the eclipsing variable

by A Quarter Past

It's not every day you send a hologram the age of a toddler down to a planet, just for it to come back over five-hundred years old and half mad.

1. Roche Lobe

Roche Lobe

If you give a world something to strive for, it swill reach out and grab it.

She's known that this moment would come. Entire days had passed where she'd feared that it wouldn't. In the fifty-two hours since they'd lost the Doctor to Kelemane, they watched the civilization beneath them backslide into violence and destruction — again and again and then again, before clawing its way, finally, to peace.

During that wait, Kathryn had wondered if this was just another ragged scar Voyager would leave behind it — the indelible mark of the Federation in a space unprepared to welcome it. She feared the day she'd lose count of them.

The moment:

Two figures come into phase abruptly with the rest of space-time on the bridge. Their gold suits are antiquated by Earth standards, but bright and new to the Kelemane. Soon to be antiquated for them as well.

Any minute now.

"I'm only reading one life form," Tuvok's steady voice is the first to break the shock of silence at the sudden first contact. Later, Kathryn will be thankful that her old friend's instinct is to always verify. If he hadn't, the sudden bloom of understanding would have been easily superseded by a sense-dulling surprise.

One removed helmet reveals a handsome young Kelemane man, the other their EMH.

If not for Tuvok's words, Kathryn might have read the intensity of the Doctor's dark stare as appreciation for finally coming home. Without it, she sees the unbearable weight of lifetimes between every unnecessary blink. It's there one moment and gone the next, all in the span of the second it takes him to meet her eyes and look away.

Centuries have passed for him in a blink of their eye, and they have irrevocably remained the same.

Even Tom holds back his exclamation at the prodigal hologram's return. His face is caught in the caricature of surprise as he realizes that he may not be condemned to medical duties after all.

The silence of the others, as they wait for her to speak, tells her all she needs to know. No one had expected him to return. They had all started to imagine the rest of their voyage without him, as their hope languished, and now no one knows what to say.

This understanding leaves the Captain to offer a pallid, "Welcome to Voyager, gentlemen."

...

The Kelemane man, who introduces himself as Hota Gotana-Retz, takes to the truth of his people's Watchers graciously. He easily accepts the time dilation once they've explained it to him, and smiles at the Doctor with a friendly, "Your theories were correct, Aeson."

Then later, he proves himself adaptable again by marveling with an uncomplicated awe at the news that his co-pilot had been one of the Watchers all along. How could he fault a man who'd done him no harm in his attempts to go home? Eventually they send the man on his way, with the information his people need to help free Voyager.

The reality quickly settles in.

She doesn't know what the Doctor did during all those years spent on the planet. She does not know what the two men have spoken of, or what other information the Doctor left with the Kelemane or sent Hota back with. She doesn't know the damage he's inadvertently done because they'd been unable to retrieve him when they'd promised to. Six hundred years is a long time, too long not to have had an effect.

She will have to read his report on it — force him to report it in full if need be — so she can show Owen Paris just how ravaged the corpse of the Prime Directive they're leaving behind is.

When the dust settles, and they've navigated to safer space, Kathryn decides it's time to face the music.

B'Elanna intercepts her the moment Kathryn enters sickbay.

Usually, she can count on the engineer to freely express her annoyance after any amount of time spent with the Doctor. Yet, nothing about the younger woman suggests a hint of her usual ire. Everything from her expression to her posture indicates she's perturbed, even confused.

"How is he?"

The he in question is quietly sequestered in his office. Whether he's examining what has changed in his absence or familiarizing himself with it again after being gone so long, Kathryn can't tell.

"He was active the entire time he was down there," B'Elanna speaks softly, "His mobile emitter is almost unrecognizable. Whatever he did to it kept him running, but," she casts a furtive glance in his direction, "not without a cost."

"What is it?" Kathryn keeps her voice low too.

"Well, for starters, there isn't enough space to store that many memories. He's compressed hundreds of years and purged tens more. I'm not even sure if he remembers us, not completely."

"What do you mean?"

"He saw me, he knew my name and my rank, that I'm the Chief Engineer, and the one who can access his program. Beyond that? I'm a stranger. Tom too. I mentioned Seven and he said, 'She's my friend, right? Or was that Kes?'. It's like he kept just enough of his memories to know he belongs here, but lost all of the context."

It is worse than she'd thought.

"Is he still capable of being our doctor?"

"That's the thing. He is. His initial medical programming remains intact. From what I can see he partitioned it and made in inaccessible to alteration. Everything else? It's chaos. I can only make sense of every tenth change, and there's six hundred years of it here. I don't have writing permissions, and I'm not even sure I should. I'm afraid if I make any changes he'll decompile."

There is little Kathryn can do with that knowledge, with the absence of it, "Keep sorting through what you can."

"Yes, Captain."

With the engineer's departure, Kathryn approaches the office.

"Doctor," she greets him.

He turns, not particularly surprised at the sight of her, and gives one of his neutral nods, "Captain."

Now that she's in his space, she can see the items he's carefully arranged across his desk. A short stack of bound books, a worn knit sweater, and small, PADD-sized satchel. These are the mementos he'd decided were meaningful enough to bring with him, and they have been tucked into the only space that's his.

Kathryn's fingers twitch, it's so little for more than half a millennium of life. Had he wanted to bring more? Surely he'd been constrained by the weight limitations of early space programs. If he'd managed to assimilate enough Kelemane culture to become the peer of pilots and bureaucrats alike, enough to secure his spot in that fuselage, he must have collected the small minutia that made a place a home.

A realization comes to her then, and the weight of it makes something settle thickly in her throat. If B'Elanna's findings are the whole truth, then very little about Voyager is familiar to this man. Yet, for reasons she may never know, he'd worked so hard to return to it. This office, this sickbay, they're still his but surely they don't hold the same meaning.

"These belong on a shelf," she says, carefully running her fingers along the cover of topmost book. It's fabric-bound, a rough green textile with a gilded title she can't read. Worn and well-loved and completely out of place in this sterile room.

His eyes follow the movement, confused but otherwise unbothered that she's handling his things. She wonders if he remembers any of the thousands of their previous interactions, many of which had been fraught, many others where she'd disregarded him, a few where she'd felt genuinely kind. Does he think it odd that the captain of this ship is growing emotional at the sight of his belongings?

The neutral expression on his face softens into something approaching warmth when she grasps his forearm.

"Let's find you some quarters."

She should have thought of this sooner. The moment he could freely leave this space. Hadn't he asked, when he'd received the mobile emitter? She'd brushed him off and never considered it again. She should have. The moment she had an inkling he might well and truly be a person, she should have.

...

Space is limited, but with each crew member they've lost during their voyage, someone else has gained a little more room to breathe. With the consolidation of Tom and B'Elanna into a single set of quarters, they are able to quickly rearrange assignments so that the Doctor has his own set near the rest of the senior staff. B'Elanna and Harry even sacrifice a non-trivial amount of their off-duty hours to make the space support holo-emitters.

Within the week, Chakotay, their on-call Quartermaster, keys the space in under the Doctor's name: Aeson Retz.

At first, no one asks him why he's taken the right-hyphenated name of the pilot he showed up with. Some speculate a relationship, others a homage. The answer is more complicated than that, like everything about his time on that planet is turning out to be. Eventually, between Seven asking why he's eating food now and Harry's friendly inquiries about his penchant for wearing real clothing, Tom finally asks what is up with the name.

Retz? It had been the name he carried before ever meeting the pilot, just a happy coincidence surely. Aeson? That was simple, it had been the first name he'd taken, and the one he'd used the most often since. The meaning behind his reluctance to answer their questions is clear, though: his name is a relic of a place and time and people he'll never return to. Why should they ask him to try to explain what has been lost to them?

The story spreads quickly among the small crew and with it the shared understanding that they should let the Doctor tell them things at his own pace.

Kathryn, as the Captain, must break this unspoken rule. A report, the size of an encyclopedia, is available to her whenever she has the time to read it. At times, it's dry, a clinical retelling of his movements and actions, so far as his memory allows it. Very little of it reads like a narrative, much of it is context free because to add context would mean she would inherent the endless task of reading. But there are dates in the Kelemane format, and location names, and often people. The surprise of an adopted son in his first years on the planet, but little mention of him after conflict ravaged the region he had settled. There are notes of what events he thinks he had a hand in shaping. There are wars with no details, decades without complete sentences, an entire lifetime that reads like a poet's attempt at abstract art, and a running tally of the ways he'd broken and patched his programming so he could better fit in with a species growing ever more capable of telling he wasn't one of them.

At times, she closes the report and thinks to herself, "he must be half-mad." At others, she thinks she's pinpointing the exact moment he completely self-actualized. She asks herself why they hadn't been able to save him from this horrible march of time. At what points had her decisions made it impossible for her crew to find his signal and retrieve him as planned?

Mostly, she comes to understand that while she'd sent down a valued member of her crew, a stranger returned.

…

The Qomar are the first species they meet after Kelemane. It's unfortunate that they are unbearably smug. For a people whose impulse engines were easily damaged by a rudimentary sensor scan, they think very highly of themselves. Some would say inappropriately so.

Kathryn keeps that too herself.

Diplomacy is what prevents her from rolling her eyes at them every time a member of their small group opens their mouth to speak. She's come to sickbay to welcome them aboard and assess their status, but what she gets is an exercise in patience. They're insulting and small-minded and speak to the Doctor as if he has the processing capacity of a toaster.

Frankly, they don't seem to think much better of her.

Only a few weeks ago, the hologram's feathers would have been ruffled beyond restraint. He would have reacted to slights so casually thrown his way with an insult of his own, or a witty retort just this side of acceptable. In turn, she would have had to swiftly correct him, as she often had to, with a stern scolding. That she often agreed with his grossing didn't matter — a Captain had to keep their crew in line.

Now, however, he isn't reacting to the Qomar at all, beyond cursory instructions and refusals to let them leave without a thorough medical examination. They may as well be throwing insults at a wall, for all that he doesn't react. He just scans and treats then moves on to the next to do it all over again.

Kathryn stays in sickbay long beyond what is necessary simply to observe.

The leader of this tiresome group, Abarca, keeps pontificating on the primitive nature of holo-technology, even as a hologram heals his injuries. Tincoo is no better, treating the entire encounter like a demonstration of antiquated care. The small female Qomar follows the Doctor around with a string of pointed questions, each more accusatory than the last.

Kathryn has to rebuff them on occasion, while assuring them that they'll repair their ship and send them on their way. That it would all go more quickly if they just allowed them to do their jobs.

By the time the Doctor begins to hum as he works — a tune she's unfamiliar with, very likely Kelemane in origin — her patience with their guests is only held together by a single thread and caffeine. The caffeine has is starting to wear off; the thread is frayed.

"What is that sound?" Abarca, while amazed, still manages to be demanding.

Kathryn looks at the confused yet awed faces of Qomar around her and is baffled. She's warring with the impulse to roll her eyes and the need ask them, genuinely, if they've never heard humming before?

