This takes place somewhat after "Persistence of Vision," but, as should soon become clear, in a somewhat different timeline.

All characters, and the universe on which this is based, belong to Paramount Pictures, which belongs to the Viacom Dominion. The story is mine and may not be reproduced, archived, bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated without this notice.

This story contains no actual sex and is rated R. It is fairly mushy.

This is in HTML but should be downloadable as text.

The sparkling of the transporter momentarily outshone the dawn light on the hilltop, and the humanoid population of the planet went from zero to five. Kathryn Janeway's first action upon materializing was to activate her tricorder and scan her surroundings. Then she turned her attention to the sunrise. Behind her, four more people materialized.

She was somewhat surprised that the captain had been the one to suggest shore leave. He was normally very cautious--which made sense, of course, given that they had sixty-five thousand light years to go in a rickety ship with a crew of twenty-seven. And the telepathic alien they'd encountered recently could be anywhere. Only Tuvok's Vulcan mental discipline had saved them from...from whatever the alien had had in store for them. Perhaps they would simply have been left to drift through space, catatonic, their minds lost to their own individual traumas, until their bodies collapsed and died. She shook her head to try and chase away the images the alien had somehow put into her brain, images of her crew in Kazon captivity. The movement made her neck hurt; she was still stiff, though it had been three days since the attack. She'd stood frozen on the bridge for three hours before Tuvok had come up with a plan to disrupt the alien's influence.

She decided to walk down into the shadowy valley in order to be able to watch the sun come up again. It had been a long time since she'd seen a sunrise. Landing parties usually transported down to someplace where it was broad daylight, and it was a good three weeks since she'd been on a planet at all. Perhaps the walk, and the need to watch her step on the dim path, would help to clear her head. She had twenty-four hours local time, 22.43 hours ship's time (to round off Tuvok's calculation), to put the past behind her again and collect strength to continue the journey.

Chakotay stood and watched her go, watched the black of her uniform blend into the valley's shadows, her hair lose the red glow the sun had given it on the hilltop.

Halfway down the slope, she stopped to sit on a boulder and watch the sky. Below, she could hear the sound of water running, but a thick stand of plants cut off her view of the stream. The upper slopes of the hills were covered in an unremarkable thick grass. The sky above her had the pale, clear blue of dawn, shading to orange at the eastern horizon. Once, a very long time ago, it had seemed strange to her to see night every time she looked out a window; now it was strange to see the morning. It was almost like being on Earth, except that no birds sang.

She looked over her shoulder at the ridge from which she had come, its grass shining green now in the sunlight. None of her shipmates was visible. They must have gone down the western slope of the hill. It was good to be alone again. She got along well enough with the rest of the crew, considering that her original mission had been to hunt them down and capture them, but of course she'd never really fit in. She had no desire to. Tom, on the other hand.... She sighed. She was still convinced she could have made a good Starfleet officer out of him, given time. But she hadn't been given time. He could be very, very irritating, but he had character, even if he seemed not to know that himself. She thought back again to the last minutes on Voyager. Somehow, he'd still managed that annoying smile of his as he refused to obey her order to evacuate, insisting that he had a better chance than she did of maneuvering the crippled ship away from the escape pods before she initiated the autodestruct sequence.

She shook her head again. That was exactly what she didn't want to think about today. She stood and headed down the slope. She found a path through the thicket to where the river flowed clear over smooth pale stone and beds of rounded pebbles. Small fish darted about in the stream; she pulled out her tricorder and recorded their vital statistics, out of habit. Chakotay had given her computer space to record whatever scientific data she could accumulate in the Delta Quadrant, and promised to see that it was transmitted to the Federation if they ever made it back. It was often useful in the here and now, of course--the identification of edible plants and animals was a high priority every time they stopped at a planet.

