Silver Spirit

A legend

vanhunks

Disclaimer: Paramount owns everything. Paramount is Chief.

Rating: PG-13

Summary: When Voyager returns after seven years in the Delta Quadrant, things take an unexpected turn for Chakotay during the trials.

SILVER SPIRIT

PART ONE

She made her way with difficulty through the thick foliage, her hand pushing the broad leaves and ferns aside without much thought to the person behind her. She heard a warning cry, looked back, and was relieved that her companion had not been struck by a fern as she let go of the magnificent fronds. He ducked just as a frond whisked past his head.

"You could be more careful, Katya," grumbled the voice behind her.

"And you, Kol, you could move your butt with greater speed," she gasped as the exertion of the trek through the forest started affecting her.

"I am moving fast enough," he retorted. "It's you who are in too great a hurry, and we're not even certain that that we are looking in the right place."

Katya paused, then turned to face her brother. She was getting winded, but her face was flushed with excitement, her eyes had a sparkle that Kol hadn't seen there since...well, since forever, he decided. Katya suffered more than he did, he thought. While he had so many interests, too many things that distracted him from thinking too much about the past, Katya had always brooded, always at the oddest moments questioned their mother about the man who was missing from their lives. Still, he kept his own musings to himself, never letting them see that he too, thought too much about empty spaces and eagles. It's why he used so many distractions, he supposed. He had become adept at hiding his feelings behind championship parrises squares, archery, quantum mechanics...

"I always thought you weren't interested, Kol," she challenged him, "and now that you've managed to take a risk for once to come with me, you've got cold feet - "

It was all she needed to get a reaction from him.

"That's not true, Katya!" he flung back with a little outrage. "It's just that I never thought you'd think up such a scheme. I always imagined I would be running away from home and come looking."

Katya looked down at the way her toes dug into the undergrowth. Kol thought that she appeared ashamed. They had always been too attuned to each other's feelings and Katya knew exactly how he felt. Although she never bugged him about it there were many times that they talked into the small hours and shared their hunger for the things that were missing from their lives. Katya stood hands on her hips. Just like Mom... Katya had their mother's eyes, blue-grey eyes that always looked a little haunted. Unlike this very moment when they flashed just like their mother when she got a little mad at them. Katya had black hair. Black as a raven. Kol shrugged. They looked so different, yet so alike. His own eyes were very dark, and he had his mother's golden hair. He also had dimples that Katya always said sat unfairly on him.

His sister looked up, her eyes a little clouded. She looked sorry, but he left it at that.

"Okay, Kol. But I can sense we're near...."

She turned and started again, brushing aside the thick fronds. They weren't on any clear path. There didn't seem to be one, and they were trekking without any form of 24th century equipment that could have facilitated their quest a hundred fold. He could see Katya was tiring, but her determination more than compensated for her exhaustion. Also the conditions were trying, ranging from semi-desert to sudden rainforest conditions. The sudden transition when they started out had been taxing, their clothes not nearly suitable for this type of journey on foot. They had been in a hurry...

He didn't want to burst her bubble. They were on the fifth planet of the old Zastron system where they were told a small band of spirit people dwelled. They had reached dead ends up to now, and this... it may be a false trail.

"What did you say?" Katya asked as she turned around so quickly that he knocked into her. His face collided with her backpack, and when he straightened up, he rubbed his nose, then asked:

"I said something?"

"Don't play dumb, Kol. You said something about a false trail."

"Okay, fine. Maybe my thoughts were loud enough for you to hear," he said with a little sarcasm, noting how she gave a tight smile. She sensed often what he was thinking, same as he sometimes knew what was on her mind. "But I want you to remember it may lead to a dead end, Katya. We've only covered four regions so far and this one, it was the most unlikely of the four - "

"I know, Kol. Please..."

He relented. She looked like Mom when her eyes got soft like that. Katya's eyes. Mom's eyes. He and Katya had been witness for more years than they could remember of the haunted look in their mother's eyes when she thought no one was looking. She missed him, but she never spoke about him. Once, when they were about eight years old, she spoke about him. Told them who he was. That was after he woke up one night screaming. He had had a dream in which he saw an old man.

"It's your grandfather," their mother told them, when he explained the old man's looks. "You were named after him, Kol..."

But telling them stories about him? Things that they could use to find some filial connection, some bond that would bring them closer to the man they had never seen except for a picture in the Federation records?

Never.

What they knew, was information they got from Uncle Tom and Aunt B'Elanna. Little tales about the Angry Warrior, and how their parents had been stranded once on a planet for months.

"That's where they fell in love," Aunt B'Elanna said, "maybe even before that..."

Now he and Katya were searching for him. They could never understand why a man whom they could see their mother loved was absent from their lives. From other accounts by those who had been on Voyager those seven years, Kathryn Janeway and her first officer had been deeply in love. After the trial, after the penal colony, he vanished. There was no trace of him. Kol thought how difficult it was to vanish in the Federation, but their father did.

Their mother...

Kol sighed.

She rarely smiled. He wondered what she was doing now. Probably frantically searching for them.

It was Katya who instigated.

"We're sixteen, Kol, and we're about to go to the Academy. I want to know that he's alive somewhere, I want him to see me, to see you..."

Katya emphasized the you and he knew she referred to the tattoo he wore above his left eyebrow.

"I want him to know about us and be proud of us..."

"He may not want to know us," he had said with disheartening honesty a month ago. He never told them. Not Katya, not his mother. But he had those dreams often - more frequently in the last year - and always, it was his grandfather with the kindly, good smile. His heart would soar.

"Just like the spirits, son. Like the spirits..." he always imagined his grandfather speaking to him.

That was why Katya's pleading eyes won him over. He had the secret yearning for so long, and for so long he had never really spoken, although he knew their mother had been concerned about the way he closed off from them sometimes.

He gave a small sigh, squeezed Katya's arm, and on an impulse, he hugged his sister. In the forest, with hardly any light coming through from above, they stood on the forest floor and pledged their quest anew.

While no one knew where they were, he was realistic. They would be traced. Kathryn Janeway would leave no stone unturned. But the window period was long enough. He had made certain that he left them a few false trails... He didn't really care anymore about the consequences. He wanted to see the man his mother only once called: Chakotay.

****

"Watch out!" Kol shouted as Katya pitched forward after she stumbled over an exposed root. He rushed forward, but she had landed with a thud on the soft leafy ground. He reached for her and pulled her up.

"Smart move, Katya," he said teasingly in an attempt at humour. She looked angry, her eyes flashing. She was close to tears and her cheeks were smudged from the dirt. She gave him a tremulous smile.

"Maybe you should walk in front after all," she offered as she got to her feet and dusted off her pants. They were classic twentieth century jeans Uncle Tom had introduced them to and which Miral wore just as frequently.

"Oh, no, we agreed, Katya. I'll bring up the rear. Our safety standards, remember?"

"Yeah."

His sister looked disconsolate suddenly, as if she wanted to chuck everything and just go home. He felt an inordinate gladness again that there were moments when Katya looked upon him for guidance, to make decisions for them. She once, when they were ten and trapped with Miral on Mars where they had gone spelunking, said, "Boy, I'm sure glad you're my brother."

Those were the days... Mom and Aunt B'Elanna had come after them. Uncle Tom had been on a mission into the Badlands. Miral's mother wiped the floor with them and didn't much care whether he and Katya were her children or not. Mom just stood and looked at Aunt B'Elanna and smiled. Then she looked at him, raised an eyebrow and said, "Kolopak, I expect you to lead by example..."

Now Katya was tired. It was her tiredness that caused her concentration to slip.

"I think we should take a short break, Katya. We haven't eaten since last night, and my stomach is thinking strange things..."

"Like your throat's been cut off?"

"Like that."

"You eat like a pig."

"You talking like Miral suddenly?"

"She doesn't like you."

"It's why she calls me a pig?"

Katya didn't answer him and wiped the smudges from her face with her palms. Kol looked around him. Everything was still so overgrown, but they had been heading in a particular direction and, according to the hand drawn map, the right direction. He pushed aside some broad leaves and ferns and laughed.

"What?" Katya asked.

"There's a little clearing here, Katya," he said, then took her hand and forgetting that she was exhausted, pulled her none too gently through the undergrowth. "There, just for you, Sis, a tree trunk. Will you take a seat?" he asked with a flourish.

Katya smiled, then made a little curtsy. She removed her backpack, and flung it unceremoniously on the ground. He felt glad that her sombre mood was dispelled. She had been frustrated, and only her determination carried her. But even that had been flagging in the last hours they had trekked through this uninhabitable woodland. He bent down and opened her backpack. It contained most of their rations. They had been careful, and didn't waste the water in particular. He handed her a little pack and water bottle.

"Thanks, Kol."

They ate their rations in silence, reflecting on their journey here, taking in their surroundings with a kind of detachment.

Katya observed her brother.

She wondered if he knew how much he emulated their absent father. Kol had his hair cropped short to resemble the way their father's hair appeared in the picture in the database. She smiled inwardly. Somehow, Kol's blonde hair made him look almost bald, the hair cropped within just a centimetre of his scalp, making it look like bristles. Mom had given him a strange look, almost as if she wanted to cry, then ignored Kol for a full day. Kol hadn't been bothered by that, and by evening their mother smiled at him. Katya thought it was a dreamy, indulgent smile. He had strong features, like their father, if the picture was an accurate reflection of him. His jaw was strong, and when Kol smiled, his dimples deepened. And Kol had a tan. Natural as the day they were born. She cultivated hers.

Kol was given to deep meditation. Something he thought she didn't know, and something their mother discovered quite by accident one day when she entered his room. He hadn't even known she was there, sitting cross-legged in a deep trance on the floor. Katya had wanted to stop her when Kol didn't respond to her hail. She stood outside Kol's room, watched Kathryn Janeway turn round, her eyes filled with tears.

"Mom...?" she said softly.

"Katya," Kathryn said as she closed the door softly behind her, "did you know of this?"

She had just shaken her head, too afraid to speak, lest she herself would burst into tears. There was an uneasy pause.

"Mom, if you told us about him..."

Her mother had looked at her for long moment, then, closing the gap between them, she hugged her. Katya had felt the slight shiver, then the whisper, "I can't, Katie..."

"Didn't he want us?" she prodded again, then felt her mother stiffen.

"He's gone, Katya... it's too long a story..."

"Kol and I are old enough to hear it, Mom."

"I know, honey. It's just difficult for me, okay?"

She had nodded, watched in silence as her mother walked down the stairs and went to sit in the living room.

Or in her own bedroom, shrouded in darkness. In that mood they left their mother alone. Most of the time though, she was amiable, even teasing. Katya would feel warmth creeping in her heart whenever she saw her mother lift an eyebrow in such a quirky manner, a slight curve to her lips when she smiled. Those were the days she and Kol reveled in their mother's company and love... the days they were proud to be Admiral Janeway's children.

"What are you thinking?" she heard Kol's voice.

"You must take after him more than I do."

"You have his hair, Katya. Aren't you satisfied?"

"But something of his nature," she replied, ignoring his own statement. "You're like him, I think."

