Winter's Child, concluded.
It took only a few minutes for us to input the correction and code the time; after so many hours of planning, it seemed impossibly simple. Still, as we faced each other, seated on the bed with the transceiver between us, neither of us made a move to send it. I almost wished that it weren't so easy; if it had still been a puzzle, a challenge, maybe we wouldn't have hesitated to finish it.
"Bea," Zayek said eventually, bunching the quilt in one hand, "do you think they'll know that the message came from the future?"
"It'll have a temporal displacement signature, won't it?" I traced the circuitry with a finger, marveling that the Borg had designed something to penetrate time that was so small, so innocuous. "But they won't know who sent it, of course, or what happened in the altered timeline."
He looked up at me, and I drank in his features: his unruly dark curls, the rounded points of his ears, the mole on his chin. I suppressed the urge to tell him how much I would miss him, knowing the logical response he'd offer, but he seemed to read it in my eyes. "Maybe we could tell them," he said.
"What do you mean?"
He clenched the blanket more tightly. "Suddenly, I – I don't want to die, Bea." He dropped his gaze, embarrassed by that very human hesitation. "If we send a message, telling them why – why we had to change history, then at least they'll know that we existed." He bit at the inside of his cheek nervously, then said, "And the other you – you'll know, too."
My heart broke. "Zayek," I said, admitting for the first time something that had been nagging at me, "I don't think my mother will keep me. Not if she's still in the Delta Quadrant, still Voyager's captain." I thought back to what Tom had told me in the icy corridor; two days, but it seemed a lifetime ago. "She can't let me break her rules."
We sat in silence for a long moment. Ultimately, it didn't matter, and we both knew it: our lives were hardly the point. But in that bright, warm room, smelling faintly of disinfectant and clean linen, we took the time to mourn ourselves. After a few minutes, Zayek punched a few buttons on the tricorder and held it up. "Tell her," he said softly. "They should know about us."
I locked eyes with him, but he was in earnest; maybe we could send a message to the future. I stared into the input recorder on the tricorder, trying to marshal my thoughts: there was so much to say, but I knew a viable message had to be short to piggyback on the temporal carrier wave. Finally, I nodded decisively and began.
"Hello, mama." I closed my eyes, opened them again, and let a smile slip onto my face. "I mean, Captain. I'm sorry – that was the mistake I wasn't going to make, and look." I paused, again arranging my expression into something neutral, an approximation of Starfleet professionalism. "We wanted you to know that this is your second chance, Captain. Fifteen years ago, Voyager's slipstream destabilized and collapsed, and nearly everyone was killed in the crash that followed. It's not the way it should have happened, and with Harry's help we're rewriting history so that it doesn't." I imagined my mother on the other side of the recorder, her eyes bright, mouth open in mute surprise. I smiled at that woman, who I had never known. "I have a request to make of you, though. Two, really."
"As captain, I ask you to enter the following names into the log – the casualties of fate, so to speak. Even though in your timeline they'll never be born, they're giving their lives for the ship and crew, so that Voyager can continue her journey. If you could remember them – " Zayek shifted, and I amended " – remember us, we would be grateful." All my life, I had listed the dead and the lost, and it was strange to suddenly count myself among them. "Miral Kathryn Torres. Ada Ayala-Matteo. Harry Owen Paris. Zayek Swinn. And – and me. Beatrice Teya Janeway."
I dropped my voice and leaned incrementally toward the tricorder. "You're not just a captain, though. You lead a community, and I've seen how much you're willing to give up for them. I know how many ways you've found of atoning, but don't let that stop you from – please, be glad of your ship, Captain. Of your crew." I paused, uncertain whether to say anything about myself, to assure her that I wasn't begging for my life but only for hers – but it seemed false, contrived, to remind her of the consequences of her night with Chakotay, when it was surely already on her mind. Instead, I just said, "Enjoy your living ship, the working sonic showers and even Neelix's cooking.
"This is for everyone, the dead and the living who deserved better, but – it's for you, too, who are my captain, and who became my mother, so that you might walk a different road – a warmer, more joyful one." I curled my lips in an uneven smile, so like hers. Would she see the similarity? "Remember us, Captain, and get your crew home."
That was it: once the message was compressed and embedded in the signal, there was nothing more to be done or said. I disconnected the transponder from the tricorder, and held it in the palm of my hand, thumb hovering over the keypad. Zayek nodded once, but before I entered the command, a call came from the main cabin.
"Beatrice!" My mother's voice was excited, more animated than I had heard her since the rescue. Unthinking, I plunged the transceiver into my pocket as she hurried into the room. "LaForge has invited us all to the bridge – Earth's almost in visual range." She stopped short, as I attempted to smile. "What are you doing, Bea?"
"Nothing," I said quickly, my eyes falling to the PADD still on the bed. "Just – studying." Zayek, his back to the door, closed his eyes in exasperation at my answer. I scrunched my forehead at him as my mother crossed and picked up the PADD, scrolling through the calculations, and for a moment, we weren't martyrs or temporal pioneers, just children.
