A/n: I'm so sorry for my lack of updates for the past few weeks, I strained my back and couldn't sit at the computer for long at a time. So this chapter has taken me much longer than usual to type out.
Also, I've moved this story' rating up to M to cover a single use of strong language in this chapter. I don't usually use it, but I felt it fit the situation if not the context of the TV show. I do not own said TV show, Star Trek: Voyager.
It seemed like Harry's eyes were the last to lift from his console to the open turbolift doors. The Bridge was a constant fishbowl, the only place where most people got to watch their officers in close quarters for a shift at a time. In a crew whose isolation had fostered as much disenfranchisement at times as it had fierce loyalty, after all no one could complain to the greater Starfleet authorities any more than they could transfer out, studying the senior officers, often described by their more mulish underlings as a clique, was the sole avenue they had for anticipating the direction of the decisions that defined their lives as well as their roles. Whether the Captain and Chakotay were chatty or reserved with each other, if Tuvok was called into the Ready Room multiple times to advise, whether Seven was consulted in Astrometrics or confined to her Cargo Bay, whether Tom was jovial or intense; these were just some of the weathervanes the wider crew had developed over the years to judge the prevailing atmosphere aboard their ship.
Harry, being a fully, uncontested Starfleet member of the 'Briefing Room Clique' had never been as dependent on these variables, gossipy rather than scientific of course, to feel that he had a grasp of what was going on aboard his ship, but right now he stared at those doors as openly as the lowliest crewman on the shift. The shock of seeing the older Chakotay hardly lessened with the second time around, especially with…their Chakotay, as well as Seven of Nine, in his wake. He had been listening, because he considered it born out of concern rather than a hunger for gossip, when the former Maquis, still acknowledged to have the best insight into Chakotay's often opaque thought processes even after seven years of integration, had come to an overwhelming consensus that the First Officer would not be handling the appearance of 'Captain' Chakotay well. Remembering just how disturbing it had been just to see a recording of another Harry Kim, haggard and grim, saying words with his voice that had transcended time, Harry had more than enough reason to agree with the assessment wholeheartedly. He glanced at Tom, who'd half-turned in his seat to watch the scene, seemingly determined in his unease to project the illusion that he hardly cared about the situation. That it was an illusion, Harry was convinced. Tom had to care about getting home, even if he had built more for himself on Voyager than he himself had, than most people had. He dimly started to realise, though refused to acknowledge, that his own desire to finally get home might be blinding him. Looking between the hard, protective shell of almost cynical doubt on Tom's face as he stared at the temporal interloper, and Chakotay, who seemed literally at war with himself, guilt began to gnaw away at Harry's hope. As the older Chakotay marched towards him, he hurriedly closed the scenario generator programme on the transwarp conduit the Captain had quietly asked him to run less than an hour before.
"The Captain's still in her Ready Room?" Captain Chakotay asked brusquely. He saw Harry give a slight start in response to his tone but his stance didn't soften as his dark, stony gaze moved agitatedly between Harry's guileless face and the Ready Room doors.
Harry started to open his mouth then closed it again. Alarm bells were ringing in his head, if he was too invested in getting home to be considered wholly objective, this man wasn't fit to be advising the Captain at all. Knowledge of whatever future he'd lived through not only blinded him but had deafened and hobbled him. His latent instinct to protect not only his Captain's integrity but that of Voyager itself came to the fore, his back straightened and he stared the older man down. "She ordered that she shouldn't be disturbed, sir." He replied quietly, unable to completely hide the quiver in his voice.
It was not the elder but the younger Chakotay's heavy, wearied sigh that hit his ears in response. "Harry, we have to talk to her." He muttered. His voice carried its usual calm, soft tone, but the strain in his face was painfully evident. "It's important."
Harry had noted before that he and Seven, though they'd entered with Captain Chakotay, kept themselves distant from him, a contained unit separate from the temporal crusader. Now he saw, with a few blinks of disbelief, that they were holding hands as if for dear life. That was as out of character for Chakotay as it was for Seven, though he couldn't even be sure if they were even maintaining the unorthodox contact. Each set of eyes was pinched and vague, with Chakotay's as fixated on the Ready Room as his counterpart's while Seven's seemed to flick constantly between the two men. Nausea suddenly did somersaults in his stomach as he started to connect the dots. Had Captain Chakotay told them something about the future? Was Seven in danger? Or people they both cared about? He gazed fearfully at Chakotay, "Go ahead Commander, she's in there." He told him thickly.
