the eclipsing variable

by A Quarter Past

It's not every day you send a hologram the age of a toddler down to a planet, just for it to come back over five-hundred years old and half mad.

4. Algol

Algol

β Perseus Aa2

The party is in full swing — lively chatter and laughter filling a space usually so neutral and empty that it's made all the brighter by those currently filling it. All around her, the familiar faces of family mingle with those of friends. Hors d'oeuvres and flutes of champagne are distributed among the adults, while more suitable finger foods and juices are handed out to the children running underfoot.

Kathryn cannot take credit for the success of this reunion, that honor goes to her aide, Ensign Towers. Credit or no, it doesn't doesn't mean she can't bask in it, if only for the evening. Soon, these wonderful people will depart, leaving her in the silence of her apartment with nothing but the echoes of their final celebration.

Enough of that, though.

She spots Harry in the crowd, speaking to Naomi and Icheb's daughter, Sabrina. The poor man is nearly as gray as she is, but his face lights up when he registers her approach.

"Admiral," he greets her, because he's still wearing his uniform and remains a stickler for regulation.

"Harry," she slides one arm around his shoulders and hugs him to her side, "you made it."

If the display of affection startles him, he's gracious enough not to show it.

"I couldn't miss this reunion," his voice is so officious, so duty bound that she wants to pinch his arm and tell him to loosen up.

"Oh, I didn't doubt you for a minute."

"I would have blamed you if you did. I'm sorry I missed the memorial service. Again."

A pang of sadness fills her. For him, for herself, and most especially for Marla, who could not join them tonight, "We all understood."

"How is Tuvok?"

If his goal is to lighten the mood, he's failing miserably.

"Oh," she breathes, "not well, I'm afraid."

"I should visit him," he says in a way that suggests he'll talk him self out of the by the morning.

"He would appreciate that," she says in a way that suggests she would. Tuvok doesn't appreciate anything anymore.

Harry clears some emotion from his throat and nods, "I can't believe it's been ten years."

"Trust me, Harry," she takes to the change of subject like it's a lifeline, "we all look like it's been twenty."

Her deadpan humor never fails to make him laugh, especially now that he knows what it means to be a captain and understands the regenerative quality of gallows humor. She pats his back once and begins ushering him toward B'Elanna. The trio stand chatting in a corner, catching up on the small things, until Harry spots Tom and departs to talk to his old friend.

Kathryn makes a point to keep the once-pilot and now holonovelist out of her line of sight. It's not Tom she's trying to avoid looking at but the man and woman who have joined him in the center of the room.

B'Elanna, now a fine diplomat and reader of people, snorts into her drink, "You're being obvious."

She smiles at the younger woman, something sharp but not unkind, "So I am. Let him come speak to me if he wants to."

They've come a long way from the Captain and her chief engineer. While Kathryn has always favored Tom's boyish, uncomplicated humor, it's B'Elanna's stalwart competence and devastatingly deadpan threats that never fail to make her company enjoyable. It helps that, while she's always willing to help without asking too many questions, B'Elanna knows when to draw the line. As any peer does.

"All right," the half-Klingon chuckles, raising her free hand in surrender, "while we wait for the impossible, you can tell me why you sent my son away on a secret mission so close to this celebration. I was looking forward to seeing him."

Kathryn is absolutely not going to tell her what Matthew had been sent to do, "How about you tell me the outcome of your negotiations with the Klingon High Council, first?"

B'Elanna takes the hint. She glances around the room furtively and then lowers her voice so no one can hear her, "They've agreed to admit the House of Monak. Korath will be offered a seat, just like you wanted. It's why you want it that confuses me. He could take or leave the Federation."

"Can't a scientist want to help another scientist into politics?"

"You're no more a scientist than I am an engineer. Those days are behind us," B'Elanna says this with no real intent to insult her, and even sighs, "All right. I'll let you keep your secrets. Just be careful with Matthew, okay?"

"I'd never dream of being anything but," it's sincere. No matter what happens next, Matthew Paris will be all right.

Whatever the other woman is about to say in response is interrupted when Reginald Barclay's begins his imprumptu speech on the balcoany overlooking the party.

"May I have everyone's attention, please. Ten years ago tonight, this crew returned home from the longest away mission in Starfleet's history. Twenty three years together made you a family, one I'm proud to have been adopted by."

When he brings it to a close, voice sure as he say "Let's raise our glasses to the journey" he catches Kathryn's eyes and lifts his glass slightly higher.

The room repeats it back, and Kathryn adds, "And to those who aren't here to celebrate it with us."

When the toast is complete, Reggie descends the steps and Kathryn bids farewell to B'Elanna so that she can join him.

"I was hoping to see you here," she says by way of greeting.

This man is as familiar to her as any member of her crew — a constant Alpha Quadrant presence when they were in the Delta Quadrant — and now a friend and faithful subordinate. He'd mellowed over the years, has grown ever more comfortable in the presence of others. So, when he smiles at her, it it is sincere and a far cry from the queasy grimace of fifteen years ago.

"I wouldn't miss this for the world, Admiral."

Nearly everyone has shared this same sentiment with her throughout the night. There's a power in this being the tenth year since their return. They have been home less than half the time they were gone, but that time had flown, and so much happiness and tragedy had come with it.

"Things are moving more quickly than expected," she says, affecting a smile so anyone looking on them will think they were sharing friendly stories instead of what they are really doing, plotting. Devious, highly illegal plotting.

Reggie is able to hide his shock behind a cough, but hunches his shoulders so he is able to talk more while letting her still hear him.

"I can have everything ready for you in a Week. You'll just need to get the deflector and the chronexaline."

The chrono deflector is nearly well in hand, but the tachyon radiation treatment?

"Is there anyone else I can go to but him?" she murmurs, casting her eyes in the direction of the man in question.

Only to find that he is looking back.

The simple eye contact is enough for him, and the beautiful young woman on his arm, to start making their way over. Kathryn can't help the small frown that takes the place of the smile on her face. She has to remind herself to place nice; this is, after all, what she had claimed she wanted.

"He's the only one remotely likely to get it for you," Reggie mutters, before straightening to his full height and smiling broadly, "Aeson, Lana, it's so good to see you!"

Kathryn's own smile is brittle and too wide, age-cracked and paper-thin, as the pair stop in front of them.

"Admiral," Aeson says cheerfully, "I don't believe you've met my wife, Lana."

Of course she hasn't — Kathryn hasn't spoken to him in over four years, hadn't even known he'd gotten engaged to a woman who looked only as old as Seven had been when they freed her from the Collective. Not that she would have done anything if she'd known.

She reaches out a hand to Lana, who takes it with a gentle shake and a bright smile of her own, "I've heard so much about you, Admiral."

"It's just Kathryn, when I'm not in uniform," and then, because she feels absolutely certain she recognizes her now, "Aren't you Kenneth Montgomery's daughter?"

Lana blushes prettily, "I am."

Admiral Montgomery had been in charge of the efforts to remove every piece of Borg technology from Voyager in the year after their return. He continues to remain in charge of Federation research into defensive, offensive, and medical Borg strategies. She'd been subjected to his unrelenting questions — often laced with the conceit of a man who hadn't been in deep space more than a year of his career — as he stripped her ship for parts.

That is to say, she finds him unbearably smug and difficult to work with.

To his credit, his daughter appears to be nothing like him.

"It's how we met," Lana fawns, grabbed Aeson's elbow, "He introduced us at a conference in March."

Reggie will never be a paragon of social virtue, but he knows enough about the dynamics, as well as the fact that six months is too quick to be engaged let alone married. Before he starts fidgeting, he actually saves Kathryn from having to speak with a tepid chuckle and a:

"I guess when you know you know."

Aeson gives Lana a fond smile, "Life's too short to wait, Reggie. You should give it a try."

The commander rubs the back of his neck bashfully and shrugs, "It's probably too late for that."

"Oh, don't say that," Lana beseeches, offering up several thoughtful compliments and tips. The two clearly know each other enough that the exchange is not awkward. If Kathryn were in a better mood, she might have even joined in to save herself the indignity of standing around like the odd man out.

Instead, she takes the momentary diversion as an opportunity to force out a, "Doctor, if you're still in town and the end of the week, would you mind stopping by? I'm due for a physical, and my usual doctor got shipped out to the Bolian System."

His uncanny dark eyes search her face as the question and the forced nonchalance settle in. For a moment, he looks like he would very much mind.

The expression passes into something approaching friendly, "I don't usually make house calls, but I think I can make an exception for my old Captain."

If she were the sensitive type, Kathryn would flinch at the careful wording. Instead, she gives him a firm nod and makes her excuses to move on to make her social rounds.

Duty calls, after all.

She spends the next two day setting her affairs in order.

There are two potentialities of what she plans to do: one will rewrite the timeline, the other will simply branch it off into a new one. Temporal mechanics still give her a headache, but Korath seems to think the timelines will diverge. He claims to have sent a fully functioning Federation warp core to Qo'noS well before they procured their own unique warp drive designs. Given that history doesn't have records of the vent, Kathryn can assume there is a timeline out there now that contains a Klingon Empire the size of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants or the burned out husk of Qo'noS.

Timeline divergence is what Korath is counting on, otherwise his ploy to join the Klingon High Council will be moot.

Kathryn intends to prepare for the eventuality that this timeline will continue on without her.

There are knowing accomplices to protect, those who have surely earned a stay at a penal colony although they do not deserve it. Matthew is easy enough to sort out, as her strange orders have created just enough plausible deniability to keep his punishment to a reprimand. B'Elanna knows even less, and though she will certainly feel betrayed if she continues exist to feel at all, she will be above reproach.

It's Reggie she worries about most. She's known him nearly two decades, has considered him a dear friend for at least ten years, and had trusted him with her plans for the last four. Every part of this has his name on it. Kathryn has done her best to shape all traces of evidence to suggest that he had been coerced. It's up to him not to loudly and proudly proclaim the opposite. He insists he's willing to suffer the consequences if there are any — his fierce loyalty to the crew of Voyager and its once-Captain will be considered a pathology by most — and she hopes he's not that foolish.

