Fic: Stalemate (rated M) VOY J/C pt III of IV
Title: Stalemate (pt III of IV)
Author: Oparu
Rating: M (sex, major character death...sort of)
Pairing: Janeway/Chakotay,
Spoilers: Endgame happened (unfortunately - Seven/Chakotay, really?) so did Full Circle Before Dishonour (the book where they kill Janeway -really unfortunately)
Notes: I think this is the best thing I've ever written. I'm not sure if that's crazy vain of me or not...but it is.
Summary: Decades after losing Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay travels back into the past and arrives the same day as Admiral Janeway did when she brought Voyagerhome. Both the timelines they experienced are unacceptable. How can their younger selves find a way to keep their family, and each other, alive and well?
part I || part II || part III || part IV
Chakotay could tell that from the way the butter had congealed on her toast and her soup looked forlorn and cold that she'd lost interest as soon as her lunch had arrived. The carrot and ginger soup was one of Chell's better efforts and deserved better than to be abandoned. Kathryn's full attention was directed out of her window and he cleared his throat.
"If you're not interested in your soup, I have enough replicator rations for ice cream," he began, climbing the steps towards her. "This is Seven's preliminary report on the transwarp hub, B'Elanna's analysis of the Admiral's shuttle, and the Doctor's prognosis regarding Tuvok's recovery after his mind meld."
"Thank you," she said, smiling faintly. "I don't have the appetite, but I appreciate the sentiment."
"Think you'll have an appetite by dinner?" he asked, returning her smile with one much brighter. Kathryn needed the company. She was retreating back into herself and the spark he admired so greatly in her was dim today.
"Perhaps," she answered without conviction. She scrolled through the various reports, skimming what was important before she read them in detail later. "Schedule a briefing for sixteen hundred hours. We need a plan to destroy the transwarp hub that will still allow Voyager to use it. Invite our guests. The ambassador may remember what worked in his timeline."
He acknowledged with a nod. "I'll see you for dinner."
"Chakotay-"
"Dinner," he stopped her protest and smiled at her until she smiled. Even her exhausted smile was always beautiful. "Nineteen hundred, I'll bring it to you."
She stopped trying to talk him out of it and gave in. He was nearly to the door before she called after him.
"No plans today?"
"Not aside from you," he answered, pausing in front of the door. "Have you ever given Seven dating advice?"
Kathryn turned all the way from the window and looked at him curiously, her hands in her lap. "Not as such, no. Why?"
"Just curious." He paused, waving off the question. "I'll see you at nineteen hundred.""You can use the transwarp hub to go home," the admiral pleaded with them, her hands on the briefing table. "Home. Earth. Your families."
"Not without the captain, admiral," Tom argued with her, not even swayed by the admiral's display. "If the condition of us going home is that she stays here, we're not going."
"And if the Borg are going to take the captain after we go back, we're not going." B'Elanna nodded in the chair next to him. Her hand rested on her belly and Ambassador Chakotay had to smile. Miral was such a gift to all of her family; it was hard to imagine her as a baby again.
"Captain Janeway's knowledge of Starfleet would be a dangerous asset to the Borg, were she assimilated," Seven agreed from the other side of the table. "That should not be allowed to occur."
The Doctor glanced to Tuvok for his permission before he spoke. "The mind meld between Ambassador Chakotay and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok has been a success. Tuvok's condition is not a reason to return to the Alpha Quadrant any longer."
Harry thought longer than the rest, pondering everything the Ambassador had told them. "You said Starfleet perfected slipstream technology, in the 2380s." he asked Chakotay, who'd been sitting at the admiral's side while she explained what she thought they should do. "If that holds true if whatever timeline we're in now, Starfleet can just come get us."
"That's the spirit Harry," Tom mused with a grin. "We'll wait to be rescued."
"It is an option that neither of you have experienced," Tuvok volunteered. He was still wearing the cortical monitor but his prognosis was excellent. Kathryn would have his counsel, no matter what course her crew chose in the end. That was worth his life.
"The likelihood of a positive outcome is no greater or lesser no matter which choice we make. The timeline has been fundamentally altered by the presence of Admiral Janeway and Ambassador Chakotay. Predicting the consequences of our actions is either a gamble or a manner of following logical conclusions."
"We'll have the hull plating from the Admiral's shuttle," Tom reminded them. "Transphasic torpedoes. Technology from decades in the future. I think it's a good bet to make that we'll do better out here than we did during the Admiral's timeline. No offence meant, ma'am."
He tossed out the last word to remind the admiral it was the captain's ship and Chakotay was pleased he was so protective.
Tuvok was the quiet voice of reason. "You are aware this may constitute mutiny, Mr. Paris. No matter how good our intentions may be."
"The captain would do anything for one of us," B'Elanna insisted. "We've taken on the Borg to get Seven back, fought the Kazon for the boy who might have been Chakotay's son. We're a family. I've never had one before, but I'd like to think I've grown wise enough to know what one is when I'm in it."
Tom deferred wisely to his wife with a grin. Seven nodded as well. Tuvok's agreement was a slight bob of his head.
"Well, I am attached to the ship," the Doctor piped up jovially. "I also do not wish to see the captain assimilated, especially when I won't be there to perform the same magic I did last time."
B'Elanna rolled her eyes.
"All right," Harry said aloud once all eyes were on him. "All right. I've always wanted to see what mutiny was like."
