A Longish Author's Note:

Calling what I've begun posting here a collection of microfictions admittedly feels like a cheat, 'microfiction' being a term with unclear conventions, defined in some fandoms as a fic composed of a single sentence and functioning in others as simply a shortish fic. It's an ambiguity I rather capitalize on here, if only because presenting various narratives in this way has let me see a unifying thread among these tiny vignettes that I've been idly pecking out on my phone at work, or else scribbling down at night.

Oh, and I blame Phoebe Janeway for all of this. If it weren't for her talking to me incessantly one night, as I sighed dramatically in bed and prayed desperately for sleep, none of this would have happened.

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed
Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down
Yeah, we couldn't destroy a single one
And history books forgot about us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once.

-Regina Spektor, "Samson"

I.

My parents always talk about the farmhouse and its history like its a family tradition that they share in equally. But the house we live in used to belong to Mom's parents, and her parents' parents before that, and I'm sure if it were up to only Daddy, we'd live much closer to San Francisco and his work at Starfleet Headquarters. But as Mom always tells us, repeatedly and with great conviction: she was born in Indiana and in Indiana she shall stay.

I don't know why I think about this now, after Dad's charged out of his den, through the hallway, and to our front door, where he now stands imperiously bellowing to poor Cheb Parker, "state your business here, young man." But if I had to guess, I'd say that it's because while his clipped words might be Starfleet, his tone is, I imagine, the same one my great-great-grandfather must have used when telling people to get the hell off his land.

Starfleet through and through, our father. And yet sometimes, so unexpectedly Indiana.

"Well?" Daddy demands of Cheb, who's evidently made the mistake of skulking about our front porch, where Dad could clearly see him through the window in his study.

"I - I, uh, I came to see your daughter," Cheb finally manages, adding after a moment of contemplation, "sir."

Understandably, Dad whips around to me, Mom and I now watching with a fair amount of interest.

Oh, no, it's not me! Not this time, I intend to correct him, but right then, Kathy comes running down the stairs, a look of fear and humiliation transforming her face the second she sees Cheb standing outside the door, our father blocking his way.

"Kathy," Cheb says, sounding terrified, and at this, Dad swings around to stare at my elder sister.

Cute but stupid, this Cheb Parker. Because as bad as it is for Dad to think Cheb's here for me, it's much worse for Cheb if Daddy realizes he's here for the golden daughter.

"Kathryn?" Dad demands, now fixing her with that look he gets when he's surprised and disappointed.

I can understand why Kathy told Cheb to meet her here, Dad being gone so much of the time now, even in the evenings, that it didn't occur to her that this could happen. And as tempting as it is to see Kathy fall from grace, be seen in my father's eyes as something less than a teenage beacon of reason and restraint, I know firsthand what it's like to be on the receiving end of the look Dad is giving her. Know concretely the feeling of inadequacy that Dad's disapproval will bring, even more so for Kathy than for me.

I do the first thing that comes to mind.

"Cheb!" I rush forward. "Thanks so much for stopping by, but I meant to tell you last week that Kathy's making time to help me with my microbiology… So I guess I won't be needing a tutor after all." I smile sweetly as Cheb looks on in confusion, then finally catches on, thank god, and begins to nod his head continuously. "It's very sweet of you to offer your help though," I continue to smile, and behind me, Mom apparently decides to lend a helping hand.

"Yes. Very thoughtful, Cheb."

Dad looks from Cheb to Mom, then back again. And I hold my smile, batting my eyes and silently willing Cheb to keep his mouth shut.

"It appears your services are unneeded, Cheb," Dad finally sniffs. "Your willingness to help is duly noted, but the girls have homework to attend to at this hour, so we'll be bidding you a good evening now."

Dad basically closes the door in Cheb's face, then marches back to his study without another word. The den door closes with a quiet click, and Mom looks at me with a straight face and sparkling eyes as she nods, "very impressive, young lady. Creative and efficient."

"I'm sure I don't have any idea what you mean, mother," I reply, but barely keep the self-congratulatory smirk off my face.

She chuckles as she walks back to the kitchen and her dinner preparations, and once she's gone I turn my eyes to Kathy, my sister still frozen on the bottom of the staircase.

I know why Kathy's so incredulous. We don't exactly make it a habit of helping each other out, especially when it come to Dad. And while I didn't do this with some kind of agenda, I also wouldn't complain if she offered to do my microbiology homework for the next few weeks.

