Kathryn lay in her bed, tossing and turning under the soft glow of the starlight. The Equinox' final few moments haunted her.

She stood on the bridge of that ailing ship, fighting with the navigational controls to get it just a little bit further from Voyager. The sacrifices she'd made flashed through her mind. But they weren't about nucleogenic life forms or watching her first officer pull a phaser in mutiny. They were about a horrified crewman in a cargo bay, and a fallen plaque, and a first officer glowering at her in the mess, and a cluster of defrocked Starfleet officers who were made to feel entirely unwelcome.

The computer called out the seconds until warp core breach. She counted along as she waited for her molecules to be scattered into the vacuum of space in a violent explosion. Everything went white and utterly silent.

With a cry, she sat bolt upright in her bed and called up the lights.

A blinding headache immediately descended upon her. She gasped and steeled herself against the pain, as a thick band of pressure asserted itself along her brow. Lately the headaches were a constant companion.

Unsteadily, she went to shower the film of sweat off her body. She went through the movements mechanically, pulling off her nightgown, ordering the shower on, wincing as her own voice encouraged the pain.

She absolutely refused to go to the doctor. The only drugs that worked would land her on restricted duty. And if the doctor knew how bad her headache was, he'd probably put her on restricted duty anyway. She had a ship to run, and no headache was going to stop her. No one ever understood that if she took time off for every vicious headache or every three-day run of insomnia, she'd never get any work done.

But here she was, wide-awake well after ship's midnight, and it wasn't a simple matter of insomnia.

Shower finished, she tugged a fresh nightgown on. The viewport lured her, and she curled up on her couch to gaze out of it. Nothing was out there but an endless field of stars. Beautiful, as always, but... She missed being able to see the other Federation ship from her quarters.

Though wounded, mislead, and embattled, Equinox had been Kathryn's first tangible connection to home. Another Starfleet ship lost in the wilds of the Delta Quadrant. A science ship fending for itself against all odds. And all was lost when they compromised their ethics to find a faster way home.

It wasn't as black and white as it seemed, and as the captain of Voyager, she wasn't in the best position to judge the Equinox crew. Voyager was a state-of-the-art long-range reconnaissance and research vessel. Comparing Voyager to a Equinox, a Nova-class science scout, was like comparing Equinox to a Danube runabout.

For a little ship like Equinox, getting home faster wasn't a matter of desire; it was a matter of survival. She felt her heart break with compassion for those who had to live through that. Voyager had a decent chance of surviving a 75-year journey home. As for Equinox, well... it was nothing short of a miracle that they had even lasted that long.

Even as Kathryn swore she would not have made the same mistakes, she admitted how tempting it could be. She remembered herself as she was on the Al-Batani, a science officer sworn to follow her captain no matter the circumstance. If she'd been an ensign on Equinox with Owen Paris in the chair, she would have followed him blindly; because he would have wrapped all his orders in a regulation-issue bow, and she would have believed any discrepancies were due to her inability to understand the will of the Federation as perfectly as he did.

The Equinox crew, however, had taken the initiative, accepting an unethical path without requiring pretty lies from their captain. They were murderers, all of them. But they were doing it to save their own lives, and in that way, they were like carnivorous beasts who killed for food. Kathryn had never been stuck in such a desperate position, and she deeply regretted the words that had condemned the Equinox crew.

But if you asked the Captain who had been in charge at the time, she would still insist she had done what was right, and would do so again in a moment. It didn't matter that Equinox and Voyager were so completely mismatched. Everything came down to the sense of betrayal she had felt when she saw Starfleet personnel defying everything the Federation stood for.

Stuck within that conflict, Kathryn couldn't honestly apologize to the Equinox crewmen or Chakotay. Because she couldn't truly claim that she would act differently, given the chance. She could only regret that she couldn't even begin to set things right.

She knew she wouldn't get any more sleep that night. She pulled on her uniform, tamed her hair, and left to wander the ship.

---

Disclaimer: Yes, I know Paramount owns Star Trek and its characters. I'm jealous, so I'm playing with their old toys. Everything will be back in the sandbox by morning.

All hail JJ, the almighty beta!

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