She's personally reviewed the evidence. Chakotay made absolutely no attempt to hide his identity or to cover his tracks. There is no mistaking that this was him, and that he wasn't acting at someone else's behest. Upon obsessively studying the footage of the prison break, his parting words to her make crystal-sharp, clear sense in the cold light of morning. He had planned this, probably from the moment Voyager had reached dry dock. It was too concise, too perfect not to have taken months to research. He had known what he was going to do well ahead of time. Yet he'd never betrayed a hint of it until that night.
The night that she had been too wrapped up in what they were doing to stop and listen to what he really said to her – until it was too late.
Admiral Paris stands in her office, and she tunes numbly back into his words. "You understand that he has to be brought into custody when we find him. There's no other option here."
"Of course," she murmurs, aware of Owen's piercing scrutiny. Of course he must.
"He'll be tried immediately, and if he's found guilty, he'll be incarcerated. For now, we've stripped him of his rank. He's no longer a member of Starfleet. I don't see him earning his commission back this time."
She nods perfunctorily, automatically. It has to be done.
"One betrayal can be overlooked," Owen allows. "But not two."
His words strike a chord in her somewhere, but she isn't sure exactly why. The sense of betrayal, anger, disbelief…it's all too much to process. She's numb. "I understand," she says stonily.
The fallout is greater than she ever expected. Those first few days of chaos surrounding the breach of the most secure facility on Earth, Janeway only keeps her job by Admiral Paris's loyalty to her; he takes her at her word and convinces the other admirals to be ashamed that they were baying for her pips. They'd insisted that she must have known of Chakotay's intent, and especially once she was forced to admit that he'd gone to that prison directly from his former captain's home, but Owen smoothed that over, too. She's kept her position. Because she's such a loyal Starfleet officer, and because Chakotay was one of her own, one she'd vouched for, she is the one to head the commission on his capture.
He's too smart for that. By the time the prison guards' relief shift had come to discover the breakout, Chakotay and his escapees were well out of the system. He'd confiscated three shuttles from Voyager using his clearance as her new captain – one of them being the Delta Flyer, they'd learned later on that morning. The additional theft of one of the most highly advanced shuttles in the quadrant had whipped the braying brass into an additional frenzy of urgency.
To the other admirals, it seemed inconceivable that he had pulled something like this off without help. Forced to concede the possibility, Kathryn was left with no alternative. She hauled in her former senior officers, from Seven and B'Elanna down to Harry, questioned them in front of a full fact finding committee complete with Betazoids to see which of them had aided Chakotay in his criminal actions. Next had been the higher echelon of the former Maquis. Angry as the brass remained, they had no desire to appear biased by hauling the lower ranking former criminals into the panels first. At some point during their absence, Starfleet had become even more concerned for their precious image than usual. She wonders if it was the choices they made during the Dominion War. Their obsessive concern with how they look smacks of deep-seated guilt for…something. She doesn't have time to pinpoint it.
All of her crew passed the inquisition, and she hated herself, still does for the shocked and hurt gazes she'd drawn from every one of them as she herself had come down hardest in each interrogation. Afterward they forgave her, lamented with her at how little they really knew Chakotay after all, and they are still the closest of friends. They attend births and marriages, birthdays and promotion parties, call each other weekly. All of it feels slightly empty without Chakotay there, but otherwise completely normal. Her mother and sister know each of them by face and name; their families know her the same way. It's exactly how they should be, and it's never quite right.
The stolen shuttles are recovered, each sitting dead in space – short a little dilithium but nothing more. Flight paths are deleted from the database and none are retrievable. Two of the thirty liberated Maquis are brought back into custody for being stupid enough to linger too close to the Federation border. They withstand extensive interrogation about Chakotay's whereabouts simply because, as Kathryn had tried to get the inquisition panel to see, he'd never have placed these people in the position of knowing that information to begin with. Eventually, they're forced to concede that point, and the prisoners are tried for escape and resentenced.