"Katya..."

"It's true, Kol. Mom even named you Kolopak, after our grandfather," she said, sounding almost aggrieved that something of Chakotay passed her by.

"Katya," Kol sighed, "I give up. I wanted natural born black hair, remember?"

His sister smiled, then shook her head so that her shoulder length straight bob bounced about her face.

"Now who's vain?"

She bent down and he frowned. The next moment she threw a small stone at him, hitting him square in the chest.

"Hey!"

"Don't mock me, brother," she said laughingly, then felt something whisk past her as he returned the favour.

"Take that!"

"Oh, no, you don't - " she started then froze suddenly just as she rose from her seat.

Kol looked puzzled for a moment. Then his ears pricked. That was when they heard it. A soft rustle of leaves. Imperceptible, but there. Kol stilled suddenly, and reached for his dagger that was still sheathed in its leather pouch.

"Kol..." Katya whispered. Her gaze traveled past him. He had been sitting on the ground, facing her. He swung round and a coldness gripped him. He rose and drew Katya protectively closer to him.

They filed into the clearing so quietly, they might never have been there. Fleet of foot with a stalking grace. Men and women - mostly men - who resembled the native Americans of nineteenth century Earth. They looked impassive, their dark eyes fixed on the two intruders. All carried long spears, the base of the head of each spear adorned with long feathers. Unsmiling, their chiseled features were daunting to the two young people. Katya's hand sought that of her brother, and Kol gripped it tightly in his.

One stepped forward, and he thrust his spear at Kol. He looked sunburned, weather-beaten, threatening. His craggy features were unsmiling. His forehead sported a tattoo identical to Kol's.

Kol had little time to assimilate that information or even be surprised, before the man nudged him. The point of the spear touched his chest with just enough pressure to signal the alien's intent. Kol quelled his fear and swallowed. The others surrounding them were silent. He knew they weren't going to help him. We are the aliens here... he heard himself repeat the words in his mind. Words Kathryn Janeway taught them of respecting the territory of others. He challenged the leader's gaze. His tattoo looked...beautiful, Kol thought absently even as he realised the danger they were in.

"Speak."

That was the next shock.

Kol wondered how they would have understood any alien tongue with no universal translator. But it was the only way they could delay any search for them. He had planted their commbadges on another homeworld, outside this sector of space. The renegade they paid two bars of latinum to transport them here had gone two days ago, and would return only in two days' time. He had been surly, but would not betray them. He had been a former Maquis...

"Kol?" Katya looked at her brother, and she clung a little tighter to him.

The aliens - the spirit people - started closing in. They had very long dark hair that hanged past their shoulders, almost into their waists. All of them carried the same tattoo Kol had on his forehead. Their deep tanned skins glistened in the sunlight that drifted down between the branches of the tall trees.

Katya was struck by two things simultaneously.

The people appeared hostile, yet curious. It could have been Kol's tattoo. It definitely was, Katya corrected herself. The second thing that struck her: she and her brother had come to the right place. She wondered which was a better thought to absorb as the aliens closed in on them.

"We come in peace," Kol said with quiet pride as he acknowledged the tattoo on their foreheads.

"What is your mission here."

Kol thought 'mission' was the correct word for their search. He felt Katya squeezing him, then she pushed the spear gently away from where the point touched Kol's chest. The warrior who held the spear conceded only one step back, not dropping his spear.

"Please," Katya spoke, looking at her brother then at the people who surrounded them, "we seek one who is called Chakotay."

Katya and Kol didn't miss the interchange between the aliens - spirit people - nor the frown on the leader's forehead.

"Chá-ko-tay?"

They had never heard their father's name pronounced in that way.

"Yes, Chakotay," Kol affirmed, still holding his hand protectively on Katya's shoulder.

The spear dropped, and Kol breathed a sigh of relief. The leader, dressed in earth toned loose garments, placed his palm flat against his chest. They didn't seem so hostile now. They sensed Kol and Katya meant no harm. Kol's dagger was still sheathed. He used it mainly as his cutting tool whenever he got hold of a good piece of wood. The leader's face relaxed, and he looked even...approachable

"Then we cannot help you - "

"We are his children," Katya cut in quickly.

"Please..." Kol added.

"It is not that we do not wish to help, but that..." The leader looked at the others who nodded solemnly. Then he turned to Kol and Katya again. Kol felt his heart turn cold at the pitying look in the leader's eyes.

"Chá-ko-tay is dead. He died two sun turns ago..."

***

END PART ONE

SILVER SPIRIT

PART TWO

Dario Rhozenko looked at the line up of athletes. He had come in from the far corner of the school's sports centre. He was missing his star parrises squares players. He noted with pride that the team of Zephram Cochrane High School was the best on Earth. They had been unbeaten for the past three years, since Kol Janeway made the seniors team at the tender age of thirteen.

Kol Janeway had not turned up, and neither had Katya. The twins... with that Miral Paris and Eamon Carey they formed notorious Four. Thick as thieves they were most of the time, getting into and out of scrapes on a regular basis. He had stopped informing their parents. He was Klingon, heavy on the honour and courage, and he knew they were inherently responsible and courageous young warriors. He gave a grin. He liked to see his players as warriors on the playing field.

Now he was worried. The Visitors - the team from James T. Kirk Memorial High - were already here. When he checked on the athletes in the dressing rooms, he hadn't noticed Kol's absence and just assumed him to be in one of the shower cubicles. Now he walked across the floor of the hall and joined his team. Or what was left after Kol and Katya didn't pitch. He knew he could put in their reserve players. But something was wrong. The two should have been here. They have never not turned up for anything, least of all Kol's favourite sport.

"Miral!"

"Sir!" Miral responded and almost jumped at the fierce way the coach growled. Like him, she had Klingon blood, and she had done her fair share of growling. But the coach was here, calling her and demanding...

"Kol Janeway and his sister. They are late?"

"I don't know, S-Sir..." Miral stammered.

Dario Rhozenko smiled when he saw Miral shift nervously. He knew she knew something.

Miral wanted to die.

"You have an idea, Miral Paris. It is dishonourable to withhold information..."

"We can use the reserves, Sir," Miral offered as she almost whipped to attention. Her clear blue eyes did not waver. The Klingon ridges were softened on her, and Rhozenko thought the daughter of B'Elanna and Tom Paris attractive. But right now she was lying.

"Shall I inform their parents that they haven't arrived?"

"Oh no!" Miral said too quickly, then, "No, Sir, you don't have to. They'll be here."

"The twins are never late, Miral Paris."

"Yes, Sir. I know that, Sir. But Sir, if you waited - "

"Miral Paris, what is the protocol of Zephram Cochrane High School when athletes do not arrive without prior notification for a match?"

Miral Paris felt like kicking herself. They knew the rules. But Kol and Katya had been so excited, so fired up and in such a hurry, they didn't...think... Kol had sworn that they had everything worked out. He had assured her and Eamon that he could delay any search for them by two days. She gave a sigh. Two days. They had only two days...

The truth, she decided, will out. Her mother will skin her and Daddy? She gave a sigh. Daddy's eyes will just go all...disappointed...

"They must give official and timeous notice of their absence from a match...Sir..."

"Good. Then this match will be delayed long enough for me to inform Admiral Janeway that her children have not reported. Is that the correct order of doing things, Miral Paris?"

Dario Rhozenko watched Miral Paris squirm. The look she gave Eamon Carey would have killed him if her eyes were daggers.

"And him..." Rhozenko nodded in Eamon's direction before he turned on his heels, "him you can kill."

"Aye, Sir!" he heard Miral Paris' voice, and he knew that it would not be long before he would hear their angry voices.

***

Kathryn Janeway sat in stunned silence after Dario Rhozenko closed communication. Her initial dizziness had worn off but the furniture in the office took on a surreal appearance, grotesque objects that suddenly mocked as they cleared and faded, cleared and faded.

It had finally happened. Twins were gone. They weren't just playing truant. They never have. But this, she knew, was something she had sensed would happen one day. Something she had feared in the last few years. Ever since the twins were able to pilot shuttles and runabouts, she had dreaded this day. She knew instinctively where they had gone, and more importantly, why they had gone.

In the last months particularly, even Kol had pressed her for more information about their father. Her hands shook and she clasped them tightly together to stop her shivering, and the need to cry.

Chakotay.

All their woes and silent pondering since they were old enough to talk, began and ended with Chakotay.

Missing husband and father.

Katya asked the most questions. Kol just drifted off into his own world of meditation. How could she tell them that the most painful thing that ever happened to her was so difficult to recount? How could she tell them and risk their hate? She loved them. She had never loved two children more, had never been more pained and reminded every day and every hour and every minute since their birth of the man who was their father. They resembled him. That was the bittersweet of looking at her children. Every moment she looked at Kol and Katya, she missed Chakotay so fiercely that she wondered if she would ever heal.

And Kol.

Kol had just quietly gone and had his tattoo. He even shaved his hair. If ever there had been a message from her children that they connected to the man who fathered them, it was Kol's tattoo. He even had Chakotay's colouring.

They needed their father. How many times when the children had gone to visit Tom and B'Elanna, didn't they return looking sadder than ever? They saw how Miral connected with her father. They saw a family circle, complete. Mother, father, children. They lacked the vital role model Chakotay would have been had he remained.

How often hadn't her mother said, "He did it because he loved them too much, Kathryn. Believe that."

She needed Chakotay.

But it was his voice, ringing urgently in her ears, that haunted her.

"They must never know me, Kathryn," he said.

She had been too stunned at the outcome of the trial, too shattered at the implications it held not for the Maquis who were such an integral part of Voyager's crew, but for Chakotay, who bore the brunt of the Federation's unexpected tough stand against 'traitors to the Federation'.

Kathryn had become increasingly distraught at the vindictiveness of Admiral Nechayev, who, it seemed to them, had taken a perverse, diabolical delight in punishing Chakotay. She had been at the forefront of several Admirals who felt that Chakotay, as the Maquis leader, had to be punished differently from the rest of the Maquis crew on Voyager. All of them had been given an immediate reprieve, which made Chakotay's punishment so excessively severe that Admirals Paris and Ponsonby had just shaken their heads. They were on her side. They were the only ones who knew... She could not blame them.

How could she?

Owen Paris had seen, studied, absorbed, breathed Voyager too long in the Pathfinder project not to have known that Chakotay was a decent, honest and hard-working officer.

A man who had given up everything, sacrificed too much and shared Kathryn's vision of keeping the crew together and unified.

Kathryn pushed, challenged, fought, lost.

Nechayev and Hays needed someone they could hang. They needed to give their own investigations, their own long-standing failure with containing Maquis operations at the height of their Struggle, some credibility, some outward public relations sign that their programme of hunting down and punishing Maquis had been successful. Chakotay and the rest of the Maquis on Voyager made them appear failures, particularly as they witnessed the great respect Chakotay had among the entire crew and a good number of senior Starfleet officials. They were ready to wipe his slate clean. Nechayev and Hays were made to look like failures. And so their sentencing when it came, felled Chakotay, damned him forever as they sought retribution in the kind of sweeping implications they promised: a bad name, bad reputation, betrayer, criminal, murderer. Something they vowed they would never let him or anyone else forget.