"That's the Harry we love," Tom teased. "Ready to try anything."
"We have two hours before we tell the captain, we'll need to get to work on those modifications," B'Elanna said. "Harry, I'll need as many of your people as you can spare." She turned in her chair to look at Tuvok. "Security too, sir."
"They are at your disposal, lieutenant." Tuvok stood and the rest of the senior staff followed suit.
Chakotay watched them disperse then looked down at his hands in his lap. The admiral had only been able to watch, completely awestruck as her younger self's crew rallied around her former self.
"Fighting against your own life isn't much of an argument," he reminded her gently. "Especially not with this crew."
She couldn't look at him for the full spread of several heartbeats. His own heart was echoing faintly in his ears and the creeping numbness melding with Tuvok had chased away had crawled back into his legs. Chakotay doubted he'd be able to stand, but that didn't seem to matter in this moment.
The tear on her cheek was what drew his attention. As closed off as she'd tried to make herself, this Janeway was still the one he loved underneath the frigid exterior. His fingers didn't respond when he reached for her shoulder, but the gesture calmed her anyway. She reached up for his fingers and held them.
"I don't know whether to be jealous of myself or pity them all for what lies ahead of them," she said finally.
"We would have done the same for you, given half a chance," he reminded her.
The admiral, Kathryn, squeezed his hand and drew it down from her shoulder into her lap. "If the technology helps them, my trip's not a total waste of breaking the temporal prime directive." She leaned across the arm of his chair and kissed his cheek.
When her forehead remained pressed against the side of his head, he turned slightly towards her. She'd had tears on her face last night when she'd arrived unannounced in his quarters. He assumed it had been seeing Seven again, but to his surprise it was her younger self that had the elder Kathryn in tears. A few minutes argument over why their previous selves were so dead set on avoiding what they both wanted so badly and she'd kissed him.
He hardly had the strength to kiss her the way she deserved to be kissed, and they made love in a slow, comfortable way. As if they'd been together for decades instead of finding each other for the her first and his second time. She'd devoured everything he had to tell her about the time they'd been together in the Alpha Quadrant. How they'd finally stopped orbiting each other and realised that they were indeed the centre of each other's universe.
Talking about her death, with her in his arms had a surreal quality that only made their tears more poignant.
She'd held him once, back on Earth while he lay dying and she could do nothing to keep him with her. His last words had been to reassure her, and Chakotay had to chuckle then.
He'd probably say the same thing when his worn out brain finally succumbed. Last night had been a rare gift. The fading of his eyesight, the cooling of his touch and the slowing rhythm of his heart were all unimportant because the scent of her lingered in his nostrils. As his body failed far too quickly, he would have that and her voice to hold to. He didn't mind death if it came with her beside him.Kathryn took another forkful of the rice and curried vegetable dish Chell had provided them for dinner. It didn't taste at all of leola root, and without the pungent root's unique mustiness, she found she enjoy her lunch much more than usual.
Chakotay caught her smiling down at her plate and nodded in agreement. "It's not that I don't miss Neelix," he said lightly. "It's just that my taste-buds don't miss leola."
"It is in here though, isn't it?" Kathryn asked. She'd hate to think they were wasting the nutrients in it just because of the taste. Though, the taste almost wasn't worth it.
"Chell is much better at hiding it. He does something to make it undetectable to the taste," he replied, reading over one of the endless stacks of reports they had to work their way through. "I don't know what it is, but he certainly has a knack."
Running her fork around the end of her plate to finish the last of her lunch, Kathryn had to agree. She hadn't enjoyed a meal like that in quite some time. She toyed with her fork while she swallowed the last mouthful. The food had been good, but she had the sneaking suspicion it was the company that made it so pleasant.
"I had a very odd conversation with Seven of Nine of my way back from engineering," she volunteered, looking up from her plate. "She was almost eager to tell me she'd decided that Ensign Beth Lang was far more suitable for her as a romantic partner than anyone else on board. Particular, and this is the example I found surprising, my first officer."
Chakotay chuckled dryly and set down his report. "Ensign Lang is superior to me as a romantic partner in all ways?"
"Well, no," Kathryn had to smile at the playful look on his face. "Superior if the one she's partnering is Seven. Apparently you are better suited for someone else on board."
"Don't suppose she told you who?" he asked lightly.
The PADD in his hand joined their plates on the table. Everything in danger of being forgotten as his dark eyes met hers. How they could be so full of promise, even after seven years, puzzled her in that fantastic way life was supposed to be confusing. He was a mystery and one of the kind she loved to solve. The kind that quickly became an addiction.
"It seemed she went out of her way not to accidentally reveal the identity of your most suitable partner. She was very coy, and for an ex-Borg, that's quite a feat." Kathryn had her own suspicions about Seven's new interest in Chakotay's love life. As hard as she'd tried to deny them, it appeared even Seven's fledgling matchmaking skills were aware of her feelings.
Was he leaning closer to her? His hand was behind her now on the back of the sofa and Chakotay was close enough that she could have kissed him.
Not that she was thinking about such things. Technically she was off-duty; even captain's had to have lunch.
"Well, romantic interest is a new development for her," he offered. "Perhaps she's anxious for everyone else be as happy as she is." Chakotay definitely shifted closer that time. "Have you seen Ensign Lang today?" he asked, smiling as if he knew a secret. "She's nearly glowing."
