Protocols Unknown: A Decision of The Stars

The Game Ends Pt.1

Starlight bent sideways.

That was the first thing Kathryn noticed. It wasn't the presence of Q suspended midair in smug comfort. Or the other figures flanking her in silence. Seven, Chakotay, Kashyk, Tuvok, the Admiral version of herself. No, it was the light. Bent and refracted through what looked like stars and wasn't. Light that moved like thought.

The Continuum. Or some performance piece of it.

She stood still.

Astrea was clutched in Seven's arms, quiet, awake, and watching.

Kathryn didn't speak. She couldn't. Her voice was lodged somewhere behind too many questions.

That was when Q grinned and clapped his hands. The sound echoed in ways it should not.

"Before you yell at me for breaking your brain or tampering with your Borg," he said, addressing both Janeways with theatrical flair, "allow me to clarify what you broke first. Shall we begin the lecture?"

Admiral Janeway stepped forward, face tight. "Q, this isn't the time."

Q's smile widened. "No, Admiral. It's exactly the time. Because the past you so heroically sacrificed has been ticking inside your head like a metronome with a complex."

He snapped his fingers.

A projection flared to life in the space between them. Images. Moments. Astrea on the bridge. In Sickbay. On the floor of a dark corridor, reaching upward.

Q turned his gaze toward the younger Janeway. "You raised her. And even when you weren't supposed to, you remembered."

Kathryn's voice came low, almost instinctive. "Because she's mine."

"Yes, yes. We know."

The image changed to a medical readout. Kathryn in the coma. Flat neural lines. And then, a spike. Astrea's biosigns flaring. Small fingers curling around Kathryn's sleeve.

"I didn't save you from that coma," Q said. His tone was almost gentle. "She did. When your little Captain's Assistant, who by the way is a little badass. Snuck into Sickbay and put Astrea on that bio-bed with you, that was the moment Astrea found you."

Kathryn blinked, slowly.

Not all of it had been a dream.

"She reached for me," she whispered.

Q didn't answer.

"It wasn't a memory, it was touch." Her voice trembled.

"Astrea reached into my subconscious and found me."

The projection shifted again.

"You thought she only remembered bedtime stories," he said. "But she remembered you."

Kathryn inhaled.

"You convinced yourself that a home was the only thing you gave her. But it wasn't. You gave her something so much more."

He turned to the others. "You all keep talking about resonance, potential, and the risk. But you forget the simplest truth."

He pointed at Astrea.

"She's a child. A child who loved her mother so deeply, she refused to forget her. Even when the timeline and Kathy's coma told her to."

Admiral Janeway's voice was a whisper. "She unravels the past."

"And remakes the future," Q confirmed.

Silence followed.

Then Q spoke again. "There is one path left."