It goes deeper than that.

They have never heard music.

Later, once they've sent the Qomar back to their repaired ship — with a sigh of a relief and a good-riddance hidden in their goodbyes — she's left to consider how thoroughly unmoved the Doctor appeared in the face of their fascination with him.

With his singing.

She feels uneasy and doesn't know why.

...

They flee Tarakis, the trauma of the Nakan massacre lingering within each member of the crew forced to experience it. Kathryn cannot help but see Saavdra behind the translucences of her eyelids. Always, always, it's her inability to stop his mass murder and the desecration of innocent people that she sees. Even though she knows she hadn't really been there, hadn't really seen or done the things the monument had forced into her mind, she feels like she should have done more.

Chakotay still doesn't approve of her decision to repair the transponder's power source, to effectively allow the memorial to traumatize another passing ship. It doesn't matter that they've left a message behind— warnings can decay or resist translation or come too late. Loathe as she is to let such an invasive reminder of violence and tragedy remain, Kathryn can not help but to agree with Neelix.

Neelix, who only speaks of the terrors of Rinax when the horrid truth of it is dragged out of him by the carelessness of others. He was forced to throw the trauma and the sorrow of it all at the feet of those who thought him incapable of understanding the implications of these issues, only to be told by those who'd once claimed they'd had as much to lose that he was wrong.

No. He is right. It isn't their place to destroy how the Nakans choose to remember their past.

The Talaxian is doing his best to raise morale, not just among the fourth of the crew suffering from newly acquired second-hand post-traumatic stress and guilt, but for those trying to support them through it. The Mess is decorated, as tastefully as Neelix can manage, with flowers from hydroponics and the many colorful tapestries he's gathered during their voyage. Harry's quartet is playing music in the corner, while two-dozen of her crew mill around a buffet of finger foods and desserts. More are likely to join as they can, since the word has gotten out that the food is actually decent.

Kathryn is nursing a fermented drink. It has alcohol content — that much is clear from the sharp undertones — but not so much that she can't enjoy one. Slowly. She's not sure if mixing alcohol with stress and grief is a very good idea, but she has been assured there is an ample supply of detox should anyone get carried away.

From where she sits in the corner farthest from the buffet line, she has a good view of the room. Chakotay, who has slowly stopped scowling at her in the last two days, is choosing to finish off their disagreement by spending this free time with B'Elanna and Tom. They're too far away for her to overhear what they're arguing about, but it must be nothing too serious, as even the engineer is smiling.

Tuvok left after fifteen minutes, so Kathryn has been mingling with anyone who comes by to chat. She uses these events to speak to those who typically don't have a direct line to her ear. For the most part, the lower decks have grown comfortable with this and utilize these moments the best they can.

Her friendly but brief conversation with Ensign Wright ends organically when the diagnostician's usual group of friends meander in. As Kathryn watches her set off to greet them, she almost misses the next young woman who takes a chair at her table.

Almost.

The Equinox crew still disturb her, for what they have done and what she nearly did to them. Tuvok has provided his usual wise counsel in this area, suggesting she leave their handling entirely to Chakotay for the time being. If anyone has noticed her lack of interest in their assimilation with the crew, well, no one has bothered to mention it.

Marla Gilmore is sitting there, wan and clearly sleep-deprived. Kathryn is relieved to see that she's chosen what looks to be hot tea over alcohol — since the latter would surely accelerate this young woman's unravelling.

This is all that pleases her about her current company.

Gilmore fidgets. It's a nervous tic she does quite often, along with wringing her hands. She knows Gilmore and Lessing were two of the many who'd been subjected to the memorial's transmissions. It seemed the Nakans had targeted a type. What did it say that Kathryn fit it?

Eventually, she realizes that this woman used all of her bravery just to come over and sit, and decides to put her out of her misery.

"Can I help you, crewman?"

A sharp edge lines the attempted softness of her tone, and Kathryn nearly sighs. There's punishing a person for their wrongdoings and then there's mistreating them for it. She'll have to try do better, despite her feelings on the matter.

"I-I," Gilmore fidgets some more, then takes a purposeful breath and pushes some of the tension out of her shoulders, "I want people to remember what I did. What we did. To the nucleogenic lifeforms. Nothing…invasive. I just..I…"

Kathryn is still considering what she's trying to ask for when the Doctor appears over her shoulder. His approach looks purposeful, like he's overheard Gilmore's request and means to participate in the discussion. A part of her wants to shoo him away, so that she can figure this out on her own. The part that sees the strange expression on his face and wants to know its genesis says nothing when he sits.

Gilmore looks at him, miserable and ashamed. The Doctor treated the onset of her hallucinations as he had with the forty or so other crew members affected. They must have already exchanged words on the matter, given that the crewman seems entirely keyed in to what the hologram might say to her.

"Captain," he gives a perfunctory greeting.

Kathryn nods her permission for him to interrupt.

His face, while severe, isn't unkind when he reaches out to still Gilmore's fidgeting fingers, "Memorials remind others what the dead have lost."

He's right.

Kathryn finds in that moment, looking from the hologram that now goes by Aeson Retz to Marla Gilmore, that she understands Neelix's impassioned argument more than she had before. The monument on Tarakis isn't the memorial. The memories transposed into her crew's brains, the ones that will not fade, are. The ones they'll carry with them for the rest of their lives, even as the feelings of them fade with time and rationalization.

They'll learn to set the guilt aside, even if the settlers' killers couldn't.

"You're alive. You can't ask others to remember what you've done just so you can forget."

His words don't immediately impact Marla. They seep into her slowly, a lesson that if she wishes to atone for what she's done, it isn't enough remind others. Eventually, she's able to take another stable breath an nod. "Thank you, Doctor. Captain."

Left alone with him now, with his familiar-not-familiar eyes cast in her direction, Kathryn wonders what events on Kelemane he serves as a memorial for. Which of his memories are the only left that mark the wars she watched from the safety of the bridge, each a little horror that came and went in a blink of an eye?

She should ask. She should.

She doesn't.

...

It is meant to be a straightforward away mission. A stop-and-go survey of an otherwise mediocre planet with compelling dilithium readings. Their stores are at 80%, so if the crystal matrix is impossible to reach without harming the weak ecosystem on the planet, they can leave with no real loss beyond the time it takes to get there and back.

Kathryn has been steadily growing more stir crazy since they rescued Seven and Tuvok from Penk. Chakotay has taken to helping the the former crew of the Equinox make amends for their past crimes, an effort spearheaded by Marla with a feverish sense of purpose. While she's pleased that the Doctor's words have ignited something in the young woman, Kathryn would like to go at least a day without hearing another report on it.

Had she not been so antsy to get off the ship, the away mission wouldn't have even been approved.

It's Tuvok's slow recovery from his injuries that allows Kathryn to overlook Ayala for Megan Delaney on the mission team without having to listen to a lecture about unnecessary risks. It will give her a chance to spend time with Megan without also having to entertain Jenny — the louder of the twins. The poor woman has been listless ever since Astrometrics Lab gave Seven near complete control over stellar cartography. Perhaps they can take the time to brainstorm how she can participate in other ways.

She nearly denied her Second Officer's single request — that she bring the Doctor with them, in case something went wrong. After all, they'd only be six hours away at Warp 4 in the Delta Flyer. It would be better for the Doctor to remain aboard Voyager in case Tuvok needed any additional care. The Vulcan's raised brow suggests that he could very easily have a problem with her adding herself to the away mission if she didn't do this one small thing that he asks.

Kathryn acquiesces.

Class L planets are known for their vegetation and water. Unlike Class M planets, they aren't meant to have much — if any — animal life. It's what makes them such great planets to colonize, since well-suited fauna could be imported in with fewer worries about upending established niches in the ecosystem.

All their dilithium readings point to a cave network on the outskirts of a temperate forest. The trio are enjoying their short five kilometer hike from the landing site to the natural openings in the network. The sunshine is pleasant, its UV index similar to Earth's, and the temperature is just cool enough that her jacket doesn't make her uncomfortably warm as they walk.

As expected, Megan is a joy to work with. It is true that Kathryn should have probably kept Ayala on the mission due to his security experience, but one could only spend so much time in his silence without needing a reprieve. Besides, Megan's secondary interest in geology makes her the right choice for spelunking.

The Doctor is mostly quiet — a new normal that used to be a rarity — although Megan is able to masterfully pull him into a conversation about the medicinal value of the plants they pass along the way. It's clear the brunette knows nothing of botany, but her questions are friendly and she doesn't give the impression that she's bothered by the changes to his personality.

Kathryn doesn't think she's said more than ten words to him since leaving the shuttle.

Two hundred meters from their destination, several things happen in quick succession. Sensing something in the brush, the Doctor stops short and bars Kathryn's forward progress with arm across her chest. He's just calling out to Megan, who has traveled ten meters ahead of them to gather readings on the rock formations, to to stop when Kathryn sees it.

The creature is perfectly camouflaged against the grey-green leaves of the surrounding brush and boulders. It's quadrupedal, likely mammalian, with a sharp, lithe frame and sinister looking spines along its tail. It isn't large, comparable to the size of a mule, but it doesn't need to be. Its camouflage is more than simple coloration, it extends to their scanning capabilities as well. Kathryn is sure there are likely volumes of research on the evolutionary paths that lead to such a peculiar ability— whether its a primary survival trait or an incidental one.

Right now that curiosity is the furthest thing from her mind.

What she wants to know is if it's hiding from them or hunting them.

She eases around the Doctor's outstretched arm, ignoring the glare he gives her for doing so, and moves carefully to join Megan. The astrophysicist is preternaturally still where she stands, her eyes steady on the creature. It's staring back, gold-green eyes unblinking.

"Are their more?" Megan whispers, when Kathryn finally makes it within arm's reach.

A very good question. One, provided it doesn't move quicker than the human reaction time, they can handle. Any more than that, and they were in real trouble.

There are three.

The one on their flank strikes first.

The next several seconds are a blur of shouted commands, a shrill scream, and Kathryn firing with the highest stun setting. Her precision is immaculate, but they are fast and by the time she's able put each down, Megan is staggering with her hands against her stomach, vomiting blood. The Doctor springs into action then, gathering the young woman up as he rushes toward the cavern entrance ahead.

Kathryn is slow to follow, running through protocols to secure their position. Part of her fears that the creatures came from the cavern, but she has to hope that their coloration reflects where they spend most of their time: the foliage. Even then, that doesn't mean nothing calls the caves its home, but right now its the best cover they have.

The tableau that awaits her when she enters is nothing short of a horror.

Megan Delaney is writhing in agony, her chocolate hair twisting out of its regulation bun and spilling across the cavern floor. Sharp stones line the path, and she's grinding her cheek into them with each thrash of her head, unaware that they are piercing her skin. Hoarse, half breaths are punctuated with groans as the Doctor probes the ragged gaps punctured through the stomach of her uniform.

"Help me remove her jacket," his voice is measured, as if this is nothing more than a yearly exam.

