Captain's personal log. Stardate 50481.5. It's been about three weeks since Chakotay and I returned to Voyager, and there has definitely been a period of adjustment for all of us. I find myself slipping into old habits, and I'm finding it difficult to reconcile Starfleet protocols and regulations with the reality of my new... situation. After nearly a year of living in virtual solitude, I almost feel as though I need to relearn shipboard life. On top of that, finding a balance between work and my personal life has been challenging. I feel like we've missed out on so much here. Will we ever catch up? Every one seems happy to have us back, but Voyager has been under Tuvok's command for so long; will they still be able to see me as their captain?

Janeway sat back in her chair, surveying her quarters. Both hers and Chakotay's quarters had been restored to them, even though they both insisted they were willing to take new quarters rather than force Tuvok and Tom to move again. It was strange; almost like returning from death. The crew had considered them lost, and they had thought their crew was gone forever, yet now they were back... It was strange, and Kathryn wasn't sure how to feel about it. Part of her was ecstatic to return to the thrill of exploration, of purposeful action towards a stated goal. She was happy to be reunited with her friends and to feel a renewed her hope that someday she would bring Voyager home to all of their families.

Yet she missed the freedom and the lightness that she had felt on New Earth. She and Chakotay had agreed to continue their relationship, but the reality of shipboard life made that difficult. Kathryn felt herself withdrawing, gradually shutting him out of her life, retreating into her role as Voyager's captain. It wasn't so much a conscious decision as it was an automatic reflex. She was confused and afraid, yet rather than admit that to herself, she threw herself into her work and pushed her feelings aside; something she had done in difficult situations throughout her life. She sighed, picking up the PADD from her desk. She had to get back to these reports, yet she found herself lost in thought.

She had learned that although the crew had nearly mutinied at first, Tuvok had refused to disobey her orders and seek out the Vidiians. For this, she was grateful to him; she would never have wanted the entire crew put at risk for a cure to their disease when they could have easily lived out their lives on New Earth. However, months later, Voyager had encountered a species called the S'an Rit, whose medical technology was far more advanced even than the Vidiians'. The Doctor had presented their plight to a S'an Rit physician, and, together, they had come up with a cure. Tuvok had been prepared to take the entire ten month journey back to New Earth, but only a few weeks before their encounter with the S'an Rit, Voyager had charted a wormhole; one that led backwards, along their path, and spit them out not that far from New Earth. The return trip had only added about two months of time to their journey homeward.

The door chimed. She sighed again, putting down the PADD that she had barely even begun to read. She didn't have time for interruptions right now. "Come in."

Chakotay entered, offering her another PADD. "Here's next week's duty roster, Captain."

"Thank you, Commander," she said absently, glancing over it. She looked up a moment later to realize that he was still standing in front of her. "Was there something else?"

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "There was, actually, if you have a moment."

She gestured to the remaining PADDs strewn across her desk. "I really don't, Chakotay. I have so many reports to catch up on."

"Dinner, then?" he asked.

"I just don't see how I can manage it," she said, shaking her head. "I have so much work..." He interrupted her, sitting on the corner of her desk, gently taking the PADD out of her hand and forcing her to raise her eyes to his.

"Can I call you Kathryn for a minute?" he asked softly.

Her carefully constructed facade began to fall away as she looked at him. All the work in the world couldn't take away the electricity she felt when he sat so close to her, or the love that was so apparent in his eyes. She wasn't being fair to him, and she knew it. Finally she spoke quietly, forcing herself to look at him. "I'm sorry, Chakotay. It's all been a little... overwhelming."

He took her hands in his, resting them on his lap. "I know. For me, too. That's why I wanted to talk to you." He took a deep breath. "Back on the planet," he said as he carefully avoided mentioning the name of their temporary home, "I was determined not to let you walk away from this. And I can assure you, none of my feelings have changed - about you or about us. But if what you need is for us to... redefine our parameters... then I'm willing to do that. I meant what I said, Kathryn. I want to make your burdens lighter. And if that means us not being together right now, I understand." He spoke softly, not in defeat, but with great conviction and strength.

