Archive of Our Own

Sunset on Ceyhara turned the river to blood and the dome of the Harean citadel into a great red moon. It left Chakotay with a sense of foreboding. Ridiculous, he knew, to permit the prejudices of his own culture to color his view of an alien world, but many things had disturbed him since their arrival at this deceptively simple, isolated world with vast dilithium deposits that no one here had use for except as ornamental jewelry. The bloody civil war, recently ended but by no means in harmony, had been over things less tangible than dilithium; its apparent cause was the issue of ownership of the ring of mountains separating the Harean plains from the Ceyan valley. It disenheartened Chakotay to realize that across the galaxy, the view that land was property to be owned--the same imperialist philosophy that had caused his own people's subjugation--was far more prevalent than the belief that all land was to be shared and cared for.

The captain had made contact with the Harean leaders because it was easier to infiltrate their society under the pretext of being travelers in search of gemstones. The deeply xenophobic Ceyans had a much more closed society, and would have been far more likely to use torture to discover their visitors' true identities. Not all Hareans seemed comfortable with Chakotay's story of coming from beyond the planet's arctic circle, but neither did they seem to suspect the handful of Voyager crewmembers--carefully chosen for their height and coloring to resemble the indigenous peoples to the north. Some minor prosthetic alterations by the Doctor had been necessary, but the small discolorations of his forehead and chin didn't bother Chakotay so much as the temporary erasure of his tattoo. It felt like a loss of identity.

The citadel was sparsely guarded, since the Hareans had sent most of their troops off to guard the borders. Chakotay had not seen a Ceyan, but although he liked the family-oriented, spiritual Hareans, he was certain that their descriptions of the monstrous people were greatly exaggerated. The enemy was reputed to be everywhere, though he saw no evidence in the great plaza of the filthy, violent savages who didn't even remove the sharp inner teeth from their newborns as all Hareans did. Under the flaming circle of sun, beside the red river, Chakotay thought he could smell blood in the air.

They came to his room just after midnight. He knew by the smell that it must be the Ceyans, though he berated himself for his prejudice in favor of the standard of cleanliness to which he was accustomed. Within minutes, however, the Ceyans had given him reasons to dislike them. They bound, gagged, and abducted him through the window, dragging him through the plaza of the citadel without arousing the attention of one Harean, all resting after the great evening feast.

Ganai was the name of his interrogator; his methods were crude, a great deal of face-slapping and threats with a knife. Chakotay was curious about the man's intelligence--Ganai did not for a moment believe his tale of coming from the Far North, and somehow deduced that the crystals were his primary source of interest in the Ceyans, a topic he returned to again and again. The fact that the Ceyans had realized he was the man to take impressed Chakotay; he had let Paris and Carey do most of the negotiating with the Hareans, since they knew more about dilithium purification than himself.

After several unsuccessful hours of trying to get Chakotay to reveal his identity, Ganai seemed convinced that the stranger did not serve the Hareans and was no threat to his own people. But he also seemed to have an unnerving taste for blood. He had not really hurt Chakotay, yet he took a great deal of pleasure in inflicting miniscule wounds with the knife, which was filthy; the cuts would surely become infected if Voyager did not track him down quickly. At first, Chakotay was bolstered by the knowledge of the subdermal transponder he wore and the assumption that the landing party would quickly realize he was missing and begin a search; after almost a day had passed, however, he realized that the dilithium might be making it difficult for Voyager to detect him in the underground Ceyan stronghold. The Ceyans might not have understood all that dilithium could be used for, but they certainly knew its power for creating shields.

Ganai grew tired. He glared at the stranger. Then a slow smile crossed his face. "I will introduce you to my sister," he announced.

Chakotay knew little about Ceyan culture beyond what the Hareans had told him: it was ruled by powerful families organized into Houses, rather like the Klingons, but there was no ruling council; the ruler was a monarch, the leaders all people he had chosen himself. All the youth were trained in fighting and conscripted into various forms of public service to teach them obedience. Ceyan women were insatiable and rough, whispered the Harean men with obvious titillation. Had his circumstances not been dire, Chakotay might have been amused when Yagar entered his cell; she looked like a dominatrix out of an old Earth story, dressed in tight black skins with sharp metal spikes, carrying a coil of rope in one hand and a small stiletto in the other.

It shocked him to the core when the alien woman chained him to the wall, ripped open his pants, and began to examine his genitals. He felt a deep spike of panic in his belly when her tongue brushed over him, long fingernails pressing into his testicles, not quite a threat but definitely no mere caress. After several minutes of toying with him, she stood, stared into his face, and unchained him from the wall. "You are not cooperating," she stated, unshackling him. "Lie on the cot or I will call my brother."

Chakotay did not even want to think about what Ganai might do if he walked in now. He lay obediently on the cot, feeling the alien woman's hands pushing at his clothing, pressing cold metal against his skin. He had to give Yagar credit for trying; he knew some men could not have helped but be aroused as her mouth worked him over. But he had never enjoyed this sort of power game, not even with women he found desirable. The filthy Ceyan rooms and clothing disgusted him. Now to be touched by this...

She lifted her head to regard him as he fought to keep revulsion out of his face. "You don't like women," she accused.

"I've been working on becoming celibate." It was a private joke, but she did not look amused. He thought that perhaps he could spare her ego by claiming he preferred men, but had no idea how that proclivity was treated in this rigid, narrow society; possibly it could get a man executed. "I like women who haven't tried to hurt me," he managed.

"We have not really hurt you," she pointed out. "We have only tested your limits. Some men like that." Yagar reached under the mattress and waved a small, sharp object in his face, then abruptly jabbed it into his chest. The point of the blade pressed against his nipple.

It occurred to him that she might actually murder him for failing to perform to her liking.

