#chapter b

Of all of the people Kathryn expected to see here, he was the last.

His eyes searched the room as though he expected to see her sitting there. But from the surprise on his expression when he finally saw her, he must have been searching for someone else. Regardless, he made his way over - his approach causing Kathryn's gut to churn uncomfortably. It had been a long time since she'd seen him. Too long - or maybe not long enough.

"Kathy!"

Kathryn forced a broad smile, feeling anything but pleased to see her former fiancée, Mark. She'd come here for solitude, to get away from the disappointments of her life and now here she was, talking to one.

Still she stood and extended a hand for him to take, which he squeezed fondly.

"What are you doing all the way out here?" he questioned with a hint of nostalgia.

She couldn't exactly tell him the truth, running away from her problems was hardly Kathryn's 'MO'. "It's difficult to find a nice place to eat out of the media spotlight," she answered vaguely. That was true too, to some extent. Since Voyager's return they'd hounded her, pressed her for gossip on the crew, asked highly inappropriate questions and just become an all round pain in the neck.

"Ah, I can only imagine," he commented. His eyes flicked to the second seat at her table, obviously left empty. "If you're alone, Kathy, you should come have dinner with us!"

She had an idea who 'us' was. Still, her mouth seemed to have disconnected from her brain. "Us?" she questioned stupidly.

He gave a short laugh. "My wife, Carla, and I," he glanced around again, though he didn't seem to spot her.

"That sounds -” like the most uncomfortable thing I can imagine. "Like a great idea."

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "She should be here any moment," he threatened.

And she was. Kathryn had hoped vainly that the woman might be late, then Kathryn could have come up with an excuse - something to get her out of there before she was forced into the most awkward meal she was sure to have. Sadly though, Carla's timing turned out to be 'impeccable'. Kathryn barely stood from her seat when the door opened again admitting a tall, young, blonde woman who bore a striking resemblance to another tall young, blonde woman that Kathryn had been trying not to think about. This tall, young, blonde woman - was pregnant.

Kathryn hadn't heard the news, though her mother still kept in contact with the man. Perhaps she had been trying to spare Kathryn's feelings? Of course, this was a great way to find out. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and made a feeble attempt to summon the captain's mask. If she could face the Delta Quadrant, she could face Carla Johnson.

The other woman's face turned overly polite as she approached. There was little chance she didn't recognise Kathryn and seeing Mark with his former fiancé obviously wasn't what she'd had in mind for a nice evening out. Kathryn could almost see the woman's thoughts forming - what the hell is this woman doing here? How do I get rid of her as quickly as possible? What the hell is Mark thinking?

Still, Carla approached, smile broad and bright and thrust her hand out. "Kathryn Janeway, what a pleasant surprise."

Bless the woman, she sounded earnest, certainly more earnest than Kathryn might have managed, had the situation been reserved.

"An unplanned one, I assure you," Kathryn commented quickly. She didn't want to make this woman feel threatened - honestly, all she wanted was to eat her pasta and drink her - bottle - of wine in peace.

"I ran into her here," Mark practically exclaimed.

"Well - how fortunate," Carla responded with hint of tightness in her tone. "She obviously has good taste."

With the exception of the rare, occasional meal on Voyager, anything was good.

She pushed the thought out of her mind before it had time to properly form.

"Well, I should let you both get to your dinner, I'm sure you don't want me intruding," Kathryn attempted.

Carla made a move to agree, but was interrupted by her husband. "Nonsense, Kathy. You shouldn't eat alone - I invited you to join us, please!"

Kathryn drew a breath, trying to think of another way to refuse. He could see that she hadn't eaten yet. She could hardly fake an emergency or prior engagement.

She wracked her brain for rather longer than was socially decent, she was certain. Nothing came to mind so she eventually forced a rather uncomfortable: "Ok," in response.

Carla sucked a breath through her teeth, though her smile never wavered.

Mark had never been very good at taking social queues so the ones that both Kathryn and his wife dropped flew far above his head. Kathryn could easily just walk out, but burning more bridges probably wasn't going to help in her return to Earth, any more than running from her problems was. So she sat at the table, opposite Carla. She put as much distance between herself and Mark as was socially acceptable and attempted to maintain her smile.

They set off to a rocky start. Kathryn was unpractised at small talk and Carla seemed unsure what to bring up. Mark led the conversation, oblivious to the awkward air that had fallen over them.

