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i wait staring at the northern star
Who: Jim Kirk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
1701) & Kathryn Janeway (directives)
What: The Talk
When: nowish
Where: Wyver
Warning(s): probably nothing unless you're very sensitive about Star Trek spoilers from 2009
Jim's not stupid - and because he's not stupid, he knows Kathryn, in turn, isn't stupid. He doesn't believe that the soft semi-revelation of yeah something's up with this was a shock to her; they're both keeping quiet about too much, they've both seen and experienced too many indescribable things out in deep space.
It's still on the table to lie about it. He could. He's manipulative enough, he's done it plenty of times. But he just doesn't want to.
The bar he picked is low-energy, for Wyver, geared to the 'fuck off and leave me alone' kind of privacy versus any kind of manufactured intimacy, because that's just how the city is. Even now in the somber aftermath of near-apocalypse. Recognizable by some natives despite no longer carrying the ring he was given (not that he'd wear it anyway), he's given space, exchanging nods or low-toned greetings. It's been a rough few weeks, for these people. Longer for the refugees. He could easily slip away to Olympia, with its lesser damage and better weather, but it's another one of those things he just doesn't want to do.
"Walking around, doesn't seem so unbelievable that a giant dragon rolled through, huh?" he says to Kathryn once they're settling into a curved wooden booth.
1701) & Kathryn Janeway (directives) What: The Talk
When: nowish
Where: Wyver
Warning(s): probably nothing unless you're very sensitive about Star Trek spoilers from 2009
Jim's not stupid - and because he's not stupid, he knows Kathryn, in turn, isn't stupid. He doesn't believe that the soft semi-revelation of yeah something's up with this was a shock to her; they're both keeping quiet about too much, they've both seen and experienced too many indescribable things out in deep space.
It's still on the table to lie about it. He could. He's manipulative enough, he's done it plenty of times. But he just doesn't want to.
The bar he picked is low-energy, for Wyver, geared to the 'fuck off and leave me alone' kind of privacy versus any kind of manufactured intimacy, because that's just how the city is. Even now in the somber aftermath of near-apocalypse. Recognizable by some natives despite no longer carrying the ring he was given (not that he'd wear it anyway), he's given space, exchanging nods or low-toned greetings. It's been a rough few weeks, for these people. Longer for the refugees. He could easily slip away to Olympia, with its lesser damage and better weather, but it's another one of those things he just doesn't want to do.
"Walking around, doesn't seem so unbelievable that a giant dragon rolled through, huh?" he says to Kathryn once they're settling into a curved wooden booth.
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A situation she wasn't being entirely honest about herself. She hasn't lied about where her ship has spent the past few years, but she hasn't come out and said that technically they're lost. They're not way out there in uncharted regions of space because they're on a mission, they're trying to find their way home — and now they may never see Earth or Federation Space again.
It's eating her up inside to know that she's finally hit that inevitable roadblock, that she may not ever succeed in getting them home as she promised herself she would. This is the no win scenario she was afraid of, the one she told herself she would fight back against with everything she had. She got them through Borg Space, yet she can't seem to get them out of this.
Not yet, anyway.
"I've had my ship hung from a Christmas tree like a living ornament. You'd be surprised by what unbelievable things I'm willing to at least consider buying into."
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Which carries such enormous, crushing burdens, sometimes.
The inevitable bumble of do-you-want-a-drink and looming attention from the bartender washes over them, and Jim's left with a bottle of curiously red-tinged beer (Kathryn with, of course, whatever she'd like, or perhaps nothing - Jim seems unwilling to take up space without courteously coughing up a few coins, though, despite is immortal dislike of this type of economy).
Alright.
"I'm going to assume you don't need the 101 course in parallel universes and time travel," is the opener he's going with.
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Right under his. What was that record, seventeen?
If this was the James T. Kirk in question. She's doubted that for some time know, wondering if the was from some splintered offshoot of the timeline she was familiar with. There were things that just didn't add up, and him asking about her familiarity with time travel and parallel universes only serves to confirm those suspicions.
