She was mired in a hole of guilt and loss, her head hanging as she sat on the bed. Her breath was quick, uneven and she focused on it so as not to focus on the choices she had made that had led her here, led to the death of a man as important to her as Mike was.
The tapping on the bulkhead was unexpected enough to cut through her frantic breaths and she pushed herself up, suddenly alert again.
The relief that washed through her when she saw him on the bed made her knees weak. Her guilt almost painful as it released its hold on her. She let the relief wash over her, let herself forget her responsibilities, forget her role and pressed her lips to his forehead and then to his mouth, desperate kisses of loss and relief.
She pressed against him, chasing the familiar feeling of connection, of love, but all she could feel was relief and the guilt rushed back. She had betrayed him through thought, through action and now through want of feeling.
Her body untied him, helped him to his feet but she felt trapped behind glass, the empty place of her feelings from him her own personal cock crow.
Dutchy met her eyes as he led Gorski off the ship and she knew immediately that he had seen. An added guilt swelled in her, not just at the pain she had caused him but because his pain touched the place in her that Mike used to.
She smiled at Mike on deck, relieved at the rescue of a man who was both friend and mentor, her past and her present. But not what she had though, not her future.
He met her eyes and his gaze had meaning and she felt like a liar looking back.
She knew her smile wavered a little after he had walked away and she hoped Swain passed it off as the exhaustion of the day. Swain smiled at her and she wished she was able to embrace his simple enjoyment of Mike's rescue, not finding it soured by her guilt.
She pushed it down, shoved her guilt beneath her relief and squared her shoulders. She would take it out and look at it later when she had time to fall in the way she thought she would. But for the moment she would hold it tight.
And then Dutchy shut the door of the ready room behind him and asked, "You okay?"
It crashed against her then, her guilt and her loss and her realisation, there in front of the man who had replaced him, of why that place in her was now both hollow and too full. Her face broke and the pain she had hidden erupted through in a shuddered sob and an anguished intake of breath.
Dutchy's face dropped and he moved forward, his hand on her shoulder, the other on her neck, pulling her into him and she let him, let herself soak up the comfort he offered, as false as it was.
She pulled back, her eyes red and swiped her sleeve over them, feeling the stinging of the sea spray like penance.
"He would have been taken even if you had picked up the call. There's no reason to be guilty, X." His voice was soft and he was still holding on to her, his eyes meeting hers. She wanted to clutch at him, clutch at his willingness to comfort her, to step back and accept that she had chosen another. He deserved the truth, deserved to know that her upset was guilt, but not of the shape he imagined.
Kate's laugh was derisive, pained, even as she let herself sway back towards Dutchy, his arms gathering her to his chest.
It was easier to say when she could not see him.
"I am sorry you saw that."
Dutchy stilled.
"There's nothing wrong with being upset, X." His voice was neutral and she pulled back but refused to meet his eyes, only too aware of the pain he would be hiding.
"We both know that's not what I'm talking about." She told him, shaking her head. His jaw tightened and he swallowed.
"I won't report you, Ma'am." His voice was suddenly tight, bitter and Kate cursed herself.
"I'm sorry you saw that because I regret it, and not because I am worried about regulations. I regret it because the moment I kissed him I knew that I don't mean it, not any more." She finally met his eyes and she saw his confusion and his hope. "I'm not blind, I know what we've been doing, I knew I'd eventually have to make a choice, it was just that until that moment I wasn't sure of what my answer would be."
Dutchy's hand cupped her cheek and she leant into it.
"I never would have forced you to make a choice." He told her, his voice soft now.
Kate smiled wryly. "You didn't." She told him. "But I already had."