Title: Goodbye...Never Hello Author: Rosekira@aol.com Series: VOY Rating: PG-13 Summary: Following Voyager's return home, Janeway muses on never blossommed relationships and lost time.  WARNING: Hanky. I needed one, but as the author, I may be partial. Disclaimer: All characters belong to the powers that be. I just put them in my perspective. ******************************************* Personal Log, Kathryn Janeway, Stardate...Unknown. We made it home. Barely. Audaciously. Captain Kathryn Janeway would take the credit, propound upon it, glory in it. Glory is something Captain Kathryn Janeway feeds upon.I haven't been hungry in weeks. Spiritually, a wasteland. I find succor in walking the humid sands of Vulcan. On a medical level, the doctor finds nothing wrong with me. It irks him, never the patient man. Bleeding inward, negative...post-traumatic stress...normal...he runs through diagnosis after diagnosis, dismisses them curtly, examines me again, marks another inch lost on my waistline.The hunger is dead, but the bleeding remains, pours inwards, a fire, consuming, assimilating. The truth is mine alone. The birth certificate, archaic form of documentation really, but it seemed such a sweet idea at young 15...yes, the birth certificate of Thomas Eugene...Janeway. Adopted at birth. Wiped from Kathryn Janeway's records. A note, left in your belongings, stored for an older little boy to read. Mother will walk your path someday...you won't recognize me, but I'll say hello. I promise. Tommy.Given up. Found.Dead. I wonder, at times. Wonder if the blood I see in my dreams is mine, or his. Wonder if I could have saved him. Wonder if I should have told him. Wonder at what we might have been, together. At what we never were, apart. The weaker I get, the further life slips, I wonder all the more if this was the way he would have wanted me to be. I wish I had the strength to answer my own questions. Too many questions. So little time. So many lost chances. Tom. Tommy mine, baby of the stars. I had the courage to say goodbye all those years ago, the endurance to hold your hands and not weep as you died in my arms so short a time ago, Tom Paris always, Tommy Janeway never. Why...why...did I never have the time to say hello? The End ~The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink~