SUMMARY: How does Janeway really feel about the Voyager making it
home to Earth?

CODES: VOY, J, 1/1, SNW Reject


Where The Heart Is, by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)


After almost ten years in space, the Voyager was coming home.

Their escort, five starships each dwarfing their sister, scattered
away from them as they entered the Sol system, taking up orbit
around Venus, allowing the Voyager to go home alone.  Orbital and
suborbital traffic had stilled to a halt, all eyes and attention
focused on the ship which would not give up despite the
impossibility of ever again reaching home.

They had been trapped in the Delta Quadrant, lightyears from Earth,
condemned by the phenomenon which had flung them so far from their
starting point to a journey so long that it would be their children
or grandchildren who would see it to an end.

It had been yet another anomaly which had reversed the damage,
leaving them an air-bleeding wreck just on the edge of Federation
space.  After a short transmission delay, they had been put back in
contact with Starfleet.  Home.

Janeway sat in her chair and watched the viewscreen as Earth grew
larger in it.  A suppressed, electric excitement ran through her
bridge crew as they neared their destination.

This one final time, Voyager would land.  The ship was too old and
had suffered too much strain in her repeated crossings between the
Alpha and Delta Quadrants.  She could not be repaired; the cost
would be too great.  She would never lift off again from her
landing spot at Edwards Air Force Base.

Edwards had been an air force base in the old United States of
America back in the twentieth century.  It was a spaceport now, but
the choice of destination had more to do with history and sentiment
than practicality.  It was here in December of 1985 that another
Voyager had landed, after the first non-stop flight around the
Earth without refueling.  And it was here that her namesake would
also land before being moved to her final resting place.

"Mr. Paris, you have permission to land the ship."

"Aye, aye, captain."

A single voice on the Starfleet channel counted down the meters to
landing as the Voyager glided down.  And then, crackling over the
channel came the words they had given up hope of hearing:  "Welcome
home."

The bridge crew broke into cheers, only herself and Tuvok remaining
unmoved.

Janeway sat in her chair, watching the viewscreen as a crowd of
people began to surround the Voyager.  They were the biggest event
on the planet, perhaps in this sector.  The celebrations would last
for days, and they would be, already were, heroes.

But Janeway couldn't help but feel a sense of letdown, as though
all of her life had come to an abrupt end with the touch of the
Voyager's hull to the earth.  As though the quest for home, with
all its trials and difficulties, had been the most important thing
in her life and after this, nothing else would ever be able to
measure up.

With a heavy sigh, Janeway stood up, surveying her celebrating crew
for a long moment.

Then, able to put it off no longer, she said, "Computer, end
program."

And the viewscreen with its seductive view of Earth, her
celebrating crew, and the Voyager itself vanished, leaving Janeway
standing alone in the holodeck.

*That* had been useless, she thought.  She had hoped to renew her
enthusiasm for the long journey ahead of them with a vision of what
success might be, but all it had succeeded in doing was causing her
to become more depressed.

With a quick, business-like step, she left the holodeck, returning
to the hustle-bustle that was day-to-day life on the Voyager.


-the end-