There was no final act of incredible valor, no selfless sacrifice to save her crew. It was all very peaceful and quiet, everything that she had never wanted it to be. There was nothing extraordinary, except maybe the fact she had lived well beyond the average age, and on the whole it was widely considered to be a very disappointing death.

I had found her in her office collapsed on the floor and gasping for air. Her face was strained and she was clutching her arm, writhing in pain. As always, she vehemently refused to cooperate and I ended up carrying her.

She ended up in the Starfleet hospital that overlooks the bay, on an upper floor reserved for those who had climbed to the highest ranks. She was waited on hand and foot, pretty nurses beckoning to her every call. I have good reason to believe that Starfleet Personnel had arranged for all of her nurses to be sporting hefty bosoms and sweet apple-tinted cheeks as a final gift to their beloved Admiral.

She was still the same woman I had fallen in love with. Even eighty-nine years after our return she never spared a chance to glance at a beautiful young woman. But she loved me always, and continued to never miss the opportunity to grope me even after I had fallen victim to the dreaded droop.

Of course, for all of her libido-driven madness, she was wonderfully romantic. Not romantic in the sense of candle-light dinners and gentle serenading, but in her own quirky way. Every morning without fail she would jog down the street and buy a bouquet of blue roses for me.

Even when she was in the hospital she had it arranged for them to be delivered.

It wasn't until three years after I arrived on Earth that we came to each other. I left Chakotay not long after we came home, and I had been living with my aunt Irene, trying to get my bearings.

It was at the reception for her promotion to Admiral. I was standing on the balcony avoiding the commotion when she came and joined me. Several long, silent moments passed where we both gazed out at the ocean glimmering in the moonlight, before she turned her head and looked at me, her features contorted in a crooked smirk.

She leaned in and kissed me, and that was where it all began.

It was a massive heart attack—a popular end to the biological progression for Starfleet Admirals. If it had been her choice she would have gone out with a bang, defending her beloved Starfleet ideals and dying proud.

She survived it initially, and was confined to that bed. But it took too much out of her. Finally that heart, the heart that was so small and yet so very big, just got tired. She died at sunset, her favorite time of day. I was there with her, sitting on the edge of her bed, my fingers entwined with hers. The golden light bathed the blue Starfleet linens, the brilliant luminescence welcoming her into the end.

She looked at me, her snowy hair shimmering, and smiled. She squeezed my fingers tight, and spoke for the very last time in that familiar husk.

"Good-bye, darling."

I didn't cry then and for sometime after. The tears came at the most unlikely moment in the company of B'Elanna Torres a few weeks after her funeral. We clutched each other and wailed like children in a display that Kathryn would have inevitably found amusing.

I feel the breeze, and it's almost like she's here again, nestled against my back whispering sweet nothings in my ear. I can hear her throaty laugh and smell her coffee tinged scent, and it's in these moments that I miss her most.

She was my only love, my only Captain.