~~C~~

It breaks my heart to see her stepping out onto the bridge looking so sad. She takes her seat, her eyes shining with emotion she's carefully suppressing.

But I see it. I can't help seeing it. I know her far too well to pretend I don't.

"Are you sorry I came back for you?" I ask then hold my breath, waiting on her response.

"Not for a second," she lies convincingly, her eyes burning into me.

It has to be a lie. I just swooped down there and took the one thing she can't have up here, the one thing she deserves as much as any of us, right out from under her. I took her shot at peace, at some sort of emotional fulfillment. And I brought her back here, where her burdens are going to crush that peace right out of her. Where she's not free to follow her heart so unreservedly. Where she has to leave the man she loves behind her.

I am, Kathryn. God help me, but I am. I'm so sorry.

I've seen that she can be happy without me. That if she lets herself, she might find something, somewhere. With someone who isn't serving under her. I can't help admitting, accepting that part of the reason she hasn't is probably me. Me waiting on her. Knowing that I'm hanging around, lingering, waiting for a chance that might never be coming of the two of us being together.

It's now that I accept a bitter truth that's been slowly sinking into me, since the moment I watched her interacting with Jaffen across a crowded room. Since I saw the openness, the unreserved hunger she directed at him. The joy that she can't have here.

I have to move on. For her sake. It's plain cruel to keep this foolish illusion alive between us. I make a note to go down to Astrometrics, to see if Seven remembers asking me for that lunch date before they were taken, had their minds warped and their lives turned upside down. I resolve myself to going down there and seeing if she's still interested.

I'm not giving up on Kathryn. Not entirely. But I do have to walk away from her. For her sake, and for mine, I have to do it.

I just wish like hell that it wasn't going to be so fucking hard.

~~J~~

"You chose to put the lives of strangers ahead of the lives of your crew. You can't make the same mistake again."

Screw you, I nearly tell her. You have no idea what I've sacrificed for this crew. But civility dies hard, even when you're pissed off…at yourself. "You got Voyager home, which means I will too. If it takes a few more years then that's–"

"Seven of Nine is going to die."

Well that's one way to get a girl's attention: gut her outright. The blood rushes from my head, pools in my icy hands and feet. "What?" I demand.

The woman who will be me in a decade knows she has me, I can see it in her eyes. "Three years from now she'll be injured on an away mission. She'll make it back to Voyager and die in the arms of her husband."

"Husband?" is all I can weakly focus on, furiously blotting out the rest.

"Chakotay."

If she's me, she knows what that casual revelation just did to me.

"He'll never be the same after Seven's death, and neither will you," she continues relentlessly.

Our agreement was simple. If our hearts don't lead us in other directions, then we'll come back to each other. Apparently…his does. His lunch date. His other plans. Seven.

My future self came back to rip out my heart and stomp on it, apparently. I'm going to be an evil bitch in a decade. Good to know, I decide.

The idea of it. And then to have him lose her anyway…

"If I know what's going to happen I can avoid it," I maintain stonily, hoping she'll just drop off the face of the earth, or out of the corridor, as I go.

"Seven isn't the only one. Between this day and the day I got Voyager home, I lost twenty two crew members. "

Twenty-two. It could be anyone. I don't want to know–

"And then of course there's Tuvok."

No. Damn it.

I turn to her. "What about him?" she makes me ask.

"You're forgetting the Temporal Prime Directive, Captain," she taunts.

"The hell with it." Apparently, I have nothing left to lose. Do I?

"Fine. Tuvok has a degenerative neurological condition that he hasn't told you about. There's a cure in the Alpha quadrant but if he doesn't get it in time."

If he does…if she's telling the truth…

"Even if you alter Voyager's route, limit your contact with alien species, you're going to lose people, but I'm offering you a chance to get all of them home safe and sound today. Are you really going to walk away from that?"

I'm going to walk away from her, that's for damned sure. I do. I leave her standing there, ignore the look of triumph radiating across her age and grief-lined face.

I check up on her claims, all of them that I can, anyway. Tuvok and the doctor admit the truth. He hadn't wanted to tell me, but I read the answer in his eyes when I ask them. They admit that Tuvok is suffering from a condition he's deliberately kept from me. That the cure can only be found in the Alpha quadrant, at the hands of one of his family members. And a simple check of Chakotay's whereabouts tells me who he's with. Where they are.

I can't let it deter me. That hub has to be destroyed, no matter what. It can take the Borg to Earth; they can use it to launch an all-out invasion against us at any time, even if we do manage to reach home by using it.

My crew agrees with me. No matter my future self's delusions, her bitter cynicism, I am not yet her, and they are not yet the broken people she described. With their agreement and support, even Harry's, I know what I have to do.

No. That hub has to be destroyed.

But there might be a way to do both. To use it to go home, and to destroy it on the way through the conduit. That must be my focus. If there's any possible way to do it, I'll need my own help, however. My future self's help. I'll have to convince her to assist us instead of fighting us, to tell me all she knows and if she works with me, there might be a way.

There has to be a way. A way to save them all.

Chakotay and Seven. God, but that stings a bit more than I'd have expected – as if this was ever something I could have expected.

Seven years of building lives together. Of learning each other and growing to trust…fighting for that trust. Years of building promises on top of toppled hopes and broken dreams. It hurts. It hurts like all mighty hell – but I love them both. One is my surrogate daughter, carried by the Borg, and the other is the man who would have been my lover if circumstances hadn't forced us to work together in one hierarchal unit.