And she? She had seen that the Maquis - because she had come to admire and trust and know the most honourable group of fighters under their leader Chakotay - were simply protecting their homes, their livelihood, fighting for a cause.

Neither Nechayev nor Hays could understand that, or even have any kind of empathy that Chakotay lost his entire family. Kathryn had not wanted to use her own condition, and the fact that she and Chakotay were married, as leverage in her defense of her husband. Chakotay had been equally emphatic, and wanted any outcome of the trial to be based on his own accountability alone.

They found him guilty. It was not wholly unexpected, because she and Chakotay could deal with a period of imprisonment.

Worse was to come.

Chakotay had thrown an agonised glance at her before listening to the damning evidence first, then the sentence.

Nechayev had looked at her with so much venom that Kathryn had been certain the Admiral had seen the closeness between Captain and First Officer. There had never been much love lost between Admiral Nechayev and others who found working with her difficult, nor, Kathryn realised at the time, between the bitter admiral and Chakotay. Nechayev was determined that everyone around her was to be hated, that the world held nothing good and that she had the sole responsibility of purging it from its evil.

"You are a traitor...traitor...traitor..."

"Murderer... Your name shall forever be branded, Commander, with all that the Federation abhorred about criminals and those who betrayed all that is good about the Federation."

There were gasps of shock.

"Your record on board the vessel Voyager, such as given completely biased account of it by the Captain of that vessel, is not enough to wipe out your record as a rebel leader, thief, criminal. Neither will it ever stand up against your reputation as traitor, one who betrayed everything the Federation believes in..."

Admiral Paris had risen from his seat to express his outrage, but Nechayev and Hays gestured that he remain seated.

"You will serve a sentence of five years in the Federation Penal Colony, after which there will be no place for you here..."

The old Earth term was ex-communicated.

Ex-communicated. An honourable man.

Nechayev had approached Chakotay and her eyes had gleamed with a terrible malice. She looked over at where Kathryn had been standing - a Kathryn whose life seemed to have ended with the unfair, biased, subjective sentencing - and then turned on Chakotay:

"I will make certain that you are never welcome anywhere, that you'll never get work... Your name will remain tainted. No one will touch you..."

No one who had been at the trial, could have been more shocked than the crew of Voyager. And, in spite of representations, in spite of sustained and passionate pleas for clemency, it was not the prison sentence so much as that Chakotay had been effectively ex-communicated from the Federation. Never had something like that happened before.

Kathryn had walked up to Chakotay that day, in the minutes before he had been shackled and tagged, and tried to reason with him. He had been implacable.

"You will not do that, Kathryn. Your life is here, with the children. I can't expect you to cut yourself from everything and come with me. I can't..."

"I can't let them grow up without their father..."

"Kathryn, cut me out of your life now. I could never let my children suffer because their father had been branded. It will always be difficult for them..."

"No! You can't mean that, Chakotay! They need a father. They need you. How can you expect me to do that? How?"

"Because, Kathryn, my love, I love you too much to put you through a life of drudgery and pain and shame. Forget me, Kathryn. Let me go."

She had been too distraught, too hurt to accept what he wanted, but he had been adamant.

"Never must they know of me..."

"They will, Chakotay. I can't deny them their heritage."

"I can't let my shame touch them too. It's too much, Kathryn. Too much!"

"You have done nothing to be ashamed of - "

"Have you heard them, Kathryn? Have you heard Nechayev? She's paying me back, Kathryn. You know why. I told you... They will never let me rest, they will never leave my family alone as long as I am with them. I must go, I must go..."

"Our children must know the wonderful man you are..."

"Think about it, Kathryn. Think! What you would have? Our son going to school and on the first day, another child, trained by an over-patriotic parent, will call him the son of a traitor and murderer?"

"Chakotay, for the love of God, you can't imagine that - "

"And our beautiful little girl, Kathryn, who will be denied acceptance to parties, to special occasions, because no one will associate with the daughter of a criminal?"

"I can't let you do this, Chakotay. This is just another hurdle we have to cross..."

But Chakotay's eyes were flamed orbs of impassioned entreaty, begging her, unable to screen the shame of an open court hearing where most in the Federation who were interested in the fate of Voyager's crew, heard how Commander Chakotay's reputation as a man and officer was destroyed. Many gloated, he knew. They were the people he had successfully outwitted and outmaneuvered during his years as a Maquis leader.

Kathryn looked in his eyes and almost, she was unable to endure the pain in them. She was fighting, fighting to keep him with her, but with every word he uttered, the dread of his leaving tore at her heart, and broke her.

"You will raise our beautiful children, my love, with all the great passion, discipline, love that you have for your fellow-man. They will be proud of you. They could never be proud of a father whose name is synonymous with betrayal..."

"I will come after you, Chakotay, so help me..."

"Kathryn, if you do that, you will fuel all the hate and anger Nechayev already bears towards us. She hates you, she hates me. She has seen us happy, my love, and no one who rails against the world for the sake of hate and evil, can stand to see another happy."

"Chakotay, her victory is only fleeting. She's separating us for now..."

"Let me go, Kathryn, let me go now. I will bear my cross with the honour of my people, for all who died in the name of freedom. That will be good enough for me. I will never see my children. Never. Therefore I ask you, cut me out of their life."

They had been interrupted then by a gloating Nechayev and the Security personnel who were ready to shackle him and transport him to New Zealand.

Even then she had found it difficult to accept such a radical decision Chakotay made. It was impossible to think of raising their children without their father. They deserved to have him. It was their birthright.

The first visit New Zealand to see him and convince him that all was not lost, ended in disaster. It didn't even begin.

Chakotay refused to see her. The only message he left her, read:

"I am dead, Kathryn. Tell our children that."

Thereafter every overture she made was met with the message: Chakotay wanted to have nothing to do with her. He had already cut himself from her life and that of their unborn children. She had been six months pregnant then, and had remained with her mother in Indiana for the duration of the year after the trial, and waiting for the birth of the twins.

Now Kol and Katya had gone to look for the man they resembled so much that her heart wanted to break every time she looked at Kol smile, or Katya look at her with so much of her father's regard. They had grown up without him, and it was the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. Nothing, nothing of all decisions she ever made before and during their Delta Quadrant years, compared with the decision she made not to tell Katya and Kol about Chakotay, warrior extraordinaire, a man, husband who was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice because he wanted to spare her and the children the shame of what Starfleet had done to him.

He left Starfleet on principle the first time, and the second? He left under a cloud of shame. He couldn't do that to them.

She tried her best, raised her children the best she could in the sixteen years. Somehow, somehow, Chakotay's words came true. They had been spared. In a certain sense they grew up balanced, without the terrible angsts of condemnatory stares and ridicule because of who they were. Everyone knew as soon as news of her pregnancy and marriage hit, that Chakotay was the father of her children and her husband.

Then the opposite happened.

The children heard from others of their father's fine reputation, of the honourable man that he was.

They learned why he left. She had told them very little. And, it was always going to be inevitable that they would know of him. When Kol had his first dream in which he saw Kolopak, she had to tell them.

After that, it had been too difficult to relate to them her pain at losing her husband, all the stories of the Angry Warrior's tales that she burned to tell them. They created their own fantasies, no doubt helped by B'Elanna and Tom.

She had no idea where they had gone, how and when they had gone.

She was going to embark on a search for them. For that she needed help. She flicked on her vid-com, and started the first communication...

***

Tom Paris hurried along the corridors to Admiral Janeway's office. B'Elanna walked briskly next to him, sounding slightly out of breath.

"So the children are missing, Tom?"

"Yeah, they've gone to look for Chakotay. Kathryn didn't have to tell me that, it was always going to happen..."

"Tom, they always missed having a father. I've never seen two children more eager or in need to have the great warrior as part of their lives."

"Well, you know, they watched Miral with us, B'Elanna. I'm surprised that Kathryn never conducted a search for him six months ago - "

"You mean after Nechayev died?"

"Yeah. After Nechayev died. That woman..."

"Well, she's dead, and here we are, right at Kathryn's office, Tom."

After pressing the chime, the door opened and they walked in. There were Joe Carey, Gretchen Janeway and...

"Miral! What are you doing here?" B'Elanna asked her daughter.

"Tom...B'Elanna... Thank you for getting here so soon," Kathryn Janeway's voice cut in.

"We came as soon as we could, but... Miral?" Tom repeated B'Elanna's question at seeing their daughter looking mortified, tears ready to roll.

"I was as surprised, Tom," Joe Carey said as he pulled Eamon Carey from where his son was standing at the window, "to see my youngest son here."

"Tom, B'Elanna, you know why I called you," came Kathryn's voice.

Tom could see how Kathryn Janeway tried hard not to show her extreme concern, but he knew she was agonised. She loved Kol and Katya desperately, tried hard to be both mother and father.

"Yes, and I'm just wondering," he replied, giving Miral and Eamon some pointed stares, "how these two come to be here as well - "

"Dario Rhozenkho sent them. He believes they know something..." Joe Carey added.

"And now these two," Kathryn Janeway added, "have something to say..."

"Well, have you?" Joe Carey asked them, his voice suddenly brusque. He was Tom's first officer.

Eamon and Miral chorused together.

"Yes, Dad."

"Yes, Uncle Joe."

Tom looked at Miral, and his eyes softened momentarily before he stepped up to her and touched her cheek.

"Miral, the truth, please. We need Kol and Katya, but you know what's happened, haven't you?"

"I promised not to tell, Dad..."

"That's not good enough, Miral," her mother said quietly. Miral looked at B'Elanna and remembered suddenly her mother's words on honour and pride. She stood for a few seconds, studying her toes and wringing her hands together before she replied.

"They went to look for their Dad, Mom. I already told Aunt Kathryn that."

"Miral, I know that they've gone to search for Chakotay. But you helped them get away, is that correct?"

Kathryn's voice was stern, and when Miral faced Kathryn, her resolve broke completely. She could see how worried her Aunt Kathryn was. Her aunt Kathryn who rarely smiled...

"Yes..." Miral whispered, then she threw herself against her mother and sobbed for a few seconds.

"They made us promise, Mama..."

"It's alright, Miral, but you will have to face their reactions yourself," B'Elanna comforted her daughter, smiling inwardly.

She had an idea that Kol Janeway knew exactly how they would react, and had known Eamon and Miral would be the first to be questioned. He must have planned it that way. B'Elanna sighed. Kol had all the makings of a leader, like his parents were. He was also developing into a strategist, that was certain. Yes, Kol planned it that his mother and the rest of them would know the nature of the disappearance.

But it was more than that, and she would tell Tom that later.

She looked at Gretchen Janeway who had remained quiet during the questioning, and that woman, too wise and too astute, gave her a knowing smile. B'Elanna gave an imperceptible nod, then smiled back.

Gretchen knew as well.

"Well then, here's what we'll do...." Kathryn said as she sat down in her chair while the others joined in discussing the plan of action. Miral and Eamon could only stare. They were seeing their parents - the old Voyager crew - working together to solve a problem. Half awe and half pride and also a little bit of fear. Then all eyes turned on them. Miral gave a little gasp and she pinched Eamon. Eamon's 'ouch' that he mouthed satisfied her. She was going to get him.

