Kathryn crouched down beside Harry's prone form and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. "Time to wake up." She whispered.

After a few seconds the soft snores ceased. "I'm up." Harry mumbled and cracked open his eyes. "It wasn't a dream." He stated and sat up.

"Nope, not a dream." Kathryn stood up and groaned as her knees and back protested the movement. "I got breakfast." She motioned towards the table. "Help yourself."

Harry pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the table. "Thanks." He grabbed one of the colorless, tasteless, odorless, bars and took a bite, chewing happily. "You must have been up early." He peered through the one, dirty, window that the room had. "Helios isn't yet high in the sky."

Kathryn sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on Tom's damp forehead. "I was up just as Helios touched the sky." Which meant she got hardly any sleep at all. "Tom decided tour the city without a guide." She explained.

Stopping mid-chew, Harry blinked. "He wondered out onto the streets at Helios break?" He turned his head to look at his friends rumpled form. "How much trouble did he get into?"

"I caught him propositioning one the overseers daughters." Kathryn said as she picked up a damp cloth laying on the bedside table and laid it on Tom's warm forehead.

Harry choked on his last bite of substance bar. "Which daughter?" The overseers daughters were notorious around the city. They prowled the streets just as Helios rose looking for another to add to their collections. "And when's the bonding?" He felt pity for his friend.

Kathryn moved away from the sleeping helmsman and joined Harry at the table. "Kero." She picked up one of the bars and bit into it. "And there will be no bonding. I will not have a member of my crew added to Kero's collection. Besides, Mister Paris doesn't strike me as bondmate number twenty material." She leaned back in her chair. "The sooner we can leave the planet, the better."

"And we can't leave until Tom wakes up." Harry surmised as he devoured another of the substance bars. "Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead." Kathryn finished her meager breakfast.

Harry looked down at the table and traced the dents in the surface with his finger. "Why don't you want Tom to know who you are?"

Kathryn nodded, expecting this question. "It's been a year, Harry. I gave up hope long ago." She sighed wishing that Rio was there to give her comfort. "I've actually come to accept this place as home and I guess I'm just as weary of outsiders as the others."

"You're lying." Harry stated, confidently. "I'm Coron, remember? We're trained to detect dishonesty or we wouldn't be any use to our Voron masters. I may be inexperienced but I can still detect a falsehood." He paused for a moment. "I've been here for a year too, I think I'll understand."

"I'm sure you will." Kathryn couldn't help but compare this young man to the boy she first met at Deep Space Nine. "But you shouldn't have to." She sighed. "Very well. I didn't tell him because I didn't trust him, not at first. How was I suppose to know if he was really here to find me or finish me off? I guess I felt safer having the upper hand."

Harry nodded, understandingly. "That's why you had him play Ka'row, isn't it?"

Kathryn nodded, once. "He followed a...subtle...order. If he had been apart of Chakotay's mutiny, I figured he wouldn't take orders from anybody, especially a stranger. It's the only way I could be sure of his true intentions."

"You could've just asked." Tom rasped from the bed as he lifted his head up and stared, bleary eyed, at the two sitting at the table.

"How are you feeling, Mister Paris?" Kathryn asked as she stood and moved over to the bed.

Tom pushed himself up a little further and groaned. "Like I was run over by a targ. What time is it?" He asked as he swung his legs over the bed.

"Helios is high." Harry answered as he stood and joined Kathryn at the bed. "Teka, Tom." He greeted when his friends blue eyes landed on him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tom asked as he stood and abruptly fell backwards onto the bed.

Kathryn couldn't contain her mirth as she helped the grumpy Tom sit back up. "It means that Helios is high." She pointed to the window.

Tom blinked as he looked towards the dirty window. "You mean the sun is high? It's noon?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "That's what I said." He saw no difference in what he said and what Tom just said. He held out his hand which contained one of the substance bars. "Eat this, your stomach will settle."