"These look like – quantum warp dynamics," she said slowly.
"Yes," I said, "well, we were – we were – "
"Going over the entrance exams for the Academy," Zayek supplied, turning with enviable calm to face her. "Warp theory seemed a good a place to start as any. Shall we proceed to the bridge?"
With a flick of her wrist, my mother tossed the PADD back down, looking at both of us curiously. "Yes," she said. "Let's go."
The bridge of the Challenger was big and bright, but crowded: the fifteen Voyager crew members were grouped on the lower deck, between the command chair and the conn, and I had the sense that more ensigns than usual were clustered around the duty stations, surreptitiously observing us all. I could see why, because even clean and warmed up, we were refugees; even Tom, Joe, and Maddie, who had always seemed strong and capable, looked thin and frail in the white light. I fingered the transponder in my pocket, and imagined each of them as hardy and curious as the grey-shouldered officers all around us.
After a few minutes of hushed conversation, as Greg pointed out the different duty stations and B'Elanna muttered about the inefficient warp processing displayed on the nearest panel, LaForge cleared his throat. "Captain Janeway," he said, almost uncertainly. "Would you - ?"
My mother smiled, but it was a formality; her eyes were hollow as she looked over her little crew. "Ensign," she called to the operations officer, who straightened. "On screen."
The planet that rolled below was very different from the glacier-bound world that had been our home. Under the rolling clouds, vast expanses of blue sparkled, and I could make out dark green forests, dun-colored deserts, and the flash of white ice at the pole. I felt rather than heard my mother's intake of breath: twenty years since she had seen it last.
LaForge walked forward and leaned up against the conn. "No matter how many times I come home," he said, quietly, "it just never gets old."
"She's a beauty, all right," Tom said. He bounced Miral on his shoulder and glanced toward his wife, who had her arms crossed across her chest, staring with a furious intensity at the vibrant world. "I only wish that we could all have made it home."
The captain shifted, and said, without looking at Tom, "It still might happen, if we don't find that transceiver." I glanced to my mother, expecting to see her roll her eyes again at the mention of the device, but instead found her looking steadily at me.
"I doubt anyone took it," Tom said easily, ignoring the stiffness in LaForge's tone and laying his cheek against his daughter's warm head. "Treason doesn't really suit us, Captain."
The planet rolled on the viewscreen, hours away but still, large as life. On the surface, 5.5 billion people woke up every day; it was unimaginable to me, crowded as I felt by the twenty strangers standing with me on the bridge. Were they all as bright and clean and whole as the Challenger crew? Somehow, the people who had raised me seemed frailer, more broken at that moment than they ever had before. After everything they had endured, it wasn't fair, I thought, that they should be so marked, going home to a shining world like that one.
"It doesn't, Tom," my mother said, and her voice was low, hoarse, yet somehow musical. "But I could understand it, couldn't you?" She looked around at her crew, and one by one they turned from the viewscreen to meet her eyes. "I could understand wanting to wipe the slate clean, to restore the crew we left behind, to set Voyager again on her journey. As her captain," and she sighed, lined blue eyes meeting mine again, "I would do anything to accomplish that."
LaForge sighed heavily. "As would I, if it were my ship," he said. "I suppose I'm fortunate that you didn't take the opportunity, or I would have already failed." He returned to the command chair, and around me the survivors drew closer together. My mother, though, didn't move as they searched out mountain ranges and man-made features, just held my gaze, studying me with a penetrating clarity that had for fifteen years been dulled by grief.
Finally, she nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Anything," she repeated, and returned her gaze to the screen. I resisted the urge to reach out for her hand, to thank her or just feel her heartbeat in her fingers one more time, and instead felt the transceiver, warm against my skin.
Zayek stepped up to my shoulder. "Now, Bea," he breathed, and I nodded too and pulled it out, still hidden in my fist. Zayek wrapped his cool brown hand against mine, and we each laid a thumb against the miniscule key. We didn't need to count to three to do it together, but at the last minute I glanced again toward my mother. A narrow hand held to her heart, blue eyes bright with tears, I knew that she was ready, too.
Though I wanted to restore them, the dead were still abstractions to me, and if it were only them, I might have forsaken logic and clung to my life. But as I studied my mother's sharp profile, I knew that I had already made the choice. She had given me everything, the warmth of her body, the quickness of her mind, the little hope she had left, but she was right: it could never be enough. What I wanted was her, whole, and standing there on another captain's bridge, her own ship abandoned, I knew that the gash that Voyager had left in her heart was irreparable. What could I do, but give her back her life?
I don't know whose touch sent the message, but we both felt the device hum with the command. How long would it take? Would we feel it, when the timeline righted itself? I tangled Zayek's fingers in my own, letting the transceiver drop to the floor. It didn't matter if anyone realized, not now.
I pressed my free hand against my heart, too, and waited for history to change.