"Seven's attention can be very focused," Kathryn deadpanned. His hand caught her shoulder, just enough to ease her closer. She was acutely aware of the proximity of his body, the warmth of his breath and the lack of distance between his mouth and hers.
"She reminds me of you that way," he said. "You both have this incredible ability to make everything else in the universe disappear when you're trying to solve a puzzle."
She had a hell of a puzzle at the moment, and it felt like she'd pulling the pieces out instead of putting them in. After Mark had moved on, she'd been alone, but still kept Chakotay at a distance. She had to be the captain.
But that wasn't it. It wasn't her concern for duty or their positions that kept him where he was now: close but maddeningly not close enough. She could be the captain and take a lover. their working relationship had survived the Borg and Captain Ransom; it would survive a date or two.
Would she?
Loss had walked beside her for most of her adult life. Justin was gone and she'd failed to save him. She'd quietly lost Mark. Of course she was afraid of losing him. She'd seen herself without him, and Admiral Janeway was someone she wanted to avoid becoming.
But was it his death that froze Admiral Janeway or the life she'd lived without him?
"There's one thing we haven't tried," Chakotay began, putting his free hand on her knee. "I keep thinking about the future me and the future you and everything we can do not to experience either of those realities and I keep coming back to the one thing we haven't tried."
"Oh?" The word was almost a gasp as it left her tongue.
The shortest distance between two points was a straight line. The distance formula, her algebraic nemesis, used the Pythagorean theorem to prove that point. She'd proved it; it was scientific fact.
Science, however, couldn't explain everything and occasionally had to admit that the shortest distance was coexistence. When two points became indistinguishable from each other, like two stars fusing or two atoms or, in the case of her ready room, two mouths.
The rambling journey of her mind took place in a millisecond, and after that all she knew was the warmth of his lips against hers, and the eager way her body responded to him. Their limited points of contact weren't enough and could never be.
She wanted him. All of him, as close as was humanly possible.
He broke the kiss, forehead resting against hers. "In one future, we started too late. If we could be together years from now, aren't we wasting the moment? We're here, now."
"Chakotay-"
Her commbadge chirped and the sound cut through the quiet. Tuvok's calm voice followed the sound. "Captain, I must inform you that one of our guests has been taken to sickbay. The Doctor has asked for your presence."
She was instantly on her feet. "I'm on my way, Tuvok."
Chakotay followed her. Before they left her ready room, she held them in front of the door. "Being here, with you, might not make the entire universe a better place Chakotay, but I know it would do wonders for my corner of it."
He smiled at her in response, promising the conversation was only on hold. "Mine too."Chakotay was half a step behind her as they hurried through the ship on their way to sickbay. He knew it was his future self. Admiral Janeway was too full of life to be in danger and the other him had been too serene. He'd thought it was simply age, but his dreams had promised otherwise. His double had known he had little time to live the moment he'd arrived. The fact that he approached it with such calm was something Chakotay respected, even envied a little. Death was just another long journey; his double was ready for it.
Sickbay was quiet when they entered. The calm spoke before the Doctor even had too.
"I'm sorry," he said once he met them. Admiral Janeway stood next to the biobed. Leaning down over Chakotay's double's body, she had her head down, and both of her hands on him. It was a vigil: her own quiet good bye.
"His neural pathways are completely destabilising," the Doctor explained to both of them, though Chakotay wasn't sure how much Kathryn heard. "There was a slight imbalance when he arrived from the Vulcan pattern superimposed on his brain. After he mind-melded with Tuvok it appeared to correct itself. His mental scans were clear yesterday afternoon." The Doctor's professional frustration slipped into his voice along with his grief. "That seems to have been nothing more than a final surge across a failing circuit. There's nothing I can do."
Kathryn nodded to him, her eyes beginning to shine as her face softened with grief. "Is he-?"
"He feels absolutely no pain," the Doctor promised. "One of the upsides of a failing nervous system. He'll simply go to sleep." He patted Chakotay's shoulder, obviously struggling. "Commander, if there was anything I could have done."
"I know," Chakotay reminded him warmly. "He couldn't be in better hands."
Kathryn hung back, giving her future self time to say her farewell. It would be the second time for Admiral Janeway, and after her reaction to seeing the elder version of himself, Chakotay couldn't help thinking this one would be worse than the last. He lifted his hand to Kathryn's shoulder, holding her close so she had his support.
"I remember when you didn't even trust Tuvok," she said weakly, trying to still her voice.
"I hated him," Chakotay clarified for her. "He fooled me expertly. I had no idea he was working for you and I hated you both for the deception."
"And now you'd give your life for him."
"Now we're family," he replied. "I imagine that held true for him three decades from now just as well as today." He looked towards the bed and the self that lay dying. He'd make that choice easily. Without any desire to leave this life, he would still trade his life for another's. Even Tuvok's.
The Doctor slipped past Admiral Janeway, checking the bioindicators before he reached up and deactivated the alarm. The admiral kept her back to them, completely unaware of anyone else in sickbay.
Chakotay felt Kathryn shift, and turned just as she reached up for his hand where it sat on her shoulder. She squeezed it, hard. "I don't know what to say," she confessed softly. "I should know what she needs to hear, how to lighten her loss, but I don't know what to say."
"I don't know if I can speak for him or not. If it were me and you were the last person I was going to see, I'd be content with that." If he could have hugged her without it being too forward, he would have.