He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, struggling to find a place where Yagar could not touch him. Her tongue worked resolutely at his throat, it reminded him of Seska, the persistence...he tried to conjure an image of his former lover, but he could only picture her dead, the gray Cardassian skin scarred by the damage his own allies had inflicted. No, he couldn't fantasize about Seska. Riley...there were also too many similarities, a woman using him for her own purposes, for the benefit of her own people. And even the acute pleasure she had given him in the link, sharing her experience of sex, was impossible to imagine with the abusive, sadistic woman touching him now. He did not want to think of Yagar at all.

He thought instead of the outlines of the ship he had come to love. The curve of his chair on the bridge. The mess hall with his co-workers...his friends. The holodeck--the pool hall, the resort, all the places he wished it to be, where he had recreated his home and its replacement. He'd been joking when he called it "New Earth" one day while she was immersed in research and he'd been gathering herbs for cooking, but she hadn't thought he was kidding and had adopted the name...

New Earth. A door he kept shut in his mind because it hurt too much, even as a fantasy, now that he no longer let himself hope. He walled it behind a jumble of feelings about the captain, loyalty and frustration and admiration and concern, the acceptable emotions of their workplace. Lately he didn't even look at her as a woman but a blur of sharp angles, the moving hands, the easy smile which could transform in an instant into a grimace of concentration. The captain's gestures served as a means by which he gauged her level of tension, to guess when she wished him to remain silent at her side versus when she wanted him to jump in with suggestions. Their conversations were erratic--sometimes warm, flirting, sometimes terse, tense with command disagreement, sometimes distracted, but stable, they were friendly, they worked well together, himself and...

Captain Kathryn Janeway. When he was on duty he tried not to allow himself to think of her as anything other than that. He'd let himself hope, for months after New Earth and then again after the letters from home when she realized Mark no longer waited for her. When the hope turned to despair, he shut it away and channeled his energy elsewhere, working on their ship. He saw her for hours every day, she was competent, brilliant even, he had her ear at all times, they trusted one another, he did not need anything more, except sometimes, very rarely now, at moments when it was hard to cope...

Yagar was growling low in her throat, her frustration at his nonresponsiveness turning to anger. Her fingernails raked the skin of his thighs, the sharp object pressed again into his nipple, hard. Chakotay cried out in surprise, feeling a trickle of blood, feeling the alien woman lap it greedily with her tongue. With Kathryn, too, the pleasure was always accompanied by pain, pain at what he couldn't have, couldn't touch, no end and no relief.

Something came loose in his mind, and the door swung open.

Kathryn. As he remembered her on New Earth, wearing a blue dress, hair down around her shoulders, smiling with excitement as she approached him with her hands full of the fruit she was growing. His breath caught at her beauty. She had never moped about their fate, had launched herself at each new day as a new adventure, even when he tried to convince her to start accepting that they were probably never going to leave. For weeks after their rescue, every time he passed her on the Bridge, he was possessed by an urge to tug her hair down around her shoulders. And when he saw her gazing sadly out at the stars during a slow stretch of travel, Kathryn--in the wee hours of the morning when he couldn't drift off, he pictured her stretched out on the bunk in her quarters, also unable to sleep, no uniform, lit only by starlight, lovely, lonely--

Clenching his eyes shut, Chakotay felt himself responding to the alien woman's touch. Kathryn, he thought. If he crept into her room in the middle of the night, would she be dreaming, the blue eyes moving behind the lids, her hands curled against the blanket? If he touched her...he moved a hand against Yagar's breast, keeping his eyes closed, bucking hard against the Ceyan as she bit into his chest...Kathryn, away from the role she was locked into on the ship, who would she become? He pictured her in the traditional clothing of his own tribe, but the golden hair did not fit. Or wearing what a young Klingon woman would wear--high collar, open bodice, tight black leather stirrups under a short skirt--it was all wrong for her, it made his blood race anyway--no, dressed in something gauzier, like the things she preferred on the holodeck, lost somewhere in history, pretending as he was pretending to be with someone else--

She would want him to live through this. To stay alive. For the ship. Maybe for her.

Kathryn.

Yagar purred greedily as he rolled and pushed her legs apart, keeping his eyes shut. Kathryn, he recited to himself like a mantra. If he ever had the courage to steal into her quarters, would he be able to control himself, even now, even after months of telling himself he no longer wanted her that way? Would she let him tell her? Would she let him stroke her, softly, all over, or would she take his hands herself to show him what she liked? Would she moan as he entered her, stretching around him, Kathryn, quivering her hips as he thrust with increasing fervor? Would her thighs become slippery with sweat, would her abdomen pulse against his lower body as he gripped behind her back, pressing her upwards against him, Kathryn, would she lick his neck, biting just below his ear, hissing a sibilant "Yessssss...," Kathryn, would she rake her fingernails across his back as she tightened her muscles, hurting him with her furious grip, inciting him to slam his body helplessly into hers?

If he somehow he could open his eyes right now to discover that Kathryn was the one who had done him this violence in the name of desire, that Kathryn was the one performing this dance with him, that Kathryn was the one tearing down the barriers, that Kathryn was the one who was about to make him--

With a low cry he plunged into the woman whose legs were locked around his back, feeling the swell of passion overtake his body until he could not contain himself: it pumped out of him, reverberating, the name tearing itself from his throat.

The sound of his own voice suddenly flung him back to the present. His entire body was soaked, every muscle shrieking as his eyes flew open. Horrified, he writhed in shame, twisting away from the monstrosity he had just transformed into...

"No," he gasped, while Yagar, clutching his buttocks in her hands, howled and shrieked around him. He pulled out of her with a jerk, leaning over the cot to retch; had he eaten in the past day, he was certain he would have been sick.

Yagar regarded him with disgusted curiosity. "Who," she growled dangerously, "is Kathryn?" Chakotay refused to answer her. He lay with his head hanging off the side of the mattress, eyes closed.

"Well?" He felt the alien woman slide away from him and begin toying with the skin of his back, first with her fingernails, then with the flat of the knife blade.

Finally he answered, "She's a woman I knew a long time ago."

"Do I remind you of this woman?"

