Disclaimer: See waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in chapter one, please

Notes: Cheshire, as always, is awesome for her help. That's just been a basic scientific law of this story for some time now. Anyone who is still with me, almost three years after the original posting of the story, is also awesome. Anyone we picked up along the way...fret not! You're all awesome, too. (Yeah, if it's not entirely clear, I'm grinning like an idiot right about now, as I press the "submit" button one last time...) This is it, folks. We're done.

Epilogue

"I can't have a relationship out here, Chakotay."

It was what he'd expected, had believed she would say.

"Forget protocol. It's frowned on, but we both know no one really cares as long as it's handled professionally by the officers involved. It's just been a personal philosophy of mine, especially since we've landed out here. One I've always felt was necessary."

"Why?" he managed to ask with sinking heart as her fingers continued kneading him.

"Because experience has reinforced it, over the years. I'm not one who handles loss very well – particularly loss in which I can be argued to have any direct responsibility."

He didn't think anyone handled that well, but, given his experience with her, his knowledge of her, on the whole, he hadn't been surprised that that was her answer.

He stood next to her, and this morning was the first time they'd set foot planetside since they'd fled from Ghanza Prime.

The planet was stable. It wasn't much more than that, and lush vegetation was a thing of fantasy here more than fact, but the soil was adequate. With hard work, with the tools Voyager's crew had donated and carefully instructed them in the use of, the Oncaveat survivors of Jehnz-yin space should be able to make a home for themselves here.

Or so they were all betting on, at any rate.

As the two of them looked on, supervising the setup of the temporary little colony from afar, a light mist began falling, dusting the party of colorful, bedraggled figures in the valley below and causing them to glisten in the beams of sunlight still managing to steak through some of the clouds. The bolder reds, blues and yellows were their own, they recognized from afar, while the other colors, ranging toward more pastel and natural greens, were the Oncaveat. Both groups were mingling, working side by side as the camp began to take real, tangible shape before them all.

"I think they'll make it," Chakotay broke the silence between them to declare, his gaze still fixed below. His hands, like hers, and especially their knees and elbows, were caked in dirt, from where they'd spent hours that morning helping to dig out the foundations of several large would-be gardens – a thing still best done by hand and more rudimentary tools, rather than risk burning or destroying vital minerals in the soil by using faster methods, like phasers. "What do you think?"

"I think so, too," she confirmed, a firm nod punctuating her agreement. "For what they've been through, most of them have amazing resilience. Strength of spirit," she furthered upon a moment of reflection. "They're to be admired for that."

"I'd have to agree with you there," he returned evenly, adding, "but I think the same can be said of our own people."

He meant their people – as in the Voyager crew, she knew, and her second nod was as automatic as it was emphatic. "I know. I'm proud of them. All of them."

The marbled clouds continued to swirl over the sky above. Shadows flitted along the planes of her face as he stole a sidelong glance at her from the corner of his eye.

She was shaking her head in a familiar way, pursing her lips in what would have been a frown if she'd put more thought into it. "I can't ever seem to remember to tell them that as often as I should…"

"That you're proud of them?" She didn't correct him, confirmation enough, and he shrugged. "They know it."

"I hope so. That's no excuse for forgetting, though."

"You're working on it, Kathryn."

He assumed she nodded, although he didn't quite catch it as they continued to watch on.

Below, a slender, dark-clad figure was being led out into the crowd, a figure that stood out from among the double-armed, barrel-chested Oncaveat in a different way than the rest of the Voyager crew did, and the atmosphere visibly tensed as many speculative heads turned at the sight of her. A few stared. Some hostilely, if the distance didn't accuse them unjustly. Eventually, however, most heads turned back to the tasks at hand, and work resumed as the crowd settled.

"Do you think they'll learn to accept her?" Kathryn wondered aloud. Squinting through the mist as a particularly strong beam of light broke through the clouds, illuminating their bodies upon the high hill.

"I think so," he speculated. "With time." He squinted, too, bringing a hand up to shield his eyes as he peered at the figure in question. "That's Harry with her now…and Yurros, too, if I'm not mistaken."

It was hard to tell at this distance, but it would make sense. They'd prevailed upon Yurros, Shasta's mate, when Senator Narrus had outright refused to take Bimmah into their midst. Yurros, when summoned, had offered his aide, though he'd promised them nothing. He'd maintained that he didn't think Narrus really liked him – or much of anyone, for that matter, and they'd gotten the same impression. As a result, it had taken two weeks, but Narrus had eventually come back to them and retracted his refusal. He hadn't looked happy about the fact, but they hadn't needed him to. They'd just needed him to agree, and he had. By methods as yet unknown to the command team, Yurros had come through.

