First of all, I want to thank all my ardent supporters who have enjoyed this story. Thank you so much for your glowing reviews! I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as the previous ones.

Also, I changed the rating at the suggestion of addrianna818. After re-reading the previous chapters, I realized that If I had kids, I sure wouldn't want them reading about replicating condoms and towels coming off and whatnot. So this story is no longer K.

And without further ado...we leave off with Kathryn telling Chakotay she's pregnant! Gasp!

Silence.

More silence.

He could hear the antique clock she had replicated for his birthday ticking in the living room.

"Okay." He said. "So that's that, then. We'll have a baby. Nothing we can do about it now."

"There are two." She hissed.

He sagged against the doorframe. "Two?"

She nodded, her face pale.

"Are you sure?"

Wordlessly, she handed him a tricorder from the counter. He looked at it. There were two.

Silence.

Then he saw tears falling from her eyes. She wasn't making a sound, just staring ahead of her as more tears fell.

He crouched in front of her and cupped her cheek. "Kathryn? Don't you remember what you said the last time? That if you were pregnant, we'd have a baby?"

"It's different now," she choked out. "Back then, I had some hope that we might not be here forever. But with every day that goes by, it feels more likely that we'll never leave. And now we'll have two children who will have no hope of a future."

"You don't know that. Come on, don't you remember what you told me? You said I couldn't know what would happen. We don't know. There are so many variable. So many possibilities."

She looked him in the eyes. "Chakotay, you're lying. You're just repeating what I said last year to keep me from panicking. I can see the sweat on your forehead. You're terrified."

He let out a breath. "There's not much we can do. We can't terminate, not here. Unless you have a miscarriage, we're having twins."

"Maybe I could-"

"Don't you even think about it." He said sharply. "You have no idea what would happen. You could end up dying." She looked guilty. He sighed. "Look, we'll deal with it. And look at the bright side. At least they'll have each other."

She nodded. "Well, you're right about one thing. There's not much we can do about it. It's too late. But I really thought we were being careful."

"Yeah, I thought so, too."

She looked back at him. "Oh, Chakotay." She whispered. Her face crumbled, and she started to weep.

He gathered her into his arms and pulled her down to the floor with him. "Sh, sh. It'll be okay, don't worry. I'll take care of you. I'll take care of you all."

"Do you think I'm fat?"

Chakotay looked up from the log he was splitting and shaded his eyes against the sun. "What?"

She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. "You heard me. Do you think I'm fat?"

He stood slowly, contemplating the possible answers to that question that wouldn't lead to her tearing his head off. "Well, Kathryn," He said. "I think you look a little pregnant. But not fat."

Her glare intensified. "Pregnant is fat, you moron!" she shrieked.

Chakotay winced. Over the last few months, the little quirks in Kathryn's personality which he had previously found adorable had intensified. Her hormones were out of control, and when she wasn't starting arguments with him, she was crying about something. He knew that a double pregnancy intensified everything, but his nerves were frayed. Most days he just made sure he had enough to do to keep away from her. He still had a hard time remembering that this was the same Kathryn Janeway who came chasing after him in the Badlands, that this was the same Kathryn Janeway who captained Voyager, and that this was the same Kathryn Janeway who possessed a diplomatic grace that had gotten them out of more than one tight situation. Because this Kathryn Janeway – this hostile, emotional woman – didn't seem to have much in the way of diplomatic grace anymore.

"Kathryn, you're four months pregnant with twins. The only change in your body is your stomach and your breasts, and really, what did you expect? Your thighs are still sexy and your arms are still toned. And quite frankly, I'm a little tired of having to tell you this every day."

"I suppose it's a good thing we're alone on this planet. Otherwise you'd be running for the nearest supermodel!"

He frowned. "What the hell is a supermodel?"

"Don't patronize me. What are you doing, anyway? Don't we have enough wood?"

"No." he picked up another log. "I want to make sure we have more than enough. You'll be having the babies at the end of winter, and I want to make sure that you and they are kept warm at all times. Last winter we had a little bit of a shortage, remember?"

She smirked. "How could I forget? We had to finds other ways to keep warm."

He laughed. "Well, we'll still be able to do that, but I want to make sure the kids are warm."

Her face softened and her eyes got a dreamy look to them. "The kids. I love the way you say that." She scrutinized him. "I guess you've really accepted them."

He decided not to question her abrupt change of mood. It happened frequently enough that he was becoming used to it. "I'd have thought the cribs I carved would have made that clear." He returned her scrutiny. "Have you accepted them?"

