The BLTS Archive - Son of Her Heart by Aislinn Carter (Kara669@aol.com) --- Published: 07-05-07 This is just a little thing I had in my head and needed to get down. It also gives Admiral Janeway another reason for going back in time in 'Endgame'. --- She watched with muted agony and a fistful of joy as the child was introduced to those assembled. He was beautiful. A capful of fine light brown hair, amber eyes. Pink cheeks and a charming smile. The best of both his parents. A blessing. A curse. After the naming ceremony, she stared out at the stars and felt him come up behind her. "He could have been yours," he murmured in her ear. She nodded, her eyes still on the stars. "But he's not. He's hers." "It was what you wanted." She turned to him then, her eyes full of pain. "No. It was what /you/ wanted." She walked away then. --- The baby grew into a toddler, and some days she nearly tripped over him as he ran down the corridors, attempting to escape his nanny. His mother, once she got what she wanted, had very little use for him, and his father was always at his station, wondering how he got trapped into this mess. She would pick him up when he ran into her, gaze into his beautiful eyes, and smile back when he smiled, as he always did at her. She wondered if somehow he knew he should have been hers. They had tea parties together in her ready room. He was hardly over one, but brighter than the brightest star. His mother didn't approve. After everything she had done for her, all she had sacrificed, his mother's heart was ice towards her. But she no longer cared. --- His mother died before his second birthday, on a mission she sent her on. She held the little boy at her funeral, as his father stared at the capsule in shock. What he and his wife had once had briefly had was gone, faded after she trapped him with their son. But in his own way, he cared for her. She had given him Kole. He was no use after his wife's death. He didn't know what to do with Kole, so more often than not, the boy was in her ready room, playing quietly on her floor as she went over ship's business. And still, she and his father held each other at arm's length. Just as they always had. She cared for his son, but they couldn't care for each other. Not anymore. The betrayal was too great. He may as well have married her daughter. Kole grew, and he called her Auntie. He tagged along after her in much the way Naomi had, and in many ways he was closer to her than to his own father. And when he was killed during a battle when he was barely fifteen, she may have grieved a bit more than his father. But his father had faded by then, and his son's death didn't so much destroy him as it did stamp the last light from his eyes. And then he, too, was gone. --- They got home a few short months later. And she vowed then and there to change it. Ten years later, Admiral Janeway made her final voyage. "A lot's happened to me since I was you," she told her counterpart. Everything changed. And although she never knew it, Kole did become her son. But then, he always was. --- The End