CHAPTER 3 – Husband #1

Q and Kathryn appeared on a tropical-desert beach, at what looked to be the end of the day. Q had changed from his mock-captain's uniform, and was now clad in a Hawaiian shirt and matching shorts with a horrible blue and orange pattern. He had a thick coating of sunscreen pasted on the end of his nose, and a wide-brimmed straw hat perched atop his head. Kathryn, however, was still in her standard Starfleet attire.

Rolling, crystal-clear blue water drifted effortlessly up and lapped at the shore. Beachgoers were packing up their belongings for the evening. The sun, hanging low in the sky, cast a near-perfect sunset.

Kathryn looked to Q. "Where are we?"

"You should know; look around."

As she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, the smell of sand and salt overwhelmed her senses. Moisture from the seawater permeated every pore. "Aruba," she said finally. "I was here once. With-" Her eyes sprang open.

"Wiiiith…" Q waved his hand in a grand gesture of encouragement.

"Justin," she finished.

"Ah, si. Fiancé numero uno."

"Why are we here, Q?" she asked, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable.

"We're honored guests. Come this way." Q took her by the wrist and pulled her across the beach. He walked almost more quickly than she could keep up, and her feet stumbled underneath her, twisting in the deep, fine sand. They were headed for a large grouping of palm trees.

"Slow down, let me go!" she shouted at him.

"Well, hurry up, then!" he admonished her like an impatient child. "We're going to miss the best part."

Pressing through the closely growing palms, they entered into a secluded, clearly private section of beach. White chairs were lined in short rows and filled with about twenty-odd people. Kathryn recognized some of them. Her mother was there, her uncle and cousin too, all seated in the front row. Some friends that she hadn't seen in years filled out the middle. At the front was a rustically constructed arch covered in soft, tropical flowers. Her sister Phoebe stood at the end of the aisle and two men, their backs to her, were there as well.

Kathryn's breath caught at the sight. "What…what is this? A wedding?"

"We should call you Captain Obvious," Q quipped.

He led her to the back row of chairs and pushed her shoulder down so she would sit in one.

"I don't understand. I know these people."

"Shhhh….It's going to start."

Q turned to face away from the beach and toward the back of the ceremony. Moments later a violinist took up playing a familiar tune.

Janeway gasped as she saw herself, a much younger version of herself, walking arm in arm with none other than her father. The doppelganger was wearing a simple off-white dress which flowed easily in the breeze. She carried a small bouquet which matched the flowers in her hair.

Kathryn shot a look back at Q and then, out of the corner of her eye, saw a sight that made her stomach lurch. At the front of the makeshift altar was Justin. Dressed in a pale blue shirt and straight-ironed pants, he had an almost angelic smile on his face. Kathryn noticed the hint of a tear in his eye, and she saw him mouth "I love you" to the woman walking down the aisle.

"Take me back Q," she said sternly. "Get me out of here."

"Don't you want to hear their vows? They're really quite lovely," he replied.

Her double was nearly to the officiant and the waiting hands of her betrothed, but Kathryn couldn't bear to bring herself to look.

"Now Q!"

"Oh fine." Q raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

In an instant, she was back in her quarters.

Kathryn was irate. "That!?" She shouted at him. "That's what you wanted me to see?" Sadness and pain swept across her face. "Why? Why on Earth would you show me that?"

"That's only part of what you need to see Kathy. You didn't stay to the end."

"What, were you going to show me how blissfully happy I was with my fiancé—no my husband—and my father with me? Is this the timeline where I'm a botanist or some such nonsense? Did I have children, are you going to show me them too?" She yelled, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger.

"As a matter-of-fact, no. You didn't have children. You wanted them, but this one ends very similar to the other."

"How?" She shook her head with anger. "How did is this timeline possible Q? Justin and my father died. I watched them. This… this sham of a wedding you just showed me. It never happened."

"It didn't happen in your timeline," he replied. "But it did happen to the Kathryn who made a different decision."

Kathryn stopped dead in her tracks. "A different decision…."

Q nodded, his expression coaxing along her train of thought.

She paused. "I almost didn't go on that shuttle mission," she said, realization sinking in. "It's something I've regretted, thought about since the accident."

Q made a waving motion with his hand for her to continue.

"You're telling me—no you're showing me—that if I had made the choice to stay home, they would have been alright."

Q's face broke into a wide grin. "Bingo."

Kathryn slumped into a chair and ran her hands through her hair. "I thought… I thought you said that I was the one making the right decisions."

"You are."

"Then why show me that? Why show me how happy I could have been?"

"You didn't let me fin-ish," he replied, much like a frustrated child who had been pulled away from a toy. "So I'll just have to tell you how that particular story ends. Your father would have died two years later, sickly, in a hospital bed. You wouldn't have been there, it wouldn't have changed you the way that it did in this life."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the pain you went through after they died changed you Kathy. You know it did."

"Of course it changed me. Their deaths devastated me. There still isn't a day that goes by…"

"I know, I know. But, if you hadn't gone on that trip—if they had survived—then you wouldn't have transferred to command. You would have been married. You would have wanted a family, and safety. You would have remained a science officer. Voyager would have left with someone else in your chair."

"Good for Voyager," she said. "Maybe that captain could have made the decision I didn't. He probably didn't destroy the Caretaker's array. Are you going to tell me now that without me they would never have been stranded in the Delta Quadrant? That would be the icing on your cake, wouldn't it?"

"The Maquis died on the day Voyager arrived," Q interjected. "All of them. Chuckles, that ridge-head of an engineer, all thirty-five of them because the other captain didn't trust them enough to save them."

Kathryn froze.

"Want to know what happened to Voyager?"

"No."

"Without you, Mr. Paris would have remained incarcerated. As circumstance would have it, your husband would have been at the helm. Justin was a good pilot, but we both know he's no Mr. Paris. He was unable to out-maneuver the Kazon vessels and Voyager was boarded three days into the journey."

Kathryn looked up in shock as Q continued. "They were all tortured and executed. Slowly. And the technology from the ship, from your ship, gave the Kazon-Ogla an edge. They destroyed the other factions and became the most horrific, tyrannical destroyers of that side of the Delta Quadrant."

Kathryn closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. It didn't happen that way, she reminded herself. Little did she know, this phrase would become her mantra over the course of the long night that lay ahead.

"Every choice had a consequence, Kathy. That's what I am trying to show you, if you'll just let me."