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That's that; there's no real way to prepare anyone for such a subject besides plowing right into it. Jim's quiet for a moment, but he doesn't seem to be stalling - he just looks tired. A revelation almost jarring held alongside the indomitable momentum he's displayed since meeting her. There's something there, maybe the weight of rank allowed to be visible to another captain-- but probably something else, too.
"In the future of your timeline, an incident results in two manned spacecraft being flung back into the past of my timeline. One was a Romulan mining vessel, fully crewed, and one was the personal transport of Ambassador Spock."
Sheds some light on a few of his probing questions; he says your timeline like he's sure of it. He is.
"The Romulans appeared first." A beat, his expression shifts with a brief, wry smile. "When I was born. Winona was supposed to deliver on Earth, but shit happened."
Anyway.
"No one knew, of course, until decades later. When the Romulan mining ship attacked Vulcan and I met the Ambassador. He... well. He wanted me to understand him, and we didn't have much time, so now I know things I shouldn't. Like what Sulu looks like in that uniform. It's not really memory, but I think things seem familiar still, sometimes."
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"He mind melded with you," she says after a moment, nodding in understanding. "Crude, but efficient. A timesaver with one hell of a headache. I suspected you were from a divergent stream. I'm far from anything close to a historian and I admittedly don't know much about your life — or rather, the life of the James T. Kirk my histories recorded beyond his illustrious Starfleet career... and certain rumors that have managed to survive the times that I never gave much thought to one way or another." (The womanizing. It's always the notion that Kirk was a supposedly notorious ladies' man.) "But there were things here that just seemed to say something wasn't right."
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"I feel pretty right," he points out. "You're the weird one, to me. You and your ... rude timeline, infringing on the rest of us. And starting rumors."
Does he even want to know about those, probably not.
"I'm used to being the wrong Kirk." His gaze skirts out, as if looking for something he's just not going to find. There's something resigned, there. "It's why Q wanted my help in the first place. Couldn't figure me out, I guess." Jim takes a drink of his beer, re-orients himself to the conversation. Clearly, this is something he doesn't discuss often. Why would he? Melded so closely with a person who cared in such a profound way for his counterpart, there's no way around having been impacted.
"And yet I can't imagine.." he trails off, shakes his head. Not going there, right now. Nevermind. ".. Well. It's one of those things - this should be more classified than it is, except that so many officers experienced it, and it's propelled temporal studies further than anyone could have imagined. The Ambassador was uncomfortable watching things like that happen, for a lot of years. But you can't put anything back in the box."
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Even if that means those ripples collide in a way that bleeds through time in ways that cause divergencies such as his. Whatever that Romulan vessel and Ambassador Spock did...
No. She doesn't want to know. Whatever those details are, whatever happened or will happen in the 24th Century isn't something she wants to be made aware of. As keen as she was to meddle in the affairs of time where the safety and security of her crew was concerned — looking at you, Braxton — she knew better than to try and play the role of temporal guardian. To be made aware of those events would run the risk of potentially interfering in them.
His timeline exists. It needs to still exist and she wants no hand in preventing its creation. She is not the angry, embittered woman from another variant of her timeline who willingly fucked with time for what were ultimately selfish reasons.
Net yet.
Hopefully not ever.
season seven is a hot mess"And for the record, if Q took an interest in you, no matter the reason — the fact that he did means something. For an omnipotent being with unlimited control over space, matter, and time to stop and look your way, you have to be worthwhile. Q doesn't ask just anyone for help."
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Still. Her impassioned defense is touching, and he lets it show. His smile isn't wide and beaming, but it reaches his eyes, making the corners crinkle up in an easy tell that it's genuine.
"Thanks, Kathryn."
Jim's not sure how to articulate the feeling - oh sorry, I'm not the golden boy of your historical records, I'm the other one. The one who grew up ditching class and getting arrested and being abused. The one whose very presence seems to have ended the lives of both father figures, who couldn't offer Ambassador Spock the right kind of comfort. The one who couldn't get to Vulcan quite in time. (Things he and Hikaru try not to talk about.)
Then again. Maybe the correct Captain Kirk wouldn't know how to handle any of that. Maybe he's the sort of person who daydreams about being retired and happily married, and is deep down too soft to be able the pick up the pieces of utter desolation and carry on.