"Carla is a warp specialist," he spoke proudly. "She's been trying to develop a new - ah - quantum drive?" he ended with a questioning glance at his wife. Who gave an amused sniff.

"A quantum slipstream drive," she corrected. Her eyes flicked to Kathryn and she couldn't help but wonder whether Carla was privy to the data Voyager had brought back.

"A noble pursuit," Kathryn commented in a jovial tone.

"Not my ideal career path, but it's fascinating," she responded. Kathryn wasn't exactly sure how to respond to the comment, so busied herself by pouring water for the table.

"It keeps her on Earth, so I can't complain," Mark interjected.

Kathryn paused for fraction of a second, making a poor effort to hide her reaction to his comment. Offhanded and harmless though it seemed, she couldn't help but feel the underlying tone: you didn't stay on Earth and look what happened to you.

She snatched up her glass, once they were all full and brought it swiftly to her lips, eyes focussing on anything but the couple across the table.

She didn't need to look at Carla to feel the brush of cold air wafting over. Obviously Carla had an adventurous spirit, it was so like Mark to find someone like that, but he also hated waiting at home. His insecurity had been present long before Kathryn had vanished in the Delta Quadrant.

"Sometimes it's nice to get away, though," Carla pressed on as though her husband hadn't spoken. "I always wanted to join Starfleet, but my parents weren't really in favour of the idea - they never let me apply to the academy."

Kathryn frowned supportively. She knew many people in similar situations, some of whom had defied their parent's requests and applied anyway. That wasn't always an option, though.

"I do enjoy what I'm doing and I'm still working with Starfleet. Sometimes I just wonder what my life might have been, had I taken a different path."

Kathryn could empathise. After all, she'd hardly intended to be in the Delta Quadrant for seven years - talk about derailing her plans. By this time in her life she'd always hoped to have children, maybe a promotion to Admiral and a nice house in southern Indiana. Now, chances of having any of those things were slim at best. She'd be lucky if she managed to avoid time in the stocks, let alone somehow obtaining a promotion.

Life could be worse, though. Her future self had made that abundantly clear. Over twenty more people dead, Tuvok succumbing to a neurological disease and she'd had to push on through all of this, alone. There was little wonder why she'd ended up bitter and cynical.

She must have made a face at the thought. Mark leaned across the table and touched her hand sympathetically.

"Sorry, I mean - I'm sure you've done enough exploring to last a lifetime," Carla attempted. She actually sounded apologetic, though her lips twisted at Mark's gesture.

"Oh no, it's not that," she withdrew her hand, took another sip of her water and glanced around. Where the hell was the waiter?

"Obviously what Carla said bothered you," Mark pushed. He missed the frown his wife gave him. "Why don't you talk to us about whatever is wrong? Surely talking about your problems will make you feel better."

Had he ever really known her?

She gave a polite smile and shook her head. "We'd be here for a week," she laughed, hoping the humour would defuse some of the tension. It didn't and she spent the next couple of minutes sitting under their piteous gazes as they waited for the waiter.

She could barely even bring herself to reveal what had her so upset to her counsellors, or her mother, for that matter. She certainly wasn't talking about her troubles with her former fiancée and his new wife.

What could she say? I broke the prime directive a lot and am now likely to face charges for that. I fell in love with a man, but couldn't be with him, due to the nature of my position aboard. I thought he'd wait for me but he started dating a younger woman on the crew - one I thought of as a daughter. Incidentally, the man I fell for became my closest friend in the Delta Quadrant and in spite of that fact ran off and eloped with the young woman, without even telling me.

Honestly, the situation with Starfleet was something she'd considered since the beginning of their journey through the Delta Quadrant. She was prepared for whatever they wanted to throw at her. The whole thing was a kind of distraction for herself from what really hurt - Chakotay had chosen someone else.

Apparently one small section of the universe felt for her. The waiter appeared and took a rather long time penning their orders. He was new and seemingly the restaurant favoured an ancient style of pen and paper requests. The boy seemed to have a great deal of difficulty spelling the fettuccini that Mark ordered and even greater trouble with Kathryn's cannelloni.

Thankfully, by the time he departed, Mark and Carla seemed to have forgotten their previous conversation, Mark deciding on a new topic to pick up. "Vegetarian, Kathy?"