"Harry's looking better," she ventured, eyeing the gold-shouldered figure between the Jehnz-yin figure and the Oncaveat. "From what I've seen on the ship, anyway." She paused, then added a dry, "He's not acting like I'm contagious, at least."

He turned to her then, and her gaze was drawn to him at his movement. "He's all right. It's going to take time, but I think he finally realizes who he's really angry with."

She nodded curtly, an action he knew belied her approval of the information he'd imparted. "That's something, then. A step in the right direction. Neelix?"

"He wanted me to tell you, but I didn't get the chance earlier. He slept through the night last night. No nightmares."

She laughed at that, although it wasn't entirely a humor-filled sound. "Good for him. Maybe I can catch up with him at some point."

Chakotay blanched, and she felt bad immediately, and that was why she hated honesty, damn it, but even as she opened her mouth to take it back, to qualify her statement, he was returning a soft, "Me, too."

She nodded her understanding. He was about as much battered as she was, still. He understood.

"Well. We're out of the woods, at least. Not a sign of Jehnz-yin ships for over three weeks. I think it's safe to say they've finally given up."

It had only taken close to another two months for that to happen, and the entire time, Voyager had stopped only very briefly to glean absolutely necessary elements needed to continue their journey. Once from a moon, twice from a random, materials-rich nebula, and once at a deuterium-rich, Class-L planet they couldn't beam down to but had been able to transport raw materials aboard from.

Chakotay smiled grimly. "It seems that way," he agreed. "I think the Oncaveat will be safe here. For a while, anyway."

They'd done everything in their power to select a safe, obscure location that the Jehnz-yi wouldn't think to investigate, even going so far as to sacrifice ideal climate and weather-pattern conditions. This planet was chilly to Oncaveat standards, not as warm as the tropical climates they tended towards, were used to, but they'd bypassed several closer, more likely options, because they wanted the Jehnz-yi to believe that Voyager intended to keep the Oncaveat with them.

Of course they couldn't do that, and, frankly, until they were able to stop and gather all of the supplies they by now so desperately needed, they couldn't continue carrying the Oncaveat aboard Voyager for even a day longer. They just didn't have the resources.

"Seven's found us several likely locations to restock within the next dozen light years or so," Chakotay informed her now, as he hadn't gotten the chance to do so earlier on the bridge, when she'd been down in the cargo bay, meeting with Senator Narrus for a final time. "In the meantime, we'll put our heads down and make a few more sacrifices, but we'll get through it, like always."

She sighed before she could catch herself. It didn't really speak much to her character that the very first, traitorous thought to make its way into her mind was that those sacrifices undeniably included–

She heard a soft chuckle bubbling up from deep within his chest and slanted a suspicious glance out of the corner of her eye at him. Had he just read her–

"Fortunately for a certain captain, who will remain nameless, someone had the presence of mind to go back into her ready room a while ago, collect certain inedible objects, and discretely recycle them."

"What?" He just plain annoyed her, occasionally. Was there a reason he was speaking in riddles? She wanted to know.

Chakotay was unperturbed. "He saved that single ration the recycled objects gave him for just such an emergency, and it should be exactly enough for one cup…"

At least she knew how this was going to end, and her face brightened considerably through her lingering confusion…

"…of coffee."

She'd turned to stare at him by a few words into his mystifying speech, scouring her mind to apply the deliberately obscure references and find an occasion that would fit whatever the hell he was talking about, and after a full minute of watching him watch her do it, the grin ever widening on his face and offering the hint of dimples that had just barely begun to return to his filling-out face, it finally struck her.

"The cookies," she gasped out in realization. Thunderstruck, her jaw dropping. "I thought they'd disappeared when I went back later, but I couldn't guess what had happened to them. Did you really?"

"I did. Really," he teased. Obviously pleased with himself on several levels.

"Neelix didn't know?"

"I said 'discreetly', Kathryn."

Flushing slightly, she turned away from him to stare at the crowd she no longer really saw below. "I don't deserve you, you know," she finally managed in acknowledgment of his ridiculous thoughtfulness.

"Hell no, you don't," he agreed heartily, his grin breaking out again as her head swiveled to glare. "But as far as jobs go, there aren't many better options out here. Very few people seem to be hiring in this quadrant…"

"Like I'd give you a reference, anyway," she quipped, back on comfortable ground.

"Probably not, but that's because you're mean. Tuvok might…"

She raised an eyebrow.

"Just to get me off the ship."

And at that, she had to laugh. "You have a point there. So I suppose I should probably be nice to you."

"Probably," he agreed easily.

She turned back to him. All trace of humor gone from her face, and making his breath catch at the look of complete and utter seriousness – of vulnerability – she was openly displaying before him.

"Did you keep your wrapper?" she asked without preamble.

