From A Survivor
Author: RoseKira@aol.com or kiraananke@hotmail.com
Rating: R

Disclaimer: All characters owned by Paramount Studios. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Admiral Janeway's thoughts before her mission in Endgame. Spoilers. This was a monster demanding to be written.

*
My ready room remains my sanctum, the one place I can generally escape the public without neglecting duty-or, at the very least, neglect duty in private.

Only problem is, they don't call these Admiral's haunts ready rooms, and this one isn't exactly Voyager's. It's a command closet...but Voyager's...that one had memories. It had a thousand living holoprogrammes bursting into life any given day, and a few in particular linger.

Seven, for instance. I'm sure the number of confrontations I had with our resident former Borg in Voyager's ready room doesn't bear counting, but the last...the very last...is as vivid as the actual event. We were a decade into our journey, and Seven was still slowly working herself into our dubious niche of humanity...ring finger first.

She and Chakotay had been married less than a month, and I frankly didn't care to speak to either of them alone for at least another. Starship captains do indeed get jealous. They just don't like showing it, or admitting it, until all is said and done and it doesn't matter anymore.

Both of them are dead. Who can I hurt?

Seven came to me early in the shift that morning, report in one implant-ridden hand, the other clenched behind her back. She had developed the habit when in my presence, hiding that ring. I felt brief annoyance...crewman simply shouldn't fall to feeling pressured into hiding things away from the captain, however sensitive the hiding is. I forced myself to speak, evenly, amiably.

"Coffee, Seven? Harry introduced a new blend to me..."

She shook her head, slowly, gingerly sitting.

I couldn't help but smile, albeit humorlessly. "You still haven't gotten used to your humanity, have you?"

The eyes were calm, the unhindered brow lifting. "I suppose not."

"However the hell do you manage those spirit quests, then?" Even attempting to visualize Seven in Chakotay's favored meditative position was...well, quite amusing.

Her smile was tight, false. "I do not meditate. I believe attempting to end the existence of one spirit guide is enough. Do not tell Commander Torres of this, of course. I understand that she desires as little likeness to me as possible."

"Seven." I hated myself, then, for letting the unease show, for putting that emptiness in her voice, the expectation of scorn, of shunning. "Don't be absurd. We are your family."

"Yes." Quiet, thoughtful, the remark barely passed my ears. "As was the Borg Collective." Then, catching my gaze, she inclined her head. "Chakotay and I will be parents. We intend to honor you as namesake."

"I am honored, then."

"No." Echo again, no inflection. "You are not, but your saying so is admirable." And she left, with no look back.

I could've called her back, I suppose, but the alienation would only have turned to outright chill, and I didn't feel up to dealing with it. I needed Seven at her best that day, and chose to leave it be. Chakotay apparently picked up on her mood, however, and decided otherwise.

"Just who do you think you are?"

I turned from the viewport as he entered...only moments later...meeting the gaze of my subject of reflection. His eyes were dark, burning, lips tightened into thin anger. "I'm afraid you've lost me, Chakotay." Damn deliberately too. What now? Hadn't the earlier gauntlet run been enough?

"Oh, I did." Soft, lashing, the voice cut through the room. "And for once I can't say I'm especially sorry for it."

"This is about Seven."

"No. This is about you."

"Chakotay, what else do you want me to do? I married you to her. I work alongside you every day and I haven't forsaken her either, though God only knows getting through the walls she's thrown up can, at times, be a great deal like grinding teeth..."

"I'm your friend, Kathryn. I've known a few people who would've been grateful for less than that."

"She's jealous?" Maybe the last word did come out a hiss, but what did he expect? After coffee, I could've dealt with this. After a few of Tom's jokes to ease the mood, I could've handled it. No coffee, no jokes. Just flat out mule-headed confrontation. He'd just have to handle it.

"I wouldn't put it that way. A little stressed. She's pregnant..."

"So she mentioned." I cut in. "And frankly, I'm a little appalled at the timing. I can't chastise you for the relationship, she is non-Starfleet and, by all definitions, a self-sufficient adult, but I can and will point out that trial runs are recommended before forging permanent bonds. I realize you've been married a while now and hope to have children, but it's a bit reckless at this point. I'm not
convinced Seven is settled into the relationship yet and Voyager certainly isn't in an easy stretch of space at the present time. This is a warship, Commander, and lately it's more war than ship. We all have to consider that."

He ignored the lecture. "She's pregnant, and you know that means certain sacrifices on the part of the rest of us. B'Elanna's empathetic enough to leave her alone, why can't the captain?"

I suppose anyone else would've been two steps from the brig after that one, but it's testament that I was nowhere nearly immune to him as I'd have liked that Chakotay stayed put, frowning down like one of those imperturbable native legends of his. I merely clamped my retort back, moderating my tones instead.

"I apologize if Seven, or you, Commander, feel that I've done something-don't bother to tell me details-to stress her. Your wife is my astrometrics officer. I am her captain. As second-in-command, you know very well that requires some degree of contact daily. I can't control the rigors of service any more than Seven can control any...paranoia...her hormones might be causing."

His lips quirked, grudgingly enough, I'm sure. "Don't tell her that."

"I'm sure Tom would be willing to empathize with you on the hazards of marriage and pregnant spouses."

