Protocols Unknown: A Decision of The Stars

Wake Up Still

The space around her didn't shimmer or collapse. There were no broken panels, no flickering tricks of Sickbay, no echoes of the bridge or briefing room. Just stillness. Unfiltered and undistorted. A silence so honest it scared her more than any illusion.

Kathryn stood inside a memory. It wasn't fractured or a metaphor. This was sharp, fully formed. A room she had sealed herself inside. The air felt preserved, almost like it hadn't been touched in years.

Q's footsteps rang out beside her. No flair. No levity. Just the sound of leather soles on smooth ground. He wasn't strutting. He walked like someone escorting her into confession.

"What do I do, Q?"

"Kathy, I'm not a therapist."

"And I'm not a mind reader."

He didn't smirk. Didn't quip. Just studied her, his eyes softer than usual, like even he knew this was no place for spectacle.

"Walk through it," he said. "You built a lock that worked too well. I have to admit, it's impressive. You didn't just hide that child..."

"Her name is Astrea," she said, quiet but firm.

He waved it off. "Yes, yes. Odd name, if you ask me."

She raised a brow.

"The point, Q?"

His voice dropped into something flat and clear. "You can't wake up until you unlock the parts you didn't mean to forget."

He gestured toward the memory ahead. "This one? You didn't misplace it. You tied it off with a lie. Buried it, then called that healing."

She didn't meet his eyes, but her voice didn't waver. "I've reviewed everything. The choices. The mistakes. The grief."

"But not this one," he said, stepping back. "Not the one that taught you fear. The one that told you love was a liability."

He turned and walked away. No signature Q finger snap. Just a door clicking closed in the quiet.

Kathryn was alone.

But the room wasn't.

Under soft overhead lighting, a younger version of herself sat in the centre of the space. Civilian clothes. Hair half-pinned. A mug between her hands. She was smiling. Talking to someone out of frame. The laughter in her voice held that cadence only safety and love creates.

Kathryn didn't move, she barely breathed. One wrong step, and this fragile peace might crack. The smell of the coffee reached her—her father's old roast from Indiana. Exactly the way he used to make it.

Her younger self glanced up, mid-sentence. Smiling, relaxed. She wasn't yet the woman who had spent a lifetime in uniform. Not yet carved by duty.

"You thought you could have both," the younger Kathryn whispered. "And then you learned better."

Something shifted. The light dimmed. A heaviness settled in her chest. The sound of rushing water edged into the room. Distant, but gaining.

And then—

She was in the lake.

The water was black and cold, churning around her like it wanted to drag her under. Her lungs burned. Her heart pounded.

A voice, his voice cut through it. "Katie!"

Then nothing.

It wasn't a dream, it was a memory.

She saw herself, younger, barely more than a teenager. Standing on the rocky shoreline of Lake George. Soaked. Shaking. Waiting for divers. Hoping for the impossible.