"Thanks," she says simply, and only after a long pause. After that, she goes back up the stairs, disappearing into her room to continuing studying. Or maybe to daydream in privacy about kissing Cheb Parker?

This last thought makes me snicker as I walk toward the kitchen, feeling the uncharacteristic urge to help Mom with dinner. So the bookish, uptight, walking-ad-for-the-Academy who sleeps in the bedroom next to mine is actually a real person?

Who knew.

. . .

II.

I accept now, and with only moderate agitation, that no matter how many times I visit Starfleet Academy or the HQ campus, I end up getting lost. Guess that heralded Janeway sense of direction is something that missed me altogether when the universe handed out genetic material.

I've come for the day to visit Kathryn, and despite that my eyes will undoubtedly roll back in my head when Kathy begins to prattle on about her advanced xenobiology course or god knows what else, I do miss my older sister. Have been looking forward to this trip to San Francisco since the two of us set it up, my numerous, terse denials to Mom notwithstanding.

"May I be of any assistance?" a voice beside me offers, and when I turn to locate the source of the polite question, lock eyes with a tall cadet.

"I beg your pardon?" I ask like a blithering idiot, because, admittedly, the male cadet's dark, shiny hair and perfect jaw and muscular shoulders have thrown me a tad bit off.

"You look like you might be lost," he smiles, his blue eyes now beaming at me. "Would you care for a little help?"

Ordinarily, I'd be too stubborn to accept directions. However, I'm also not in the habit of turning down the company of men who look like this.

I tell him the dorm I'm looking for and he claims that it's on his way. "Unless you mind the company," he bats his impossibly long eyelashes at me, for which I give him a few points. Flirting is an art and I like men who've committed some effort to its study.

We set out down a manicured path, and he begins to cheerfully make conversation, asking polite questions the answers to which, I can already tell, he's only feigning interest in. A mere two more minutes of walking and the cadet begins to remark on his own interests, detailing - with gossamer-thin humility - his impressive list of academic accomplishments. We round a particularly lovely rose garden as I idly wonder what perverse law of nature dictates that all attractive men must be idiots or jackasses.

"Pheebs!"

At the familiar shout, I look over the cadet's shoulder, now spotting Kathryn standing in front of what, apparently, is her dormitory. And she's smiling, miraculously, despite the fact that her baby sister is, as usual, late.

"She's your sister?" the cadet blurts, and by the way Kath puts her hands on her hips and glares at him, I gather that the two of them are fairly well acquainted.

"Nice to meet you, William Riker," I bid him sweetly, and promptly quit his side. It's pure impulse when I add, not at all tempted to look back, "my apologies if didn't I appear appropriately enthralled by your conversation. Allergy to braggarts is a bit of a family trait."

. . .

III.

"Not a drinker, I see."

I meant the remark to be reproachful, what with me having to steady the other woman with my arm, a shock of her red hair falling across the black shoulder of my dress as well as itching against my chin. But I've had so much fun with this woman this evening (even drunk, she's proving a riot) and knowing that this must be out of character for such a decorated Starfleet Officer, I'm hard pressed to keep the smile off my face.

"How was I supposed to know it wasn't- that it wasn't synthehol?" she throws up one hand dramatically, making us both unsteady in the process of her showing frustration.

"How about we talk with our words and not our hands from now on, hmm?"

"Right," she acknowledges, nodding decisively, and I can't help but laugh out loud at her expense. "What's so funny?" she asks.

"You, dear. You're very funny. Drunk and surprisingly heavy, but charming even then."

"Aw," she smiles, "I'm so happy Claudia thought to introduce us tonight. She must have known that - known that we'd become friends"

"Well," I huff, a bit frustrated now, "it would have been even kinder if Claudia had warned you that those were real martinis you were drinking at the art gallery."

"It just never occurred to me," she explains, "being on starships for so many years."

"Welcome back to Earth," I drawl, as we finally enter the building I believe my new friend to be staying in. "Will you be able to replicate a detox hypo? Or will you have to suffer through this the old-fashioned way?"

"I don't know," she says, and then smiles a dizzy, distant little grin.

"Is there a doctor in the house?" I ask dryly, after calling for the building's turbolift.

"Doctor Beverly Crusher. Newly appointed head of Starfleet Medical at your service," she replies, impressively quickly, and gives me a little salute as she leans against the lift's wall.

Only she can't quite hold herself upright, and so she slides slowly down to the floor, giggling as she goes.

"Doctor," I pronounce, not bothering to pick her up. "I believe our patient might be beyond help."

. . .

IV.