If Captain Chakotay was offended by his abrupt change of tact, he made little sign of it, the glance he cast back towards his younger self an odd mix of wryness and grim sorrow. As he moved towards the Ready Room, he found himself mulling over the exchange. Memories of inspiring loyalty and friendship had dimmed with age and isolation, he'd forgotten how far each member of the Voyager crew could push the boundaries of trust in another. It struck him as naïve, almost unbelievable, even as he admired and recalled it. True, an older Harry Kim, robbed of the innocence of youth, as hardened by grief and loss as he was, had still helped him get here, but things had changed… Maybe they wouldn't have too. Maybe the family would stay intact if it got home intact, with no more struggle, no more death.
Janeway reflexively reached for her lucky mug, though her eyes, strained from staring at her console screen, were considerably drier than her throat. She gasped as the mug started to slip from her hand, hardly managing to set it shakily back on the desk, major coffee spillage narrowly avoided. She grimaced as she belatedly realised her palms were slick with sweat, the tiny, intricate muscles weaved around her aging bones quivering as if they were connected to a constant electrical current. It was either a message from her body to give up her caffeine addiction or her captaincy, she decided with a flash of dark humour as she regarded the mug thoughtfully. Like her, it was worn down and chipped but not broken. Lucky. She couldn't risk forsaking any of her old charms today, if there was any day were good luck was a necessity, today was it. She seemed to be telling herself that more often with every passing year. Pushing that pessimistic thought aside as rigorously as she rubbed those wet palms on her trousers, she took a single, stubborn swig from the mug and refocused on the console.
The hub really was massive. The spider's web with which the Borg intended to ensnare the galaxy. They already were, one system at a time. And Chakotay, Chakotay, the freedom fighter, the spiritual libertarian, was telling her to follow the silk spun by the Borg spider to get home. He was right; that it would take her home was indisputable, there were multiple conduit exit apertures embedded in Alpha Quadrant space, dissecting its heart as well as its vaguely mapped fringes. The scans Harry had run for her, directed by Chakotay's plan, revealed that, if they chose the optimum conduit, Voyager would pop out just beyond the pull of Earth's orbit, perhaps even directly above Bloomington, Indiana. The Borg's greatest tactical advantage indeed.
A transwarp hub made the Caretaker's array look like a water pistol. Its use would not only affect the fate of a single inhabited world, but of billions. It was the injection site through which the Collective would spread their poison through the veins of the galaxy. Exploiting it for good, for getting her crew home, was a temptation she knew anyone, if they'd lived through what she and her people had, would understand. As soon as their bravery, their ingenuity, was applauded by everyone at home however, there would be the stronger wave of panic that such a thing existed. A fleet, multiple fleets, would be deployed, to find these hubs and destroy them. The ultimate pointless search through the proverbial haystack. She'd stumbled across the needle, could she ignore it? Get home, but leave that home in an impossibly vulnerable position as the consequence?
The familiar sensorial cocktail of nausea, adrenaline and heightened awareness she'd come to associate over the years with decisions, with responsibility and necessity, washed over her. She would grasp at her only chance to destroy this web.
As if he'd heard the cogs clicking in her mind, the Ready Room doors opened unannounced and both versions of Chakotay marched in. She'd half expected another confrontation with both of them, but not at once. Their stance of mutual avoidance had compromised her position no end, playing peacekeeper instead of decision maker, and the fact that they were together now stunned her. The resemblance between them had never been more striking. Captain Chakotay had been a creature onto his own, a violent storm of emotion barely contained within a visceral, bitter and blinkered, determination; her First Officer had hardly been more controlled, lashing out at this version of himself who had brought on an existential crisis of sort. Now however, those competing forces of nature seemed to have blown themselves out. Painful resignation had settled on both haggard faces, the impotent frustration drained away. In fact, the emotions that had warred so close to the surface, demanding her empathy, had been locked away. All she could see was a glinting, steely kernel of hard, icy pragmatism in both sets of dark eyes that set a flame of warning up her spine.