She ran a hand over her protruding belly. "When I wake up in the middle of the night, and I feel them moving, that's when I can accept them the most. I lie in bed and listen to you breathing, and I imagine that we're sleeping in our home in San Francisco. I imagine that all I have to do is get up and go to the window to see the moon shining over the Golden Gate Bridge. Tomorrow I'll get up, and I'll have messages from my mother and Phoebe, wanting to go shopping for baby clothes. I feel them somersaulting inside of me, and I imagine taking them to Golden Gate Park, or wheeling them in their strollers into Starfleet Command, and all the Admirals gathering around to coo at them. And as long as I can have that fantasy in the middle of the night, it makes it a little easier to accept that they'll never know my mother and sister, and that no one but us will know they exist."

"They won't be here forever. We've made sure of that." He said, referring to the serum she had developed from the little of her materials which had survived the plasma storm during their early days on New Earth.

"We still don't know if the vaccine will work. But I can tell you that every time I let them out of the house, they'll be slathered with insect repellent."

He smiled. "I noticed you didn't mention Voyager in your fantasy. You can't see them toddling all over the bridge, or driving B'Elanna crazy in Engineering?"

She flinched. They hardly ever mentioned Voyager anymore. Then she smiled at him sadly. "Raising them in San Francisco seems more plausible in my fantasies than raising them on Voyager. They never would have existed there. There was never that possibility, and you know it."

He nodded. It was the truth, they both knew. If they were still on Voyager, their relationship would have never started. "I can't imagine loving you this way, and having to sit next to you every day and not be able to show you."

She came closer and sat on a stump next to him. The late autumn sunlight shone red on her hair, and lit her blue eyes brightly. "When did you know you loved me?" she asked quietly. "Was it on Voyager?"

He frowned and gazed up at the sky. "I was certainly fond of you on Voyager. But I was never really able to get to know you. I suppose I was infatuated with you from the beginning. You were so…fiery."

She laughed. "Fiery?"

He grinned. "You kicked ass, baby."

She laughed even harder. "What, were you taking lessons from Paris?"

"Well, it's true. I hadn't ever met a woman like you before. Most women I've known in positions of power – or who wanted to be in positions of power – would use their femininity in order to get what they wanted. They would use the fact that they were a woman in order to get he upper hand."

"Like Seska?" she said softly.

He grimaced. "Like her, yeah. But you never did that. You never tried to hide your femininity, but you never tried to exploit it. And in doing that, it became one of your greatest strengths. But that wasn't all, either. You were fair, compassionate…" He grinned. "A little bi-polar at times, but with the stress you were often under, I guess that's to be expected."

She raised an eyebrow. "Bi-polar?" she said flatly. "Really."

He laughed. "Don't look so insulted, Kathryn." His smile faded, and he became serious. "You were brilliant. Beautiful. Imposing. Yeah, definitely imposing! You were so small, and yet you had such an imposing stature. When you spoke, we listened, and not just because you were the captain. You were so eloquent. Do you have any idea how shocked I was at how quickly you gained my crew's loyalty? It was because of you that the merging of the two crews went as smoothly as it did. It could have been so much worse."

She smiled. "Sounds like you were in love with me for a lot longer than you thought."

"Don't get cocky. Actually, I think I know when my feelings first changed from hero worship to the beginnings of love." He looked into her eyes. "When we met Amelia Earhart and the 37's."

She raised her eyebrows. "Really? Why is that?"

"You showed me more of yourself than you had before. Not only was I able to see her through your eyes – as an inspiration – but I learned that you were only human. You had your own hero's, and your own insecurities and fears. You showed me your fear, Kathryn, when you worried that the crew would want to stay on that planet. I think that's when I was first introduced to Kathryn, and didn't just see the Captain."

"Maybe we should have stayed on that planet." She said bitterly, running her hand over her stomach. "Things could have worked out better, for all of us."

"How do you know Voyager isn't home?"

"Well, then things could have worked out better for the four of us." She said sadly.

He couldn't say anything to reassure her. There just wasn't any assurance to be had.

They were quiet for a moment. Then Kathryn squinted up at him. "Do you ever think about Seska?"

He sighed and sat on the ground next to her stump. He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. "Only with contempt."

"Do you ever think of the baby?" she asked quietly.

He pursed his lips. "I try not to. I try not to think about where she is with him, what kind of life he's having."

She put a hand on his arm. "You don't even know for sure he was yours. She could have been manipulating you."

"I prefer to think of it that way. As long as I do, I can believe that I don't have a child out there somewhere. I'll never meet him anyway. I'm sure that Cullah will be raising him anyway, regardless of who his father is." He said bitterly.