When she meets him at Starfleet Academy just days after the reunion, Reggie is in high spirits. While they both know that she's only agreed to speak to the cadets in his class as a cover for their mission briefings, and the class itself is merely and excuse to give him and excuse access to Montgomery's labs, he's still eager to see what wisdom she conveys.

"Everything is coming together," he says in that vague way that prevents anyone who might overhear from understanding, "the SC-4 is nearly fitted for your travel. I'm just waiting for my contacts to confirm the information you asked for. Give me four days."

Kathryn does not know his contacts, but he trusts them and she trusts him. She suspects they're under Montgomery's command or a Section 31 cell. The ablative shielding isn't appearing from nowhere, and B'Elanna's right, Kathryn hasn't been a scientist in a long time. She's relying on sharper minds to develop the virus needed to breakdown the Collective for her.

"If Aeson pulls through, I'll have my treatment lined up," saying the name of a highly classified medication in the halls of the academy is a one way ticket to detection, "by Saturday. I'm just waiting to hear from my godson."

Perhaps she's expecting the clear culmination of their hard work to phase Reggie, but he's come a long way. The only expression she sees on his face is determination, "Soon."

"Soon," she repeats as she enters the small lecture hall.

Many of the cadets are seated quietly in the back, and they visibly perk with excitement when they see her. Kathryn takes her seat gamely, quirking her brow in the direction of the most openly curious students, and patiently waits for Reggie to get the show on the road.

His introductory speech is equal parts flattering and funny, and as Kathryn stands to address the room, an eager young man raises a hand.

"A question already, Cadet."

He stands and looks to his friend at her clearly teasing tone, "Well, I suppose it could wait until after class, Admiral."

She looks around at the waiting faces and shrugs, "As they say in the temporal mechanics department, there is no time like the present."

It gets her the laugh she suspects, and the young cadet smiles at her. Kathryn can tell there's some arrogance to him, even before he confirms it, but feels no reason to disabuse him of it. Time and failure will do that for her.

"In the year 2377, you aided the Borg resistance movement known as Unimatrix Zero."

At her confused expression, Reggie offers a sedate, "Sounds like someone's been reading ahead."

"I thought you had a question, Cadet."

"Yes ma'am. When you informed the Queen that you were going to liberate thousands of her drones, could you describe the look on her face?"

It's a fundamentally bad question, although Kathryn doesn't correct him. She'd never told the Queen what she intended to do, and had never gotten the satisfaction of doing it herself. The fallout from the Queen's eventual retribution is still clear in her memory; however, and Kathryn isn't going to share what she looked liked after that with the class.

So, she doesn't answer. It's a rhetorical question anyway, and the cadet sits with a satisfied smirk. Oh, to be young and cocky and so sure. It has been decades since she last knew what that felt like.

"Admiral," a female cadet stands, unwilling to let this chance pass her by, "some of us were talking before class, and we were curious. How extensive was Seven of Nine's involvement with Unimatrix Zero?"

Kathryn stills and feels the muscles work in her jaw and throat to compensate for what she feels. It has been nigh on eleven years since she's seen her, and nearly that long since she'd spoken to her. There are many more years of disappointments and betrayal strung up between them that will never be addressed or healed. Kathryn has resigned herself to this, although that does not mean it doesn't hurt.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss Seven of Nine, except to say that she was an integral member of my crew," she answers truthfully. The former drone's movements are classified, a part of Starfleet's efforts to aid the resistance that these cadets so eagerly wish to speak about but know very little of.

"Yes ma'am," the cadet awkwardly responds as she takes her seat, "thank you."

Before she can carry on with her intended lecture, Ensign Towers interrupts with a careful whisper in her ear, "The Comm you've been expecting has been routed to a secure channel in the visiting staff office."

Matthew, she thinks with a mix of relief and stress. She departs with nothing more than an "Excuse me" and follows her aide to the office in question. As she settles in, he moves to wait outside the door to secure her privacy.

Her godson looks healthy and happy when she calls up his Comm on her computer.

"I'm sorry to pull you out of class, Admiral," he definitely isn't sorry. The young man may look like his mother, but he's as incorrigible as Tom is at his worst.

"You've seen it."

"Have I ever. It works, just like he said it would."

The sly smirk he's giving her makes Kathryn nearly sigh with relief, "Korath has agreed to the exchange."

"He insists he'll only hand it over to you, but yes, yes he has."

It's a let down to hear that Matthew cannot bring it to her himself, but Kathryn can understand why Korath wouldn't want to hand over the chrono deflector to an ensign. The expectation was that it could do very little to this timeline, but that doesn't mean it is wise to let it fall into just anyone's hands.

It will take her some work to finish everything she needs to do here, but they can make this happen, "I'll be there as soon as I can. Good work, Ensign Paris."

She returns to the class while the students are discussing nanotechnology. As is wont to happen when a bunch of overachievers are forced into a small space, they're all trying to outperform one another. It's unfortunate that her prepared lecture was so interrupted, but she and Reggie manage to moderate a decent discussion.

When it's over, she relays Matthew's update. Reggie frets, as he still does when stressed, "He could renege."

"I expect he might try, or at the very least try to leverage more out of me."

"More of what, though?"

That's what she needs to find out. There is little else she is willing to give a Klingon who intends to make a farce of honor. If Korath goes that route, he will be sorely disappointed with the outcome.

"Let me handle that," she says cryptically, before bidding him farewell until next time.

…

Kathryn is left heartbroken in the wake of her visit with Tuvok, as she always is. This goodbye is harder than all the others before because it is meant to be permanent. She knows when she looks at him while he mutters and scribbles down words that make little sense to any but him, that what she is doing will prevent his mental decline. Yet, it hurts all the same because that restored Tuvok, her oldest and her dearest friend, will enrich the life of a different Kathryn.

A younger one.

One she hopes to spare all the little losses that built into a greater one.

He is alive when so many others are not, and he still cares deeply for her when so many others have stopped, even though she is the one who caused so much of the loss he suffered in those final, lucid years before senility. She who made it so his family was too far away to cure him of his illness.

Some version of herself must be allowed to see him healed before it's too late, even if she cannot be the one who is so lucky.

Saying that final goodbye to this Tuvok, who she loves no less than the hypothetical version she hopes to save, leaves her nerves raw for the rest of the day. By the time her apartment door chimes in the evening, her emotions feel like live wires, threatening to lash out and harm her most of all.

It's time.

When she lets him in, Aeson is dressed in his medical blues, tricorder already in hand. His expression is unreadable, the mask of stoicism he had so easily perfected after Kelemane firmly in place. It's been so long since she'd seen it — him — up close, and yet nothing about him has changed. At least not physically. And yet, here she is, hair white with age and face lined with all the stress and worry of the last three decades.

Surely there's nothing here for him to miss.

The feeling that follows the thought lodges traitorously in her throat, so painful she has to fill the silence with something innocuous or else this won't go the way she has planned.

He's here at her request after all, despite all that she let come between them.

"Thank you for coming."

He steps in, then moves ahead down the stairs while she shuts the door and follows.

"Not once in 33 years have you asked me to perform a physical. In fact, I seem to recall having to coerce you into quite a few."

"Well," she concedes, holding her arms out from her sides as he scans her, "I'm going away for awhile, and thought I should get this over with first."

"I'm sure that's it," he says primly, his stubborn eyes and gin and mouth all set in a doubtful frown.

"How are you?" she asks, curiosity making her voice soft. They've both been stationed out of San Francisco for over two years now, yet she hadn't seen him in all that time.

By her own design.

He quirks brow, so similar to how Tuvok used to, that it nearly causes her to smile. Now that their alone, despite his prickly demeanor, she's happy he's here.

"I'm well, and you're as healthy as you were the first day I examined you."

"You remember?" An old joke and an even older insult, she isn't sure how she means it now.

"You know very well that I do, Admiral" his tone is tinged very briefly with exasperation before he sighs, his guarded posture drooping just enough that she knows he isn't going to bolt from her apartment or fall into one of his truly spectacular rants.

"Kathryn," she corrects gently, leading him with a on the bicep to her couch.

To her surprise he does not balk, nor does he protest. He lets her guide him and takes a seat, even settles in comfortably, as she puts distance between them to start packing her uniform.

"We didn't get to speak much at the reunion," she starts lamely, as she carefully holds up the garment and begins to fold it.

"Our new normal," there's no real bite to it, just weariness, "Why now, Kathryn?"

She looks at him, the way he's crossed his legs and is tapping the tricorder against his knee. He used to do that when he thought she was about to run off and do something rash that might get her killed — often he'd been right. There's a familiar pain in his expression, as much as he's trying to hide it, which must mean he still cares.

Despite her disquiet at his choice of a wife, as young and friendly as Lana is, it is Kathryn who'd ultimately hurt him by walking away and refusing to explain why.

"I need a favor," there's no sense in denying it.

The tricorder is cast aside as he runs a hand over his face, "And here I thought you wanted to catch up. Ask me about the wedding. Comment on my choice of bride."

Kathryn can imagine it: she'd criticize Lana's age, he'd retort that everyone was too young for him, even her. It would bring the conversation too close to something she didn't want to think about let alone admit.

The outcome would be the same, another goodbye.

The least she can do is try to make it as peaceful as possible. For his sake, if not for her own.

"You didn't," she says, not unkindly.

"No," Aeson admits, casting his eyes to the ceiling as if asking it for help, "I didn't."

And yet, he'd come here anyway, and he hasn't left yet.

She hedges her bets and decides to be direct.

"I need 2000 milligrams of chronexaline."

He's on his feet in an instance, and Kathryn sets aside her uniform in preparation to follow him to the door if she has to.

He ends up walking toward her instead of away, "It's experimental and highly classified."

"When has either stopped me?"

"Never," it's almost fond.

"Can you?" She clarifies, "Get it for me?"

"I can have it delivered to your office in the morning."

Kathryn feels a weight leave her then. In its place is the relief of him choosing not to be an obstacle in her way taking its place, even if he doesn't know what this was for. She'd been avoiding this for months, knowing that he might refuse or worse, guess what it's for. Tachyon radiation only comes from a select few sources, and the most prominent one is in the drug's name.