"No. Not at all. Nothing about you reminds me of her." Was that really true? He tried to remember whether there was a time when he had felt forced by Kathryn. When he put on the Starfleet uniform again for the first time, when she insisted that he go along with her plan to ally with the Borg? No. He had gone willingly, even if she compelled him, because of her, because of his obligation to her, because...

"Did you love her?" Yagar said the word "love" as if it were a curse; there was a brief hesitation before the universal translator gave him the term. Yagar did not strike him as someone who loved, unless she defined the violation she had just performed on him as love. Something twisted in Chakotay's mind, dark and hideous, a streak of rage he hadn't even realized he harbored against Kathryn, resentment and frustration balled together with lust and hunger, not love but something else, something akin to what the Ceyan woman had just done to him.

"Well? Did you love this Kathryn?"

He hated to hear Yagar speak her name. He hated the images her question sparked in his mind. And because it was the only way to save Kathryn, to remove her from this filthy room and the filthy act committed there, even if it meant a final betrayal of his integrity or even his identity, he gave the only answer he could:

"No."

Yagar tied him to the bed without letting him dress and left him in the dark. Ganai came in perhaps an hour after she had left. His face was dark with rage, yet what frightened Chakotay more was the unexpected flash of glee. The alien circled him, once, twice, as he sat on the cot waiting. Then Ganai attacked. Chakotay didn't see the blade at first because it was so tiny, hidden in the palm of the alien's hand; it sliced across his face, his chest, his throat, he could feel that it was rusted, filthy. Ganai punched him in the stomach until he vomited blood. Then the Ceyan gave Chakotay a slow smile.

"You have displeased my sister," he hissed. "For that, there must be appropriate punishment."

The alien leaned over the prone body on the cot. For one instant, Chakotay thought Ganai would do to him what Yagar had done, and nearly cried out in disgust; but Ganai smiled again, bent low over him, and for the first time, Chakotay got a good look at the razor-sharp inner row of fangs of the Ceyans. He tried to jerk away just as the alien lunged, screaming aloud when he felt his flesh torn away, a great ragged hole in his body.

* * * *

It took Kathryn Janeway almost three days to track Chakotay to Ganai's fortress, and the fear with which her informants had responded to her questions made her very nervous. Within the filthy Ceyan chamber, remembering the snatches of rumor she'd heard about the treatment of Ganai's prisoners, she felt very exposed. The oily, hair-slicked alien leader--the monarch's personal head of security, Janeway had been told--offered her bitter, fermented juice and meat which was beginning to spoil, then brought in his sister, a slovenly woman dressed like a caricature from an old-fashioned brothel.

The two aliens stood and hovered over Janeway while she attempted to choke down some of the food to be polite. They made her feel acutely uncomfortable, even dirty, despite the cloak which covered most of her body and head.

"Take down your hood," Yagar asked preemptorily.

"Why?"

"Because it is the custom of our people, and we request it." Ganai made an unraveling gesture.

Janeway hesitated for a long moment, then reached up to pull her hair free from the dark cloak. Ganai studied her closely.

"You look like a golden animal," he decided. "A well-cared-for golden animal." As he reached out a hand to touch her hair, Janeway had to restrain a shudder.

"I'm from the North," she responded automatically. Even in the North, hair as light as her own was rare, but not unheard of, and the scattered tribes of the planet's arctic were no allies of the Hareans.

Ganai's smile was unpleasant, somewhere between seduction and threat. "It would be interesting to see you in a cage among all the other animals."

Yagar made a purring sound low in her throat. "What is your name?" she snarled.

"Janeway." Both Ceyans cocked their heads as if it were not the answer they expected, and she felt oddly compelled to elaborate: "Captain Kathryn Janeway of Voyager, a ship from Aobra." The slow delight which crossed Yagar's lips made her stomach knot; Janeway could not imagine why that information would give the foreigner such pleasure. What mistake had she made?

Yagar came around the table slowly, letting the other woman watch her walk and examine her body. "So," she hissed. "Kathryn. I had hoped it would be you who would come for him."

"Then you have seen Chakotay."

"I have seen much of Chakotay." Yagar wrapped a finger through her own hair, tugging at the coarseness. "And heard much of you. You are the one whose name he cries out when he touches me."

"You misunderstood him," Janeway snapped as she rose, annoyed with herself for reacting at all. "If he called for his Captain," she stressed the syllables, hoping the translator would leave them unchanged, "it could only have been in response to your cruelty."

"I was not being cruel when I heard him say your private name," Yagar soothed condescendingly as she circled. "And he was not pleading for some officer to come rescue him. He was crying for a lover. He was giving himself," she paused very close to Janeway, her hands clutching at the air, "to a woman who was not there."

"I want to see him, now," Janeway said in the tone of a command.

Ganai looked at Yagar with a smile that chilled Janeway more than any threat could have. The alien tossed her a heavy set of keys. "Take him, then. He has proven most disappointing to my sister and myself." He turned to face her fully then, and Janeway saw the double row of teeth.

They led her to a corridor with shackles in the walls, and tables of filthy equipment; she could smell them before she saw them, and almost gagged. "He is at the end of the hall," Ganai murmured, in the same soothing voice that Yagar had used before. "You need only the square-headed key to open his door."

Janeway began to stride down the corridor, when the Ceyan woman added, with a rank sweetness to her voice, "...Captain Kathryn. You should be grateful to us. He will not stray from your side again." She turned her back on them and walked as quickly as she could down the hall.

His hands were no longer cold. He knew that that might mean that the cells were dying from lack of oxygenated blood, but felt abstracted from the knowledge; it simply relieved him to have one less pain to block out. He did not think he had slept in more than two days, but his sense of timing didn't function in this blackness with no food or water. He regretted only that he could not shut down fully; he had managed to stop thinking about virtually everything, but his body kept reminding him of its existence, keeping him from the oblivion into which he longed to sink.

Something creaked. At first he thought he had imagined it, but a crack of brightness burst into the room, stinging his eyes. Chakotay managed to lift his head enough to see the light coming through the door. Within the light stood a small creature in a dark shroud, too small to be Ceyan. Had the Hareans finally come for him, then? He had heard no sounds of struggle, but he had scarecely been listening.

