Annika shuddered with the ship as another thud reverberated close by; it was as if the Raven itself was groaning. She felt sobs building in her throat again as she watched the last of her art pictures, which had all been safely tacked to her bedroom walls when she'd first been tucked into bed, flutter to the floor. To Annika's wide eyes it looked as if the walls were buckling, about to cave in and crush her. "Mama…" She croaked out hoarsely, "Papa!" Clutching her blanket even closer to her chest as her parents' muffled, but fearful, voices seemed to grow more distant rather than closer to her, she slid her face off her tear dampened pillow and cowered in the centre of her bed with the duvet pulled over her, though she had to leave a gap open to let light in, darkness frightened her just as much as the chaos going on around her.

The next blast made the world around her lurch and roll, leaving Annika clinging to her bed sheets as her refuge was for one moment rocked to a strange angle. Her little bookcase, a sixth birthday present from the day before, didn't have any such support and fell forward with a violent crash that drowned out Annika's choked scream even as that sound itself was rendered akin to a whisper when compared with the cacophony of sounds reverberating from the Raven's Bridge. Annika's ears picked up on one particular sound, mostly because it reminded her of the time her father had yelled at her when she'd crept too close for comfort to the set-up for a fireworks display back on Tendara IV. The fireworks had made sounds like that after Papa had dragged her away, sparking and hissing before a final boom…

"Magnus!" Her mother's frantic cry was enough to break Annika free of her stupor, remind her of the existence of comfort and safety. She scrambled out of bed, from the bottom to avoid the debris scattered around her room, and slipped through the door onto the Bridge without even pausing to notice that the doors had only managed to creak halfway open upon her approach.

The Bridge was in uproar. Annika even took a stumbling step back when she saw that the console nearest her bedroom door had exploded, white hot plasma oozing out of the cracked screen as wisps of smoke stifled her cry into a petrified squeak. Her parents were still oblivious to her presence, with her father's towering frame now bent double over the comm. as his wife flitted between the consoles which were still functional. Both sets of their beloved eyes were fixed on something above Annika's head, the viewscreen. When she finally followed their gaze, the tears already escaping from her eyes began to fall in earnest. It was a truly nightmarish sight. The Borg Cube that filled up most of the screen was familiar to her, Papa and Mama had chosen to follow it out of Borg Space when it left on a mission because it carried some of the Queen's special drones, but that familiarity didn't ease her mind, not now. Instead of being surrounded by normal, starry space, both the Cube and the Raven were enclosed in vicious, multi-coloured skies, like a malevolent rainbow which also spat lightning. That lightning was what had been hitting the ship. The Cube was lopsided, it appeared as if something had bitten off one whole corner, and was rapidly falling out of the viewscreen, its green luminosity dimming as it tumbled.

Annika fell as the Raven, too, surged downward uncontrollably. It was only then, as she yelped in pain, that her parents finally tore their horrified gazes from the tumult outside to their young daughter. "Annika!" Her mother gasped out, staggering towards her child, "You can't be out here right now baby…"

"Mama, is someone attacking the Borg Cube?" Annika asked fretfully as she tried to crawl to her mother on her knees, "Why are they attacking us?"

Erin finally managed to catch her daughter under her arm and pin her to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut for an instant as Annika's question made her heart hurt. They'd prepared her in many ways, piqued her curiosity, but nothing could prepare her, or anyone, for what they were faced with. "No, we don't think anyone is attacking us, or the Borg, it's a really bad plasma storm. But don't worry Anni; you know what a good pilot your Papa is…" She tried to slacken the child's grip on her waist then, but Annika just clung tighter. "Annika, we need you to go back to your room and wait. You need to be brave…"

"No Mama!" Annika pleaded tearfully, "Let me stay with you!"

"Erin!" Magnus' shout was strident, his eyes still locked on the comm., he couldn't face his daughter right now. "I need you to find a landing spot, the warp nacelles are gone."