Kathryn does as she's told, the stones cutting into her own knees as she quickly kneels at Megan's hip. Despite the sharp sting of it, her fingers are steady as she yanks the zipper free and pulls the tank up until nothing but skin and the deep burgundy of arterial blood is visible where three holes have been punched into skin.

"I've administered an analgesic, but she's still feeling pain. Sedation isn't working. The creature's spines must contain neurological toxins. I suspect they are blocking the effects of the medication. I need to remove them to stop the pain and the bleeding," The Doctor explains as he efficiently rolls up his sleeves and grabs a laser scalpel.

With a sickening dread, Kathryn knows what's coming next.

"Megan," the Doctor says, voice growing kinder, soothing as he leans over so his face is in the injured woman's field of view, "You've been badly injured, and I can't stop the pain. Do you understand?"

The ensign gasps but nods, the movement loosing the tears from her eyes and down her cheeks.

"I'm going to remove the spines, but it is going to hurt," he pauses, as if he wants to elaborate just how badly she will hurt, "You will survive this."

Sobs erupt as she nods again, her blood-frothed breaths coming faster and more shallow with the shock of what has happened and what is yet to come.

He meets Kathryn's eyes, "This will have to be by sight and feel. You should look away."

She doesn't.

He makes the first incision.

Megan's screams are the only thing that ground her.

When it's over, Megan Delaney is barely conscious with a thready pulse but alive. Kathryn has torn the sleeves from her uniform jacket and uses one to wipe the blood away. The venom does not allow for complete dermal regeneration or cauterization, so the wounds continue to ooze. With the jacket's back panel, Kathryn creates a fabric guard to keep Megan's soiled tank from touching the bandage when they pull it back down. The Doctor, for his part, allows his hands to de- and then re-materialize to remove the blood that has soaked them.

They both examine the four spines he'd pulled from Megan's digestive track. They are each six centimeters in length, the largest one eight millimeters in diameter. He handles them, frowning at the barbs that line a side of each length, "I will need to reconstruct her abdomen when we make it back to Voyager."

"Did you leave any behind?"

She can see it as freshly as if it's still happening, his fingers probing between the folds of intestines in search for each spine and the many barbs attached to them. He had been detached, methodical, while Megan made tortured sounds as Kathryn held her down.

"No."

Now that the immediate emergency has been dealt with, Kathryn can focus on the next. They're stuck in an unprotected cavern five kilometers from their shuttle, unable to initiate a transport due to the geological interference. Megan is in no shape to sit, let alone to make that hike. The Doctor needs to stay here to tend to her injuries, and Kathryn isn't convinced she won't be hunted down if she tries to go out on her own.

She might be able to fashion a signal enhancer from a tricorder, but she'll need to work fast before whatever toxins are affecting Megan kick in.

It's her wince gives her away as she stands.

The Doctors eyes are predator sharp as he looks past Megan's blood on Kathryn's body and sees the evidence of her own injuries. He's viper quick, grabbing her wrist and preventing her from playing the martyr by denying care.

There's nothing to do but to let him pull her away from the glassy-eyed ensign and force her to take a seat on softer ground. She stops him from using the limited medication in his kit, knowing that any of it might be the difference between life or death for the woman barely conscious in the corner.

"What part of neurotoxin don't you understand?" he grosses, begrudgingly giving in to her order.

Before she can respond to the clearly rhetorical question, the Doctor yanks her right sleeve up. It reveals the angry swelling of her forearm and the trickle of blood seeping from the spot where an especially large spine has sunk beneath her skin. Kathryn, knowing it's better to rip the bandaid off in one go, tilts her head to show him her second injury.

He takes the hint and drops her arm to tug at the collar of her turtle neck. This time he lets out an indignant huff before giving up and ripping the seam, only enough to expose the wound while keeping her dignity in tact.

"I know the drill," she says before he can admonish her for hiding her injuries for so long, "this will hurt."

"We have no idea the medium or long-term effects of the toxin. This could have paralyzed you; it still might," warm hands adjust the tilt of her head so he can get a closer look at the wound on her neck, and one continues to hold her firmly in place by the jaw as he activates the laser scalpel.

Blood is trailing down her neck to her collar and the smell of burnt flesh is nearly suffocating. The pain is intense enough to steal the rest of her breath alway. More than that, the slick sounds of fingers digging beneath her skin is nauseating.

When he releases her, Kathryn rubs where his grasp has left an indent on her chin and swallows down bile. The Doctor is too busy examining the specimen he's removed to clock the tired glare she throws his way.

Dizzy from the blood loss or toxin, Kathryn turns her glare to the ground, holds out her arm, and waits for him to start the process over again. At least this time she can watch — the morbid curiosity of it all should be enough to keep her from emptying her stomach all over his shoes.

Eventually, he begins to eye the wound on her arm strategically, palpitating the barb that has settled there. Kathryn hisses at the pain but doesn't comment on the brusque way he's handling her — she'd told him to save the sedatives for Megan after all.

"I'll need to cut through skin and muscle," he warns her, voice nearly as soft as when he'd apologized to Megan before reaching a hand into her viscera, "the smaller barbs have likely breached the radial artery, and their anti-coagulant properties mean I'll need to try cauterize as soon as pull them free."

She understands this to mean that she'll be getting a taste of Megan's medicine, "Understood."

His gaze catches hers briefly at the go ahead, a sense of presence there that has been missing for weeks, "I need both hands for this, so I'm going to anchor your wrist between my knees. Please do your best to remain still."

Kathryn gives him a single nod, which devolves into an involuntary shudder of agony when he moves her arm into place.

"Muscle tremors," he mutters, "the analgesic must have at least prevented those in the Ensign. Are you experiencing any in your jaw and neck?"

"No, just pain."

He nods, then, "Three, two, one."

The laser scalpel splits the skin of her forearm like paper. Kathryn watches the bloom of blood as it bubbles up, then out, resistant to the cauterization.

"That's the anti-coagulant," he explains calmly, using the remaining patch of sleeve she'd torn off to clear away the blood as it surfaces "once I remove the spine the cauterization should be more effective. Cutting into muscle now."

White hot pain flares up her arm and settles right behind her eyes. She feels her jaw lock around a groan, and barely keeps the sound from tumbling out of her mouth into the space between them. The next cut is worse, deeper and longer as he exposes as much of the foreign object that has settled within the tissue as he can. He switches the scalpel off and presses it into the palm of her other hand, where she reflexively closes her fingers around it.

"Hold tight," he commands, then pries open the flesh of her arm. He uses the fingers of his other hand to find the boundaries of the spine and its barbs.

Her vision dips, then doubles, then settles with the fog of pain and shock. Distantly, she can hear and feel him slowly working it loose

"Your heart rate is up to one hundred and eighty. I should sedate you."

"No," she grinds out, even as she strains against his vice-like hold on her wrist.

At no point does he stop the extraction process, even as he begins to speak.

"This reminds me of my days as a medic," whether it's her failing consciousness or the tone of his voice that makes her uneasy, Kathryn cannot say, "I saw men lose consciousness at this level of pain, not to mention Megan's."

It's the tone, Kathryn decides. His voice is low and conversational, and given what he's in the middle of doing, it's eerie, "but I suspect that was because they knew what was coming next."

Kathryn can hardly speak, watching mutely as millimeter by millimeter he removes the largest of the barbs from muscle. She manages, weakly, "What do you mean?"

"The Kelemane were in a state of arrested development, very similar to twentieth century humans. This was most evident during their wars. The ones you started when trying to maneuver Voyager to a higher orbit. I stayed out of it, but you can only dodge drafts so long while trying to blend in."

He set the first barb aside and went in for the next "So, I became a medic."

She's incapable of speaking, so he continues when she grunts instead..

"They were especially fond of white phosphorus munitions, you know the type," another barb is dropped from fingers gummy with her blood.

"They make fantastic smoke screens, but," another, "as I'm sure you're aware, white phosphorus burns at 800 degrees celsius. Enough to dig a hole clean through skin and bone. By the time you smother the flames, half your patients go into shock. A nontrivial number of them are already dead."

With the final barb dislodged, he begins to pull the main spine free with slow precision. His voice is still even, as if he is conveying nothing more than the weather, even as the tug beneath her skin causes the sound of it to thrum between her ears.

"That's when the lucky ones would faint, because it isn't over with the flames are gone. You can't just leave that phosphorus in the wound, you have to cut it out while it's still smothered. Otherwise, it'll just start burning again. The unlucky ones remained awake for that part."

The movement of her flesh sounds slick, like mastication.

Kathryn wheezes once, and it's this that makes him look at her with compassion.

"You both have handled this well. There we go," he offers her the spine, impossibly large with little pieces of her clinging to it, in exchange for the laser scalpel.

Kathryn grips the dark, blood-covered object without complaint.

"Cauterizing."

Despite the pain, she hardly flinches, the minutes slip by her as she half imagines a smoke-hazed field. Despite the centuries that lay between now and then, the horrors of trench warfare on Earth are not foreign to her. She just doesn't know why he's decided that this was the right time to tell her about his time on Kelemane.

He fashions a bandage from the frayed remains of her right sleeve and a small piece of his own. Her wound is oozing much like Megan's, and his fingers graze the puckered edges of her flesh as he secures the bandage into place with practiced knots.

"You should rest," his voice remains gentle as he releases her arm and drops his tools back into his kit.

"I need you to monitor Megan while I create a signal enhancer," she finds the strength to order.

With a sigh — as if he knows arguing with her is futile — the Doctor nods at moves away.

As she disassembles her tricroder and works on its insides with shaking hands, her eyes struggle to take in anything clearly, but what she does notice is this.

He has not wiped her blood from his hands.

Katheryn, half delirious with the toxins that clearly do have neurological effects, solders and tinkers beside him with her one good arm. Between her slow work and the growing frequency of violent muscle spasms, she watches with a detached curiosity as her blood dries. As it cracks and flakes and rubs away while he works on the signal enhancer she has failed to complete. Where it adheres — stubbornly etched around and under his blunt fingernails — it remains red no matter how long it sits exposed to the air.

Eventually she tires and can do no more.

The sweat cooling on her brow is the only sign that she has had a fever and that it has broken only to return again. Between one agonizing fit and the next, Kathryn settles next to Megan's prone form. She wakes there later, her wounded armed wrapped comfortingly around the younger woman's shoulders until she realizes that she's the one who's shaking violently.

In brief moments of wakefulness, she stares at her injured arm, at the blood seeping through the bandage, and listens to the Doctor complete her work. He makes progress as she hallucinates white flame burning against the cave wall. The ghosts of his stories are bright in her mind's eye, casting shadows that aren't really there.

As she drifts back to sleep, she imagines the Doctor carving flames from the abdomens of men, just like he'd carved the spines out of Megan Delaney's intestines. His voice had been so soft, so calm as he'd told the science officer everything would be all right. That the pain wasn't permanent. That it meant she was still alive.

