Summary: This story is set after the series ends but in a timeline where no intervention or rescue from Admiral Janeway takes place. Basically, Voyager has to take the long route home and Captain Janeway eventually cracks under the pressure of guilt and loneliness.

Warning: this story is full of 'out of character' actions and motivations and there are references to Chakotay/Seven. Seriously – that's how bad it is.

Addendum to the Personal logs of Captain Kathryn Janeway (present status 'relieved of command for medical reasons', SIQ)

At the suggestion of the Doctor I am writing this addendum to my personal logs. He seems to think I should reflect on what happened whilst on my last drinking binge, instead of just lying under a blanket in a semi-comatose state holding the biggest pity party ever for myself. Perhaps he has a point.

Day 1

After I was picked up by the security detail, the glorious, eye-dazzling, heart-gripping state of euphoria I'd been lost in for nearly a month subsided almost immediately on being transferred to my quarters. I'd gone AWOL whilst on shore leave from Voyager and it was a repeat performance. An encore. This particular episode consisted of exactly 27 days of wild living, binge drinking, boon companions, pool, poetry and an ear… attached to…well, let's just say that exactly who that ear was attached to is just a little too painful to bring into this account right now. At this point, it is only the disembodied but entirely enchanting ear that I can bear to contend with.

To be honest, since Seven married Chakotay I had been an accident happening in horribly slow-motion. It's not easy to get addicted to alcohol in the 24th century, especially not on board a Federation starship but I managed it through the exercise of a great deal of cunning and because I was the captain. (Short pause here to shiver and shake and cough over a bowl like a medieval plague victim, rub my aching joints and drink yet more water.)

The first time I went cold turkey was after I absconded on the first shore leave after the wedding. Eventually they found me sleeping on the floor of a toilet cubicle in a night club in a small industrial city. I'd apparently run out of credits so the management called in the authorities.

Back on Voyager everyone knew about what had happened to the captain, but no one said anything. I was both relieved and humiliated, and I spent ten days SIQ shivering and sweating whilst refusing the doctor's supervision, and reading instead through the CBT addiction programme in the ship's database. I am not without a certain will power, and after doing all the right things and making a load of promises to myself and those who cared for me, I gradually stuck myself back together. I was optimistic that I had learned my lesson.

Except now I find myself back again in that strangely comforting place – rock bottom. It is cold, the lights hurt my eyes, there is nowhere to hide and since you can't stay there, nowhere to go except to somehow find a way out. This time at least I know what to expect – time to enter Purgatory.

Day 2

As I remember it, this is the day of maximum emotional turmoil. I still feel terrible physically, but now the terrifying numbness, the sense of growing crisis before a storm, the one long note of high held tension, has given way to crashing sorrow.

'You realize you are objectifying them,' The Doctor said putting down the data pad after reading my journal entry.

'Who?' I asked.

'Exactly – the ear was presumably connected to a person. Who were they?'

'A woman I met at the logging camp down on the planet. Well, she started as a woman and then she turned into a girl…' I replied.

'Funny, that transformation usually goes the other way,' The Doctor commented dryly.

'I know!' I wailed and started sobbing for the fifth time that morning.

'Anyway, you should at least include her name,' The Doctor told me sternly. I just sniveled and wiped my red, swollen nose on another tissue. With all the tears I was shedding, I now needed to drink even more water to prevent dehydration. The crying on this day was pretty much non-stop and all the crumpled tissues around me gave the impression that it had been snowing in that part of my cabin.

It's not objectification, it's synecdoche anyway, I told myself after The Doctor had left. The part stands for the whole; one pertinent detail is allowed to act as a representative for the entirety. If it was good enough for Shakespeare and Dante, then who am I to turn my nose up at it.

As I remember it, my first thought on seeing that ear was that as a statement of intent, ears didn't get better than this one. It was small but perfectly formed and sported an ear cuff, a rook piercing and four piercings in the lobe and it was decorated with pearl and titanium and silver. And if I hadn't already had a weakness for women with metal enhancements on their bodies then I would have developed one right there on the spot.

The ear was a work of art and when I took my first long look at it out in the little logging camp on Planet Sticksville, it seemed to have many much more interesting things to say to me than any of my drinking companions in the last ten days. It said, 'I deal in the big picture.' It said, 'Don't you dare waste my time.' It said, 'You won't forget me.' It said, 'I am not like the rest.' It said, 'I bite' and 'I'm vulnerable' both at the same time. It said, 'Hands off!' and 'You want a closer look, don't you!'. It was a damned talkative ear, and damned alluring too.

