Author Note: Written for the Secret Summer 2014. Eydiemunroe's request was "a great J/C shuttle crash story. Romance, strife, danger, angst, anger, sex - all are good, but they need to be stuck wherever they land for a while, even possibly believed to be dead. The catch - if they're not together already, there has to be an atypical reason why they aren't - no protocol, no regulations, and no paralyzing fear of what might happen to the other." I added a challenge and did it in second-person.

~Break Down~

Awake in a dream. Watch it move away from you, pushed out by the leading edge of your own breath as you lean in to snatch it from the surface of your mind. Ask yourself the questions that will call it back at the same time it recedes to nothing but a wisp of gray smoke. Open your eyes.

Feel your consciousness worming its way back to the surface, through the heat and the flush of first morning's light. Uncurl the fists tucked against your chest. Wipe the sleep out of your eyes and tap the consol. Frown when you remember there's no power left for that. Be still. Watch the sunrise from the cockpit of your grounded shuttle, shading up the horizon like a fresh bruise – blacks to purples to blues to reds to blistering golds.

Think, at least it's pretty. You could envision worse places to be stuck for the duration it will take Voyager to find you.

Sit back. Stretch. Long for a cup of coffee, or at least enough power to make a cup of coffee, knowing full well if you had it, you wouldn't waste it on that. Still… imagine a world where you could. You'd like to be back there, as soon as reasonably possible.

Record a few notes for your logs. You'll have several to file when you get back, and while the mediocrity of basic survival is hardly anything of note, relish what little you have to pass the time. Try to recall when you were this still for this long and quickly come back with the answer: never.

Hear your first officer's gentle snoring in the aft compartment and consider he might be trying to catch a dream of his own. Wager he will have more luck that you, knowing his nonsecular background is just another curious element that delights and aggravates you at the same time. Let him sleep and hope he, too, is thankful for the passage of time.

Fear colder nights, wild animals, and the dark spaces just beyond the nose of your ship. Push it off with silent assurances that other than the engines, the computer core, and the power distribution center, the shuttle stayed intact.

Didn't even scratch the glass.

Laugh when Chakotay offers it as a boon to your piloting skills, knowing it was anything but. Curse yourself for missing the entry sequence, letting the troposphere of some random alien planet shake your indomitable calm. Curse yourself again for believing the Captain and the First officer of a vessel should ever leave at the same time.

Statistical improbably measured against a more salient need – you could have taken shore leave alone or with someone, but you had to take it. Or so you were told. Though, on the back end of this, you will have no trouble dissuading the Doctor of forcing you off your bridge again.

Fall asleep in fits and jerks, keeping your eyes on the odd shadows at port. Predict it will take a week, or more, to stop craving the coffee.

Miss the open roar of the engines at warp, the dashing pinpricks of stars ahead, around, and behind you. These are the shifts you truly enjoy; the ones that pass with the cool, quiet lull of a summer drizzle. Banter with Paris and Kim, wait for Tuvok to join in, which he unfailing does. Offer Chakotay a wry smile and, if you're feeling bold, an invitation to dinner. Spend the rest of the shift deciding the menu: vegetable risotto and key lime pie. Promise a surprise if he antes up one of those bottle of Anterian cider.

Awake to the rapid recession of your bridge, its component parts and people moving away as the bright light hits your face. Your skin has barely adjusted to the idea that it is the first thing you will feel every morning for the rest of your life. Your heart may never. Your brain flat refuses to accept failure, of yourself or your crew. They will find you. They always find you.

Until they don't.

Trust that yesterday's argument is far from over, because all you have is the time to pursue it. Identify Chakotay's attempts are only the seeding of an idea you may have to accept somewhere down the line. He's had seven years to perfect the art of dealing with you and that means a well-timed attack isn't one made in the eleventh hour.

It takes time to break you down. You've made sure of it. Long gone are the days when you could be crushed by the possibility of a worst-case scenario. Remind yourself, your life is a worst case scenario, and you haven't done too badly thus far.

Hear him say something. Miss it. Call out to him.

"Your breakfast is getting cold."

Wonder: can ration cubes get cold? Were they ever warm to begin with or is that just wishful thinking on your part? A warm meal. A soft bed. A hot bath. Things you took for granted, even when you didn't. Memories redoubling their efforts to keep you curled up in the cockpit chair, because at least here, in sleep, they can be enjoyed.

Not so now.

Know that no matter how long you stand there, squinting into the inevitability that this could be your life… The full sight of it will hurt you. Haunt you beyond the measure of the original proposition. It will steal your sleep, your voice, and your breath every time you envision the sleek, sculpted hull of your vessel ripping ahead through space.

Without you.

Startle at his voice when it says your name.

"Kathryn?"

Don't be so sure he said your name. He could have said Captain. He still calls you that, here. Sometimes. The syllables match and the consonants blend, and there was a time earlier in your life you snapped at a junior officer for the same. Though, in retrospect, the error was probably yours.

Loosen your grip on the armrest and pretend not to notice the grooves carved into the material. Stand, like you do every morning, and every night, and give up your post. Pass from forward to aft.

Hear him say, "Good morning," and ask how you slept.

Did you sleep?

You dreamt.

Recall sleeping as an integral part of the same. Nod.

Cry for the first time in years. Let the tears unwind from your body in shuddering bursts, rolling over the number of days you have watched the day turn to night and back again as the chair takes the shape of your body inside it. Struggle with the idea that you can't sleep here, like this, forever. At some point, anatomy will require you to relinquish your position for a softer place to rest.