The indicator lights sunk lower and lower. When the admiral's head dropped to the dying man's chest, Chakotay began to silently pray for his other self and his very long journey.
Kathryn took a step towards the admiral. Her compassionate heart ached to be able to do something, anything, to help the older woman. She had time for two steps before the admiral turned around.
Tears poured freely down the Admiral's face, falling from her chin and staining her chest. Her gaze ran over Chakotay and she nearly smiled. When her eyes turned on her younger self, something cracked.
"Do you think about Justin when you look at him?" the admiral asked, her voice rasping with accusation. "Is it Justin sinking beneath the ice that keeps you apart? Or is it Mark, moving on without you and starting a new life? Which old lover are you putting between yourself and happiness?"
Kathryn blinked, obviously startled by the attack.
"I told myself it was for my position. As I assume you do. I was the captain of a starship and that meant I had to be objective. I had to be removed and distant enough that I could be larger than life," the admiral continued. Her voice was laced with bitterness, and the edge in her tone came from sobs buried in her chest. She closed the last of the distance between herself and Kathryn. "The thing they don't tell you about being larger than life is how much you have to stretch who you are to fit it. The bigger you become, the thinner the remains. Make it all the way to admiral and you'll be stretched so thin that a thought pierces through you and leaves you in tatters.
"I could have been the one he married," she snapped, losing herself in her memories. "Not Seven of Nine, but me, because I loved him. I loved him so much I would have done anything to keep myself from having to lose him. So I married him to my protégé and let them be happy. I even tried to be happy for them because I knew they were happy, and I loved them both.
"Then she had to die," she finished, her voice trembling. "I had to watch him let her go. I had to watch as his loss ate him from the inside out, all the while knowing that if I hadn't been selfish and afraid of feeling that pain if I lost him, I could have spared him. To save myself, I doomed him. And I doomed him again because without me, his life was hollow. I'm damned because I didn't love him when I had the chance, I'm damned because he loved me enough to cross time, and you-"
Her hand lashed out and stopped brutally against Kathryn's chest. "You're just damned." Her anger melted, sizzling away like snow next to a fire. The admiral's chin trembled and her tears increased until they were a flood. "You don't know. You can't know what it's like to lose him. You think you remember how it was on that icy hell planet. This-" the admiral laughed and it sounded like tearing paper, "-this is hell, Kathryn, and if you don't stop being the kind of stubborn fool we both know you can be, you're going to be up to your neck in the full glory of hell."
Pushing past the captain in a dark cloud of rage and grief, the admiral nearly collided with Tom and B'Elanna as they entered sickbay.
B'Elanna had her arms around Tom's shoulders, and Chakotay could tell from her breathing that this was either the most convincing bout of false labour yet, or the real thing. The Doctor emerged from his office, tricorder in hand, and Chakotay watched as the drama of the other side of life began on the edge of his vision. He could have kept watching them, focusing on the hope B'Elanna and Tom's baby represented for all of them, but that wasn't his place in the cycle.
Today he had death to care for; he could leave life to the two of them.
Kathryn had left his side. She hovered over the lifeless form of the Ambassador, slowly stroking his white hair. Torn between following the admiral and the woman in front of him, Chakotay decided that his Kathryn needed him more.
She didn't look up when he encircled her waist with his arm. "I hate that part of myself," she sighed, her composure crumbling. "I keep thinking I hate her, but it's myself that I'm furious with. When I'm not careful, this horrible darkness rears itself up and lashes out. When my father and Justin died, I turned it inward. I thought if I hurt myself enough, I could wear the pain out."
He pulled her closer, resting his head against the side of hers. "I've been so angry that it felt like I would drown in it unless I found a way to pull myself out. For a time, I thought killing Cardassians was the answer. If I could somehow pile up enough bodies, I could stand on them and be free of my rage. No matter how many raids I went on, or bombs I set off, the emptiness still only had rage. It filled me up like dark water and I worried that was all that was left of my life."
The elder Chakotay had a smile on his face. Even in death, when the muscles were slackening, Chakotay recognised a smile etched into the lines of his skin. The elder man had peace. He'd had Kathryn and he'd met death with calm and contentment.
He echoed the smile, brazenly kissing Kathryn's temple. The commotion on the other end of sickbay was enough that no one would notice, even if they happened to see the intimate gesture.
"It wasn't until I met you that I realised I even wanted to find my way out. Seeing you walk in the light made we realise I wanted to feel that again."
"It feels a little dark today," she said softly, clutching his arm to her stomach and shaking her head.
He held her hand, pressing the palm of his over the back of hers. "Then I'll be your light."
Turning in his arms, Kathryn rested hers on his chest. "You always are," she whispered. "I don't know what scares me more: having you and losing you or what I'd become if I never do."
One of her tears bathed his thumb as it ran down her cheek. Chakotay stroked it away. "Kathryn, stop thinking."
She opened her mouth to protest, and he covered her lips with a gentle finger.
"Life is not what's going to happen. You're not her, I'm not him and what we have now nothing can take away. Now we're exactly the way we need to be."
Lowering her head, she let him hold her closer. He stroked her hair, losing his fingers in the softness of it as she began to cry.
Tom was laughing and B'Elanna alternately laughed with and roared at him.