She turns from him, to hide that relief under the guise of righting her uniform on the couch. A part of her hopes he'll take his leave, a larger part is saddened by the thought that their last conversation will be a distant, hollow thing if he does. Not unfriendly but cursory.

Aeson surprises her by grasping her elbow and gently turning her to face him. If he means to ask her to explain herself — to explain the last four years of silence, explain why they had gone from what they were to this — then he'd be sorely disappointed.

"What you're doing," he visibly stops himself before he can say more, face contorting again into that old reluctant pain.

Kathryn wanders how much he knows and how much he's guessed. She's kept him at a distance because she wants to spare him the aftermath of this as much as possible. The possibility that was all for nothing is sobering.

Before she can ask, he shakes his head once and reaches for her. His hand on her cheek is gentle, his eyes warm and achingly familiar. A moment later he leans forward to press a kiss to her temple.

When she hugs him around the middle in response, he holds her to him tightly.

"I would have helped you," he whispers, his breath (and oh, she remembers how proud he was to have figured that out) stirring the hair near her neck.

Kathryn feels the tears but refuses to let them fall,"I know."

It's why she hadn't let herself ask.

…

Barclay sees her off with a single PADD, filled with teraquads upon teraquads of data.

His smile is so bashful, so endearingly apologetic for shackling her with this much homework to read, that Kathryn nearly laughs.

A somberness falls over them though, as they realize what will happen next.

"Will it work?"

Somehow, he knows she's asking about the virus. Three years ago. She had just wanted to go back and have them brute force their way through the Borg transwarp hub, but he had convinced her their is a better way. A safer one. One that can save so many lives if it works.

Who is she to deny so much hope?

"Yes," there is a conviction there she cannot question. Then, he adds because there's nothing else to say, "The shuttle is waiting for you at the Oakland shipyard."

A beat later, he says softly but earnestly, "I wish you would let me come with you."

Kathryn hopes her younger self makes a friend out of this man. His loyalty would have been invaluable to her on Voyager, had she been lucky enough to count him among her crew. It has certainly meant everything to her in the Alpha Quadrant.

Kathryn steels herself, though, knowing that any sentiment now can only put him at greater risk when she's gone, "I'm sorry Reg, but this is my mission."

To soften the blow, she says, "Besides, if you leave, there won't be anyone to teach those young cadets about the Borg."

He bows his head, smile small and sad, then holds up a finger to indicate there is one thing left, as he walks over to grab something from a console, "I made you that tea you like. The real thing, not the replicated stuff.I have to drink it every time I see Aeson now, because I convinced him I wanted the recipe for myself."

Kathryn takes the thermos from him, rendered nearly speechless at his thoughtfulness.

Nearly.

"Thank you, I couldn't have done this without you."

"Please," he chuckles, "don't remind me."

She leaves his lab quickly after and makes one more stop before Oakland.

The memorial is a low, two feet tall and three feet in diameter. Flat, black, and reflective, it mirrors the fall-grey sky. Kathryn stands beside it, looking over the names one by one. There are over sixty engraved into its otherwise smooth surface; nearly half of them put there by decisions she made after Quarra.

Because she must, she kneels to wipe the leaves from the names they've covered, then remains in that position to take it in for the last time.

Her eyes land on Chakotay's name at the top left, and she sighs.

The rustle of footsteps on dry leaves approaching doesn't stop her from saying her piece.

"I wish we'd had the time to forgive ourselves. You were, even when it seemed like it couldn't be true, especially then, my friend."

"He felt the same way."

Kathryn closes her eyes, takes a steading breath, and stands.

"I still miss him. Every day, I miss him," Marla is standing beside her, as aged as Kathryn is but no less beautiful for it.

Without looking, Kathryn knows that the other woman is still wearing her wedding ring, despite the man who wore the matching band being long dead.

"When did you get back?"

"Yesterday," her friend smiles, "I was told you're going away for awhile, and I thought I might catch you here before you did."

"It'll be more than a while," Kathryn confesses.

"I know," Marla's lips quirk, a flicker of a knowing smile.

Kathryn hasn't told her anything. This woman had worked her way from a criminal to a respected member of her crew to a decorated captain, and Kathryn didn't want to ruin that. Yet, Marla has always seemed to know. Know what she's planning to do and why. Know what to hint at and what not to. Kathryn has never figured out who keeps her informed — it definitely isn't Reggie — but even now she can't bring herself to mind.

"I'm glad we get to say goodbye," she admits to the captain.

"We will," and now Marla does smile, one that reaches her eyes when Kathryn looks at her with shock, "once I get you where you need to go, with the thing you need to get there."

"I have a shuttle."

"And I happen to have a shuttle bay. Let me do this. For you, Kathryn. For Chakotay. If I can buy any version of us even just a few more days with him, it will be worth any consequences I might face here. Besides," she smirks gamely, "I can always lie and say you coerced me."

Kathryn swallows the lump on her throat. She should deny her, but she doesn't want to. Marla has every reason to be a part of this — more than Matthew, especially more than Reggie. No matter how much she wants to keep her from suffering the fallout in this timeline, it's still Marla's choice to make.

"Thank you," the younger woman says, when Kathryn nods her agreement.

…

It's a good thing she agrees.

Without the arsenal of the USS Endurance, Korath's treachery might have ruined the mission. As it is, when Kathryn takes the chrono deflector from him without giving him Borg technology he demands, there is little he can do when the Endurance trains its weapons on his weaker ship before going to warp.

She says her final goodbye to Marla, accepts the breach of protocol that is her friend's fierce hug, and climbs aboard the shuttle. When she sets a course for the past, when she activates the device that will take her there, Kathryn is completely certain.

This will work.

…

The path to making it work is rockier than she'd hoped for. The Captain is unwilling to engage the Borg again, not so soon after their attempts to help the resistance led to retribution and bloodshed. Kathryn cannot blame her younger self for ignoring her appeals to save the lives of millions, billions of Federation civilians in outer systems from suffering the fate of future assimilation. She can't even blame her for taking the risk to bring her crew home early, perfectly aware of how much they have to lose.

So, when the Captain refuses to hear word of the future that awaits her, the Admiral finds those who do listen.

She starts with Chakotay, who responds to her happy smile when she catches him alone as if it's the first time he's seen the sun after a long night. It's been nearly eight months since he killed Jenny Delaney and gave the orders that led to the deaths of five others, and Kathryn knows her younger self has not fully forgiven him or herself. It feels good to give him a short preview of what he might one day come to expect from his estranged friend.

She sits with him in the empty mess late that first night and tells him happy, innocuous tales of the journey that still fill her with some joy thinking about. When he's softened with laughter and the warm feeling of having his friend back in any form, she hits him with it.

Age-lined hand over his, in the darkness of the room over empty mugs of tea, she tells him what happens.

"You die in a shuttle crash on a humanitarian mission."

Chakotay grows somber then, and she watches as he wars with accepting his Captain's orders to uphold the temporal prime directive and his morbid curiosity to learn more. It's the latter that wins out.

"When?"

"Five years from now."

The knowledge washes over him, and to his credit it does not scare him. Instead, he nods resolutely. ready to hear more.

"Tuvok took your place as my first officer, until his illness made him unfit for duty," she does not explain what that illness is, and he knows better to ask, "if you can believe it, I ended up with Harry as a first officer and Tom as a second for the last seven years of the voyage."

The lopsided smile falls from her face when she meets his eyes. His Captain will experience no rest, and she will watch as her crew shrinks one, the bitterness of it only briefly alleviated by friendly outsiders willing to take their place. Harry will get his promotion, but it's at the cost of friends an cherished colleagues, something they both know he'd trade his pips in to undo.

He realizing now, what it will mean for her and the others to finish this journey the long way. She can see it in the way his brow furrows in compassion, not for himself but for her.

She needs him to stop thinking of the others now, and start thinking about himself.

"She never remarried"

Shock and understanding hit Chakotay at the same time.

He always was and is quick to the draw.

"Who?"

Kathryn places her hand over his again, "I think you already know."

After Quarra, the two had grown closer. Friendlier and then more. By their eighth year into the journey the couple had been a fixture in the crew. Nothing to blink at. Hardly even a surprise, not with how careful Marla was about making sure that it was okay.

And Kathryn had been happy for them — even with the lingering pangs of what if's that came with the news. Happy enough to officiate their wedding ceremony with an honest smile on her face, and then sad enough to grieve with Marla when he'd gone.

"Marla," he doesn't whisper, but his voice is low, as if acknowledging it at full volume will make it go away.

"Yes. You were very happy. She reminded you that you were capable of forgiving yourself," she'd reminded Kathryn too, even knowing what she'd nearly done in the final moments of the mutiny, "and you reminded here there was more to live for than making amends."

Now for the final blow, the one that Marla had been prescient enough to levy against her at the memorial, "She risked her career to help me here, so that any version of them could spend just one more day with you."

"Them?" He asks, but the horror and hope on his face give away that he must know.

"You had a daughter. Have. She's still out there, in the timeline I left. She's brilliant, Chakotay, just like her parents."

She leaves him there, shaken and swayed, to go find Seven in astrometrics. The younger woman flits between terminals, intent on ignoring her, and Kathryn can't help but chuckle at the thought that so few things ever really change.

"I do not wish to hear what you have say," Seven eventually declares, when she realizes her silence won't scare the admiral away.

Because avoiding the subject to spare her feelings never works, Kathryn sighs dramatically, "Then I guess I'll just have to tell Megan."

She'd really rather not. Look Megan in the eyes — telling her what's to come and the role that Kathryn plays in it — would be the worst kind of self-flagellation. It's regret that still festers, one that makes her stare into the middle distance when she lets her mind wander back to it.

The former drone, whose back is to her, stills, "Megan is irrelevant."

Kathryn laughs. Her once-protege may have grown to resent her so much that they no longer speak, but her tells have not and would never change.

"I didn't understand at first," Kathryn forges on, "what she meant to you after the mutiny. I don't think you did at first, either. Not until Quarra," that damned planet had changed so much for so many of them, "but the two of you…you're already trying."

She doesn't know when Megan went from half-over-the-moon for Seven to completely over it. She'd never gotten the opportunity to ask.