"Have you made you decision Captain?" Captain Chakotay, taking the dominant role without his younger self making a murmur, asked bluntly.
Kathryn bit her lip, hedging as she rose slowly to her feet behind the barricade of her desk. It was only then that she noticed that Seven was also there, in plain sight between the two men. Her expression revealed even less than theirs, as she should've expected from her, but she'd become practised enough at reading between the lines with Seven and was relieved to see that her protégé had none of that disturbing hardness in her, it was despondency, hopelessness, that tinted her stoic resignation. She peered at her, gasping softly when she was that Seven's human eye, though dry, was horribly bloodshot and puffy, giving her already asymmetrical face an eerie quality as her cybernetic eye was of course unaffected. She could count on one hand the number of times Seven had been shaken enough by circumstances to show the slightest evidence of crying… "What did he tell you?" she whispered hoarsely, heart thudding through her ears.
"Enough. He told us enough." Chakotay replied thickly, shifting uncomfortably as Kathryn turned her horrified, empathic eyes on him. He'd been the one who'd convinced his counterpart that it was necessary to impress the weight of the future on her, his older self had been understandably reluctant to expose his grief to her, had snapped that 'he shouldn't even have told them'. Well it was too damned late for that and he'd told him so, but now that it came to it he couldn't force the words to his own lips. It turned out it was a lot easier to be self-righteous when you're ignorant of the personal costs, he wasn't sure if he could bring himself to rob Kathryn of that ignorance. He'd reminded his elder self that Kathryn wouldn't agree unless she knew what they were faced with, and he'd believed it then, but now doubt flared within him. She didn't cope with indecision, couldn't handle moral ambiguity. Kathryn Janeway would cling to her first instinctive conviction to the bitter, violent end with the commitment of a zealot rather than get lost in the void of anxiety and guilt that she associated with indecision. "We have to do something Kathryn."
Janeway studied him for a second then flicked her eyes keenly to his elder. "Can you guarantee that the hub is our saving grace Chakotay?" she asked softly, "That we won't be assimilated in the attempt? That…" Her voice caught, "…the full force of the Collective won't hail down on Earth straight on Voyager's heels?"
Captain Chakotay broke his deadened state at her for an instant, his jaw churning. "No." He admitted abruptly, "I can't."
Janeway regarded him sadly, her shoulders slumping. "Any more than I can." She concluded.
His eyes flared at her knowing tone. "Kathryn, if the Borg wanted to invade the Alpha Quadrant, they could do it whether Voyager uses the hub or not, its very existence proves that!"
"Precisely!" she snapped hotly, staring at him as she would a stranger before heaving a deep breath, regaining control of herself, "That's it exactly, that's why we must destroy the hub."
All three faces stared blankly back at her, struck dumb. It was Seven who comprehended her first, for once in her life unable to stand like a good drone, blindly seeking out the nearest chair with her hand before sinking into it as her legs gave way. It was Captain Chakotay who spoke, his voice suddenly like that of a painfully young, lost little boy. "Destroy it?"
"Yes." Janeway told him almost gently, but then her voice hardened with conviction. "It can't be allowed to exist. The Collective can't have such a tactical advantage, such a hold over billions upon billions of lives! If you can't understand that, then you never were the man that I thought I knew…"
"If you think I don't realise what the Borg are capable of…" Chakotay forced out, his whole body shaking with the violence of his grief and hatred as he thought of what they'd stolen from Seven, as he remembered holding Freya's cold, broken body, her baby face mutilated by nanoprobes injected into her dying veins. No, if he thought of those things, he'd strangle Kathryn while giving her the Queen's face, as he'd once driven the life out of Cardassians. So he remained still, the violence instead exploding from his mouth, "You have no fucking idea!" He heaved a breath in, feeling weak and sickened as he met her terrified eyes. "You don't know anything." He choked out in a broken whisper, turning away from her.
"Then tell me what I don't know Chakotay!" Janeway pleaded with him desperately, stricken by what she'd just witnessed, "Please!"