It was as the coyote put it, in a very old story. Life was a great river between death and the beginning. You could swim across it, burying your face in the water, or you could let it carry you and look up at the stars. With Kathryn in his arms, his stars were very bright indeed.
onto part IV
Author: Oparu
Rating: M (sex, major character death...sort of)
Pairing: Janeway/Chakotay,
Spoilers: Endgame happened (unfortunately - Seven/Chakotay, really?) so did Full Circle Before Dishonour (the book where they kill Janeway -really unfortunately)
Notes: I think this is the best thing I've ever written. I'm not sure if that's crazy vain of me or not...but it is.
Summary: Decades after losing Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay travels back into the past and arrives the same day as Admiral Janeway did when she brought Voyagerhome. Both the timelines they experienced are unacceptable. How can their younger selves find a way to keep their family, and each other, alive and well?
part I || part II || part III || part IV
Chakotay could tell that from the way the butter had congealed on her toast and her soup looked forlorn and cold that she'd lost interest as soon as her lunch had arrived. The carrot and ginger soup was one of Chell's better efforts and deserved better than to be abandoned. Kathryn's full attention was directed out of her window and he cleared his throat.
"If you're not interested in your soup, I have enough replicator rations for ice cream," he began, climbing the steps towards her. "This is Seven's preliminary report on the transwarp hub, B'Elanna's analysis of the Admiral's shuttle, and the Doctor's prognosis regarding Tuvok's recovery after his mind meld."
"Thank you," she said, smiling faintly. "I don't have the appetite, but I appreciate the sentiment."
"Think you'll have an appetite by dinner?" he asked, returning her smile with one much brighter. Kathryn needed the company. She was retreating back into herself and the spark he admired so greatly in her was dim today.
"Perhaps," she answered without conviction. She scrolled through the various reports, skimming what was important before she read them in detail later. "Schedule a briefing for sixteen hundred hours. We need a plan to destroy the transwarp hub that will still allow Voyager to use it. Invite our guests. The ambassador may remember what worked in his timeline."
He acknowledged with a nod. "I'll see you for dinner."
"Chakotay-"
"Dinner," he stopped her protest and smiled at her until she smiled. Even her exhausted smile was always beautiful. "Nineteen hundred, I'll bring it to you."
She stopped trying to talk him out of it and gave in. He was nearly to the door before she called after him.
"No plans today?"
"Not aside from you," he answered, pausing in front of the door. "Have you ever given Seven dating advice?"
Kathryn turned all the way from the window and looked at him curiously, her hands in her lap. "Not as such, no. Why?"
"Just curious." He paused, waving off the question. "I'll see you at nineteen hundred.""You can use the transwarp hub to go home," the admiral pleaded with them, her hands on the briefing table. "Home. Earth. Your families."
"Not without the captain, admiral," Tom argued with her, not even swayed by the admiral's display. "If the condition of us going home is that she stays here, we're not going."
"And if the Borg are going to take the captain after we go back, we're not going." B'Elanna nodded in the chair next to him. Her hand rested on her belly and Ambassador Chakotay had to smile. Miral was such a gift to all of her family; it was hard to imagine her as a baby again.
"Captain Janeway's knowledge of Starfleet would be a dangerous asset to the Borg, were she assimilated," Seven agreed from the other side of the table. "That should not be allowed to occur."
The Doctor glanced to Tuvok for his permission before he spoke. "The mind meld between Ambassador Chakotay and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok has been a success. Tuvok's condition is not a reason to return to the Alpha Quadrant any longer."
Harry thought longer than the rest, pondering everything the Ambassador had told them. "You said Starfleet perfected slipstream technology, in the 2380s." he asked Chakotay, who'd been sitting at the admiral's side while she explained what she thought they should do. "If that holds true if whatever timeline we're in now, Starfleet can just come get us."
"That's the spirit Harry," Tom mused with a grin. "We'll wait to be rescued."
"It is an option that neither of you have experienced," Tuvok volunteered. He was still wearing the cortical monitor but his prognosis was excellent. Kathryn would have his counsel, no matter what course her crew chose in the end. That was worth his life.
"The likelihood of a positive outcome is no greater or lesser no matter which choice we make. The timeline has been fundamentally altered by the presence of Admiral Janeway and Ambassador Chakotay. Predicting the consequences of our actions is either a gamble or a manner of following logical conclusions."
"We'll have the hull plating from the Admiral's shuttle," Tom reminded them. "Transphasic torpedoes. Technology from decades in the future. I think it's a good bet to make that we'll do better out here than we did during the Admiral's timeline. No offence meant, ma'am."
He tossed out the last word to remind the admiral it was the captain's ship and Chakotay was pleased he was so protective.
Tuvok was the quiet voice of reason. "You are aware this may constitute mutiny, Mr. Paris. No matter how good our intentions may be."
"The captain would do anything for one of us," B'Elanna insisted. "We've taken on the Borg to get Seven back, fought the Kazon for the boy who might have been Chakotay's son. We're a family. I've never had one before, but I'd like to think I've grown wise enough to know what one is when I'm in it."
Tom deferred wisely to his wife with a grin. Seven nodded as well. Tuvok's agreement was a slight bob of his head.
"Well, I am attached to the ship," the Doctor piped up jovially. "I also do not wish to see the captain assimilated, especially when I won't be there to perform the same magic I did last time."
B'Elanna rolled her eyes.
"All right," Harry said aloud once all eyes were on him. "All right. I've always wanted to see what mutiny was like."
"That's the Harry we love," Tom teased. "Ready to try anything."