The figure in the doorway pushed the hood of the cloak back. There before him, her hair falling radiantly about her face, looking like a figure out of an ancient painting--an angel of mercy or death--stood Kathryn Janeway.

He considered for a moment that perhaps he had managed to enter a trance state and was looking outside reality, but he could smell the blood and other odors reeking from his clothes, his wrists throbbed where the bonds cut into them, his leg was almost numb. His next thought was that he must have been hallucinating. Through sheer force of will he kept his eyes on her, straining to keep his head upright. She floated across the room to him like a vision from another life, and he almost expected her to lift him magically and fly him out. But he recoiled instinctively when she reached for him: "No, don't touch me. I'm filthy." They were the first complete sentences he had spoken in more than a day.

Chakotay hung bound between the cot and the wall, the frayed remains of his clothing hanging in tatters over his body. Lack of food had tightened the skin over his cheekbones; dark bruises sank around his eyes. Although she had braced herself for what she suspected had been done to him, Janeway was nonetheless unprepared for the sight of him beaten and cut, caked in bodily fluids, looking as though he might never stand again and was past caring. Trembling, she moved beside him.

She did not know what to do first: clean the gash across his chest, untie the bonds, find something to wipe off the sticky mass of blood and dirt that was caked to his neck...she found that her hands were shaking too hard for her to do any of those things. His eyes were wild with pain and revulsion. Furiously she pulled the phaser concealed in her cloak and blasted in the general direction of the maze of metal that suspended him from the wall; it snapped apart as it burned and brought down a chunk of the ceiling on both of them. It would be a violation of the Prime Directive when the aliens found the molten mess, but she really didn't care. Chakotay dropped back heavily, grunting when his breath was knocked out of him but making no sound indicating that he felt pain. That frightened her enough to spur her to action. She unwound the bloody cloth from around his wrists and hands, pulling his arms up so she could maneuver the material around them. When she had finished, his fingers pushed hers away.

"Listen to me. Get out of here, now. Get back to the ship." His voice sounded like he had a noose wrapped around his throat.

"I will, as soon as I can take you with me." She looked for something to brace herself against while she pulled him up, settling for the side of the cot, which was sticky with his blood. "Give me your hand."

He did not look at her. "You can't carry me. I'll follow you. It's more important that you get out, fast."

She took his arm and heaved with all her might. His weight was concentrated; although he did not deliberately try to prevent her, he made no effort to shift his center of gravity.

She let herself get angry, knowing that the anger would strengthen her. "I am not going to leave you here. Try to help me, before they decide to come back, or they'll have both of us."

He lurched toward her then, face contorting as he put weight on the left leg. She pulled and he fell to his feet, choking at the effort.

"All right," he gasped. "But if we reach a point where we can't continue, I want you to promise that you'll give me your phaser and run."

She did not answer, but swung herself around his body so that she was supporting as much of his weight as she could take on. He tried to force his legs to move in a natural walking rhythm, but every step seemed to torment him. Somehow she pulled him to the doorway and through, then back into darkness.

Ganai was waiting. Janeway realized that she had known he would be. She felt Chakotay try to lurch away, realized she had no choice but to release him so that she could reach the phaser deep in her cloak. The alien's movement in Chakotay's direction was enough to distract her from considering other options; she shot Ganai before he had time to register the weapon in her hand. His flesh sizzled for a moment and vanished as she dragged Chakotay back towards the exit to the stronghold, the only way she knew to escape into the Ceyan tunnels and eventually to the surface. She ignored her first officer's gasp of surprise.

Tuvok had warned the captain that interference from the dilithium underground might make the phaser's energy matrix unstable; he had advised her to keep it set on full strength at all times. Janeway recalled her chief of security's suggestion as she moved into the light of the room where Ganai and Yagar had fed and studied her. She remembered it as she turned the corner to see Yagar, not yet aware of her brother's fate, as she heard Chakotay's muffled oath and the female alien's cruel laugh. Janeway had the warning clearly in her mind as Yagar approached.

Yagar glanced at the weapon, a slight expression of puzzlement on her face, questions forming on her lips as she pulled a blade from one of the pieces of metal on her clothing. That was all the excuse needed. Kathryn Janeway was perfectly conscious of the inevitable consequence of her actions as she fired.

Afterwards, when she had talked her way past the guards and pulled Chakotay through the entrance to the vast tunnel system, Janeway asked him no questions beyond the practical. In a low voice Chakotay told her of his abduction from the Harean citadel, but not about what the Ceyans had done to him; it wasn't relevant now, not yet. The captain had verbal directions for navigating the underground, but the maps had been old and incomplete. More than once they reached a dead end. Chakotay was certain the only reason they had been permitted to leave was that the Ceyans intended to pursue them, hunting them down like rats in a maze. The underground seemed to be a labyrinth; he doubted whether there were any exits at all.

The captain, of course, believed differently. "Tuvok suspected that all the dilithium would make it impossible for me to contact the ship once I was beneath the surface, which proved to be correct," she reported. "But I brought transporter amplification relays, so once we're past the level of the major deposits, we should be able to beam out. I'm sure it'll give us a case of the bends, but the Doctor can take care of that. We got the crystals, Chakotay, the mission was successful."

Chakotay barely managed a sound of acknowledgement. He was in agony--every step forward sent fire shooting through his thigh and pelvis, and every jolt to his groin reminded him of what he'd done, what he'd said. And now he'd dragged her in with him. Again and again he saw the phaser firing, saw Yagar sizzle out of existence as if she'd been a bad dream or a holographic fantasy. The knowledge made him want to despair, yet was the only reason he kept going; he feared Janeway would not abandon him even if he refused to move.

Finally, he could walk no further. "I have to sit down," he managed to gasp. She caught him as he pitched forward, clutching his leg.

