Disclaimer: Do I really need to go through this song and dance /again/? :) Paramount owns Voyager...'nuff said on /that/.

She often meant to take the time and wonder as to why all was as it was. The fate that had led her on paths less taken--self sacrifice was a stench that absorbed itself into her soul quite stubbornly.

"Kathryn.."

"Leave me be." Deeper into the compound she stumbled, desperate for allies at every turn and finding none. Wishing for a second chance that, by now, could never come. "Go."

"No..and you know I won't." She did, he was right. She did know that,as long as he held her love, life, and crew over her head, that there was no escape. It was 'jump', and 'how high' all over again. He controlled, she obeyed.

Kathryn Janeway was damned if she would.

"All right. I'll stop." Eerie calm manifested itself on her feature--brute strength that would, in every instance, be her sole weapon with which to fight her own battles. He was behind her, in uniform, and she turned to him.

"Kathryn, please."

"Enough." She snapped. "Enough games, enough dancing. I don't care for the circumstances, Inspector."

"Neither do I."

"Gaharay?" She hissed. "Hardly the word one might use to gain a lover. Gain a child, in fact? Live out your life with a Gaharay who bore you a child in exchancge for the freedom of her lover...her loved ones?" A hand crept to her abdomen, still slightly swollen from a previous pregnancy. "Gaharay!"

"Gaharay doesn't matter. And the child--a product of our love, Kathryn."

"Our love?" The anger was quite evident in her voice now, and he found himself stepping back--back away from the furious gaze and the firey red hair. "There was no love lost, Kashyk, only because there never was love!"

"Kathryn.."

"There wasn't, and you know as well as I that Chakotay was whom I trusted more...I loved him, and only him, and you were nothing."

"Fine. You keep telling yourself that, Captain, and I'll continue to remind myself that you are no longer part of my daughter. You will not see her, will not feed her, will not hear her cries at night--that honor will be mine from now on."

She stopped, cold, hands clenching her stomach as she turned in her flight to face him--as she had so many nights, the nights which had led to the consumation of their...to the conceiving of their child. Their daughter.

"You wouldn't dare."

"I wouldn't?"

"No." Step forward. One. Two.

"Are you going to tell me I wouldn't, Kathryn Janeway?" He chuckled. "Tell me I can't do what I want with our child...with my daughter, after her mother insisted that a rogue Gaharay was more important than the likeness of her own flesh and blood? No, Kathryn...I don't believe you."

"Damn you!" Her scream echoed throughout the corridor, hands flying to clench at him, to lash out. A plasma torch, concealed within the folds of her maternity dress.

"You're right." She whispered, as the blood flowed freely.

His life dissolved.

"You had no reason to."