[ How long has it been? Days? Weeks? Time blurred when they were on the Gorn ship, trapped and sedated in darkness until they'd reached the breeding planet. It wasn't the same place La'an had been before, but she still recognized it for what it was immediately. The hot, humid atmosphere. The shadows that covered everything. The stench of blood and rotting meat in the air. She'd nearly been sick from the horror of it, but she'd pulled herself together and gotten to work.

Listen to me. If you do as I say, we can survive this. Someone will come for us. The Enterprise, her crew, someone will come. We just have to last long enough for them to find us.

Even now, with her feet firmly back on the Enterprise, she can't say if she really believed those words. All she'd really known at the time was that people needed to understand the threat they faced and hold on to even a shred of hope. Not believing you're going to die will get you killed, but so will giving up. So she'd done her best to keep that balance, stepping into a leadership role she hadn't asked for but that no one else could do.

There were hundreds of them, at the start. Starfleet personnel and colonists. Men, women, and children. Keeping everyone together was a recipe for slaughter, so they'd had to split up into smaller groups, and it had killed something inside of her every time they came across signs of those who'd been caught. By the time Captain Pike and the others finally found them, there were only 53 survivors.

George Samuel Kirk was one of them. At no point had she explained to Sam why she insisted he stay with her group, or why she'd stuck close to him during each encounter with a hatchling. He'd assumed she didn't think he could handle himself and she hadn't bothered to correct that assumption. Telling him about her mission to the past would do no one any good; he didn't need to know that in another life, he'd died and something inside his brother had broken at the loss. Even as dozens of people died around them every hour, she kept Sam safe because she couldn't bear to see the look in Jim Kirk's eyes when he found out his brother was gone.

It had been close once, not long before they were rescued. A youngling had managed to get within reach, its sharp claws and teeth diving through the air toward Sam's chest. She'd shoved him out of the way, rolling them both to the side, but those claws had ripped through her shoulder, shredding her armor and leading to enough blood loss she'd worried she might not make it. But they'd killed the youngling, her group working together to take it down like they had others before, and they'd stemmed the blood flow enough that she hadn't even lost consciousness.

That injury was why she'd been beamed straight to sickbay, M'Benga insisting they at least administer primary treatment before she escaped to her quarters. There were others in more dire need, including a few who'd been infected with Gorn eggs, but it seems Chapel had used her time well, discovering a way to extract the eggs without killing the host. If nothing else, that eases a bit of the pain in La'an's chest that hurts so much more than her shoulder or the countless scrapes and bruises covering her body. These people will live. She didn't fail them.

And Sam will live. It shouldn't be what matters most, yet it is. She'd been ready to give her life for his if it came down to just the two of them, but that's something else he never needs to know. ]