Chapter Text
Kathryn Janeway had imagined the return to earth quite differently, once she had received the first messages from the wormhole.
She imagined seeing her family as soon as she transported down to Terra from her ship, could almost feel the warmth of her mother‘s arms and see the growing wrinkles on her face. She had imagined Phoebe somewhat older as well, but still with that edge about her, still a little judgmental of her. She hoped that motherhood had mellowed her sister, and looked forward to meeting her husband and son. Those messages from the wormhole had been happy ones.
Janeway had even had days where she fantasized about reuniting with Mark — not as they had once been, partners, but as people who had shared something important together in the past. She understood that he had moved on, and it had been a long time since she had longed for him. But Kathryn still wanted to see him, she still wished him well, and she wanted to meet his new wife. She thought that by doing so, she might imagine what her life would have been like, had she not been lost in the Delta quadrant seven years ago. She wanted to see a glimpse of that world, if only to put it to rest for once and for all. She did not wish it back, but she wished she had more to return to than her mother and sister, as much as she loved them.
If she were honest with herself, she had also dreamed of all that she might have said to her first officer once they had returned home and she was no longer his captain. She had told herself so many times – on New Earth, with the Borg – that it would be worth coming home, if it meant that she could be honest with him. She had imagined standing side-by-side with him on her bridge as Tom piloted the ship towards Earth, had even imagined he might reach out for her in more than a friendly embrace, the rest of the crew be damned, and seal their return with a kiss or some such pledge to each other.
Stuff and nonsense.
Just like her thinking Starfleet might promote her, or throw her a parade, or repair her ship and give her another one, the newest model in the fleet. Appoint her to some sort of new admiralty for the delta quadrant; those kinds of wishes, the foolish sort. Foolish, even without counting on Seven to be the one that Chakotay would turn to in the end.
She had no right to expect that Chakotay’s dreams would be the same as hers, no right to fault him for not waiting when she had shown him, in her words and in her actions, that she would never be available to him as long as she was tasked with bringing the ship and its crew home.
Rationally, she knew that she shouldn’t blame Seven, either, but part of her despised her, was disgusted by her protégée.
Another part of her knew that she was most disgusted with herself. She had put aside a chance at love for – for what? For what the admiralty thought about her? For pride? Out of a misplaced sense of guilt that she had stranded her crew so far from home? What foolishness now, when she looked back at it. She had always had a masochistic side, Mark had said. Kathryn had disagreed. She didn’t find pleasure in the pain, certainly she didn’t. There was little reward for the guilt that drove her, other than the final result, now crumbling in her hands – their return. She had dreamed so frequently of being back on earth, had stored so many of her desires away for a future moment (This future that was now the barren present, she thought), that it was no wonder that she was so depressed. Reality could never compare to all those years of longing.
At least Odysseus had his loyal dog and his brave Penelope, she thought. But who has waited for me?
***
To make the matter of their return even worse, she hadn’t expected such a hostile reaction from Starfleet. The Admiralty had forbidden her from speaking to her crew for several weeks while they conducted an After-Action Review, or post-mortem, of what they now considered a “failed mission.” They didn’t even call her in for a whole week, but put her up in a drab apartment on the far side of headquarters, monitored all her communications, and let her off base for only an hour each day accompanied by some junior grade lieutenant who made sure she didn’t speak to anyone. After a week, they finally called her in for her Review.
It turned out there was a faction of the Admiralty who were sympathetic to a peace treaty with the Cardassians, and in their absence the Maquis had caused even further damage to Cardassian outposts in the quadrant. Making peace with the Cardassians appeared to involve taking a much harsher stance towards the few remaining Maquis, now firmly seen as terrorists, then Janeway had ever imagined.
She had had some time to think through this possibility, of course. Once they discovered the transwarp corridor and knew there was a chance of going home, she had begun to worry about the fate of the Maquis on her ship. Would Starfleet consider them, as she long had, to be their allies now? Would their service on this one Starfleet vessel make up for months, or in some case years, of insubordination and rebellion? They had become such a close crew, and the Maquis had adopted Starfleet ways so thoroughly, that at times she had forgotten that they might face this difficulty in the end. It helped that some of them, like Commander Chakotay, were former Starfleet officers. But even the ones who hadn’t been, like Ayala and Torres, had seemed to adapt readily enough to Starfleet rituals and rules.