"I want to see that wound," she insisted. He shook his head frantically as she pulled at his clothes, her fingers contacting the dried blood, the crusted sweat and the sexual foulness Yagar had dripped onto him. It nauseated him to have her touch him in that state. He made a gagging sound and she halted, looking at his face.

"Do you need water?"

"No," he tried to choke out, but the word turned into a cry; his entire body twisted away from her, shutting her out. She watched in alarm.

"Chakotay, don't do this." Her voice floated urgently to him; he could feel her hands gripping his shoulders. "You have to fight." Her fear pierced the blackness that rose in him, promising oblivion. It was so difficult to shut her out; even now he did not want to hurt her, not any more.

She picked up the canteen, but instead of drinking from it, she tore the sleeve from her shirt and poured water over it. She pushed his head aside and began to mop at the blood caked on his neck.

"Don't, save the water," he protested weakly, but she ignored him. The sleeve was entirely bloodsoaked before she finished and she ripped the other one, going to work on the gash on his chest. When she reached toward his pants, he pushed her hand away. "No."

"This isn't a time for modesty." Her hands returned to his waist and he caught her wrist.

"It's not modesty. The cut's infected, water won't help, I need antibiotics."

"I didn't bring a full medkit, but I can get it clean at least," she retorted, clearly uncomfortable with the situation, and yanked down his pants. He had not looked at the gash since Ganai had inflicted it upon him, and when he saw the gruesome damage, multiplied by days of inattention, he was almost ill. Kathryn gasped in horror--he guessed that she was trying picture what sort of instrument could make such a wound, but even detached scientific reasoning refused to give it life.

"Did an animal do that to you?" she murmured.

"Yes," he gasped shortly, wincing. She moved gently, trying to wipe away the pus without actually touching his skin, but he choked out an expletive. Her fingers hesitated, brushing his groin, and despite his intense pain and disgust and exhaustion, his genitals twitched in response.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He was unsure whether her apology was for causing him pain or for arousing him. He almost choked out a laugh and said something crude in response--so this was what it took to get her to touch him? Her tenderness, magnified by all that he had invented and imagined during his imprisonment, caused his entire body to ache for her. She moved her hand back to the hole in his leg, making it burn anew, though she was so gentle, resting one hand on his other thigh as if to distract him from what she was doing. Almost as if she were deliberately teasing him. The throbbing channeled to his sex, already maddened by her nearness, which grew rigidly erect despite his battered condition. She stopped uncertainly when he groaned.

"Please," Chakotay begged in a raw voice, catching her wrist in his palm and squeezing tightly. He couldn't have said whether he wanted her to stop touching him or to touch him again. His humiliation was acute, as was his desire, though they were both warped by the pain into an overwhelming need for release from the torment. He wanted to hide in disgust, he wanted to forget that he had a body, he wanted wrap himself around her and press her into the rips in his flesh like a salve.

Kathryn looked into his face and moved as if she would put her arms around him. Her expression was empathetic. But she shifted, turning her eyes from his body. "It's all right, Chakotay," she murmured. Was she giving him back his privacy, or trying to escape? How much had she learned from Yagar, or was she guessing what they'd done to him? He wasn't ready to learn that. When she glanced again at his expression and stroked a hand down his arm, he knew she meant to reassure him. But her touch scalded him, burning straight through to the fire in his groin. Chakotay nearly shouted aloud in frustration and fear--not strong enough to push her away, paralyzed by the thought that she might do so to him if he reached out for her. His erection was agonizing, refusing to let him ignore the inferno in that part of his body. It was surprising he was capable of becoming aroused at all, it was all because of her but not her fault, it was all polluted, Yagar and himself and her and the ache that he couldn't bear...

"Please, please please," he heard himself moan, to the spirits, to his mind and body which would not shut down, but she thought he was still talking to her, even though she'd moved away to leave him alone with his suffering. As if they had turned him into a man who'd beg for it, or even try to take it. "Kathryn," he choked out, because tears were closing his throat. His face contorted, trying to hold them back. She slid beside him once more, her lips brushing across his forehead, then his cheek, then his mouth as his body jerked and shuddered in helpless response. He felt her fingers on his clenched jaw for a moment.

Then they were on his chest. Then they were on...he had to be imagining it. Or was he so far gone that he wouldn't even know it if he'd put his own hand on himself? Did she think he was crazy? Did it matter if she did, this woman who had phasered two people to death right before his eyes, this woman he now thought he hardly recognized? The hand moved confidently, gaining purpose and momentum, was joined by another hand that couldn't possibly be his own because he was leaning on his wrist to stay upright.

Oh, god it was good, and she was so close that he could smell her hair despite how they were both sweating. Her cheek brushed his parted lips as he panted. A hallucination couldn't accidentally touch his injured leg, at least. He didn't dare open his eyes, yet he had to see; he was about to come all over himself, it scared the hell out of him, the feelings he thought he'd dismissed and then thought Yagar had burned out of him were still there. Lust and delirium and love, it was still love, he still loved her, could still love her, could tell her he loved her, could hear himself telling her he loved her over and over, till she whispered, "Oh, Chakotay," and he cried out and came in her hands in long hot spurts which shocked him, he hadn't thought there was anything left in him, certainly not pleasure like this.

When it finally stopped and the pain reasserted itself, he could focus on her face for a moment. Moved and scared and dark with passion--the incandescent eyes that had given him salvation from his torturers. Kathryn. The debt hit him like a blow to the gut. Her image blurred before him, and he realized that his own eyes were watering uncontrollably. When she wrapped her arms around him, her shoulders were shaking with empathy. He lowered his head and sobbed, dropping his face against her chest, letting his putrid hands clutch at her. He didn't know how she could stand to be so close to him, yet she held him tightly for a long time after he stopped shuddering, longer than was prudent given their need to flee. She didn't say a word.

He was no longer cold and his limbs no longer hurt, though they felt too heavy to move. The throbbing in his leg diminished to a dull stinging pain. It was getting darker--not the black oblivion that had threatened to swallow him in the Ceyan cell, but a soft haze clouding his vision. Perhaps he was still in the cell, in a trance state, hallucinating, but it no longer mattered; she was with him. The haze thickened, obscuring everything but his view of the side of her face, and then even that.