She squeezed his hands and then released them, walking away from him to stand at the window, not wanting him to see the tears that threatened to spill out of her eyes. She crossed her arms in front of her body, hugging herself. She watched the stars whiz by out the window, but they became only blurs of light as moisture blurred her vision. While she had been immersing herself in her work and trying her best to ignore him, Chakotay had been thinking of what he could do to ease her struggle. Clearly, he had sensed it, and he was prepared to offer up even their togetherness, which he cherished, if that would make her life easier. She brushed the moisture off her cheeks and took a deep breath. "No," she said, still not turning to face him.

Chakotay was unsure of the meaning of her word. He stood from his perch on her desk and walked over to the window to stand just behind her shoulder. "No, what?" he whispered, his breath hot on her cheek.

His tone made her shiver and she turned to face him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and feeling his arms go around hers as well. "We said we would face this together, and we will. This isn't easy for me. As much as I never thought I'd be stranded on an alien world for the rest of my life, in some ways, this is much harder. It's going to take me a while to adjust, and my natural tendency will be to pull away from you. But, Chakotay, I changed on New Earth, and I liked what I was able to become there. You opened my mind to a whole new range of possibilities that I never considered before. I don't want to go back to the way things were before. I don't want to go back to the way that I was."

He smiled that crooked smile of his and pulled her close to him. She allowed herself to relax into his embrace, letting her head fall to his chest and feeling his hand come up to run itself through her hair. He kissed the top of her head. "I don't want to go back, either." They stayed there for a long time. Finally, it was Chakotay who broke the embrace. He took Kathryn's face between his hands and pressed his lips to hers in a chaste but meaningful kiss.

She stepped away from him, holding his hands in hers. "Now, I really do have to get back to work," she said.

He nodded. "Dinner?"

"That sounds lovely."

"1900. I'll cook," he offered.

"You know I can't resist your cooking," she said, giving him a wink.

He chuckled, raising his eyebrows at her. "I hope there are some other things you can't resist about me."

"We'll have to see about that. You better make it a damn good dinner."

He gave her a mock salute. "Aye, aye, Captain."

...

After determining that all traces of Seven of Nine's life on Voyager had disappeared from cargo bay two, Captain Janeway approached the comm panel at the entrance to the cargo bay. She tried to access it, but her fingers seemed to slide right over the screen, as if her hands weren't touching it at all. Then, she noticed the stardate printed at the top of the panel: 50481.5. Her mind began to spin. 50481.5? That was nearly three years ago. Suddenly, realization dawned on her. Time travel. No wonder she had a splitting headache. Had the whole ship traveled back in time, or only her? There was only one way to find out. She walked towards the doors, moving to exit the cargo bay...

Nothing happened. No matter how close she came to them, the doors wouldn't open. She tried the manual override, but was met with the same response as she had felt when she tried to use the comm panel; it was as if her fingers weren't touching anything at all. "Janeway to bridge," she said, tapping her communicator. There was no response. She tried again; again, no response. "Janeway to engineering." Silence. "This is the Captain. Is there anyone on board?" Nothing.

Had she been transported alone then? Had she been thrown into the past to a deserted ship? She had to get out of this cargo bay, but with the doors not responding, and the comm panel inactive, she was running out of options. She had just decided to try the Jefferies tubes when the doors to the cargo bay swished open and she heard a familiar voice.

"I know it's in here somewhere," the voice said.

"Neelix!" Janeway exclaimed. It only took her a moment to realize that he hadn't heard her. He was rummaging around in a storage container, muttering to himself.

"I know I packed it safe somewhere after the last time I used it... Now if I could just remember where that was."

The Captain approached him, so that she stood directly behind him. "Mr. Neelix," she said, "can you hear me?" He did not indicate that he had heard her or even had an idea that anyone else was in the room.