So in one way, the admiral is right to ask. Can I walk away from a chance to ensure their future happiness? Their chance to grow old together, and perhaps – ow, oh God that hurts – watch their children grow? Even if the idea is shredding, and hope-crushing on some other personal level?

Even if it means walking away from Chakotay, and the years-long idea of that future having been built with me instead?

Of course not. It will be hard, hard as hell if the smarting, resounding ring of shock in my ears is any indication. But he and I were never easy, and I'd be walking away from something we, technically, never even had to begin with.

So for him. For both of them. For Tuvok, my oldest friend, and for the twenty-two unnamed crewmen – it doesn't matter what their names are, who it is, it will hurt to lose them just the same – for all of them…

I already know what I'm going to do. And I know what I'm not going to do, no matter how the rest of this plays out, and that is to rob two of the people most dear to me of the chance for a fulfilling future with my unconditional support.

Even if that future is together and even if there's no room leftover to include me.

I almost have to laugh, though. Really I do. If all goes according to my hopes…if we can find a way to work together and make both goals possible, by all indications this budding romance will only have been unfolding weeks before we get home. Just weeks.

Fate is a cruel bitch indeed. But then…that's nothing I was ever deluded about. Is it?

I wait in the mess hall, for my future self to come and find me me. If I know myself at all, even in the distant future, she'll come. When she does, I'm going to find a way to convince her to help us both.

~~C~~

"We did it."

I'll be damned. So she did. We're home. I never doubted she'd do it. Not for a second. I guess I never really let myself believe that it would work this time…that it would really be so soon.

Her methods may have been unorthodox, but that's so intrinsically her that it's not surprising. Her future self came back for us, but it was her. She did it. Kathryn's brought us home.

"We're being hailed!" Harry's grin is audible and I don't need to see it. It's surreal.

"On screen," Kathryn says. "Sorry to surprise you. Next time, we'll call ahead."

Unless I'm mistaken, that's Tom's father, Admiral Paris looming over us on the viewscreen, peering down on us in bewilderment. "Welcome back," he says, looking stunned.

"It's good to be here," she grins.

Admiral Paris has no idea what he's witnessing, is probably in a fair amount of shock to see us sitting here – for which I can't entirely blame him as he all but stutters, "How did you…?"

"It'll all be in my report, sir."

The last time she had to address anyone as "sir" so directly was seven years ago. It almost amazes me, the humility she's capable of injecting back into it, so easily. But then I know her. I know the relief that's probably starting to loosen a tight knot of crushing responsibility she's carried for the last seven years.

"I look forward to it," the older Paris assures with a final glance at his son.

The screen cuts out and I watch Kathryn stand gazing out at the viewscreen. It's a poignant moment.

"Thanks for your help, Admiral Janeway."

I'm not sure anyone hears the low murmur but me. But I do hear it. I bow my head for a moment, finding the thought of her, any version of her, dying, disturbing. I don't like the thought. It's a dangerous one.

She died for us. A version of her died for us today. So we could be standing here, basking in this moment. I'll never forget that, and I won't let her forget it either.

"Sickbay to the bridge," a voice interrupts my heavy musings. The sound of a baby crying in the background over the comm. tells us we have our newest addition to the crew.

Harry chuckles.

"Doctor to Lieutenant Paris. There's someone here who'd like to say hello."

Kathryn's still smiling, all she seems able to do. And yet I can hear the notes of emotion that she isn't expressing, that she's suppressing. It's understandable. I'm overwhelmed myself, still half in shock.

"You'd better get down there, Tom," she tells him.

"Yes, ma'am." Tom doesn't wait to be told twice. His relief…wait. We didn't have anyone standing by to relieve him – we've been otherwise occupied the past few hours trying not to get ourselves killed.

Kathryn speaks again. "Mister Chakotay, the helm."

Mister. It's an odd moment for formality I can't help thinking but shrug it off. Maybe not. The moment is too triumphant to mar with questions, at any rate. "Aye, Captain." I proudly descend the ramp to follow her orders. Maybe one of the last I'll ever take from her.

"Set a course…for home."

With immense pleasure, I enter the coordinates; it's easy. The heading is one we've all long ago memorized. But today we'll actually reach it. I'd like to be standing next to Kathryn, by her side the moment we actually dock at–

And then it dawns on me. Really hits me. Through the shock, fading adrenaline, elation, relief.

We're home. And I've been standing next to Seven.

Not by Kathryn.

The woman I waited for for nearly seven years is finally free to be what we'd promised each other we would be…and I'm in a relationship with someone else. A weeks-long relationship I've carefully cultivated, nurtured because I've started to see a long-term potential in it. We have yet to say anything to Kathryn about it. She has no idea we've…

A heavy stone drops straight into my gut. That's one conversation that isn't going to be easy – not by a long shot. In fact, it's why I've been steadily putting it off. And if I thought it was going to be hard before, that's nothing to what it's going to mean now.

I glance back at Seven. The moment suddenly feels odd. Off. It's…not what I'd pictured for the majority of the last seven years. I return her soft smile. That's nothing to do with her, and it isn't her problem. It's mine.

I turn back to the helm, all while avoiding Kathryn's gaze. If she's even looking in my direction.

Suddenly, I'm filled with a sinking sensation, one I try to fight off but that I can't seem to shake.

I could not have screwed things up more if I'd tried.

~~JC~~