"You no longer value your linear existence," she informed him, as if diagnosing him with an illness. The Prophet, who had chosen to borrow the form of Annika Hansen from his memory, sat on the edge of the cliff where he'd watched hawks as a child. Her golden hair, now shot with grey, tumbled down over her shoulders and danced in the breeze.

"My linear existence has faded," Chakotay explained, kneeling down to the dirt. In his vision, his knees weren't stiff from their biometric implants. They felt like his own knees again. He drew a line in the dirt, which felt as real as it had when he was a child.

"Your existence is brief. One-dimensional," the Annika-Prophet said.

"Not as one-dimensional as most," another Prophet, this one appearing as Tom Paris, dressed in another one of his holonovel costumes. Chakotay's memory danced around the design, trying to place it. The Tom Paris wearing it was the elderly Admiral from Chakotay's time period who had invented the last three shuttle designs with his wife, not the one who'd spent hours saving the world in the holodeck from Chaotica.

"His people have a slightly increased view of the universe," the Tom-Prophet said optimistically. "He's seen more than most."

"And he believes," a Kes-Prophet weighed in as the scene changed to the bridge of Voyager. She stood up from the captain's chair, even though she must have been dead for decades. "You are not Bajoran, yet you came for us."

"Why?" the Annika-Prophet asked.

"To change his existence," a B'Elanna-Prophet joined them, swinging her feet as she sat on the navigation console behind them. While the Prophets had chosen an elderly Tom, the B'Elanna they'd borrowed was a young woman. "He wishes to change his existence."

"Changing a linear existence is not allowed," a Doctor-Prophet informed him, strolling leisurely along the bridge. "His existence would alter the lives of millions around him."

"One moment changes many others," the Tom-Prophet agreed.

"But he knows that," the B'Elanna-Prophet realised, circling him with a curious smile. "One life in particular."

On the viewsceen of the Voyager from his memory, a Borg cube exploded.

"This moment," the Kes-Prophet said, moving to his side.

The cube exploded, swirled back together and exploded again.

"This moment is not linear," the Tom-Prophet added gently. "This moment is incongruent."

The sand blew in to cover the deck. The B'Elanna-Prophet knelt, and the others followed suit, circling the line he'd drawn before. They all stared at the sand reverently, as if all the answers in the universe were there in the furrow.

"This is your existence," a new female voice said. A hand, her hand, reached down and rubbed out the end of the line. She trailed her fingers in the dirt and he remembered those fingers on his shoulder as if they had just been there. "You let it fade."

He caught her hand out of the dirt and followed her arm up to her face with his eyes. As much as he'd dreaded seeing one of the Prophets become her, it was her and for that he was infinitely grateful. Kathryn Janeway, the reason his existence had faded, smiled at him over the dirt.

Kathryn squeezed his hand, the memory of her blue eyes twinkling as if she was there. "She was here," she said, tracing a line beside his. "Then she was not." She frowned, stopping the line as she reached the part she'd rubbed away. She pulled the memory from his mind and turned to him. Her expression softened, but the Kathryn-Prophet was fascinated. "Her existence terminated," she said, touching her chest. "This being ceased to exist."

"She died," he clarified. No matter how many times he said it, or how many decades it had been since she'd been burned out of the universe, every time he faced Kathryn's death, part of him died. No matter how much he hoped the slow death of him would lead him closer to her, Chakotay hadn't lost enough yet. The last of him clung to existence, no matter how faded or empty.

"Do you want to die?" the Kathryn-Prophet asked him, tilting her head to the side. "You could cease to exist. You could die." She offered it as a suggestion, as his Kathryn might have offered him a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. "Would you see her again if you died?"

"I don't know," Chakotay answered honestly. "I would like to see her again while I am alive." He took the Kathryn-Prophet's hand and set it on the line in the sand, right before the end. "I would like to be here."

"She is there," the Kathryn-Prophet assured him. "You are there."

"I need to be there again," he insisted.

The Kathryn-Prophet pondered that idea. Lifting her hand from the sand, she touched his cheek. "Because she is there."

"Because she is there," he agreed.

"You will change your existence," the Kathryn-Prophet reminded him. "Why?"

He covered the hand on his cheek with his own, then smiled at her. Across decades, time and space, he leaned close to Kathryn Janeway the way he never had in her life, and kissed her. The Kathryn-Prophet had no idea how to return the kiss, and when he pulled back, she studied him curiously. She traced his lips with her fingers. "Corporeal copulation is a reason to change existence."

"What did you feel?" he asked her.

"Feel?" the Kathryn-Prophet repeated. "Feeling is corporeal."