"We have two hours before we tell the captain, we'll need to get to work on those modifications," B'Elanna said. "Harry, I'll need as many of your people as you can spare." She turned in her chair to look at Tuvok. "Security too, sir."
"They are at your disposal, lieutenant." Tuvok stood and the rest of the senior staff followed suit.
Chakotay watched them disperse then looked down at his hands in his lap. The admiral had only been able to watch, completely awestruck as her younger self's crew rallied around her former self.
"Fighting against your own life isn't much of an argument," he reminded her gently. "Especially not with this crew."
She couldn't look at him for the full spread of several heartbeats. His own heart was echoing faintly in his ears and the creeping numbness melding with Tuvok had chased away had crawled back into his legs. Chakotay doubted he'd be able to stand, but that didn't seem to matter in this moment.
The tear on her cheek was what drew his attention. As closed off as she'd tried to make herself, this Janeway was still the one he loved underneath the frigid exterior. His fingers didn't respond when he reached for her shoulder, but the gesture calmed her anyway. She reached up for his fingers and held them.
"I don't know whether to be jealous of myself or pity them all for what lies ahead of them," she said finally.
"We would have done the same for you, given half a chance," he reminded her.
The admiral, Kathryn, squeezed his hand and drew it down from her shoulder into her lap. "If the technology helps them, my trip's not a total waste of breaking the temporal prime directive." She leaned across the arm of his chair and kissed his cheek.
When her forehead remained pressed against the side of his head, he turned slightly towards her. She'd had tears on her face last night when she'd arrived unannounced in his quarters. He assumed it had been seeing Seven again, but to his surprise it was her younger self that had the elder Kathryn in tears. A few minutes argument over why their previous selves were so dead set on avoiding what they both wanted so badly and she'd kissed him.
He hardly had the strength to kiss her the way she deserved to be kissed, and they made love in a slow, comfortable way. As if they'd been together for decades instead of finding each other for the her first and his second time. She'd devoured everything he had to tell her about the time they'd been together in the Alpha Quadrant. How they'd finally stopped orbiting each other and realised that they were indeed the centre of each other's universe.
Talking about her death, with her in his arms had a surreal quality that only made their tears more poignant.
She'd held him once, back on Earth while he lay dying and she could do nothing to keep him with her. His last words had been to reassure her, and Chakotay had to chuckle then.
He'd probably say the same thing when his worn out brain finally succumbed. Last night had been a rare gift. The fading of his eyesight, the cooling of his touch and the slowing rhythm of his heart were all unimportant because the scent of her lingered in his nostrils. As his body failed far too quickly, he would have that and her voice to hold to. He didn't mind death if it came with her beside him.Kathryn took another forkful of the rice and curried vegetable dish Chell had provided them for dinner. It didn't taste at all of leola root, and without the pungent root's unique mustiness, she found she enjoy her lunch much more than usual.
Chakotay caught her smiling down at her plate and nodded in agreement. "It's not that I don't miss Neelix," he said lightly. "It's just that my taste-buds don't miss leola."
"It is in here though, isn't it?" Kathryn asked. She'd hate to think they were wasting the nutrients in it just because of the taste. Though, the taste almost wasn't worth it.
"Chell is much better at hiding it. He does something to make it undetectable to the taste," he replied, reading over one of the endless stacks of reports they had to work their way through. "I don't know what it is, but he certainly has a knack."
Running her fork around the end of her plate to finish the last of her lunch, Kathryn had to agree. She hadn't enjoyed a meal like that in quite some time. She toyed with her fork while she swallowed the last mouthful. The food had been good, but she had the sneaking suspicion it was the company that made it so pleasant.
"I had a very odd conversation with Seven of Nine of my way back from engineering," she volunteered, looking up from her plate. "She was almost eager to tell me she'd decided that Ensign Beth Lang was far more suitable for her as a romantic partner than anyone else on board. Particular, and this is the example I found surprising, my first officer."
Chakotay chuckled dryly and set down his report. "Ensign Lang is superior to me as a romantic partner in all ways?"
"Well, no," Kathryn had to smile at the playful look on his face. "Superior if the one she's partnering is Seven. Apparently you are better suited for someone else on board."
"Don't suppose she told you who?" he asked lightly.
The PADD in his hand joined their plates on the table. Everything in danger of being forgotten as his dark eyes met hers. How they could be so full of promise, even after seven years, puzzled her in that fantastic way life was supposed to be confusing. He was a mystery and one of the kind she loved to solve. The kind that quickly became an addiction.
"It seemed she went out of her way not to accidentally reveal the identity of your most suitable partner. She was very coy, and for an ex-Borg, that's quite a feat." Kathryn had her own suspicions about Seven's new interest in Chakotay's love life. As hard as she'd tried to deny them, it appeared even Seven's fledgling matchmaking skills were aware of her feelings.
Was he leaning closer to her? His hand was behind her now on the back of the sofa and Chakotay was close enough that she could have kissed him.
Not that she was thinking about such things. Technically she was off-duty; even captain's had to have lunch.
"Well, romantic interest is a new development for her," he offered. "Perhaps she's anxious for everyone else be as happy as she is." Chakotay definitely shifted closer that time. "Have you seen Ensign Lang today?" he asked, smiling as if he knew a secret. "She's nearly glowing."
