PARIS: With all due respect, the last time you took the Delta Flyer to confront the Borg, it ended up in a couple of thousand pieces.
JANEWAY: I intend to bring it back in one piece this time.
PARIS: A good pilot might be able to help you do that.


"New rule," Tom says. "You don't get to take the Flyer out without me anymore."

There is a moment in which Kathryn sincerely entertains the possibility that she is dead, or nearly. It would not be unlike her to hallucinate Tom scolding her for destroying his shuttle, again, especially since it was on her mind as Celes counted down (more or less) the seconds to impact. He's going to kill me, she'd thought, an involuntary bubble of hysteria as the shockwave hit.

And then she groans, and the sound of her own voice crashes through her skull too horribly—hopefully—for this to be the afterlife. She blinks with the pain of it once, twice, and then her eyes focus, finally, on Tom, half-slumped against the side of her bed.

Not a bed. A biobed.

Sickbay.

She starts, gasps, "My crew—" and the room spins wildly when she tries to push herself up, and her muscles scream in protest, but—

"Easy," Tom says, halting her progress with a hand on her shoulder. "They're sleeping. No serious injuries. Everyone's all right… though you gave us a good scare for a while."

Everyone's all right. Adrenaline drains from her as quickly as it came as she collapses back against the biobed, letting out a long exhale. Everyone's all right. They got Harren in time.

They're home.

But something in Tom's voice makes her look at him more closely, and for the first time she notes the smudges under his eyes, the relief in his soft smile. They seem to be alone in Sickbay, so she finds his hand and threads her shaking fingers through his, then allows her eyes to close for a moment.

"What happened?" she asks.

"We were hoping you could tell us. We found the Flyer drifting above a gas giant. You were all unconscious."

"Any sign of another vessel, or some kind of entity?"

"Should there have been?" says another voice. Chakotay's voice. She opens her eyes, then looks down to where Tom is trying none-too-subtly to disentangle their hands.

In the past twelve hours she has, on an away mission that she'd specifically calibrated to be as innocuous as possible, made first contact with an alien lifeform unlike any Starfleet has ever known, almost lost four of her most vulnerable crew members to that lifeform, and very nearly been killed herself. If they'd been just a little less lucky, Voyager wouldn't have had anything to salvage, let alone rescue. She thinks of the toll that would have taken on Tom.

The toll it did take, from the moment Voyager received their distress call.

She does not let go of Tom's hand. She squeezes it once. Tom's surprise radiates off of him like a supernova.

Chakotay tracks this interplay closely, but says nothing.

"There was something out there, all right," she says. "Some kind of dark-matter alien."

Both men's eyes widen. But she is so tired, and her head pounds in time with her pulse, racing ahead with the sudden rush of her decision. She holds up her free hand. "It'll all be in my report, sir," she jokes, wincing a little.

Chakotay nods, offers her a tight smile. A beat, then, "Make sure she actually rests," he says, addressing Tom, who grins smugly. Kathryn rolls her eyes.

"I'm perfectly capable–"

"You absolutely are," Tom agrees, running his thumb across the back of her hand.

"I'm sure the Doctor—"

"Would be considerably less magnanimous in his assessment of your condition."

With a long-suffering sigh, she relents. And Chakotay, apparently at his limit, throws one last sideways glance at Tom and Kathryn's locked hands, then sees himself out.

"That was easier than we thought," Tom murmurs.

"Yes, just a near-fatal collision with sentient dark matter," she huffs.

"If I'd known that's all it took, I'd have flown us into a stellar nursery ages ago." He pauses, then adds, "I mean it, though."

"Mean what?" she asks, her eyes drifting shut.

"Next time you need the Delta Flyer, I'm driving."

She would roll her eyes again, if they were open. But they aren't, so she squeezes his hand, a smile softening her face as sleep takes her once more.