"You should try it," he suggested, chuckling. "Feeling goes behind a linear existence."

The Kathryn-Prophet put her hands on his face. She gently pulled him closer, staring at his lips. This time, the kiss she initiated was soft and tentative, like the first time a girl had kissed him when he was young. He held still, letting her explore the moment. Flashes of memory passed through his mind. Each kiss running into the last. Seska, Annika, the first girl to kiss him, the first girl he'd kissed: all of it ran together, coalescing and refining until it was a single thought. That thought hung in his mind, there and not there, like dark matter.

The Kathryn-Prophet smiled, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "Feeling is not linear."

"It's not."

She guided his hand back down to the sand. "Here," she offered.

And he went.

One moment she was sitting there, listening to Chakotay gently tease Tom for all of B'Elanna's false alarms. The next, she was looking at him. Chakotay stood there in front of her, an ancient Chakotay who's dark eyes were so haunted that they could have been a quantum singularity. His tattoo was faded on his wrinkled skin, his clothing was entirely unfamiliar, but it was undeniably him.

"Kathryn," he murmured, dry lips creasing into a smile.

Tuvok was a step away from him in a moment, and Tom was reaching towards his phaser.

"It's all right," she said, raising a hand to calm them. "Who are you?"

Her Chakotay got to his feet as well, staring at his doppelgänger. He saw the resemblance. They both did.

"A man without a lot of time," the doppelgänger said. "Mr. Tuvok can take me to sickbay to confirm who I am."

Tuvok caught her eye and Kathryn nodded quickly. "Sounds reasonable."

"I thought it might," the elderly Chakotay agreed. "Thank you, captain." His eyes lingered on her, like a starving man having his first glimpse of food.

Something stirred in the pit of her stomach and Kathryn wasn't sure if she could put a name on it. Her Chakotay saw it too, and she could sense him behind her.

When Tuvok led the other away, her Chakotay hovered over her. "That was me, wasn't it?"

"I have no idea." Kathryn shrugged. She should have been able to say more, but that man's eyes-

"You plus about fifty years commander," Tom observed. "Unless you have a great-grandfather you never told us could travel through space."

"Not that I know of," Chakotay replied.

"Any unusual readings Mr. Kim?" Kathryn asked, trying to shake the cold fingers from the bottom of her spine. "Any idea how he got here?"

"I've been working on that, captain," Harry said, frustration sneaking into his voice. "There's no temporal distortions or spatial anomalies. According to the sensors, he just appeared. One second he wasn't here, then he was. I've never seen anything like it."

"Well, considering how improbable it is for a man to appear out of thin air, Mr. Kim, I don't think you can blame yourself," Kathryn quipped, trying to dredge up her own optimism.

Harry's console beeped and drew his attention. His frustrated look gave way to wonder. "I'm reading traces of verteron particles and neutrinos."

"Verteron particles and neutrinos..." Kathryn repeated thoughtfully.

"Like the Bajoran wormhole, captain," Chakotay offered, coming to stand behind her.

She knew that look. "Do you have a theory, commander?"

"Only the beginning of one, captain," Chakotay excused with a nod.

"Let me know when you have an ending." Drumming her fingers on the edge of Harry's console, she decided. "Mr. Kim, keep tracking the verteron particles, try and see if you can determine the decay ratio. I'll be in sickbay."

Chakotay fell into step behind her, leaving the bridge to Tom.

"Do you know what you're going to ask him?" she asked, watching Chakotay's expression shift from being deep in thought to a smile.

"How to make him prove he's me?" he replied. "It's a fascinating opportunity."

"It seems you might outlive all of us," she said, far more lightly than she should have. Fear flashed through Chakotay's face so quickly she may have never caught a glimpse of it if she hadn't known him so well.

"Perhaps." He held his smile, but Kathryn could see the effort it took in the tightening of the fine lines around his eyes. "At least I know I'm going to keep my hair."

"He is Commander Chakotay," the Doctor confirmed.

"It's Ambassador now," the visiting version of Chakotay corrected gently.

"Rank aside," the Doctor interjected, sharpening of his tone, "they are the same man. Their DNA is identical, and of course that could mean a transporter duplicate or a clever clone. However, when I compared their memory engrams and their neurological profiles-" the Doctor indicated a very complex mental map on his station and continued, "They share one hundred percent of Commander Chakotay's neural engrams. Every moment of the Commander's life was experienced by our guest. The only differences in the pattern are from the addition of new engrams. About thirty-five years worth."

"I'm ninety-four, if you would like to be exact," the visitor weighed in. "The Doctor will also tell you I've had a number of my joints replaced with bio-synthetic ones, and that my right lung, kidneys, liver and pancreas have been replaced with ingenious Borg-inspired replacements. We've made a few advancements in the last few decades."