They were asked to tell everything they knew. They were ready to tell everything they knew. For half an hour her parents, Uncle Joe and Aunt Kathryn kept them busy. Miral and Eamon shrugged halfway through the questioning when they finally also accepted that their parrises squares match was forfeited. "Time for another day, another victory there will be," Dario Rhozenko told them.

"Well, that's it then. We leave Space Dock at 1600," Kathryn told them. "I'll join you in half an hour, Tom."

"Admiral," Tom said, using her rank although through the last sixteen years they had been close friends on first name basis. "We'll get them. Don't worry."

"I know we'll get them back, Tom. They have a two day lead on us, but I have faith in my old crew..."

"Aye, Admiral!"

They filed out, with Eamon and Miral in tow. All except Gretchen Janeway who had been quiet all the time.

"Kathryn...?"

"Yes, Mom?"

"Bring them home soon, Kathryn."

Gretchen Janeway's heart wanted to break at the look she saw in her daughter's eyes. The control of the last hour finally gave and Kathryn was close to tears. Her hands were trembling, and she bit her lower lip in an effort not to give in to the urge to cry. Her eyes held a sheen in them, and a deep, deep distress none of the others who had just been here in the office had seen.

Kathryn had never stopped loving Chakotay. Never. Gretchen had known from the moment Kathryn called her to tell her of Kol and Katya's disappearance, where they had gone.

But Gretchen knew something else. While most had condemned Nechayev's tough vitriolic outpourings, that admiral had become the target of ridicule instead. Gretchen was not one to gloat, but Nechayev got her just desserts in the way Starfleet turned on her. Never a happy woman, Nechayev had time to consider her humiliating treatment of a great man and see it in comparison to the way she herself had been ignored at social functions, how her clout had greatly diminished. Nechayev realised in the first years after Chakotay vanished for ever from Federation space, that there were many more people on Commander Chakotay's side than she had imagined.

Forgiveness was something difficult to offer, especially when present at the birth of her grandchildren. Kathryn Janeway sobbed hours after their birth. Gretchen Janeway had found it difficult to forgive Admiral Nechayev when she witnessed Kathryn's pain throughout her pregnancy, and the trauma of giving birth to the twins. Kathryn had gone into deep post natal depression, and only with the greatest of care and support of herself and the entire Voyager crew and the Paris family had Kathryn pulled out of it. She had two small babies to care for, two children to raise without their father.

Kathryn had been insane with grief in those first months after Chakotay left the penal colony and disappeared for good. The children had been four years old... He had never seen them, hadn't wanted to see them. The only sign from Chakotay that he could possibly have stayed was when he informed them:

"If I see them, I might never want to leave them."

The children had never known what it was to have a father, and the only frame of reference they ever had, was watching Miral with her parents, watching Eamon Carey interact with Eileen and Joe Carey. They felt that absence more and more as they got older. Kol and Katya spoke with her often, and mostly, they talked with such longing of their Chakotay.

Kathryn had time to recover her composure and spoke:

"I will, Mom. Don't worry, I will."

Gretchen could not mistake the underlying excitement in Kathryn's eyes and her voice sounded something lighter, too.

"I have no doubt you will, love."

Kathryn smiled as she prepared to leave, after having given Gretchen details to prepare for the children's return.

"Thanks, Mom..."

Gretchen sighed as the door closed behind her. Then she gave a broad smile.

"That was the best thing you've done, Kol," she whispered softly. "You meant to have your mother find Chakotay. You wanted to lead her to him..."

**

END PART TWO

SILVER SPIRIT

PART THREE

There was a second of stunned silence in which Katya and Kol's faces registered a flurry of emotions. Shock, consternation, surprise. Mostly it was the unexpectedness and harshness of the leader's words that threw them. Katya moved forward and her hands tentatively reached for the leader, then slumped to her sides in a gesture of acute disappointment.

'"No, he can't be dead," Katya cried out in pained dismay.

"We - we came all this way for...nothing," Kol said the moment he found his voice. He looked away, anywhere, where none of them could see the sheen of tears burning in his eyes. He struggled for composure, found very little of it. His disappointment ran deep.

They had not entered Chakotay's possible demise in the equation of the search. It simply never occurred to them. Kol swallowed painfully, then straightened up again, feeling the sympathetic eyes of the others on them. Katya had gripped his hand again, and he felt how she shuddered.

The other people started shifting around uncomfortably. Kol thought they looked to their leader for every cue before they took any action. He experienced a tug of envy, but mostly, his disappointment that they had not anticipated that their father could have died, lingered. A sick dread that they would after all, never meet the Warrior, the man whom he and Katya had hoped to call "Dad". All indicators in the research led to their belief that Chakotay was still alive. The ancient whom they found in an uninhabited region deep in Mexico had given them no reason to believe otherwise.

Now Kol, his hopes dashed, his dismay mirrored in Katya's eyes, realised that he had introduced themselves only as Chakotay's children.

"My name is Kol Janeway, and this is my sister, Katya," Kol said, and before he could continue, the leader interrupted, giving Kol and Katya a smile which creased the lines in his face to deep furrows.

"I beg your forgiveness, for not introducing myself," he replied, "I am Grey Eagle, and these are some of our people," he continued. "We have seen a small vessel land and leave again. We knew there were strangers coming..."

"We are Chakotay's children. I - " Katya choked up, too distressed to speak further.

Kol felt sorry for her. She had been so keen on meeting their father. Grey Eagle's words had rocked her hard. He put his arm around her shoulder again and comforted her.

"It's alright, Katya. At least we came to the right place. Perhaps we can even learn how our father spent his last days here with his people..."

"His people..."

"Yes," Grey Eagle said, "but, we take you to our village first. You are not suitably attired for the journey across the sands - "

"The sands?" Kol asked and his sister said at the same time:

"What for?"

Grey Eagle smiled and one of his followers touched Katya's hair. The woman who caressed the shoulder length tresses said:

"As black as a raven's hair..."

Katya gave her a brave smile, an obvious attempt to hide her distress, Kol surmised.

"We journey a short way across the desert to our village. From there it is a half day's journey to the Abode of the Silver Spirit."

"Silver Spirit?" Kol asked surprised as the women picked up their backpacks and they started moving swiftly out of the clearing through the dense undergrowth.

"He can tell you about the man you say was you father..." Grey Eagle replied, walking behind Kol while two tribesmen brought up the rear and the others walked ahead of them.

"He knew our father?" Katya asked, a little surprised.

"Chá-ko-tay was known to all of us, Kol and Katya Janeway, children of Kathryn Janeway..."

Kol and Katya both turned in their tracks and faced Grey Eagle.

"He told you who our mother is?"

"He knew about us?"

"Of course he knew, dummy," Kol replied to his sister, "how else could we have been named for his father and his cousin?"

"It's not funny, Kol."

"Of course it isn't. He must always have known. It's - it's why..."

"His presence was so strong in our lives," Katya offered reflectively as they continued walking.

"What was our father like?" Katya asked as she trudged behind one of the men who cut a path for them through a thick throng of leaves and branches.

"Very strong and big, with a great heart..."

"A good man, then."

'"I knew that!"

"He was very much a good man, a great and gentle warrior."

"Oh, no longer angry then?"

"He was...very - " Grey Eagle paused, looked up through the roof of the forest to the thin slivers of light passing through. Kol and Katya had stopped too, looking at him and wondering what he was thinking.

"What?" Kol ventured.

"In the beginning he was very angry, very bitter..."

"I can understand that," Katya said and Kol nodded his affirmation, adding:

"The Federation dealt him a very cruel blow, Grey Eagle. They excommunicated him, calling him a traitor, criminal and murderer."

"They took him away from our mother. He has never seen us, Grey Eagle," Katya said softly, before turning again to follow the tribesman in front of her.

Grey Eagle shook his head. He had known Chakotay since the Warrior joined them eleven years ago. Chakotay had been bitter, but as he came under the spell of his people again, the bitterness left him. He had spoken so often of the children he had never seen, always wondering what they looked like, whom they resembled, what their manners were like.

Young Kolopak he knew, would have done his father proud. Kolopak had taken the sign, like his father and grandfather before him. It told Grey Eagle something. Chakotay was still alive in this fine young warrior who was his son. He smiled to himself. It was a good thing they could not see that. Silver Spirit would tell them all there was to know about Chakotay who lived among his people for nine years. As if Kol read his thoughts, the young warrior turned to face him again.

"This Silver Spirit... I suppose our father Chá-ko-tay spoke with him often?" Kol asked in an unconscious imitation of the way Grey Eagle pronounced their father's name.

"They must have been great friends."

"I suppose Silver Spirit must know about us too, then."

"Could he tell us the stories of the Angry Warrior?"

"Maybe Chakotay told him why he left us."

"I wonder what Silver Spirit looks like..."

"At least we'll get to know more about our father's life here, on this planet."

"If you two will stop for one minute, I can perhaps answer your questions," Grey Eagle said with a tone of marvel in his voice. The boy and girl, children of Chakotay who died, spoke a lot. He wondered about their world where they could give commands of the voice, or touch a panel, and things would happen. Here they led a simple existence and they were happy.

"What can you tell us, Grey Eagle?" Katya asked, half stumbling forward as she caught her boot in an exposed root.

"I can tell you that you should wait till you come into Silver Spirit's presence. He does not see many people, but as Chakotay's children he will see you."

"How do you know that?"

"We may not be Chakotay's children," Kol said. "We could have been lying - "

The woman who walked in front of Katya stopped, touched Katya's hair again before she spoke in a soft voice.

"The Angry Warrior's strong features are present in both of you. You are Chakotay's children. Besides..."

"What?" Kol asked, his curiosity piqued.

"You would never lie," she said enigmatically before turning and continuing.

Kol and Katya remained quiet after that, the sticky heat cloying to their clothes. They were really not suitably attired, Kol thought as he watched Katya struggle a little, her hair now damp and clinging to her. So much for Uncle Tom's 20th century designer jeans. Here in the wilderness they were a little useless, cumbersome daywear. He wished suddenly he was back in Indiana on their farm where he would swim in the creek.

They had yet to cross a small desert...

**

The village was small, a group of dwellings constructed from mud bricks. Kol had not been surprised. These people had chosen this lifestyle willingly, shying away from all forms of technology. They could really make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Kol remembered suddenly Aunt B'Elanna's words of what their father had said on a planet where they had been marooned by the Kazon. Their father had complained about being the only Indian in the universe who couldn't make a fire.

He and Katya were in the home of one of the women. She had given them clothing, loose fitting garments like their own, and very cool in the heat. She gave them shodding that resembled espadrilles. He could see Katya's fascination with the strap sandals, and wondered how they manufactured the shoes.

"Here," the woman said, handing both of them long spears, "you will need these for protection."

"I thought that - "

"You will need it," she insisted, and armed with the spears and their backpacks, they left the little house to meet with Grey Eagle again. He would be the only one accompanying them to the Abode of Silver Spirit.

