Captain Saffiya Nassar had gone through the different stages of grief after her first mission on the USS Cupertino.

Denial. After years of building an excellent track record – first as Engineering Officer, then Chief Engineer, and then as Executive Officer – she finally had her own command, and that very first mission aboard the ship ended up in the death of several members of her crew. They had been dragged into underspace, then confronted a Cardassian warship, which in itself made no sense to happen to a California class vessel.

Anger. Why had this happened in the first place? Did Starfleet Intelligence really have no idea what was going on? And Keller, had she really needed to just stand there rather than get herself into safety? Yes, Saffiya had failed to call for yellow alert, but she wasn’t exactly the only person on the bridge able to do so.
Then again, she was the Captain. So most of that anger was directed at herself.

Bargaining. Maybe she could have changed things. Perhaps if she never had set out to find Jurev, no one would have gotten hurt. Or perhaps… well, weird temporal distortions happened all the time. Maybe she could even get the people back?

Depression. Days of not leaving her quarters unless she had to. Days on which the guilt overwhelmed her. Days that didn’t seem to end, and on which no amount of talking to friends, mentors and counsellors could change how she felt about herself, and her role in what had happened.

And then, acceptance. Yes, it had happened. Yes, Saffiya’s inexperience had played a part in it, and there was nothing to do but to honour the memory of those who had passed by making better decisions for the future. It was why the Captain was taking a (for her) entirely new approach. She connected with her crew, tried to get to know them, and if people disapproved of her for one reason or the other, she simply accepted it.
It made things better. At least Saffiya had believed that it was making things better.

Of course, those stages of grief weren’t linear. She didn’t leave the one, and moved on to the other, but lingered in anger for days before returning to denial, only to wake up one day and find that she was back to her path on acceptance.

Now, however, she found that there was another stage to it. Insanity.

The accusatory voices wouldn’t stop, detailing every little thing she had done wrong, could have done differently, and spouting dark prophesies for the future. Saffiya tried not to listen.

But she also didn’t pay as much attention to everything else than she usually would – otherwise she would have noticed that she wasn’t the only one hearing things that weren’t there, and that where entirely unpleasant to deal with.

It wasn’t until an officer on the science station turned to her, and screamed something about a a black hole that definitely wasn’t there, that she recognised that maybe she wasn’t going insane.

Or that, at least, she wasn’t the only one.