"All right," Kathryn folded her arms over her chest and frowned at the other him. "Why are you here? How did you get here?"

Chakotay's own shock was starting to fade. He'd suspected he saw himself in their visitor, and having it confirmed was surprisingly comfortable. Watching the elder version of himself smile as Kathryn's questions continued, he saw something else that nagged at the back of his mind.

The other him never took his eyes off Kathryn. From the moment she'd walked into sickbay, the elder Chakotay gave her his full attention, and he hadn't let up. Knowing himself was more frightening then having doubts. This Chakotay had lost her. It was the only possible explanation. Somewhere, along his journey, this version of him had lost the woman who'd given his life meaning.

"I went to the Temple of Iponu on Bajor and asked the Prophets to send me here," the visitor explained with a calm that only irritated Kathryn more. "I assume your sensors detected the verteron particles and traces of neutrinos?"

Chakotay nodded immediately. He'd suspected some kind of micro-wormhole and the Orb of Time was the simplest explanation.

Kathryn looked back at him, not making the connection to the artefact. "No wormhole could form on this ship. Commander, what is he talking about?"

"The Bajoran Orb of Time is kept at that temple," he answered. "I am curious how you gained access to one of the Bajoran people's most precious religious objects."

The visitor smiled weakly and slowly slid off the biobed. "As our father used to tell us, when all else fails, just ask nicely." The darkness in the other man's face vanished for a moment and it was more than years that had aged the man before him.

"You expect us to believe that the wormhole aliens of Bajor sent you back into the past, here in the Delta Quadrant, so you can do what exactly?" Kathryn's temper was up and the visitor's enigmatic smile was only making things worse. Unfortunately for the captain, the visitor was so content to bask in her presence that even her mood worsening meant nothing to him.

"Please, Mr. Tuvok, what time is it?"

"Oh-nine hundred hours and forty-three minutes," Tuvok answered.

"I'm here now because in just over half an hour, another version of you, captain, will arrive through a spatial distortion. She has a plan to bring Voyager home and I have to stop her." The other him said all of it calmly, rationally, as if he was speaking of going down to the mess hall to eat lunch. Tuvok looked incredulous. The Doctor was deeply involved in studying the visitor's brain scans. Something there had his attention.

The captain was quickly approaching her livid state. Chakotay knew that set of her jaw all too well.

"Another version of me, who's what, ninety-eight and used Romulan technology to cloak herself through time?" Kathryn's tone was biting, but the visitor didn't feel it.

"She's using a combination of several technologies, including Borg," the visitor told her with a nod. "You've always been the scientist, captain. You will come your way, and I came mine."

"What reason is that for me not to throw both of you in the brig right now?" Her hand was on her hip and her posture sang with tension. Her time travel induced headache was already stalking her.

"Because you're going to take me up to your ready room and I'm going to break the temporal directive so badly that they'll hear the crack back home," the visitor insisted confidently. "Now, we don't have a lot of time. Of course, Tuvok and a security team may continue to escort me if you wish."

"I wish it," Kathryn snapped. Her eyes flicked to Tuvok. "Take him to my ready room."

Now that Kathryn was angry, the Doctor was interested. She dismissed him as politely as she could under the circumstances and Chakotay reached for his inner well of calm before he approached her. He could feel her frustration roll off her, and knew he approached at his own risk.

"I know I might be the last person you want to see right now," he began lightly and it was enough to break her frown.

"The thought had occurred to me," she replied. Kathryn sighed and fought to constrain her logical mind. "When did you get so irritatingly smug?"

He'd gain nothing by lying to her, but Chakotay knew she wasn't ready for what he had to say. He softened his tone and wished he could ease her way. If the elder him was still in love with her, he didn't envy either of them the conversation they were about to have.

"I think he sees something that he's been missing for a very long time."

The admission was subtle and she was halfway to the door out of sickbay before she whirled back. Kathryn fought her emotions down and simply nodded. "Thank you, commander."

Tuvok and the other Chakotay were deep in conversation when she entered. Kathryn couldn't help feeling like she was a child who had walked into a secret conference between adults.

"Captain," Tuvok acknowledged and got to his feet.

"It's all right Mr. Tuvok, there's no regulations regarding your speaking with our guest." She demanded coffee from the replicator and tried not to feel self-conscious. Chakotay was right about himself. The older man only had eyes for her when she was in the room. Not even Molly paid her so much attention.

"Will you excuse us, please," she requested, and her security officer obliged. Meeting the other Chakotay's eyes was too difficult, so she kept her gaze on the coffee pot. "Is it still two sugars?" she asked politely.

