Chapter Text
One life to live? Or nine?
Janeway was beginning to wonder if she was part cat, given how many times she’d died and come back to life on this away mission. Figuring out why the crew couldn’t see her seemed like small potatoes compared to avoiding the Grim Reaper again. At least Chakotay was alive and back where he belonged. No worries there.
The glowing swath of light beyond the engineering doors, on the other hand, was something to worry about. “Oh, what now?” She muttered.
A figure emerged through the light, a human man, wearing the gold Starfleet uniform of a decade past. She found herself throwing caution to the wind and stepping closer to get a better look.
The man’s runner’s build was familiar, but his face was one she’d never forgotten: Dark blue eyes. Tousled black hair. Pale skin. A square jaw that showed the barest hint of the five o’clock shadow that had never gone away, no matter how closely he’d shaved.
In that very instant it was as if a hull breach had blown all of the oxygen from the room. Her mouth fell open and her lips formed around the name of a person she’d never expected to see again.
“Justin?”
He closed the distance between them in a few short strides, sweeping her into an embrace and laying his lips on hers. Janeway thought the heat of his kiss would burn her to the ground. It was heaven.
And it was confusing as hell. She recoiled; It didn’t matter how much she wanted him to be alive, she’d spent fifteen years knowing that his broken body lay six feet under the ground in San Francisco. One did not get any more dead than the man in front of her, who now looked at her with a lover’s gaze.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he exclaimed, a smile lighting his face like the sun. Heat radiated off his hand as he stroked her cheek. Her blood ran cold.
What the hell was going on?