She followed the course of the river for perhaps five hundred meters, walking in a dry part of the channel where the bent and broken stems of last year's grass testified to a modest spring flood. Now and then she stopped to scan some new life-form--slender- trunked, scaly-barked trees, bright green insects, purplish ribbons of water plants. She came to a bend where the river formed a round pool, deep enough for swimming. The morning light sparkled on the surface of the water and sent trembling reflections onto the shaded hollow which the river had carved out of the cliff which rose to one side. Farther up, a vine with sweet-smelling purple flowers snaked across the cliff from a tenuous hold on a handful of soil. The slope on the other side was somewhat more gradual and strewn with boulders.

The water would be cold, but not as cold as the Terran oceans she'd swum in as a child and as a cadet. It was a warm summer day, the temperature already up to twenty- six degrees, though it was still early. She dropped her small day pack to the ground and carefully tucked the tricorder inside it. The Maquis weren't really very well-equipped with tricorders. She unclipped the belt which held her phaser and draped it over the pack, then sat down to remove her boots. Finding a channel where the water ran clear and clean over the rock, she stripped off her uniform and plunged the dusty fabric into the cold water. She'd replicated this uniform almost a year ago, before they'd left Deep Space Nine, impossibly far away. She'd never worn any clothing nearly so long in her life. The pips on the collar sparkled like bright pebbles under the water. It was good, durable material. She wondered how long it would hold up. She planned to wear it until it fell apart.

She was the only one on the ship who still wore that uniform. Tuvok had switched to his spare set of civilian clothes, finding it illogical to continually remind his shipmates of his betrayal of them. Tom, who'd never seemed comfortable in his "observer's" uniform, had borrowed a tunic from B'Elanna to wear over it only a few days after the loss of Voyager, and now he had all those Sikharian clothes. He'd suggested she buy some, too, telling her with wonder that the Sikharians would take stories in payment. She'd bought a green dress, for off-duty, and some lacy underwear, though she wasn't quite sure why. But she clung to her uniform. It was all she had left of Starfleet, of the life she still thought of as her real life, though it was so long ago and far away now. She spread it out to dry, an alien pattern in black and red against the cream-colored stone of this nameless world.

She sat on the warm slope of river-smoothed rock and dangled her feet into the cool water while she loosened her hair, carefully placing the pins in a small hollow. She shook her hair out, wincing a little at the pain in her neck, and let it spread out around her in golden strands as she lay back and basked in the sun, closing her eyes to listen to the sound of the river. She felt the presence of her spirit guide next to her, small, wise, and calming.

"Let them go," said her guide and the river. "It is not given to you to help them. Your worries cannot help them, only harm you. Let the wound heal."

She lay on the rock worn smooth by its long, losing battle with the river and listened to their voices and to the singing of the wind in the dangling branches of the trees, and said to them, "No, I can't. Not and be the person I am. That's the one sorrow I can't get over."

"You must shed that skin," said the lizard. "You will still be the same underneath."

She slipped into the pool, careful to avoid the currents near the waterfall. It was wide enough for her to swim a few strokes, enjoying the play of her muscles and the smooth sensation of the water gliding over her body. She rolled over on her back and let her hair spread out on the water, her body rise and break the surface, the water trickling off between her breasts.

He followed her trail through the grass of the riverbed, his pleasure at using the skills his father had taught him overshadowed by concern for her. He'd thought at first he should let her be alone. She needed that, and it was hard to do on the ship. But he knew, too, how deeply the alien's attack had upset her. She'd wept as she told him about it--it was the first time he'd seen her tears since the day the alien had forced her to relive. She'd been on the bridge of her beloved Voyager again, gone through that whole last battle with all its sights and sounds and smells, Rollins's death, heard herself give the order to abandon ship, seen the members of her bridge crew leave, except Tuvok and Paris. But there had been more, too, she'd seen her people in the hands of the Kazon, abused, sold into slavery on distant worlds. She'd never really put the loss of her ship and crew behind her. He didn't suppose he would have either, in her place. And now all that pain had been brought to the surface again. She had a phaser. He had to be sure she was all right. So he had turned to go after her, as he had that day.

When he climbed around the boulder, he saw her in the pool. She was naked, and very much alive. He felt the tension in his shoulders release.

"Hello, Kathryn," he called, startling her. "May I join you, or would you rather be alone?"

