When Our Stars Are No Longer Distant

A/N: A tiny ficlet in celebration of Voyager's 25th anniversary, written for all of the real-life friends I have made thanks to the show.

The sun is slow to rise. It takes the sky one step at a time, as if reluctant to start the day. Kathryn Janeway fixes herself coffee with the semi-light of dawn pouring through her kitchen windows, remembering other mornings, long ago, when she had felt the same. Back then, of course, there would have been no kitchen window, nor daylight of any sort to pour through it. Back then, the sun had been just one more distant star. Back then, there would have been no coffee, only an amalgam of replicated molecules trying their best to pretend they were more than a just a facsimile of what she really craved.

Mug in one hand, she slides open the door and steps out onto wood slick with dew. She crosses the deck and leans on the railing, noting the sharp chill as the night's leavings soak through her wrap to her forearms. The air has yet to warm. She breathes in, filling her lungs with it as she watches the new day fade up from indigo to violet, from violet to azure, from azure to cerise, to orange, to yellow, streaks of colour so vibrant they look more like a painting done in sand than any form of reality.

Behind her, the door slides open again. Quiet footsteps follow her path, as they have so many times before, to so many places so much more remote than this. She feels his familiar presence behind her left shoulder. It is as if it has been there forever instead of only a quarter of a century.

Chakotay settles beside her, arms on the railings in the same fashion as hers. His hair is silver, but his shoulders are still as broad as they always were. She straightens a little, holds her coffee mug between both hands, sips from it. For a while the silence between them holds. Light unfolds across the green slope of the lawn, across the trees she has planted on the periphery, across the benches he has carved so that they may sit beneath them in years to come, when everything has grown to fit the dream they have in their heads.

There is a garden, she thinks. A garden.

"Twenty-five years ago," she says, eventually, "I had only just learned your name."

He smiles, reaches for her, slides an arm around her shoulder. Presses a kiss against the grey hair at her temple.

"Twenty-five years ago," he says, "I was about to rediscover that life is more than anger and battle."

They stand like that for a while. Quiet. Watching the sunrise. Watching the planet around them come to life for another day. Eventually Chakotay shifts and takes the mug from her hands.

"More coffee?"

"Please." He leaves her but she turns to him before he reaches the door. "We've got about an hour before they start arriving."

"Not even that, I bet. Harry's bound to be early, you know what he's like."

She nods. "True. Forget the coffee. Shower first."

He holds the door open for her with a grin. "Aye, Captain."

She reaches him, stands on tiptoe for a kiss. His arms close around her, and it has not been long enough that the feel of this has become commonplace. She doesn't think it ever will. "I haven't been your captain for years. Thank god."

He grins again. He's still capable of exuding the sauciness of a much younger man. Sometimes she worries she can no longer match him. Other times she will turn and catch him watching her, the same spark in his eye that she once tried to pretend wasn't there.

Twenty-five years. It is everything. It is nothing.

"Shower," she says, again, this time against his lips, her voice as husky as it ever was.

"Shower," he agrees.

[END]