"Ah! Here it is!" he exclaimed, pulling an oddly shaped pan out of the storage container. "My terranut souffle pan. I knew it was here somewhere." He took the pan and turned to exit the cargo bay; Janeway was right on his heels.

"I don't know what's going on here, Mr. Neelix," she was saying, "but I'm going to figure it out." She jogged out in front of him, and stood directly in his path. He would have to run straight into her; surely, then, he would notice her presence, even if she had somehow become invisible. She stood, bracing herself for the impact of his body, but it never came. Neelix had simply continued walking down the corridor, and Janeway realized that he hadn't walked past her, he had walked through her. She continued to follow Neelix, her mind racing.

Was this another encounter with the alien who had tried to get her to go with him to his matrix? If it was, he had changed tactics drastically by sending her back in time. It seemed unlikely. In the anomaly, she and Tom had detected chroniton particles, so the actual explanation most likely had to do with time travel. She had traveled back in time approximately three years. Why couldn't anyone see her? If Neelix could walk right through her, did that mean she could walk through people? Did it mean she could walk through a bulkhead without behind harmed? Was she somehow out of phase with the rest of the ship? That might explain why no one could see her and why the ship's sensors didn't seem to recognize her presence. Neelix had entered the mess hall, and she followed him, paying no heed to the doors that were closing as she walked inside. Then, she turned back and blinked twice, looking at the now closed doors. She had walked through the doors as they were closing. She had to test her theory, now that the doors were completely shut. Taking a breath, she began to walk out of the mess hall. She shut her eyes in anticipation of ramming into a solid object, but opened them in surprise a moment later, realizing she was outside of the room, on the other side of the doors. This was interesting.

She wondered if there was another version of herself on this Voyager. So far, she had not noticed any radical changes that would indicate this universe was vastly different from her own. The crewmen in the mess hall had all been wearing Starfleet uniforms, and had seemed carefree and at ease. She hadn't stumbled into an alternate universe where the Maquis had taken control of the ship, or where they were locked in a war with some hostile alien race. She thought back. Stardate 50481. That would have been just after their encounter with Marayna, the lonely alien in the inversion nebula, who had tried to keep Tuvok with her for companionship, and just before... just before her encounter with the alien and his matrix. Her suspicions mounted. Perhaps he was here, after all. If that was so, she only had to wait for him to show up; this time, she knew how to deal with him. She began to walk the corridors. If that was so, why hadn't he shown up yet? Could the timing be just a coincidence?

She found herself walking to the bridge. It was definitively strange being able to walk through the bulkheads. Absently, she wondered if she could walk through the comm panel, or through the decks into space. She wondered what would happen to her if she tried, but she wasn't about to experiment with that. As she emerged onto the bridge, she stopped moving. Tuvok stood at tactical; Harry at ops; Tom at the conn... Everything and everyone seemed exactly in place. Slowly, she crossed down to the command level... and felt as if she was looking in a mirror. Well, it wasn't a mirror exactly.

This Kathryn Janeway was three years younger than her; her face weathered by fewer lines; her brow less furrowed; her expression less severe. Her hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. She didn't have quite the same ease on the bridge that Kathryn now had, but she had a bounce in her step and a sparkle in her eye that Janeway feared she had now lost. She watched as her younger self checked in with the members of the bridge crew and then left the bridge in Tuvok's capable hands. Anxious to find out as much about Voyager and herself in this timeline as possible, Kathryn followed her.

In the turbolift, she noticed the younger Kathryn fiddling nervously with her comm badge and shifting her weight from her toes to her heels and back again. What was she so nervous about? Kathryn couldn't imagine. She followed her into her... their... quarters where the younger Kathryn proceeded to change into a simple, royal blue dress. The older Janeway eyed her curiously. If she didn't know better, she'd say she was getting dressed for a date. When she saw her younger self replicate a bottle of wine, her suspicions were all but confirmed. But a date with who? She had a hard time imagining any circumstances in which she would have allowed herself to become involved with a member of her own crew. Perhaps she had met someone on alien world they had visited in this timeline but not in her own?

