In the life of Shara Elaine Calloway, most things of import were determined by befores and afters.

Before her mother died…
And after, when her similar appearance to Tanis enraged her father, whose drinking had only accelerated. He would have preferred it if Tanis survived the illness and Shara had not. He had even said that at one point too.

Before she got pregnant…
And after, having just turned seventeen and she tearfully gave her baby up for adoption. She was too scared, too unprepared, too alone to be a mother.

Before she met the charming, poetry-loving Edward Calloway…
And after, when they got married and moved to a little colony to carve out a life of their own amongst people who were willing to work hard and share in the building of a community.

Before the Federation-Cardassian treaty…
And after, when they became enemies, traitors. They were just trying to survive, help others survive and defend their homes.

Before she set off in that shuttle to go do cryptographic work for another Maquis cell, her daughter’s angry pleas ringing in her ears…
And after, when she found herself in the Delta Quadrant, stuck on a Starfleet vessel with a crew she’d eventually grow to care deeply about.

Before they made contact with the Alpha Quadrant…
And after, when the reality of her friends and loved ones having been so cruelly slaughtered by the Dominion brought her to her knees.

Before Voyager made it back to the Alpha Quadrant…
And after, when Intelligence took a woman who had lost everything and gave her a greater propose. They never explained what it would cost her long-term.

Before Reid proposed to her…
After that bitter fight when she realized she wanted this man to be someone who was long dead, and she handed back the ring, slipping into the shadows fully.

Before her third covert stint in Romulan space…
And after the Tal Shiar brought in a prisoner they had targeted specifically for her extraordinary mind only to gaze into the drugged out eyes of her second-born, unable to do anything for nine whole months to get her to safety. Nine months, closer to ten. The same time as she gestated Faye.

Before she surfaced and forced a reunion…
After, standing in the ready room on the Manhattan, knowing full well she had just up-ended her daughter’s life with only the barest thread of hope they would make it through.

Before Micah Pikelsimer beamed onto the Manhattan…
After he so easily snuck past her shields and offered her a refuge in more ways than one.

Before Tennessee…
After she woke up married to a man she was scared to want so badly, and whom knew her heart so well he brought the babe she had given up back into her world again.

Before Faye got married…
After, when Shara realized that she had welcomed something powerful back into her life: joy.

Faye, Micah, Nadine, Gavin. She was tethered to life, to joy again. To the possibilities of what could be. But she was no longer certain it was something she could hold on to. Maybe she had existed in the shadows too long. Maybe, Gods forbid, that damned Admiral Drixton had been right. She could trade titles, but Agent Calloway still existed, whether she wanted her to or not.

Coming back into the light was proving a harder task than any she had faced thus far, and that was saying something.

The Asimov was too small a ship and there were few places she could go. Nowhere to truly hide out for a bit and regroup. So she made a brief stop, and collected something that belonged to her husband (but they were married and she could argue what was his was hers too), and fled back to her quarters. She ripped off the insane jacket, tossing it over her desk chair, kicked off her boots, and stood there in faux leather leggings and a tank top, hands akimbo and felt a familiar weight settling over her body and mind.

They were dead. She was trying to explain this to them all, that by accepting this assignment, by agreeing to stay aboard they had forfeited their lives. If they were somehow fortunate to come out of it alive, then great.

They didn’t understand that. How could they? Most of them had never truly had to sacrifice themselves for anything, so this all now was a bitter pill to swallow. She understood, she really did. But their games and their reticence to do it right instilled something in her that was rare: fear.

Shara didn’t want to die. Not yet. As Bethy had pointed out, she had a lot to live for these days. But the further this charade went on, the more Shara realized that it would take someone like her, setting the example, making the sacrifice. Someone might have to, and the reality was that they all had more years ahead of them than she did. She had thought she still had something to offer, but maybe a life in the light was too much to ask for. Maybe the shadows were truly her home. A discomfiting thought, that.

Grabbing the jars and amused very briefly that her husband might be mad to find them gone, Shara slipped to a safer place, leaving her combadge behind. Thank goodness for arrangements of necessity! But she wasn’t the only one with the sort of skills she had cultivated in her Shadow Years. At least there was one person she wasn’t married to who understood. Aside from Strickland, of course, but she had no intention of talking to him just now either.

Slipping to the floor against the bed, the jars settled next to her safely. Fingers slipping through her hair, holding her head, Shara braced her elbows on her knees, the images, memories hitting hard. She had been doing so much better, but the problem with stuffing everything down for prolonged periods of time was that it tended to come back up rather forcefully. And this time Shara was having a hard time pushing it back down. She was out of practice. Or maybe all that love and joy made it impossible?

It was too much. Too much to ask. Too much to bear. But she wasn’t sure that anyone, not even Micah, fully understood right now just how hard it was to be in the light and be asked to be in the shadows too. The murky middle ground was where people were destroyed, or destroyed others.

It would be her downfall.

And thus with that reality fully before her, Shara sobbed.

Commander Calloway, CIO