Now, however, on day two of her Review, she felt like a fool to not have considered the situation more carefully. Should she have consulted with Chakotay again before they chose to enter the transwarp corridor? Maybe some of the Maquis would have chosen to remain in the Delta quadrant rather than return to the Alpha, if they had known about the nascent peace treaty with the Cardassians.
She brushed her guilt aside; even if she and Chakotay were no longer close, they had had conversations about this potential scenario over the years. He said he knew the risks of returning, as did the rest of the Maquis, but still they preferred to go back to the Alpha quadrant which was, after all, home. And after finding the corridor, she knew that they all were caught in a kind of collective illusion about what their welcome home would be. No one had thought, not even for a moment, that the Maquis crewmembers would be separated from the Starfleet crew; that all of the senior officers, Starfleet, and Maquis, would be questioned separately; that they would put her up in this drab facility, which resembled nothing so much as a detention center; nor that they would delay her reunion with her family and what she presumed was also her crew members’ reunions with their loved ones.
And then there were the days of what she could only considered to be interrogations, though they assured her to the contrary, assured her that this was a mere formality, a standard AAR (but one for a “failed mission” – why failed?). Much to her dismay, the admirals on her panel seemed less concerned in the scientific value of what her ship had learned in the Delta Quadrant, than in ascertaining the loyalties of each crew member, and this irked her. All that time away, and Starfleet were still worried about the few remaining Maquis? What threat could her crewmembers possibly pose, after the decimation of Maquis forces in their absence?
This panel was particularly interested in her relationship with commander Chakotay and, to a lesser extent, with B’Elanna Torres. They asked her to account for her first impressions of both of them; how it was that she had decided to trust them so immediately; and inquired in great detail as to when exactly Torres and Tom Paris had become intimately involved, whether the lieutenants had known each other prior to Voyager, and Janeway’s impressions of their loyalty to Starfleet. The panel seem to ignore or minimize the fact that Tom and B’Elanna had a child together, and had not let Paris see his daughter since the investigations began, a fact that Janeway found unconscionable. She tried to answer the panel of admirals as calmly and professionally as possible, though internally, she could not help but think of them as a junta.
With regards to her first officer, they wanted to know if she had ever encountered him prior to their mission to capture the Valjean, and seemed displeased when she told them that they had never overlapped, to her knowledge, as he was more than four years ahead of her at the Academy. She had heard of him, that was true – he’d been one of the more favored cadets in the years before her time. She knew that he had graduated from the command track with highest honors, and was commissioned as an ensign to a state-of-the-art military vessel. She had heard her father talk about him, sure, in the way that he frequently mentioned older, promising cadets and, later, young officers to her, as a sort of goad to his daughter, a reminder of who he thought she was up against. But she honestly could not say if they had ever crossed paths, unless it was in the casual way that one did as a lower decks officer, on leave at a star base or on Risa, wandering in groups with one’s friends and crewmates, catching a glimpse of other newly commissioned officers, and knowing who the rising stars were.
Yes, she had known that he was considered a rising star way back when, and remembered that fact when they first gave her his file. It had disturbed her even then that someone who had sworn vows to uphold the Federation would have joined a renegade outfit like the Maquis.
“Did you consider him a romantic figure?,” one of the panel asked.
“Romantic in what sense?” she had countered, unsure if they meant the heroic mode or the erotic.
“Both may be relevant here,” one of them said bluntly: Admiral Jelica, a half Betazoid man who looked at her with a scowl.
“Chakotay might be considered a romantic figure to some,” she began slowly. “He certainly was intriguing. A former Starfleet officer, well-regarded, honorably discharged before he joined the Maquis.” She had hoped that she could convince him to return to Starfleet, she added.
“Why would you have wanted to do that?” asked Admiral Pritak, the only woman on the panel, Vulcan, a former Judge Advocate. “Did you not understand that the mission was to capture him and return him to the Federation to stand trial?”
“Of course I did, Admiral,” Janeway hastened to respond. “But I didn’t consider his crimes to be so severe as—"
She was cut off before she could continue.
“And what did you know of his crimes?” asked the third member of the panel, Admiral Paxton, one of the old guard Terrans who had served with her father. “Apart from what he told you?”