"We're close neighbors in that big, weird puddle. We have the same values and when it comes down to it, I think that's the most important thing. I've seen enough other ones-- further down the block, things begin to twist. But we're still Starfleet."
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The Kirk that lived in her time had a son. One who was killed unceremoniously during a struggle to control the secrets he had helped to unlock. It was an unfortunately tragic footnote to an otherwise sensational tale.
A tale she was going to keep to herself for the time being. Even if the alternate nature of his timeline opened up far more loopholes to her than were initial available, allowing her to sit more comfortable upon her throne of Federation principles and beloved Starfleet regulations while sharing information with him without feeling like she were betraying them somehow.
(Loopholes were her favorite, and she was damned good at finding them.)
"And you're still a fellow commanding officer," she says in a soft, almost strained tone that betrays how much that means to her. "Who am I to turn away someone who understands what most are incapable of fathoming unless they themselves are sitting in that chair solely on the basis that you're not from the same timeline?"
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For a moment he can't find anything to say, words sticking somewhere between his ribs, bittersweet and tender. It's so easy to see her in his mind's eye, unbuckling and stubborn, in that chair.
"I think this makes us icons of interdimensional cooperation," he says, mouth twitching into a lopsided smile, his voice low. "And, hey, acting Starfleet Command."
Who am I to-- is rhetorical, but who are either of them without their respective crews? Outside the most highly skilled, well-rounded, rigorously trained officers Starfleet has to offer. Nerds with bars on their shirts. Nerds with bars on their shirts and no idea how to have real interpersonal relationships because of the distance they have to maintain.
"I'm trusting you with this because I want to." Jim keeps hold of her gaze, intent. "Not because I got hosed by some phone app. My gut says I understand you."
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Or her personal ones, for that matter.
"I could pull rank. I could cite regulations that may or may not exist in your own version of the timeline in order to gain superiority over you. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about doing just that, but frankly, I don't want to. I have been playing the role of acting Starfleet Command for the past three and a half years with Voyager's database standing in for a crude version of the Federation Council on more occasions than I care to admit. Honestly, it's a relief to know that I don't have to do that by myself anymore."
In truth, it's also the trust he's putting in her now. Not just as a professional, but as an individual — as Kathryn and not Captain Janeway. Oh so rarely do people put faith in her because of who she is beneath that set of pips pinned to her collar. She's been losing sight of who she is without them, but somehow he's playing a part in helping to remind her.
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'Considered' is a strong word. It occurred to him, but he set it aside just as quickly, shrugging it off into the void of 'stupid idea'. Pointless posturing and conflict has never been his style. Better to save that shit for when it's worth it.
"That wouldn't work on me any more than I expect it'd work on you," he says. Jim Kirk's never rolled over for anyone in his entire life, and he imagines it's the same way for her.
A beat of quiet, then: "You were trapped out there?" Why would she only have her ship's database? Even in the farthest reaches of accidental travel, the Enterprise had been able to send the slowest of slow messages to a subspace relay, even knowing it might take years to get anywhere. (Thank something-or-other for Eurydice and her warp towing.) But Kathryn sounds very close-ended.
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"Try it and you'll find out just how formidable an opponent I can be," she says jokingly, though there's an undercurrent of seriousness resting just beneath the surface of her words that seems to say she can be a very dangerous woman when needed be. That she's had to fight to keep her and her own afloat and she wouldn't hesitate to do so again.
Janeway reaches for her drink, but she doesn't raise it to her lips. She just holds on to it, fingers wrapped around the glass, as if she needs to steady herself before giving voice to something she hasn't had to explain to another person in quite some time. A fact of her life for the past few years that didn't quite feel as heavy as it did in this moment when the weight was more or less distributed across the shoulders of one hundred and fifty other crew members who were now resting in stasis somewhere up in orbit.
"Trapped isn't the word I would use," she says for a moment. "En route is more like it. The truth is, we weren't assigned to the Delta Quadrant so much as we were brought there against our will and I have spent the past three and a half years working on a way to get my crew home."
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Meanwhile - listening. Arms crossed on the table, his gaze is serious, all implications rolling around in his head as she explains.