Seeing that his other self was far too overcome and struggling to control himself to continue, the younger Chakotay stepped in, repeating what he'd been told himself. "In the sixteen more years it'll take Voyager to get to the Alpha Quadrant, 22 people are going to die." It was just a bald a statement coming from his lips as it had been to hear it, it was only with the next one that his voice cracked. "Seven is going to die." Kathryn's face, already drained of its fiery red anger to a shocked ashen grey, turned to Seven with a strangled gasp, huge eyes glistening with tears of guilt. Seven, as she had before, seemed almost unmoved by the declaration, instead fixating on consoling her 'husband', ignoring the Captain's reaction completely. Chakotay couldn't bring himself to mention Freya, the blow that Seven couldn't help but feel. His older self had managed not to even in his anger, but then he hadn't been able to tell him how she'd died, it had been Seven who had told him. In a choked but steady whisper that had somehow been more upsetting that if she'd sobbed it out. She hadn't let him hold her then, as she had allowed his older self. She'd stepped back from him and asked that Freya's fate was the one they not share with Janeway as a bargaining chip. They'd both agreed, his older self murmuring that Freya was 'theirs' alone.
Kathryn had sunk back into her chair, "How?" she asked faintly.
"Does it matter?" Captain Chakotay ground out, finally looking at her again as Seven kept steadying hands on his shoulders.
"Of course it matters!" She cried out, "If…if we know how she dies, how all of them die, we can stop it from happening…" She was struggling to catch her breath, "If I'm more careful, then I won't lose anyone, I'll get them all home…"
The frantic, honest desire in her voice managed to reach him and Captain Chakotay's face was softened by pity. "You're already losing someone Kathryn." He informed her, some compassion seeping into his tone, "Tuvok has a degenerative neurological disease, he's already feeling the effects. His window of opportunity to get treatment, a mind meld with a family member, with close soon. Within a few years, he'll be a shadow of himself, and within a few more his mind will be gone." He sighed heavily, finding Seven's hand and squeezing it hard. "Even if I could prevent all of the deaths I witnessed by telling you of the circumstances, there would be others. If not Seven, then me or Harry, Tom or B'Elanna. Eventually it could even be…their daughter."
Kathryn nodded, her face in her hands, then looked between him and her console screen where the transwarp hub still loomed. "Seven…" She began hoarsely, "Is…Is there any way we could traverse the conduits to get home and destroy the hub?"
Seven blinked at her, understanding slow in coming as her head continued to throb with strain and exhaustion. Dimly, she recalled that the Doctor had advised her to 'take it easy' for a few days. Well, if his operation hadn't succeeded, the failsafe would've undoubtedly killed her already today. She couldn't help but feel angry at her Captain for asking that question, she didn't deserve to carry the burden of devising such a perfect solution. Yet if they did nothing it was likely she would die, any happiness with Chakotay would be short-lived. It was selfish to equate that with the billions of lives that would be saved from assimilation with the destruction of the hub. She'd participated in such assimilations, perhaps her life was a small price to pay for stopping it. If the hub had been eliminated originally, perhaps Freya would've never faced the Borg. Countless children, some as young as she had been, wouldn't face the Borg… However, she knew better than anyone that the Collective would eventually recoup their losses, that they had other transwarp hubs.
Chakotay saw the conflict raging over her face and fought to put a stop to it, glaring at Janeway accusingly. "Damn it Kathryn! There's no point in these what-ifs…" He began, grimacing as he saw agreement and even approval flash over his older doppelganger's face. He was turning into him.
Seven stopped him in his tracks as she spoke slowly but clearly, her first words since she'd left Captain Chakotay's temporary quarters. "It…may be possible. I do not know." She answered frankly, "Most things might be possible." She amended, hands clenched on her lap as she finally looked the Captain straight in the face, challenging her to see reality. "But Captain, we cannot always have what we most would wish for, whether that is getting home or damaging the Collective."
Janeway rose slowly to her feet again, focusing on the door to the Bridge. "Then we should focus on the plan we already had." She muttered grimly, "Getting home."
A/n: Please review. Do check out Teya's brilliant new C/7 and P/T two-shot 'The Ultimate Cheesecake Challenge', where Tom and Seven's little culinary bet rapidly gets out of hand with their long-suffering significant others and friends looking on… Lol. ;)