The ear's owner said, 'Don't buy that plum brandy. It was actually made from rotten potatoes and old beets. It'll hollow out your innards in days. I can show you where the decent stuff is kept.'

And at that moment it seemed that stumbling (literally) across an ear possessed of a combination of aesthetic sensibility and nous in this god-forsaken place was some kind of miracle. For the first time in three years, slightly buzzed on low-grade liquor, inspired by unexpected beauty, and already writing poetry (my own personal unholy trinity) I was entering that familiar sweet and dangerous state of mania and my brain was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Day 3

My eyeballs are drying out, my skin is drying out, and I have a low fever. I drink and drink water and I can't seem to quench my thirst. I am crawling across a desert and the harsh light of reality is burning…blah, blah, blah. God, I even irritate myself.

'Why are you writing so much about this woman…girl anyway? I thought you were supposed to be learning something about how to control your cravings.' Seven pointed out when she put down the data pad after reading my journal entries. 'It doesn't look like she started you drinking. You were drinking before you even met her. So why is she so important?'

…Because she was wonderful, I told myself once Seven had returned to Astrometrics. She was like a bright jewel in that dull and dreary logging camp. At first I thought she was a writer there to soak up the 'beyond the bounds of civilization' atmosphere, then I thought she was a cowboy, then a scientist, then a poet, then a magician, then a mine-owner. Every moment a new facet seemed to shine forth like the light on that very real diamond I once saw in Antwerp displayed on black velvet.

On that first day, we arranged to meet in the afternoon on a rock by the lake. All day even as Old Joe told me for the eighth time the story of how he had once spent half a day hitching his poor old dog to the logging sledge instead of his horse, I hugged to myself the thought of our meeting. I drank a few shots, just enough to keep me in the zone but without getting boorish or dozy. I filled five pages of notebooks with ideas for a modernized version of a Petrachan sonnet cycle. I even laughed at Bobo's jokes though he always tells them in a mixture of three languages and even the Universal Translator can't keep up with him.

Eventually the hands of the clock reached the appointed hour. I stood up and slapped Bobo on his skinny back.

'Got to go, boys! I told my drinking companions. 'Got things to do and people to see.'

They looked at me in amazement, since one of the defining features of this place was that unless you were logging or drinking there was a distinct lack of either.

And there by the lake she waited, and she had with her a rowing boat and two fishing rods, and my heart leapt at the sight, and in we climbed and I took the oars and off we went, right to the middle of the lake where we weighed anchor and baited the lines and fished till sunset, surrounded by the peace of the mountains and the lapping of the water and the sound of our own voices in companionable and somewhat ribald conversation, and all the fairy lights of my brain had turned to a calming blue and I finally felt at rest.

I hoped we would meet again, and we did. And again and again. Until in a short time she was part of the rhythm of my days, and the old-timers would grin and wheeze into their cups as I stood up each afternoon to go and meet her.

'Off to see that pretty girl of yours, Captain?' they would ask.

'She's not mine, boys. She belongs to herself.' I replied each time.

'I was adored once too,' said old Bobo in a small sad voice.

'Only by your horse,' roared the others and they ordered another round.

Well, who would have thought that there could be so many fascinating things to do in and around a logging camp – fishing, hunting, riding, climbing, talking, laughing, teaching each other old songs from our home worlds, lighting fires and cooking on them, and writing and writing and writing. The place became a kind of Eden, and I was a new Eve…and so, of course, it couldn't possibly last.

Day 4

Thankfully day 4 means I am now out of the seizure and potential death zone in this cold turkey process. Not that I expected that to happen, but one should always be grateful for small mercies.

'So did you, you know, do the nasty with her? I'm not sure if I am supposed to read all this 'baiting of lines' and 'lighting of fires' as metaphorical or literal,' asked Tom Paris as he put down the data pad after reading my journal entries. Then he looked up and saw my face and literally quailed at my death-ray glare.

'I'll take that as a 'no',' he muttered, and as he was leaving added. 'Anyway, glad to see at least a part of the old Captain is back.'

It was an entirely correct friendship with elements of flirtation involved, and on my part a considerable amount of doting and dotage, I muttered. Yes, there was a frisson but no actual friction. That was not what this story is about at all…at all…and if anyone thinks I am over-reacting then they have seen nothing yet…because about half way down this page the reaction is only going to get even overer.