"Gone?" Erin echoed, nauseated. That was enough for her to abandon Annika for that moment, for all their sakes. She ran to the last of the long-range sensor consoles. "The third planet in the system, it's M-Class, but the Cube is heading there too…"

"That doesn't matter, it's our only choice!" Magnus shouted back over the din of the multiple alarms blaring in tandem, "I'm plotting in a course!"

"What do you mean it doesn't matter?!" Erin gasped out in disbelief, "You know what the Borg will do to us if they…"

Only know did Magnus turn to meet his wife's eyes with a tortured look in his own. "I know." He said thickly, "But they're even worse off than us right now, from what I can see on sensors their link with the Collective has been severed, which is why they're in such disarray. If that's not the case then we'll just have to hope they all die in the crash…" Another hit from the plasma sent him crashing forward into the comm. console, but he ignored the winded feeling to dial in his last few commands. "It's going to be a hell of a rough landing, hold on!"

Somewhere beneath his feet, cowering under another console but trying to follow her mother's plea for her to be brave, Annika did indeed hold on even as she wept.

18 Years Later

Chakotay had been standing just outside the shelter clearing the dirt and leaf debris from his shoes for five minutes, being stranded here had given the phrase 'a man's home is his castle' new meaning recently and he'd become punctilious in keeping his new 'home' clean, but he only noticed that Kathryn was inside after he'd already crossed the room to boil water. He jumped when he finally saw her, though he supposed he shouldn't have been that surprised to see her bent over the microscope that had pride of place on their sole table, set aside temporarily only when they were eating. He cleared his throat, feeling awkward that in his distraction he hadn't seen her, and more so when she continued to not acknowledge him. "Any further forward?" he eventually asked, though he already knew the answer as well as he knew that the Captain would dance around it.

Kathryn finally glanced up at him, swiping a stand of hair out of her eyes as she did so. "The insects that were in the traps this morning don't carry the virus…" She admitted, her fingers toying with the microscope slides much as he'd been able to observe her doing with her comm. badge on Voyager once upon a time. "But that making me all the more certain that the answer lies in the primates, I'll start designing new traps after I've finished cataloguing this last specimen of the day."

"That could be a challenge." Chakotay remarked thoughtfully as he began to wash the sweat off his face and neck, "My father always used to say that you should never underestimate a monkey, they're related to us after all. If you managed to trap it at all, I doubt you could get it to submit to the tests you have in mind without killing it first."

Kathryn's eyes flashed wilfully for an instant. "I wouldn't kill him Chakotay, humans have tamed primates before, and observing it might tell us something."

"You're right." Chakotay conceded, "We've got plenty more time with the insects and monkeys of this world."

Kathryn's eyes dipped uncharacteristically for a moment. "Maybe." She muttered, "But I don't intend to waste any of that time until I find a cure."

"Kathryn…" Chakotay began, but stopped as he saw her tense for a fight, readiness shining from her eyes, "Maybe it would be more productive to give yourself a break, of sorts. I was going to head out to look for fresh fruit today…"

Kathryn felt a frown begin to form in her brow, though she fought it since she realised he meant well. She was just tired of his, what she was as his insidious, attempts to get her to surrender to this situation. The combination of exasperation and coaxing in his tone hadn't worked while the boundary of rank stood between them, and it wasn't going to work now either. "We have the replicator." She cut him off dismissively.

"Which won't last forever, we have to use all the natural resources we have here." Chakotay pointed out, "What I was going to say was the monkey will probably be more tempted by its native fruits than anything else, perfect bait for your trap. It's getting hot out there; we must be getting into summer, so there should at least we something ripe."

Kathryn's gaze softened, "That's a fair point." She agreed, some hint of apology now present in her strained voice, "But you go on ahead without me today." She sighed heavily as she gestured at the microscope, then down towards the stack of half-built insect and monkey traps around her feet. "I should persevere with this."

Chakotay nodded reluctantly and headed for the doorway, but couldn't stop himself from turning back to her with a weakly teasing smile, "If anyone else were here, they might think you were avoiding spending much time with me."

