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Maybe it's the coffee, or perhaps it's the time of year. Janeway stops reading, contemplates Voyager's journey. They are nearing the end of their sixth year in the Delta Quadrant. Memories wrap and smother her mind. She can't get enough air at the end of every year.
Six years. Now she likes the lights in her quarters low. Dante trembles in her hand. She should be grateful. They've made contact with Starfleet, survived numerous contacts with hostile creatures and demonic pieces of technology. Ensign Ballard has a new life.
The stars outside her quarters warp away. She stands, eyes the stack of completed padds on her desk. It seems that Chakotay doesn't think she's crazy anymore. He doesn't like to think of her at all, that much is clear. She doesn't know what he's doing at the moment, and really, she doesn't want to know. Chakotay may not want to face it, but she knows she hasn't really changed from whatever she became last year, when she continually horrified him with her recklessness, her rigidity. It may not show right now, but she probably isn't any less crazy. Just tired.
The night before, she dreamed that she was in Indiana. She walked through fields; their dead and trampled cornstalks half-disguised by snow. Icy, cold snow that was clean and fresh. With every step she took, the ice coating the snow broke and her boot plunged into the powder. It didn't help her mood, those images of ice and plunging and cold, cold so deep it could only mean one thing. Twenty years ago. She was supposed to be over that.
She seemed to wake then, wake in a warm room, legs covering her own, many legs, legs thick and thin, a head pressed against the soles of her feet. Outside, it was winter. Winter in those fields of ice and snow and trampled cornstalks. She wore something thin and white. Chakotay stirred at her side, Tuvok had a palm pressed to the base of her neck. Tom and B'Elanna fought at the foot of the bed as Naomi attempted to sleep, Flotter wrapped around her side. Seven lay crosswise, head heavy on her stomach, eyes clenched shut. Clearly, the chatter of waking crewmen was irrelevant.
In the dream, Janeway yawned and brushed the hair out of her eyes. The Borg baby at her breast stirred, ice crystals formed on the window, and Harry Kim rolled in his sleep, nudging her slightly in the hip.
She woke to Tuvok's voice over the comm and the insistent beeping of an ignored alarm. The dream stayed with her all day.
Her quarters are silent and still. She walks to the replicator with memories of warm quilts, snatches of laughter and the sound of pillows hitting assorted limbs. The bed of her dream represented a strong bond, one nearly animal in its starkness. She should be embarrassed, but the image of countless crew members piled in her bed doesn't repulse her. She is quite willing to be a mother to the crew, if that is what getting home takes. She chastises herself; coffee burns her tongue. A captain isn't supposed to be a father or mother to his or her crew. However, she isn't a typical captain. She swirls the coffee around, glances at the dark, empty space outside her viewport. So much of it. When did she stop being a typical captain? The answer is, of course, irrelevant.
Reluctantly, she pulls down the sheets, wonders what tonight's revelation will be. There is no line between mother and crazed insomniac. Indeed, each is an integral part of the other. She wonders which aspect will be the first to go.