Prompt:

Well I'm going home, to the place where I belong

And where your love has always been enough for me

I'm not running from, no I think you got me all wrong

I don't regret this life I chose for me

But these faces and these places are getting old

So I'm going home

-"Home" by Daughtry

Looking down at the red and black uniform, he couldn't believe that he was actually leaving everything it stood for behind. The uniform signified his accomplishment of achieving the goal he had set for himself as a teenager. It meant that he had done what he had set out to do and embraced the twenty-fourth century.

However, the twenty-fourth century wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

Oh, it wasn't that he regretted his decision to leave home and join Starfleet. In fact, he had enjoyed much of his adventure. As for the low points, well that was just life. You had to take the good with the bad. He was happy with the path he had chosen for himself. His only regret had been his inability to make his father see that this was the right choice for him.

Then again, he knew that he hadn't exactly been open minded when it came to learning about the way of life that had been right for his father.

And now Kolopak was gone and with it, any chance of reconciling the differences which had been formed when he had chosen his own path.

No, he wouldn't change the choice he had made. Chakotay knew Starfleet had been the right choice of a career for him. He hated to walk away from it in this manner but he felt he had to. Though he may not have embraced his tribe's way of life, nor wanted to live they way they did, but he did respect their choice for that way of life for themselves.

This wasn't a choice about who was right or wrong in the territorial dispute. This was about a people's way of life being destroyed. A way of life that his father had given his life to defend. It was about preserving his ancestry, even if he had chosen to turn his back on that way of life. Just because it wasn't for him didn't mean it was wrong.

No, leaving Starfleet wasn't the easy decision, but it was the necessary one. His people deserved to be allowed to live their lives the way that the chose to live them. They deserved for somebody to stand up for that right. They didn't deserved to be trampled upon by the Cardassians like the Bajorans had been for years.

It was time that he stopped living for himself and do right by his people. It was time to go home.