I understand why Kathy is annoyed with me, as the swim was my idea, the moon being so beautiful and the lake so invitingly tranquil. But, lest I remind her, I was not the one who chose to meticulously fold up our clothes, leaving our garments in tidy pile on the edges of those rocks , so terribly exposed to the gusts now blowing from the east.

"This is not how I planned to spend my shore leave, Phoebe," Kathy hisses, as we steadily pick our way back to our weekend cabin and the distant promise of waiting clothing. It's the first time I can ever remember Kathryn letting me walk in front of her, and for this I am absolutely not grateful.

"You're the one with all that Starfleet wilderness training, Commander. Didn't you learn how to fashion swimsuits from leaves or something?"

"Just be glad I didn't," she grumbles. "I'd tailor yours from poison oak."

And I'm sure would if she could; of Kathryn's many talents, her ability to hold a grudge is particularly remarkable.

"You know it's a shame that lovely turquoise bra of yours is floating somewhere toward the bottom of the lake," I observe instead. "But since when do you wear anything other than regulation grey? Something you'd like to tell your sister, perhaps? "

"At this particular moment, no, there's nothing I feel inclined to share with you," she shoots back, but her tone is a little lighter, having lost its previous bite.

"Suit yourself," I shake my head, water from my hair sending a spray of cold droplets down my naked lower back. "But we've still got a long walk ahead of us, dear."

Behind me, Kathryn snorts. Then falls into the kind of quiet reflection that means she's deciding how to go about expressing something she thinks I won't understand.

I allow her to consider her thoughts for however long she needs, my arms now wrapped around my shivering body as I pick way gingerly down the darkened path, leaves steadily crunching beneath my feet.

"Do you remember Dad always saying that Starfleet captains don't have the same luxuries as other people?"

"All the time," I sigh forlornly.

"Pheebs... Phoebe, I think I'm about to be promoted."

"Congratulations," I pronounce neutrally. "That's what you've been working toward, isn't it?"

"Yes," she concedes reluctantly, but I can tell she wants to say something else after that.

Another long, meditative pause. And when Kathryn finally starts to speak again, I find myself slowing my stride, lest we reach the cabin before she voices the entirety of whatever she fears might be too revealing to speak aloud. Revealing even now, while on a naked walk her with her only sister, several pieces of her clothing presently floating somewhere along the north-central shores of Lake Ontario.

. . .

V.

After Kathryn's ship is lost, Mom displays pictures of her more prominently within the house. It's healthy, this kind of direct acknowledgement of the loss, and for this small sign I should be grateful. And I would be, except that sometimes when I come to visit, eventually climbing the creaking steps to the second floor of the farmhouse, I get stuck at the top of the landing, staring at old pictures of myself and Kath.

I know that I'm considered - was considered - the more obvious beauty of the two of us, given that I got the boobs, and the lips, and the long legs I admittedly like to show off with hemlines Mom and Kathy both bemoaned as "higher than strictly necessary." But it was Kathryn who always had this way of looking so effortlessly polished, so completely together, no matter what she was doing or where she was. It's something I tended to mock, always verbally attacking it as an unhealthy outgrowth of the Starfleet tendency to put shallow appearances before substance.

But even then, there's been this little drip of envy that's steadily pooled within me through the years. And sometimes I wonder if one afternoon the matriarchs of the Janeway family chose to take Kathryn and only Kathryn aside, showing her all the little ways to ensure that one's lipstick remains unsmudged and one's clothes never wrinkle.

At the top of stairs, just outside my old bedroom, I stare at a picture of my sister with our father, taken about about a year after Kathryn finished at the Academy. It was apparently windy that afternoon, the large trees behind them all bending decidedly to the right, and Dad cupping a hand over his eyes as if to shield them from the gusts. But right beside him is Kathryn, standing calm and polished in her sensible, perfectly tailored dress. Not a single goddamn hair out of place.

My eyes fill with tears and I fold my arms over myself. Force myself to march right back down the stairs as I try to will away the guilty flush that now stings my cheeks.

What kind of monster resents her sister even when she's dead?

. . .

VI.

I'm not sure what to say to break the one-sided silence I seem to have fallen into while Mark Johnson talks to me in a soft voice over rapidly cooling cups of coffee. I and Mark and have always gotten on well despite not having much in common. He's a kind, thoughtful person and his patience with Kathryn seemed to me something rare and boundless, once upon a time. To this day, the man is still so inconsolable with grief, I don't know what I can say that wouldn't shatter him into even smaller pieces.

