Chapter Text
Oh, come and take this pain away
Oh, come and set my spirit free
⁂
Voices. Several of them. So loud even though they were only whispers. The whine of the Doctor. Strange a holographic being would manifest itself in her hallucinations. Seven's clipped tones. B’Elanna’s urgent voice. She shouldn’t have been so curt with her. Tom. Trust a pilot to sense the ship was off course.
She had to get moving. Maybe she could still save them.
Janeway felt around for the face mask. When she couldn't find it, she opened her eyes. The skin on her hands was clear of burns, and she could breathe easily.
Sickbay.
“Captain, don’t try to get up.” The EMH gently pushed her back on the biobed before focusing his attention on the tricorder he was holding.
“Voyager? The nebula?” Her mouth was like sandpaper, as if she had forgotten how to talk.
“The ship made it through the gas cloud just in time. Ten more minutes, and I don’t think I would be talking to you.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t get your program back online.”
He looked at her, frowning. “I wasn’t talking about myself. You almost died, Captain. It’s a wonder you survived the exposure to the nebula gases. Even in low density, their effects should have been fatal. As it were, you suffered from majors burns and both your lungs collapsed.”
Her throat tightened. “I didn’t reach the stasis chambers in time, then. They’re all dead. B’Elanna. Tom. Harry.” She couldn’t breathe, her heartbeat getting faster and faster, her head swimming. “Chakotay.”
The darkness was a welcome relief.
⁂
“Captain.”
Captain? What a joke. The crew was gone, and it was only his ghost coming to indict her.
“You can’t sleep forever.”
She could try. And maybe she wouldn't wake up this time.
“The Doctor said he repaired the damage to your lungs and healed your burns.”
Really? What would a vision know? “Go away.”
“I haven’t seen you for more than a month, and you’re asking me to leave?”
His voice carried much more amusement than she was prepared to tolerate from a ghost. She opened her eyes to Chakotay's smiling face and his damn dimples.
“Hi, Kathryn.”
She whispered his name again and again, tears threatening as she crushed him in her arms.
⁂
“Nobody died. The failing stasis chambers opened just as Voyager was leaving the nebula, and we suffered only minimal injuries. Once we made certain the ship was out of danger, B’Elanna undertook a thorough decontamination of all decks, while Ayala and I got into environmental suits to look for you. We found you just a few metres down the engineering corridor.” His fingers squeezed hers hard. “Your condition was touch and go until Seven brought the Doctor’s program back online.”
After two days in sickbay, she still wasn’t entirely convinced he was alive, expecting him to fade into oblivion the moment she turned away. They were sitting on her living room couch, a couple of empty plates from a late meal on the dinner table.
“The ship?” she asked.
“Engineering has been doing double shifts. We’ve degaussed the hull and all micro-fractures have been repaired. With the Alpha tanks empty, B’Elanna said it was a straightforward job to reseal them, a job she had wanted to do for months. Warp speed should be available first thing tomorrow morning. There’s an asteroid field a couple of days away which shows promising signs of raw dilithium, according to Seven.”
“And the crew?”
“The Doctor has given everybody a clean bill of health. For us, it’s like we woke up after a good night’s sleep.”
She breathed in deeply. “Good.” She’d been concerned the crew might have suffered some effects from the brief failure of the stasis pods. Although the Doctor had reassured her this hadn’t been the case, it was good to hear it again.
“I can’t imagine the pain and anguish you went through to survive and pilot the ship all by yourself. Want to talk about it?”
Did she? She had not exactly covered herself in glory. “You know I talked to ghosts of the crew.”
“I read your logs when you were in sickbay. I understand it must have been a strange experience, but it seems to me that you made the most of a bad situation.”
“Tuvok said pretty much the same thing. His ghost, rather.” She was going to have to be careful not to mistake her real officers with what she had made them into during the past few weeks. It would not be fair for them to know how much she’d relied on their emotional support. That was not the mark of a good captain.
“What else did he tell you?” he asked when she didn't elaborate.
She looked down before lifting her eyes. “That I should speak to you. But I didn’t.”
She’d talked to just about everybody else. Her mind had created illusions of her crew members, the strength of their spirit sustaining her, a reminder of what she should be doing. B’Elanna’s determination, Tuvok’s sense of duty, Harry’s faith in her. Even Seska who’d tried to goad her into giving up. But she had not spoken to her first officer.
Chakotay’s comfortable silence encouraged her to continue. Now was the time to rectify a situation entirely of her making. She breathed in deeply. “After the Borg, I convinced myself that I could not trust you. It was the first time you had gone against my express orders, and despite all my words to you afterwards, I felt you had betrayed me. Worse, that you would do it again. But it was easier for me to just plow on rather than talk to you about my misgivings.”
Her hand was still in his, and his thumb brushed her knuckles. “I am sorry you thought you couldn’t rely on me.”
“Instead, I treated you badly,” she said. “All those months I pushed you away. All those decisions I took without consulting you; where I acted first and told you later. And look where it got me at the end. I singlehandedly decide to cross that damn nebula and put the crew in danger just to shave a few months off our journey.”
“You know we saved more than a few months. Harry calculated that it would have taken us a year to go around that cloud of gases. You did make the right decision, and you were not alone in making it.”
She looked deep in his eyes and saw only devotion and trust. She was not sure why she deserved him, but there he was, as solid and real as the companion who had been at her side during those weeks of hell. “I know that now, but it took me a while to realise you are always with me, even when I tackled that nebula all by myself,” she said with a smile, the man’s quiet support filling her with warmth.
“I don’t understand.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. Starved of any human contact for more than a month, she needed to hear his voice and touch him.
He didn't seem to mind.
“When Seska came to talk to me, she laid it all in front of me. The decisions I’d taken in the past that went wrong. My self-doubts about my ability as a captain. In the same way that I had been responsible for stranding the ship in the Delta quadrant, there I was, condemning everybody to death trying to cross that gas cloud. I was so tired of fighting the nebula, of fighting myself. I was ready to give up.”
His arm came around her shoulders and held her tight. “You were exhausted, injured, and hallucinating. And you also are the strongest person I’ve ever known. You just don’t give up.”
“I was so very close though. But somebody made me change my mind.”
“Who?”
“A wolf.”
“A wolf?” Chakota’s voice sounded more curious than concerned.
“Remember that shadow I saw before I—” she squeezed his hand, “before we decided to cross the nebula?”
“Yes, I do, but there was nothing on the internal sensors, and Security never spotted a thing.”
“It came back once you were all in stasis, but I ignored it at first. Until the day the deuterium storage tanks exploded on deck seven, and there was a grey wolf, as real as you are. You can understand why I didn’t tell the Doctor, or say anything about it in my logs. Talking to my crew was one thing; seeing and touching a wild animal…”
The wolf was fast fading from her memory, as if he now shunned the bright light of the reality she’d returned to. As if he knew she was safe now, and didn't need him any more. But she could still feel the peace and strength she had drawn from his presence.
“He warned me of danger that day. Later, he stopped me from putting the ship on a course which could have led to disaster. He was there every single day, protecting me and the ship, and he stayed with me until the very end.” She glanced at the man whose face displayed only keen understanding.
He smiled. “Wolves are strong spirits in my culture. They represent trust, strength through cooperation, loyalty to both their pack and their leader. Working together, side by side, they are a formidable force."
His fingers slid between hers, their hands entwined. "And like that wolf, my commitment is to you. To be there with you whatever your choices. Be there with you to the very end if you let me.”
“Loyal and strong. Always with me,” she said. She burrowed a little deeper into the side of his chest.
“Always,” Chakotay whispered, as he kissed the top of her head.