“I read his file very thoroughly before our mission,” Janeway said with some anger in her voice, despite her best attempts to keep her calm. “I knew what my job entailed. But the kind of sabotage that he and his crew had conducted – what they were able to do with the limited equipment and old ships they had – were hardly crimes against Starfleet. If I remember correctly, at the time, they only ever targeted Cardassian installations. I may be mistaken.”
“Indeed, you may be mistaken,” said Pritak. “Is it possible, Captain Janeway, that there were acts committed against Starfleet of which you had no knowledge?”
“Of course,” she admitted. “I don’t know everything that my crew has ever done before serving with me. The same goes for many of the Starfleet officers in my command. Even I don’t know the full extent of what Tom Paris did to warrant his incarceration prior to his service with me. I respect that many decisions are made at levels above my own, with information I may not be privy to.” She paused. “And I know that I serve at the pleasure of the Admiralty.”
“And if we were to tell you we had other information about Chakotay and Torres? About their roles in the Maquis, prior to serving on Voyager?” Paxton steepled his fingers, then turned his hands inside out, cracking his knuckles. Janeway waited.
“What information?” she asked cautiously. It was possible that Paxton was bluffing, trying to get her to respond to them with anger, trying to see where her own loyalties lay. She knew it was not beyond Starfleet, in situations such as these, to entirely fabricate a story to see how the interviewee would respond. For all that she knew, this was an interrogation and not an AAR. After all, they seemed to view everything she said with some suspicion.
“If we told you that we had information that your first officer, among others, had been involved in acts of sabotage against the Federation, would you still view Chakotay as a romantic figure?”
“I would need to know what that information is before I can answer your hypothetical questions,” Janeway countered.
Admiral Pritak spoke next, changing the subject. “Speaking of romantic figures, she said, “did you ever have a romantic relationship with commander Chakotay?”
“No,” Janeway said, an edge to her voice. She didn’t like where these questions were leading.
“Did you ever have a sexual relationship with commander Chakotay?”
“No.” They wanted to make her squirm, she thought, and she wouldn’t give them that satisfaction.
“Did you ever have a sexual relationship with a member of your crew?”
“No.”
“Did you ever have a sexual relationship with someone in the Delta Quadrant?”
“Y–yes,” Janeway stuttered.
“What was their name?”
“Inspector Kashyk.” Gods, it had been so brief, did that really count?
“For how long?”
“For less than a week. It was a brief affair.” Janeway felt the sweat build under her armpits, and her throat felt tight.
“Under what circumstances?”
“We were trading with his people, the Devore Imperium.” She wondered why they were asking – surely they had read her ship’s logs thoroughly by now, otherwise why would they have waited a week before calling her in?
“Did you ever consider staying in the Delta Quadrant with him?” Paxton asked.
“No, I did not,” Janeway said. They know the answer to this already, she thought. This is pointless.”
“Why not?” Pritak again. She looked annoyed at Paxton; clearly this line of inquiry was supposed to be hers, probably because she is a woman too, Janeway thought.
“He betrayed us,” Janeway said.
“And yet you trusted him enough to have a relationship with him?” Pritak looked at her sharply, then consulted her padd.
“I would hardly call it a relationship,” Janeway said. “It was a dalliance. A fling.”
“So we can agree that you don’t always have the best of judgment when it comes to potential romantic partners?” That was Paxton again, that smug tone so typical of the men of his generation, implying that she was a hysterical woman who couldn’t be trusted. She wished all these men would hurry up and die and leave the admiralty for a new generation.
“I hardly think this sets a precedent,” Janeway said. She looked Admiral Pritak in the eye, and then glanced at the other admirals. “I thought this was supposed to be an AAR. I don’t see what my personal life has to do with our journey from the Delta Quadrant.”
“It has to do with your judgment,” Pritak said, “and whether or not you may have trusted people who are enemies of the Federation.”
“To my knowledge, none of my Voyager crew are now enemies of the Federation,” Janeway said. “And unless you provide me with solid evidence, I have a hard time believing otherwise.” She waited. “I think I can be forgiven for making a mistake in my judgment in this case – a mistake that was soon detected, I should add.” This was no lingering error; Kashyk was not Seska and she was not Chakotay.
Ah – there was the rub! She didn’t trust Chakotay’s judgement, not always, and not now.