It's been two years, and god knows I would give anything to bring back Kathryn, but a growing, impatient part of me wants to tell Mark that at some point he stopped mourning the real Kathryn, moving on to mourn some fictionalized version of her that bares less and and less resemblance to the woman whose body we may never find and bury.

However robbed by fate Mark genuinely has a right to feel, Kathryn would not have contently given him the hypothetical children he now tearfully brings up in these types of conversations. And she would not, absolutely not, have merrily surrendered command of a starship in order to move with him to that lovely plot of family land in Michigan; the land he's now decided to sell because, as he put in a minute earlier, all he can see there is "a future that's no longer to be."

That future was never to be, I want to shout at him. But I don't, of course, because doing so would be unfathomably cruel. So instead I sip my cold coffee, and silently mourn a woman who compromised her life for no one, so unable was she to resist the mystery around the next corner. The danger beyond the next star system.

Sitting here with Mark, I mourn that woman quietly and alone.

. . .

VII.

I meet T'Pel for the first time about a month after Pathfinder makes contact with Voyager.

I'm normally good with people, but my effusive, touchy nature hasn't endeared me to many Vulcans in my lifetime, so when I meet T'Pel at the first 'family of Voyager' dinner, I politely introduce myself, not hanging around long to exchange stories about her husband or my sister. It isn't until later that T'Pel finds me again, after I've now spent three hours listening to other peoples' stories and been too afraid to tell my own. After I feel more alone than I did before I came here, newly swollen with the fear of saying anything that would make my sister sound like anything less than some epic hero who will, without question, bring their loved ones all home safely.

I've gone outside to get some air, my husband still listening patiently to an elderly woman telling a long, wandering story about her niece Naomi, and after a few minutes, my solitude is broken when T'Pel appears beside me.

I'm not sure what to say to her, I'm kind out of small talk so long into the evening, but she simply stands beside me, not demanding my conversation, and just when I think I can't allow myself to hide outside much longer, T'Pel asks, "are you aware that when Tuvok first encountered your sister, he expressed reproach for her decisions, doing so in front of several high ranking officers?"

"Umm, no," I reply, as this is news me. Kathryn getting dressed down by the man who would become one of her closest friends? This is not a story my sister ever cared to share.

"As I recall from a conversation I had with my husband after their few meetings, he thought her blinded by her scientific curiosity and reckless with regard to her own safety."

"Sounds about right," I snort despite myself, and T'Pel tilts her head slightly to the side.

It's a remark I should really qualify with something else, given the circumstances, but I somehow don't feel the need. We fall into a comfortable silence, T'Pel appearing to have no vested interest in continuing our conversation.

"I should really get back in there," I say, thinking I'm being selfish, hiding away like this.

The other woman remains where she is, her shoulder a few centimeters from mine and her own tranquility proving contagious.

"In due time," she tells me. And so I stay right where I am. Ask the familiar stars above me if, somewhere deep in the Delta Quadrant, two people are having a similar conversation.

. . .

VIII.

When I refuse to go with everyone to meet Voyager at McKinley Station, Mom gets so angry that I think for a second that she might actually haul off and hit me for the first time in my life.

It surprises her to hear my refusal, her knowing that I'm so happy Kathryn and her crew are home - so relieved for their safety - that I've been crying non-stop since I heard the news. But here I am, eighteen hours of tears and one worried husband later, standing in my mother's living room and refusing to go join the hundreds of other family members gathering to meet their loved ones as Voyager finally reaches home.

It's not like Mom doesn't understand how badly I want to see my sister. That I've missed her so much and so long that I'm not completely convinced this hole inside of me that opened when Voyager disappeared will really close up again. It's just too deep and too empty, the hollow feeling it gives me now making me desperate at the mere idea of hugging Kathryn.

Which is why when I embrace her sister for the first time in seven years, I don't want to do so in a room full of journalists and Starfleet brass, their thoughtful, carefully crafted remarks pondering the history of what's taking place today. Nor do I have any interest in Kathryn having to smooth down her own relief and desperation; her burden again extended as she's forced to conduct a reunion with her family in front of the many waiting eyes of subordinate officers.

No. I won't do it. I'll wait.

I'll wait despite that my declaration makes Mom the angriest she's looked since I was sixteen and got caught sneaking out (because Kathryn, characteristically, refused to cover for me. The self-righteous little brat). And while I want Mom to understand my decision, I simply cannot find the words that would make her. She goes into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee, and I hear something that sounds like a swallowed sob coupled with footfalls across the wood.