Was it that soft when Kelemane men writhed under his violent treatments? How many died screaming while he whispered empty promises because he couldn't cut their flesh from their bodies fast enough?

When she finally sleeps, it's she who is burning clean through. Skin to bone to skin again. By the time Voyager finds them, her husk will be ashes.

She should have asked.

...

The low thrum of Voyager fills her senses as she comes to. She's trembling and ill, but it's no hallucination. They've made it back aboard the ship, and her biobed is humming through its gentle scans as she takes one aborted breath after another. She runs her hands over the new, smooth skin of her right arm and neck, afraid she'll feel the ridge of another venomous spine ready to start the nightmare all over again.

Voices reach her — Jenny coddling her sister, who has against all odds survived and is awake. The Doctor is giving them both the positive prognosis, even as he explains the terrible ordeal the injured twin has gone through. There are sniffles but relief in the voice of the twin who'd nearly become a one.

"The Captain?" the warbling voice asks, fretting. Concerned.

Jenny.

"She's recovering," he explains.

"She made him give me all the medication in his kit," Megan's voice is threadbare. Exhausted, small, but steady. Her own personal crucible had made her stronger.

"It bought you time" the Doctor conceded, "enough time."

Shaking, nerves jittering in her face and eyes, Kathryn understands what he's saying. While Megan's injuries had been the more devastating, Kathryn is paying the price for the other woman's survival and would continue to until he could flush all the toxins from her system.

The three voices continue to whisper as the biobed administers another sedative, pulling her back under as the next violent tremors take hold.

"Captain?"

Fingers fiddle with the sweat-slick hair plastered to her brow, soothing it away and behind her ear. It's a gesture reminiscent of her mother's gentle ministrations when she was sick a a child — nostalgic and ancient history.

Her eyes snap open, the sharp prick of coherence lining the edges of her vision again.

Sickbay is at a quarter light. Although her muscles feel weak, all the pain has left them. Her hands are still at her side — free of the twitching that had rendered her useless on the planet. She is able to move to look at who was touching her.

Beside her, Megan is seated on a stool. The younger woman continues to wear a medical gown, and there are shadows bruising the undersides of her eyes as she watches Kathryn come awake abruptly. Although she'll always be a natural beauty, the Ensign looks prematurely aged by her ordeal. Shell-shocked and emotionally exhausted.

She recalls now, the way the other woman's stare, frozen in the rictus of a medical trauma, had watched as the Doctor did his best to treat Kathryn's wounds. How much had she really understood of that fraught exchange? How much had she heard? Had she just imagined it all?

"How are you feeling?" Kathryn tries her voice. It's raspier than usual but comes without struggle.

"Like I was gutted on a cave floor," Megan whispers, but there are traces of her usual good humor in the words.

"You were," Kathryn doesn't lie. For as long as she lives, she will remember how she'd forced herself to watch the Doctor reach into this woman's abdomen and work a miracle. Forced herself to pay witness in case it didn't work. In case Megan's last moments were filled with meaningless torment.

"I thought he was trying to kill me at first," Megan confesses.

Kathryn knows now that the astrophysicist isn't whispering because she's afraid the Doctor will hear. He's not here. She's whispering because the sickbay is too empty to fill with anything louder. The experience isn't something you share at full volume.

"The crew talks, you know, about how he came back not ri… the same. It's small potatoes stuff, just about what he must have gotten up to down on Kelemane. That he wears real clothes now, eats food. I didn't really think about it until…" her brown eyes flick away briefly as she swallows something down, a moment later she lays her crossed arms on the edge of the bed and rests her chin on them, "…he's never tried so hard to make me feel like everything is going to be okay. It's the nicest he's ever been to me. I really thought I was going to die."

It used to be easy, back when Kes was aboard and Kathryn still had hope, to reach out and touch her crew. To comfort them when they showed her their fear. To take comfort in the act of making them feel better, if only for the moment.

She'd let that natural, soothing intuition shrivel in the absence of the Ocampa. Kathryn uses what is left of that pathetic thing to rest a hand on Megan's and mean it.

Megan sniffles, wiping at her eyes, "And I was really out of it, you know? Obviously I was, those pain killers were some next level stuff even if they didn't work. I remember thinking, 'Geeze, why is the Doctor pulling fish bones out the Captain's neck.'"

"I had a similar thought," Kathryn say wryly.

This earns her a smile, a wan little thing, "Anyway, aside from officially winning the betting pool for being the first member of the crew to be spooned by you—"

"—as far as you know."

"Oh, you better believe I'm cashing in those energy credits. No one else has."

It's Kathryn's turn to smile. Leave it to a Delaney sister to pull something funny out of a truly harrowing experience, "I'm assuming this line of thinking is a detour ?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Before Kelemane, Jenny and I were convinced he was over the moon for Seven. To be fair, at least six of the men and as many of the woman are. I'm half over the moon for her myself."

"Not that I'm completely uninvested in the collective appreciation of Seven, but I'm not seeing how this is related to the away mission."

Megan wipes at her face again, her wrists pressing against her eyes as if she can't believe she is about to actually say this, "He looked at you like he'd … before we beamed back, I was pretty out of it, but you were gone. I'd been dreaming about warm beaches and daiquiris and there you were thrashing around, fighting an entire army in your sleep. And he was just," Megan reaches out a hand gingerly, as if afraid of the world's worst dressing down, and strokes Kathryn's forehead with the edge of her thumb, the same back and forth movement that had woken her minutes before.

Just as Kathryn thinks she's going to have to ask her to stop, Megan blinks, clears her throat, and withdraws.

But she remembers, and Megan isn't wrong. She'd been half-dead with pain and fear, and he'd looked like the thing he wanted most in the world was to crack open her head to see what was inside.

...

"You look hungry," leave it to Chakotay to peer into the manic core of her and pinpoint with complete accuracy what is wrong, and only two minutes after entering sickbay to congratulate her on her release. It's a new personal record.

Her smile is all teeth, the growling in her stomach loud enough to give her away.

"The Captain needs rest," comes the Doctor's soft admonishment from where he's entering his discharge report, as if releasing her into Chakotay's care is unthinkably foolish.

"I've been sleeping for days," she looks away from Chakotay to him, and what was once a smile is now just bared teeth, "and I am hungry."

The Doctor returns the thing-that-used-to-be-a-smile with something that is all plastic around the eyes. A cellophane expression for a cellophane man.

Although they've been in the same space for most of the morning, they have not spoken beyond vague mentions of her condition. It seems he was content to fall into his new equilibrium of quiet toil, while she's tried — and failed — to rationalize her new discomfort in his presence until what remains is something cruel and uncharitable.

It's time she gets away from him.

Once the command team makes it to Kathryn's quarters, Chakotay is happy to carry the entirety of the conversation as he harangues her replicator into making a proper dish. He's long since forgiven her for the Nakan incident, just as he had with the Equinox debacle and every other decision he hasn't agreed with before. His tone is light and as friendly as it has ever been, but she isn't paying attention.

Not until a bowl is set before her, does she shift her eyes to him.

He hands her the spoon, "That bad?"

He knows her so well, this man. When she feels more like Kathryn than the Captain, it's easy to sit and laugh with him over drinks and meals. To sink down into the warm safety of soft pining. She knows he dabbles in it too, even if they've both accepted it for the doomed thing that it is. When she's retreated to a place where she feels less a person and more a rank, conversations with him are just another duty. A chore she has to complete to get to the other side.

Lately, she has started to feel as if she's a half-filled uniform in the shape of Kathryn Janeway, held up by protocol and duty and regret.

She swirls the spoon around the sauce and catches a chunk of turnip. It's his mother's vegetable stew, the one Chakotay saves for when what the person he's feeding needs most is comfort. Harry had once called it the culinary equivalent of a warm hug; Kathryn thinks that's an apt description.

"I've been in my head too long," she admits, before chewing on the softened root.

Chakotay takes a seat, clearly thinking through his next words as they eat in companionable silence. Eventually, he sets his spoon aside and folds his hands together.

Kathryn stops chewing and waits.

"Will Megan be okay?"

It's not what he wants to ask, but it's the best way he knows how to start this conversation.

"Physically? Yes. Psychologically? I'm not sure. The Doctor tortured her while I held her down."

The image of the ensign comes back to her, blood and offal and bleeding. It puts her off her appetite. Swallowing thickly, she pushes the bowl aside and leans her elbows against the table. A moment later, she rubs her face with her hands.

Chakotay waits with silent compassion until she rests her chin in her palm. She wants to say she should have never approved the mission — but he'd respond with a reasonable reminder that hindsight is reviewed with perfect vision. She wants to tell him that in her own state of delusion and emotional confusion, she'd convinced herself that the Doctor had enjoyed Megan's pain —her own pain — and had extended it. That this is a feeling deeply etched into her by the trauma, difficult to shake, and deeply unfair. He'd remind her that hallucinations can render the most benign actions insidious. She wants to talk about the detail in which he'd discussed carving fire out of men. Chakotay would explain that holograms must be able to experience trauma too, and that the Doctor said such things to work through his own at a time when he was forced to relive it.

She wants to mention the blood and the look, but she knows he could have just been monitoring the anti-coagulation effects of the creatures' toxins and then later her condition. That he had fashioned a signal enhancer strong enough to initiate a site-to-site to the shuttle, then immediately sent for Voyager to meet them at highest warp they could maintain.

These are all the things she's been telling herself, and she mostly believes them. Yet that deep, irrational part of her brain she has no control over clings to it. It clings to the paranoia that comes with relying on a stranger to keep you safe at your weakest. And as much as she hates to admit it, that's what the Doctor — Aeson Retz — now is. A stranger they all must rely on, with an indecipherable program and unknown motivations.

Kathryn doesn't want prejudice and fear to dictate they way she handles this — it's well past the time she's learned her lesson on that — but she doesn't know how to proceed. They are, none of them, his friends.

Not in the way they once were.

Seven has confessed that he often mistakes his memories of Kes with his memories of her, to the point that he often forgets that she's aboard the ship and has already accepted the loss. This detachment has left the young woman uncertain of where she stands with him. She is now doing what many humans do when they are hurt, creating a protective distance instead of trying to bridge the gap it. Harry cannot keep him invested in conversations long enough to ask him about his experiences, and Neelix only finds luck when he asks for Kelemane recipes for culinary experimentation.

Yet, for reasons unknown, she's noticed him hovering around the edges of her social periphery during her off hours. Near without approaching. Present but detached. The interaction with Gilmore was just one example of his joining the conversation in response to what someone has said to her. He'd done the same with Megan on the planet, and often to Tom in the holodeck.

Why hasn't she engaged with him? It's not like her to be uncertain when interacting with her crew. Even the Maquis. Even the ones who she spends no duty shifts with. It's possible it's because he no longer feels like a member of her crew. Sure, he wears the uniform and follows protocols, but he also wears the facial ridges of a Kelemane. It's a reminder that he's spent centuries more time not being a Starfleet Officer than he has being one.

