More Than a Lifetime #8: The Edge of Heaven

Epilogue: Paths

When she woke, he was still asleep. The sun was just coming up. She carefully sat up and left the bed, not wanting to wake him. She thought he would remain asleep as she dressed, but he stirred, and his eyes fluttered open as she was pulling on her shoes.

"Good morning," he said.

She timidly turned to him. "Good morning," she said. "I didn't want to wake you, you looked to be sleeping so well."

"Fair enough." He pushed himself to a sitting position and leaned back against the headboard. "I'm glad I woke up. I would have hated it if I'd missed you. I probably wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to say goodbye. And you would have left, and then I would have never seen you again, I suppose."

"I don't know if you could say that," she said. "We're both in Starfleet. There's a chance our paths could cross again."

He nodded. "Possibly."

"Possibly." She sat on the bed beside him. "We happened to find each other this time," she added.

Chakotay stroked Kathryn Janeway's face and kissed her one last time. She rose from the bed, gathered the last of her things and left him.

xxx

Thirteen years later, Evan Danielle Janeway met her father for the first time. She was sitting in her mother's quarters aboard the USS Voyager and had already been attempting to come to terms with everything that had happened during the past week. On top of being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light years away from home, she'd just learned that Chakotay, a Maquis rebel leader, was her father. At least she would have plenty of time to get to know him.

xxx

Kyle Hicks turned away from the large timeline display and looked at Daniels. "So this is they way it was supposed to be for her?" he asked. "It seems like her childhood was so much happier in the other line."

Daniels nodded. "Maybe," he said, "but it was never supposed to happen that way. The other line was completely wrong: Chakotay was never supposed to start out as Kathryn Janeway's first officer. Dani wasn't supposed to have a romantic relationship with Will Riker and definitely not with Marac Dukat, gods no."

Daniels stepped up to Kyle's side. "You're going to have to separate yourself from what you've come to think of as your reality," he said. "Working for the Temporal Police is hard, even more for you since you're not from this century. Your life as you lived it didn't happen. Neither did your friendship with Dani."

Kyle nodded. It would be difficult, be he would need to begin this separation process if he wanted to succeed.

"Do you want to see what happened in her life for the correct timeline?" Daniels asked.

Kyle looked at Daniels, his interest rising, and Daniels gestured to another large timeline panel next to them.