Jim knows what it's like to feel as though he's the only person standing between all life as he knows it and total annihilation, and yet, as his career's gone on, he's come to believe that all starship captains know what that feels like. There's no way around it, when you're so strictly isolated in unexplored space, so strictly isolated in rank, and with the stakes so unavoidably high; even if you aren't dealing with the fate of the Federation, or the universe, you've got the lives of your crew in your hands at all times.

He gets it.

He gets, too, what the Borg means, and the split-second shift of recognition in his gaze is either easy to miss or instantly damning, depending on how close Kathryn is looking at his dumb face.

"Good. You aren't defeated. Not even here." Jim believes it, thoroughly, completely. There's something about him, a buoyant balance of ego and sincerity, that makes him sound believable, like it isn't just a platitude.