"No, black is fine," he said, thanking her with a smile. "Once I hit ninety, I didn't mind the taste anymore."

"Ninety," she sighed, shaking her head. "I have to say you look pretty dapper for a man about to become a centenarian."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, captain." He replied, favouring her again with that enigmatic smile. Sipping his coffee slowly, he remarked, "funny how after a few decades, even Voyager's coffee can't be good."

She could see him, her Chakotay, in this man's smile and in the hints of good humour left around his eyes. He'd led a long life, and most of it was written into the deep lines on his face. Age didn't frighten her; Kathryn knew she would watch her own face and body succumb to gravity and the ravages of time.

There was more than time in the haunted look that wouldn't abandon him, no matter how he smiled or relaxed in her presence.

"Chakotay," she began, toying with the handle of her cup.

"It might be easier to let me," he offered, reaching across and taking her hand. The gesture was too familiar for her Chakotay, and the hand that closed over hers had skin like parchment laced with ropy veins.

"In my timeline, Admiral Janeway appeared , today, through a spatial distortion. She told you that the nebula ahead contains a Borg transwarp hub. Together with our crew, we devised a plan that would get Voyager home earlier than her Voyager did."

He took pity on her and paused. His compassion was definitely more familiar than his obsession with her. "How's your headache?"

"I'll live," she promised sardonically.

"While Admiral Janeway's Voyager eventually made it home, it took her many years and the losses she suffered along the way made her cynical and isolated. She represented a side of you it was not easy to confront."

She sighed, no matter when he was from, Chakotay still protected her, apparently even from herself. "Are you insinuating I can be difficult?"

"Only in the best possible way," he promised warmly. Beneath his friendship, a buried need tugged at her, demanding attention she hadn't paid it. His face softened and he tightened his grip on her hand. "In Admiral Janeway's time, Tuvok will become senile from a degenerative Vulcan illness. Seven of Nine will die on an away mission and Voyager will return home absent twenty-two more members of her crew."

Her hand twitched his grasp reflexively, and her coffee was dreadfully bitter in her mouth. "Twenty-two?"

"It's a long journey for them," he replied softly. "It wears on you until you become the woman you're about to meet."

Racing with her, Kathryn's mind plucked at what he'd said a thought at a time. "Tuvok?"

"I believe I can help him," the elder Chakotay promised. He was holding something else back, but his voice was light and hopeful. "As I'm sure the Doctor will explain it to you when he discovers it, I experienced an exceptionally deep mind-meld with Tuvok's son, Sek, the day before I left for Bajor. With a little help from both of our ancestors, Tuvok and I might just be able to achieve fal-tor-voh, which should cure him. That's what we were discussing. It's never been attempted with a human before, but he left a detailed impression of his mind on mine that should allow let me help Tuvok."

Trying to rationalise losing her dear friend and advisor only to have this stranger offer to give him back was difficult. Kathryn nodded and put the thought aside. Seven of Nine's death was unacceptable, of course. On that point she agreed with her inbound future self completely.

"Twenty-two..." she repeated. Grief tightened her throat and she tried not to imagine launching twenty-two more bodies into space on their long journey home. "But we get home?" She almost didn't want the question answered.

"You do," he said, releasing her hand and turning his attention to the stars outside her window. "I've missed this view, captain."

The twisting of her stomach had an answer she didn't even want to consider. "And you?"

"Die shortly after returning to Earth," he informed her, bringing his dark eyes back to her face. "However, that timeline is not what I experienced."

"You're from the timeline Admiral Janeway corrected, or thought she was correcting?" Kathryn guessed. "Surely it can't be worse than losing twenty-two people!"

"In my timeline, we follow a plan that both of you approved. Admiral Janeway helped us destroy the transwarp hub, and Voyager arrived home. You land the ship on the lawn of Starfleet Headquarters, just like you've always said you would."

The idea of Voyager home safe brought tears to her eyes. She might have wiped them away more quickly in the presence of her Chakotay, but this one seemed incapable of judging her. "So far it sounds perfectly acceptable." Her throat tightened hopefully. The idea of reaching home had been so far away.

"It is, for a time," he said, voice cracking ever so slightly. "Many of the crew are promoted; reunited with their families. For a time, it's a great celebration, everything we could have dreamed of."

"You're not making your case very well," Kathryn retorted. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, and he had no intention of telling her what it was. Her aggravated anticipation seethed over her as if she'd disturbed Utzrican fire ants.