She looked up at him and was glad for his company. Somehow, his presence always calmed her, as her lizard's did.

"Come on in. You look like you could use a dip."

He grinned and began to strip off his clothes. She watched him, suddenly conscious of a warm feeling between her legs. Turning away, she swam across the pool. "Remember," she said to herself, "he's not your lover. You're...." How could she describe their relationship? He was the captain, of course. Her exact function on the ship was less clearly defined--she was the closest thing they had to a science officer, but she'd become more than that over the course of the last months. She didn't know whether she would call him her friend, as she did Tuvok, but she had come to respect and trust him and knew that he returned those feelings.

He was in the water now, swimming towards her, his dark hair glistening wet. She half-stood, half-floated, only her head above the water.

"Nice place you've found here." His smile faded. "I was worried about you."

She was puzzled. "There aren't any large animals on this planet. And anyway, I can take care of myself." Then she realized what he meant. She shook her head gently, the strands of her hair dancing below the water's surface. "No. You don't have to worry about that."

"You've been pretty upset lately, since the encounter with that alien. I know that brought back a lot of painful memories for you. You told me once you wished you'd died that day." She was startled by the pain in his eyes.

"There were times when I thought that. But I don't want to die today. And I don't want to talk about those memories. I want to enjoy myself."

He nodded. "Would you enjoy yourself more if I weren't here? I could go."

She thought about it for a moment. She'd wanted to be alone, but now she thought his being here might help to dispel her memories. He was of her present, not her past.

"No, stay." They swam the few strokes back across the pool together and leaned companionably against the rock at the water's edge. She kicked her legs under the water to keep herself warm, enjoying the sense of her own strength.

"It's a nice planet," he said after a little while. "I wish there were birds, though."

"There are, actually, or at any rate small flying animals. Not very many, but some. They don't seem to sing, though. It's really very quiet here."

He smiled. "It beats listening to that funny noise the ship's been making lately every time we go past Warp 5."

"Yes, I must say I don't envy B'Elanna today. Still, she said she had a very good time yesterday. She and Tom went for a long walk in the hills."

"The two of them seem to be seeing a lot of each other. I'm a little concerned about it, frankly. I don't know whether it's going to work out, and if it doesn't, well, it's a mighty small ship. But on the other hand, I hesitate to interfere."

"It would be awkward, yes, considering you and Seska...." Seeing the look of pain that crossed his face, she put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. Maybe we should talk about something else."

"No. I need to talk to somebody about that. Besides my spirit guide, I mean." He turned toward her, looking at her thin, red lips because he couldn't quite look into her eyes and say what he was going to say.

"It's more than you know. When that alien was playing mind tricks on us, she was what I saw."

"I know her death was very hard on you. The two of you were very close."

"Not as close as we had been. I wanted to break off the relationship. She didn't. The situation was getting very awkward. She wanted something I couldn't give her, and she wouldn't accept that I couldn't." He turned to look at the cliff. "I saw her the way she looked when we dug her out from under that rockslide. She was speaking to me, accusing me, saying I was relieved that she was dead. And I couldn't convince her, couldn't convince myself, that I wasn't. The whole time I was just sitting there, frozen-- somehow, somewhere, I was arguing with her and losing."

She wanted to embrace him but refrained, not so much because he was her captain as because they were both naked and he might misinterpret her action. She couldn't quite imagine what he was going through, but it was surely very hard for him, she saw that in his face, in the way his shoulders drooped. There had never been a time when she would have been relieved at all to learn of Mark's death. Her mourning for their love, when it had become clear to her that they would almost certainly never see each other again, never even hear from each other, had been unmixed by guilt of that kind. Her regrets were for the things she hadn't said when they were still together, and for her curtness with him the last time they'd spoken, by subspace, just before Voyager left for her final mission.

"You can't blame yourself. Feelings change, relationships end. It wasn't your fault she died."

"I sent her on that mission. I could have sent someone else. It was partly to get her off the ship."

"She was a logical person to send. And you certainly didn't cause the rockslide. I don't blame you, and I don't think any of the crew does. Seska probably didn't either. It wasn't her you saw, you know. It was a reflection of your own fears."