"Chakotay. Wake up. I'm sorry, but we should get moving."

His eyes opened against their will to find her looking down into his face, her nose centimeters from his. She glowed in the dimness; again, as in the cell, he had the vague impression of a Renaissance angel hovering over him. She might like that image, he thought, if she didn't shrink from what it implied.

"I almost fell asleep, too. We've got to get out of here. Do you think you can walk?"

Chakotay's head was clouded, detached from his body; he found it surprisingly easy to sit up. He nodded and pulled himself to standing against her, gasping at the renewed pain in his thigh, but moving on his own power. Kathryn held him close as they walked, a little too close to stop from tripping over one another's feet. She didn't speak, so he didn't either. It was easier to concentrate on the uneven ground, the need to center his weight on his good leg before stepping forward, the softness of her hair brushing against his arm.

After an hour of motion, she looked at his gnawed lips and said, "We must be halfway to the citadel. Let's see if we can communicate with the surface yet."

He was too tired to object and let her lower him to the ground, thinking that her shoulders must be sore from bearing his weight. She set up an amplitude field, pulling small modular enhancers from her pack and twisting the cones. "Janeway to Voyager." A crackle in response. "Voyager, if you can hear this, two to beam up immediately."

She bent towards him inside the triangle, keeping him close to her comm signal. He touched her hand, and felt himself dissolving into light with her.

The Doctor kept Chakotay in sickbay for nearly three days. He refused all visitors except the Captain and Neelix, who brought him soup and asked no questions. Janeway kept Paris busy on the bridge, refusing his requests to help out in sickbay. She visited often but didn't stay long, wanting him to know she was concerned, not wanting her presence to disturb him. When the Doctor at last released him, after a surprising outburst at what the Ceyans had done to him, she gave him two days off and reserved the holodeck for him for several hours.

He slept, but he had nightmares. Over and over, he watched Kathryn's face transform into Yagar's, her hand pulling out the weapon with which she had killed the Ceyans. His recall of that event had a hallucinatory quality, though he remembered his torture with excruciating clarity--the weapon, the set of her jaw, the bodies dissolving into light. He did not recognize the woman who had fired that phaser. Nor was he certain he recognized the woman from the cave.

He had been away from the bridge for more than a week; that break in their normal routine affected their relationship as well. Captain Janeway was not in evidence when Kathryn came to see him; ship's business was not discussed, not even her obvious pleasure at having gotten the dilithium they had so desperately needed. She was affectionate, but somewhat maternal. Neither of them mentioned what had happened in the underground. Occasionally while he was resting, he would open his eyes to find her looking at him with something fathomless in her expression that was almost frightening. But when she saw him looking, she would duck her head and smile for him, transforming back into the woman he'd thought he knew.

"I murdered her, Tuvok. I remembered everything you told me about keeping the phaser set on maximum, and I shot her anyway." It was the fifth time she had used the word "murder" in her report. Tuvok, damn him, looked unperturbed.

"Did you believe you had any alternative?"

"I didn't look for one."

"You have stated that you were concerned for Commander Chakotay's safety."

"Not right at that moment. That's not why I shot her. I killed them in cold blood."

"Nevertheless, since there is no one to corroborate your testimony, I see no reason to bring charges."

"Chakotay could corroborate my testimony."

"Yet you believe he should not be questioned about this."

"That's right. I believe it would cause him unnecessary suffering. That's why I'm asking you to accept my word, and take the necessary actions."

An eyebrow rose. "I am uncertain of the benefits of putting a senior officer on report with no flag officers present to determine a proper course of discipline."

"The benefits are for me." Janeway was tired of arguing with her chief of security. "I am the captain, and I am telling you that I violated my office. I demand that you put me on report, Tuvok."

"Until you have explained in full what provoked your actions, I am unable to comply. I suggest, Captain, that you are using the strictures of formal discipline to alleviate your sense of guilt and fear of disclosure, rather than out of any deep-held belief that your behavior requires censure."

The captain sighed deeply. "Well, what do you suggest?"

"Since the Commander is the only crewmember who witnessed the events, perhaps you should speak to him. And since you are the only crewmember who is aware of his ordeal, I believe it would benefit him to hear your version of events as well." The Vulcan looked almost smug, though she knew he was concerned about her--herself and Chakotay both. "Then, if you have something you wish to tell me, we shall speak again."

Why had Ganai admitted to having Chakotay in his custody? Why hadn't they taken her prisoner, too? She turned the questions over and over in her mind. They didn't seem to have realized that either Chakotay or herself had done business with the Hareans, so it couldn't be anything so simple as collaborating with the enemy...and they would not have been permitted to escape if the Ceyans did know. Why had Yagar done to Chakotay what she did if she didn't want anything specific from him, and why had they done what they did to his leg if they meant to take such advantage of him? Perhaps there would never be answers. Or perhaps Chakotay had answers that he couldn't bear to tell her. Sitting on her sleek, clean ship, staring out the window of her ready room at the receding shape of Ceyhara which had replenished their fuel supplies and, for the most part, bolstered morale, Kathryn Janeway closed her eyes to the ambiguities.

"Janeway to Chakotay."

He'd been expecting the summons all day, but when it arrived, he was no more sure of what he wanted to say to her than he had been back on the planet. "Chakotay here," he answered.

"I'm off duty in a few minutes, and I was thinking about taking a sail. Care to join me?"

"I'd love to." She hadn't invited him sailing in a long time--not since she'd started hanging out in ancient Florence, possibly not since the Borg. Seven was her more frequent companion on holodeck excursions of late. As for his own...he had realized when she gave him holodeck time to recuperate that he'd been avoiding that form of solitary entertainment. He'd deleted his recreation of New Earth--an action he couldn't remember taking, though he'd written an account of it in a note he'd written to himself in longhand, about several days he couldn't recall and had no desire to try, based on the anger and denial in the note. The pain of having wiped out the holoprogram remained. His leg was still a bit sore, but he didn't think that would affect his ability to handle the boat, and he trusted Kathryn not to make too many demands on him. He started to put on a uniform, thought the better of it and dressed in shirtsleeves, getting a bottle of wine from the replicator before he left.