Oh.
Three and a half years is a long time to be totally cut off, especially looking down the barrel of god-knows-how-many more. Twenty, easy, right? Jim does the math in his head, trying to account for how much he knows warp should advance. Christ. Refueling, restocking, keeping everyone from going crazy, the number of conflicts and dangers and setbacks..
"I can ask more or I can put a sock in it," he says, his voice quietly reflecting his mood despite the words. Gordian Knot psychology works fine when you're not a telepath.
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Being in the Delta Quadrant has been a factor of her life for the past three years. It's a fact of her existence, a part of herself whether she wants it to be or not. And now that she knows he isn't from her timeline proper, she's more willing to answer his questions and be frank about her situation. It wasn't that she was ashamed or wanted to withhold that information from him so much as she is such a stickler for protocol, and it would have been a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive to inform him of an event which he may one day hold the power to change.
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"Are you doing alright?"
But it's not a debriefing.
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Is she doing alright? Yes, but also no. She's a maddening contradiction of herself at the best of times, where as the captain, she's perfectly fine. But as a person, as a woman— That's an entirely different story. Kathryn's grown so accustomed to planting her feet firmly on the much more stable and even ground of Captain Janeway that having it sway and crumble beneath her feet while she's here isn't sitting well with her.
She does a remarkable job of masking it, but a few months in and this place is starting to get to her in ways the far reaches of Delta Quadrant failed to do, something that pisses her off to no end.
"Who's asking, Jim or the captain?"
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Life, man.
"Jim," he clarifies, and his expression skews, his half-present smile more wry than anything. "I'm asking you, Kathryn, as - I hope - your friend."
They can take a hatchet to the details later. Write imaginary reports, silently make contingency plans around exchanged information. They're always going to be officers first; it's why this conversation took so long to happen. But that's not all they are.
i rewrote this like a dozen times
"Do you know how long it's been since someone has been able to say they were my friend?" It's not something she says in order to chase pity or gain sympathy, but to give perspective, for hers is a unique one. "There are only two people aboard Voyager who could, and even then that statement came with a tacked on addendum in regards to my also being their commanding officer. Their friend and captain, because being the captain has to come first. These pips — or rather, stripes, in your case — come with a certain set of responsibilities, as well as sacrifices that have to be made. Personal ones. Ones that people who don't sit in that chair realize you have to make."
Sacrifices she's certain she doesn't have to detail to him.
"And that includes sometimes taking a sledgehammer to what few friendships you have, because you can't be their friend while also being their captain."
It's lonely at the top, and she's the stubborn lone climber sitting atop that mountain's summit. Some would even say she's as cold as those snow-covered peaks. And she could keep up with some of her more icy themes and disregard his question, brush it off with a shrug and provide an evasive answer that's deliberately designed to tell him absolutely nothing, but she's tired. It's been three and a half years, and Voyager departing from Deep Space 9 without a counselor on board has been hell on her crew.
It's about damned time she said something from the heart instead of from those four pips pinned to her collar.
"No. No, I'm not. I haven't been since the moment I stepped foot in the Delta Quadrant."
to kill me
What he's looking at now is how it's supposed to be.
He moves one hand, reaching out to curl strong fingers around her wrist. Just bracing there, offering tangible support. Not something he'd do to a Vulcan, probably, but Kathryn's human. She shouldn't be fine. If she was, she wouldn't be fit for command - that kind of heartlessness can't go anywhere good. It'd be easier for someone mechanical, but ease doesn't mean right. Without her feeling the weight of her awful predicament, she wouldn't be able to manage it for her crew. Jim doesn't know any way out of that catch - other than just pushing on.
"I'm sorry."
to kill us both
It's a sentiment she's heard from alien dignitaries time and time again, sometimes followed by granted permission to cross through their space, other times by an apology proceeding the denial of that request. There have been moments where it's sounded like nothing more than a hollow dismissal, something she couldn't hold against those who turned her ship away but still stung nonetheless. However, hearing it from someone in her proverbial camp, who understood the weight that was pressing down on a captain's shoulders was like a balm to an open wound she hadn't realized was still that raw.