"I know. But it was so real." He shook his head slowly and pushed forward into the water, gliding across the pool. The coolness of the water on his face felt good, and its smooth resistance against his arms and legs as he swam. When he reached the other side, he turned and looked back. She had climbed out of the water and was sitting on the rock in the sun with her knees drawn up to her chest. He hesitated for a moment before swimming back to her. This is a professional relationship, he told himself, looking at her uniform spread out on the rock to dry. To let it become something else would be too dangerous. He crossed the pool again and climbed out to sit beside her.

"Are you getting along all right with the crew? Have there been any problems lately?" The question seemed stupid to him as he asked it--she would have told him if there were, if she wanted to--but at least it was business, without getting into the innumerable technical details involved in keeping a starship running, matters he didn't want to think about today.

"No, no problems." Not since Seska's death. Except that B'Elanna had been kicking her out of their quarters pretty often since things had heated up between her and Tom.

"I know it's been difficult for you. It's not exactly what you're used to. It took me a while to adjust, and it was my choice to leave Starfleet and join the Maquis."

She turned her head toward him and smiled. "I don't consider that I've left Starfleet, much less joined the Maquis. I'm just hitching a ride."

"You've done a lot more than that, and I'm grateful. You're one of the most valuable members of my crew."

She paused for an awkward few seconds before thanking him. She'd been through a long argument with herself in the beginning about whether it was right to cooperate. There were no viable alternatives, but still she had found it difficult. She'd done her best to think in terms of "the ship" and "the crew" and put their political affiliations out of her mind. After all, they really didn't matter here--the Cardassians and the Federation were a long ways away. They had a common goal, to get home, and it would require all of their efforts to achieve it. But the alien had brought back all those memories of her ship and her crew that she'd tried to put aside. She remembered all the sounds and smells, the names and faces. And then that awful moment, standing on the bridge of Chakotay's ship, watching on the viewscreen as its phasers cut into Voyager's belly, feeling as though they were cutting into her own flesh, fighting to contain her emotions as the containment field around the antimatter storage ruptured and the ship disappeared in a blinding white flash.

He saw the pain in her face and felt it in his heart. It had to have been very difficult for her, losing almost all of her crew and that beautiful, powerful ship and being stranded seventy thousand light years from home. She'd borne it well. He remembered their first meeting, before the battle with the Kazon. She'd been determined to recover that crewman of hers--Kim or whatever his name was--and apparently fearless, despite the Caretaker's evident power. When they'd come back after the Kazon attack and beamed her and the other two remaining crew members over from Voyager without taking time to ask, she'd quickly oriented herself and asked him to do what he'd prevented her from doing, to destroy the ship rather than letting it fall into Kazon hands. He'd never forget how she'd looked at that moment, standing silently at attention, jaw clenched, the flash of the explosion on the viewscreen reflected in her eyes and in the tears which streamed from them.

"It has been hard," she said softly at last. "I admit I was used to much more comfortable surroundings, and of course to being the one giving the orders." She gave him a brief smile. "But I can adapt. What's hard is not being able to do anything for my crew. To be forced to turn my back on them like that." She looked away from him, slowly clenched her fist, and struck the rock.

"I understand," he said. "If it had been possible to rescue them, I would have. But they were so far away, and there were so many Kazon. With one small ship, already damaged....I couldn't risk it."

After a long time, she said, "I know."

They sat there in silence, not looking at one another. After a while she got up and turned over the pieces of her uniform, drying quickly in the midmorning sun. When she had finished, she turned towards him.

"I don't think I ever thanked you for saving my life."

He looked up at her. "No, I don't believe you did. I didn't really expect you to. But I've always been very glad I did." He did his best to smile as if he didn't mean the last sentence the way he meant it.

"Thank you," she said simply, and he wasn't quite sure how she meant that.