Kathryn is standing close enough to Seven now that she can see her throat bob with emotion as she speaks, "You are here to warn me against it."

Emotions of her own prick at Kathryn's eyes as she takes the risk of settling her hand on Seven's shoulder. The younger woman does not pull away, even though she tenses, "No. I've come here to fix a mistake. My mistake."

A muscle ticks in Seven's jaw, but she's finally willing to look at her with imperious blue eyes that are still hard. Kathryn knows that that just means she's afraid.

"You never forgave me for the Doctor," Kathryn admits, and it's true. In many ways, she'd taken Seven's most ardent friend and supporter away from her — not once but twice — and the pain of that never went away. Even as B'Elanna helped him regain many of his lost memories of Voyager; even as he fell into a warm friendship with Seven again.

The damage has already been done, and it will never go away.

"No," Seven concedes honestly, "I cannot."

"And I can't change that, but I can change what made you hate me."

Seven still has so far to go when it comes to interpersonal relationships and understanding them, but she has always been able to read Kathryn so clearly. How much of that had been out of fear of being abandoned if she didn't? How much out of love for a surrogate mother.

"I have not told her how I…feel. If I do not, then it will not hurt me when she dies."

So clever. Of course she'd pieced together so few clues and got the correct answer.

They lost Megan three years after Quarra. The result of another away mission with her Captain that went terribly wrong too quickly. Only, unlike the first time, Aeson had had to choose which of the two to save. In a visceral lesson she'd finally been forced to learn in the aftermath, Kathryn came to know that he would always choose her.

"It will hurt worse, Seven, because you will have denied yourself joy for the fear of losing it."

"I cannot…" Seven pauses, at a loss for words.

When it comes down to it, this young woman has and would always live in fear of losing those she loves, "Admiral, I do not know what I am doing."

"So few of us do, but I want you to have the time to figure it out. Let me give you that?"

Seven's nod is subtle but it is there.

…

Kathryn does not go to Tuvok. Seeing him in his prims is counterintuitively excruciating for her. His stern, controlled features only serve to remind her that she's left her dearest friend behind, and that he will never understand why.

She can't change his mind anyway. His loyalty will always primarily be to the Captain and the friend he serves. It is why she loves him, and it is why she refuses hurt him by telling him things he must already know will come to pass. Tuvok must see in anyway, in the way she can't meet his eyes.

The next morning, she finds herself standing in front of Aeson's bookshelf, browsing what is there with an old fondness and a new sadness. It's been a very long time since she's been able to do this.

As she snoops among his things, he prepares the customary momet tea, as if he'd been expecting her arrival.

"I'll do what she tells me," he calls over to her, "surely you know that already."

Kathryn smiles, "I'm not here to convince you to commit mutiny."

"Then why are you here?" his voice is closer now, but not directly behind her.

When Kathryn looks to check where he's at, she sees he's settled onto his couch and is watching her.

With a lopsided smile, she pulls down the book she wants and moves to take a seat in the chair perpendicular to his side of the couch. She has countless memories of sitting right in this spot, having friendly and difficult and meaningless conversation with him. Kathryn know that, in the months since Quarra, the Captain has begun socializing with Aeson — with everyone. In that short time, she has grown to consider those conversations necessary to her sanity.

"Can't I just want to say hello to a friend?"

"Are we that?" He softens the blow by eyeing the familiar brown cover of the book in her hand and quirking a brow in question.

Kathryn doesn't answer; instead, she opens the book in her lap and traces the pages delicately. The acknowledgment is shorter and sadder than the first two: 'For my people, who will one day be forgotten.' It bodes badly for the story Martzia decided to tell in the pages to follow.

"I never got to read this," she says instead, knowing that even now she won't be able to. There just isn't enough time.

"They were all destroyed before I could," is her answer to the worried look he's giving her.

They were just another casualty of all her choices. The sweater his daughter had knitted him had long unraveled and these books, crafted by Martzia's sharp mind, had been lost to violent hull breach on this deck. All four objects still exist here, now, as more things she can preserve by succeeding. She intends to make the prophetic words of the acknowledgment never come to pass.

"It's her best," he chooses to join the conversation instead of ending it.

Aeson takes it from her, holding it as carefully in his hands as she had, "Although it was criticized at publication for being too bleak in a time that demanded optimism."

"Tell me about it?"

She has heard so many stories of Martzia as a child, as a young woman, as a mother and a grandmother. He'd opened up to her quickly after Quarra, helped along by the fact that she'd treated him like a friend she could trust. Maybe that will happen again with the Captain, despite this interruption to their timeline. Even with everything that happened in the end — by her choice no less — that love was still worth exploring.

He humors her ask as she sips her cup of tea. As Kathryn listens she tries not to miss it already. In days, if this works, she will be gone and this will be just another strange memory for Aeson to one day decide what to do with.

"Ultimately," he finishes the summary of a tale of a people trapped in a world they could never leave due to the statistical bad luck of their planet's core, "the Watchers depart. When they take a single Kelemane man with them, the people rejoice, because that means their history and cultures will be remembered."

"It's bittersweet," she acknowledges, sitting her now empty cup aside, "but hardly pessimistic."

Aeson gives her a sad smile, "No. had it ended there, I think the initial criticism might have been kinder."

"There's more?"

A nod, then, "An epilogue. The man lives for so long among the Watchers that he forgets where he comes from. Kelemane is lost to time, and his memories of it are replaced by those of his new life."

It's a fear he has yet to share with her younger self, that he may one day live so long he'll have to choose what memories to carry with him. That in choosing he might whittle away at the time he spent on Kelemane, until its but a shadow of an afterthought. Fortunately, between B'Elanna, Reggie, and Lewis, his compression algorithms will be perfected. He'll live for many more centuries before needing to find another solution.

Kathryn reaches out and sets a comforting hand on his knee. He responds with a smile that doesn't spread beyond his eyes, but lays a hand over hers, thumb passing once then twice over the back of her wrist.

This is how the Captain finds them, so used to entering his quarters without needing an invitation that she does. It's a surprise, but despite the younger woman's sharp, keen eyes taking in the domestic scene she doesn't respond to it directly.

Instead, she does a valiant job at softening her features when she looks to the doctor, who now appears chastened as he lets go of the Admiral's hand, "I'll come back later."

Then, more firmly, "Admiral. Come with me."

By the time they make it back to the Captain's quarters, her younger self has worked up into a level of irate that Kathryn hasn't felt since she'd given up coffee.

"I told you not to speak to anyone about the future."

Kathryn shrugs, as if to say, 'what did you expect from me' which does very little to calm the Captain down.

"Chakotay? Seven? I've had them both in my ear since this morning. What can I expect Aeson to tell me? Have you unearthed some long dead spouse? A child? Do I maroon him on another damned planet?"

It's interesting that these are the things she fears might happen, at least enough to bring up. Kathryn considers it a shame that they don't have the time to unpack that.

"I haven't told him anything."

The Captain doesn't believe her, and Kathryn can't blame her. She has been doing exactly what she was forbidden from doing, rallying to her cause those that hurt her younger self most. It's not as though Kathryn expects to win anything, certainly not over the Captain. After all, at the end of this, if everything goes to plan, only one of them will be left alive, and it won't be the Admiral.

What would she have told him anyway? That his worst fear had never come to pass? He could plainly see it just by looking at her, decades older. She'd survived the journey. That he'd had her and lost her, because her pride and duty dictated she right the wrongs of her past?

What use is there relitigating her past with a man it hasn't happened to? Won't happen to, if she has any say.

"I should just give you a list of the dead," Kathryn snaps when the Captain continues to look on her with suspicion, "let you look at the names and wonder what happened to them. Joe, Megan, Seles. You thought 'If they've already survived the worst, how could they possibly die now?' Samantha, just months before she made it home to her husband. He'd waited for her, you know, and for all that waiting he got a traumatized daughter and no body to bury."

"Stop it…"

"And Chakotay. Tuvok," her voice breaks, and she can't go on.

The Captain throws up her arms and turns away, "So am I supposed to rewrite the timeline just to spare my own feelings."

"I've told you, you won't be rewriting it. Mine is still out there, the people there unchanged, the damage the Borg did unchanged."

"Then what's the point? Nothing you do here will make it better for them."

Kathryn wants to be angry at herself for being so difficult, but she's just sad, "It will be better for you. Whether you like it or not, this timeline is new and it's yours. Why waste this opportunity, if you can change it?"

"Because what if it's worse?" The Captain is so close to her now, one hand on her her him and the other waving about in thought, "What if we introduce the virus to the Borg, and instead of disseminating the Unimatrix Zero genetic code among the Collective as planned, it kills them? I'm capable of many things, but not genocide. Not now that I know they can be saved."

"It will work," the folks at Montgomery's lab, the ones who'd risked their careers for an Admiral who would never know their names, had been certain of it. The outcomes of their simulations still lived on her PADD. Millions and millions of freed drones, enough to turn a small resistance into a real separatist movement. One strong enough to bring down the Borg from within, to offer a kinder future to those assimilated against their will.

"And the transwarp hub? How do we know they won't jump to near Earth orbit before we can stop them?"

"Then don't go through it. Destroy that aperture as soon as you can. There are others, dozens within a thousand lightyears of Federation space. You can be home in months, not years."

She can tell that it's working, that the Captain is finally listening to her.

Just a little more, now.

"You're worried about retribution, but we both know you don't need to antagonize the Borg for them to bleed you. If you stay this route, you'll lose twenty more crew to the Borg. Morrow and Chell are assimilated. Chakotay dies trying to provide aide to their victims. Megan…." she swallows, the guilt still making it hard to say aloud, " will die in three years of you follow this course. Seven never forgives you. She joins the Borg resistance the first opportunity she gets. There is no way you can avoid the danger, whether you follow my plan or don't, because the next twelve-thousand light years are Borg space."

The Captain's posture visibly sags, her hand coming up to rub at her brow. It's one thing to do that herself and another to see it happen. Uncanny. Endearing.