"Thank you. You are very kind," Katya said softly, her eyes still filled with the disappointment at news of Chakotay's death.

She felt much more relaxed and comfortable in her new clothing, easier to walk and move swiftly across the plain to the distant mesa. It reminded her of Earth and she felt a sudden longing to see her mother again. But Kol had promised. Their mother would come after them. She would. Then she would have to face Chakotay. That was their real agenda. They had wanted their mother to see their father and encourage him to come back to them and take his rightful place in the family, as father and husband. Now that Chakotay was dead, she wondered whether it was worth it at all. What did they accomplish? Seeing maybe an old man, a tribal elder who would tell them of the kind of man the Angry Warrior was? How would their mother react? Up until this moment, Katya hadn't given that a thought, she realised with a pang.

They had seen their mother unhappy for too long, and before they went off to the Academy, she needed to have him with her. But they wanted him too. They wanted to be emotionally connected to him. Now it was all for nought. There was to be no warrior after all.

"It pleases me to help the children of the great Warrior," the woman's voice broke into Katya's thoughts.

"Ready?" Grey Eagle asked as he popped his head into the entrance of the door.

"Yes," they chorused.

"Then we leave immediately, for we must reach the Abode before sundown."

"Thank you, Grey Eagle, for taking us to this Silver Spirit, who will tell us everything we need to know about our father."

"It is what we must do, for the great warrior who had done so much for us here..."

***

The sun glowed red in the late afternoon. They were almost there, and Katya wished for a moment that the kind woman had given her something to cover her head. Her face was flushed and she was drenched in perspiration. She looked at Kol, who didn't appear much different from the way she must have looked. He tried valiantly to shield it though. Always so brave, so proud at not letting others see his discomfiture. He had always been like that, hardly ever giving in to the urge to cry. Kol took after their mother in that respect, and she guessed that she too, to an extent, was like that.

It was something that caused Miral endless frustration, she knew. Miral who was so ebullient, so full of life, ready to have an emotional outburst she hardly wanted to control. It was to Katya the strangest thing. The one minute Miral would be angry, and the next, it was gone, as if it were never there.

"We are almost there," Grey Eagle said, increasing his pace a little and they followed quickly. Kol was behind her, and only once along the way across the dry plain had they encountered something resembling a giant lizard. She realised quickly why they carried spears, and what the straps of the sandals were made of. She shrugged, and turned her attention to the rocky outcrops in front of them.

"I hardly realised it, Grey Eagle," Kol panted, "that we've been moving along a steady incline..."

"You have. If you look behind you, you'll see how high were are."

Both looked for the first time down on the plain, and in the distance they could see the outline of what must have been the edge of the forest.

"Come," Grey Eagle's voice sounded peremptorily as he turned without making a sound and stalked agilely over the rocky terrain. Kol and Katya had a hard time keeping up with him, and only his own knowledge of the area gave him the advantage over them. They had youth on their side, and Grey Eagle was about as grey as his name suggested.

The cave appeared so suddenly that Katya drew in her breath sharply. The opening was large enough that three or four people could walk through at the same time. They paused, staring, their hearts thudding wildly for seconds on end.

"This is where you'll find him," Grey Eagle said softly as he pointed to the entrance.

Kol thought that they would never have found it. It was so well hidden in the belly of the amazing number of rocky outcrops of this mesa. He realised that they were not on top of the plateau, but a little more than halfway up the slope. No one looking from the level ground up, would ever suspect that there was a cave here. He looked at Grey Eagle, whose eyes had suddenly become inscrutable.

"Are you - ?" Kol started while Katya moved tentatively forward.

"I will stay here," he said, and Kol felt a shiver go through him.

"He means for us to go in alone," Katya whispered as she pulled at his sleeve at the same time.

"I know, Katya, but Grey Eagle looks so secretive. What if this Silver Spirit will not give us an audience? Or, worse, how could Silver Spirit know we're coming?"

"Because he is the Silver Spirit, Kol," his sister said sagely. "Now, are you coming, or are you going to stand and gawk at a hole in the wall?"

Kol had to smile. Katya seemed to have regained her spirits. She was in her teasing mood again. He sighed with relief then followed her into the cave. He gave one last backward glance and saw Grey Eagle standing quite still, looking imperious in the late afternoon sun.

*

It was dark and surprisingly, not damp. The twins stood still for a few minutes for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Gradually things started taking shape, like the tunnel they were in that veered off into two different directions. The walls of the cavern looked...painted, and in the dark glow they could see paintings, eagles in flight, eagles perched on branches, and then, Kol drew in his breath. They were about ten metres from the entrance and the soft orange glow from outside still allowed them to see.

"Look here, Katya..." he whispered urgently as he pointed to a row of paintings.

Katya stepped closer and peered at the drawings of a woman's face, caught as her head turned, as if someone had called her. Her eyes looked alive with merriment. She was smiling, with her hair fanned about her face. A moment, frozen in time.

"It's Mom, isn't it?" she asked softly.

"At least now we know Chá-ko-tay did visit Silver Eagle..."

"He might even have stayed here, Kol," Katya suggested.

"Yeah..." Kol answered a little distractedly, his interest more in what lay ahead.

They moved further in. Kol wondered whether light somewhere in the cavern was responsible for the extremely soft glow that made objects like rocks lying around and cave drawings visible. It was low, but they were able to move carefully until they reached the fork.

Kol looked at Katya.

"This way, I think," he whispered, "more light seems to come from the depths there..."

"Aye, Captain," Katya replied, and was rewarded with a fist nudging her gently in the ribs.

They moved carefully, not certain what lay beyond the next turn and the next. The tunnel narrowed for about ten metres, then opened into another, smaller cavern. This was where they stopped, Kol grabbing the back of Katya's top to prevent her moving ahead.

It had been quiet since they started at the entrance of the cave, but here, the silence became something that seemed to breathe. Now it was as if they could touch it, so thick and tangible it was.

All the more so as they observed in the far corner on a sort of chair, the figure seated there. They watched for several moments in awe at the stillness of the figure. Kol and Katya looked at each other, both seeming to wonder whether they had merely come to disturb someone who appeared to be in deep meditation. Especially Kol who had, since his thirteenth year, been experiencing the peace such meditation could bring, appreciated that they should leave the man alone. There was no doubt in their minds that this man was indeed Silver Spirit. His hair... So they waited. Interminable minutes in which Kol stood quietly and admired the way in which Silver Spirit sat so focused, his eyes closed with barely a movement from him except the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. His serenity touched them, filling them with a vague sense of intimacy.

"Kol..." Katya murmured very softly, "look at his hair..."

"Shhh..."

Katya remained silent after that, standing next to her brother and waiting for Silver Spirit to emerge from his deep solitude. Her mind was a jumble. Silver Spirit would tell them what they needed to know to make the warrior Chakotay even more real to them, as if their father had been alive. That was the way of the warrior. They were all storytellers and she and Kol were prepared to sit and listen Chakotay become alive before them. That is, when Silver Spirit willed it so.

She was still thinking that when both of them were alerted to a soft rustle.

Katya's heart sat in her throat. Her lips were parted and she was afraid to move lest she disturb Silver Spirit.

"Come..."

They were beyond wondering how he could sense their presence.

It was his voice that rumbled from the depths of the cavern and carried like an echo to them. Deep and resonant it sounded. They moved forward at the soft, yet firm command.

There was a taper burning somewhere in the cavern. They couldn't see it, but it threw the cavern into a swirl of dark shadows that moved like ghostly figures along its walls. It did something else: it threw Silver Spirit in half relief, a kind of silhouette where they could only see movement of lips and hands. His face they couldn't see, even if they tried. His strong, muscular arms glistened in the gloom.

Silver Spirit didn't speak after his first and only word, but his hand gestured for them to take a seat about three metres opposite him.

They were speechless as they looked at him in the darkness, for the one feature that stood out and left them in no doubt as to his identity was his hair.

It was parted in the middle and hanged past his shoulder.

Hair that was so long and light that it appeared in the strange and fascinating play of light and shadow to shine like silver.

It was indeed Silver Spirit.

They had removed their backpacks and put down their spears.

"We were sent here by Grey Eagle," Kol said, still struck by the magnificence of the tribal elder.

"Yes, you are Kolopak and Katya Janeway," he said, and Kol could swear that Silver Spirit's voice trembled.

"We are also the son and daughter of Chakotay..."

"I know."

***

END PART THREE

SILVER SPIRIT

PART FOUR

Kathryn lay on the bed in the prime suite of the USS Perseverance, and shifted about restlessly. She had been unable to sleep, and Tom had instructed the pilot to engage maximum warp. They had transwarp capability on this vessel, but for their purpose there was no real point in using it since they were still within the boundaries of Federation space.

They had already picked up some valuable clues, including finding the planet where they thought Kol and Katya had been. Instead, they found the twins' commbadges.

Kathryn had been too worried, too strung out to appreciate Kol's ingenuity at leading them astray. Tom and Commander Allman, his Security officer had found the signal on their long range sensors, and hurried to Epidauros, but Tom just shook his head when she gave him an enquiring glance upon their return. He showed the commbadges to her, the only sign that they had been on the planet.

"Whoever transported them from here, will have left a trail, Kathryn, however faint it might be," Tom had assured her.

They did indeed find a trail which led them to another planet and another. She had been frustrated and her concern had grown that they might not find Kol and Katya after all.

Chakotay...

They had been obsessed from such an early age to know about him. With hindsight she realised now that she should have been more open to them. She should have told them about Chakotay, everything she knew of him, letting them know the wonderful and incredibly brave man that he was.

Too brave and too honourable, caring too much about her, sparing them pain, and making a sacrifice he never should have made.

Now the twins were on their way to find him, wherever he was. Chakotay was for certain not within Federation space. He had successfully hidden himself from them, and she? She had, when Nechayev died six months ago, been thinking about him so often, more than ever she had done in the past. Strange how she had had the same objective the twins had, but hers had been tentative, mere possibilities she turned over in her mind. Kathryn supposed that she still thought of obstacles, of things that could stand in the way of her possible peace and happiness. Always in the last six months she rather weighed options such as that he might still not want to know about the children, still not want to be a part of their lives, still not want to be the father and husband he was. She saw those little niggling and unnecessary impediments, while Kol and Katya, bless them, had no such reserve.

They simply went out to look for Chakotay, regardless of the consequences. An impulsive action that had Starfleet's finest Captain on its finest ship after them.

She rose from the bed and went to the vidcom, took her tricorder and downloaded the date she wanted to look at. They were vid-images of the children taken from their birth, tracing every milestone, every step they took, their first school day, Kol's early proclivity for sporting achievement, their high school years, their championship games at parrises squares.

She smiled at the way Katya took her first steps - she started walking before Kol did - toddling precariously towards her, laughing with the newest teeth showing. It was as if she ran towards the imager. Kol looked mutinous. He hadn't wanted to be picked up and insisted on heaving himself to a standing position. He had sailed out of her arms back on to the grass again.