"Seven's attention can be very focused," Kathryn deadpanned. His hand caught her shoulder, just enough to ease her closer. She was acutely aware of the proximity of his body, the warmth of his breath and the lack of distance between his mouth and hers.
"She reminds me of you that way," he said. "You both have this incredible ability to make everything else in the universe disappear when you're trying to solve a puzzle."
She had a hell of a puzzle at the moment, and it felt like she'd pulling the pieces out instead of putting them in. After Mark had moved on, she'd been alone, but still kept Chakotay at a distance. She had to be the captain.
But that wasn't it. It wasn't her concern for duty or their positions that kept him where he was now: close but maddeningly not close enough. She could be the captain and take a lover. their working relationship had survived the Borg and Captain Ransom; it would survive a date or two.
Would she?
Loss had walked beside her for most of her adult life. Justin was gone and she'd failed to save him. She'd quietly lost Mark. Of course she was afraid of losing him. She'd seen herself without him, and Admiral Janeway was someone she wanted to avoid becoming.
But was it his death that froze Admiral Janeway or the life she'd lived without him?
"There's one thing we haven't tried," Chakotay began, putting his free hand on her knee. "I keep thinking about the future me and the future you and everything we can do not to experience either of those realities and I keep coming back to the one thing we haven't tried."
"Oh?" The word was almost a gasp as it left her tongue.
The shortest distance between two points was a straight line. The distance formula, her algebraic nemesis, used the Pythagorean theorem to prove that point. She'd proved it; it was scientific fact.
Science, however, couldn't explain everything and occasionally had to admit that the shortest distance was coexistence. When two points became indistinguishable from each other, like two stars fusing or two atoms or, in the case of her ready room, two mouths.
The rambling journey of her mind took place in a millisecond, and after that all she knew was the warmth of his lips against hers, and the eager way her body responded to him. Their limited points of contact weren't enough and could never be.
She wanted him. All of him, as close as was humanly possible.
He broke the kiss, forehead resting against hers. "In one future, we started too late. If we could be together years from now, aren't we wasting the moment? We're here, now."
"Chakotay-"
Her commbadge chirped and the sound cut through the quiet. Tuvok's calm voice followed the sound. "Captain, I must inform you that one of our guests has been taken to sickbay. The Doctor has asked for your presence."
She was instantly on her feet. "I'm on my way, Tuvok."
Chakotay followed her. Before they left her ready room, she held them in front of the door. "Being here, with you, might not make the entire universe a better place Chakotay, but I know it would do wonders for my corner of it."
He smiled at her in response, promising the conversation was only on hold. "Mine too."Chakotay was half a step behind her as they hurried through the ship on their way to sickbay. He knew it was his future self. Admiral Janeway was too full of life to be in danger and the other him had been too serene. He'd thought it was simply age, but his dreams had promised otherwise. His double had known he had little time to live the moment he'd arrived. The fact that he approached it with such calm was something Chakotay respected, even envied a little. Death was just another long journey; his double was ready for it.
Sickbay was quiet when they entered. The calm spoke before the Doctor even had too.
"I'm sorry," he said once he met them. Admiral Janeway stood next to the biobed. Leaning down over Chakotay's double's body, she had her head down, and both of her hands on him. It was a vigil: her own quiet good bye.
"His neural pathways are completely destabilising," the Doctor explained to both of them, though Chakotay wasn't sure how much Kathryn heard. "There was a slight imbalance when he arrived from the Vulcan pattern superimposed on his brain. After he mind-melded with Tuvok it appeared to correct itself. His mental scans were clear yesterday afternoon." The Doctor's professional frustration slipped into his voice along with his grief. "That seems to have been nothing more than a final surge across a failing circuit. There's nothing I can do."
Kathryn nodded to him, her eyes beginning to shine as her face softened with grief. "Is he-?"
"He feels absolutely no pain," the Doctor promised. "One of the upsides of a failing nervous system. He'll simply go to sleep." He patted Chakotay's shoulder, obviously struggling. "Commander, if there was anything I could have done."
"I know," Chakotay reminded him warmly. "He couldn't be in better hands."
Kathryn hung back, giving her future self time to say her farewell. It would be the second time for Admiral Janeway, and after her reaction to seeing the elder version of himself, Chakotay couldn't help thinking this one would be worse than the last. He lifted his hand to Kathryn's shoulder, holding her close so she had his support.
"I remember when you didn't even trust Tuvok," she said weakly, trying to still her voice.
"I hated him," Chakotay clarified for her. "He fooled me expertly. I had no idea he was working for you and I hated you both for the deception."
"And now you'd give your life for him."
"Now we're family," he replied. "I imagine that held true for him three decades from now just as well as today." He looked towards the bed and the self that lay dying. He'd make that choice easily. Without any desire to leave this life, he would still trade his life for another's. Even Tuvok's.
The Doctor slipped past Admiral Janeway, checking the bioindicators before he reached up and deactivated the alarm. The admiral kept her back to them, completely unaware of anyone else in sickbay.
Chakotay felt Kathryn shift, and turned just as she reached up for his hand where it sat on her shoulder. She squeezed it, hard. "I don't know what to say," she confessed softly. "I should know what she needs to hear, how to lighten her loss, but I don't know what to say."
"I don't know if I can speak for him or not. If it were me and you were the last person I was going to see, I'd be content with that." If he could have hugged her without it being too forward, he would have.
The indicator lights sunk lower and lower. When the admiral's head dropped to the dying man's chest, Chakotay began to silently pray for his other self and his very long journey.
