=/\=

"I've seen you up here a lot. You must really enjoy this view."

Quinn smiled warmly at him. "You have to admit it's spectacular." From this high up, the view of the sea and surrounding coastline overshadowed the overview of the prison just below. This was the first time Robert Whitehorse had accessed it, since it was outside of the fences around the encampment. His ankle bracelet would have sounded the alarm if he'd tried to climb the hillside at any time before the announcement of the Maquis prisoner's freedom. Since then, he'd never tried to follow her up. She was glad he hadn't.

"Truthfully, it's a good place for thinking. Even in my office, I can't shut everyone out. My staff is at my door continuously when I'm there. They can signal me to come down when I'm up here, but they know it had better be an emergency if they do."

"I can understand that. This is a peaceful place, compared to the prison."

"I'm afraid you had even less chance for thought in there. You didn't have an office where you could shut yourself away to keep out the crowds wanting your attention."

"It wasn't so bad for me. Most of the time, I didn't mind the company. The middle of the night, when almost everyone else was asleep, became my time to think."

"Robert, you needed to sleep at night, not think!"

"Truthfully, I never could sleep through the night anywhere since I was forced to leave Dorvan V. There was always a lot on my mind. It was worse on my ship the Zola."

"I can imagine you were always waiting for trouble."

"And it came, more often than not," Whitehorse said, displaying the dimple in his cheek that was only visible with a broad smile, even though his eyes were grim.

She smiled back, but the moment was fraught with unspoken words and feelings too deep to be expressed. As difficult as these moments had always been for her, and for him, too, she suspected, she would miss them. Their previous lives and traditions had been so radically different. Her family had worked as public servants for many generations. His life's path was to have been the recreation of the lost world of the Native American tribes on Dorvan V. Unfortunately, the need to defend that way of life through warfare had been the primary way Robert Whitehorse had been forced to spend his life. He'd landed in this prison for doing just that; yet warden and prisoner found themselves to be more alike than different.

If only the events of the 24th century had not conspired to keep them separate from each other! But if the Cardassians, Dominion, and Breen had not entered the picture, she probably would never have met him. Now that she had, she wished their story could have ended in another way.

The gap in their conversation had become painfully long. Thinking of stories gave her something else to discuss, to break up the awkward wall growing between them, if only for a few minutes.

"I never heard how that episode of Voyager ended. You know, the one I interrupted when I had to announce the news of your freedom."

"Actually, Tim never did end it. After your announcement, everyone was so busy trying to figure out just what they were going to do, he didn't have anything more to tell us for several days. When Harry finally asked him about it, Tim said he'd had a few ideas about what was going to happen, but he'd never decided on which one he was going to use."

"And so he left it there? With the captain and the commander blown up inside the Borg cube?" she asked, incredulously.

"Actually, he admitted that was one of the endings he had considered. The rest of the crew would be saved, but Janeway and Chakotay would die, along with the Borg Queen. Without the Queen, the Borg all turned back into individuals, and most would be repatriated throughout the galaxy. In some cases, a new home would have to be found because the freed drones had no idea where they had been from originally."

"Hard on the commander and the captain, I'd say, but I can see that wouldn't be a bad way to end the story. If he did that, I imagine he wouldn't be adding any more episodes later on."

"No, he said that would have been the last episode. That's why he wasn't sure he would have the guts to end it that way."

"You said that was one of the endings to the episode. Did Tim let you know about another?"

"Oh, yes. Just before Voyager blew up the Borg cube, the captain and commander felt a 'tingling of electricity.' He said he was going to have the Temporal ship Relativity beam them back at the last minute. Then all of the crew would have lived happily ever after, once the Relativity returned them to a planet in the Alpha Quadrant in their own time - not Earth, he said - but one where they would be discovered by Starfleet and rescued. Sort of like refugees cast ashore on a desert island who are found by a sailing ship and brought home, safe and sound. So the good ship Voyager would never have gotten back home, but the crew would."

"That sounds like a final episode to me, too."

"It was. I guess Tim was getting a little tired of having to come up with new story lines all the time. We were getting a little obnoxious sometimes about mistakes in continuity, like Ensign Kaplan coming back to play golf after her death at the hands of former Borg."

She laughed. "All things considered, I'd have to say he did a really good job for - what was it, almost four years? It's not easy to do that every week."

"I think he did a great job. He entertained the crew and helped everyone bury some ghosts along the way. Especially Tim's, I think. I just saw him with Elena Baez. They're going on that Middle Earth tour of New Zealand with the Changs. I'll be interested to see how that works out, since 'Tom' and 'B'Elanna' were such a big part of his story."

"So he never actually said which of those two endings he would pick?"