Janeway chuckled tiredly, "They'd also soon realise I'm not the outdoorsy type, and come to the conclusion that I'd just slow you down." She looked past him and through the doorway to the lush and peaceful forest outside, her face tightening as if she feared it would suck her in. "I'll keep an eye out for fruit myself when I'm checking the rest of the bug traps, I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." Chakotay replied wryly just before she turned back to the microscope and he took that as his cue to leave.

He'd been walking for almost three kilometres before he found any decently laden fruit bushes, it seemed that the Captain's new monkey friend had picked clean whatever lay closer to home. Not that any of the slim selection he had managed to gather in his canvas knapsack would necessarily turn out to be edible; a tricorder wasn't completely reliable in revealing poisonous alien plant life, as his numerous harvesting trips with Neelix over the course of Voyager's journey had proved. Still, he kept walking. This was by far the most distant he'd been from camp, and that fact alone was replenishing his soul somewhat. He'd actually been arguing the case for exploration for days now, but Kathryn never wanted to stray far from the comfort of her makeshift lab. Was that really any different, in essence, from what he'd been doing though? Building things for the shelter from early in the morning until the last shaft of light failed to penetrate the trees, from bathtubs to headboards, wasn't that about distracting himself from the situation as just Kathryn was using the search for a cure as her crutch? Maybe, he acknowledged, but at least he was part of the way to accepting the way things were. The reality of their marooning. Kathryn hadn't moved an inch towards reconciling herself with that fact. That conversation before he'd left this morning was the most amiable one they'd had in days, after his attempt at trying to push her gently towards acceptance, and then, as his patience had ebbed, confronting her with the impression he had that his efforts to help them both settle, to build a life here, were making her uncomfortable. It had proven to leave her resentful as well, really they'd both withdrawn from each other after that, because, to be honest, he'd been hurt by her accusation that he'd given up.

Was trying to make the situation remotely tolerable equitable with giving up? To think so made his heart ache, though he knew the Captain, for now at least, thought so. He hoped she'd come to appreciate these early efforts of his in time, but as the days passed he grew more unsure. Yet, it wasn't as if he had much choice but to hope, there was only the two of them here, and he didn't want to live in this limbo with her forever, constantly skating on thin ice. He knew he probably could content himself with her if she let go and let him in, he was attracted to her. Always had been, in a way, she was strong, intelligent, curious about the universe around her but with strong morals. All that, and an enigma had always drawn him in. It had been that way with Sveta in the Academy, and of course with Seska, though those two heartbreakers weren't reassuring examples. Kathryn still hid a lot from him. In the social hothouse of Voyager, where loneliness had been endemic if not constant as it was here, he'd often longed for her to open up, but now he found he could hardly rouse himself to try to draw blood from the stone. It had probably lost its appeal when they'd woken up in a real-life 'If you were the last person in the world…' scenario. The knowledge that she would probably want to be intimate with him one day just to relieve the boredom and loneliness wasn't exactly cheering, nor what he'd pictured his relationship with a lifelong romantic partner to be like.

He sighed, irrationally irritated when that one sound echoed eerily through the empty forest around him. There weren't even any monkeys in sight. He took a few hurried, anxious strides forward before checking himself; there was nothing to fear here. To back up the reminder, he began to whistle as he walked, growing louder and more forcefully jaunty with every step he took. So it took him a few moments to hear the occasional rustle around him, but when he did, his eyes zeroed in on it enough to hear heavy breathing. But that was impossible. Maybe this place was making him lose his mind quicker than he would've liked…

A phaser shot however, is much harder to imagine than someone's breath making the hairs on the of your neck stand on end, and in that moment the unmistakable red-orange beam of a phaser shot cut a sharp angled line over Chakotay's head, fizzing threateningly through the air. He dived to the ground with a soldier's sharp instincts, and then scrambled back into a crouching position quickly to assess his attacker. One glance behind him showed the round burn of the phaser on the tree trunk directly behind him, but his attention was really directed forward. Directly opposite him, veiled by the undergrowth but locking with his gaze all the same, were a pair of piercing blue, humanoid, eyes.

A/n: PLEASE REVIEW! :D I hope you all like my newest AU idea! I'm so caught up with it right now I'll probably go and start on the next chapter as soon as this one is posted. ;)