It's possible he's brimming with things he wants to say. Maybe Tarakis had shaken loose memories of the wars he'd witnessed, and the only time she'd stopped long enough to allow him to give words to what he'd experienced was when he re-experienced them while cutting into her arm.

She's been silent for too long. Chakotay watches her think until it's no longer comfortable. At that point, he asks, "Are you okay?"

It's what he has wanted to ask since he got her alone.

And like that, she falls back into the increasingly familiar feeling of being more Captain than Kathryn.

"I'll have to be."

…

Kathryn hasn't been back to Fair Haven in some weeks.

While balancing her concerns over the well-being of the Doctor, Seven, Tuvok, and Megan, she's spent the better part of her off-duty hours unplugging from more complex pastimes. So, she plays Velocity with Seven, shares meals with Tuvok, and works with the twins to find a place for them to make their mark. For Jenny, this means commanding Astrometrics — as she is content to allow Seven as much access to the space as she wants. It fulfills the dual purpose of assuaging Command's concerns about letting a non-Starfleet member of her crew fill that position while giving Jenny the command experience she's been asking for. Megan chooses to take over bridge shifts from Samantha Wildman, who in turn happily takes over command of the research lab.

Her return to the program is really just a bid to get to know the Doctor again, and help him find the means to reintegrate with those who still try to think of him as a friend. To let him speak to her about what has happened to him when she's capable of listening.

This means the wholly non-secular Katie O'Clare is trying to talk the skeptical town priest into giving a sermon when Milo and Seamus barge through the front doors of the church with a cow. The Doctor looks at her, not amused in the slightest. Kathryn, for her part, is wondering what sort of prank Harry and Tom have come up with this time.

So she shrugs at him, as if to say this isn't her doing, and addresses the two characters.

"Cows can't take communion, gentlemen."

Seamus, who is already quite red around his bloated face, turns a deep shade of fuchsia, "This isn't a cow! It's Maggie!"

"Naming the cow doesn't mean it isn't a cow," is the Doctor's sardonic response.

It's clearly out of character, as Father Mulligan is known around town to be loquacious and painfully earnest. It shocks the men into indignant silence long enough for Kathryn to remember who they must be talking about.

"They think she's Maggie O'Halloran," she whispers through her teeth, then says so the others can hear,"The auburn haired lass who runs the vegetable stall?"

Milo points at her and nods, temperament thawing slightly now that she hasn't dismissed this outright. She has two options here: 1) assume this is some prank built into the program, and that Tom or Harry are having good fun waiting outside to see the outcome, or 2) assume that these men really think the cow is Maggie.

Aware that the Doctor will never again agree to host a Catholic mass, she decides that it doesn't matter which is true. She may as well go where this strange plot thread takes her —them, if she has any say in the matter. If it is a prank, surely she has enough good humor to laugh at herself.

"Did you see how she was turned into a cow?"

What does it say about her that this isn't anywhere near the top ten oddest questions she's asked in her time on Voyager?

Seamus hesitates before answering, clearly wary of her. He'd come to see a man of God, not the strange outsider who was carrying on with the bartender.

"Your friend, Tom, did it."

The Doctor may not remember this program well, but he's catching on to the dynamics quickly. Before Kathryn can try to ask the questions necessary to determine how the holograms were able to understand Tom's actions —and she does believe them that Tom has done this — he cuts her off.

"Mr. Paris isn't her friend. That's why she was here, to convince me to have a word with him about his behavior."

She wants to glare at him for throwing the pilot under the proverbial carriage, but refrains when she sees the way his words make Seamus relax. The rotund man even manages to look apologetic for his harsh tone. It has paved the way for Kathryn to ask the questions she wants.

"Did you see him do this? I know he's been a nuisance, but this sounds like…"

"The meddling of outsiders," Seamus completes her sentence, "the workings of the spirit folk."

"You think Mr. Paris is a Sidhe?"

If pulling off the incredulous priest — bound only to believe a certain type of supernatural and to disregard all the rest, especially Irish folklore — is the Doctor's goal here, he's succeeding. The tone is half question, half accusation, as if he suspects Seamus has had a little too much to drink and is seeing things.

"Aye, and that friend of his too."

That would be Harry. It's possible that this is a storyline that the boys have added to the Fair Haven program, but they've been good about posting their change logs to the ship forum. Kathryn had checked it the previous evening to see what had shifted in the town during her absence. Aside from a few patches after the storm, little has.

"Have you seen them since?" she gestures toward Maggie-the-cow.

"They disappeared through a door in the air," is all Milo say.

Kathryn makes eye contact with the Doctor. He's thinking what she's thinking: this is not a Tom Paris signature prank. Something might actually be wrong here. Even if Tom turned Maggie into a cow and these men saw, they shouldn't have recognized the exit doors.

They need to get out of here and run a diagnosis on the program, but first, they need Seamus and Milo to leave, so they can exit without witnesses.

"You should take Maggie back to town, and keep watch in case Tom and Harry return."

"What about you, Miss O'Claire?" Milo seems uncomfortable leaving her here.

"I'll escort her to the ferry for safety," the Doctor soothes.

If the men find it suspicious that neither want to return to town with them, it doesn't show. Instead, they seem to be nodding along with the plan, silently working up the courage to leave the perceived safety of the church.

"You two be careful," Seamus mutters, before heading out into the night.

Kathryn hovers near a window, watching their forms retreat in the distance, before turning back to the Doctor. He's watching her, faint traces of amusement on his face, the beginnings of a once-familiar smile tugging at his cheeks.

When she arches a brow, he shrugs and lets the smile form.

It feels a little bit like normal.

…

She shouldn't have let Tom and Harry re-enter the holodeck to reset the program. Now, they're the hostages of an irate group of holograms who've destroyed the controls. Her pilot and Ops Officer are at the mercy of a God and fae fearing folk, and they have no easy way to get them out.

The suggestions aren't great, but their best shot at rescuing their men and salvaging the program is to send in the Doctor with pattern enhancers. Despite Tuvok and Chakotay's misgivings, she chooses to join him. It's a risk, but not an especially great one. They can remotely deactivate the program if anything truly gets out of hand. Mostly, included in all of her concern about her officers, she's curious. The holograms aren't sentient, per se, but they're far more aware of their surroundings than they should be.

They enter out of view of the church, just below the crest of a hill that blocks them from view. It's still night, which suggests the in-program time must not have advanced too much beyond what it was when they left. That tracks, because they'd taken it offline while Tom, Harry and B'Elanna tried to troubleshoot the issue.

It's a shame that everything has gone sideways. The evenings in Fair Haven are some of Kathryn's favorites of Tom's work. It's a lived-in town and surrounding country, with period typical activities that bleed sound and dim orange lantern light out into the open spaces. Along with the moon, the bugs and the breeze, it creates an ambience that is second to none.If everything had gone to plan, she'd be on stroll with Michael right now, not the Doctor. Not that she particularly minds, he's been a fine companion, even if she can still remember the tug of his fingers beneath the flesh of her battered arm.

"They might want to know why I'm not on the ferry," she says, as they begin the quarter mile walk to the church, where Tom and Harry are being held hostage.

"The ferry didn't show, probably just another one of Mr. Paris' magic tricks. We heard that the outsiders had come back into town, and decided to see if they were up to no good. We saw the state of the pub and came straight here in case people were seeking sanctuary."

That sounds reasonable enough to her.

As they near, a bell clangs followed by a long baleful moo from Maggie-the-still-a-cow. The absurdity of it nearly makes her laugh. Had no one reset the woman to her original form? They'd had so many opportunities to do so.

At her snicker, the Doctor shoots her a look, mostly unreadable in the low light of the evening.

"At least they left her outside. I don't know how long I could manage a straight face under the recriminations of a cow."

"It might do Mr. Paris some good to face his accuser."

The deadpan catches her off guard. It's a tone he'd used often before Kelemane but never in her presence since. She flashes him a smile before they enter the glow of the church light, where she tucks the expression away in the time it takes them to enter.

An argument is playing out at a considerable volume when they do. A small crowd has congregated, likely under the belief that these hallowed halls will protect them from more mischief, and they're disagreeing over what to do with the Sidhe. Poor Harry and Tom are tied up on a pew, watching the shouting with twin looks of worry. Kathryn manages to catch their attention before anyone else notices her, and shakes her head at them. If they start pleading with her to save them, she'll just end up tied up right beside them, at the whims of superstitious 19th century farmers.

Tom catches on quickly and nods, then whispers something to Harry that causes him to meet her eyes and nod as well.

"What's this, then?" The Doctor does his very best impression of a disgruntled member of the cloth.

Like a needle ripped off a record, the shouting comes to a halt.

"Father Mulligan, Katie, thank goodness you're here," Michael looks overwhelmed, clearly the lone man on the side of reason. He's standing between the angry crowd and her tied up crew, doing his best to keep them from attempting to exercise or hang them.

"We'd heard you found them, and went looking in town. What happened to the pub?"

Seamus has worked himself up into a state of red-cheeked fury, "Their allies cast dark magic on the others, we only just managed to break their conduit to the other side before they did the same to us."

"Have they been able to do anything since you've brought them here?"

If the Fair Haven holograms are all functioning with a baseline faith in the otherworldly, they can use it to their advantage. At least, that's Kathryn's hope as she asks the question.

"No," Michael says firmly, before any of the villagers can start speculating, "no they haven't."

Not for the first time, Kathryn is thankful she added a Trinity College education to his program before locking herself out of making further adjustments. Even if his superstitions remain, they'll be tempered with skepticism in the face of actual accusations.

Three pattern enhancers are tucked away in a secret pocket in her dress; the Doctor has three more in case she's incapacitated. If either of them can make it near enough to the others, they can finish this now. Kathryn considers calling into question the strength of the knots binding them — offering to check them — but most of the group in the church look paranoid enough to see through the ruse immediately.

"Father Mulligan, is there anything you can do?" she asks instead, since the townsfolk are far more likely to trust their priest than they are a strange woman from out of town.

"Exercise them," Seamus demands.

That's not what she wants.

The Doctor hedges — he's likely plumbing his databanks for information on 19th century Catholic practices — "I'd need the permission of my Bishop, and I'm not sure I'd receive it. He demands ironclad proof in cases of possessions."

"Send him Maggie," is Milo's less than helpful suggestion.

"All he'll see is a well-fed cow."

"He'll never believe us anyway," comes the lilting words of a woman Kathryn doesn't remember the name of, "The Aes Sídhe are too Irish for the Church. And we know an exorcism won't work. They're not possessed, they're of the fair folk."

It's been years since Kathryn's had a refresher on Irish folklore. Aside from the basics on family Banshees and the differences between leprechauns and clurichaun, she's woefully unprepared to outwit a group that believes Tom and Harry are among their ranks.

Edith, her name is Edith, points a finger in their direction, "And you, shapeshifter, don't think no one's seen you disappear at night."