I don't change my mind until about thirty minutes after everyone has already left for McKinley Station, when it rather belatedly occurs to me what might run through Kathryn's mind when she sweeps the crowd and doesn't see my face.

I make up a fair bit of time rushing the whole way there (a lifetime of running late has made me well equipped for this), but not enough, I know. By the time I reach McKinley, Kathryn and her crew have already disembarked, the crowd now diffusing away from the threshold that the USS Voyager's Captain walked through ten minutes earlier, appearing noble and victorious in the vids that will play for weeks.

I search frantically until I spot Mom and Kathryn still embracing loosely, Kath appearing to make introductions to her senior staff. She isn't crying, I guess she's still Captain Janeway at the moment, but even from ten meters away I can see the sheen on her eyes. I don't have any idea how she can still be holding on; the strength and emotional control it must require strikes me as simply inhuman. I fear how woefully little I might understand about the person Kathryn's been forced to become.

I don't really know how to insert myself in their gathering at this point, and am surprisingly content to merely watch. And watch I do for a few minutes, until Kathryn catches sight of me, her whole body freezing for a second, and a moment later she's excusing herself from the group.

"I see you're still incapable of being on time, baby sister," Kathryn teases me with an air of cheer, and loud enough that everyone nearby can hear her.

"I consider myself the prompt one," I tell her through a shaky breath. "You're the one who's seven years delayed."

Kathryn doesn't say anything in response, just walks into the arms I've opened for her. But then something happens, something apparently snaps inside her, because as soon as my arms encircle her, Kath's knees buckle and I'm forced to shoulder the entirety of her weight.

"I've got you," I feel myself whisper, as Kathryn begins to silently sob into my neck. Brace my body like steel to keep us both upright and calmly promise, "I've got you. You're not alone anymore."

. . .

IX.

It's the most crowded I've ever seen the house, which is saying something rather spectacular, given our family's history and the many traditions, good and bad, that have always come with being a Janeway.

Looking around, I decide I don't even mind the collective noise and occasionally bump of bodies into mine, not when the assembled Voyager crew and their families are all so swelled with relief and love that the very foundation of the farmhouse feels like it's begun to pulse with joy.

Kathryn makes her rounds in her usual, effortless way, and I notice the sudden chorus of whispers when she passes Commander Chakotay, the two exchanging a soft smile as the man gently touches my sister's shoulder.

Maybe, I think, as I've already heard the crew's gossip. But I'm not quite sold on this particular hypothesis yet.

It's an hour later, and I'm mid-conversation with three crewmen I'm meeting for the first time, when I hear my sister emit a sound I haven't heard since long before Voyager disappeared. I turn my head to see who or what has been managed to wring from the ever-composed Captain Kathryn Janeway such uproarious, unseemly laughter, but there are too many people between us and I can't quite see over the sea of heads to where Kathryn last stood.

"Does anyone know what's transpired to make my darling sister laugh like that?" I ventures to ask, not able to take not knowing, and an ensign standing next to me says with a casual shrug that it's just Tom Paris. Says it like the pilot's apparent ability to do this is some kind of ordinary, utterly unremarkable occurrence. As if the ensign's seven years on Kathryn's ship haven't rather pointedly revealed that what Tom Paris managed to pull off is something that a more spiritual person might call 'miraculous.'

"What was that all about earlier?" I ask Kathryn, the next time she passes back my way.

"What?"

"All that laughter. You. Tom Paris."

"Oh," Kathryn says with a distracted smile and an affectionate shake of her head. "That's just… Tom."

She promptly moves on to hug a new arrival to the party, and as I watch her go, feel my eyes narrow in interest.

Kathryn has always denied it, but looking back at our childhood, I know, with absolutely certainty, that her first crush was on this little blond, blue-eyed boy named Danny Cline. Danny was a clever little charmer and also has the distinction of being the only reason that well-behaved little Kathy ever got in trouble in grade school. Because Danny sat behind her in class, and he was just so funny to Kathy that he'd make her giggle loud enough to repeatedly disrupt the lesson, angering her teacher.

Not that Danny ever let himself get caught. Oh, no. Only poor, infatuated Kathy. But she didn't seem to get angry at Danny when his comedy routines lead to her getting extra assignments and a rare scolding from our father. I even remember pushing her on the subject once, because even to my vague, naissant concept of justice, it simply wasn't fair. But my sister just got this dreamy little smile on her face and said, "Oh, that's just Danny."

