Chapter Text
This was the moment that would change Kathryn Janeway’s life forever.
This was the moment that would end Kathryn Janeway's life.
She inhaled deeply, staring out the massive tear in the hull of her ship where the forward viewscreen had been just moments ago, watching the ensuing battle that raged around her. Watching her enemy just beyond the gradually weakening emergency force field, the only barrier left to prevent the cold vacuum of space from extending into the bridge. She was ready. She was already dead on the inside, the empty expression on her face reflecting the weight of the past year’s immense losses and traumas.
So much loss, so much pain, she could scarcely recall it all. Except she could, in terrible, excruciating detail. Every hit Voyager took, every crew member she lost, every friend gravely, even permanently, injured. Every moment of the past year was burned into her brain as indelibly as the scars from the deflector room fire had been seared into the skin of her face, arms, and hands.
The flames and weapons fire that were both battering and emanating from the time ship, perhaps the worst enemy she’d ever faced, leaped in the glassy mirror of her eyes. For the first time in months, the flames of her own internal fire surged up to meet them, and she had a moment of such pure clarity, she could almost cry at the simplicity of it all.
The voice of her chief security officer crackled in over their comm link. “All our ships have been disabled, Captain. Do you have weapons?”
“Negative, torpedo launchers are down.”
“How do you wish to proceed?”
“I’m setting a collision course.”
At first there was no response. Tuvok said nothing, but the voice of another came through, strangled by more than just the weak connection. “Kathryn, don’t do this.”
She allowed herself one moment, a single breath, to grieve for yet another loss. She didn’t bother arguing; the risk of being dissuaded was too great. There was no other course left. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, for once not masking the pain or the depth of her emotion. There was so much to be sorry for, so much to atone for, and she couldn’t fix any of this horrible, tragic mess that she had caused.
“Kathryn, please.”
The desperation of the breathless plea broke her heart anew, and almost broke her resolve. Throat choked with sorrow, she offered the only words she could. A promise as much as a goodbye. “I love you.”
She broke the comm link.
Alone on the bridge, her low, strained voice ground out some of her last thoughts, wanting to give them life even if she was only talking to herself. She keyed commands into the console as she prepared for her last stand, a unique set of instructions for a small temporal field, then tapped her comm-badge.
“Janeway to the fleet. Take your temporal shields off-line.” Her order was direct, yet still her ever logical officer replied in question.
“Captain, we won’t be protected.” His response was so predictable, so very Tuvok, that the barest of smiles graced her face.
“Exactly. If that ship is destroyed, all of history might be restored. And this is one year I’d like to forget.” She let her words sink in, the quiet washing over them despite the frenzy of weapons fire and hull breaches. Loyal as he was logical, Janeway watched what was left of her sensors indicate that Tuvok had wordlessly lowered the temporal shields of the fleet. She broke off the comm link one more time, closed her eyes, and wished him peace. Wished them all safe.
Maybe she could undo this. Maybe not. But she could, and would, end this. Now.
This would be the moment that ended Kathryn Janeway, forever. She knew this profoundly. And she gave her last words, spoken as a command, enunciated with deadly precision. “Time’s up.”
So quickly, yet so slowly, Voyager’s bow careened into the hull of the Krenim time vessel, crashing with devastating brute force into the exact coordinates of the temporal core. She thought her death would be louder, scarier. Instead, her final moment was nothing. Nothing but such an abrupt halt to everything, to the momentum of everything her life had ever been building up to. The end was weightlessness and shockwave impact that stopped everything she was and would ever be in an instant so quick, she couldn’t process anything. Flames were swallowing the bridge, swallowing the blackness of space, swallowing her. So much fire filled her vision, the last thing Kathryn Janeway saw.
Peace at last.