No one else is caught. Not that week, and not in the long months that follow. Chakotay sightings pour in, but they never come to fruition. She herself has led several missions on the more promising leads, at station bars and colonies, outposts and camps, and each time she turns up ghosts, look-alikes, or simply nothing, she returns home in deeper disgrace. The looks are hidden but discernable if she bothers to look closely enough. She doesn't anymore. Why waste the effort? She keeps her head down in between sightings, goes about her other duties.
They give her glorified desk work, probably because they still don't fully trust her. She isn't sure she trusts herself. She only knows that home isn't what she had expected it would be, and that, barring the Chakotay oddity, it's everything she had expected it would be, all at the same time. None of it is quite right.
Half the time, she has memories of Chakotay's hands on her skin, of him driving deep inside of her. They still arouse her. Many nights, she lies in bed alone, or in the steaming bath she draws for herself, and lets her hands wander down between her thighs to rub away the ache his memory causes. She falls asleep in the water, waking when it goes cold as the fog in August and September, or in bed with sweat drying on her clammy skin. She's never quite sated.
The other half of her nights, a deep and personal anger builds steadily within her. Why would he do this? How? How could he throw away everything when she had given everything she had for seven years…and more? How could he do this to her? It's the last that burns most acutely. Those nights she gets no sleep, comes to work with dark circles cosmetics barely conceal and stifles yawns through committee meetings that have no bearing on anything that ever matters.
She goes to the holodeck, never more than once a month for an hour, to run simulations of Voyager. They're empty shadows of the way things were and it raises questions that plague her on sleepless nights. The where and how of losing her hold on Chakotay's loyalty, his character, remain elusive.
Seven comes to her office. She wears her hair up in that same modified French twist, but as Janeway makes a covert study of her, she finds again that this is where the similarities between this young woman and the one she knew on Voyager end.
She'd been marveling at her progress for a long time now. Today it seems even more evident.
"I hope you're well," Seven says, after she declines Janeway's invitation to sit. At least that is familiar.
"I am, Seven," Janeway lies with a bright smile, looking up at her tall protégé. "And you? How are you doing?"
"I am adjusting to life on Earth," Seven says softly. Softly.
They don't speak of Chakotay. Not anymore. In the first few weeks they had, but it had quickly become too painful. For both of them. Now, they discuss everything but him.
"Have you made a decision about that position they want to offer you?" Janeway asks, already certain she knows her former Astrometrics officer's response.
"I have," Seven nods. "I will not be joining Starfleet."
Or not. She had not expected Seven to refuse. If she's honest, it had never occurred to her as a possible outcome. It hurts. It shouldn't, but it sure as hell isn't a pleasant shock she's experiencing.
The former captain represses all outward reaction with great care. "All right," she says evenly. It isn't her choice to make, she reminds herself. She may think it's a mistake, but Seven isn't going to be made to realize that by telling her so. "Have you decided what you want to do instead?" the admiral asks.
Seven has come prepared for this. Janeway sees the certainty in the younger woman's face with a sinking in her gut well before she opens her mouth to answer. "There are three individuals on Starbase Eight Four who have been recently liberated from the Borg."
Liberated is a strong word. It was more like accidentally disconnected, but Janeway has heard about it. She'd been the first contact, in fact. A minor panic had spread throughout Starfleet when the damaged sphere had dropped out of transwarp on the fringes of Federation territory, but the navigation logs they'd recovered from the broken wreckage had reassured them that the sphere had not intended to land anywhere near the Federation. A malfunction in the navigation controls had led them too close to a quantum singularity and the Borg have shown no signs of coming back to salvage the wreck. Yet.
For now, at least, the frontier is quiet.
The three drones who had survived the devastation of the sphere, however, have been something of a problem. Starfleet hasn't known quite what to do with them. Two humans, both former Starfleet officers, and one Cardassian male. Removing their implants is necessary for two of them. The third has yet to decide to undergo the risky procedure. All three are being held in quarantine on base until the EMH can reach them to assist with their medical assessment.
"They require an individual with similar experience to guide them through their transition," Seven is explaining as a glassy-eyed Janeway tunes back into the present. "I possess that experience. To choose not to help would be…unkind."