"It was a lose-lose situation and I chose the available option that was most morally sound."
Which says everything and absolutely nothing about how Voyager came to be in the Delta Quadrant. She isn't ashamed of how they came to be there or of the choice she made, but she does feel immeasurably guilty about effectively stranding her crew on the other side of the galaxy. During low points, she's tormented herself with what-if scenarios and the burden of that guilt, always blaming herself for not seeing some way to save the Ocampa and get them back home. For keeping everyone from their friends and families—
But it's always about them and not her. She can't even pinpoint when she stopped missing Mark or even thinking about him, and that engagement ring was dropped into the depths of a drawer at some point during year two and she hasn't once thought about fishing it out.
Kathryn rests her other hand atop his. She's a tactile person at times, and she selfishly appreciates that physical extension of support.
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Lose-lose situation, she says.
"Not every win is an instantaneous one." It's a while before he speaks up, thinking on his own hard lessons, including the sort he's just plain old refused to learn. "Not every win feels good. You got up again the next day, and went back to work."
And when work is what she's had to deal with, it's a hell of a feat. Nobody gets it but them, but even within their fraternity, not everybody can handle it. If her ship had to be lost, then she had to be captain, and maybe that's the win.
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"I don't consider myself defeated," she tells him. "Far from it. My crew and I have prevailed in the face of impossible odds, and we made remarkable progress on our journey home. We've encountered worlds, cultures, and phenomena previously unknown to the Federation. Voyager's databanks are a veritable treasure trove of information, and I have likely become the Federation's leading expert on not only first contacts, but the Q and the Borg, as well."
She was an ambitious woman, but yanking the proverbial rug out from under Jean-Luc Picard's feet was never part of her agenda. And yet, here she is, able to say that she not only successfully secured an alliance with the Borg, but helped bring an end to a cosmic civil war that had the potential to unravel the very fabric of space-time.
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He gets it.
He gets, too, what the Borg means, and the split-second shift of recognition in his gaze is either easy to miss or instantly damning, depending on how close Kathryn is looking at his dumb face.
"Good. You aren't defeated. Not even here." Jim believes it, thoroughly, completely. There's something about him, a buoyant balance of ego and sincerity, that makes him sound believable, like it isn't just a platitude.
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"Jim." Her hand turns beneath his, twisting around in his grip so that she can encircle his wrist with her fingers. "Tell me."
The more direct What do you know about the Borg? goes unsaid, but is most certainly implied. Her indirect mention elicited a direct response. And if this was once again the result of Q's incessant meddling, she was going to toss him out an airlock.
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Jim's pulse doesn't tick up, but he exhales something like a sigh. Man, his brief wry look communicates, what the hell happened to my poker face. It melted in the face of 'leading expert' on the massive problem he was just beginning to tackle at him, is what the hell happened. He knows the chances of remembering a single thing about this place are less than none, but he can't help it. He wants to fucking know. And it's not cheating, not really, given that Kathryn's timeline is what sent the Borg into the Alpha Quadrant a century early in the first place.
"That Romulan mining ship," he begins, hand still in hers, "was shot through with tech we didn't recognize. Hardly mattered, because it was from so far from the future, from a culture we had virtually no contact with. We assumed it was just Romulan engineering contemporary to their native time. Even our own Romulans assumed so."
Jim shrugs.
"It wasn't."
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"It was Borg technology," she concludes, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. "Technology I am willing to bet the Romulans who integrated it into that mining ship didn't know how to properly use. Borg integrations can be a powerful asset, but they are to be utilized with great caution. If not adapted properly, the technology would still resonate with a distinctive Borg signature — a considerably more advanced Borg signature, which the Collective would have immediately perceived as a threat."
Kathryn doesn't know that drones from the 24th Century already went back in time and attempted to draw the Collective towards the Alpha Quadrant during the events of First Contact. Thus, she assumes that the futuristic signatures were caught on long range sensors, drawing the Borg towards Earth a good century before they ought to have taken interest in humanity.
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Here, Jim smiles, sharp and conspiratorial. Like maybe there really is a best part, and it's not a shitty, ironic use of the word.