She followed the younger Kathryn out of her quarters and down the corridor, but as she did so, the older Janeway's footsteps began to slow. She knew where they were headed, and she wasn't sure that this was a reality she wanted to see. She watched with trepidation as she saw herself ring the door chime to Chakotay's quarters. She saw him greet her at the door with a kiss on the cheek... already a gesture beyond what she would allow in her own time... and then she saw herself disappear inside.

Janeway knew that she should leave them to their privacy, but she was burning with curiosity. Besides, she told herself, she needed to find out as much information about this timeline as she could. If her suspicions about what had happened to her were correct, she needed to know about where she was and who she was dealing with. Maybe she could learn some piece of information that would help her get back to her own universe. At least, that was what she told herself. In truth, she simply could not resist her own curiosity about this Janeway's relationship with her first officer. She stepped through the door into Chakotay's familiar quarters.

The table was set for two, complete with candles and soft jazz playing in the background. Chakotay was standing over a burner, stirring the contents of a large pot. "It's nothing fancy," he was saying. "Just chili. And I replicated some corn bread to go with it."

"I brought a bottle of red wine. I hope it goes," the Captain replied.

Chakotay took the wine from her, kissing her on the cheek again. "I'm sure it will be delicious. Now, have a seat. Dinner's almost ready." Kathryn sat down at the table while Chakotay served the food and brought the corn bread from the replicator. He opened the wine and poured them each a glass, then sat down across from her.

She raised her glass to him and said softly, "To figuring things out... together."

He smiled, clinking his glass to hers. They both drank, their eyes not breaking from each other's gaze. He held her gaze for a moment longer, and they seemed to share a special secret in that moment; one that the older Kathryn could not discover or conceive. Then the moment ended, and he said with a grin, "Dig in."

Kathryn tasted the chili. "Ah, Chakotay, it's delicious!"

"We didn't have beans on New Earth, or I would have made it for you there," he said. This easy reference to their exile surprised the older Kathryn, who still stood, invisible, just inside the door. It was a subject that, by tacit agreement, she and her own first officer never discussed.

"That's all right," the younger Janeway replied. "I enjoyed all your cooking there so much." This was true, mused her unseen counterpart; she had very much enjoyed Chakotay's cooking on New Earth, but she still wondered at the ease with which the couple in front of her discussed it. She watched herself put up her hand, and watched Chakotay interlace his fingers with hers. Kathryn's face became serious as she sought his eyes.

"Kathryn?" he asked softly. His voice held a tone of gentle, comfortable intimacy. It was a tone that the older Kathryn had not heard in a long time... perhaps since New Earth. She felt herself take a deep breath, watching her own reaction. Her younger self seemed to take his tone for granted; her breath did not catch in her throat.

She watched herself struggle with her emotions, obviously wanting to express something that was hard for her to say. Finally, she said, "I want you to know how much your offer meant to me earlier."

"I was serious, Kathryn."

"I know you were. And so was I. I appreciate your gesture more than you know, Chakotay. This is going to be anything but easy for both of us. But I owe you... I owe us more of a chance than that. I realize that it's going to take time for us to figure out how this works on the ship, but I owe it to both of us to take that time."

He ran his thumb over the back of her hand, and when he replied, his voice was almost a whisper. "I'm glad to hear you say that." Unlike her, he wore his heart on his sleeve sometimes, and at this moment, he was completely open and vulnerable to her. He did not cry, but he did nothing to hide the tears that welled up just behind his eyes. Not letting go of her hand, but shifting his grip, he walked around the table to stand in front of her. She stood to meet him, and brought her free hand up to caress his cheek, tilting her face up towards his. He lowered his lips to hers in a gentle kiss, and then let go of her hand, wrapping both of his arms around her waist as her arms went around his shoulders. "We haven't had very much time alone since we got back, have we?" he whispered seductively.

