They are children, and they play a game sometimes. What if, one of them will begin, as though their fates were not already written in the stars.

"What if I become the captain of the Enterprise!" Katie starts.

"What if I become the captain of the Enterprise," Tom counters, and they giggle helplessly as they picture that old aircraft carrier, now a model on display at the shipyard.

It's a familiar refrain. Sometimes they spin wild tales of time travel and intrigue to get Tom on that deck, if only briefly, in their shared imagination.

Sometimes Tom grows quiet, and Katie doesn't know how to ask him why.

This is before either of their fathers teaches them the word birthright.

.

The next time she sees Tom after the Icarus incident, his father has made a full recovery. But hers is dead.

"You can't be in here," she hears someone say.

Hospital, she guesses.

"Like hell," Tom snaps. "Katie—hey, Katie, can you hear me?"

But that doesn't make sense.

For a profoundly disorienting moment, she thinks they've just escaped the Cardassians. That Tom is here because they brought her in with Owen Paris, who must be just on the other side of the room, just behind that white curtain, if only she could find the strength to open her eyes and see.

Why else would Tom be here? How else would she…

With a flood of adrenaline, she realizes that she has no memory of how she arrived here. She remembers pain, and a punishing cold, but this wasn't mud. This was—bright. White and pale grey, snow but also, somehow, smoke; crystals of searing ice in her lungs. She remembers the snapping of her ribs, her ruined leg, remembers—

Wind shear—

"She's hypothermic, concussed, and she has multiple bone fractures. Get out."

—she decides not to remember.

The last thing she's aware of for a long time is that Tom does not go quietly.

.

They are teenagers. They don't get as much time together as they used to, but Kathryn reassures herself that they'll be at the Academy soon enough. Tom still calls her Katie and she likes it more than she'll admit, even to him, even as she forbids every member of her family from doing the same.

They are teenagers, and they still play their old game sometimes.

"What if I quit tennis forever," Kathryn groans, flopping down onto Tom's bed.

Tom is quiet for a beat too long. "What?" she asks, a little defensively.

"What if I joined the Federation Naval Patrol?" he says.

This brings her up short. She pushes herself upright, heart tripping in her chest.

It's clear from everything about him—his hunched posture, the cautious hope in his eyes—that he's been working up to this admission for some time. And it makes so much sense that, now that he's said it, she can't believe she didn't see this coming. Yet all she can think is, we'll never see each other.

She opens her mouth, and nothing comes out.

Tom looks away.

We'll never see each other, she thinks again. Once or twice a year, if that, because our shore leaves wouldn't overlap, or if they did I'd be so far out in space that I couldn't get back—

But Tom has never not known a high cost for following his heart.

Kathryn takes a steadying breath.

"You would be great at that," she says finally, valiantly. "I've heard they might partner with that group who wants to raise the ocean floor—the Atlantis project, I think?"

"Yeah," Tom mutters, and Kathryn feels terrible—feels like a terrible friend, feels a terrible hollowness inside her at the thought of him down at the bottom of the ocean—so she tries again.

"Honestly," she says with false brightness, seeking his gaze. "And there's plenty of exploration to be done in our very own solar system. Maybe I'll be posted nearby. I could request it, even."

Which isn't what she wants, either, and Tom knows it. But for now he accepts this as the offering it is, and allows her to draw him into conversation about the Atlantis project.

This is the first time it has ever occurred to her that their careers may not so intertwined as their childhoods. It leaves her feeling as though the light of some old, familiar star has gone out.

In the end, of course, it doesn't matter. The only son of Admiral Paris was never going to be allowed to find his own way.

Tom follows her to the Academy.

And although he discovers a love for flying, a purpose in Starfleet, that should absolve Kathryn of her guilt, the truth is she was shamefully relieved when he abandoned his dream—and she suspects that Tom knows it.

She never fully forgives herself for this.

.

She wakes up after surgery to find that her hand is numb. Panic pulses through her as her eyes snap open and she looks down, thinking nerve damage, thinking amputation… until she sees, of all things, Tom's head resting on her arm.

She exhales hard. Hears from off to her left the mechanical beep, beep, beep of her pulse returning to normal.

"Tom," she says, touching his hair with her other hand.

"Tom," she tries again, louder, when he doesn't stir. She pulls on her arm and he starts awake, calming only when his eyes find hers.

"Hey," he breathes. "How do you feel?"

This is a question she is not at all capable of answering, so instead she asks, "Why are you here?"

"Don't be stupid," he says with a small smile.

"No, I—how…?"

"Oh. Mom," Tom says, like this explains everything. At her blank look, he adds, "She was with dad when—when he got the news. She knew I'd want to come. I was closer, but he'll be here soon."

Her heart sinks. She places a shaky hand over her face, presses her eyes shut. "He's coming to take me off active duty, isn't he."

Tom hesitates. "Would that be so bad?"

Yes. She can think of nothing, nothing she wants less right now. She would rather throw herself back into her work, be flung to the far end of the galaxy, anything but sit around with little else to do except remember.

When Admiral Paris arrives, he seems to displace the very air in the room with his presence. Apparently surprised to see his son so many lightyears from where he's supposed to be, he brusquely asks Tom to step out. Tom, in return, gives every sign of throwing an unholy fit, which Kathryn almost wants to let him have, if only to delay the inevitable.

"It's fine, Tom," she says quietly. Admiral Paris narrows his eyes, tracking his son's gaze to Kathryn's shuttered face, and he does not seem pleased. Nor does he bother to watch Tom go.

"I don't need to be relieved," she says firmly, as soon as the door shuts.

He sighs. "I didn't want to be, either. It's protocol."

"Sir—"

"It's out of my hands," he interrupts, not without sympathy. "Besides, your mother will want to see you. I spoke with her before I left."

Kathryn clenches her jaw, but says nothing. Awkwardly, they share a heavy silence.

"I'll let you rest," he says at last. "I'll be debriefing you, when you're discharged. I'm… sorry about your father. He was a good man."

And although she shouldn't be surprised by his words, something about this reminder of their friendship, his and her father's, guts her like nothing else has since she woke up and found herself alive, found herself absurdly, unconscionably unscathed by comparison, when by all rights she should be bleeding from an open chest wound, should be teetering on the very cusp of death herself, and it's an insult that she is not. Mercifully, he leaves before he can see the blood drain from her face, her quick, shallow breathing the only thing staving off what will certainly be a deluge if she doesn't get herself under control.

But before she has the chance, Tom slips back into her room and takes in her shattered expression; without a word, he toes his boots off and climbs into her bed, folding himself into the narrow space beside her.

"What if I take a leave of absence?" he whispers against her clammy skin. "What if I come home with you for a while?"

Oh, how she wants to say yes. Wants to plead, what if we stayed together, what if you never leave? But she can't let him pause his whole life for her, not when she scarcely knows anymore what to do with her own. She shakes her head, feels her precarious control slipping as she does so. She shuts her eyes against it all, sucks in a breath and holds it, fighting, fighting—

"Kathryn," Tom says, reaching for her hand. "It's okay."

—How do you feel?

With a shuddering gasp, she turns to hide her face in his chest.

He holds her while she falls apart.