"I always feared this would happen to Voyager," she admits one evening when they're sitting in the mess hall, watching the colors of a nearby nebula swirl together to make new colors she doesn't have a name for through the main observation window.
Years. It's been nearly two years since she found herself on this vessel, displaced from her timeline and any recognizable version of her universe, but it's not the displacement she's bemoaning. It's the silent acceptance of being lost, of this being her new reality. A reality with a home that will never be seen again and an endless span of uncharted space before her with all the time in the world to explore it.
A scientist's dream, really, in many ways. And she's been making the most of that, filling up the ship's databases with information on new cosmic phenomena and helping to update diplomatic policies based on her own extensive experience with first contacts and the situations for which they previously had no guidance for that they had to figure out along the way. Kathryn is proud of the things she's managed to accomplish here in spite of impossible odds, putting her skills as both a seasoned commanding officer and quantum cosmologist to good use to the benefit of all aboard, but it's not what she was hoping for.
Not where she saw herself five years out from being flung far, far away from Earth. She wasn't foolish enough to think that they would have made it back to the Alpha Quadrant by now, but she also didn't see herself farther from Indiana than she ever imaged she would ever be. Or that she would have to say goodbye to both the crew she left behind and people she'd come to value aboard this ship.
For what she had feared would happen to Voyager was happening to the Danaë.
People were leaving. Leaving to join other crews embarking on promising adventures that catered to their interests or settling down on planets that had more opportunities available to them. Or ones they'd come to love and wanted to stay with versus remaining on a wayward vessel in hopes that they'd one day, maybe see home again.
"Towards the end of our first year, we came across a planet where the descendants of humans who'd been abducted by aliens in the 1930s had settled after breaking away from their captors. They had grand cities, reminiscent of the ones we'd left behind. I gave my crew permission to remain behind if they wanted, to start a new life there instead of facing the possibility of remaining in space for the rest of their lives. None of them stayed. Not a single one."
At the time, she'd seen it as a victory. A small triumph of reassurance that she'd selfishly needed and a great relief, but now? She isn't sure she'd view it the same way. Now, she's had a taste of what it's like to be out amongst the stars with home nowhere in sight and impossibly out of reach.
"We're losing people, Jim. And I can't fault them for it, just like I wouldn't have faulted my crew had they decided not to remain on Voyager."
That she wouldn't have left then and wouldn't leave now goes unsaid, but is implied. She understands why people are leaving and plotting new courses for their lives, but she can't.
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Years. It's been nearly two years since she found herself on this vessel, displaced from her timeline and any recognizable version of her universe, but it's not the displacement she's bemoaning. It's the silent acceptance of being lost, of this being her new reality. A reality with a home that will never be seen again and an endless span of uncharted space before her with all the time in the world to explore it.
A scientist's dream, really, in many ways. And she's been making the most of that, filling up the ship's databases with information on new cosmic phenomena and helping to update diplomatic policies based on her own extensive experience with first contacts and the situations for which they previously had no guidance for that they had to figure out along the way. Kathryn is proud of the things she's managed to accomplish here in spite of impossible odds, putting her skills as both a seasoned commanding officer and quantum cosmologist to good use to the benefit of all aboard, but it's not what she was hoping for.
Not where she saw herself five years out from being flung far, far away from Earth. She wasn't foolish enough to think that they would have made it back to the Alpha Quadrant by now, but she also didn't see herself farther from Indiana than she ever imaged she would ever be. Or that she would have to say goodbye to both the crew she left behind and people she'd come to value aboard this ship.
For what she had feared would happen to Voyager was happening to the Danaë.
People were leaving. Leaving to join other crews embarking on promising adventures that catered to their interests or settling down on planets that had more opportunities available to them. Or ones they'd come to love and wanted to stay with versus remaining on a wayward vessel in hopes that they'd one day, maybe see home again.
"Towards the end of our first year, we came across a planet where the descendants of humans who'd been abducted by aliens in the 1930s had settled after breaking away from their captors. They had grand cities, reminiscent of the ones we'd left behind. I gave my crew permission to remain behind if they wanted, to start a new life there instead of facing the possibility of remaining in space for the rest of their lives. None of them stayed. Not a single one."
At the time, she'd seen it as a victory. A small triumph of reassurance that she'd selfishly needed and a great relief, but now? She isn't sure she'd view it the same way. Now, she's had a taste of what it's like to be out amongst the stars with home nowhere in sight and impossibly out of reach.
"We're losing people, Jim. And I can't fault them for it, just like I wouldn't have faulted my crew had they decided not to remain on Voyager."
That she wouldn't have left then and wouldn't leave now goes unsaid, but is implied. She understands why people are leaving and plotting new courses for their lives, but she can't.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
She's stubborn like that.