He felt heat flush his face then drain down through his whole body. Damn it, would she never stop doing that to him?

He'd been expecting her to bring it up soon, true, but…just not quite this soon.

He swallowed once to moisten his throat. "Yes," he returned quietly, what he deluded himself into thinking passed for evenly, reaching into his left pocket to fish it out with much crinkling and crackling. He held the brown foil out to her, watching as she took it, turning it over and over in her hand in silence.

Chocolate. The wonderful smelling, tricky Jehnz-yin vegetable ration that, for several wonderful seconds, tasted amazing. Until the sweet, naturally waxy coating on the vegetable wore away under the enzymes in human saliva and the bitter, harsh taste of the actual vegetable took over, that was.

"But I think by now we've established that my way isn't exactly working for me. Maybe not for either one of us, anymore. It would be one thing, maybe, if we didn't know how we felt. If we didn't know how each other felt, but we do, and it's foolish to try and pretend our feelings don't already exist." She pressed the wrapper into his hand. "So…it's silly, I know, but…when we get back to Voyager, I want you to keep this with you for a while. And I'll do the same." With her other hand, she removed another wrapper from her other pocket, one she'd apparently saved from a previous meal. She held it up so he could see what it was before folding it up to the same proportions as his, slipping it back into her pocket as he watched.

As he watched in confusion, that was. His brows knitted together. "Why?"

"Because it's a perfectly appropriate metaphor to what we have to be careful we're not doing."

"Which is?"

"Which is fooling ourselves into thinking jumping into a relationship is the right thing to do, just because we both know how we feel now."

"I think I understand what you're saying…" he glanced down at the wrapping she'd pressed into his hand, "but not exactly how it relates to the foil."

She saw that, and smiled softly. "Not the foil – the 'chocolate'." He frowned, and she leaned back on her heels on the bed, where she continued to kneel next to him. "On the surface, love is a wonderful thing. It's enticing. Exciting. Human instinct is to follow it wherever it springs." Her gaze turned sadder, more inward as she continued. "But love in practice has two sides to it, particularly the longer you're in it. Scratch the surface, stay in a relationship long enough, and you usually find other layers. Layers that aren't quite as nice."

He was beginning to understand now. "Especially in our situation," he realized quietly, meeting her eyes.

"Yes. Especially in mine. I have to make sure my first priority is the ship at all times. That doesn't usually work in a relationship."

"Not with someone who doesn't fully understand why, no," he agreed.

Seska hadn't – or, hadn't seemed to, and who the hell knew what was really going on the Cardassian spy's mind, anyway. That was the last time he'd tried the "lovers on the same ship" deal, however, and it was because she couldn't handle not being his top priority that he'd broken it off. And he DIDN'T want to think about her now, of all times, but that was a large part of what life was about. Making mistakes and learning from them. And he had been in Kathryn's place himself, did know exactly what she meant by it. Could he accept not being the top priority in her life? Under the circumstances they were contemplating getting into?

He found he didn't quite know the answer to that, now that he thought about it…

"I want to make sure we aren't doing this because it looks nice on the surface," her voice was breaking over his thoughts. "I want to make sure…if we do this…we've both fully thought it through. I want to make sure that we're prepared. And I want to make sure that what I risk by doing this…what we risk…isn't based on a whim, or the thrill of the moment."

He understood her near completely now. Generally speaking, he was one to act, to leap when opportunity presented itself. One to live in the here and now, because the future wasn't guaranteed, as experience had taught him. She was the opposite – at least in matters of the heart. She guarded herself, much more than he did. Experience had taught her to be that way, too. And yet she'd had no more luck in love than he'd had.

He thought he was understanding her now, though…understanding the decision all of her own self-professed, painstaking thought had been going into these past few weeks that she'd been carefully avoiding this conversation. She was trying something new, something more like his route to even consider exploring this option with him, but she was right. She was absolutely right that there were more things to consider than his usual, leap-before-you-look method would take into consideration. So then in this instance, maybe…

Maybe, what was required was a mixture of both. His style and hers. Thinking first…and then leaping.

Hopefully. She wasn't saying no out of hand, or habit, and that was more than he'd expected.

She pressed the square she'd folded deeper into his hand, closing his fingers around it. "So I want you to keep this with you. Think about everything I've said. Think about everything what we're considering entails – the drawbacks, as well as the rewards. When this mess with the Oncaveat is over…when I'm ready, and hopefully, so are you…you can tell me what you've decided when I ask you for it again."

She'd just done so. She continued to stare at it, as if inspecting it for wear and ventured, "Have you had a chance to think it over?"

"Yes." He'd done little else in the few spare moments they'd had over the past few weeks. "Have you?"

