The Keystone was the Arcade bar most favoured by Starfleet officers, especially Gateway’s own crew. Kharth could have guessed this without being told, despite most of the patrons being out of uniform. There was a structure to the establishment, not dissimilar to the lounge on any starship; an inoffensive charm to make the bar nobody’s favourite choice, but nobody’s last – an acceptable compromise.

She’d considered arriving a little late to not interrupt the reunion itself, then reasoned that Logan had asked her to come along for moral support. Against her better judgement, she came early, and found Elijah Bishop in a booth already with a pair of officers around the same age.

‘Kharth – meet Stewart and Trevion.’ Bishop gestured to the human woman and the Rigellian man respectively. ‘Old hands from the Oberon, but if you’re here… I take it Jack’s not coming?’

‘He said he’d be here. He invited me.’ She considered asking if they minded, then decided that if she was here for any reason, it was to support Logan, and slid in next to Stewart.

Rather than protest, Bishop lifted his pint glass and said, ‘The more the merrier.’

After a beat, the gruff Rigellian Trevion leaned forward and said, ‘Endeavour was in the Empire during the transition, then.’

She almost would have preferred to talk Logan’s personal feelings than shop. ‘Transition. Takeover. Sure.’

‘You think there’ll be war?’

‘I didn’t see much more than you’ve seen in reports. I didn’t meet Toral. Somehow, my captain thought that she shouldn’t disembark her Romulan XO,’ Kharth said coolly.

Stewart snickered. ‘We wait and see, Trev. Orders will come.’

Trevion gave her a dour look. ‘Orders to fight our oldest allies?’

Then he flinched, and it sounded like Bishop had kicked him. ‘Orders,’ said Bishop, ‘to protect people who came to us for help.’ He looked at Kharth apologetically. ‘Sorry. Trev’s just very set in his ways.’

Kharth looked levelly at the Rigellian. ‘He’s not the only person to prefer Klingons to Romulans.’

But Trevion had subsided, shoulders drooping. ‘I don’t want to choose between anyone,’ he said, and for a flash, she felt guilty at the accusation. Then through the bustle of Keystone, she heard new footsteps and looked up to see Logan approach the table.

He was casual in a button-down plaid shirt and jeans, a jacket slung over his shoulder, and stopped a few feet away, clearly uncertain, clearly apprehensive. His old shipmates stared back at him for a moment, too.

Then Elijah Bishop rose to his feet, arms outstretched. ‘Jack! How the devil have you been?’

Kharth wondered if it was too much, too transparent. But as Bishop stalked over to Logan and she saw his eyes brighten, she realised it was probably not possible to be too effusive in greeting him.

‘Oh, y’know, Eli,’ Logan drawled through his obvious self-consciousness. ‘Been wandering the galaxy a while.’

‘Then sit your arse down and take a load off.’ Bishop gestured to the booth. ‘It’s been too damn long. First round is on me.’

That both did and didn’t help, Kharth observed as Logan slid in to sit down across from her. He caught her eye nervously, clasping his hands together, but Bishop had headed for the bar, and it was now him with his other two old friends.

Trevion gave a deep nod, seemingly unperturbed by any tension. ‘You look in much better health than I expected.’

‘Uh. Thanks? I work out.’

‘He means,’ sighed Stewart, ‘that you hardly look Borg at all.’ Even Kharth gave her a sharp look, and she rolled her eyes. ‘You get used to translating Trevion. Don’t shoot the messenger.’

Logan unclasped his hands. ‘You’re right. I forgot. No, Trev – I’ve still got implants. Mostly internal, though. A few you can’t see.’ He plucked at his collar briefly. ‘But not that many.’

‘You were much worse when you were in rehabilitation,’ Trevion rumbled thoughtfully.

Logan blinked. ‘You saw me in rehab?’

‘We all came to see you in rehab,’ said Trevion as if this was obvious.

‘Oh. I, uh. I don’t remember much about it.’ But any of his easing out faded as he glanced at Stewart. ‘How’ve you been, Lisa?’

