A/N: Voyager is the first series I ever wrote for (some of those fairly horrible stories are still on this site, even). Watching it again with adult eyes, I felt the need to render these characters in a somewhat more mature way, with a subtlety that strives to honor the depth of the original. Thanks for reading.

Note: This will be a multi-chapter "getting together" story. It marginally follows 4x15, Hunters.

Epilogue

Chakotay wasn't sure at first what had woken him. The sleep he'd been drawn from was a deep one, perhaps the deepest of his life, and he struggled against his body's insistence to rise, very content for the moment to remain where he was. When he finally surrendered to the urge to open his eyes, he realized at once what had breached his unconscious—it was a change of the light, a cacophony of color writhing through the viewport above him. Still he didn't move for a long moment, reluctant to disturb the figure curled up next to him with her head on his chest, the faint music of her breathing the only sound in the room. Chakotay allowed himself a slow smile, committing to memory the way she looked like this, the softness the nebula's brilliant light brought to her face. Then he bent forward and pressed his lips against her the shell of her ear, whispered her name like a prayer into the dark.

"Kathryn."

He couldn't fathom how many times he'd imagined this, speaking her name in the small hours after midnight and not being the only one who heard it. He had to say it twice before she shifted against him.

"Chakotay?" Chakotay ran a hand through her hair as Kathryn twisted to look at him, her baleful blue eyes barely open. "It doesn't feel like 0700…"

He couldn't help chuckling at that, couldn't quite bring himself to believe, for all her abilities, that she could feel something as artificial as time on a starship. His hand left her hair and slid softly down her back as he nodded toward the starport.

"I didn't think you'd want to miss this."

Kathryn looked up. He felt her tense, the sharp intake of breath against his ribs—then she rolled out of his arms to sit on the edge of the bed, and he rose to sit next to her, the two of them staring out the window shoulder to shoulder. They watched the soft glimmer of the forming stars growing brighter and brighter until one by one they ignited, dazzling pulses of white light flashing like distant beacons, and everywhere they blazed brilliant tendrils of red snaked out into the cerulean nebula like veins through a heart until the entire sea of dust seethed with scarlet flame, breathtaking against the void. For a moment there was a chasm of white light almost too bright to look at through the center of the cloud, millennia of protostars gleaming out at them from subspace like diamonds or dragon's teeth—then the instability folded, and the new protostars sank into the rupture, vanishing in the space of a breath. Chakotay found he had lost his, captivated by the crimson hues that had conquered the universe outside the window. He felt her hand clench around his arm.

"Chakotay."

It took him a second to understand what she was looking at. Two of the protostars had escaped the rupture, and as he watched they began to glow brighter and brighter against the crimson whorls, limbs of bright white fire arcing between them like outstretched hands. In only a few minutes, they had surrendered completely, crumpled into each other to become one body, one brilliant star sending out a pulse of red light that made the whole nebula shudder and burn. Kathryn let out the breath she'd been holding and slumped against his shoulder.

"A millennium," she murmured, almost to herself, and when she looked up at him her blue eyes shone with something he did not understand. "They spent a millennium spinning next to each other before gravity pulled them in. I can't make sense of…what kept them apart so long."

Chakotay wasn't sure what she was trying to tell him. But he had always had a great faith in stories, other people's and his own, and he did his best to honor the story he thought she was telling, leaning in to press a kiss to her shoulder.

"They weren't ready," he told her, and felt her shiver as he breathed the story into her skin. "The sky wasn't ready for them. But when it was time, they found each other." Stars always do, he almost said, but then checked himself, not certain what he meant.

Kathryn watched him in silence for a long moment, her eyes bright with an ache he knew all too well. But she didn't need to feel that anymore, and neither did he—she let herself fall back onto the bed and pulled him down with her, erasing the last divide between them as their bodies collided in the tangle of the sheets.

"Find me," she whispered against his mouth. Then she kissed him, and he forgot the rest of it, the glow of the newborn stars and the riot of the red sky beyond the window, the colors of the unbridled universe coalescing into a beautiful, dusky blue. She was here beside him, beneath him, beating in him like a heart. Everything else was dust.