"Oh, he had another one, too. He said the Relativity would institute a time loop, and they'd all find themselves back in orbit over Ocampa. The last seven years had never happened. Everyone who was in either crew was alive again, and they were going to have to go through the whole adventure all over again."

"Horrible idea! Although I guess that scenario would have had its charms, too, especially for the crew who never made it to the end of the 'seventh year' of the journey."

"I agree. I wouldn't have picked that one, though. When everyone asked him to pick which one was the right one, he said he couldn't. He said he'd told us of all of the possible endings he could think of, and we each could pick the end of our own adventure. There was a lot of grumbling, but I think that was a pretty smart move. The truth is, we all knew our 'adventure' was over. How this is going to end for each of us is going to be different."

"Which one did you pick?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. I'm going to have to see how things go for the next few years. Maybe then I'll know."

She gazed out over the sea towards the horizon. "So we'll never really know about Janeway and Chakotay, will we. Did they ever get together?"

"I guess if they died together with the Borg Queen, they were together at the end."

"Awful man! One thing I do know: Seven would never end up with Chakotay. Harry Chang would go ballistic! He'd make Tim have Harry Kim challenge the commander for her."

They laughed together over visions of Harry Kim duking it out with Chakotay over Seven of Nine. Finally, Robert said, "I think they would have, someday. It's too bad it's not going to be the same way for us. We've always known it was totally impossible."

She stood stock still. He'd never even hinted he'd felt that way, even though she'd always been sure he did. At last, she added softly, in a voice as far away as the sea shore hidden below them by a line of trees, "The warden and the trustee. Couldn't ever happen."

Clearing his throat, Whitehorse asked, "I am officially released. Pardoned. A totally free man now, am I not?"

"Yes, you are free to go out into the world, and into the galaxy, and do whatever you wish."

"In that case, since I'm a free man, it's not impossible for me to do this - at least once." Turning to her, he swept her up into a tight and warm embrace. Their lips met in a passionate, but ultimately very sad kiss.

Kathryn broke off the kiss, but she did not step away from his hold. Burying her face into his chest, she let a few tears escape her eyes, to soak into his shirt, where he might not notice them until he left, and possibly, not even then. She could not speak all that was in her heart. Her mind was busy repeating all the things she knew would be said by those who didn't know what she felt; that she had no business saying good-bye to a discharged trustee in this way. And her heart answered it was none of those damned voices' business.

"Good-bye, Kathryn Jane Quinn. My Kathryn Jane's way, the only way. I know, at least for now, it is impossible. We're impossible. But we're going to have this moment to remember. I'm going to keep in touch. I want to know what happens with all the Maquis who shared life in Auckland with me. And I will always want to know what's going on with you. Just in case, sometime in the future, it isn't impossible anymore." His voice trailed off at the last. She felt a soft touch on the top of her auburn hair which could only have been a final good-bye kiss.

He turned to walk down the path towards the prison gates, where the duffel holding his own meager possessions had been left when he'd trekked up the hill to see her.

Kathryn Jane Quinn stayed where she was, watching him go. When the sparkling transporter beam carried him to wherever he had decided to be next, she turned back to her view of the sea and the coastline. She remained there for a very long time, alone with her thoughts, before walking quietly back down to her office. New prisoners, the very old and the feeble who could not be allowed to live in general prison populations, were scheduled to arrive in a month or so.

She would have to decide if she was still going to be there when they arrived. Or not.

=/\=

End

=/\=

In the summer between Star Trek: Voyager's sixth and seventh seasons, the 1001 Word Challenge was issued on the ASC Newsgroup: write a scene you'd like to see in Star Trek: Voyager's final episode. I actually wrote three, although none of them were even close to being told within 1001 words or less. (The running joke with some of my Trek-writing friends was that my drabbles were at least 5000 words long. I'm not much for writing one-scene stories, either.) Only one met the criteria of being about Janeway and Chakotay, even though that was not a rigid requirement. The other two were Paris/Torres stories.

Late one night I was in an Instant Messaging Chat (remember them?) with Christina Wilson, who would later become one of my co-writers on the "Voyager Virtual Season 7.5 project." I told her of another story idea I'd had, but I had no clue when I'd find the time to write it. It didn't exactly fit the criteria that the challengers had intended, but it was something I would have liked to have seen in the final episode.

Well, it's taken 17 years, but it's finally done. Since the final season is long over, some of what occurred during that final year crept in. This story is well over 8,000 words, but since the challenge is LONG over, that doesn't matter much. I call it a "sort of" Star Trek: Voyager story.

Christina, thank you for helping me. I kept a copy of our chat's transcript all these years because I knew I wanted to write it up someday. Thanks so much for listening that night. This is dedicated to you and to all those late night chats we had that resulted in so many stories from our VVS7.5 group - and from me.

Jamelia

May 20, 2017