‘I’m pretty sure I told you how I’ve been in my letters, Jack.’ Stewart sipped her cocktail, and Kharth wondered if she could request an emergency beam-out as the tension rippled over her.

Logan sucked his teeth. ‘I did see some. Congrats on the promotion. You deserve the shift to a command track.’

Stewart relaxed an iota. ‘You read them at least. Just didn’t reply.’

‘Yeah, I was…’ His voice trailed off, and Kharth’s throat only eased at the approach of Bishop, clutching three pint glasses with a practiced ease.

‘Here you go. Jack. Kharth.’ Bishop slid in the other side of Logan, trapping him in, and gave an exaggerated, toothy smile. ‘I interrupted, right?’

‘No, your timing’s fine.’ Logan groaned, then grabbed the pint glass and drank deeply. ‘Lisa were just cuttin’ to the chase and callin’ me out.’

‘Oh.’ Bishop gave Stewart the briefest shadowed glare. ‘You don’t have to explain yourself, Jack-’

‘Sure I do. We all go from bein’ thick as thieves for years an’ then I escape the jaws of death an’ drop off the sensor readings?’

Bishop gave a hapless shrug. ‘I understand this must have been… I understand we couldn’t understand. But when we reached out and you didn’t reach back, we didn’t know what to do.’

‘You were assimilated in that time,’ said Trevion. ‘It was believable your personality had changed. That you no longer wished us in your life. Whether through trauma or inevitable alteration by the Collective -’

‘Trev.’ Bishop now glared outright.

‘My nephew was turned on Frontier Day,’ said Stewart abruptly. ‘He explained some of it to me afterwards. The guilt. The shame. The… difficulty in finding his way back to his sense of self. And that was merely hours. We can’t imagine that happening for years.’

‘Look, it ain’t complicated.’ Logan scrubbed his face with his hands. ‘I ain’t the same, and that’s why I stayed away. Not ‘cos I didn’t want you around. But ‘cos I were afraid that if you got to know this new me…’

‘We wouldn’t like him?’ said Bishop with a sad smile. ‘Nobody stays the same forever, Jack.’

‘Except Trev,’ added Stewart. ‘He’s still the same oblivious blockhead.’

‘I exceedingly dislike change,’ Trevion agreed amiably. ‘But only in fundamental issues. Superficial developments are inevitable.’

Logan made a face. ‘Pretty sure being Borg’d is a fundamental thing, Trev.’

Trevion lifted one long, bony finger. ‘Jack. Do you still prefer Blanton’s bourbon, aged for twenty years in a white oak cask?’

‘With just a drop of water,’ Logan said with a hint of an edge. ‘No ice.’

‘Do you still sing bluegrass in the shower off-key?’

Logan hesitated there. ‘I, uh. It ain’t off-key no more.’

Stewart gave him a sharp look. ‘Are you telling me the Borg fixed your singing?’ Beside Logan, Bishop howled with laughter.

‘I… my senses got improved! I got much sharper hearin’ now, not to mention a diaphragm steel!’

‘Point is,’ said Bishop, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes, ‘we know you, Jack. Things that matter don’t change.’

‘Him singing better matters to me,’ Stewart drawled.

Bishop waved a dismissive hand before raising his pint. ‘Rat pack forever, right?’

There were cheers. The clinking of glasses. More jibes from Stewart at Logan’s musical talents. And the moment the immediate jubilation died down, Kharth set her drink on the table and slid down the booth bench.

‘I should let you get to it.’

But Logan’s hand came out. He did no more than touch her forearm, but it made her hesitate, and his gaze was keen.

‘No need to run,’ he said with a wince. ‘Promise we’ll stop all this old-timer’s talk. Like I said, you’ve got some good war stories yourself.’ He looked at her drink, barely a third down, and tried a grin. ‘Stick out the rest of the pint?’

She glanced back. Glanced at Logan’s friends, relaxed now, easy with him in their company. Never before, she thought, would she have imagined being jealous of Logan’s sociability. Against all her better judgement, she slid back onto the bench. ‘Fine. The rest of the pint.’