Kathryn took a step towards the admiral. Her compassionate heart ached to be able to do something, anything, to help the older woman. She had time for two steps before the admiral turned around.
Tears poured freely down the Admiral's face, falling from her chin and staining her chest. Her gaze ran over Chakotay and she nearly smiled. When her eyes turned on her younger self, something cracked.
"Do you think about Justin when you look at him?" the admiral asked, her voice rasping with accusation. "Is it Justin sinking beneath the ice that keeps you apart? Or is it Mark, moving on without you and starting a new life? Which old lover are you putting between yourself and happiness?"
Kathryn blinked, obviously startled by the attack.
"I told myself it was for my position. As I assume you do. I was the captain of a starship and that meant I had to be objective. I had to be removed and distant enough that I could be larger than life," the admiral continued. Her voice was laced with bitterness, and the edge in her tone came from sobs buried in her chest. She closed the last of the distance between herself and Kathryn. "The thing they don't tell you about being larger than life is how much you have to stretch who you are to fit it. The bigger you become, the thinner the remains. Make it all the way to admiral and you'll be stretched so thin that a thought pierces through you and leaves you in tatters.
"I could have been the one he married," she snapped, losing herself in her memories. "Not Seven of Nine, but me, because I loved him. I loved him so much I would have done anything to keep myself from having to lose him. So I married him to my protégé and let them be happy. I even tried to be happy for them because I knew they were happy, and I loved them both.
"Then she had to die," she finished, her voice trembling. "I had to watch him let her go. I had to watch as his loss ate him from the inside out, all the while knowing that if I hadn't been selfish and afraid of feeling that pain if I lost him, I could have spared him. To save myself, I doomed him. And I doomed him again because without me, his life was hollow. I'm damned because I didn't love him when I had the chance, I'm damned because he loved me enough to cross time, and you-"
Her hand lashed out and stopped brutally against Kathryn's chest. "You're just damned." Her anger melted, sizzling away like snow next to a fire. The admiral's chin trembled and her tears increased until they were a flood. "You don't know. You can't know what it's like to lose him. You think you remember how it was on that icy hell planet. This-" the admiral laughed and it sounded like tearing paper, "-this is hell, Kathryn, and if you don't stop being the kind of stubborn fool we both know you can be, you're going to be up to your neck in the full glory of hell."
Pushing past the captain in a dark cloud of rage and grief, the admiral nearly collided with Tom and B'Elanna as they entered sickbay.
B'Elanna had her arms around Tom's shoulders, and Chakotay could tell from her breathing that this was either the most convincing bout of false labour yet, or the real thing. The Doctor emerged from his office, tricorder in hand, and Chakotay watched as the drama of the other side of life began on the edge of his vision. He could have kept watching them, focusing on the hope B'Elanna and Tom's baby represented for all of them, but that wasn't his place in the cycle.
Today he had death to care for; he could leave life to the two of them.
Kathryn had left his side. She hovered over the lifeless form of the Ambassador, slowly stroking his white hair. Torn between following the admiral and the woman in front of him, Chakotay decided that his Kathryn needed him more.
She didn't look up when he encircled her waist with his arm. "I hate that part of myself," she sighed, her composure crumbling. "I keep thinking I hate her, but it's myself that I'm furious with. When I'm not careful, this horrible darkness rears itself up and lashes out. When my father and Justin died, I turned it inward. I thought if I hurt myself enough, I could wear the pain out."
He pulled her closer, resting his head against the side of hers. "I've been so angry that it felt like I would drown in it unless I found a way to pull myself out. For a time, I thought killing Cardassians was the answer. If I could somehow pile up enough bodies, I could stand on them and be free of my rage. No matter how many raids I went on, or bombs I set off, the emptiness still only had rage. It filled me up like dark water and I worried that was all that was left of my life."
The elder Chakotay had a smile on his face. Even in death, when the muscles were slackening, Chakotay recognised a smile etched into the lines of his skin. The elder man had peace. He'd had Kathryn and he'd met death with calm and contentment.
He echoed the smile, brazenly kissing Kathryn's temple. The commotion on the other end of sickbay was enough that no one would notice, even if they happened to see the intimate gesture.
"It wasn't until I met you that I realised I even wanted to find my way out. Seeing you walk in the light made we realise I wanted to feel that again."
"It feels a little dark today," she said softly, clutching his arm to her stomach and shaking her head.
He held her hand, pressing the palm of his over the back of hers. "Then I'll be your light."
Turning in his arms, Kathryn rested hers on his chest. "You always are," she whispered. "I don't know what scares me more: having you and losing you or what I'd become if I never do."
One of her tears bathed his thumb as it ran down her cheek. Chakotay stroked it away. "Kathryn, stop thinking."
She opened her mouth to protest, and he covered her lips with a gentle finger.
"Life is not what's going to happen. You're not her, I'm not him and what we have now nothing can take away. Now we're exactly the way we need to be."
Lowering her head, she let him hold her closer. He stroked her hair, losing his fingers in the softness of it as she began to cry.
Tom was laughing and B'Elanna alternately laughed with and roared at him.
It was as the coyote put it, in a very old story. Life was a great river between death and the beginning. You could swim across it, burying your face in the water, or you could let it carry you and look up at the stars. With Kathryn in his arms, his stars were very bright indeed.
onto part IV