He looked pained. "Please, Captain. We’ve been through this."

"I know," she said, "but I still can’t accept it. You can’t leave, Chakotay. You promised, you know. You promised you’d always be here, to help me. You’ve never broken a promise to me before."

"I’m sorry," he said sadly. "I’ve tried to help you, but you don’t really need me. I can’t help you any more, but there are others that do need me. You’ll be all right. I…I’ll miss you, Kathryn."

Her eyes held his. "Please," she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.

He closed his eyes, as if to break a spell. Then he opened them. "Come with me, Kathryn," he said, and extended a hand toward her. "Come with me."

Even though she was across the room from him, she drew back. "Leave Voyager? You know I can’t do that." Drawing a long, shaky breath, she played her last card. "I love you."

His shoulders sagged, and his arm dropped. "And I love you. I probably always will. But it’s not enough for either of us. Goodbye, Kathryn."

Tears stung her eyes. This was it; he really was going to leave them. Leave her. "Goodbye," she said, her fingers manipulating the transporter controls. "Be well." The shimmer of transport began, and then he was gone, safely delivered to the new ship he had chosen to lead. She turned and left the room.

As she walked down the corridor, she didn’t notice whether she passed any other crew or not. A hollow, empty feeling had begun in the pit of her stomach the moment of the transport and was spreading rapidly throughout her body. Chakotay, the person to whom she was closest, her right hand in running the ship, had left her. How was she going to go on? Would the Maquis on the ship still accept her leadership without him? Why did she always lose the men she loved?

She went to her quarters and sat heavily in a chair, staring out the view port at the stars of the Delta quadrant. The journey home now seemed endless, and maybe impossible.

On the other side of the window, three doctors watched their patient stare back at them sightlessly. "She’s catatonic again," Dr. Hansen said sadly.

"I was afraid of this," Chakotay said, looking troubled. "Maybe I shouldn’t leave after all."

"Don’t you start feeling guilty," Dr. Hansen said quickly, her large blue eyes showing concern. "You’ve devoted seven years to trying to help her. For your own sake, you need to move on."

He looked through the window at Kathryn, and sighed. Annika was right; he was becoming too emotionally attached again and losing his objectivity. "So much potential," he murmured. "It’s such a waste."

"There is still hope for her," Dr. Tuvok said. "She has been very close on two occasions in the past three years to returning to reality. We may yet find the key to helping her."

Chakotay took one last look at her. "I hope so," he said, and left the observation room to return to his office.

Gilmore, his secretary, had been efficient. His personal items had been removed from the walls, shelves and desk and neatly packed into three boxes, already loaded on an antigrav for him. There was only one thing left for him to do, and then he could catch the transport for Earth.

Sitting for the last time behind the big desk, he activated the computer. "Open patient file Janeway, Kathryn," he said, and found his first entry, dated almost exactly seven years earlier.

He scrolled ahead several weeks. This new "reality" is far more complex than its predecessors. One hopeful sign: it is evident that she has been aware at some level of the news vids broadcast in her rooms. Among the cast in this fantasy are Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres, both of whom have been featured prominently lately. She knew Paris before, but as far as we can ascertain, she has had no prior contact with Torres. She has also included the Maquis, which she could know of only through the news. In keeping with her pattern, she has incorporated her treatment team into the tapestry: Tuvok is her friend and security officer (a testament to the level of trust he has built with her over the years); Dr. Marya Kes is a Delta quadrant native; and I am the renegade Maquis leader. I am not certain how to interpret that role. We had some difficulty tracking the other key players, but we finally found that she had a classmate at the Academy named Harry Kim. Commander Kim was killed at Wolf 359 so we cannot ask him about the nature of their relationship. The origin of the Neelix character is still uncertain, but I suspect he is based on Neil I. Xavier, who was her father’s aide when she was a child.

He frowned. He had been so optimistic in those early days. So convinced that he would be the one to help her. They had come close many times; when he tried the "marooned" variation, with just the two of them alone for weeks, he felt they had been on the verge of breaking through. But then she had turned the tables on him, and brought the ship back, causing Tuvok to disobey orders against every tenet of his character to date. Each time he thought they were close, she’d done something similar.