She thinks if Chakotay and Marla and their girl, Selena, who may not be born the same here but who exists somewhere else. Of Matthew Paris who is at no risk of not being conceived, because he already has been. Of those short years that Megan looked happy again and Seven looked at peace. She thinks of the decade and more she let herself love someone, before she pushed him away to do this.

Kathryn takes pity, "Good things happened too. I think they still could if we do this. You can give them a chance to happen more often. Take the risk, Kathryn."

"Okay," it's soft, barely audible, and Kathryn almost doesn't here.

And then it comes again, more firmly, "Okay. I'll do it."

…

Aeson and Ravok, always the clever medical duo, are able to synthesize the virus in a matter of days. Their own simulations match those of the nameless scientists who created it. With each new practice run of her leg of the mission and Voyager's in the holodeck, the mood among the senior staff lightens. Baiting and infecting the Queen, and subsequently 13% of the collective, is the easy part. Kathryn has brought with her knowledge and technology from the future that the Queen cannot refuse. She knows which buttons to push to force her into rash decisions.

The hard part rests with B'Elanna, Tom, and Tuvok. The engineer must install the ablative shields and weaponry they need to force their way into the hub, Tom needs to practice the flight pattern that will get them there, Tuvok's task is hardest of all. He must practice the excruciatingly fine targeting that will destroy the direct route to Earth before a small retributory fleet can use it to lay the Federation low, all while allowing them to take the one that should drop them no more than a year from Federation space.

The excitement, the nerves, and the determination grow until the very end.

As Kathryn prepares her shuttle the night before the mission, the Captain meets her there. She thinks it's to deliver the hypospray with the virus she'll need to inject herself before entering the Queen's cube, but it isn' will be delivered to her by Aeson when she's set to depart in the morning.

Her younger self looks around the flight controls of the shuttle, calm and quiet as Kathryn works. Eventually, she starts to help until there is nothing left to do.

"Thank you," the Captain finally says, when they're seated in silence.

"Don't thank me yet," but she smiles, already thinking of the other woman as another woman. This Kathryn Janeway will have a different future, will become a different kind of admiral if she wants to. Perhaps, if Kathryn weren't about to set off to her death, they may have become a weird sort of friends in time.

"I won't be able to thank you at the appropriate time, if this works."

She chuckles because otherwise she'll think about what it will really mean to die this way, partially assimilated into the Collective, "Fair enough."

Another silence falls, and when it's about time to leave and prepare in a completely different sort of way for this mission, one that involves sitting with her crew one last time in the mess, she speaks, "Can I give you a final round of unsolicited advice?"

"Will I be able to stop you?"

Kathryn shrugs, then smiles, then shakes her head, "No, I suppose not."

The Captain smiles back through her exhaustion, "Go on."

"Don't push him away."

It's says plenty that the Captain doesn't ask who, "Is that what you did?"

"I don't think I would be here, if I hadn't."

"Was he trying to stop you?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so. In the end, he even helped me, when I asked."

"Always only when we ask," but there's a fondness there, even if her eyes are downcast as she keys commands into her own PADD.

Yes, they're talking about the same man.

"No," Kathryn sighs, "the problem was I was happy, but so many people I loved weren't. If I didn't do something, if I didn't try…"

That regret, that happiness, it would have soured into guilt.

The Captain is staring at her, blue eyes clear and knowing, "How do you feel now?"

Sad, she wants to say, but she doesn't have to. Who knows her better than herself?

"Like I'm going to sleep well tonight."

…

In the morning, she climbs back into the shuttle with her chin held high.

The time has come to say her final goodbye.

β Perseus Aa1

The SC-4 is a small blip on the bridge view screen as they prepare to complete their part of the mission. Kathryn feels many things — anxious, tired, hopeful — but mostly she feels certain. Despite her initial misgivings and her refusal to do what needed to be done, she knows now that it is the right thing.

She stands between the conn and her chair, muscles tense as she prepares to receive the word from the Admiral that will start the longest hour of her life. Behind her, Chakotay sits at command double and triple checking that all stations are ready. Seven is standing beside and aiding Tuvok, who has agreed her expertise is needed to make that all important first (and possibly only strike). If they miss, if they hit the wrong one, the Borg could adapt and lock them out. B'Elanna is in engineering, her comm line open to the bridge.

Aeson stands at the rail above the lower bridge. Ravok has sickbay, ready to respond to any injuries that might occur on the decks below, while her CMO is stationed to handle any that might occur here. His presence is as soothing as the others, if not more, and when she turns to briefly look back at him, he gives her a confident nod.

"Incoming hail from the Admiral."

"On screen, Harry."

Her face, over twenty years older and yes, perhaps wiser, fills the screen. She looks determined and prepared to do what must be done. The sadness that marred her feature the evening before is gone, replaced with an unfamiliar of peace.

"I'll be entering the nebula now. Follow behind as planned, and I'll send the signal when I've been taken aboard the Cube. Strike then. "

"Understood and good luck, Admiral."

"Promise me that you'll get them home," there's a subtle crack in her mask as she makes her request. Despite the fact that they share a face, Kathryn cannot quite read the Admiral's true feelings in this moment. Desperation? Hope?

"I will," she promises.

The Admiral stares at her crew on the bridge for a moment longer, and then she nods once before cutting the line.

"Prepare to enter the nebula," Kathryn orders.

"Yes Ma'am," Tom responds, hands sliding along the console in front of him. Immediately, Voyager begins to move at impulse speed, keeping fifty thousand kilometers between it and the SC-4.

They ease in behind it, find their cover, and then begin the long, quiet wait.

Thirty minutes later, the Admiral's message that she's been taken aboard the Queens ship comes loud and clear.

The SC-4 explodes, taking with it all the technology the Borg could hope to get their hands on.

"Tom, go."

They race toward the hub, their ablative shields protecting them from the initial volley of fire from the two cubes that arrive to engage them. After the third hit, she turns to Tuvok, "Report."

"Shield integrity at 97 percent."

The ship rocks around them.

"90 percent."

Another four cubes move to intercept them. Kathryn grits her teeth, "Evasive maneuver's, Tom."

"Already on it!"

She barely keeps her balance as the inertial try to keep up with his banking. They dodge another volley of weapon's fire and a an attempt to catch them in a tractor beam. It looks like they might be able to shake off at least three of them, until three cubes and a sphere drop out of warp behind them.

Before Kathryn can swear, certain they're well laid plans are on the brink of being ruined, the new interlopers begin firing on the two cubes still flanking them.

Harry calls up the audio from the broadcasting sphere. A familiar, gruff voice can be heard shouting Klingon obscenities.

Kathryn looks back at Seven, a question plain as day on her face. She can hardly believe it.

The blonde nearly smirks, "I requested backup."

The time to chide her for not disclosing that information will have to be later, right now, they move finish their mission.

"Hold your fire, save it for the hub. Tom?"

"We're nearing the conduit," he calls.

"Tuvok!"

Three transphasic torpedos rush from the aft banks, streaking through the nebula toward their targets. The first is the aperture the Admiral told them would take them less than a light year from Earth. The torpedo hits it, just as a cube tries to enter, and the resulting explosion destroys the vessel with it.

The other two hit junctions that Seven has assured them will lead to the complete destruction of the hub. Tom keeps them on course toward their way out of this mess, at the breakneck speed meant to get them to their aperture before the cascade gets there first.

"Brace yourselves!" Kathryn shouts, bounding to her chair where she sits and white kunckles the arm rests just as they enter.

Their approach is less than graceful, roughened by the battle and destruction behind them. The hub pulses around them, jostling the ship, and shaking her down to her skeleton. Tom remains admirably keyed into his console, working hard to ease the rest of the ride, as behind them, a cube fires on them and a sphere retaliates on the cube.

Moments later they are spit out, and the sphere slams through the remains on the cube just as the hub conduit collapses in a self-contained implosion.

Around the bridge, the red alert klaxons blare and several of the consoles steam and spark. Kathryn can still feel the clacking of her teeth from the rough ride, but is able to right herself in her seat. She can just make out Chakotay doing the same.

"Report."

"Shield integrity at 10 percent," Tuvok, bleeding from a small cut on his brow, is the first to answer.

"Casualties on from decks 5, 6, and 10. No fatalities," Harry looks up and is the first to smile.

"The sphere is hailing," Chakotay says to her, voice soft and low at her side.

Kathryn looks at him, takes it in that they might have done this, and grabs his forearm. It's the first time she's touched him in months, and open relief relaxes his shoulders when she does.

"Tom, figure out where we are. On the screen, Commander."

A proud Klingon's grin fills the screen. It's been months since she's seen him, since she's heard how his insurgency is faring, and she can't help but smiles broadly in return.

"Korok, you're alive."

"It is a good day," he nearly shouts, raising a fist but not finishing the usual saying, "you have delivered am impressive blow!"

Kathryn looks at Chakotay, then back at Aeson and Tuvok. She had resigned herself to having to wait to know if the Admiral's plan had worked in its entirety. It seems to her now that the answer will come much sooner.

"What's happening?"

"We have destroyed the Queen. Even now your pathogen is working its way through affected cubes. We shall have our army!"

Emotions war within her. She knows without needing to ask that the Admiral is dead. She will never know what her final moments looked like or what she was able to say to the Queen. If it frightened her, to know that her Collective was about to splinter, all thanks to her own foolish decisions.

She can't help but to continue smiling, to accept that Korok's glee is infectious. Her ally has been handed a great victory today as well, "What will you do next? The hub is destroyed."

He looks to his own crew, not visible to her, and then nods. Finally, the smile is replaced with a serious frown, "We will rendezvous with our forces in the Beta quadrant and regroup. There is much to do."

"Let us know if there's anything the Federation can do."

He smiles again, all teeth, "The Federation, the Empires, yes. I am sure you will all hear from us soon."

The screen flicks back to an image of the space around them and the sphere disappears.

"Well," Chakotay says, "that went well."

She huffs out a laugh, "Tom?"

Her pilot turns to look at her, eyes suspiciously bright, "we're 874 light years from Earth, if we go around the Romulan Empire instead of through it."

The hand on her shoulder that keeps her from staggering is warm and welcome. Kathryn looks to find that Aeson has joined her in the lower deck. His silence had nearly made her forget he was there, and now she can only smile wanly, her hand reaching up to cover his.