Another fit of laughter from Kathryn a few minutes later, and when I look over now, I can clearly see Tom standing beside his former Captain, his arm draped over her shoulder as several other people appear to join in whatever banter Tom's begun. Tom's wife is standing there too, all smiles with their newborn daughter in her arms, but this last image doesn't so much as make me twitch in discomfort. Not when I already understand how fiercely and unconditionally my sister loves her crew.

But maybe, I decide with a spreading smile, her crew is right, and Kath loves one of them a teeny, tiny bit more.

. . .

X.

Beverly is in the middle of telling an elaborate story when the person we've been waiting for finally shows up, and the friend on the other side of her stops Beverly mid-sentence, putting a hand meaningfully on her arm.

"I didn't mean to interrupt any girl talk," the newcomer apologizes, in a voice so presumptuous that his tone courts no remorse.

"Not at all," his wife tells him, her hand now moving from Beverly's arm to my right hand. "Will, this is Beverly's friend Phoebe. I believe you've met before?"

"I'm sorry," he says, having searched my face and not finding a memory. "Did we serve together at some point?"

"No," I laugh. "But you gave me directions once. When I was visiting my older sister at Starfleet Academy. Kathryn Janeway?"

"Phoebe Janeway," he states, sounding impressively calm. "Kathryn's Janeway's sister." He nods diplomatically before gesturing to the bar a ways behind him. "I think I'll just… let you ladies catch up."

"Coward!" Will's wife Deanna calls after him, and beside me, Beverly cackles.

. . .

XI.

The beep at my door comes half an hour after the boys have left to go on a camping trip with their father, and when I answer it, I fully expect it to be my ex-husband, slightly panicked at having forgotten this or that item that one of our sons is now asking about.

Opening to find Seven standing there, I have no doubt that I must look as surprised as I feel.

"I'm sorry if I've disturbed you," Seven offers stiffly, if soundly a tiny bit pained, and at this I manage to find my manners.

"No," I say. "Not at all. Please come in, Seven."

She does so, entering my living room with that kind of elegant, efficient movement she has, but once there, appears torn, as if she wants to leave now that she's come in.

"Forgive me for asking, Seven, but is everything alright?"

I don't know the young woman well, and what I what I know is mostly through Kathy's narratives, and in the last six months, those narratives have stopped. Not stopped in the way of occasional, brief mention that would denote genuine disinterest, but rather the abrupt, total silence that (with Kathy) bespeaks a profound source of pain.

Seven looks at me, and then looks away, appearing to contemplate my question with no small amount of anguish. As if the very idea of her disquiet is something she's not fully equipped to handle.

It makes her appear so terribly childlike. And not for the first time, I fear for her, having so much to still understand about people and their intentions while being as painfully beautiful as she is.

"Your children," she says finally, now looking around anew, "they are not home?"

Perhaps it's belatedly occurring to her how she much might be intruding on a relative stranger, but I force a serene, reassuring smile, "they're away with their father at the moment." This seems to calm her a bit, and so I add with humor, "they've gone off camping, and I am not a woman who camps."

Seven doesn't smile, but I'm pretty this is to be expected. I take it as a good sign that she sits down, looking more curious than distraught as she begins to study my family room.

"So," I try anew, "are you still at the Daystrom Institute?" I know from Kathryn that Seven's been doing a fair bit of floating about, accepting invitations from various think tanks, only to leave a few months later. It's the kind of thing that seemed perfectly healthy to me but made my sister fret dreadfully. She worried that Seven was flailing without Voyager and the kind of consistent environment it afforded her.

"No," Seven responds. "I'm presently on personal leave from the Institute."

"Do you plan to go back?" I ask casually.

"I," she begins, and then pauses for a moment. "I have not decided whether or not I will return."

"Perfectly understandable," I assure her, before she can begin to panic all over again. And after I say it, she seems to take a breath, looking again at the portraits I have hung around the room. Unsurprisingly, she seems most interested in the ones I have of Kathy. And although this is the kind of thing I would have little toleration for in someone else, Seven is decidedly different.

My entire life, there have been people (classmates, would-be boyfriends, even Starfleet officers) to whom I was, quite obviously, just an attainable facsimile of my sister. Someone who shares both a gene pool and a lifelong history with the characteristically reserved, seemingly unreachable, famous Captain-turned-Admiral. I've always scorned that kind of attention, both for my own sake and for Kathryn's, but as I look at Seven now, knowing that she's in my living room because (for whatever reason that I don't yet understand) I am the closest thing to Kathryn she get, all I feel for the young woman is unadulterated sympathy.