"Not on pregnant former Borg spouses. Even Paris is staying clear of her bad side." He sat, hands absently passing through his hair. "I'm sorry I barged in like that, Kathryn."

"Just don't do it again, Commander." Somehow, though, the sharpness dwindled into tiredness. "And since you are here, we'd better move on to related, more official matters. The Fen Domar are visiting."

"The Fen Domar hate Borg."

"The Fen Domar hate everyone. Borg are just a little higher on the list. Given what the collective has done...assimilated a third of the population, harnessed nearly all technology...I can't especially blame them. I do, however, fear for Seven. It would be better if she remained in your quarters until they leave."

"You think they'd actually attempt something on Voyager?" He leaned forward until I could practically touch the furrows of the tattoo.

"I think a diplomatically rouged face can hide a great many scars."

He stood, nodding. "She won't be happy with the idea, but an order will hold her. In the meantime, we can arrange a meeting planetside...shift them away from Voyager as often as possible. Play diplomatic hardball"

"Kiss the hand that feeds you before they strangle you?"

He left me to mull the option, but I had to recognize the wisdom in his idea...the Fen Domar were a powerful, perhaps too vengeful, race. Their territory was an expanse of rough space...and we were right in the middle of it. We had to go through, none of us were willing to take long routes anymore. I also didn't anticipate a smooth passage if they took a disliking to us, and letting
them know of seven was simply out of the question, and entirely too dangerous...for all of us.

And yet she disobeyed us.

Seven was a grown woman. By all means, my logs declared it so, and she ought to have known it. I didn't ask a great deal of her in those days, but I expected obedience. If not obedience, respect for Chakotay. Hell, he was her husband. She could've considered that, but, with her usual childlike resoluteness, she reached her conclusions and made her decisions without either of us.

She went planetside, enlisted assistance in beaming down after Chakotay and the away team had left by shuttle. The rest is in the logs, and I don't care to go into detail. She and the child she carried paid for that misjudgment with their lives.

End book.

Never.

The real story always picks up, soars on broken wings, with those left behind.

Death, the last voyage, the longest, and the best. So said a man named Thomas Wolfe. For Seven's sake, I certainly hope so. For Chakotay's sake, I pray so. They were both lost to us that day.

He left, left Voyager, left me, left B'Elanna, left the Maquis rank bar on his desk and a decades worth of duty for Tom Paris to pick up in his place. I'd like to say I understood. How can I? I don't run from grief. I don't consider the staying a strength. I simply can't run. He could. There's no gray-scale of understanding between humans on issues such as grief and death. We each deal
in our own way.

Perhaps he sought just that, solitude, distance. For three years, we supposed he had found it.

Chakotay came home, older, less alive. Just as with his departure, he didn't bother to mark the occasion with a hailing, just steered the battered little shuttle back into shuttlebay during routine cargo loading and strode right back into the ready room, sitting down as if he'd never left.

I was startled, certainly, and though security had given warning, if not halted him, I found myself faintly amazed by the face to face contact. God, he looked tired, and old...old war-horse, that's the term Torres would use. At the time, there were no terms, simply a hand grasp and whisper. "Three years, Chakotay."

"I realized that it's time to put Seven to rest." His eyes darkened, lost in distances I didn't even attempt to travail. "Her stasis pod, I assume it's still kept up?" At my nod, a faint smile rose. "I want a ceremony. A Starfleet one, and you at it's head. She idolized you, in her way...it was only a sign of her maturation that things eventually fell as they did between you. She struggled so hard...I
think the marriage was more than a commitment to Seven. She wanted proof that she was needed, desired. I probably failed to
live up to her high expectations of marital bliss, and that only made her more determined to heal the damage. She was a good wife. I believe she would have been a good mother. She had enough love to give...that she needed to give someone. After she was gone...it's been a long while since I've cared about anything beyond that loss. Pain is a bitter, bitter aloe, Kathryn. Guard
yourself in the future. It makes you do incomprehensible things..."

"I won't ask you what you've done, for I know well enough what they did to you. I just ask you to stay, Chakotay. This ship needs you. I need you. And we all need you to keep Seven with us, if only in memory."

His smile was pained, quirky. "I've nowhere else to go, Kathryn. Voyager is home. Seven would want me here."

"I can't give you your position back. Tom earned his place. Helm, however..."

"I was one of the best pilots in the Alpha Quadrant." The tones approached humorous. "Of course, that was the Alpha Quadrant."

"That's where we're headed." What to say? I wanted to throw myself into his arms...did he realize what the years had done to us all? I supposed not. Chakotay was back, but there was a distance, a reserve, an almost detached air. He kept his sanctum, and his word, and stayed.

We made it home.

He had a Starfleet ceremony, and I was at the head of it.

And somehow, if I can change it all...the honor doesn't mean a damned thing.

*
From A Survivor- Adrienne Rich

The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
Of men and women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
That our personalities
Could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
The race had failures of that order
And that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
Your body is as vivid to me
As it ever was, evenmore
Since my feeling for it is clearer
I know what it could do and could not do
It is no longer
The body of a god
Or anything with power over my life...
...and you are wastefully dead
Who might have made the leap
We talked, too late, of making
Which I live now
Not as a leap
But a succession of brief, amazing movements
Each one making possible the next

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