The premise of this series is that Samantha Wildman, designated madonna figure of Voyager, has an interior life.
It isn't always pretty.

Trigger warnings: Neglect, physical abuse, and possible sexual abuse of a child are referenced/implied - not described.
The in-canon death of a character who is minor in canon but major in this fiction series is referenced.

I wasn't a writer, until MiaCooper said I should be.
Warmest thanks to her for opening that door and then beta-ing what emerged through it.

Chapter 1. Naomi

Hot fudge sundaes are my favorite. We hardly ever have them. Mommy says it's a special treat, for celebrations, like my half-birthday. Yesterday wasn't anyone's birthday and I forgot to ask what we were celebrating. But we were all happy like a celebration. I was happy that Mommy came back from the planet, that she still remembered me, that we were never going back there. And that Uncle Joe was there too.

He didn't stay to tuck me in. I think Mommy wanted to do it. She keeps hugging me and staring at me without talking. I keep hugging her too. I think we were both scared, when we came back and realized what had happened to us. How they made us forget. I wasn't scared when I was there, but I didn't like it. My new mommy and daddy didn't hug me, and they seemed mad when I asked too many questions. They gave me nice stuff and I liked all of that - it mattered a lot that I had nice clothes and the newest computer and that we lived in a big house. But after I came back to Voyager none of that mattered, and it's weird to remember thinking that it did matter. It's weird to remember not knowing Mommy, or Neelix, or Captain Janeway. I remember being that girl, Alassi, from a little old ship where everyone died, and a lot of her feels like me but a lot of her doesn't, and when I think about it I don't feel right.

I was lying in bed, thinking about it. My tummy was hurting a little, maybe from the sundae or maybe from being worried all afternoon about Mommy. She had spent a long time tucking me in, and I'm pretty sure she thought I was asleep. I didn't hear anything but there was still a light on in the main room. I got out of bed and went to find Mommy.

The light was from the terminal in the corner. We don't use it much. I have one in my room and Mommy says she spends enough time sitting at one in the lab all day. She was sitting there in the dark in front of the terminal screen. I was behind her and I guess she didn't see or hear me.

I was going to climb in her lap like when I was littler. I wanted her to hug me again. But she was sitting there with her back to me and her hands were over her mouth and her shoulders were kind of shaking. Then I looked at the screen and saw a still holo of a little girl I've never seen before. She looked a little like me, blond hair and round face, but it wasn't me because she had a human forehead, no horns. The little girl wasn't smiling, and her hair was kind of tangled and messy. Her eyes were brown like my Mommy's, but … that little girl's eyes looked hard, like she was mad at the person taking the holo. Not mad. I don't know. It didn't look right, it didn't look the way my Mommy looks in our holos, the way she looks at me. And Mommy was looking at her and she was crying, but so quietly. The only reason I knew she was crying was because of her shoulders, and her breathing sounded kind of wet and broken up.

Before Quarra, I would have walked up and climbed in Mommy's lap and asked her who the girl in the picture was. But before Quarra, she wouldn't have sat in the dark room crying and I wouldn't have a stomachache from feeling scared. I … felt like she wouldn't want me to be seeing her right then, wouldn't want to tell me about the little girl. And I didn't want to make her more unhappy, and I was a little scared that she would get mad, or would stare at me without seeing me, like she did sometimes that first day back, before she'd blink her eyes and kind of … come back to life. Or that she would look at me with her brown eyes hard like the girl on the screen.

I tiptoed back to my bed and got in and curled up around my Flotter doll. And my tummy hurt and it took a long time to fall asleep, and I kept waiting but I never heard my mommy get up from her chair.