Everything was captured. Katya's first tentative steps in dancing, Grandma Gretchen holding both babies who wriggled in her arms. There was footage of Kol's first solo shuttle flight when he was ten, Katya who excelled in quantum mechanics and showing off her winning science project. There was Kol holding the Taung skull, millions of years old...

By the time she looked at the school sports team, there were tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Chakotay..." she murmured with trembling lips, "you missed all of these. You needed to be there, with them, carrying them on your shoulders, teaching them games, telling them stories...legends of the Angry Warrior..."

Her hands shook as she switched off the vid-com again. She paced the floor, thinking of the children. She loved them desperately, had sometimes been too protective over them, afraid that they might be jeered, shunned for things their father had been accused of.

"You did every conceivable honourable thing, Chakotay, nothing, nothing that you should have felt any shame..."

As if it were his voice she heard, it throbbed in her:

"Our children will carry the scars, Kathryn. Nechayev will never leave you alone as long as I am around you and the children."

Kathryn remembered Nechayev's scathing vows:

"I will make certain no one forgets what you are, Chakotay..."

"She hates me, Kathryn, from way back, when I was still a young lieutenant, serving on the Salamander..."

"Something happened, Chakotay. It's not only Nechayev's natural predisposition to dislike anything and anyone that stands in her way, or disagrees with her. It's more than that, I know, Chakotay," Kathryn had told him the night before the outcome of the tribunal.

"If you know, Kathryn, how can you doubt her power?"

Yes, she knew. Chakotay had told her in one of their quiet moments in the months before they reached home, and he had known that a tribunal awaited him.

"She what?" Kathryn had asked, so surprised that she sat up straight and he gave a yelp of pain as his arm twisted the way she pulled him with her.

"Hey, I was still young, and very impressionable..."

"But there was honour and dignity in you, Chakotay," she had told him, not doubting that he had done the right thing.

"She was already an admiral, did you know? One of the youngest in 'Fleet."

"And on your first mission, she propositioned you?"

"I guess you could put it like that," Chakotay had answered, not too willing to divulge more of what had been an embarrassing situation. "I extricated myself from her."

"In your quarters."

Chakotay had given an exaggerated sigh.

"Yes, in my quarters, Kathryn. Now will you stop?"

"What did she want?"

"Kathryn! How can you even ask? Of course she wanted...company."

"Your company, my love. Your hair was sleeker and a little longer then, you were much younger then and handsomer too, right?"

Another sigh and he threw himself back against the pillows.

Yes, Kathryn Janeway thought. Nechayev, a lonely, frustrated woman, approached Chakotay, and Chakotay had thrown the book at her. Fraternising with a junior lieutenant, one who had no interest in the admiral, a young officer who kindly told her about rules and that he wasn't interested in her. After he joined the Maquis, Nechayev had seen his act as an act of betrayal against the Federation, and an ideal opportunity to nail Chakotay.

"One day, Chakotay, I'll get you. You wait and see," Nechayev had promised when she left his quarters, making certain afterwards that no one had seen her or knew what she had done.

In a strange way Kathryn had felt sorry for the lonely admiral. Hadn't she herself been subject to those very feelings? Lonely, brooding in the darkness, pondering on the fate of being a captain and not being able to explore her womanhood? Being just Kathryn?

The very same man who had let Nechayev down so gently, guided Kathryn Janeway into accepting that she could be a woman as well as a leader. It was, when she finally relented and allowed herself to love Chakotay openly and with joyous unity, the best thing that had happened to her. It was the same Chakotay, only years later, older and much wiser.

So the ghost of Nechayev remained, and on his day of reckoning, she unleashed her full anger on him. A woman spurned who turned into something malevolent, an evil personage whom no one really loved or cared about.

Chakotay bore the full brunt of it. Nechayev had never forgotten her own slip of indiscretion, nor the fact that a young officer, years younger than herself, had rejected her advances. Her anger, her scorn, Kathryn believed, had been born out of her acute embarrassment at exposing the most vulnerable part of her to a junior officer, one who had cared enough to know that allowing himself to be pulled into something so clandestine could have disastrous results. That was not all. The Chakotay Kathryn had come to know and love, had simply not been attracted to Nechayev and had respected her enough to save her the ignominy of being found out.

She turned on him.

He paid seventeen years.

Now Nechayev was dead.

*

"I love you, Kathryn," Chakotay whispered, his mouth close to her ears, nipping her lobe so that she turned into his embrace and held tightly on to him.

"I'm glad I chased after you..."

"Oh, really?"

"Sure, Commander, it was a done deal. When I set eyes on you, my life changed."

"What took you so long, my love?" he asked again as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the couch. He sat down and allowed her to snuggle closer to him.

Chakotay felt so hard, soft, safe all at once.

"I wasn't very brave, was I?"

"Only very human, Kathryn. I would never have stopped, you know."

"Stopped what?" she asked, although she knew what he meant. She had such a need to hear him declare himself over and over again, as if she still could not believe her good fortune that he didn't turn her away after waiting for so long.

"Loving you..."

"Even if - "

Chakotay gave a sigh. Kathryn could feel how his chest rose as he expelled his breath.

He was going to love her till the day he died.

"Yes," he said at last, "even if you never returned my love..."

"I love you, Chakotay," she pledged before leaning over to kiss him. It was a long, lingering kiss that brought tears to her eyes, and he gripped her tightly to him.

"Shhh..." he murmured while caressing her cheek. "Tuvok will he here shortly, and I can't have my bride in tears, can I? What will he think?"

"We've made glorious love?"

"I want children, Kathryn," he said suddenly.

They hadn't thought that far ahead, still too giddy with their new found joy and the breathless freedom of at last letting Kathryn, the woman be as important as Kathryn, the Captain. She sat up and stared at him. Long moments in which her eyes had lit up and her hand covered her mouth. He thought she was distressed and drew her into his arms again.

"It's alright, Kathryn," he soothed, "if you don't want chil -"

"Chakotay..."

"I said it's - "

"I want babies, Chakotay. Very badly, you know. You'll make a brilliant father..."

"And you, my love, will be the best mother in the world."

"But first, Tuvok."

"First, Tuvok," he agreed, then kissed the tip of her nose.

"Happy?"

"Supremely..."

*

The chime sounded far off, coming insistently closer until Kathryn woke with a start. She sat up on the bed and realised that her face was wet with tears.

I was dreaming...it was so real...so real...

"Coming..." she called, then rushed to the bathroom where she dabbed her face quickly, attempting to look presentable again by the time she stood in the lounge of the executive suite.

"Enter," she called out and when Tom stepped inside, she wasn't surprised. He was due to consult with her and give an update on their progress.

"Kathryn, are you alright?" he asked with great concern as he saw how her face still bore traces of tears.

She nodded, afraid that her voice might betray her .

"Hey, it's me, Kathryn..." Tom coaxed softly as he took her hand and led her to the couch.

"Have you made progress, Tom?" she asked.

"Some," he said candidly, not wanting to raise her hopes.

She gave a sigh. As a scientist and former Captain of a starship, she knew the importance of studying all the clues, and Tom was simply being very thorough.

"There's something else, isn't there?" she asked, the sudden burn of her heart taking her breath away.

Tom looked away for a minute, then at her again. He gave her the PADD he had been holding in his hand all the time. She stared at the data, then frowned heavily.

"They were seen in the presence of Ken Dalby?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes, Kenneth Dalby. Old Chakotay fan and ex-Maquis, Kathryn. He's running freight these days."

"He never took up the offer to remain in Starfleet at the time, I remember. Ken preferred to keep outside Starfleet."

"Yes, he's doing quite well for himself, and no doubt he knew Kol and Katya and probably thought he'd do them a favour by transporting them to the planet where they hoped to find Chakotay.

Kathryn turned the PADD over in her hands, and Tom thought how nervous she appeared. He touched her hand and stilled the movement, taking the PADD from her again.

"We're only about fourteen hours behind them, Kathryn."

"They were impulsive, Tom..."

"Kathryn, they were just looking for something they had been denied all their lives," Tom countered.

Kathryn sighed. Much as she wanted to haul them over the coals, admonish them for heading into such a foolish venture, she just wanted her children back. She had gone through hell for them, and now her anger had long dissipated at the incredible chances they took. They had never before wandered off so far, and although Kol was dependable, in a pinch, what could he do? The odds were that they'd never find...him...

"I know, Tom, and Chakotay...he might not want to be found, you know," she answered, her voice sounding suddenly desolate.

Tom smiled at her. She frowned.

"Didn't you know, Kathryn?"

"What?"

"The odds are," he started as if he read her thoughts of earlier, "that Ken Dalby led them to the right homeworld. "

"I want to see them, Tom. I'm going out of my mind with worry..."

"And Chakotay?"

"Chakotay..."

Kathryn sighed. Tom wondered if Kathryn Janeway knew how she looked. He wanted to stand her in front of a mirror so that she could see the longing in her eyes, hear the wistful sound in her voice. He thought that she had little hope of seeing Chakotay, that the twins would not see him after all. For all they knew, Chakotay might already be...dead. That was a possibility few thought of and that he had entered into his own equation. Chakotay could very well be dead.

He knew how disappointed Kol and Katya would be, and more so, their mother.

"Yes, Chakotay..."

"If they find him, they may not be able to convince him to - to return, you know," Kathryn Janeway said after a long pause.

But their mother would, Tom thought as he rose from the couch and prepared to leave. Most certainly their mother could bring Chakotay back to where he belonged: at his wife's side and as the father of his children.

**

Kathryn walked to her drawer and took out the picture of Chakotay. She stared long and longingly at it, her fingers caressing the cool glass softly before she brought the picture to her lips.

Then she held it away from her.

"You are out there, Chakotay," she said to the face in the frame. "You are there, and I am here, missing you so desperately as I have done for seventeen long years. Seventeen long, long years. There has not been a day that I didn't think of you, nor a night that you weren't somewhere in my dreams. Your spirit is strong, so strong, my love, and it lives forth in the children - the beautiful, brilliant children we created; the two most precious beings in the entire world that you longed for..."

As if she could hear Chakotay again, his words rang in her ears:

"And what will we name them, Kathryn?"

"For your father, Chakotay, and for your cousin who died..."

"I love you, Kathryn Janeway-Chakotay," he pledged again.

"Yes, Chakotay," Kathryn spoke to the face in the picture, "they are the children you always wanted. We had been so blessed then. You would have been proud of them," she stammered, then she gave a huge sob as she held the photograph close to her.

For a few minutes she cried brokenly, then as suddenly as the bout of tears started, she forced herself to stop crying. She put the photograph back in her drawer, closed it with some finality before she went into the lounge area again and walked towards the replicator.

"Computer, coffee...black..."

**

END PART FOUR

SILVER SPIRIT

PART FIVE

"You know us?" Katya asked, wondering how much Chakotay had told this wise old man whose face was in silhouette.

"He spoke of the children he had never...seen," Silver Spirit answered in slow, measured tones while he kept his gaze directed at them.