"I was about to make myself dinner," I tell her, "would you care to stay and join me in a meal?" And when she hesitates, I chuckle, quickly assuring, "don't worry, unlike another member of the Janeway clan, I'm a rather adept chef."

"In that case, I would be pleased to dine with you."

It's not quite a joke, but for Seven, I imagine it's pretty close. I'm relieved when she accepts.

It's tempting to ask her about Kathryn over dinner. To make her open up about whatever's transpired between them, or else, about her life on Voyager. What it was like after she was severed from the Borg; the relationship my sister forged with her those first few years. A voice inside my head has been telling me that Seven has a part of Kathryn that even I don't get to see. But even if this true - especially if this is true - I know it's cruel to pry it from Seven now, when she's so desperately trying to hang on to it.

Our conversation is pleasant if unremarkable, and when Seven leaves, hours later, I'm still concerned about her sudden appearance at my door.

Maybe Seven senses it, maybe she doesn't, but as she leaves, she nods thoughtfully, "Admiral Janeway once indicated that she considered the sound of your laughter a cure for most ailments." And then her mouth produces the first smile of hers I've ever seen as she concludes, "I found it a perplexing statement at the time."

Seven disappears without so much another wave goodbye, and that night, I lay awake in bed, listening to the sound of my empty house and thinking about my sister.

It's impulsive and maybe a bit selfish, but I lean over the comm panel by my bed, encoding a text-only message to the person in Kathryn's life who's the mostly likely to tell me what I want to know and, without question, awake at this ungodly hour.

Dear Doctor,

Pardon the non sequitur, but if you have the time and are inclined, would you mind telling me about Seven of Nine? I'd like to know more about her life on Voyager.

. . .

XII.

Mom asks to be buried in Indiana, which comes as a surprise to no one.

Kathryn doesn't say a word at the funeral. Doesn't make a single sound when they lower our mother into the ground. But I know this goes against every fiber of my sister's being, this idea of wedding oneself so permanently to soil.

At some point I'll have tell her that for all her searching, space is mostly a vacuum, and it can't fill those who ache hollow.

. . .

XIII.

"Did you finally convince her to get some sleep?" Tom Paris asks me, and I'm so tired myself that I don't even open my eyes when I answer in the negative, my head pounding as I shake it.

"She went to get some coffee," I explain, and hear a jagged sigh as Tom slides into the seat Kathryn recently vacated, his shoulder bumping against mine.

Harry Kim's doctors are now cautiously optimistic that the Commander will make a complete recovery despite that he's yet to regain consciousness. The news came this morning, after nine days of constant vigil; a solemn, silent parade of people from Voyager who've come in steady waves to show their love and offer support.

Tom is the only one besides Kathryn to be here everyday, watching with obvious anxiety as an entire team of pathologists debated the nature of the virus afflicting his best friend. But unlike Kath, Tom's wisely made himself leave for a few hours every night, if only to sleep in his own bed and share a meal with his wife and children. And though I've repeatedly pleaded for Kathryn to go with him, she always refuses, remaining behind to watch the motionless body of a man who's no longer young and yet apparently remains so singularly fragile in her mind.

I stretch a leg that's begun to tingle, thinking back to all the times my sister offered unsolicited advice about to her nephews; the infinite permutations of 'talk to me when you're a parent' that I invariably tossed back at her in response. Picture the bland, hollowed out look that Kathryn would get every time, always letting the subject drop.

I feel vaguely nauseous.

"I wish Mom were here," I whisper a few moments later, and the man next to me says nothing. Perhaps recognizes that my expression of longing wasn't really directed at him, or else is just too tired to ponder the fact that between us, we have not one parent who's still alive.

"Here she come," he says to me, when Kath appears at the end of the hall, and I can tell by the way Tom looks at my sister that he's trying to come up with something that will convince her to go home and rest.

"Save your breath," I tell him kindly, and when Kathryn reaches us, coffee in hand, she sizes Tom up in that solemn, thoughtful way that most people find unspeakably intimidating.

"Go home," she tells him gently, and when he opens his mouth to argue, puts a hand in his hair and gives him a firm look. "Go home to B'Elanna and your children. I'll comm you if anything changes."

Tom doesn't push back on the order. Merely shoots me a small, sad smile before he kisses us both goodbye for the night.

"You should go home, too," Kathryn tells me, not long after Tom has gone.

"I'll stay a little bit longer," I sigh in reply, and threads our hands together.

