It just wasn't the same.
Kathryn snorted, realizing how ridiculously banal that sounded, but it was true.
Of course it isn't the same. You don't have a ship. You don't have a crew. You're home. You're free.
She missed it.
Not entirely true.
Of course not. She missed not having coffee by herself. She missed not having dinner alone. She missed constantly having an ear, and constantly having a reply.
Don't be ridiculous. You haven't had a meal alone since the day you got back.
It wasn't the same.
She really was being ridiculous. The companionship habit she'd fallen into was so hard to break that her personal log entries were starting to sound like letters. She had one-sided conversations with him, imagining that somehow he could hear her.
My mother asked me if I'd entertained the idea of a romantic relationship while I was gone Chakotay. I didn't know how to answer her. What would you have said?
Ridiculous.
What was even more ridiculous was that she couldn't bring herself to actively seek him out now that they were back on Earth. They were best friends weren't they? What was stopping her from calling? What was stopping her from dropping by his classroom when she had to be on the headquarters grounds for a million briefings anyway?
Voyager had been home for three months. There was a major gala held in their honor. There was one week of major briefings and workshops for "reaclimation" and then the Voyagers had gone their separate ways.
It sounded dramatic, but it wasn't. Most of the crew ended up working with other members on other projects. She was the only one who had "gone a separate way," and it was only away from him.
She'd been told by the Admiralty that she was to be placed on sabbatical for a year. It seemed extensive, but Admiral Paris has indicated that Starfleet wanted to promote her to Admiral as soon as possible, but it was impractical to expect her to function properly as an Admiral with a seven year gap of local policy knowledge. Her sabbatical was meant to be partly recreational, and partly catch-up.
It was a lot of catch-up, but it was a welcome distraction. She never imagined that she'd be home, surrounded by family and friends she hadn't seen for nearly a decade, and suddenly feel lonely.
She'd genuinely taken for granted how easy she had it just because he was there. He was always there. Even when he wasn't there, he was there. That was the beauty of being on such a small ship. Even when they were fighting, he was there.
She flopped backward on her bed, feeling stuck. She was not still romantically fixated on her first officer.
Former first officer.
She wasn't. Hadn't she proven that? She'd risked a great deal and trusted in a great deal of fate to get them all back to Earth to avert a future where he wouldn't have to live without a woman he loved who wasn't her. Didn't that prove that she didn't feel that way about him anymore?
As far as he was concerned, she'd never felt that way at all. She knew that feelings had a way of not making sense when someone was under duress.
They were always under duress, from the moment they'd found themselves stranded. The moment she first felt attracted to him, having to keep him from assaulting Tom on the bridge in those first five minutes, she was certainly under duress. It was the adrenaline, she told herself then and now. He was, literally a rebel without a cause, and she was the authority he was challenging. The appeal of his character in those first few minutes, his dark hair and eyes, and his scent that, though faint, made her nostrils flare like a damned horse. Adrenaline and duress. All of it.
And on New Earth, how was being stranded again with only one human being for, as far as they knew, forever, a reliable situation on which to judge one's emotions?
Ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous, she had a feeling that her mother knew something wasn't right with her. She never said anything, but she seemed like she wanted to ask a lot more questions than she was asking. The poor woman probably thought Kathryn had gone through some great trauma and didn't want to push her into talking about the "horrible ordeal" she'd gone through.
If only her mother had any inclination of how silly her "ordeal" really was.
Things would have been easier if he'd succeeded in sucking her out of the ship.
She felt guilty for thinking it. It was just so frustrating. She admitted freely that one of the reasons she hadn't wanted to reach out was because she didn't want it to come off as inappropriate. At one time, she looked forward to the idea of being able to take him to all the real live places that they'd visited on the Holodeck together. Hawaii… Lake George…
Well it wasn't going to happen now.
She also felt guilty because she was being selfish. Just because touring the world together would be weird now didn't mean that she should just cut off all ties and disappear.
He hasn't reached out to me either. Aren't friendships supposed to go both ways?
Now she was just being petty.
Kathryn sighed pathetically.
Tomorrow. I will go tomorrow. I will get up, and I will put on one of those lovely comfortable pantsuits I bought with Phoebe and I will go see my best friend and stop being so absurd.