"No, we haven't." The older Kathryn could barely hear her counterpart's reply as she watched the couple kiss passionately. She turned away, blinking back tears, and exited Chakotay's quarters, leaving the couple to their privacy. She sifted slowly through her thoughts, trying to uncover an explanation for what she had seen.

...

First officer's log. Stardate53897.8. Captain Janeway has mysteriously disappeared into an unclassified spatial anomaly. We have no reason to believe that she is dead, but thus far, all attempts to uncover her whereabouts have been unsuccessful. Harry, B'Elanna and Seven of Nine are analyzing the data gathered by the Delta Flyer during the away mission in hopes that it will yield some clues.

Chakotay sighed, sitting back in the chair at the ready room desk. Anxiously, he tapped his fingers on the desk. He had been waiting for a call from B'Elanna or Seven, telling him that they had found some new data that would shed light on what had happened to Captain Janeway. He had been on edge ever since her disappearance, and the uneasiness in the pit of his stomach seemed unlikely to dissipate any time soon. Inwardly, he cursed himself for letting her go on the away mission; he should have gone himself. But he knew that it was unlikely that he could have dissuaded her, that they couldn't have foreseen this danger, and that it wouldn't be any better if he had been the one taken, and she had now been sitting in this chair, looking for any sign of him.

Despite himself, he smiled ruefully at the situation. How many times had he been here, anxiously awaiting the return of Captain Janeway? How many times had he stood by her side as she had awoken in sickbay? How many times had he had to look for her after she had disappeared, been kidnapped by hostile aliens, or been lost in some spatial distortion? He had lost count long ago. And how many times had she done the same for him? At least as many.

Unable to concentrate on the duty roster and the engineering report on the PADDs in front of him, he allowed his thoughts to drift. There was no defining his relationship with Kathryn Janeway. She was the woman in his life; of this he was certain. Yet, their physical relationship had never exceeded an arm around her shoulders, a comforting embrace, a chaste kiss during a moonlight sail on Lake George. On New Earth, they had almost broken these barriers, but that had been years ago, and Chakotay rarely thought about that time; he tried not to, and imagined that Kathryn did the same.

"Seven of Nine to Commander Chakotay." The voice over the comm system snapped him out of his reverie.

"Chakotay here."

"Commander, please report to astrometrics."

"On my way." Chakotay strode into astrometrics a few minutes later, anxious to hear what the team had discovered. Seven, B'Elanna and Harry were all standing around one of the astrometrics consoles, looking up at the large view screen. "Report," Chakotay ordered.

"We've analyzed the data collected from the Flyer and cross referenced it with Voyager's database as well as the knowledge of the Borg," said Seven.

"And?" the Commander asked.

"We're looking at some kind of temporal wormhole," Harry reported, obviously proud of their discovery.

"A temporal wormhole?" Chakotay asked.

"We didn't recognize it as a wormhole at first because of the large amount of interference created by the chroniton flux," B'Elanna explained. "But when we analyzed the sensor data from the Flyer, we realized that the anomaly does have an access point."

"Actually, we believe it has more than one," Seven pointed out. "Part of the Delta Flyer must have intersected one of the access points, and the Captain must have been drawn into the wormhole.

"Do we know where these access points lead?"

"Not yet," B'Elanna answered. "We'd like to launch a series of probes into the anomaly to get an idea of where these access points lead to. The problem is, there's no guarantee that our probe will enter the same access point as the Captain did."

"What if we use the Flyer's telemetry and send a probe to its exact location at the time of the Captain's disappearance?" Harry asked.

Seven pressed a few controls and changed the display on the view screen, so it showed the Flyer's course inside the anomaly. "We can attempt to do that, but we have no way of knowing whether the access points are stable," Seven said. "They may not remain in the same location."

"Still, it sounds like it's worth a try," Chakotay said. "Launch the probes. Let's see just where this temporal wormhole leads." As he exited astrometrics, he found that the uneasiness in the pit of his stomach had lessened slightly, and he felt exhilarated by the ability to take action. He just hoped that this wasn't one of those one-way wormholes, that you could go through in one direction, but never come back.