"The best part, is they detected it was tangled up with Romulan and Federation communication signatures. To them, we're two parts of a whole. To them, we're the same. And we have to be. The only reason that anomaly was stopped in the first place is we knocked it back into an artificially created black hole," Jim you what, "and nothing either of us have can independently stop the Borg completely. We're gonna do it, Kathryn. They're coming to the table - they will, they are, they did, however you want to work it out, with linear time. We're going to have a real, working treaty with Romulus.
And maybe--" he gestures with his free hand, obviously passionate about this. "You know, maybe it'll last only barely as long as it needs to. Maybe it'll be held together with gum and spit. At first. This got dumped on us because of an incursion from another time, and by all accounts it should destroy us. But maybe all this stupid shit was meant to happen, so we could do this."
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Kathryn hesitates for a moment, teetering on the very edge of protocol as she wars with herself over leaving it there or offering up examples from her own timeline's history. The problem with the Temporal Prime Directive, she's found, is that it's not nearly as solid as the Department of Temporal Investigations would like the whole of Starfleet to believe. There is no clear outline to be found the bullet points of protocol for a lot of the situations she's been in, this one included. The best she can do is adhere to what fits and use her best judgement in regards to the rest.
Story of her life from the moment Voyager was flung into the Delta Quadrant.
"We lost forty ships at the Battle of Wolf 359 to a single cube. Over eleven thousand lives lost. The Klingons sent warships to our aide, but failed to arrive on time to help. Perhaps if they had, a turning point in the battle could have been reached sooner. I hope that whatever alliance was on the verge of being formed succeeds. The animosity between the Federation and the Romulan Senate is ultimately insignificant in the face of the threat the Borg pose."
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But she doesn't owe him shit. She talks anyway. Jim listens, intent, and the numbers strike him somewhere deep and personal. They can't survive a loss like that. Not after Vulcan, and the wholesale decimation of an entire generation of Starfleet cadets and commanders. The Federation is so aggressive with technological advancement and linking hands with new worlds because they must be. They're undermanned, still, at nearly every angle. Alone, they don't stand a chance against the Borg.
"Honorable timing," is not funny, about Klingons. He says it anyway because flippant jabs are a way of life, even when it's clear his mind is still calculating, wholly apart from dark, dumb jokes. At least they showed up at all.
"I've been to Romulus. Twice. Both times I should have been executed, under their laws. Both times they let me go. They can be reasoned with, and so can we. It's going to work."
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"So can the Collective under the right circumstances," she says carefully, taking a moment to look down at their still joined hands. "Of course, the stunt I pulled with them was likely a one time occurrence and I'm pretty sure I made myself a personal enemy of the Collective in the process. I saw an opportunity to force their hand and make them cooperate with us. It was a gamble, and my first officer was vehemently against the mere notion of allying ourselves with the Borg, but it was a risk I was willing to take. One that ultimately paid off."
Even if it hadn't played out quite the way she'd hoped it would. Even if it effectively destroyed the personal relationship she and Chakotay had in the process.
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And then he squeezes her hand again. Firmer.
"That is incredible."
Serious, just as passionate as he was a moment ago speaking of the Romulans, this time directed at Janeway, looking at her with a laser-like intensity. Curious and inspired and motivated to support her, because fuck, it must have been a brutal decision to make.
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As is someone telling her that what she did was incredible and not foolish, too risky, dangerous, stupid— Deciding to propose an alliance to the Borg had been one of the loneliest decisions she's ever had to make. Chakotay always had her back, until he didn't. She understood where he was coming from, she really did, but a captain doesn't have the luxury of taking personal opinion (or preference) into consideration. If she had to be alone in her choices, so be it.
Sometimes, out in the black, a commanding officer had no choice but to be alone.
The shrug she gives him in response is a humble one; a slight lift of her shoulders that seems to say this miraculous, brazen feat she pulled off was nothing to marvel at.
"I did what I had to do, what no one else would dare to. I wouldn't have us be another Wolf 359. When I took Voyager into the heart of Borg Space, I intended to come out on the other side of it without losing the ship or getting half my crew assimilated. And I did."