The elderly Chakotay smiled knowingly at her, as if he'd forgotten all about her temper and now found it endearing. "I'm being selfish, Kathryn, forgive me," he said. "After the paperwork, and the debriefings, the crew is reassigned, many promoted. Voyager is retrofit and relaunched. Gretchen and I- your mother, I mean- had tea every Wednesday for years."

"My mother?" A very old ache rose up fresh in her chest.

"Never turned down an invitation for dinner," he said fondly. "She always came to our gatherings at the memorial." There was something else, something he was leaving out and she couldn't quite-

Then she understood, but Kathryn desperately wanted to be wrong. "The memorial for the crew we lost?"

"No," he shook his head. "Though that is nearby." The elder Chakotay set down his cup and clasped his hands together. "It's a grand memorial, Kathryn. Topped with an ever-burning flame. It's really quite beautiful."

"I don't know who you think you are-" she snapped, impatience finally bubbling over.

"Please," his throat choked the word, turning it into a sob. He closed his eyes, then folded his hands in a Vulcan meditative posture. Grief washed over his features like the sea over old stones. Chakotay's breath shuddered, then quieted. "I have very little time and I'm afraid there are things that it will never be easy for me to say."

She brushed his shoulder first, then she cupped his cheek. The bones of his face were barely covered by flesh anymore and the fragility of him ached in her chest. "Tell me a story."

His smile was the brightest it had been since he'd come aboard. "This one doesn't have a happy ending."

"Chakotay-" She stoked down his cheek. "Please. I have to know."

"My last story was about a woman warrior, as is this one. She was much beloved by her tribe, for she was a mother to all of them. She'd even found a young woman who had been raised by faceless demons and taught that young woman to love and laugh, as she should have always been able to. That woman warrior brought her tribe home after a great journey across the stars and the great gathering of her people honoured her in many songs and stories. For a time she was happy, and her tribe was safe with their families again."

When he paused, her heart threatened to stop with him. Chakotay's eyes were suddenly ancient and terribly dark.

"The faceless demons were strong, and though the woman warrior and her people had outwitted them many times in the past, after she came home, the woman warrior's tribe was scattered. Her family was not able to come to her aid when the demons took hold of her soul."

"No..." her gasp was a prayer of disbelief.

"The woman warrior had been powerful, and her great strength was turned against her people. The woman she'd saved on her journey, and a great warrior who had fought the faceless ones before managed to stop the woman warrior but the damage had been done. The faceless ones had wrought more pain and suffering than they ever had before.

"The greatest suffering was in the tribe of the woman warrior, for though she had saved all of them and kept them safe on her journey home, none of them were able to save her. Without her, the woman warrior's family was broken. The young woman she'd rescued, the one who had been faceless once, forgot how to laugh. The lovers she'd protected never knew peace, for their daughter was never safe. The young man she'd nurtured into a warrior died a warrior's death. Her confidant carried the weight of her absence for the rest of his long life."

His bitterness crackled in the air, clouding his eyes. It was more than grief, or the unstoppable anger he'd fought against when he'd come onboard many years ago. This Chakotay had been destroyed; his heart torn from his chest, and what remained was still suffering that loss.

"And the angry warrior, who had once sheathed his sword and fury to stand by her side, found without her, he would never again know peace. Instead of being angry, because that could no longer fill him, he was hollow. When life did not leave him for many years, he was hollow for a very long time." His voice had softened to nearly a whisper and the twisting of her stomach suggested she knew exactly why he couldn't take his eyes off her.

She should have been asking him how the Borg assimilated her, if she became a queen, or grabbed the nearest phaser and prevented herself from becoming an instrument of the galaxy's greatest evil. Instead all she could think about was how terrible it must have been for him to spend decades alone.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Kathryn shook her head slowly. "I would die to bring my crew home, Chakotay, you know that."

Chakotay sat back, reaching for her shoulder with a trembling hand. "And any one of them would die to keep you alive, captain. It's an odd predicament, isn't it?"

"I don't understand," she stammered. "You're here to stop some version of me from bringing us home because she hates her timeline but yours-"

"Cannot be allowed to occur," he begged her, digging his bony fingers into her shoulder with surprising strength.

"I can't change the future," she protested. Leaving the sofa, she crossed her arms in frustration. Kathryn took a deep breath and willed her heart to stop racing. "Not to hers or yours or to whatever the future version of Naomi Wildman wants me to do."

He laughed wearily, watching her with tremendous sympathy. "I don't think she's coming."

"Good," Kathryn agreed sardonically, "I'll run out of guest quarters." He kept watching her; she could feel his gaze as she paced back and forth. As disconcerting as it was, part of her-

"Doctor to Captain Janeway," her commbadge interrupted. "Are you with our visitor?"