Chapter Text
“Death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes…” - Wait for It
Voyager’s hum had always been Kathryn’s comfort, her constant — a steady, familiar sound, the beating heart of something she trusted. But now, it… sounded wrong.
Distant.
Hollow.
Like a memory is out of sync with reality.
Captain Kathryn Janeway lay motionless on the biobed, eyes closed, skin pale under the lights of sickbay. Neural readings blinked on the monitor overhead – stable, sluggish. Fractured.
Chakotay sat beside her bed, hands clasped over hers, gaze fixed on her face. Whispering prayers to any God who would listen to help her.
The Doctor moved silently between the patients, adjusting the stimulators, checking neural patterns. Tuvok unconscious on the adjacent bed, body only moving to breathe. Torres half-propped up, stared at the ceiling with clenched fists and dark eyes. Tom also by her bedside, a reminder they had people that cared.
Aftermath of assimilation was not loud.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
Somewhere deep within Kathryn’s mind, a sound began to rise – gentle, soft, grief. A piano.
Then a voice, faint and aching: “There are moments that the words don’t reach…”
The voice is unfamiliar, female, human – ancient. However, the pain behind it was known to her. The pain of someone who had lost something they could never explain. Never get back.
“There is suffering too terrible to name…”
Kathryn squeezed Chakotay’s hand. The monitors hummed to life. Chakotay shifted to watch her.
The music faded. Gone.
Kathryn opened her eyes slowly. Squinting when the light hit her. Heart racing, trying to figure out everything.
“Captain?!” The Doctor at her side instantly. “You’re awake.”
She blinked, trying to focus, “...Where…”
Chakotay answering gently, “Sickbay.” His voice a soft balm to her soul. “We got you out. You’re safe.”
Safe? The why could she still hear them?
Not the Borg, but something else. Something softer. Persistent.
She glanced toward Tuvok, then B’Elanna, then to the ceiling.
“Forgiveness… Can you imagine?”
Kathryn whispered the words without meaning to. So softly Chakotay almost missed it.
He leaned in closer. “Kathryn? What did you say?”
She flopped her head towards Chakotay, her voice hoarse but clear. “There is music in my head, Chakotay and it’s not mine.”
B’Elanna shifts, noticing her waking up. Kathryn propped herself up however, painfully. The lights flickered. Knowing that’s not normal, “The lights. They flickered.”
Chakotay assured her it was her mind. But she saw the look on his face. He saw it too.
B’Elanna sat upright. Her posture saying she wasn’t in pain, her jaw saying another story. Paris tried to help her as much as he could.
Tuvok remained unconscious. The neural stabiliser wrapped around his head and blinked softly. Peaceful. But too still.
“There are moments that the words don’t reach…”
Kathryn’s other hand twitched. The voice, soft, human. Too tender to be Borg – and too real to be a hallucination.
She shut her eyes trying to focus on the lyrics. The voice lingering.
“There is suffering too terrible to name…”
“Captain?” Chakotay’s voice cut through the haze of the music and the world. His silhouette is outlined by sickbay’s low-alert lighting. “You alright?”
“No.” Kathryn surprised herself by being honest. “I’m hearing the music. Again.”
B’Elanna turned as sharply her recovering body can take. “You’re hearing it too?”
Kathryn looked at B’Elanna, “You are?”
“Only when it’s quiet,” B’Elanna mumbled. “And it’s always quiet here.”
“We had been detecting low-frequency subspace pulses across the ship. Harmonic in structure.”
The lights suddenly flickered.
Monitors spiked then dimmed. The neural stabiliser on Tuvok beeped erratically.
The deck vibrated. Rhythmic resonance. A deep breath held in musical time.
Kathryn sat up, ignoring all of her protesting muscles. “That’s not the ship. It’s something else.
“Is it a warp field echo?” B’Elanna questioned. Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed against Tom’s protests.
The Doctor looked straight into Kathryn’s face. “No. It’s not mechanical. It’s… biometric. It’s following you.”
Chakotay stepped toward the Doctor. “We need to isolate the field. Move them to–.”
A sudden flash erupted around Kathryn. A second later Torres.
“Forgiveness…Can you imagine?”
They vanished.
No sound. No transporter beam. Just light then—nothing.
Chakotay’s heart dropped. Lunging back to where he was standing vigil.
The pulse struck again.
This time. Him.
Then Paris.
=/\=
The Doctor stood frozen. Seven’s voice is sharp over the comm. “Bridge to sickbay. We just lost Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Paris. What is happening down there?”
The Doctor stared at where Paris, Torres, Janeway and Chakotay had been. “They’re gone. All of them. Janeway, Torres, Chakotay…even Paris.”
Seven’s voice was cold over the comm. “Gone where?”
The Doctor finally landed on the biobed the Captain occupied seconds before. “I believe… into history.”