On the way to the holodeck, Chakotay ran into Tom Paris, also coming off duty. "Chakotay! How are you?" the younger man demanded.

"I've been better, but I'll survive," he grinned half-heartedly. Rumors must be swirling about him by now, and Paris worked in sickbay with the Doctor, who was not always known for his discretion. "I hear you led a successful away mission in my absence. Congratulations."

Paris waved his hand dismissively. "You laid the groundwork, I just insisted that they adhere to it while we were looking for you," he said. "I heard the Ceyans got you."

"They did." Chakotay tried to move past, but Paris wasn't having that.

"Were they as bad as the Hareans said?"

"Worse."

"Even the women? Hey, did you hear about how they were supposed to be..."

"Enough, Tom."

"Well, I hope you enjoyed it at least a little." Paris winked at him.

Later, Chakotay couldn't remember what he felt, or even what he did; he knew only that when the captain found them, he had Paris pinned against the wall and was in the process of punching the crap out of the younger officer. The two of them together managed to pin his arms down long enough for the conn officer to move out of range, though if Kathryn hadn't been standing between himself and Paris, he would have gone after him again. Paris was genuinely apologetic, and flustered, repeatedly telling the captain it was his own fault. Janeway was livid but seemed to accept his apologies, and didn't press Chakotay's silence. They entered the holodeck together as Paris backed down the hall, still apologizing, the broken bottle of wine awaiting his attention on the floor.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" she asked as she maneuvered the top sail.

"He made a joke about Ceyan women. I hit him," Chakotay reported tonelessly.

"That can't happen again, Chakotay."

"It won't. I think you can count on Paris to make sure of that." He grinned mirthlessly. He was willing to bet that anyone Paris had told what he knew would be receiving warnings as they spoke not to mention it to anyone, particularly himself. Janeway touched his arm gently as she passed, went to check one of the ropes, then came back to sit beside him on the deck to watch the dusk turn to full night.

"Tuvok thinks we both have to deal with this," she said.

"Oh really? What does he recommend?"

"I told him I wanted to put myself on report for my actions. He refused to listen without your testimony. I told him he wasn't going to get that, and he suggested that I'm trying to use regulations to assuage my own guilt."

"Are you?"

"I don't know," she said flatly.

Chakotay felt unreasonable rage welling in him, at her and at her confession. "I'll tell you what happened to my leg. A Ceyan sank his teeth into it," he grated. "He wasn't aiming for my thigh, I just got lucky." He laughed mirthlessly as Janeway swallowed a gasp. "It was my punishment for behaving badly. Yagar claimed me as a trophy of sorts. She demanded that I perform for her. Do you want to know what I did?" He waited; when she remained silent, he clamped his hand onto her chin, forcing her to look at his glowering face as he dug his fingers into her. "I closed my eyes and touched her--and pretended it was you."

There it was. Not a surprise, but she had no better sense of how to deal with it now than she had when Yagar first told her. "I know," Janeway said evenly. "Yagar told me, as soon as I told her my name."

Chakotay closed his eyes and bowed his head, but continued. "I thought maybe she'd broken me for good, but I guess I was wrong. I guess I still want to fuck you like the animal they showed me I am. Will you please stop touching me, before I hurt you?" He released her face from his hand, pushing it away like a slap.

"You have to stop punishing yourself for what they did to you, Chakotay. There was nothing you could have done, and it's over now."

"My people believe that a person can damage another's spirit by conjuring it into the wrong body, did you know that? What they did to me, I did to you. Obviously it had an effect on you. What you did back there--that wasn't any you I've ever seen before."

She had to force herself not to become defensive, and to remember why she had done it. "Listen to me. You survived, that's the important thing. I would have done almost anything to make sure of that." She took a deep, unsteady breath. Would telling him that what happened wasn't his fault only serve to disempower him further? He saw her as another victim--his victim. "What I did back there--" She let the tears come into her eyes and her voice. "Chakotay, it was too late to protect you from them, so I had to bring you back to me however I could. I'm sorry if it wasn't the right thing to do. Can't you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" He looked at her. "It's my fault. I did things to you, I pretended it was you..."

"It's all right."

"No, it isn't..."

Kathryn leaned forward to kiss him, but he jerked away in surprise, staring at her in wild misery. She gazed at his pained face, contorted by a grief she could not fathom. What if he couldn't forgive her? Or what if he couldn't forgive himself, and tried to cut her off from him in the name of protecting her? She couldn't bear it. Slipping an arm around his waist, she pressed her face against his chest, possessed by passion so strong it frightened her. Chakotay groaned but did not try to stop her. They sat together for several minutes, holding one another, tension building until it seemed like a physical force around them. His heart was pounding beneath her ear, his breathing ragged, she could see his erection straining the fabric of his pants.

"Can I touch you?" she asked quietly.

He shuddered, catching one of her hands in his and nearly crushing the fingers before he carefully forced his own to release them. "Touch me," he whispered.

She turned her face to kiss his chest, feeling his adam's apple move in his throat. Careful not to touch his leg, she pushed his clothing aside to taste his skin, recalling the wounds that had marred it just days ago. He let her slide down his body, holding himself tensely as if he expected her to hurt him or push him away.

She hadn't intended to make love to him, merely to give him a few moments of relief as she had on the planet, along with the comfort of knowing that such pleasure wasn't lost to him. Her body ached to hold him after almost losing him, a bond expressible only through the flesh. When she touched his genitals through his clothes, he let out a keening cry, digging his fingers into her arm; she wasn't sure whether he was instinctively protecting a wound which was no longer there, or merely afraid of ejaculating in his pants. His hands grabbed her hips and pushed under the skirt, tearing at her underwear. She was startled by his strength and a little frightened. But she knew there was no stopping--no safety, no holding back.

