Kathryn Janeway was the last act at the fourth annual talent show; they were having this one in honor of their new ‘friends’, the Kindes. Yeah right she thought, they told her either she stayed behind or they’d kill all of her crew. Friends was not the word she would use to describe them. Of coarse she hadn’t told any one else about how she was to at the last moment beam out undetected and by the time they found out she would be long gone hidden by the shielding of the Kindes’s planet. Then standing in front of the every one, minus the skeleton crew, she made eye contact with Chakotay her first officer and begun to sing.
I'm here to tell you we can never meet again
Simple really, isn't it, a word or two and then
A lifetime of not knowing where or how or why or when
You think of me or speak of me or wonder what befell
The someone you once loved so long ago so well
Never wonder what I feel as living shuffles by
You don't have to ask me and I need not reply
Every moment of my life from now until I die
I will think or dream of you and fail to understand
How a perfect love can be confound and out of hand
Is it written in the stars
Are we paying for some crime
Is that all that we are good for
Just a stretch of mortal time
Is this God's experiment
In which we have no say
In which we're given paradise
But only for a day
Nothing can they alter, there is nothing to decide
No escape, no change of heart, no anyplace to hide
You are all I'll ever want, but this I am denied
Sometimes in my darkest thoughts, I wish I'd never learned
What it is to be in love and have that love returned
Is it written in the stars
Are we paying for some crime
Is that all that we are good for
Just a stretch of mortal time
Is this God's experiment
In which we have no say
In which we're given paradise
But only for a day
As she finished the crowd erupted in cheers slowly making her way off the stage she was surrounded by her beloved crew getting hugs and good jobs from all of them including the Doctor. The Doctor, she thought, he’s a hologram I could send a holographic image in my place, they would never know the difference. Absently she made her way through the crew searching for B’Elanna Torres. On finding her Kathryn pulled her off to the side and asked, “B’Elanna how long would it take you to make a new holo emitter?”
“48 hours depending on the urgency and the cause for what it’s needed for. Why?” B’Elanna asked her.
“What if you had just 12 hours and it would be necessary to save my life?” Kathryn asked her kind-of smiling.
“Then I wold have to say for reals?” B’Elanna replied rolling her eyes.
“For reals B’Elanna you can use any staff you need but it needs to be done by 0800 hours tomorrow. And you can’t tell any one what it’s for understood?” Kathryn told her.
“I’m on it,” B’Elanna said and hurried around to collect her engineering staff.
Suddenly Kathryn felt a hand one her shoulder and a voice from behind her said, “It doesn’t have to be for just one day.”
Turning around she saw Chakotay smiling at her and answered, “Maybe not any more, come on we have to go to the holodecks and ‘make’ a new me.”
“Everything ready?” Kathryn asked B’Elanna as she entered the holodeck where she and Chakotay had just finished making a new ‘her’.
“Yes, here you go, do you know how hard it was trying to make a new one of these?” B’Elanna asked them.
“Probably as hard as making a new Kathryn Janeway,” Chakotay answered her.
“Good point,” B’Elanna answered putting the holo emitter on the ‘new’ Kathryn.
“I’m glad you choose to stay behind, it would have been a pity to see your entire crew die just for you Kathryn,” the Kindes ambassador told the holo image of Kathryn Janeway.
“Yes it would have been a pity,” she said smiling inwardly.
“I love you,” Chakotay told Kathryn shortly after leaving the Kindes’s planet and returning the journey home at warp 8.
“I love you too,” she said smiling as he brought his head down to give her a kiss inside her ready room.