Seeing Tom's disgusted face, Kathryn raised an eyebrow. "I can make that an order, Mister Paris. You'd do well to listen to Harry, he knows what he's talking about."

"Yes, Captain." Tom mumbled as he took , what he thought looked like a brown blob, the offered bar. Taking a bite, he fought back a shutter at the strange taste that assaulted his taste buds. "I thought Neelix's cooking was bad." He mumbled but took another bite as his stomach began to settle. As he lowered the bar, he blinked and looked at his wrist. "What's this?" He held out his hand, palm up.

Kathryn didn't even looked at Tom's wrist, she already knew what would be there. "You left the safety of my room just as Helios was rising." She explained as she moved around the room gathering her meager possessions together. "You propositioned Kero while you were out." She explained.

Tom stared down at the mark, it looked kinda like an old earth tattoo except it was black and looked like some kind of bird posed to attack. "I propositioned someone named Kero and got a tattoo?"

"Kero is the overseers oldest daughter." Harry explained as he sat down on the bed beside his friend. "And it's not a tattoo, it's a brand."

"A brand? Like they used to put on cattle back on earth?" Tom had no memories of the event. "What does it mean?"

"The overseer has three daughters; Kero, Keno, and Keyo. They amuse themselves by collecting mates. That brand signifies that you're to be Kero's twentieth conquest. You'll be bonded to her, at Helios' set, in a ceremony that is rumored to be very painful then sent to live at her compound in the mountains where your soul purpose in life will be to serve her." Kathryn explained.

Harry took over the explanation, having a little more knowledge on the subject. "You'll basic become a glorified Coron with one exception. Coron's can be sold but not killed, it's against the overseers Devine law; no living being shall be killed if it can still serve a purpose and carry out a labor. The daughters tire of their Coron quickly and usually send them to the mines where they don't last more than a cycle. But if they are truly displeased with their Coron's service, then they just kill them. They're the exception to the law."

Tom paled sometime during their explanation. "What do I do?"

Kathryn looked around the small room which she had called home for a year. "You contact the ship and get us out of here. Once you're off the planet, you'll be out of danger. You can try and have the brand removed but I don't think it can be, believe me I've tried."

"I think everybody with a mark or a brand has tried to have it removed but I don't think anyone has succeeded." Harry added.

"You have one of these?" Tom asked as he motioned towards his wrist.

"We both do." Kathryn answered as she handed him his communicator off the bedside table and tucked her flask into her pocket. "Nobody is free on Artius. We all belong to the overseer." She turned around and lifted her hair away from her neck where her brand was located. It was identical to Tom's except it was angry red instead of black.

Harry pulled down the neck of his shirt just a bit to show Tom the brand on his collar bone which matched the Captains.

Tom shook his head. "If Chakotay wasn't already dead, I would kill him. Hell, I think everybody onboard would. What you two have gone through...it's imaginable."

Kathryn cleared her throat. "Call Voyager, Mister Paris. I'm ready to go home." She looked down as Rio appeared by her foot. "You coming along after all?" She chuckled and bent down to pick up her little friend.

So Tom did exactly as he was told and soon they were saying goodbye to Artius and materializing onboard Voyager where the senior crew was waiting to greet their long lost family members. He stayed on the transporter platform and watched as the Captain was greeted with hugs and Harry was greeted with enthuastic pats on the back and handshakes, his being alive was really a shock but the crew accepted it in stride. Everybody was just happy to have the crew back together.

"It is good to see you well, Captain." Tuvok, acting Captain, stated once the excitement of having them back onboard had faded and he was sitting in her quarters enjoying a cup of tea. "It's equally as good to have you back."

Kathryn inclined her head in acknowledgment as she sipped her bland tea, coffee was too bitter for her to drink. "Thank you, Tuvok. It's good to be back" As she sat there talking with her old friend she couldn't help but think how perilously close she came to falling.