Kol and Katya shifted a little uneasily under Silver Spirit's stare, and they thought he was sizing them up. He was looking at them too intently. Katya lowered her gaze and stared at the floor, while Kol studied some pictures - drawings really - against the walls on the cavern. It was too dark to discern clear outlines and definitive markings and figures, but he thought Chakotay must have come here often to be in the presence of Silver Spirit. Chakotay must have seen in the wise old elder a mentor, or experienced with this man a spiritual healing of some kind. Silver Spirit was an undeniable presence, his long silver hair lending him an added aura of majestic proportions. It was no wonder the tribespeople spoke of Silver Spirit with such reverence. His face - what little they could see in silhouette - was austere, but not unapproachable. Somehow, in spite of this air surrounding him, they felt they could speak with him, and ask him questions.

"Tell us of him, Silver Spirit," Kol asked after s short silence, not fazed way his sister was. Silver Spirit could not keep his eyes off them. "Tell us what he endured..."

"Please..." Katya joined in, finding her voice at last. Kol could hear that she was close to tears. He felt like that himself, but the least they could do now, was to know as much about Chakotay as they can from this man, then go home and get on with their lives.

"Chakotay was a very bitter man when he left the Federation prison. He was treated there like an outcast..." it came slowly from Silver Spirit.

"Why?"

"Inmates were warned about him. They had been told that Chakotay was a traitor, the worst kind of betrayal against the Federation. He was a murderer - "

"But he fought in the name of freedom of his people, didn't he?" Kol asked, wringing his hands in a sudden burst of the anger he tried to control.

"Yes, but it was not seen like that, Kolopak. While conditions were not harsh, Chakotay endured the scorn and harsh treatment of the real criminals "

Kol and Katya tried not to show their shock, but they had an idea of the kind of treatment their father must have endured from his fellow inmates. It had taken them long to find one Kreb Dehaan who had been in jail with their father at the time and who wasted little time in apprising them of behaviour that amounted to torture. Yes, it couldn't have been easy for their father.

"Did he ever want us?" Katya asked, a question she had asked her mother so often. "Didn't he care enough about us?"

"Katya... you were named after his cousin. Chakotay loved you long before you were born. He loved you too much to allow you to be sullied by his own shame."

"We would have overcome that," Kol retorted with a burst.

"He wanted to protect you, Kolopak..."

"By leaving us? By leaving our mother to raise her children alone?"

"It was not what Chakotay believed, Kolopak."

"What did he believe, Silver Spirit?"

"Katya, there were men and women in Starfleet who vowed to make Chakotay and his family's lives difficult if he remained in the Federation. They...hated him..." Silver Spirit added slowly.

"Who were they?"

"Perhaps you would not know them. I cannot tell you, Kolopak. Chakotay was too pained to reveal all of what had been done against him."

"Yet their power was such that they could drive him from everything he loved," Kolopak said reflectively.

"Yes..."

"He has never seen us, Silver Spirit," Katya said quietly, a wistfulness in her voice.

Katya and Kol watched in surprise as Silver Spirit's hands began to tremble. It was quiet a long time and Katya wondered whether her words just stunned the old man, or whether Chakotay had told him anything else about them, or not. What was there to tell Silver Spirit if Chakotay had never seen them anyway? Silver Spirit rose from his seat and for a fleeting moment they were able to see the faint lines above his left eyebrow - a tattoo such as the rest of the tribe wore. Silver Spirit retreated further into the darkness, and minutes later, after what they thought was rummaging in a chest carved out of the trunk of a tree, he returned and put something down on the flat surface that separated them. Kol reached forward and picked it up. It was a photograph. He didn't have to show it to Katya, since she leaned over, curious to see what was on it.

"It's us," she whispered in awe, her fingers caressing the glass. "But - but we're only about - "

"Four years old," Kol said, then looked at Silver Spirit again. The old man's face, half in the shadow and not very clear, appeared to them inscrutable again.

"How did - ?"

"Chakotay saw you when he was released from prison, a few days before he left Federation space," Silver Spirit said. "He - he could not keep away..."

Kol thought he must have imagined it, but it seemed to him that Silver Spirit found it difficult to speak, as if there were a lump in his throat.

"Did our mother know?"

A nod from Silver Spirit was the only answer.

"He must have loved us..."

"Then why didn't he stay?"

"Because he didn't want his shame to touch us..."

Then Silver Spirit spoke.

"There was nothing that pained Chakotay more than having to leave his family. Because he loved them too much, he made a sacrifice. He had seen you two, Kolopak and Katya, and it was again for him as if his heart had been torn out of his ribcage - " Silver Spirit closed his hand into a fist and beat it against his chest. His face contorted. Katya wanted to lean forward and touch him, but his head was bent. A single tear escaped and dripped onto his hand.

"Why?" Kol asked.

"Look - look at the picture. What do you see there?"

Both studied the photograph again. They were playing in a shallow pool on their farm in Indiana. Beyond wondering how this photograph had come to be in Chakotay's hands - it could have been himself, incognito, taking the picture, or someone else doing it for him - they saw two laughing children. Kol with his hair very light and golden, and Katya with her pitch black hair and blue-grey eyes looked into the camera. In the background they could see their mother, always keeping a watchful eye on them. It was just before they had gone off to big school, Kol thought. They looked carefree, untroubled, happy. They had not yet started questioning the absence of a father. It hadn't mattered too much then. It was only later...

Still, Kol appreciated what Silver Spirit meant. The two children in the picture were clearly happy and well-adjusted, and with Chakotay in their lives then, who knows how tough it would have been on them? Kol wondered how he would have stood up to being called the son of a traitor and murderer... Those things had been spared them, for he knew, as surely as he had been sitting here in front of Silver Spirit, in the presence of a great man and tribal elder, that they would not have escaped it had their father lived with them.

Kol felt his heart burn again with belated anger, for he was beginning to see and understand the tremendous sacrifice their father had made. Yes, the picture showed two happy children, but they would have been happier still, had Chakotay...

He sighed, looked at Katya who took the photo from him to study it more closely. A teardrop fell on the glass, and Kol touched her shoulder. He felt a little like crying himself.

"Do you understand?" Silver Spirit asked.

Katya was sobbing quietly, and for a moment Silver Spirit leaned forward and wanted to touch her hand, but he restrained himself, sitting back again in his seat.

"Chakotay spoke of you often, and of your mother. He called her his queen..."

"Silver Spirit..."

It was Kol who spoke, as if a thought struck him suddenly.

"Yes?"

"Did our father ever think that we might come in search of him?"

There was a long silence. Kol watched in fascination how Silver Spirit's fingers clamped the edges of his seat. A convulsive gesture that surprised both Kol and his sister. They jaw the clenching of his jaw, lips that trembled and gave them the appearance that he was murmuring some forgotten litany. Even in the half dark they could see Silver Spirit's eyes were closed. It was a moment so sacred, so personal that they knew anything they uttered would have been an intrusion into those private thoughts. Kol found it something strange, as if Silver Spirit's aura extended to him as well. And though strange, he merely registered it as his own affinity to the spirituality he shared with these people. He rose from his seat and walked round the flat surface which served as a table. Then he touched Silver Spirit's tattoo.

A touch of the ages, Kol thought as he felt Silver Spirit's hand come up to cover his own. He remained like that for long, long moments and then Kol noticed with surprise how a tear rolled down the old man's cheek.

"Every day..." Silver Spirit started, "every day that went by, Chakotay dreamed of just such a day..."

"He wanted us here?" Katya asked, also rising and wanting to comfort the old man.

"He never gave up hope. Never... You are now how he always pictured you...tall, brave young warriors like he had been. Beautiful, looking like him and looking like your mother all at once..."

He had been staring down at the dusty floor, and Katya stroked his long, silver hair, her own tears trailing hotly down her cheeks.

"Our mother has suffered, Silver Spirit. She needed him, perhaps more than we needed him," Kol whispered.

"You must understand...there were people who did not want to see Chakotay happy, who hated him and would do anything to prevent him from having his family..."

"If - if he lived, Silver Spirit, and if -if we told him those things were no longer there, would he have come back with us to taste that happiness he was denied for seventeen years?"

"To see us grow up, witness all our milestones, our first school day, the first night that - that Kol had..."

They could feel as they stood so close to him how Silver Spirit stiffened.

"What did you experience, Kolopak?"

"A vision quest, Silver Spirit," Katya said quickly. "He thought it was nightmare. That was the first night our mother told us about you..."

"Could it have meant that our father's spirit was very strong in Kol?"

"Would he have come back with us, Silver Spirit?" Kol asked, not wanting to be reminded of that first vision quest he so unexpectedly experienced, and without the akoonah.

"You saw your grandfather..."

"Yes..."

"Chakotay always visited him in his own vision quests. That's why he knew..."

"What did he know?"

"That you would come, one day."

"But now it's too late, isn't it? We'll never know whether he would have come back with us and take his rightful place in his family," Katya sighed sadly.

"Silver Spirit," Kolopak Janeway said, straightening up and standing a little away from the old man while Katya still stood close to him, her hand still on his hair, "do you think Chakotay would have returned with us, had he lived today?"

There was a pause, a silence that hung in the cavern, and only the last syllables of Kol's words echoed in the stillness. They waited anxiously for Silver Spirit to speak, but words seemed to have stuck in his throat.

"Please..." Katya whispered.

That was when they heard another voice.

"You can tell them, Chakotay..."

"Kathryn..."

The twins swung round in the direction of the voice.

"Mom?" Katya cried out in surprise.

Kol looked for a moment shocked, then he looked at Silver Spirit again.

"You are Chakotay?"

****

END PART FIVE

SILVER SPIRIT

PART SIX

She had been standing there for several minutes listening to the voice of the man she loved for more than twenty years. From the moment he had asked: "How do you know my name?" she had always known that her destiny would be interwoven with this man. From the moment he said: "No, it's not a legend, but it made it easier to tell", she had known that he would love her forever. This was the man who left her because he loved her too much, sacrificed as he had done so many times before, and paid the highest price a man who loved a woman to the end of his days was expected to pay.

It was clear from the moment she stood at the arched entrance of the cavern that they hadn't noticed her, and just as clear that Kol and Katya didn't know they were speaking to their father.

Now her voice alerted them to her presence. Her heart burned fiercely, proudly for a few heated moments, seeing the children there with their father, a picture she will remember till the day she died.

They looked liked they belonged together.

Only momentarily the twins experienced confusion, looking at each parent in turn before Kol turned on his father.

Chakotay's arms opened, and two children who longed all their lives to be held in his arms just like they were standing now, were home at last. She did not intrude. It was their moment, a fulfilling of their dreams, their wishes.

She watched her silver haired Chakotay cling to his children as if he would never let them go again. He touched their hair, their faces, traced with trembling fingers the tattoo on his son's forehead. He wept with them, shuddering deep sobs that echoed over the years and washed away his pain, his hunger of yearning for them for so long. He kissed Katya's forehead, and she ran her fingers through his long hair that had whitened, not so much with age as it greyed because of his trauma, his long incarceration, the endless pain he endured for so many years.

She understood in those moments why he told them Chakotay had died. It was possible that he had given up hope of ever seeing them again. She knew that he would not fault her for having told the children a little about him. The rest, even Chakotay would understand, the children had learned from every man and every woman who had ever known the good that was in her husband, Commander Chakotay: the kind, gentle warrior, the officer who endured little nonsense from those who served under him, and who made time for every single one who respected him.