Bishop grinned the widest. ‘You’ve been putting up with Jack while he was at his most glum, it seems. You deserve the drink. Tell us if you’ve got a good story of him being a complete idiot.’

For a moment, the memory of Logan plugging himself into a Borg Queen’s interface flashed across her eyes. Then Kharth tilted her head at Jack Logan, and said, ‘He was being chased down by a whole extremist movement when I met him.’

‘And saved my ass,’ said Logan, tilting his drink to her.

The full tale went down well. Logan wasn’t shy of embellishing at his own expense, and his old friends, comfortable now with where they stood, weren’t shy to tease him for it. Then Stewart pulled out her own decade-old anecdote of Logan nearly getting arrested by their hosts on one of the Oberon’s first contact missions, and the tone was set from there.

There were other stories, some of them from the four old friends’ adventures – but ones of their own, too, and as the night got easier, Bishop retold a few of him, Trevion, and Stewart from the Zephyr, more comfortable now to exist in a space without Logan. It became so relaxed, so easy, that Kharth was halfway through an abridged retelling of rescuing Rourke from a Romulan prison camp – skipping how she’d been in the brig at the start of it – before she realised there’d been a second round, or a third, and she was still here.

The night became hazy from there. Not only from alcohol, but the sheer momentum of Logan and his friends once they got going. Bishop was a quick-witted companion, skilled at shuffling and dealing out anecdotes and conversation topics that helped old friends reunite while keeping her looped in. But at some point the evening became less about reconnecting and more about blowing off steam, steam she didn’t even know she needed to let loose. Drinks at Keystone shifted to dancing at Paradox. Somewhere in that transition Kharth tried to make her excuses, yet ended up in the thumping mass of bodies and flashing shadows and pounding bass.

It was an easier kind of socialising, in its way – this intense, physical engagement, bound by wire to be either superficial or primal in a way that didn’t need words or emotional understanding. It was how she’d lived as a cadet, how she’d lived on her last assignment, only to be chased back into iron walls on starship assignment, in that claustrophobic life of everyone knowing everyone.

It was very late – or, perhaps, not as early as she’d have liked – before the group broke up, and she and Logan staggered back to the docking level, back to Endeavour. Her ears rang with the music, the silence of the station in the middle of the night local time, her ship with everyone disembarked, deafening almost more than club Paradox had been.

‘You don’t got nothing early on today, right?’ Logan drawled, all but collapsed against the turbolift walls once they were in.

‘Nothing at all. That I can’t cancel.’ Kharth scrubbed her face with her hands, equally exhausted now. ‘…that was fun.’

When she pulled her hands down, he was regarding her with a crooked smile. ‘It were, weren’t it? Thank. For bridging that gap.’

He looked lighter, she thought, despite the exhaustion. What demons had tonight chased away? Who was this man without them? Was it really that easy to rekindle a spark of the man he’d been before the shackles of the Borg had fallen upon him?

Could she ever find such a way to reignite?

She gave a lopsided shrug. ‘It was good. I like your friends.’

‘Seemed like you had steam to blow off.’

‘And I didn’t even know it,’ she admitted. ‘But… yeah. It’s been hard. Working as XO. Isa being gone. Times change. Connections change.’

The turbolift doors opened and they staggered out. She had further to go down the crew quarters corridors to get to her rooms, which suited her fine as they stumbled to a halt at his door.

He looked like he might reach for her, seemed unsure of how he’d do that, and gave her more of a pat on the arm in the end. ‘It suited you. Winding down. Breaking open. I dunno. You got a dark around you all the time, seems like.’ Now he gave that crooked, toothy grin of his again. ‘You called me outta the dark, once. Maybe sometime I can return the favour.’

She left him there, all but immediately falling onto her bed once she got to her rooms, all but passing out the second her head hit the pillow. It should have been lonely, in its way, she thought – to see someone rediscover and reconnect with their roots, and know she didn’t have that.

It hadn’t been lonely, though. And Kharth was too fast asleep before she could ponder if that was because the sight of Logan reconnecting was too heartwarming, or if his roots had snaked out to reach her, too.