She walked over to the shade of a tree that grew near the base of the cliff, just beyond the pool. He watched the way her hips swayed. Her skin was fair, of course--he could stay in the sun for quite some time before he had to worry about sunburn. Nonetheless, he went to join her. They sat side by side, leaning against the cool, rough stone of the cliff. Across the river, a black shape glided down from a tree to the water's edge.

"Those are the animals you mean. The ones like birds."

"Yes."

"There were no birds on my homeworld. It was hard for my people to leave them behind, especially the eagles. But Dorvan V was a class-M planet with its own life, and by that time there had been enough experiences with the problems of introducing alien species. We learned about them in school, from holograms. They've never seemed real to me."

She considered this, watching the small alien creature drinking. From her childhood, she had been learning of the many ways in which people's experiences could differ, but still there were always new ones she'd never thought of before.

"I remember watching the gulls in the summer--my uncle had a summer house on the coast--and wondering what it was like for the Wright Brothers, watching them fly and wanting to join them."

Chakotay smiled. "To them, our ship would have seemed like a miracle. Can you imagine trying to explain warp drive to them?"

She imagined B'Elanna Torres trying to explain it, the two men in their stiff collars staring at the ridges on her forehead. She laughed.

"It's good to keep a sense of perspective," she said after she'd considered this image for a while. "It seems to us, well, to me anyway, like the odds are pretty long against our getting home again, but at least we do have a spaceship. If Orville and Wilbur Wright were here, they'd be right here on this planet for the rest of their lives."

Chakotay thought of Tom's bizarre theory about that vapor trail they'd run across some months back. "Gasoline," he'd called the stuff. Chakotay had breathed a sigh of relief that Kathryn wasn't on duty at the time. She would have wanted to investigate, and he would have had to pull rank on her yet again. He'd sworn Tom to secrecy.

She wanted to ask him whether he thought they'd ever make it home again, but she knew that even in the Maquis there were questions you didn't ask the captain. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear his answer, anyway. In her view, five of the planets they'd stopped at so far would have been suitable for settlement; this one probably was, too. Each time, she'd been afraid he'd decide to stay, to abandon their quixotic mission and begin a new life in the Delta Quadrant. But something was driving him on--hope, a restless spirit, an unwillingness to admit defeat, something.

"Do you think some of the crew will want to stay here?" he asked softly after a while. It still seemed a little strange to her for him to ask her such questions. She still felt herself to be an outsider. He'd evidently quit regarding her that way, most of the time.

"B'Elanna and Tom, no. I can't picture them ever settling down on a planet. What would they do? Tuvok, no. The bond with his family is too strong. Henley, no. She'd think it would be too boring." She broke off and worked her way through the crew roster in her mind. "I think Ramon and Sylvie are the most likely candidates. And maybe Dalby, if Geron would stay, otherwise not."

He nodded slowly. "The time will come. I hope not yet. I was a little hesitant about stopping here for shore leave, but I think we really needed it."

"I agree. B'Elanna hasn't been sleeping well at all. She always dreams about her father."

"Have you been having bad dreams, too?"

She nodded, then put her hand to her neck with a rueful smile. There was a long moment of silence. Then he put his hand on her shoulder and asked, "May I?"

She smiled and turned her back to him. He shifted his position, parted her long, still- damp hair at the neck and swept it forward, and began to massage her shoulders. She sat with her head hanging forward, noticing how her nipples grew hard at his touch.

"Yes," she said, barely loud enough for him to hear. "Just like at first. Only I always used to wake up, either when the last person left Voyager's bridge--it was Harry Kim, I can still see him as though he were in front of me, tears on his face--or when you beamed us off, or when the ship blew up. Now sometimes I see members of my crew as slaves of the Kazon, or dead."

"I lost some crewmembers to the Cardassians once," he said slowly. "I heard later about what happened to them. I'll spare you the details. At least you don't know for certain. Like you said, that alien showed us our own fears."

"Yes. That feels wonderful, by the way. Thank you."

"You're welcome," he replied. He moved his fingers in light swirls down the sides of her neck again, kneaded her shoulders, and then broke off the contact. "I think I'll go swim a little more."