They moved on to different topics then – spent several hours on the Borg, the Kazon, Vidiians, the Hirogen, and returned again to the Devore, Species 8472, and any number of other Scyllas and Charybdes that the admirals had encountered when reviewing her ship’s logs. They inquired about Neelix and Kes – Kes, she missed Kes so much – and the crew of the 37’s, and all the strange temporal anomalies, shore-leave planets, and new galaxies they detected. Kathryn was more comfortable with these kinds of questions – she understood the AAR was over at this point, and they were merely gathering information, assessing for what she found to be of greatest strategic importance to the Federation. She had rehearsed this part with Chakotay and Tuvok, anticipating these kinds of questions. This part was what she had expected, was even pleasant at times. To her relief, they did not ask more than a couple of questions about New Earth, and those primarily scientific in nature.
Near the end of the third day, the three admirals rose and left the room for an hour. When they returned, each solemnly shook her hand while remaining standing.
“Thank you, Captain Janeway,” Admiral Pritak said. “You have served Starfleet well. Now, we ask that you take six months leave. Please remain planetside, we may have further questions.”
“Is that all?” Janeway asked. They looked at her. “What about my crew?”
“They will all get six months’ leave as well. Your stories are consistent,” Paxton said. “We are convinced that your Maquis crewmembers pose no threat to the Federation. However, we still must deliberate on some individual circumstances. Most of the Maquis will be fully pardoned, some will have conditional pardons. Some will be reinstated into Starfleet, if they wish to continue to serve. Your first officer, for instance. We may offer some commissions to others as well,” he added.
“If there is a treaty with Cardassia,” she began. “Some may not want to join Starfleet. What will happen to them?”
“They may return home, as civilians, to wherever they wish to go.”
And with that, the whole ordeal was over. They discussed some other points as well, like backpay and family benefits, but her head wasn’t in the details anymore. She left the Center exhausted, but grateful--grateful beyond measure that none of her beautiful crew would end up in a Federation penal colony. They seemed doubly precious to her after the last week and a half without them.
Tuvok was the one to pick her up from Starfleet Headquarters after three days of her Review.
“Am I glad to see you, Tuvok!” she said. If he had not been a Vulcan, she might have hugged him, so relieved was she to see her old friend.
He took her bag from her, lifted his eyebrow in that piquant way of his, and said, “I trust your Review went smoothly, Captain?”
She laughed bitterly.
“If you call that a Review. It felt more like an interrogation.” She paused and looked at him. “And yours, Tuvok? How did yours go?”
“I must admit that it was a somewhat tedious experience, Captain.”
She smiled. “What can you tell me about it? Anything? Anything at all?”
He pursed his lips.
“Not here, Captain. But there are some things for you to consider. May I suggest a walk?”
As they walked down the promenade, towards the Presidio, she asked him what he knew of the other crew members. What of Harry, Tom, B’Elanna, Chakotay, Seven? Would they decommission the Doctor?
“Starfleet has finished the first round of Review, Captain,” he stated. “The rest of the crew all were released a week ago.”
A week ago! They had kept her for a week longer!
“Where did they all go to, Tuvok?” There was one person she needed to speak to most of all. “And why haven’t you left for Vulcan yet?”
“Thank you for your consideration, Captain. My family has joined me here on Earth. Lieutenant Torres and Tom Paris are with their families, I believe they have all traveled here to the Bay to be with them and Miral. Lieutenant Kim has joined his family as well in San Diego. Seven of Nine has traveled to Sweden to meet some relatives.”
“And what about Chakotay?” she asked. “Where is Chakotay?”
“Commander Chakotay left to visit his sister in Arizona,” Tuvok stated simply. He looked at her carefully. “I believe that he traveled there alone.”
She looked at him. Tuvok looked back at her. “And what about you, Captain?” he asked. “I expect you will go to Indiana now.”
“I don’t think I will,” she said. “Phoebe wrote to me. They aren’t living in Indiana anymore. Oh, I’m sure I’ll go back to visit sometime -- they kept the house there -– but it won’t be the same. They’re in Utah now, where Phoebe’s husband grew up.”
“I may be mistaken on my Terran geography,” Tuvok began, “but I believe that Utah is quite close to Arizona, should you wish to see the Commander.”
“Should I wish to see the Commander…” her voice trailed off. Now, there was an idea. “Tell me, Tuvok, do you think the Commander would want to see me?” The old house, the loom undone, the lustful suitors in what was her rightful place…naught but a bitter return to Ithaca.
“I believe he would,” Tuvok said. “I believe he would.”