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Author's Chapter Notes:

Christmas story for a bunch of special ladies.

Many hugs for QS for doing the beta on her present :P

Warning this story drips sap-but hey its the season.

 

 

 

Kathryn Janeway pulled her scarf tightly around her face to escape the force of the biting cold wind. A few bare trees poked up from the frozen dirt, the only relief in a flat, featureless landscape. A watery sun sunk low in the horizon, defeated in its attempts to warm up the snowy earth.

 

She knew she should have just transported home, but she needed the walk to clear her head. The pressures of the Admiralty rested heavily on her shoulders, and today had been a doozy of a day. The ships delivering aid to Cardassia had been under constant attack, and regardless of Starfleet’s best efforts, the “pirates” managed to rob at least a third of the convoys heading to the broken planet. They had taken to sending heavily armed battleships to escort the convoys, which left the outlying planet systems extremely nervous because those ships were meant to be patrolling their borders. The leaders of those systems were understandably anxious because their home planets had been at the forefront of the most recent war. They also were none too happy to hear that the ships that were meant to be protecting them were now pulled to help the very people who had been the aggressors in that war.

 

Janeway had spent the entire week trying to calm the jitters of the T’rai and appeal to the compassion of the Nagle, whose ambassador declared that the Cardassians should suffer the same way that their population had.

 

She sighed to herself. And then, if that was not bad enough, there were the reports leaking in from Ambassador Spock of trouble stirring on Romulus with a Reman named Schinzon? It had been a very trying week, to say the least.

 

She dug her hands deeper into her pockets, trying to ward off the chill. The whole situation was made far worse because Chakotay was not there. He had been sent by the Admiralty to try and discover who these pirates were, if they worked as one cohesive entity or if they were just individuals in search of some quick latinum. Starfleet had no leads, and they thought that Chakotay, being a former Maquis, might still have the contacts that could give them the break that they needed.

 

She missed him desperately since he was undercover and unable to contact her directly. She’d laughed incredulously when she’d heard that was their plan.

 

“You do realize that he has one of the most recognizable faces in the galaxy?”

 

They’d frowned and reminded her that undercover did not mean that he would have to create a new identity. They just did not want him to appear to be passing on information to Starfleet. That made her worried, of course; their relationship, despite their best efforts, was an open secret in the quadrant.

 

The newsvids had speculated endlessly about them. However, all she and Chakotay were willing to reveal was that they were very good friends. She had insisted over and over again to the reporters that he was the finest first officer she had ever had the pleasure of serving with, and that such relationships were not appropriate for a commanding officer to have with her crew. They could get no further with Chakotay either, because he was a master at talking in riddles. She often had a hard time containing her laughter at the stories he wove. There was one memorable moment when he talked about monkeys running amok on New Earth that she had had to leave the room. The time that they spent alone on that planet seemed to be the reporter’s favorite line of questioning.

 

In reality, much of what they had told the reporters was true; they had been just friends for the entirety of the voyage. It was not until that they were back on Earth and she was able to find that core of herself that she had shut away from everyone, that she had been willing to pursue a relationship. Of course, it had also taken the subtle pushing by her mother and sister and even Mark to realize that she was letting her fears keep her away from a very special relationship.

 

Even so, it had taken them a while to finally come together – and then he’d left for the mission. So far, she knew he was still alive; as an admiral, she did get his progress reports. She would have liked to speak with him, but for now, this would have to suffice.

 

This was shaping up to be quite the month.

 

Her mother’s home loomed ahead. Stomping off her boots, she stepped onto the wide front porch. The swing that her father had hung creakily swung in gusts of wind. The last time she had sat on it was at Chistmas. It was equally cold then, but she was too wrapped up in Chakotay to notice. They had sat together watching the stars, her old blanket draped around their shoulders.

 

The house looked considerably different from the last time she was here, as well. Since it was Christmas, the living room had been strung with fairy lights. A tree that a neighbor had cut for them was decorated with ornaments that were handed down within the Janeway clan for generations. None of that holographic stuff would wash with her mother.

 

 

Gretchen had initially wanted to have the entire Voyager crew over for the holiday but then decided that would be better left for another time. It was the first Christmas that Kathryn was home in many years, and it would be celebrated with just family. So it was a considerably smaller group that sat down for an eclectic dinner of duck and succotash. The wine flowed freely, but only four of the group drank, and the fifth member toasted with fruit juices.

 

She had walked into the living room after clearing the dishes and had seen her mother deep in conversation with Chakotay’s sister and Chakotay laughing at something that Phoebe was saying. He had looked up and, seeing her walk in, reached out his hand to her. The thought had flitted through her mind, the true meaning of peace, indeed.

 

Dinner done, Tom and B’Elanna had came with Miral and Owen in tow. They‘d stayed for a little while, just long enough to laugh over cherished old memories to make new ones. They left once Miral decided that the adults were too wrapped up in themselves and not enough in her. She’d let her displeasure be known with the full force of her Klingon lungs.