Chakotay barely made a noise when she parted her damp thighs and sank onto him with a low moan. She knew she was going to come before the ache of penetration had faded, especially in this position, with her body sliding up and down his and the look in his eyes--oh, it had been a long time, it was almost a new sensation. She was afraid her ardor might cause her to hurt him, but a small sound of pleasure escaped Chakotay's lips, overwhelming her so that her muscles began to tremble just from sharing the intimacy. When he angled his hips to press his belly against her, she cried out and came hard, rubbing into his body while he strained to watch her. He dug his hands into her hips and started thrusting forcefully, still staring at her, until he seemed to surprise himself by going over the edge with her name bursting from his lips.

She did not want to let him go, even when he sagged against her and she felt him slip out, hot fluid flowing from inside her over the now-invisible scar on his leg. Shifting, she buried her face into his chest, breathing deeply. Chakotay lifted her up so that they were face to face, not trying to hide the tears that coursed down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for." Seeing him weeping undid her. She began to cry the way she had wanted to when she first saw him in the Ceyan cell--hard, wrenching sobs that shook her entire body. He held her tightly, kissing her, lips opening to taste the tears on her face. When he moved his mouth against hers, the slow pressure of his lips and tongue caused goosebumps to break out across her body.

"Let me..." He turned her in his arms and settled her against him, her back to his chest, his arms wrapped around hers, face in her hair. He smelled so good, after the last time she had been close to him, though at the time it hadn't mattered--the grassy fresh scent of his semen, his damp hair, his skin. He was also inhaling deeply, breathing her in like some vital element. His fingers moved gently between her legs, parting the soaked hair, stroking the tender flesh. It took less than a minute for her to come again as he murmured what sounded like words of love into her hair.

She could have fallen asleep, wrapped in his arms with the boat rocking beneath them, but after a few minutes Chakotay quietly whispered, "Talk to me."

"I'm here."

"Are you? Where are we now, Kathryn?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. We're right here."

"Is this just now, because of what happened?" She sat up a little to look at him. "I don't want you to think I'm criticizing, but this still is not like you. I know what happened to me. What happened to you?"

Janeway was silent for a long time. "I killed two people," she whispered finally.

"Because of me."

"Not just because of you." She swallowed hard. "What happened to me--you were right, that wasn't like me. It was a violation of the Prime Directive and it was wholly vindictive." He made a choked sound between a laugh and a cry. "I knew what I was doing, Chakotay. I had to get you out of there, and I was beyond thinking antiseptically about those people. You must have seen things like that in the Maquis--you must have done things like that in the Maquis. Don't tell me you can't understand..."

"Of course I understand, Kathryn." His arms tightened around her. "What I want to know is...is us sitting here now a part of that? You decided it was time to get your hands dirty, you did what had to be done, and now..."

Her gut twisted. "How can you ask me that?" Defiled and defiling: he had blamed himself for having dragged her into his own rape, but now perhaps he blamed her, too. "Chakotay, if this feels dirty to you..."

"No." His eyes were dark with contrition but also with fear. "I've wanted this more than anything in my life, but Kathryn, I have to know if it's just for now, and when I'm over all of it, I'm supposed to be over you, too. I can't do that. I don't know who I'll turn into if I have to do that."

A slight tremble went through her that she knew he could feel. It had been her fear all along that he would come to depend on her this way, but she had learned over the course of the past year that it went both ways. She was comfortable being only his captain when he was comfortable being only her first officer, and her best friend, which was a communion of sorts. But when someone or something threatened that--when she had to consider a future in which she might have to exist without him, not because their roles had consigned him to death but because her choices and his had led them apart...it was unbearable.

"Maybe they just gave us an excuse, Chakotay," she murmured, turning in his arms to hide her face against him.

His chest rose and fell with a sigh. Would he always associate loving her with pain? Yet she realized he seemed more comfortable inside his skin than he had since long before she'd found him on the planet. Maybe since the last time they'd gone sailing together. Maybe since New Earth. The words he had spoken to her the night after the storm came back to her, as well as his words from the underground.

She whispered, "I love you too."

"Kathryn, I know you won't want to hear this, but I don't ever want to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. I want to stay on the ship with you forever."

"If we get back to the Alpha Quadrant, this isn't going to change," she replied.

"I've hoped that we never get back. I thought maybe the past few days was my punishment." His voice was filled with confusion. "I don't know who my people are any more. All I want is you."

"I know who your people are," she said with conviction, gripping his hand. "But Chakotay...they're all my people. I have to be there for all of them. I can't always, you know I'm going to be pulled in a lot of different directions, there can't be demands..."

"Have I ever made any? Have I ever asked anything of you that interfered with duty? I've disagreed with you as your first officer, Kathryn, but I've never asked anything for me. Never."

"You don't have to ask, Chakotay. That's what I'm trying to tell you. It's not you. I killed two aliens and broke the Prime Directive because of this. It's me."

He sat digesting this while the boat bobbed on the quiet waters beneath them, moving without destination but incapable of remaining still. The last blue-red-violet hues faded from the sky as the air began to chill. Wrapped in Chakotay's arms, Kathryn Janeway shivered once, then shifted and rose to adjust the ropes to catch the wind. As she turned the wheel, steering in a slightly different direction away from shore, she heard Chakotay rise and move behind her. He stood back while she directed the ship, waiting until she finally turned to him to reach out a hand for hers. She clasped his fingers, pulling him beside her.

"Let me be here for you. The way you were for me," he said. It wasn't quite a question - it had already been decided, perhaps further back than she had wanted to admit, even when she shut away the words he had said to her on New Earth and again the first time they had taken this sail together. At the Hirogen relay listening to messages from home, and when they had found the powerful particles that only a captain was meant to know about. Alpha to omega, she thought, and a smile touched her lips.

"Yes," she nodded. "I will." His eyes echoed her smile.

The moon was nearly pure white overhead, turning the river into a great streak of silver. It met the river of stars at the horizon, their course distant but undeniably clear.