"Go, help Ravok."

"Of course, Captain."

As he leaves, she turns to look to Tuvok, then to Seven and Harry in turn. They are each their own version of happy. They are each looking at her like they cannot believe that it worked. Eyes moving back to Tuvok, knowing now what the future would have cost him if it hadn't, she clears her throat and slaps her combadge.

"Computer, open a ship-wide line."

A chime indicates that it has followed her orders.

She keeps her speech short and sweet, and her voice still cracks:

"We're going home."

…

There is so much to do.

Almost more than the time they have to do it in: just under eight months by Seven and Harry's estimations.

They decidedly do not take a shortcut through the Romulan Empire. They wouldn't have even if they'd been invited to. The technology and information contained within Voyager is too much of a temptation to take that risk. It is for the same reason they do not make toward the Klingon Empire, keenly aware that their allies aren't always their allies.

Instead, they plot a course that will take them, ironically, toward the Delta Quadrant before cutting toward the Alpha Quadrant at a distance suitable enough to keep the Romulans fro discovering them and staging an intercept mission. The path is verified by Starfleet Command, which immediately classifies the mission upon learning what the Admiral has done and scrambles three deep space vessels to rendezvous with them.

They will meet with their first, friendly Starfleet ship in three months. The other two a month after that.

In that time, they cannot make contact with their families at home. The risk is too great that the messages will be intercepted and Voyager put at risk. It seems like domestic politics have remained as fraught as they were when she left, albeit with a different flavor.

So, they work to repair the systems damaged during their trip through the transwarp hub. Then they work to complete their reports for that mission. All the while, they still meet species they have never met before along the way. They help where they can, only now with more caution as Kathryn's inherent recklessness will no longer help them grow ever closer to home.

The relief is shot through with a certain inward paranoia. Until they make it, until her people step foot off this ship the McKinley station, she will continue to fear the other shoe dropping. They hear nothing from the Borg, Unimatrix Zero or otherwise, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Waiting to ask for help or to try their hand again at revenge.

…

It's the evening before their rendezvous with the USS Faraday, and Kathryn has settled in with Tuvok at his usual table in the Mess. Chell's idea of a casserole is even worse than Neelix's, so she's opted instead to replicate a salad. Tuvok, for the most part, ignores his soup to gaze out the view screen.

"Penny for your thoughts."

"You do not need to pay me with antiquated human currency," he reprimands, but his eyes are focused on her now.

"No, I suppose not. I'd like to hear them anyway, antiquated human expression aside."

"I regret that I did not tell you I am ill."

She chews her lettuce, wondering if blue cheese was the right dressing to select, and waits for him to speak again. It would be a lie if she tells him that learning it from the Admiral had not hurt. He would know it's a lie.

"I did not want to burden you with the knowledge until it could not be ignored. You would have felt my indignity for me, and I wished for a few more years of normalcy between us."

It's the closest he'll ever get to saying he didn't want his illness to change their friendship. Kathryn is honest enough with herself now to know that it would have. The expectation of losing him would have made every interaction hurt, if only a little. Could she fault him for wanting to avoid that as long as he could.

No. There is very little she will ever fault him for.

"Will Elieth be on the Cataria?"

"The fal-tor-voh can wait."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Tuvok isn't one prone to sighing, so he regards his soup instead, "Yes. He will arrive on the Cataria. I informed him that his brother Sek could perform the meld when I return, but he is not one to be dissuaded by logic."

Because she has known him most of her adult life, Kathryn knows what is bothering him, "No one will begrudge you for seeing your family before they see theirs, Tuvok."

"I suspect you are wrong."

"Nonsense," she says through a tomato, enjoying how her lack of table manners bothers him, "Harry's academy roommate is aboard the Faraday, and I know for a fact that Mortimer Harren's sister is aboard the New Amsterdam. Everyone will find someone they're happy to see."

Even you, she doesn't add.

"Your logic is sound."

"You could try making that sound a little less surprised, my friend."

Her logic is, indeed sound.

The Faraday has 767 crew to Voyager's 129 crew and 2 children. Kathryn finds herself wishing Neelix was still aboard, certain that the Talaxian would have had the time of his life catering to the Starfleet Officers that come and go between ships. Chell does his best to host parties and events in the mess, but he's missing that little bit of flair that brings it all together.

For her part, Kathryn accepts Captain Jaqueline Field's dry demeanor for what it is. The older woman is in her sixties and discusses the topic of the Dominion War as if it is the weather. They share a few meals and exchange a few stories, but by the end of the Faraday's three-week babysitting mission, Kathryn is happy to see the other captain and her crew off.

"The Delta Quadrant has made me a hermit," she gripes to Aeson, when he finally manages to drag her into sickbay for a long overdue physical.

He says nothing, but hums and continues to scan her.

"You're supposed to tell me I'm not a hermit."

Ravok does an admiral job of suppressing a chuckle from where he's standing at one of the terminals, inputing commands. It's not his fault he's eavesdropping, and it isn't the first time he's overheard this level of bantering between his CMO and captain.

"If I recall," Aesone mutters in that sing-song voice of his that has started coming back to him, now that B'Elanna is helping him with his memories, "you don't like it when I lie to you."

She had half a mind to protest, but merely rolls her eyes instead.

"Should I rescind my holodeck invitation, if its going to make you liar?"

His smile is crooked and his hand is warm where he touches her shoulder, "You're healthy, and I'll see you at o'900."

"Bring a bowler hat," she orders cryptically.

A week later, the New Amsterdam makes contact. The ship carries with it much needed supplies and sticks around for four days before departing for its next mission. Two days later, the Cataria falls out of warp beside them, and with it comes their mission from command. When it's over, and they've avoided a war with supremely intolerable planet of ghouls that make the Romulan look friendly, Kathryn can't help but mutter to Chakotay when he brings her his report of the debacle in her ready room.

"See, I told you I was rusty at taking orders."

His grin comes with dimples and Cataria comes with Tuvok's cure and Kathryn feels like the other shoe still might drop.

…

Their next crises are minor affairs.

A radiogenic species takes over their warp core and nearly destroys the ship with four months left on their journey. Through pure rage and tenacity and the protective instincts of a mother-to-be, B'Elanna evicts them into a subspace well.

A week later a star goes super nova in range of a system where the post-warp species is incapable of fleeing fast enough. They can't save everyone on the colony that's affected, but they do save enough and warp out just in time to avoid the blast.

A Bird-of-Prey finds them three weeks after that, acting as evasive and contrary as expected. The Romulan's aggressive ploy to ensnare some of her crew by feigning engine damage and casualties suffered in a skirmish with the Orions is transparent. Just when things start to look bleak for Voyager, a Gorn vessels appears to complete a violent act of retribution, in a supremely destructive act that destroys the Bird. The Gorn behave magnanimously afterward, and so she doesn't look their gift of intervention in the mouth.

At the end of each stressful encounter, Tuvok reports that there are no casualties as if that is a given.

…

The embargo on personal communication is lifted with three months left. They're so close to familiar space, that even Kathryn has found that most of her misgivings have faded away. Around her, her crew are able to write and comm and respond to their family and friends as often as they want. No more waiting a month between metered messages. No more counting quads to se if the next paragraph of text can fit.

No more fearing the Borg have embedded activation codes in letters from children.

It is also the first time Kathryn is able to send a message to Neelix. She knows her morale officer and distant friend must have worried when his regular communication with Voyager had ceased abruptly. They had been unable to warn him, lest the Borg intercepted the message. While her good tidings won't reach their destinations for over a month each, she knows Neelix will appreciate it.

They hear what will become of the Maquis once the lines open, and Admiral Hayes actually appears happy when he tells her that Command had wanted to wait to tell her the good news until she docks, but that'd he'd convinced them that there is no better time than the present.

She sits with Chakotay after the news gets out. The pardons had been expected, but that doesn't stop the level of revelry in the mess to rival the celebration that occurred there when they made it to the Beta Quadrant.

He nurses a cider as she makes due with her usual coffee, and they watch their family and crew as they let off some steam.

"What's in your future," she asks, in a way she knows will make him smile.

Their relationship is mending, and Kathryn thinks that by the time they reach Earth, it will be strong enough to survive going separate ways. Once, she would have hoped to explore something more with him — she knows he used to feel the same way — but there is no shame in the flavor of that love shifting into the fierce loyalty of a friend.

He does, slow but wide, "You've converted me back to the Starfleet way of things. We'll see if they let me back in."

"Oh, I don't think that will be a problem," she'd already sent her commendations for all those worthy, and all of them were worthy. Him most especially of all.

Chakotay ducks his head, hiding his dimples in his drink, and she continues, "What about Marla?"

He looks quietly for a moment, dark eyes suddenly serious. They soften when he realizes that she's asking him as their friend, not their Captain.

"The Equinox crew have all decided not to fight for time served. She plans to plead guilty. Most expect to lose their commission, but with the effort that she's put in rehabilitate herself in the Delta Quadrant, I think they'll allow her to return to duty in time."

He isn't answering the entirety of the question, but Kathryn lets it go. If he wants to hold the burgeoning relationship close to his chest until it's able to survive it's first steps off this ship, who is she to begrudge him that?

"You know I'll do my best for them," she is already putting in the political work to secure them fair deals. It's Chakotay who knows them best, though, and Chakotay who as worked to rehabilitate them since they came aboard.

"I do, and they do."

Kathryn cannot pretend to know the minds of all the Equinox crew, just Marla's. All she really knows is that she has her own regrets to assuage.

"What about you," he asks, "surely Command will want to make an admiral of you."

She gives him her wryest look, leans back comfortably in her chair, and takes a long pull of her tepid coffee. A beat later, she decides she knows the answer, "I'll be happy to put off Admiral Janeway as long as I can."

"I don't know," he chuckles, "she seemed pretty well-adjusted, all things considered."

Kathryn couldn't, wouldn't, let herself become the type of person who so easily throw away her present to alter the past, "Well adjusted people don't create an entirely new, branching timeline. Put me out of my misery if I ever try to do that."

He's at ease with her dark humor, but his expression is too knowing; she's being serious.