The longest day of the year arrived on the planet and my companion suggested that we climb up to a nearby mountain top and watch the sun rise together. So we took some food and I had my trusty hip-flask and we climbed up that damn mountain in the dusk, and even as I huffed and puffed and felt the burn in my leg muscles, I hadn't felt happier in a long, long time (and as I recognized that, I also knew there would come the crash – 'I'll pay for this happiness,' I told the listening gods. 'I'll pay whatever you demand, just let me climb this mountain.')

And then, believe it or not, out of the darkness began to glow thousands of little glow worms on bushes and in the grass – so wonderful, so unexpected and so as though life had become literature and therefore much more beautiful than one ever really deserves. And my companion linked her arm though mine and we simply held our breath and looked around in wonder and I thought my heart would burst from joy.

But by dawn it was all already too much. I was already in a state of hyper-stimulation and when the sun came up and each ray came streaming over the mountain top as though it were an individual thought unleashed from my own mind and pouring out over the world faster than I could grasp them though my fingers flew across the data pad, the lights in my Christmas tree mind began flashing faster and faster and all their garish colours showed at once. Then at that moment my companion in her trusting, honest way told me her real age – too young to even be an ensign, though thankfully just old enough to be an adult – and I felt as though someone had crushed up glass into my drink and that I had drunk from it and now my insides were all torn into pieces.

And as we climbed back down the mountain, there were now two conversations going on, the one with my companion and the one with my own conscience, and now each day I drank a little deeper and saw coming closer and closer the impending and absolutely inevitable moment of my own collapse.

Then I made my decision, and without waiting to debate it further I shut down the dampening field that was preventing the ship from picking up my bio-readings and seconds later a security detail had picked me up and transported me off the planet.

Day 5

'You just left her! Good grief, what kind of an unfeeling idiot are you? Didn't you even say goodbye or explain or anything?' B'elanna was staring at me like she was seeing me for the first time and was not at all impressed, that is once she had put down the data pad after reading my journal entries.

'I left her a note with Bobo,' I said.

'And what did the note say?' she demanded fiercely.

'Er…it said I was sorry, and that I had to go.'

'Kahless! What kind of explanation is that! You don't even know if she got that stupid note. Bobo could have fed it to his dog or used it as toilet paper!' she yelled.

'You still haven't given her a voice, you know.' Seven told me calmly putting down the data pad after reading my journal entries. 'Just because Shakespeare and Dante used synecdoche in their poetry, it doesn't mean it's not an objectifying practice. Anyway, I don't see how you can come to terms with any of your triggers if you just deal in body parts and romantic flights of fancy.'

She's disappointed in me, and worried too. Not as worried as I am about myself. She's not the one falling into alcoholic dotage – no, reformulate that – she's not the one who has problems making healthy choices. Reformulate again – I have problems making healthy choices … Seven has nothing to do with it. That's better. Just take one step at a time. Don't look up. Just keep following that one silver thread that is going to eventually lead you out of Purgatory.

What do I think my former companion would say to me if she were here right now, I mean after the cursing stopped?

'The first thing I want you to know,' she says, 'is that I hate you and all starship captains and I always will. I trusted you. I thought we were friends. I told you important things about my life and you told me about yours. I thought we cared about each other and what happened to each other. I thought you would be there for me if anyone ever tried to hurt me, I didn't realize that you would be the one to kick me when I was down…and over what? Over nothing except a load of whiney bullsh*t in your head. You didn't even say goodbye, nothing, how do you think I felt when I discovered you had gone? You know, you are pathetic.' …what follows is too dangerous for me to write right now because I am trying to head off thoughts like that …let's just say that it is a lively, incisive, clever and well-written character assassination. Anything less would have disappointed me.

And I thought back to how I had once seen and fallen in love with a small sculpture by Brancusi called 'Prometheus' many years ago on the home world. It was just a head, the features unclear as though worn away so that what stood out the most was one small, terribly vulnerable and arresting ear. The thought made me shiver, for at the time I could not guess why this beautiful but odd sculpture seemed to call out to me; not knowing that it was a portent or that nearly 20 years later on a strange world in an unexplored quadrant I would have a most unexpected meeting with my very own Prometheus.

And now as I traveled away from one and towards the other, I was glad to live in a universe that had such things and people in it, even if I couldn't know them or own them myself. It was good just to know they were out there somewhere, doing their extraordinary Promethean things.

'So what was her name?' asked The Doctor.

'Tell me yours first,' I countered.