Kol and Katya cried with him. Tears that mingled, old tears and new tears, tears of remembered pain and bitterness that turned into tears of new-found joy and happiness. He touched them, making certain they were real, alive. And her children? That he didn't reveal himself to them did not seem to matter at all.

It was as if they sensed anyway.

Silver Spirit was Chakotay. Chakotay was Silver Spirit.

Sometime soon, when all the excitement of being reunited with their father, whom they didn't recognise because he was so grey, the children would joke about this day. She knew Kol would tease Katya mercilessly, and Katya would return his teasing measure for measure. She could imagine one telling the other:

"But I knew all the time it was Dad!"

Kathryn's heart wanted to swell and burst with pride. It was a burning, painful glow in her bosom that made her want to clutch with both hands at her heart. It throbbed unendingly: the knowledge that her children were where they belonged. She saw her Chakotay, Katya and Kol now as she had always dreamed of seeing them. Kathryn pictured Chakotay carrying Kol on his shoulders, or lifting a sleeping Katya into her crib after she had fallen asleep in his arms. She pictured Chakotay helping the children with intricate problems, patiently guiding them and teaching them their first swimming lessons, teaching them to play hoverball or parrises squares, fly their first shuttles...

For a few betraying seconds she felt a deep regret that Chakotay hadn't been there to see the children grow, that he hadn't been there to counsel, to reprimand, to soothe them in the middle of the night when they had nightmares, or when they were teething. She felt a regret that he couldn't have seen their first school day, or be present when Kolopak took the tattoo, or when Kol played in his first championship game for the schools' league at the age of thirteen. She felt a regret that he couldn't see Katya dance in her first ballet performance.

But watching the three of them in those moments, standing so close together, touching, talking, smiling, discovering as if they had known Chakotay all their lives, made up for every heartache she suffered, every scream of pain she endured when she gave birth to Kolopak and Katya.

Somehow, she sensed it would not be so difficult, so painful after all, to convince Chakotay to return to them. All these years she had had this one thought: Chakotay would be bitter still, remember his shame too much and not desire to join them. Kathryn had not wanted to raise the children's hopes by promising them she'd bring him back. She had been too, too pained still in those first years, working so damnably close to the very person who drove a wedge between them. Nechayev had never given her a moment's peace, their acrimonious working and personal relationship sending Kathryn close to the edge time after time.

Nechayev had threatened to tell the children. Kathryn wondered then what manner of woman could be so calculatingly vindictive, so unutterably malicious to hurt two innocent children. So she set about protecting them from not knowing about Chakotay... She would carry out Chakotay's wishes and shield her children from people like Nechayev whose only joy in life was to see others as unhappy and lonely and depraved as they were.

She should have told them.

Now she had hope. Perhaps he'd not resent the fact that she did, however little it was, tell the children about him. Chakotay would understand that the fine filial thread that connected his children to him, could never be broken. He was never really gone, she realised with some insight. That thread weaved through the years in and out of her children's lives, and even if she never told them of their father, they were going to know him. They sensed his presence even though he was light-years away from them.

It was a fact, a blinding, glorious moment of truth. There was something unbreakable, an invisible connection that made her heart sing. For the first time in sixteen years she saw her children really, really alive. For the first time in seventeen years, Kathryn Janeway allowed herself to hope again.

She had been standing quite still at the mouth of the cavern and observing with joy the tearful, heartwarming reunion. Her heart thumped wildly for a few seconds when all three of them turned to look at her. Katya whispered something to Kol and Chakotay, a gesture so familiar and so intimate that Kathryn's eyes filled with tears. Then the twins moved towards her, while their father remained where he had been standing.

"Mom...?" Katya was the first to speak before she threw herself in her mother's embrace and Kol hugged the two of them.

"Now you know..." Kathryn whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. She stroked Katya's black hair and touched Kolopak's tattoo tenderly.

"Mom," Kol said, standing a little away from her, determination in his voice, "make sure Dad comes home with us."

"Yes," agreed Katya as she looked at Kathryn with shining eyes, "don't let him get away this time..."

She smiled at her children, squeezed their arms, before she nodded.

"Promise, Mom?"

"Promise..." she replied before watching them leave the cave to join Grey Eagle outside. There were others waiting for them too, and Kathryn was certain that they'd not stop talking once they reached the others. Kol was certainly going to question Grey Eagle...

"I promise," she whispered to herself, very softly mouthing the words.

*

They were alone.

At last.

Fifteen metres apart. Kathryn wondered idly why Chakotay hadn't sensed her presence the way she knew he must have sensed the children's presence in the cavern. Perhaps he had been so engrossed with them... Perhaps he did know. He stood there, looking so regal, so completely in harmony with his surroundings that it seemed sacrilege to uproot him from it. His hair hanged about him, and she pictured him in just such surroundings on Earth, six centuries ago. He was not of this world, she thought. He belonged in another time. He looked so different, yet so...same, as if nothing changed about him.

She felt a little afraid to move.

He saw how hesitant she was to move from where she stood. Never in his wildest dreams had he pictured her so beautiful, or so bereft of eloquence. She did not speak, yet she said so many things. Her hair had hardly gone grey, he noted. In the darkness his own eyes had long ago adjusted, the pupils dilated so that he could actually see her as clearly as if it were daylight. Just as he had seen his Kolopak and Katya, the two most beautiful children in the universe. Now Kathryn stood there, petit as always, dressed in what he presumed to be the uniform of an admiral. She was always going to go that way, he felt with so much pride. He had yearned for her so intensely that the pain never left him, and only in these moments did that pain become something of a supreme joy.

Kathryn's lips trembled, and she stood with her hands at her sides. He knew she felt some apprehension. He had accepted his children, received them with love and joy. He would accept his Kathryn, whose image was painted all over the walls of these caverns. It was a Kathryn whom he could never ever purge from his mind. And so the walls of the tunnels and caverns became the testimony of his undying love for her.

Once, he had given her up, now he was going to take back what was his - always.

"Come here, my love..." Silver Spirit commanded.

Kathryn moved forward, her steps at first hesitant, then quickly as she saw Chakotay's arms open for her. Just as she reached him, she stood still for a second to look at him. In the semi-dark she could see his smile, a pained smile which accompanied the dimples that formed in his weathered cheeks.

She stepped quietly into his embrace and when his arms closed gently around her, she rested her face against his chest. A deep, deep sigh escaped her as her own arms clutched at him. He felt so strong, his chest so hard, so incredibly hard and reassuring. After seventeen long years she was drowning again in his great big hug.

Trembling fingers stroked her hair, trembling lips pressed against her head, and in a voice that stammered, that croaked in hoarse tones, Chakotay spoke:

"My Kathryn..."

In the minutes that followed they stood and touched, much as Chakotay had touched his children. There were endearments they murmured, soft cries of anguish replaced by cries of joy. Fingers explored, rediscovered familiar planes of cheeks and brows, lips that pressed against palms... There was a great tenderness in his eyes as Kathryn raised her face to him, marveling again at the way his hair had gone white. He bent down, his long mane forming a curtain around them, and he brushed his lips against hers. It was a long, lingering touch in which his tears burned down his cheeks and mingled with hers.

A sob.

A desperate cry before she hurled herself against him again.

"My Kathryn..." he murmured over and over.

"Too long I have hungered for you, Chakotay...Silver Spirit... Never leave me..." she whispered against his hard chest. His arms wound round her tightly for a few tense moments.

Then he held her a little away from him. Very gently he wiped the tears from her cheeks, his thumbs caressing her soft skin with infinite care. Her eyes closed at the endearing way in which he touched her.

He smiled a sad smile.

She felt afraid again.

"I will not let you go again, Kathryn. I too, have hungered for you, in moments I thought I would never live again. I want my family, Kathryn, God help me. I have seen my children and I have you here in my arms. I'll not let you go again..." the warrior said with great passion as pulled her close to him again.

She felt gloriously soft, old, old memories of days and nights when they had lain in each other's arms swamping him. When Kathryn looked in his eyes again, her own mirrored those never forgotten memories, those heady nights when they knew they had created two beings. Their children who had their names long before they were born. Her eyes shone with love and pride.

"They take mostly after you, my love," Kathryn said softly. She rested her head against his chest again and sighed as she felt his hands on her back.

"They have your inquisitiveness, Kathryn, both of them..."

"You noticed that already?"

"Has anyone ever told you they talk too much?"

"Everyone, Chakotay."

"I have always loved them, Kathryn. Always. When they came in here, I knew that my lonely existence has come to an end..."

"Katya used to ask me the most questions and Kol, he - "

"- is like me... finding peace in meditation?"

"Yes..."

"Kathryn, those things of years ago, I'm much stronger now, my love..."

"Chakotay, I'll tell you everything. As much as you want to know. There's something I must convey to you first..."

"What is it?" he asked, frowning heavily.

"Nechayev... she died six months ago."

Kathryn felt Chakotay give a sigh. She could sense he didn't want to talk about the admiral who caused him so much grief and pain.

"I - " he choked up, held her close to him again and gave a few wracking sobs. When he could contain himself again, he looked at her, a question in his eyes.

"Before she died, Chakotay, she asked me to forgive her..."

"She had no mercy for us, Kathryn."

"She was never at peace after what she had done, Chakotay, and near the end of her life, she was the loneliest woman I've seen. She was shunned by Starfleet Command, by everyone who knew what she had done to you."

"She suffered?"

"Yes. She could not undo her deed of seventeen years ago, but she needed absolution."

Chakotay nodded. He understood the need to be at peace, and if Nechayev had never experienced that, he could only imagine how lonely and unforgiven she must have been.

Nechayev played hard games, and she too paid the price.

"Once, Kathryn, there was a time that I thought I could never forgive her for what she had done to us, and what she threatened to do to you. Now, I'm at peace with myself, my love, and all the bitterness that had been there, mercifully gone."

"Then I'm glad, Chakotay. You have a great heart, and more love to give now than ever before..."

"Kathryn..."

"Yes?"

"There are things here that I need to do before - before..."

She felt her heart race. She wasn't going to prod him and put him in a position where he wanted to please her. He had to make the decision himself, in spite of what she promised Kol and Katya. She just had to make sure that he carried it out.

"Before what, Chakotay?" she asked, irresistibly drawn to twirl his long tresses between her fingers. She couldn't help it. She touched his face, traced the outline of his tattoo, the hollow that has now formed where his dimple had been. He was thinner than she remembered, more gaunt and yet, so strong.

"Before I take my wife home..."

"I love you, gentle warrior. Now, before I make arrangements to remain here for a few days, there are some people who'd like to meet Silver Spirit," she said with a relieved smile, her arm encircling his waist as they made their way towards the exit of the tunnels.

"Oh? And who might that be?"

"You'll see, Chakotay. They are the friends who have never forgotten you..."

In the soft glow of the cavern warm eyes feasted on her as she looked up at him.

"I love you, Kathryn Janeway."

She pressed herself against him for a second.

"Welcome back, Silver Spirit."

**

END