"Yeah. It might be best if you put off the promotion for a few years. I'm sure they'll give you your choice of ship."

"They will," she concedes.

He nearly groans and a shout goes up across the mess as Harry beats Joe at a game of cards, "Just promise me its name won't be synonymous with a long and winding journey."

Kathryn snorts, "Any Odyssey or Odysseus or Venture is off the list."

…

It's a message from her mother and a followup video comm from Admiral Paris, one right after the other at the end of a long shift, that make her truly smile. She leaves her ready room abruptly, gives Harry the bridge, and sets off to find the true recipient of the good news before Chell's, "We're Two Months Away" or is it his "B'Elanna's One Month Away" bash in the holodeck?

…

"I have happy news, Aeson," she enters his quarters without bothering to change for the celebration first, content with finally being able to surprise him with something good for once.

"Oh?" He appears in the doorway to his room, tugging down the edges of the very real knit sweater he has very clearly just finished changing into for Chell's party. His posture is curious and in no way perturbed that she's interrupted him. Not that she's set him back — holograms have to try to appear ruffled, as 'put together' is their natural state.

She realizes some explanation is in order, since she failed to share her one-off request to her mother with him when she made it.

"Before Quarra, I asked my contacts in Starfleet to find you representation. I've just gotten word that all the preliminary steps to petition the Federation courts for your personhood have been completed. Admiral Paris found you counsel and has just assured me that the final ruling will be a formality. You'll be a Federation citizen before we make it back."

As she speaks, he moves from the doorway of his room into the living room, then nearer still as what she's done for him (or rather what she'd asked others to do in lieu of her) is made clear until finally he enters her space. There is something gentle in his expression as he stops in front of her, like she's dear to him.

He's worn the same expression for months now, when he doesn't think she's looking.

Kathryn is sure that she has as well, even thought she doesn't remember when she started to.

His lips are light on her cheek, his hand warm where he's used the curve of his knuckles to tilt her chin upward. The intimacy in the way his breath stirs the hair near her ear silences any objections she might raise. He lingers there for a second longer before dropping his hand to her shoulder and drawing away.

The admiral had all but admitted this had been her future. Not quite like this, certainly not quite now, given the changes to her timeline, but that somewhere — somewhen — in a timeline she'll never see, they'd crossed a line she'd drawn to keep others away. Why him? He's been persistent and she's never bothered to stamp out that spark from Quarra. What can she say to answer that in any way that isn't an excuse?

She follows the path of the words he's about to speak until she can press his thank you against his mouth. It's so sudden and purely on impulse, that the thought she shouldn't be doing this with any member of her crew — least of all him — comes and goes in the scant second it takes him to fold into the kiss.

Aeson doesn't need to breathe, but he eventually allows her to, using the brief moments she takes to collect herself to work his fingers quickly along the zipper of her uniform jacket. It slips from her shoulders with the slide of his hands down her arms and a shrug.

Kathryn watches his eyes as he carefully plucks the pips from her collar two-by-two and then considers them. When he tosses them away to scatter across the floor, she makes an aborted sound of protest.

Now that he's stripped her of her rank, he finally speaks, "Unless you want me to call you Captain?"

While the words are a friendly challenge, there's a strain around his eyes, as if even now he expects her to insist he should.

She grips the sides of his sweater, not allowing herself to do more than press into his lean frame through its knitted fabric. Knowing that the muscles and the soft padding of skin above them have never actually served any function does not stop her from enjoying the ambient warmth of him beneath her fingers. The light dances off his dark eyes as she does so, expression softening, and his hand cradles the back of her head so he can anchor her gaze to his.

It's fathomless and intense, and she can see every one of the years he's been forced to live. As much as she's come to enjoy who he is now, it wouldn't be wise to give into whatever version this unintentional obsession of his has become, but the time to restraint had passed the moment she kissed him.

Kathryn slides a hand up his chest over the subtle dip of his clavicle to the skittering inhuman tap of his pulse where it jumps beneath the simulated skin of his neck that had not and will never truly age.

"I don't."

He's the one to kiss her, then.

They're an hour late to Chell's party and still the other shoe doesn't drop.

…

When they make it McKinley Station, every member of her crew that came through the transwarp hub steps off Voyager alive.

Looking at them, watching as they depart and disperse toward their new futures, Kathryn realizes she has no more regrets.

β Perseus Ab

It's time to say goodbye.

Aeson follows the Admiral aboard her SC-4 and cannot help but admire, as he always does, that she doesn't act as if she's going to the gallows. Her shoulders are strait and her chin up. Even without seeing her eyes, he knows they show neither resignation nor anxiety, just the determination to see the job done.

He doesn't know if she looked this way the first time she did this. He'd let Captain Janeway give her the hypospray containing the Unimatrix Zero genetic virus then, unable to to be the one to see her off to her death. Not when it was so new, not when all he'd needed to do to finalize his plans was scan the chrono deflector when no one was looking.

He'd regretted it nearly immediately, and has never made the same mistake again.

The Admiral — Kathryn, he reminds himself, because even still she's his first Kathryn — walks through her final checks as he waits for her to finish. He's decided she does this to spend more time with him before the end, even though she doesn't know what to say to a man she thinks doesn't know everything she's been trough.

Sometimes, he tells her that he does know, and watches as she works through the stages of understanding and grief. Sometimes he sends her off without knowing at all just to enjoy her uncomplicated friendship. More interesting is when she is able to read his words and his face and just know — half of the truth, at least.

He wonders what it will be this time.

"When should I administer the hypospray," it's the first question she always asks.

He knows that she knows the answer.

"Just before you deploy your decoy. That will give it time to work through your system before they're able to assimilate you," what he doesn't tell her is that he's also loaded it with an agent to mute her nervous system response. By the time she's assimilated, she won't even feel it.

It's the least he can do — sparing her that pain.

Aeson ducks down to take the secondary pilot seat, and she finally looks at him.

He's lost count of how many times they've done this, although he knows he could find it again if he tries. What remains constant between each is that he never regrets taking the opportunity to say goodbye to her.

"I'm sorry," she says eventually, taking his presence in reaching a conclusion.

Mostly she's sorry for Kelemane, but sometimes something he's said has made her think of something else to be sorry for.

"For what?" he asks, sweetly, like there isn't anything in the world that should make her apologize.

The smile that reaches her eyes is his reward, and then Kathryn reaches out and touches his cheek, "It's you."

He lets her trace the holographic stubble along his jaw before he grabs her hand, kisses her knuckles, and nods.

One time, he told her everything. How Reggie, when she'd ended their relationship and cut off communication, took pity on him and explained what she intended to do. At first, he'd been desperate to stop her throwing her life away. How with time, he'd eventually resigned himself to it, until he decided that he couldn't wait for her to ask for his help. How he's mostly forgotten Lana, not because she wasn't lovely, but because she'd served her purpose.

Who else but him could have created a virus to genetically resequenced so many Borg constituent species? Who else but him would? Who else could get him into that lab but the daughter of the man who ran it?

Now, he lets her piece it together on her own. Why he gave her the chronexaline without a putting up a fight. How Marla knew to help when she did. Kathryn's mind is as sharp as it has ever been, and even though she doesn't make the connections out loud, he can see it come together in the slightest furrow and lift of her brow.

"Why did you come back?" she finally asks.

She always asks that, when she's able to figure it out.

He never lies to her.

He never has, not when she asks.

"Because you did."

If she had asked how he came back, the answer would be longer. All it had taken was Reggie transferring his program to her PADD. She did the difficult work of making sure it was aboard the shuttle when she went back. His program had automatically transferred to his mobile emitter, where it overwrote his past self. From there it had taken only a little bit of effort to keep Torres from seeing the near decades of improvements made to his routines.

The engineer is always busy after all, first with prepping Voyager for its grand mission, and eventually with the impending birth of Matthew.

Kathryn will never know to ask him how he keeps coming back.

"What will you do now?"

What I always do, he thinks.

"I'll figure it out as I go, and make sure that everyone is okay."

It's at this point she either accepts what he has done or feels betrayed. He still doesn't know what he says or does before this moment to trigger either reaction. When she reacts badly, he can't tell if it's because she can't reconcile the fact that he will move on, likely with her younger self, or if it's because she suspects he has ulterior motives.

Even now she doesn't quite know how to trust him entirely.

She accepts it - him - now and gives his hand a final sorrowful squeeze.

He never actually says goodbye, because he knows he'll see her again. Right here. Right when. Always at the moment it matters most.

Instead, he leans in to kiss her, the way he'd wanted to in her apartment back before the first time they arrived here. Then he pulls away and wishes her luck.

She doesn't need it.

This Kathryn is very good at dying and taking the Borg Queen with her.

…

Once again, because she knows who he is, the Admiral appears on the view screen just before the end and asks Aseson to get her crew home. The Captain, who thinks she's the one being asked, gives her promise as he nods, just the once, from his position at the bridge railing.

He's learned, through hard work and dedication and pure luck, how to keep that promise.

The first time they'd carried out the Admiral's plans, Korok wasn't there to provide aide. Voyager lost ten of its crew in the skirmish and landed two thousand light years away from Federation space. The resulting journey had cost them five more. Now, every time he corrects the mistake before it can be made, Seven looks at him when he tells her she should reach out to the Klingon and does not ask why.

When the Admiral is gone and the Captain is the only Kathryn left, he continues to keep his promise. Radiogenic life no longer threatens to harm B'Elanna's unborn son. Harry, Tom and Seles no longer perish trying to save one more shuttle of colonists from the super nova. The Gorn receive a communique with the exact location of the ship that raided their shipyard before the Romulans can kidnap Seven and kill Baxter.

Aeson has gotten very good at making sure no one suspects what he's doing. (Except for the once, when everyone knew the half of it but eventually gave up trying to stop him.)

Kathryn still expects the worst each time, as if she preternaturally knows how it went in that first, second, third, and nthbranching timeline. She still spends the months it takes to get to Earth half ill-at-ease, waiting for a divine or temporal punishment that will never come. Aeson has not figured out how to prevent her fretting, he can only do his part to alleviate it in the moment.

Just another mystery he looks forward to solving one day.