"I don't think he was yours, Chakotay." She said softly. "It's just a feeling, but I really don't think he was."

He smiled at her. "I'll trust your feelings over Seska's claims any day."

She grabbed his hand and pulled it up to her stomach. "Feel it?"

He pressed down and smiled when he felt the little bump. "It's a foot, isn't it?"

"It must be, the way it keeps trying to poke its way out." She ran her other hand through his hair. "That's your child, Chakotay. Not a tube of DNA that may or may not have created a baby. This, right here. This is the one who is going to call you 'Daddy'."

"Thank you, Kathryn." He said softly. "I needed that."

"I'm sorry I'm such a dragon sometimes. I can't help it. I just feel all these emotions pressing to burst out, and I can't keep them inside. It's nothing against you."

"I know. I really do. What you're going through, I could never do it. And you're not fat. In fact, you're more beautiful than I've ever seen you." He patted her stomach. "And you'll be the most beautiful when you're holding our children in your arms."

There was only three hours left now. In a way, he was dreading it. In a way, he was dreading it. He was dreading the inevitable questions, the speculations. He was dreading explaining things, not just to his rescuers, but to his children. To them, a starship was a fairy tale. They had never seen the world their parents had come from. They never knew that the gentle father they loved, who told them stories and ran their household and spent much of his days working on some sort of project to make their lives easier, had once been the second most powerful person on a massive starship, a huge bird flying through the stars. They knew it from the stories he told, but to them it was just that, a story. They could never imagine their father in a uniform, sitting everyday next to their mother, wearing the same uniform. They couldn't grasp that the mother they mourned not knowing, the beautiful princess from their fairy tales, was once the captain of that powerful starship. Once, their mother commanded over a hundred people. Once, their mother led a mission across the far reaches of the galaxy, and she wouldn't rest until she saw her people home.

They didn't know that about their mother, and he didn't know how to tell them.

They weren't from that world.

He couldn't imagine carrying Kathryn in his arms off of the transporter pad, with Edward clutching his hand. He couldn't imagine walking through the corridors of the ship their mother commanded. He didn't know how they would respond. It was so drastically different from anything they had never known. He couldn't imagine it.

What he could imagine was the shocked expressions on the crew's faces when they saw him with two children. Kathryn's children. The Captain's children. He knew that much of the original crew had come on the voyage with Tuvok, and he knew that the news must have spread quickly about Kathryn's death and the birth of the twins. But knowing something and seeing it were two different things, and he knew the look of shock that would be on B'Elanna's face, and Tom's and Harry's. He knew even Tuvok would raise his Vulcan eyebrow higher than it had ever been at the sight of Captain Janeway's five year old twins with her Maquis first officer.

Tuvok, once Chakotay informed him of Kathryn's death, had informed him on the status of the crew since returning to Earth. The Maquis had been dismissed of all charges if they consented to continuing their service during the Dominion War. Eager to battle the Cardassian's, every single Maquis crewmember from Voyager had opted to stay in Starfleet, especially after learning of the massacre at Tevlik. Chakotay had been devastated to hear of it, but he had been reassured to know that his former crew had fought in their memory. The war had ended with insanely heavy losses on both side, but with the Federation as the victor, for what it was worth. Nearly the entire crew had remained on Voyager during the war, and while there were several casualties, they had come through it largely unharmed. He was grateful for that, and grateful that Starfleet had finally opened their eyes to the Cardassian atrocities. After the war, the crew had, for the most part, remained together. Tom was Tuvok's first officer, Harry was the chief of security, and B'Elanna was still the chief engineer. The EMH had been supplemented – not replaced, at the crew's insistence – by a new staff from Starfleet Medical. A vast array of holo-emitters had been installed throughout the ship, and now the Doctor could move around the ship at ease. His creator, Dr. Zimmerman, had even developed a device which allowed him to download his program into it and leave the ship for periods of time. He would be coming down to the planet to examine Chakotay and the children, and administer the cure. Chakotay had told Tuvok that he was fairly sure the children hadn't contracted the virus, but it wouldn't hurt for them to be checked out. After all, they had gone their whole lives without a full physical exam.

His conversation with Tuvok had filled him in fairly adequately about basic information, but he wondered about what Tuvok hadn't felt necessary to tell him. What had life been like when they got home? Was Tom still a cocky bastard? Did B'Elanna still explode at the slightest provocation, and were she and Tom still at each other's throats? How had Kes and Neelix coped among a Federation where they were the only ones of their species? Was Kes still alive? No, he didn't suppose she was.

He wondered what the morning would bring.

TBC

Review! Tell me your thoughts!