nature." The Captain glared at him an icy stare.

"Captain," Chakotay ordered with a hand on her shoulder. "Lie still." The command was soft but firm, and for some reason Janeway listened to it. Whether she just was too fatigued from fighting, or finally saw sense, or something else, the Doctor didn't know. He didn't care really, as long as she let him finish the lifesaving treatments and start on the more cosmetic ones.

Tom Paris, however, was a little more interested. The pilot was a keen observer of people, and he'd spent a lot of time over the past 7 years observing the officers in front of him. He couldn't put a finger on it, but the dynamic had changed since they'd entered the Alpha Quadrant. He'd been watching them carefully to try and figure out what it was, but there had been no giveaways, no tells, no behavior out of the ordinary for him to fall back on just a different...energy. There were no actions from either officer to send a message. But it was interesting. And this interaction in sick back confirmed it. It wasn't a scientific study. There were too many unknown variables. It was impossible to know if the changes were because of their hasty arrival to the Alpha Quadrant or something else. B'Elanna thought he was crazy, or at least she had until she'd seen Chakotay's strange reaction in engineering. She was sure Chakotay wouldn't, that he couldn't, couldnt possibly, keep anything like what Tom was theorizing from her. She'd known about Seska within about 30 seconds of being in their presence. With all of Chakotay's previous conquests, he was as transparent as a person could get when he was in love, or at least in infatuation. And there had been many of those in their olden days. She saw no reason to think things would be different now. They both might be less angry, but other personality traits ran deeper.

The Doctor finished up the more delicate of the procedures and helped the Captain, or rather allowed her, to move to a sitting position while he finished the simpler repairs to her broken body. Chakotay stood by silently like a sentinel. Tom cleared out the tools they'd used and brought them to the recycler before heading into the office to join his wife and baby daughter. He leaned up against the desk and smiled at the sight.

"She's going to be fine," he told her. "A moderate pneumothorax, some burns, and another concussion. A console overloaded?" he asked, knowing there had to be a bigger reason his newly post-partum wife was dealing with catastrophes in Engineering so soon after their arrival.

She shook her head and filled him in on the misdirected Ensigns, not leaving out the punch she'd thrown in defense of Joe Carey. "He was a good man," Tom said, taking in the beautiful sight of his small family, safe and secure in the Alpha Quadrant and thanking his lucky stars they were all here.

Back on the biobed, the Doctor finished his ministrations and stepped away, letting Chakotay step closer. He moved around from the head of the biobed to the side, standing in front of her. He placed a large hand on her slim shoulder, almost covering it completely, fingering the burned tear in the sleeve. "Kathryn," he whispered in a choked voice.

"I'm fine," she whispered back.

"I know. But it was so close," he choked out again. "After so many years, I finally let down my guard thinking we are safe docked at McKinley Station and some hapless ensign almost kills you." His reaction upon entering engineering and seeing this woman unconscious on the ground was total disbelief, as if he was existing in an alernative reality. The idea that something dangerous could happen to her now, after everything they had been through, defied his comprehension. He couldn't even force his body or mind to react. He now felt the post-adrenaline crash hit him hard and he tried to stop himself from clinging to her in desperation.

She gave him a small smile and let her head hang forward, her chin almost to her chest, in acknowledgement of the irony, and the fear, that he must have felt. Thinking they were alone in Sickbay, the Doctor having moved to the other room, Chakotay faced her and let his forehead fall onto hers. The both sighed with their eyes closed in silent recognition of what they had almost lost. His hands came up on either side of her and his touch ran slightly up both arms until he cradled her face in his hands with familiarity. His thumbs traced her angled cheekbones under her eyes as his pupils met hers. They dilated in response. His hands slid to the back of her head where her hairline met her slender neck and his lips dropped down to meet hers softly. It was a kiss of knowledge, and reassurance. Not demanding, not full of flame and desire. She slipped her tongue between his lips and his flicked out to meet hers gently. He gently sucked on her lower lip as the kiss broke off slowly. She rested her forehead on his chest and he let his chin sit on the top of her head.

They both froze as they heard a choked noise come from the doorway. Neither wanted to move to alert the person who made noise that they were aware and uncomfortable or give the impression they were doing something elicit. Speaking without moving a muscle, Chakotay, who had his back to where the noise came from, murmured "Who is it?"