Kathryn takes a step back, hand clutching at the waist belt of her dress. It's this involuntary movement — borne out of the incorrect assumption that Edith was pointing at her — that works to her benefit. Because she looks like she's stepping away from Father Mulligan in shock, it's enough to inoculate her from the suspicions of the others.

Edith isn't pointing at her. She's pointing at the Doctor.

They've noticed his facial ridges. Only weeks ago, to them, he'd looked like any other human entering the program. Now, now he looks like a person who can change his face.

There's a murmur of agreement among the crowd, as they are all immediately swayed by Edith's words. How easy it is, to change the attitudes of a mob for the worse.

Michael holds a hand out in her direction, "Katie, move away from him."

It's perhaps the right thing to do, to keep up her ruse, but the situation is one wrong word away from turning violent. Placing herself in the center of growing mob justice is risky —perhaps too risky — but if she doesn't, she may as well tell them she's an outsider too.

She takes too long to react, and the mob is picking up steam. Milo jumps to the conclusion first, "He's gotten Katie alone. How do we know that's really her!?"

If she'd spent more time with Michael, he may not be faltering now. Even as he makes the decision not to help her, he remains calm in the face of the other's panic, and stands between the crowd and the pair with hands outstretched to hold them apart.

It's the best she could have hoped for.

" We don't know, but—"

At this point, the crowd is surging toward them, led by Seamus. Michael cannot hold them back, and the shouts from Tom and Harry denying that she's one of them fall on deaf ears. The Doctor steps in front of her, as if to hold back the tide, and she's forced to grab the back of his arms to keep from tripping as they're both pushed back.

The wool jacket he's wearing is coarse beneath her fingers, and bunches in her grip. This time, he's not letting her duck around him to move toward the danger. Each step the crowd takes forward leads the Doctor to take one back — and so she steps with him in the worst dance this side of the Delta Quadrant.

Eventually, they run out of room to retreat. The shouting and accusations and insults are at their fever pitch and with one final, jerky step, her grip falters on his left arm just enough to cause her fingers to slide against his mobile emitter. Kathryn knows what's about to happen without needing to be told, and so covers it with her palm.

The Fair Haven holograms cannot be allowed to take it and leave the program.

The Doctor turns his face to see where she's grabbed him and it's enough to allow Seamus to take the final steps toward them. Kathryn doesn't know if the, "Don't" the Doctor utters is directed at her or the man grabbing him by the shoulders. It doesn't matter, because as Seamus drags him away, Kathryn is left with the mobile emitter in her hand.

She doesn't know the last time she's held it. The powerful piece of technology is B'Elanna's duty and the Doctor's freedom. Prior to Kelemane, she'd given it little thought beyond what it allowed her CMO to do. Now, it sits cool and light in her palm as the Doctor's endlessly complicated program begins its integration with Fair Haven's.

It's a proverbial slaughter, a slow, thorough destruction.

It starts with the candle flames at the alter freezing in place and the shadows disappearing. The effect is eerie and causes Edith to cast fearful eyes around the room as her posture shrinks into her shawl. Michael looks at her, baffled by what must be the supernatural to him, as he hadn't really believed in it before. He makes the sign of the cross as Seamus freezes in the middle of manhandling the Doctor. His stout frame unnaturally still, before he blinks out of existence. Milo manages a single shout of shock before he flickers once, then again, before following his friend into the ether.

Chaos comes to the townsfolk then, and they embrace it with the madness of a Lovecraft protagonist.

Kathryn looks to Tom and Harry, no longer bound as the scenery begins to bifurcate and fold into itself around them, "Go," she orders, "save what you can."

They scramble out with hardly a 'Yes Captain', ignored by the holograms that remain, each either caught in their own hell of fright or decompilation or panicked fleeing.

Michael is frozen in place now, one of the few holograms remaining. Kathryn can see the way his eyes are darting from left to right, witnessing what must be — to him — divine punishment. She steps up to him, no longer impeded, and grips his shoulder with her right hand. In her left she still holds the mobile emitter. If she knew it could save him, she wouldn't hesitate to key it into his programming or reattach it to the Doctor's arm to disentangle him from Fair Haven.

But she doesn't know that.

"It'll be okay," she comforts him with a palm to his cheek, throat tight around the words, mere moments before he, then half of the Church, dissolve into the gridlines of the Holodeck.

It's just her and the Doctor now, and he takes the emitter from her when she blindly holds it out for him to take.

"They weren't real," he says lowly, as if comforting her or excusing them for the role they played — inadvertently or no — in their demise. It runs counter to what he'd said to her months ago, earnestly badgering her in the corridors in his priestly attire.

"Have you decided you know what's real and what isn't, Doctor?" The question and the way she speaks it are harsh, considering this isn't his fault.

Considering she won't even look at him.

"I find myself wondering if I'm real," it isn't an answer, not even close, but Kathryn suspects there is a point.

"If I am, when did it happen? Was it before I was sent to Kelemane? During any of the intervening years I was there? You've had time to read my reports. Can you tell me?" He's shoulder to shoulder with her now, gaze locked on the slowly decompiling remains of Fair Haven, head tilted so his words slip past her ear like a breath.

Kathryn clenches her teeth and does not answer, because she doesn't know the answer.

The Doctor softens under the strain of her silence, then lays an apologetic hand on her shoulder. It's the first time he's touched her since he discharged from sickbay weeks ago, and the weight of it is heavy despite the fact that he's a being of no real mass, "I'm sorry. Real or not, they … I'm sorry."

...

Tom and Harry lose everyone but Maggie and the few townspeople that were caught in the pub during the conflict. They report the calamity was the result of the Doctor's complex program burdening the already strained holodeck. Fair Haven's program is no longer stable enough to sustain its shape or charm and is put to rest. Its survivors are left in the peace of quiet deactivation, where they need not wonder where their friends have gone.

What is real? Kathryn asks herself not for the first time. You can't cast the real into nonexistence when it no longer serve the purpose you created it for.

...

The children have an interesting effect on crew morale.

Like little ducklings, they follow Seven around in a line: Icheb, then Azan, then Rebi. Only the young girl, Mezoti deviates, as she prefers to spend her time with Naomi instead. Seven isn't maternal, nor is she comfortable at the idea anyone would expect her to be, but they don't need maternal. They need familiar. Her speech patterns and efficiency bring them comfort, and it turn, they seem to help reduce the feeling of helpless isolation she's been feeling since the Doctor went down to Kelemane as her mentor and came back something else.

Kathryn interacts with the four rarely, but enjoys it each time, seeing in them the reminder that there are people who exist within each individual Borg drone. They may be able to bring peace to those who thought their loved ones were lost forever.

Icheb is easy to accept, as brilliant and quiet as he is. Many of the crew allow him into their work spaces, as evidenced by the reports she receives that include reference to his name. Curious but unintrusive, he becomes just another facet of the social web on the crew. Azan and Rebi are more difficult, insular as they are. Only Seven and the other children seem able to draw them out of their unit of two. Kathryn fears that if they do not find them family, they may one day grow into cloistered adults, outsiders within a group of outsiders.

Mezoti is the most individual of the four, with a strong personality and a developed sense of self. She is clever and capricious. She is not devastated when Voyager cannot contact the Narcadians — but is instead pleased to remain among those she knows and trusts.

The little girl is the first real opportunity Kathryn has to pry into the Doctor's new, long past. He favors Mezoti above the others, and of all the adults aboard Voyager, she appears to prefer him. Above Seven, above Samantha and above Neelix. When she isn't attending lessons with Seven or playing with Naomi, she is underfoot in sickbay, or trailing after him in the corridors with an endless stream of questions. Mezoti is fascinated that he knows how to reconstruct a body altered by the Borg, and he in turn appears to enjoy doting on her.

It's the most normal he's seemed.

The answer to why must be in the report he submitted after returning. It will take her many more weeks to review its contents in full. A little more than half way through, she spots the first use of the name:

Martzia.

She issues a search based on the name, but it only returns three instances. The first is a sentence in recognition of adoption: the child's name was Martzia, without a family she would have died, so I took her in. The next entry was twenty years later and listed only the date of her marriage and the name of her husband, Hedi, and that he'd taken her last name, Retz. The final entry was the date and cause of her death: at 70, she'd passed in her sleep from an embolism.

It is a depressing lack of information. Clinical. It suggests nothing about his paternal relationship with his adopted daughter or why he might have taken a shine to Mezoti, aside from the similarities in their names and their status as orphans.

Kathryn expands the search to only Retz. The results are a treasure trove — it appears often, attached to different first names across nearly a hundred and twenty-years of data. She sits back in her ready room chair and lets it sink in, the sheer passage of time. She'd only meant to send him down for days, and here before her is proof of an extensive family tree.

All dead now.

Half her nature is regret. It's in the lines growing slowly more permanent on her brow, in the downward tilt of her chin as she gives orders, in the way her pips chafe against the curve of her neck and in the way she looses more and more sleep each night. She regrets Justin and her father and saying the final goodbye to Mark before unknowingly leaving him for the final time and stranding her crew in hostile space and the hundreds of terrible decisions she's made since.

This is another regret. Perhaps it will become the way she no longer enjoys the taste of her food, perhaps the way she requires more coffee to feel human in the mornings, or perhaps it will one day stare at her from behind her own eyes in a mirror, a stranger wearing her face.

Perhaps it's already in the way she avoids the girl. No one notices, because she doesn't see much of the children anyway, but she recognizes the behavior in herself and that is enough. The way she asks Seven follow-up questions about Icheb and the twins, but never presses for anything more about Mezoti than what Seven offers. She doesn't want to start to wonder if the child is like the Kelemane girl long grown and dead. She cannot take that sorrow away from the Doctor anymore than she can undo her decision to strand her crew thousands of light years from their homes, nor can she let that regret turn into guilt.

Because unlike regret, which could only ever fester in the pieces of her she's willing to give up, guilt would consume all of her.

...

It's the second time in as many months that Seven comes to her in her quarters in the dead of the night distraught. The first time had been at the thought of saying goodbye to Icheb forever — a boy so like her he may as well be her brother or foster son. Kathryn hadn't been able to soothe her then, or protect her from the goodbye. It was just another way her duty required her to hurt the people she loved.

That Icheb was able to find his way back to them and heal that wound does not matter because she is about to do it again.

When Seven enters, Kathryn is half sprawled across her couch with a paperback Tom's lent her in hand, one arm tucked behind her head, jacket tossed over the back of a chair. She's spent the better part of the evening reading through reports and needs the absolute trash of a pulp 1950s science fiction novel to help her unwind.

"You must speak to him."

The hiss of her doors opening without a chime causes Kathryn to sit up abruptly, jolted from the succor of the novel. Seven does this sometimes — forgets herself and barges into Kathryn's space without permission. This time, there is something to her voice that keeps any terse corrections at bay.

"To who, Seven?" Kathryn could have made those words sound like reprimand, but they just come out of her tired.

"Aeson," the name still sounds so foreign, so misplaced, no matter how much the others try to use it, to bring the stranger back into the fold, "She won't stay if I ask her, but she will if he does because she wants to stay with him."