…

This time, he does not thank her in a way that leads to a kiss before Chell's party. That had been wonderful but unexpected, since he never embarks on each new timeline anticipating her to show the same interest she had in the original. Part of the joy of living the remainder of his life this way is that he can experience every repeated moment differently and find something new in each. Most often, he spends the decades of her remaining life as one of her closest friends. Sometimes they eventually become lovers. Rarely, do they leave the ship having already become so.

As long as she doesn't push him completely away in a timeline, he considers it a good one indeed.

Because they are not late, Kathryn is able to spend more time one-on-one with B'Elanna at her baby shower. The engineer never views her Captain as a mother or a close friend (not until Voyager is well behind them), but she loves her in her own way: as the person who finally had faith that she could be more than permanently angry, something more than a liability with the penchant for breaking things.

She always asks her captain to be her son's godmother, but how she does so differs. When Kathryn isn't late for the celebration, B'Elanna asks her when the cake is cut and passed around. When she is late, due to duty or something happier, the engineer waits until she's given birth to make the offer.

No matter how it plays out, Kathryn has to surreptitiously wipe the tears from her eyes.

Another benefit of arriving on time is watching Seven and Megan enter together. The sheer number of witnesses who notice how close they stand to one another fuel the gossip markets for weeks. Aeson finds another small joy in getting to be one of those merry gossip-mongers.

…

They are a week from Earth, and he doesn't see the offered posting until the end of his shift.

Between final inventory and creating treatment plans for each member of the crew who requires continued care, he misses the small alert on his computer terminal indicating a message is waiting. It only comes to his attention when he submits what he knows will be his final report as the CMO of Voyager, at least until next time.

When he downloads it to his PADD, curiosity piqued by this thing he has never seen before in any of the other timelines, the content has an immediate and profound effect.

Aeson nearly forgets to transfer his program to his mobile emitter before rushing out of sickbay in search of its sender. It's only Ravok's timely yelp that prevents him from losing an arm or a head and needing to recompile.

He finds her in engineering, where she's on the second level heckling a decidedly exasperated B'Elanna. The new mother is sleep deprived and grumpy, but despite her air of annoyance, she bickers back with an ease that suggests she's enjoying herself. Aeson looks up at them, PADD clutched to his chest, and watches as the engineer is the first to notice him.

With more perception than he has ever given her credit for, she mutters something to Kathryn and takes the lift to main engineering.

"She's all yours," B'Elanna says as she passes, "See if you can get her out of here before Vorik starts weeping."

"No promises," Aeson mutters, and then he takes her place on the lift.

Kathryn is leaning her elbows against the rail, admiring the peaceful hum of a well-calibrated war core, when he sidles up beside her. If he were organic, he'd surely be trying to catch his breath. The offer he holds in his hands and the way the light bounces off her welcoming smile is enough to steal the air from the lungs of anyone who has them.

"What do you think?"

She isn't asking about the view.

"What if I'm tired of being a CMO? A Doctor? I've been doing variations of the same thing for centuries."

Her smile softens but doesn't disappear; Kathryn knows he's only pretending to be difficult for the sake of keeping up appearances.

"You could certainly find a new posting. Leave Starfleet. I don't doubt you're capable of succeeding wherever you go. There are other ships, other postings. You could lead your own research, pick your own team…have everything you've ever thought you deserved."

It all sounds magnificent. It always is magnificent, when it's what he chooses to do.

There's a but in her happy tone, one he's never heard before. The possibilities of this something new nearly drive him to distraction.

Aeson stares at the side of her face as she continues to watch the reaction in the core, the light bouncing off her eyes with hints of deep blues and greens. Everything about her posture is loose, the weight of duty and regret gone from her now that they are so close to Earth. There is only Kathryn in her right now, no Captain, no Admiral.

The PADD shifts with the twitch of his hands.

"But…." He prompts, soft and low, drawing her gaze to his.

"You could come with me to the Venture."

She can't say something like that, with that glint in her eyes, in the middle of engineering where he can't really react, at least not in the way he wants to. Mostly with a thousand questions, each a variation of the last to make sure he understands the exact parameters of what she means.

"I can't leave Starfleet, not without seeing where else it takes me," she turns, only one of her arms leaning against the railing, so that they can face one another.

"It will take you anywhere you want to go," his face feels separate from him, hard to control, a little cumbersome. He doesn't know what the future of this timeline holds, but he knows her. Captain or Admiral, she always finds a way to make Starfleet fit to her.

Sometimes, she even lets him come along for the ride.

Kathryn huffs out a laugh, then raises her free hand to buff her own chin.

A thoughtful, quiet moment passes, and she looks away from him to stare off into some possible future, "I guess you would know."

There has only been one timeline where the Captain knew he was the Admiral's Aeson. In the only one where the Admiral had felt betrayed enough to tell her. In that branch, he'd been forced to wait out the remainder of the Captain's life, as neither a friend nor something more, until he could go back and do it all over again.

This is the first time she's figured it out on her own. He can't help but feel proud, even as he worries, and wonder how long she's suspected. Why she's waited until now, when they're at a crossroads, to say anything. Mostly, he marvels at the thousands of possibilities this opens if, if her knowing doesn't immediately make her distrust him.

"It's different this time. You're different," he says. He doesn't deny her revelation, but neither does he explain further, lest he give more away.

He's said the right thing, because her posture remains loose and she doesn't look ready to end what has been a very promising friendship so far.

"Is Vorik still lurking?" She eventually asks.

"Not that I can see. That's a really weird non sequit—"

He leans into the kiss she cuts him off with. The buzz from the contact ricochets pleasantly through his subroutines as he cradles her face between his hands.

Kathryn pulls away too soon, with something of an incorrigible smile as she says, "In case you needed me to clarify what I meant when I said you could come with me."

An entire fleet of Voriks could be lurking and he wouldn't care; he steals his own kiss, happy to once again be able to.

"I'm not getting caught out like a pair of teenagers by B'Elanna," she chides — with no real bite — when he's barely had his fill.

"She did ask me to convince you to leave."

Kathryn laughs, full-bodied, before looping an arm through his and pulling him toward the lift. The chief engineer gives him a mock solute when she sees them leaving together, something a little too knowing in her smirk.

"Let's grab coffee. I can talk you in to accepting the posting, and you can tell me about your romp through time."

He smiles primly, "I'll have you know that I already sent my acceptance…"

…

Later, when he does it all again — when he holds a hand out to her and she accepts it — he will acknowledge that this is no great love story.

If Kelemane taught him anything, it's that everyone he cares about will die. Then, with time and due to limitations of his own programming, the memories of them will die as well. Kathryn, B'Elanna, Reggie, and Lewis alway think that the solution to this terrible condition of his life is to forever extend that memory so that he never forgets. They never consider that it's not forgetting the people he loves that's the problem; it's them dying.

He can't mourn those he doesn't remember, after all.

When he'd chosen his captain to anchor his memories to, he'd considered her the logical choice. Memory files that contained her in them had more of the crew than any of the others. If his compression solution had worked properly, he would have been able briefly recall everything he needed to know about another person — another friend — by recalling any of those overlapping memories before tucking them away again.

It hadn't worked.

For centuries, she was all he'd had — memories that refused to die — and he'd come to rely on her functional immortality to keep himself sane.

But Kathryn Janeway isn't really immortal, nor would he force her to be if he could. There is an ambivalent cruelty in outliving the people who make you who you are, who you want to be, and he will not be party to any act that forces another person to suffer it.

His solution isn't an elegant one, nor is it complete. Martzia and Kelemane are forever lost to him as memories he can never physically relive. Every branching timeline he creates always ends the same. All of his friends still die. She still dies. He must always grieve those losses.

Yet, for all of its flaws, it's the only way he can ensure their memories never die –– by returning to them again and again and again, for as long as he can until he fails or until his program does.

If that someday means he has to carve away at the centuries of Kelemane that have made him who he is, if that means that one day he will have to bury the final memory of his daughter to make more room for this?

Then so be it.

It's just another tragedy he's learned to live with.

---

Story Notes

Reference: Some dialogue is pulled from the Endgame transcript. Almost entirely Barclay's speech and the final scene between him and Janeway.

1. That whacky timeline, huh? I didn't want to spell it all out there, but basically you can think of it like this. Imagine one time loop (arch, I guess) where the Admiral goes back in time to create a timeline where the crew gets home early. That always happens, and that's why that part of the story is the least dreamlike of this chapter. Now. Imagine the Doctor hitting the end of the new timeline she created by going back, he then creates another time arch by going back to the exact moment the Admiral cross over into the past using the chrono deflector (he's plucky and creates his own). Then, at the end of the new branching timeline he creates, does does that again. Then again. Then again. He's solely responsible for a hundreds of timelines that are nearly identical. I'm sure one day a Q will look up at the Q and say, "Should we deal with this" and the Q will say, "Nah. As long as he doesn't try to rewrite this timeline over here the wormhole aliens won't care."

And trust me, the Q don't want the wormhole aliens to care.

2. The Admiral is vastly more well adjusted in this version of End Game than she was in the canon one. Yes, the hints that she was in a romantic relationship with the Doctor mean she was. Yes, if someone asks me to I'll write something that explores that original timeline a little more. I didn't think details of it were pivotal for this story.

3. Megan and Seven? Hell yes I ship it. No notes.

4. Chakotay and Marla? Hell yes I ship him with my version of her. She's fierce and willing to grow.

5. I hope you enjoyed!

General Author's Notes

1. Once again, I have edited this so many time. I should be embarrassed by the mistakes still in it, but I can't be. You know the drill, I'll be back in a few days once my faithful beta reader Cearo_Thyme sends me screenshots of all my mistakes and update it.

2. The subtitles of this chapter equate to the three main stars in the Algol eclipsing binary star system. I have chosen each for their respective POV character with purpose.

3. I did it! I finished a story in a timely manner! I've learned the solution to my, "She takes years to finish her stories" problem. I wrote all of this on my phone.

4. Thanks for coming along for the ride! I imagine I'll swing back into this particular universe to explore some of the finer details that weren't plumbed here. I already have half a plot for Megan/Seven planned and even a one shot for Chakotay and Marla.