* * * * * *
in hyperspace...
She sat in the chair. Her chair. The chair of the captain.
Gaze set forward, the Lupine leaned back as she pulled in a long breath, letting it back out slowly. Behind her, KHER stood, flanked by Morgan on the right. Kes had taken up residence in the pilot's nest. An old habit that he couldn't help but indulge in. Their first short stint together had been when he was piloting Novgorod. And it was more than likely that this endeavor now would be their last. It seemed only fitting. Her eyes closed as her head dipped low. She felt the wholeness that now flooded her senses, and the disgust and horror that her untouched half now projected. The part of her that had committed so many atrocities in the name of a man too selfish to see the devotion of one... the desperation that she'd had to cling to him, to come so many times to the point of begging him for his acceptance, pleading for his affections...
The pureness of her renewed self recoiled, yet reached out all the same. It knitted itself back together, taking hold as a single entity once more. She was a whole being again, though it had come at such a terrible cost. She had much to answer for, but in the here and now there far more pressing matters than the crippled psyche of one woman.
She let her good eye crack open, tracing up to look at the back of the pilot's nest.
"What's our time to arrival."