After three years, Marya couldn’t take it any more. It was too heart-breaking. She had left, and Annika had replaced her. He smiled. Annika had not been amused to be cast as a Borg drone, but given her naturally aloof personality and her determination to maintain a clinical distance, he was not surprised. What did surprise him was that Kathryn chose to cultivate a relationship with her Borg at the expense of her relationship with "Commander" Chakotay. Once he got past the blow to his ego, though, he realized that it no longer mattered that he be the catalyst for her healing, so long as she was healed.

But it never happened. No matter what they tried, Kathryn’s nimble brain found a way around it. When they introduced amazing propulsion systems, she crashed the ship. When they tried sensory deprivation, she turned it into a desolate region of space. When they tried to introduce wormholes, she turned it into alien tricks. For every hope sparked by a bobble in continuity, she countered with self-isolation and despair. After seven years, he was completely demoralized. Nothing he did was of any actual benefit to her. He had not been able to help.

With a sigh, he called for a new entry and began to dictate. "This will be my last entry into this patient file. After seven years, I now understand that I am unable to help this patient. More importantly, I can no longer maintain the emotional detachment needed for a successful therapeutic relationship. Like Dr. Marya Kes several years ago, I have become too involved in the patient’s fantasies and need to leave before my own perceptions of reality are affected.

"My failure weighs heavily on me. Kathryn Janeway was a capable, promising Starfleet officer before the accident and my interaction of the past seven years convinces me that she possesses an exceptional mind and will. I remain convinced that the key to helping this woman is letting her find a way to expiate her guilt, even if it occurs in her fantasy world. She is locked in a cycle of blame and needs to find her own way out.

"It is my recommendation that she be allowed to play this fantasy out, albeit with some careful guidance. If she can get the ship home safely, she may finally expiate her guilt.

"End note."

He sighed, turned off the computer, and sat for a moment, thinking about nothing. Then he stood, picked up the antigrav tray and left the Braga Institute forever. The transport was waiting at the spaceport, and Marya was waiting on Earth.

Captain Kathryn Janeway caught a glimpse of herself in the glass outside Admiral Paris’ office in Starfleet headquarters. Her hair was neatly in place, safely secured in its bun. It wouldn’t do to be untidy in front of the Admiral; he was a stickler for detail. Everyone had been worried about her for months, since her husband had been killed in the Klingon War. Chakotay's death had hit her hard, very hard, and for a while she had considered leaving Starfleet. Actually, she was still considering it; it was impossible to imagine carrying on without him, especially since the political tide had shifted. The Klingons were once again the allies of the Federation, despite the bitter conflict of the prior year, and the Cardassians were once again the enemy. But Owen had called with the lure of a challenging assignment, and hint that he needed her help. She owed him a great deal, and perhaps it was time to get back to work, after all.

When she entered his office she saw immediately that something was wrong. His expression was heavy, not with the sympathy she had become accustomed to, but with worry. "The assignment I have for you, Kathryn," he said, "is one I would not trust to anyone else." She waited patiently for him to continue. "We have a lead on a Jem H'dar prison camp in the Gamma quadrant. It won't be easy; it's deep within enemy territory, and if anything happens to the Bajoran wormhole, you'll be stuck on the wrong side of the quadrant. But the prize is worth it. We have reason to believe that there are at least 150 Starfleet personnel being held there, including the surviving crew of the USS Joel Kaylem."

She sat quietly for a moment. Owen did not need to add that his son, Tom, had been the helmsman of the Kaylem; she had attended the memorial service with him and his wife. The last time she had seen Tom was at his graduation from the Academy. He had been an officer of much promise, and his supposed death had been hard to accept. "Don’t worry, Owen," she said at last. "I’ll bring him back."

"I know," he told her, trust and confidence in his eyes. Then he brightened. "You’ll have a new ship to do it. Wait until you see her, Katie – she’s a beauty. The USS Odyssey. Just out of the shipyards."

The name seemed to echo in the small office. A smile spread slowly across her face. "When can I see her?" she asked. Adventure was beckoning again, and Kathryn was ready to heed its call.