star trek - How did Voyager return to the Alpha quadrant?

I think they were just referring to getting away from the possibly dangerous sphere.

However, I believe janeway and everyone realized something quite simple...

The borg were never malicious or even an enemy, per se. Far from it, in fact. The one time they made a borg collective out of a planet inventing borg tech, they found that people enjoyed being assimilated to the point that it was like a drug. In that case, the borg isnt really evil. Its trying to induct new members because it is essentially addicted to consuming people. So maybe since the borg was dying, it decided to make an act of kindness. There was no point in preventing janeway from getting home. They would still die. So why not help her?

This may sound strange, but it really makes sense. The borg queen clearly expresses seperate consciousnes, but she died. Therefore, the borg would be the sum of everyone it conquered and took. Those people would all know they were going to die. It was inevitable. To them revenge is futile and assimilation it futile as they would die. But they can do one thing the borg universally does understand.

The borg understands the purpose of a community and tightly linked civilization. The borg would never be able to handle seperation from itself or its queen. This means it can in fact sympathize with captain janeway so long as doing so does not serve to harm its own interests. The station was going to fall. The borg had been monitoring voyager for years. The station members had to be quaruntined. Nothing could be gained from trying to assimilate, and very little would be lost to the federation. So they gave them an act of kindness.

In an ironic sense, janeway's plan b was the deal that the borg would accept. Kill their oppressive queen and she goes home. It's a deal so insane that the borg would actually accept it.