Seven's features are pinched. She's trying to hide her emotions behind reason but failing, and Kathryn has to set her book aside because she knows what this interruption is about now. Seven loves Mezoti, not as much as she already does Icheb but more than she does the twins. Kathryn wonders how much of that love comes from what she sees of herself in the girl's obstinance and curiosity, and how much of it comes from the connection the girl has allowed her to reforge with the Doctor, however gossamer the new thread between them is.

She can let the twins go in the morning, because their parents will fill the gaping wounds the Borg left behind with familiarity and love and respite, but what could they provide Mezoti that Seven could not, besides a home? What will they take away from Seven, by taking away the child?

These thoughts aren't entirely selfish. Kathryn knows Mezoti would be happy to stay aboard this ship as it hurtles toward each new danger — content to grow up with Naomi and Icheb, parentless or with an adoptive father, and a whole ship of adults to protect her. It wouldn't be a terrible childhood, either, provided Kathryn didn't get them all killed or worse. But Mezoti might be just as happy to put her feet on the ground and grow up with two brothers and two parents, in a real home, with a stability that cannot come from a starship, let alone one so far from safe harbor.

"The Doctor is doing what he thinks is best."

Kathryn doesn't know if she's lying or not. It's a guess. She doesn't know why the Doctor has decided to send the girl on her way, despite her clear adoration for him. He could be a father to her — there were so many names ending in Retz on Kelemane that say he could — but he has decided not to be.

"He is afraid," Seven insists.

Sometimes fear makes us do the right thing, the best thing for someone else, even if it's for the wrong reason. Kathryn does not say this, because the best example of the good her own fear has achieved is standing in her quarters, facing down another goodbye she doesn't want to make.

"Please," the younger woman says, "he won't listen to me."

Kathryn sighs, then rubs her hands across her face. She might have actually been able to sleep tonight, and she might still be able to if she sends Seven away. That's a lie she's telling herself, though. If she sends Seven away, even if the honest truth that Kathryn doesn't think the Doctor will listen to her either, the regret will start to feel a little more like guilt.

Finally, she pushes herself to her feet. Seven is tense but grows pliant when Kathryn grabs at her elbows. Its the most comfort she can give her, "I can't make him ask her to stay."

"You can tell him he's making a mistake."

"I'm not sure it's a mistake," Kathryn confesses.

Seven, an astute student of humanity and growing more aware of it by the day, looks down at Kathryn in her imperious way, "That's why he'll listen to you."

That's not it. Seven hopes that Kathryn telling him he's right will offend him into asking Mezoti to stay. It's clever if not cruel, leveraging the prior dynamic between Captain and hologram. The one where she always considered him that much less of a person than everyone else.

Kathryn doesn't begrudge her this cruelty.

"I can't promise you anything, but I can see what I can do."

The younger woman relents, leaving Kathryn at the door of her quarters.

Her eyes linger in the book she'd been reading, where it rest on the couch. It would be so easy to pick up where she'd left off until sleep took her.

With a sigh, she runs her fingers through her hair to tame it and steps out into the corridor to make the short walk.

The doors to the Doctor's quarters open to admit her after a single chime. It's the first time she's seen the space, and Kathryn isn't surprised to find that it's nearly as spartan as hers. She is surprised to find it smells of something lightly of citrus and bergamot — which stands in stark contrast to the wall of incense she steps into every time she walks into Tuvok's quarters, or the wafts of whatever meal Chakotay has prepared for her in his.

He stands from where he was seated on his couch when he sees her. Then he sets the book in one of his hands aside and places the cup of something steaming — tea, perhaps from the aroma — in the other on the coffee table, "Captain. Are you feeling well?"

Her lips twitch. The Doctor no longer asks what the nature of the medical emergency is whenever brought online, so this is as close as he gets. Given it's 0200 hours, she can't blame him for suspecting she's come to see him with an ailment.

"I feel fine."

At his silent direction, she takes a seat in the armchair and watches as he tinkers at the replicator. A moment later, he comes back with another steaming mug of something and hands it to her.

Kathryn quirks a brow but takes a tentative sniff — citrus and bergamot — and a careful sip: herbal tea. It isn't quite citron, and the floral tones leave a stringent aftertaste. She likes it well enough, given it isn't coffee.

"Momot tea," he says by way of explanation as he sits at his couch again.

"Kelemane?"

A nod, "A late summer drink, meant to be nursed before sleep. "

She takes another sip before setting it near his full cup on the table. She wonders briefly if he'd even been drinking his or if it's there out of habit. She's let her fair share of midnight coffees grow cold out of neglect.

With no desire to get to the point, she lets a little of her curiosity through. Kathryn knows that Neelix has strong-armed a few meal ideas out of the Doctor, but doesn't know how far that extends, "Have you programmed the replicators with other recipes?"

Her interest is rewarded with a smile, one of his old ones that verge on just this side of preening, "A few. You're always welcome to try them, Captain. Although," the smile falters, "I don't think you're here to discuss the culinary delights of Kelemane."

"No," she concedes, "I'm not."

The desire to stand and pace is so strong, she has to fold a leg beneath her and lean toward him against her armrest to keep from doing it. For his part, he remains silent and watches her with dark, unassuming eyes. It's enough to make her want to ask what he's reading. How like her, to use the ruse of getting to know someone to save her the trouble of having to have a conversation with them.

Kathryn presses on, "Seven."

"Ah," it's just a sound, but the aversion of his gaze and frown give him away.

He knows why she's here.

"I could have saved you the walk," he mutters.

"Humor me. I won't say I'm not curious, and Mezoti clearly adores you. She'd stay if you offered her a family."

"And you think I'm capable of being a father?" The question is leading, as if he surely expects that not to be the case. Whatever his memories of his time aboard Voyager before Kelemane, they must contain her wavering support of his growth.

"You've done it before."

She might be the only one aboard the ship that knows. Kathryn hasn't mentioned it to anyone else, hasn't had a reason to, "Twice."

The Doctor sighs, his posture turning inward, "Surely you don't think I should try again."

"I think Mezoti should grow up on planet, with a loving family and opportunities, far away from the risks that come with living aboard this ship. None of that has anything to do with you. You could give her love and a family, however small, but how long would it last? A week? A few years before Voyager meets an obstacle we can't overcome?"

Seven had been wrong, Kathryn didn't think keeping Mezoti here was a mistake because the Doctor would be raising her. It was a mistake in spite of that. Naomi lived with them because she must, so long as her mother wished to complete the journey. They could keep Icheb with a clear conscience because the alternative had been so much worse for the boy.

Nothing gives them the right to put Mezoti at risk. Kathryn knows it, and she knows the Doctor knows it.

There's an assessing look to him when he meets her eyes again, as if he had not expected that to be her logic. Kathryn can't blame him, but she's too tired to unpack that expectation any further; that will have to come another day.

"Those are all noble reasons," he says at last, in a way that suggests they aren't necessarily his.

Noble or not, they were all still deeply unfair to him, but few things ever were how they should be.

"I won't stop you," she admits, "if you want to raise her. Starfleet Command may protest, but Mezoti will be an adult before they could reasonably expect to do anything about it. Seven would help you, Neelix and Sam as well. She'd have a family here, could have one of her own one day."

She leaves herself out of it, unsure if she could take on another responsibility. No, Kathryn had promised Seven she'd try, if not with actual words than with her actions, and she'd be able to leave here saying that she had. That was the extent of her involvement in this.

The speech is met with a thoughtful hum and a tilt of the head, like he's working his way through a puzzle. She waits silently as he does so, until he simulates a sigh and reaches to his side for something. His hand comes back with the book he'd been reading when she entered. For a brief moment, Kathryn thinks he's regressed socially and that this is a dismissal, that lasts as long as it takes him to hold it out to her.

With some hesitation, she takes it from him. The textured cover and binding are familiar, even if the words in the spine are not. Kathryn turns it in her hands until she remembers where she's seen it before, on his desk in sickbay the day he returned. Carefully, she cracks it open and turns its yellowing pages. Words she can't decipher span them, some of the letters familiar to her but in no way she can read. It must mean something to him, if he brought it with him.

What was she supposed to do with it.

"Read it, when you get the chance," it's a friendly suggestion.

"I don't know the language," but that doesn't mean she can't learn it. While Kathryn has taken after her father in nearly every way, ran after him to learn everything he could teach her, in this she is her mother's daughter. Gretchen Janeway, the linguist who focused on the written folktales of long-gone, pre-warp societies, had passed along an innate love of languages and the stories they could tell.

There is no way he can know any of that unless by a stray comment she's already forgotten.

He is already beginning to stand, clearing away his cup and hers, "I'll put together a primer. It's no more difficult than Standard. Think about it, and I'll think about what you've said."

Kathryn closes the book, runs her fingers over the binding once more, and nods. There's no reason not to take it with her — it's not as though he can't walk the short distance to ask for it back if he wants to. If this is how he's choosing to reach out to someone about his time spent on the planet, she'll try meet him halfway.

"All right," she says, knowing a dismissal when she sees one, and leaves.

...

Mezoti and the twins are seen off the ship the next morning by no less than half-a-dozen crew. Kathryn watches Seven suppress every emotion in her as she says her goodbyes to the trio and gives instructions to their parents on how to care for the parts of them that remain Borg. To their credit, the Wysanti couple listen avidly and nod along, seemingly aware of what their sons and now daughter mean to her. The Doctor is beside them all, kneeling so that he is eye level with Mezoti. Although the girl is not crying, she's taking in the final words he's whispering to her as if they're the last pieces of sustenance she'll ever receive.

Beside her, Naomi sniffles, putting on a brave face for her friends. Samantha tucks a lock of her daughter's hair behind her ear and thumbs away the lone tear, "They won't forget you."

Naomi's muffles her response by shoving her face into her mother's stomach.

When the family leaves, the older Wildman woman hands her daughter off to Neelix and indicates she'll join Kathryn in her walk to the turbo lift. While her crew are free to approach her this way, it has grown more rare over time. It's good for crew morale to see her, but she knows for many the returns quickly diminish when they speak to her.

"It was the right thing to do," Samantha says, eventually, once the others have dispersed behind them. The blonde has folded her arms across her chest, "it's breaking Naomi's heart, but Voyager is no place for children."

The who have other options goes unspoken.

"I suspect that's what the Doctor decided as well."

The look she receives isn't exactly shock, but close, leading Kathryn to believe that Samantha suspects she decided for him, against his wishes. Perhaps she would have, if not for Kelemane, but she can't really speak to that. She'll already have to deal with Seven's hurt feelings and disappointment in her failure, Kathryn doesn't need judgment from anyone else.

"I didn't realize," the other woman has the good grace to admit, "Aeson didn't say."

Kathryn will one day no longer be phased by the easy use of his name, but today it still causes a pause. She knows Samantha sees him often, especially now that she commands the research lab. They must surely talk to one other often, and would have done so about the progress the children were making.