 

When they were leaving, she and Chakotay had walked out to the porch with the Paris clan to say their goodbyes.

 

“Tom needs to be flying soon,” B’Elanna had whispered to Janeway, “He’s making me crazy.”

 

“I’ll do my best,” Janeway had whispered back.

 

They hadn’t made it back inside right away, instead settling themselves on the swing, rocking back and forth. Phoebe had good naturedly yelled “get a room”, and when everyone was in bed, they had. The house was dark, the only illumination from the glowing embers in the fireplace. She had led Chakotay up to her bedroom, treading quietly on the old stairwell. Her stomach clenched slightly at the memory of that night.

 

Today, though, the house was considerably quieter. The tree was long recycled, a few logs saved for the fireplace.

 

“Mom?” Janeway was puzzled; her mother had asked her to come but was not around.

 

She walked into the kitchen. The comm. unit beeped incessantly, indicating a message. She turned it on; it was her mother.

 

“I’m sorry, Kathryn, not to be there when you get there, but Josie had some bad news, and I need to be here. I tried reaching you, but that pompous aide of yours would not let me speak with you, said you had a meeting. I’m sure he forgot to give you my message, as well.”

 

Kathryn laughed at Gretchen’s affronted expression; she was too used to getting her way. A wife and mother to Admirals, she was not one to take no for an answer. Kathryn was amazed that Carlos, her aide, had managed to refuse her.

 

He must have some hidden talents that I need to hear more about, she mused.

 

He had tried to hand her a PADD when she was done with the meetings, but thinking it was more work, she had thrown it on the desk without even looking at it.

 

Now what? She looked around the empty house and decided that she would head back to her apartment. There was no sense sitting around waiting for her mother to return because she had no sense of how long she would be gone. Maybe being surrounded by the debris that Chakotay had strewn around the place would make him feel not quite so far away. Even as she had that thought, she knew it to be a lie; she had been there all week, and it had not made much of a difference.

 

She walked back to the living room and to the corner where the transporter pad was cleverly hidden by a handmade rug. Her mother had made it because she had thought having a big black circle on her nice wooden floors was just too ugly. But she did see the necessity and convenience of having a transporter to use at will. In an effort to satisfy her aesthetic sensibilities, she laid a rug right over it.

 

It always made Kathryn smile to see it, because it would remind her of her father ribbing her mother about how he probably was the only Starfleet officer who would have to transport onto a rug with puppies gamboling around the edges.

 

“Couldn’t it have been a starship?” he’d laugh.

 

“No and starships don’t gambol” was her mother’s invariable response. That was the end of the conversation usually, at least until the next time he’d transported home. Kathryn did wonder, though, how the rug had survived so intact for close to four decades. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that her mother replaced each one as it fell apart with another that was exactly the same.

 

Moving the rug aside, she stepped on the platform and programmed the coordinates. In a shower of blue, she was back home in her apartment. She could see the lights of the city reflected in the window as stepped off of the pad in her study.

 

Unbuttoning her jacket, she dropped it on the floor and headed to her bathroom. She was looking forward to a nice long soak and then bed. Maybe morning would bring news of Chakotay’s safe return. She started to remove her turtleneck when she saw a slight movement in the cracked door of her bedroom.

 

What the…

 

It probably was nothing, but she was not inclined to take any chances. After being on guard from hostile aliens in the Delta Quadrant and persistent reporters in the Alpha, she was more than a little skittish. Reaching into the drawer of her desk for her phaser, she crept out on silent feet. She could no longer see anything. The room was still, lit by the moonlight streaming in from the large windows. She pushed the door open. It was completely silent; she laughed to herself about being paranoid.

 

She was getting ready to leave when she saw it: a package on her pillow. She looked around the room and saw nothing else out of the ordinary. She hesitated for a second before walking to it. It was small, wrapped in a silver and gold ribbon. There was nothing on it to identify the sender. Sitting down on the bed, she carefully pulled off the ribbon, and in the box, barely catching the moonlight was a ring and a card, with two words. Marry me.

 

She gasped; the writing was one that she would recognize anywhere, bold strokes. Chakotay.

 

“Would that be a yes?” He was leaning on the door, grinning.

 

She dropped the box and glared at him; standing up, she walked closer.

 

“When did you get here?”

 

A step closer. He straightened; even after eight years, there were some moods that he couldn’t quite read.

 

“How did you hide from me?” She jabbed her finger at him. “Is your mission done?”

 

Closer, and then leaning up, she kissed him, her eyes glazed with unshed tears, “and yes.”

 

He pulled her closer. “This evening, I didn’t know where you were, so I just got everything ready, and I still have a few Maquis tricks you don’t know about, and yes, my part in it is done; my contacts let me know where they had their bases, and I passed on that information to headquarters, and when?”

 

“How about tomorrow?”

 

“I think your mother might have a few words to say about that, not to mention my sister because she is still off-world.”

 

“Okay then, next week.”

 

He dropped a kiss on her head. “Next week,” he agreed.

 

 

=/=

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