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In any universe, history will make note of James Kirk and his wrestling matches - with the Prime Directive, with the Kobayashi Maru, with diplomatic relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and so on, and so on. Always shoving his elbow in somewhere and saying look again at the harder choice, even if it's unconventional, or terrifying, or taboo. But this Jim in particular understands how vital it is to confront every choice with total honesty, and the nerve it takes to make them, even when you're crippling a part of yourself.
"You moved a mountain. You don't have to take credit for it, but I'm going to acknowledge it."
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That still stung. They may have set that disagreement over his supposed insubordination (supposed, because Chakotay had technically been in command at the time while she was injured and out of commission) in order to turn things back around and sever Seven's ties to the Hive Mind, but he still went against her. Still went and did the exact opposite of what she told — no, asked him to do.
It stung as both a captain and a friend, but she couldn't allow the latter to get to her. So like many things, from Mark's engagement ring to whatever now lost connection she and Chakotay had, it was set aside. To be touched upon later, perhaps never to be touched upon at all.
"I've had to make a lot of tough decisions since we found ourselves in the Delta Quadrant, but I always had Chakotay's support. Not in that instance."
Not when she had needed his support the most.
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"I'm gonna say something wildly unprofessional," is a great opener, "but that's unbelievably shitty of him. I understand - and I mean, I really understand, I had to drag members of my crew and civilians and children out of a Borg ship, still attached to their tubes and wires - but that's your exec."
That's basically mutiny, implies a guy who was once put in an escape pod and abandoned on a giant ice cube for inciting mutiny. It just makes him an expert on the subject.
"I'm-- sorry, is all." And kinda pissed on her behalf.
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It's impulse at this point, defending her crew. Defending the ex-Maquis. She may or may not have a solid defense already built up to present to Starfleet Intelligence in hopes of preventing them all from being whisked away to a penal colony the moment Voyager crosses Federations borders. (She absolutely does.)
"Perhaps, but he was in command at the time." It's here that she withdraws her hands, laying them on top of one another on the table before her. Shields up, defense mechanisms in place. Closing off as much as she's opening up, always a constant contradiction of herself. "As much as I hate that he disobeyed orders, he had every right to make that decision while I was out of commission."
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But your exec was still a dick.
Minding his manners - somewhat - Jim doesn't say it out loud. But it doesn't take a telepath, etc. He also technically disagrees that if orders were in place, he didn't actually have a right to contradict them, but that's a fiddly, pointless thing to say, and he'll never know all the nuance or details. He just knows his own experiences, which are ... all weird, all nuts.
"I'm in your corner. There's not another one for me to be in." They're friends. They're peers.
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Chakotay did the opposite. He allowed his personal feelings towards the Borg and what Riley Frazier did to him to cloud his judgement. He was against the alliance from the start, and it hadn't taken much to convince him that tossing the drones aboard Voyager out the literal airlock was in the best interest of the crew. She fully believed that he thought he was doing everyone a favor, that he was protecting the ship (and her), but it hadn't been the correct choice to make.
The right Maquis choice, perhaps, but not the Starfleet one. As much as that betrayal stung, and still throbs from time to time like a dull ache in her chest, it only reinforced her way of thinking. Her self-imposed distance.
A distance she doesn't have to maintain while here.
Her shoulders sag, some of the tension bleeding out of her as she wills herself to relax.
"I know you are, and I appreciate that more than you know."
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Psychology tips he's probably had drilled into his head over whiskey with Bones at one point or another; what Jim hasn't self-diagnosed in his efforts to suck less since Chris's death, he's had laid out and shoved into his face by his best friend. It's easier to think of him - of everyone - mechanically, in lessons, instead of emotions.
"Thank you for telling me. And thank you for listening."
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She knows what her faults are, knows what labeling would likely be applied. She knows her coping methods aren't always the best, and that she's far from being a picture image of the ideal captaining model. Quite frankly, she doesn't much care at this point. If Starfleet wants to take her to task for keeping Voyager a Starfleet vessel with a crew that was alive and thriving, who hasn't had to outright break the Prime Directive in order to survive, then so be it.
"Shouldn't I be the one thanking you for listening?"