It's not really her place to ask her crew about their personal lives, lest it turns into an interrogation, so she won't ask exactly what he did say.

"Something tells me he's more private now than he was before," she says diplomatically instead.

Samantha gives her a paper thin smile — it's still too soon after saying goodbye for it to reach her eyes — "It's just something I'll have to get used to, along with everything else."

A change of subject is in order, since it looks like they'll be riding the turbo lift together, "Will Naomi be all right?"

"Yeah," it's said with the same breathiness as a relieved sigh, "She's robust, and she knows she isn't alone. It helps that Icheb never turns her away, even when he wants to."

It's a testament to the young man that there is no concern in Samantha that he spends time with her four year-old-daughter. For all that Naomi has aged quickly and Icheb's growth was accelerated by the Borg, the pair's closeness might generate a few raised brows from those who did not know them. Kathryn has seen them together multiple times — Naomi precocious and outgoing, Icheb reserved and patient — and has always come away with a smile.

Naomi won't be the only child to have grown up aboard a starship, forced to make friends within the small pool of other children available to her and always, always having to say goodbye when families relocated due to transfers. She would be the only one forced to understand that the she was meant to be somewhere else, with a father and family. Kathryn could apologize to Samantha for this, but the words never come — haven't come a single time since the Ensign announced her pregnancy.

They certainly don't grace the turbo lift with their presence before the women steps off at her stop.

...

"Do you remember Gar?"

They've just navigated the debacle that was Dala, Zar, and Mobar. The trio of cons had given them quite the ride, and Kathryn has spent the better part of the past few days marveling at how badly her own reformed-cons had been had. At least Tom and Neelix had had the good grace to second guess themselves, truly it was such a shame that they had lost their touch.

Tuvok is seated across from her, delicately dishing himself more of the Pok Tar she'd managed to harangue out of her replicator. Kathryn is slicing her eggplant lasagna into ever smaller pieces, and while he has clearly noticed her waining appetite, he's had the good grace not to say anything about it. It helps that she makes sure to take a bite for every three of his.

"I recall that he was very exciting."

The bored way Tuvok delivers this thing that passes as an inside joke between them draws an earnest and honest laugh from Kathryn, the kind that makes the muscles of her abdomen sore as she gets them under control. It feels good to do so, to laugh and fail to stop laughing, and not for the first time she recognizes that it is with Tuvok — not Chakotay or Seven or alone — that she feels the most the Kathryn she was before she was the Captain.

He expects nothing from her she doesn't already give, and she values everything he's willing to give her, and while her friend will never laugh with her, she knows he appreciates the sheer humanity of her. If he didn't, he wouldn't be so dear to her and she him.

"I can't help but think," she's making good progress with smothering her smile, "that we keep getting conned by people are so blatantly untrustworthy. Have we lost our touch?"

"I witnessed misters Paris and Neelix attempting to fool Doctor Retz with primitive carnival tricks."

"Did they succeed?" She found herself curious despite herself.

"No."

That gets her laughing again, a tamer thing than before, until she shakes her head to cast off the mirth, "Between those two and the former Maquis, no one will be able to question our ability to rehabilitate the riff-raff."

She doesn't really think of any of them that way, and Kathryn knows that Tuvok knows this. It's in the way he lifts his brow at her choice of wording and responds to it by taking a bite of food. Half their conversations are silent, as evidenced when the the angle of his brow shifts as he chews. Kathryn knows she's been made; he's taken three bites since her last. With a wry smile of her own, she takes a bite of her own food.

"You've purposefully excluded the Equinox crew from your list," it's not a reprimand, just an observation.

Kathryn sighs, but can't be put out that he's brought up one of her least favorite subjects. It's his job to make her reflect on her choices — both as her friend and as her Security Officer. She may not enjoy it, and while more often than not these days, she uses her rank to change the subject, this time she accepts it for what it is.

She chews slowly, thinks carefully about how she doesn't particularly enjoy the texture of eggplant and can't recall why she chose to make it for herself, until there's nothing left and she's just buying time. Finally, Kathryn decides to have this conversation with him.

"They were wearing the uniform."

"As were you when you interrogated Mr. Lessing and when you chose to override Tuvix's right to life."

As easily as he makes her laugh, her friend finds the raw edges of her that still ache and forces her to acknowledge the damage. He doesn't even need to call her actions what they were — torture, murder — to invoke within her the feeling that he is condemning her actions and accepting her for who she is at the same time.

She closes her eyes and admits, "Can't you see that's why?"

"I have observed that you judge those who commit crimes you have committed yourself more harshly than others. I can find the logic in this, but I cannot claim to understand the emotions that come with it."

That he can admit that logic and emotion work in tandem is a testament to how she has shaped him — that this friendship is not a burden he bears for her benefit but one he also find rewarding. It can also be horribly annoying how well he's learned to read her.

She's never had to articulate this though, has never had to put into words why when she looks at Marla Gilmore or Noah Lessing or any of the others, she cannot extend to them the same chance she gave Tom, Chakotay, B'Elanna and Seven. If not for her sake, then for Tuvok's, she tries now.

"I will never be held accountable for my actions," in admitting it, she knows its true, "even if we make it to the Alpha Quadrant tomorrow, Command will say I was in an impossible position and that I did what I could with the resources I had."

Could he understand the terrible weight of that knowledge? That she had tacit permission to slowly spiral into a distorted reflection of herself, so long as her actions did not bring direct harm and ridicule to the doorstep of the Federation?

"They didn't — couldn't — stop Ransom from murdering for their benefit or from torturing those he thought were a threat," she briefly presses her hand to her mouth, as if she can prevent the next words from being said, but she can no more stop the truth from coming to light than she can force the litigation of her crimes, "and none of you could stop me from doing the same."

This isn't a regret, this thing she feels right now. It's shame and it's anger and it's self-loathing, and none of it is strong enough to stop her from becoming what she fears the most.

Tuvok watches her, reads the emotions that pass across her face and understands. He himself has done things he would never do of his own volition for her, because he feels duty-bound to her as his Captain and to the love he has for her as his friend. Instead of saying this, instead of trying to grant wisdom to dilemma he must watch her face but can never help her overcome, he grants her grace.

"I have observed in our long friendship that you do not like eggplant. Why have you chosen to consume a dish that contains it as the main ingredient?"

She huffs out a breath of air, enough so that it stirs the hair framing her face, and feels her heart unbreak a little, "I don't know, Tuvok."

"You do not need to eat a vegetarian dish when we share meals," he begins to stand, "I will replicate you cottage pie. Pastry or potato crust?"

Kathryn lets him do this for her, but can't help the friendly roll of her eyes, leave it to Tuvok to force her to confront one of her deepest fears and then navigate the conversation to the more comfortable waters of food. And he says Neelix hasn't rubbed off on him,

"Potato. It's never a question. Always, potato, Tuvok."

...

"He should have loved me better."

Kathryn has known this day would come for years, even if not when, and has looked forward to it with an anticipation that bordered on hope. How could she be given the gift of looking upon the aged face of Kes, even if just hours before it had been twisted into a maw disdain and fury, and not feel joy at knowing she is alive? This woman who has made Kathryn feel the closest to a mother than she ever will again.

They stand together in the hydroponics bay, where they had once spent so much time together, two woman worn down by the things they have had to do and the ones they have chosen to do despite knowing better. Between Neelix and Kathryn, they have kept the memory of Kes alive in this place — in the plants and in the soil — it makes sense that this is where she will say her final goodbye.

Kathryn watches Kes trace the leaves of an Ocampan rose with reverent fingers and smiles sadly.

"Neelix," she turns to Kathryn and then away again, "When I asked him to help me escape Ocampa, he shouldn't have asked me to love him back. How was I supposed to say no?"

"I don't know," Kathryn admits, "but you found the strength to, eventually."

The Ocampa stills her fingers and nods, once then twice, and decides that she can look at her old Captain without feeling ashamed, "You gave me a home and asked for nothing in return. You loved me better. I'm sorry I forgot that."

"Don't be," the words aren't a command so much as they are a wish for Kes to forgive herself for what she'd intended to do.

The sad, tilted smile on Kes' face is so like Kathryn's own, but it falls away as she moves on to her next thought. The Doctor had suggested that, at her advanced age, her memories might carry her to places other couldn't easily follow. Kathryn doesn't know for how much longer Kes will remain lucid enough to reminisce, and so she lets the other woman settle her demons at her own pace.

"He forgot me," voice small, hurt.

She's no longer talking about Neelix.

"I was ready to kill him, to kill you all, so why I am so hurt that my best friend could forgot me so easily?"

Kes small shoulders shake with her sobs, and she does not hesitate to cross the space between them fall into Kathryn's hug.

Kathryn feels something in her heal — despite Kes' open grief — at being able to comfort her again, "It was my fault."

Kes clings to her tightly and works through her tears while Kathryn tells her the whole sad story of it. How he hadn't wanted to go down to Kelemane, and how she'd made him do it regardless.

"He doesn't remember any of us, not completely," Kathryn finishes.

There's lucidity in the shadows around Kes's still-wet eyes as she steps away, and even though she'd lost her way so terribly, she nods with understanding now, "I'll have to remember for the both of us, then. For as long as I can."

Something catches in Kathryn's throat — grief and that ever present regret — and she strangles down a fresh wave of tears of her own, "I don't want you to go."

Nearly every day since she'd gone and taken with her so much of her hope, Kathryn has missed her. Knowing she'd have to let her go again is a terrible burden, but admitting that isn't.

Hands spotted with age cradle Kathryns cheeks, long forgotten tenderness coming back to Kes so easily as she decides to leave anyway, "Parents shouldn't watch their children die."

---

Chapter Notes:

About the timeline:

1. I shifted the departure of Mezoti and the twins to (nearly) right after Icheb's departure and return. Narratively, for this story at least, that timing made more sense. You'll understand why after the next chapter.

2. I also shifted the primary events of Critical Care (7x05) to this season. It's one of those episodes that could fit anywhere in the later seasons. I place it just after Equinox in the timeline. Gar comes from this episode. If I put it in its normal spot, it will be a slaughter and there will be enough of that.

About the characters:

1. Megan is NOT okay in the sickbay scene. I imagine her trauma response is humor, in that way people can get when they need to laugh or they'll sob violently. Some part of Janeway can see that in her, which is why she plays along as long as she does We'll see more of her, given she's hanging out on the bridge.

2. Marla (my phone kept correcting this to Martha. I can't even) Gilmore and Noah Lessing should have been utilized more. Eagle-eyed readers will have caught in to what my plans for them (more specifically her) will be.

3. I love Tuvok. I wish so badly we got to see more of his friendship with Janeway on screen. It's clear she takes such delight in getting the absolute minimal response out of him and that he feels comfortable with it (and I think, enjoys it).

4. This story is a more critical exploration of Janeway. Not in a "She's terrible" way, but in an exploration of how her very real human flaws affect those around her. She's still the protagonist (the only POV of the story proper) and so that criticism comes directly from her and the spoken words of her crew.