Stupid question, he thought immediately, wincing inwardly. She had, if she'd asked him for it back already. Kathryn, however, didn't appear to care whether it was an intelligent question or not. She simply nodded thoughtfully as she combined the two foils and refolded them together.

"I still don't know if this can work. But as I said, I think it's become pretty clear by now that what I've been doing hasn't been working, either."

He nodded, understanding all of the reservations she had that were still in play. A few of which he shared, upon deep reflection. "We can try it slowly," he suggested.

"It'll have to be slowly," she confirmed, meeting his gaze for the first time to reinforce the notion.

Her answer was "yes", he realized fully, upon staring deep into her blue eyes. And so was his, as he knew she read in his own eyes by now.

"Think you'll get spooked if things go too fast?" The grin was stretching broad across his tanned face, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"I'm already spooked," she admitted candidly. "And how the hell you aren't is beyond me."

"Because of how mean you are," he nodded, pretending to be giving the matter a good deal of grave thought. "Well you're right, that worries me, but I think I know how to handle you by now." He took a step forward when she reluctantly chuckled, his eyes long past the point of smoldering as his gaze was drawn to her smile, her lips, and hers, in turn, was drawn to his. "Am I allowed to kiss you now?" He was already starting to lean down and do so.

She shook her head, drawing subtly back from him. "Not in front of the crew," she explained, her lips twitching in amusement at his obvious surprise at her refusal.

He nodded, falling back a step as he straightened but losing none of the intensity, and they both felt it in waves of heat, despite the fact that they weren't touching. "That ashamed to be seen with me?" he teased, to lighten the mood.

"Mortified," she affirmed with a grin of her own. "But I'd also prefer not to make it public knowledge until we know if this will work."

"Okay." He accepted that because he understood the prudence of it, but his eyes still smoldered as they passed over her again. "Then can I kiss you once we're back on the ship? Behind closed doors?"

"I thought we agreed to take this slowly," she teasingly reminded him, starting to – damn her too-fair complexion – flush deeply under the power of that gaze.

"Right." He looked away again, turning his body so that they stood side by side, almost shoulder to shoulder at crest of their hill. The picture of circumspectness to anyone who might be glancing up at them from time to time. "My mistake," he murmured to her out of the corner of his mouth. "Then can I kiss you…slowly…once we're back on the ship?"

"God, yes," she emphatically agreed, the images that simple thought invoked doing wonderful, tormenting things to her whole body in reaction. "You'd damn well better, after all this!"

He chuckled low again, the deep sound sending more ripples of warmth, of pure heat through her. They passed another moment in silence, looking down over the crowd. Finally, he broke.

"Kathryn."

"Hmm?" She seemed lost in her thoughts, her voice low and lazy when she responded.

He didn't much care. "Can we go back to the ship now?"

"You read my mind," she returned immediately, the clarity returned at once to her voice, giving him a delicious indication of where her thoughts had actually been a moment ago, and her hand was already tapping the gleaming metal over her chest. "Janeway to Tuvok. The commander and I are done here. We're ready to beam back to the ship at your earliest convenience."

As the muted reply came over the comm. to the two humans standing over the rest, two additional unseen figures, which had been watching the events from even higher above, turned to each other.

"Well, they made it out of Jehnz-yin space, and that's the first step. Do you think they'll make it all the way home?" the first asked the second.

"You're damned right they will," the second figure responded forcefully. "That's my daughter down there leading them, after all!"

John chuckled, an action that, while unheard, provoked another ripple of light moisture to be wrung from the swirling clouds around them. "I honestly didn't think she would take our advice."

"She still might not, depending on how things go. She listened to what we had to say, took it into consideration, but when it came down to it, she had to be the one to convince herself to try. As long as she's alive – and after that, too – Kathryn will be the one to make her own decisions."

"Well of course," John chuckled again, amused to the core of his silvery being, and more list rain was shaken down over the crowd. "She's your daughter, after all."

Edward Janeway grinned. "Exactly." He grew more serious, humbled enough by now to know how little his own predictions often meant, in the grand scheme of things. "Will she be all right?" he asked quietly, in spite of the bravado with which he'd bragged a moment ago. He thought of the crew he'd watched closely from the moment the array that had brought them to this quadrant had been destroyed, on Kathryn's orders, and added, "Will they?"

"You know I can't tell you that," John returned just as seriously this time. "No one can."

Edward considered his answer for a moment and then clasped his hands behind his back, straightening. "Well, I think they will be. They have each other, and they have hope."

"Hope is a strong asset," John acceded enigmatically. "But do you think it will be enough?"

Edward thought long and hard. After a moment, in which the two figures on the hill shimmered and disappeared in the beam of light that had still been pushing through the clouds, he decided in a fervent whisper, "I certainly hope so."