"I agree," she says. Because of course she agrees that Seven should be kind. "But you don't have to leave Earth to do that," she proposes. "I'll have them transported here." And to hell with the clamor the rest of them will raise over it, she adds to herself. The question of whether or not she even has that kind of clout anymore, of whether or not she ever did, does not enter her mind – damn it.
"They are in quarantine," Seven reminds her.
"The quarantine period is nearly up. And the decision has been made that the doctor is the best person to oversee their care. You don't mind working with him, I assume?"
Seven's ocular implant rises with her brow. "You are attempting to keep me on Earth."
Caught. Janeway shrugs, unabashed. "I'm attempting to ensure that all the personal connections you're forging here aren't put on hold unnecessarily. If I have to pull a few strings in order to do that, I won't lose any sleep over it."
Seven's chin lifts in a gesture vaguely familiar to Janeway for reasons she can't quite place. "That won't be necessary. I am adapting to life on Earth. I will readapt to life in space."
"I'm sure you would. Maybe I wouldn't adapt so easily to your absence." There. She said it. And everyone's still standing. Miraculously.
Seven smiles softly. Softly. "I will miss you, as well, Admiral. However, we can communicate through subspace at any time. And I intend to return when I am no longer needed."
At least she isn't trying to desert her permanently.
The knot in her gut is a little too tight as Janeway sizes the former drone up, finality settling over their exchange. There is no altering this. Seven has made up her mind, and Janeway no longer has the authority to order her to change it.
Not having the last word is something that takes adjustment. Serious adjustment.
It can only be for a few months. Right?
Starfleet won't be letting those drones out of their custody anytime soon. They aren't eager to bring them to Earth, but they aren't letting them rejoin the Collective, either. How she feels about that, either way, she hasn't quite decided.
"Seven," she says.
"Admiral."
"You are one thing I did right out there."
That so-soft smile might have been what drew Chakotay to her side. How long had it existed before Janeway ever saw it? Seven's teasing words snap her out of the draping guilt blanketing her musings. "I believe the rest of the crew disagreed with you at the time. As did I."
She can't help but respond to that smile with a tiny half grin of her own. They have been through hell together, that much is certain. Some of it of their individual making, too. "I told you that I wouldn't support you going back to the collective until you'd regained the capacity to make that choice for yourself," the admiral recalls.
"And I have already told you that I do not wish to do so," Seven acknowledges. "I believe we should give these three drones that same chance to regain the ability to make that decision. But the transition was…difficult. If my experience can help them adjust during their transition, then I must try."
Janeway stands, circling her desk to approach Seven. She halts a step or so back, taking a long look at her protégé: the young woman who is the closest thing to a daughter that she has ever had and, it looks like, ever will have at this rate. Pride thrums through her, parallel to the hurt she has no right to feel and moisture stings her eyes as she reaches up and tucks a strand of golden hair that had been kicked up by the wind back into place. Seven allows this, regards her warmly, with affection, even, and she does not flinch from the embrace her former captain pulls her into. She even tentatively returns it, and Janeway's eyes sting harder with relief. And regret.
So much regret…
Janeway whispers through a throat that is traitorously tight, "Good luck, Seven."
Watching her leave is one of the more painful things she's ever done. Which is odd, for something that is only going to be temporary. A year, at most. Right?
The chronometer signals the end of her shift. She never lingers. She isn't comfortable in her sterile office. Her knickknacks don't fit as snugly in the bigger admiral's office as they had in her ready room. They're dwarfed by austere, too large white walls.
She packs up her PADDs, throws them into the handy carrying satchel B'Elanna so thoughtfully presented to her on her birthday, and heads home through the September mist, her eyes reflecting the murky fog that permeates her insides lately.
She stops off at the local pub, manages to nurse a glass of wine in silence for long enough to let darkness fall outside. Only then does she stand and make her way back to her silent apartment.
It's exactly one year since Chakotay disappeared. She isn't particularly surprised to find him standing in her darkened bedroom when she enters it.