He got to his feet and moved over to the edge of the pool. There was something awkward about the way he walked. She realized that he was turning to keep his back to her, and stifled a giggle. But then her expression grew serious. She'd been so preoccupied lately with trying not to think about what had happened to her crew that she'd almost forgotten that there was something else she was trying not to think about.

He slid into the water and swam slowly across the pool, breast stroke, not raising his head for air until he reached the other side. He swam back underwater. Then he stood and looked at her for a long moment. He wanted to contact his spirit guide, but he could not reach her. Finally, he spoke to Kathryn instead.

"Should we talk about this or should we not talk about this?" he asked, wondering with a sudden rush of panic what he'd do if she didn't understand. To his relief, she seemed to be considering the question seriously.

"I guess there's not much point in pretending it doesn't exist, is there?" she said finally.

"No, I guess there isn't." He took a deep breath. "There aren't the formal rules against it like in Starfleet, but the reasons for those rules still exist. I don't know how the crew would react. There might be jealousies or resentments. I don't think so--I think they've learned to trust you, and accept you, and accept the fact that I have a close relationship with you. But I can't be sure what would happen. B'Elanna and Seska were close friends. She might see it as a betrayal." And in a way, she'd be right, he thought to himself.

Kathryn smiled. "I doubt it. She'd like to have me move out, so Tom could move in."

"Maybe. But then there's also the fact that it's a very small ship. If things didn't work out for us, we wouldn't be able to avoid each other." He had admitted to himself, finally, that he was relieved at Seska's death. Could there ever come a time when he would.... No. He couldn't imagine that.

"That, I think we could handle. We're responsible adults. But there's another problem. On duty, you can't play favorites. And if there's a dangerous mission, you have to send the people who can do the job best. You can't think about how you feel about them as individuals." She remembered how hard it had been to send Tuvok to infiltrate the Maquis, and how she'd worried about him after the ship disappeared, even though she knew he wouldn't understand such emotions.

"I know that. I think I managed all right with Seska, on the whole. Sometimes she tried to abuse her influence with me, and that was a problem, but I don't think you'd do that." He smiled. "Not unless there was some phenomenon you really wanted to investigate."

She smiled back. "I can't promise I won't try. But I'll accept your decisions."

"Would it be hard for you, taking orders from your lover?"

She felt a quivering sensation in her belly at his use of the word.

"No harder than taking orders from my intended prisoner, no."

He laughed. She climbed into the pool with him. The cold water made her feel almost light-headed. Or maybe it was something else. Suddenly she was frightened.

"We could try it out. Just for today. See whether it seems like it could work. If not, we could write it off as a shore-leave fling."

"No, Kathryn," he said, his dark eyes serious. "This is no shore-leave fling. If you don't want to take the risk, I'd understand."

They stood there facing each other, waist-deep in the cool water in the shadow of the cliff. They studied each other's faces and mentally reviewed the arguments for and against with a facility born of months of practice. Finally, she put her arms around him.

"I'm getting cold," she said. He kissed her hair. They climbed out of the water and stood in the sunshine. She looked down at her uniform and up at him.

"If we get back to the Alpha Quadrant, things are going to be pretty complicated."

He nodded. "Getting back to the Alpha Quadrant is going to be pretty complicated, too."

"I still don't consider myself part of the Maquis."

"No. Even without the uniform, and with that decidedly non-regulation hairdo, you're every centimeter a Starfleet officer." He kissed her. "A Starfleet captain."

"If things had gone differently, and we were on Voyager instead of on your ship, would you have been willing to serve under me?"

"Yes, if you had been willing to have me. But I don't suppose we could have been lovers then."

"No, I don't suppose so." She shook her head slowly. "Everything would have been very different." Different and better, she thought to herself. With a bigger, faster ship, with her crew....But there was little point in thinking about what might have been. This was her life now, and she would share it with this man. And that, at least, was good.

"So, science officer, have you examined the grasses on this planet? Do you think we could lie down on them without suffering skin irritations?"

"Yes, on both counts." She smiled at him.

She left her uniform drying in the sun, but picked up her pack and her weapon while he collected his things. Together, they crossed the river.

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