She had not, for one second, been able to put the terrible image from her mind. She could find no relief from the haunting memory of Seven, standing like a sentinel with a bomb in her hand, ready to kill and die for some unimaginable cause. She racked her brain over and over again for an indication of something she could have said or done differently, to make Seven put the weapon down and run away with her. Kathryn had always been a person who believed in trials; she had thought it character-building to continually test one's own strength, intelligence and resolve, but finally, and uncharacteristically, she was beginning to feel she had suffered enough. She felt that if the Starfleet men hated her this much, they should have killed her, and spared her the torture of a devastating memory that would never grow dim.
Kathryn soon lost count of the hours she spent on the deserted planet, without written or spoken contact with anyone. There were moments of restlessness, wherein she wrestled with her freedom and her responsibility, her rebellion from Starfleet and the almost obsessive attachment that remained. And then there were darker moments, when the voices of Seven and the Cassandras spoke to her, calling her to some altered state of consciousness, akin with death, pleading with her to relinquish her hope for humanity. She felt that these women had put her in contact with some primal, contrary part of her nature of which she had never been consciously aware. She saw the blue river, now, as twofold, a representation of life and nourishment but also as a place for abandonment. She had always loved to swim but now she could truly imagine losing her life to the river, and the thought was not as abhorrent as it ought. Likewise her vessel, a means of escape, survival, and a weapon of war, could equally be considered a quick and efficient method of self-destruction, as Cassandra Weatherfield had so memorably demonstrated. How could the thought of crashing into a neutron star at a million miles an hour be appealing? And yet it had been, at least to one desperately unhappy woman, who had faced prejudice and hatred from the people who created her, and could not find love or understanding anywhere. Kathryn knew that she had to fight, but somewhere in her mind she was beginning to compare herself to these Borg hybrids, feeling herself to be very much a creation of a group of people who had turned on her and forced her away from her home.
More than anything, she was unanchored, and afraid. She had told Chakotay at their last meeting in a Starfleet holding room that she had changed, and perhaps she had, but the spiritual transformation she had anticipated had not come. Indeed she felt connected to her own raw instincts and emotions. But this newfound self-awareness did not generate any greater wisdom, rather it made her feel as if she were losing her logic. And so she held onto it in any way that she could, clinging to it as if, perhaps, it were already a thing of the past, doomed to slip away. And Seven, always Seven, remained with her, broken and destroyed, loving her and hating her, and telling her that everything lost was irretrievable.
It was perhaps due only to luck that through this torment there remained in Kathryn a willpower and bravery that were to be envied by all who knew her. She might have been, or believed herself to be, a Starfleet soldier, but then there was that other, more powerful part of her, the daredevil and the independent, a keen scientist who could determine the truth, and who and what was worth saving, on her own. She could still breathe in the cold air and it filled her lungs, and in rare times she allowed herself to feel gratitude for her life, for the blood that still pounded in her veins. And she was stripped to her deepest bones, and remembered her spirit guide, and Chakotay, and their cryptic and exciting conversations aboard Voyager, and all of the distant things that she had generally pleaded with herself to forget.
In her old life, she had found great solace in the idea that she would one day bring her people home. She could not help but find it somewhat ironic that the defining mission of her career had been to return to a place that had become as treacherous as any alien world in the Delta Quadrant. She had learned the art of solitary leadership on Voyager, but she learned true solitude here; for she had no followers, and no friends, only the wild hope that what had gone so terribly wrong in the world could one day, through judgment and perseverance, be set right.
She was standing as she often did on the pier, when she heard the water stir unnaturally. Her eyes scanned the river until she perceived a boat in the distance. She knew it would not be Apocrypha, as they were coming by ship and knew on which side of the river to land. Fearing the worst, she retreated into the rock cave that she used for her living quarters, and set her weapon at the ready. She chose the gun she had stolen from the Starfleet man during the raid on the Borg vessel. For a time she heard nothing, and thought perhaps that the traveller had retreated, but then there were footsteps approaching, and she knew the danger was near. Her quarters were not well concealed; if someone were looking for her he would find her quickly in the flat expanse of sand and grass and occasional trees. She decided it was best not to let him find her where she waited; rather, she would attack first and hope to catch him unawares. She waited several minutes until the footsteps were close, and then she took her chance, stepping out of the cave with one authoritative move, brandishing her weapon at arm's length.
"Stay where you are! "