"Really," she argues, "the boys must miss you."

"I'll go soon," I say again, and listens as Kathryn sighs in a familiar, frustrated way. "Sorry, Admiral."

I lean back a little more heavily against the wall; allow the white noise of Starfleet Medical and the gentle pressure of my sister's hand to leech some of the tightness out of my aching upper back.

"I miss Mom," I hear Kathryn whisper, and in a flash, all the tension I just let go is there, hot and knotted in my neck.

"Me too, honey," I say, and try to breath in a little deeper when my sister squeezes my hand harder.

Squeezes it like her whole life depends on hanging on.

. . .

XIV.

I don't really advertise my art shows all that widely, the name 'Janeway' having a way of drawing idle, speculative attention that I don't enjoy. It's a reality I rather accepted long before I turned sixty-five, and no longer expend much energy fighting it, the way I did when I was younger. It's only when it comes to my art that I draw a solemn line.

"Miral loves every painting in this collection," B'Elanna tells me, after I saddle up beside her and companionably take her hand.

B'Elanna and Tom's oldest is an artist herself, and I have no doubt that B'Elanna only comes to so many of my shows because it makes Miral happy when her mother does so. In all honestly, I'm deeply fond of B'Elanna, so her coming makes me happy, too.

"Kathryn's around the corner if you'd like to say hello. I believe she was looking for you earlier."

"I'm sure she was," B'Elanna mutters, and though I have no idea what's afoot, I'm happy to laugh at the younger woman's expense.

"Better you than me, dear."

I know with deep conviction that B'Elanna and Kathryn love and respect each other, even though the two of them continually prod and poke, Kathryn forever surprised when B'Elanna doesn't accept her high-handed advice with boundless grace and gratitude.

It's something I secretly consider a bond between myself and the Klingon woman, this little dance B'Elanna always does with Kathryn. Because while Kathryn is brilliant, strong-willed and drawn toward other people who are the same, she's always had a bit of trouble getting on with people she has so much in common with.

Sometime later, B'Elanna emerges from the side of the gallery that's Kathryn on, now looking a little worse for wear, and I grab a glass of wine before slicing the crowd to join her.

"That good, huh?" I tease, and B'Elanna gives a little sigh, smiling despite herself. "You know," I begin to tell her, "as the years go by, I find myself losing my temper with my sister less and less. And at first I thought maybe it was because Kathryn was growing less arrogant, or maybe - maybe in my old age, I was a little slower to ire…"

"But?" B'Elanna draws up her eyebrows, and I roll my eyes, throwing one hand to heaven.

"But. I think it's fair to say Kathryn is still the same haughty bitch she's always been, and I'm the same moody, impatient woman who drove away two husbands and several outdoor pets."

B'Elanna snorts, the amused sound her only interruption as she listens with an air of agreement, and I weave my arm through hers.

"And then, dear, it occurred to me," I snap my fingers for effect. "It has to be the wine! I drink so much more now than when I was younger."

I hand B'Elanna my wineglass and she contemplates its contents for a few beats. Then raises it to her lips, draining half the burgundy fluid.

"Has the urge to wrap your fingers around her throat subsided any?"

"A little," B'Elanna replies, after squinting in mock reflection.

"Then drink two more." I wink as I confide, "I was about three glasses in the night she came over to borrow a few old photos and decided, since she was already in my bedroom closet, that she should reorganize it for me." I shrug, "Kathy was so pleasantly surprised that I didn't seem to mind, and I never thought to tell her that it was because of a lovely cabernet, rather than her knack for color coordination."

"She wants Thanksgiving to be at her house this year," B'Elanna tells me, sounding openly dismayed. "And I know we have a tradition of spending the old Terran holidays together, but Kahless, you know what that her cooking is like."

I do indeed. And the mere threat of it makes me wonder if I can wrangle up a professional obligation that will take me safely off-planet the week of that particular holiday.

Kathryn emerges into the main room of the gallery, flanked by an old friend from Bloomington and Harry's Kim's eldest son, presently on furlough from his second year at the Academy. She spots the two of us standing together and smiles enthusiastically, now navigating the crowd, toward where B'Elanna and I stand.

"Do they make a wine that strong?" B'Elanna asks me, sounding desperate as Kathryn edges closer, and I ponder what, if anything, could kill the taste of my sister's infamous charred roast goose and dried out pumpkin pie.

"No, honey," I tell her, and firmly squeeze her hand. "For that they make bourbon."

. . .