Kathryn hadn't even thought about her order. She'd gone for feta, mushroom and spinach cannelloni out of habit. Many of her dinners had been with Chakotay and while he would make the exception for replicated meat, he usually preferred to avoid it altogether. She'd made that compromise, not that it really was one - after all, his meals had been the highlight of her week.

"It sounded good," she responded evasively. All she needed was for him to probe into her 'friendship' with Chakotay.

"I'm sure just about anything sounds good now," Carla commented. Despite how correct she was, Kathryn got the impression that the other woman was being snide rather than attempting to appear jovial.

She sniffed a laugh. "You're not wrong." She didn't really want to elaborate, but like basically everyone, since Voyager's return, they were curious about her time in the Delta Quadrant. She could hardly fault anyone for asking, but answering the same thing five times a day began to grate rather quickly.

"What kind of foods did you have available?" Mark questioned quickly.

Rehearsed as she was, she began her usual spiel, pre-empting his next two or three questions. "We had whatever foods we managed to scavenge and though we had replicators, they run from the same energy source as the engines. We were on rationing most of the journey and needed to maintain our own supply."

Carla actually appeared impressed. "I'm sure that wasn't always easy," she said lightly. For the first time in their conversation, Kathryn sensed that Carla was being genuine. Thanks to the war, many people seemed to be under the impression that their time in the Delta Quadrant was like a holiday - until they heard the details. Most of Voyager's time away from home was classified, but there weren't any regulations against her revealing what they faced on the day to day.

"It wasn't easy some days," she admitted. "But we made it through."

Mark gave a short laugh. "How did you manage without your coffee?"

The mood shift was welcome. She wasn't overly interested in bringing anyone down. She gave a wry smile. "I always had rations for coffee." That was a blatant lie, of course. In truth Chakotay had spent a lot of rations on her addiction, but she'd spent a good deal of rations on their dinners and wine for their meals.

"Then what did you eat?" he joked.

She gave an affronted frown. "I ate," she protested.

He gave her an appraising look and shook his head. "Now that I don't believe."

Kathryn made a move to protest further, but the waiter re-appeared with their meals.

The young man seemed to make up for his inability to spell, with an exceptional ability to balance the three plates and still carry a pepper grinder. He placed all three rather large plates without needing to question which meal belonged to whom and offered pepper. Not to mention his perfect timing.

The food looked incredible. Even if she had been on Earth these past few years, she'd have been eager to try this dish. She waited until both her eating companions had begun, before taking a first, wonderful bite. This wasn't the first meal she'd had since her return, of course. She'd been on Earth for nearly seven months now. But this may have been the finest meal. The pasta was perfectly cooked, the sauce perfectly sweet, offsetting the rich, salty flavour of the feta and the creamy texture of the mushrooms.

Her original plan had been to eat swiftly, thank Mark and Carla for a lovely evening and then make her exit, but she found herself wanting to savour the dish more and more.

The dish was remarkably similar to Chakotay's - if Chakotay had had fresh ingredients and a proper cooking space to work with. She couldn't help but wonder how similar the recipes were.

Despite her best efforts her mind strayed further - was he cooking his cannelloni for Seven?  She couldn't help but imagine a scene playing out of him cooking for her, cracking open a bottle of Antarian Cider and a table that suddenly appeared very similar to the one in Kathryn's quarters aboard Voyager.

A lump formed in her throat, making swallowing the next bite rather difficult.

She'd been trying so hard to fight off any thought of the pair, but they'd managed to worm their way into her thoughts like they did most days. Their callous disregard for the friendships she'd cultivated since she'd met both of them was easily as painful as the fact that Chakotay had moved on. At the very least she thought she meant more to him than that.

The remainder of the evening progressed much the same with one rather obvious addition. Carla clung to Mark as though attempting to show how wonderful their relationship was. To be fair she probably felt threatened - that of course didn't make Kathryn feel any better.

By the time she made it through the front door of her small, one bedroom apartment, she was exhausted. The drab, Starfleet issue furniture certainly didn't improve her mood.

She slumped on the hard, grey couch and stared blankly at the wall ahead. Had she still been in the Delta Quadrant, had things remained the way they had been going, tonight she'd have shared yet another dinner with Chakotay. Tonight would have been her turn to cook - and bless the man; he'd have eaten whatever she served, despite her protests.

Had their dinners stopped in the alternate future?

The thought of living that life broke her heart. Admiral Janeway had lost everything in her pursuit of home. Admiral Janeway must have been so lonely.