The fractured images faded away, leaving Kathryn curled up in her favorite chair in the shelter they called home. Here, she wasn't captain. There is no captain, Chakotay said. Only, he was lying. Of course, he was captain. They just didn't want to hurt her feelings. Just like they tried not to say she was crazy when they thought she was listening.

Most of her senior staff had come to the planet, Bastinia, it was called, or maybe that was the planet they visited a month before, or maybe she only read about Bastinia, but she was sure there was a planet. A planet where most of her senior staff, herself and Chakotay and Tom and B'Elanna and... were there more? No, there couldn't be. She counted the chairs at the dining table. Four. She must be right, then. Because everyone else died, not them. Everyone else...

Voyager was a fiery explosion in the evening sky. The violence of the warp core's detonation slammed into the planet's atmosphere, and then it was colder, much colder, so strange in the tropical climate, and so hard for the native people... But her people, native to nowhere in this godforsaken quadrant, were dead. All dead, all but her, and the three other chairs.

They told her to stay, that she needed to rest, and maybe they were right. She was just so confused. Everything blended together and it didn't matter, because it was just a dream, or maybe it wasn't, and anyway maybe Mom would come soon and check on her because it was cold. Wasn't the climate control working in this room? She'd have to ask her mom about that.

But no, no mom, and no ship, and no Earth. Just the reality fading in and out, and the doctor had something that would fix it, only there was no doctor and no medical records and no one wanted to hear from a crazy person that they knew how to fix it, if only they could see the medical records on the ship that didn't exist.

Then Kes would come in. Kes? Oh, yes, they found Kes and she wasn't mean and hateful like in her dreams, but Kes would take care of her and calm her. And Kes didn't know what was in the medical records – they were restricted, you know – and the doctor didn't teach her about this kind of craziness, because it would be dangerous if she added together the symptoms and figured out what no one should know about their captain, except for the doctor, who exploded, in the ship that doesn't exist.

Well, his program exploded. Isometric chips and all. But Kes, she was an angel. And Kathryn's mind would stop spinning for a while and Kes would smile, and it was worth it to see Kes smile. Something strange about being cared for by a ten-year-old. Well, immortal ten-year-old. Barely corporeal ten-year-old. But there was no accounting for immortal maturity, was there? Just look at the Q Continuum. Now, that was crazier than her. She never tried being the dog.

She missed her dog. Molly, she must have passed on by now, and maybe the pups, well, she'd never see the pups. B'Elanna said they were making progress on getting a ship. That was nice. She had a feeling she didn't want to know what knowledge they were trading for a ship, but it had become a Maquis mission and she wasn't captain any more, of course. Crazy women didn't captain ships in the Maquis. Crazy Indians, maybe, but only Starfleet let crazy women captain ships. Only, she wasn't quite so crazy back then. Or maybe the doctors fixed it. But the doctor's isolinear chips were dust.

"She's not coming back," Kes frowned. How she hated it when Kes frowned. She wanted to make Kes happy, but she was confused. Too confused. Then her mind was full, too full, and Kes wasn't Vulcan, and there were no fingers on her face, but her mind screamed, "Intruder Alert!" and it must have been her mind because the ship had exploded and there were no more red alert panels to flash.

Then it was warm and comfortable and Kathryn sighed. Like the comfort of a bubble bath and a cup of steaming hot coffee on a winter day. And there was yelling, someone was ranting, but it was far away and didn't have anything to do with her. And then she was beneath her down comforter with Molly sleeping on her feet and so tired...

=/\=

She awoke to the heavenly scent of coffee, freshly replicated from the wizardry B'Elanna had thrown together from black market parts. B'Elanna was standing near her bed, holding the cup out to her. She pushed herself up to sit and carefully took the cup. "All right, now?" B'Elanna asked in that voice she used to threaten the panels when she wasn't sure circuit patch would take.

"Mmm," she sighed, reveling in the scent of the steam. "Yes, B'Elanna, I'm fine." And if Kathryn's eyes didn't quite meet the younger woman's own, well, it was for the best.

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