Find that pain mirrored inside yet another fleeting dream of your ship. Your crew. Your journey. Wonder, at what point, they decided to resume it without you. Sob quietly into your palm, covering the sound you know he can hear, has heard before, when the tears were shed for the same reason. Note only minor difference between then and now: power, a replicator, real shelter. Hope. Count off the things you had then, weighed against the things you have now.

Thank a god you don't believe in that you're stranded with the only man you've ever met who can build a house out of force of will.

But be thankful he didn't wait another month to suggest it.

Dream about Victorian England and the holonovel you never finished. All the holonovels you never finished, and never would. Taste the strange hollow air of Lord Burleigh's mouth against your own and then gag at the thought it's the last kiss you shared… with anyone. Shake it off. Remember there were others, but don't say their names.

All right. Say their damned names.

"Jaffen. Michael." Choke on the last one. "Kashyk."

Move forwards and back through the gap between waking and sleep thinking of their faces, until another man's voice punctuates the silence.

"We should probably start taking apart the rest of the shuttle."

Hear the sensibility of that suggestion, but resist it on principle. Regard it as a last-ditch effort to provoke him to disagreement, if only for the nostalgic quality his rhetoric provides.

Then… argue everything into existence here. The house. The beds. The walls. The doors. The drawer he built to accommodate your clothing. Review that moment as a turning point for him – the place when your refusal to accept the present situation finally pushed him too far.

"Dammit, Kathryn! This is our life now! Voyager is gone!"

Hear the crack in his voice. Know he hates himself for speaking to you this way almost as much as he hates you for denying him the grief he also feels. You are, at times, a most selfish creature. That has always been true.

Concede. Allow him, even help him, disassemble the last of the bulkheads and consoles and carpet with the fervor of a scavenger bird. Digest the conduits and relays with the same, slow mastication of Naomi Wildmen's telepathic pitcher plant. Repurpose the cockpit chair as a place to read inside the three room cabin his has managed to cobble together with you standing in the way. Close your eyes on the ceiling above your new bed. Hold your breath. Be still.

Lose a year. Lose ten.

Wake up with the same tight-fisted hopes, only to have them dashed under the dual suns of an alien sky.

Feel his arm fall against your bare skin, stirring to readjust and find purchase on your hip before pulling you back into the only position you hold now. Duty cut down by more than half, all remaining efforts aimed at survival now turned into routine. In these quiet moments, pleasure.

Respond to his touch, not knowing the particulars of how or with whom he first perfected the art, but don't care to know either.

Remember when it changed? It was as natural as breathing, letting him touch you that way. See you that way, devoid of the undue resistance you mounted the first time his hand lingered on yours for a second too long. Or the first time he kissed you. Or explored your skin with the reverence and grinning fortune of a man stranded on a deserted planet with his first and last true love.

Chuckle at the idea that you are his true love.

Bite your tongue when you realize: he is not yours.

Your first true love was the stars. The quiet, blanketing unknown of space you close your eyes on every night. But even its memory isn't enough to rouse you to a breathless fraction of what he's capable of doing these days.

Lose your recollection of words and how they are put together when his mouth claims the skin of your breast. Let instinct lead the charge. Touch. Stroke. Nip. Taste yourself on his lips. Lap at the heady bitterness in the crux of his mouth. Revel in the vulgarity of it, the power of it, and the certainty that you will never get enough of it as he pushes you over the edge again.

Move toward and away from him as cleanly as possible. Shudder when you realize how much better at this game he is than you. Succumb to that sensation, all sensation. Let him take his fill. Be filled.

Stop caring where your crew is for the duration of the morning, most of the afternoon and the evening. Recapture a piece of yourself, one you assumed dead beneath the polar ice caps of Tau Ceti Prime. Tell him what that means. Not just for you, but of you. Confess the darkness that has walked behind you since that moment, the fear that nothing could rekindle let alone overpower the love you felt for another man at a time when your life was arced along a different vector. Laugh at yourself for how stupid that sounds finally spoken aloud.

Tell him you love him.

Listen to the strife in his tone when he tells you about his own losses. The terse but deliberate tone he uses when he explains the heritage of his tribe, his people. His father. Understand that nothing can remove either of you from this moment or the next, save the rising needs of bodies. The care you must take of them now, because there is nothing left in this world to care for otherwise.

Forget what it's like to speak beyond the words you want to say. Reach a point where action no longer requires explanation or sentiment. He understands you, and you him. Use your voice to engage in intimacy only when your bodies are too tired to make the journey, or as a precursor to the same.

Wake again. Make love. Lose time. Stop caring. Fall asleep.

Open your eyes to a nightmare; at least, it is now. One that engages the emotions you've long since buried and plays on a landspace you've never stopped dreaming of. Feel that first rush of cool, recycled air push through your lungs as a word.

"No."

"Kathryn?"

Know… it's not his voice. And it wasn't your name.

"Captain?"

Sit up with the gasping feeling you're late for the most important day of your life, only to be pushed back down into the position you loath. Stare up at the limited sights of this dreamworld's Sickbay as its Doctor fusses with something in your periphery.

"Captain, you need to lay still. I'm going to give you something –"

"No."

You meant it that time, and for the first time, in a long time, a man complies with your command simply because you gave it.

Sense an exchange beyond the reach of your vision. Remember the slightly cooler notes of your pilot's cologne as something his father also used to wear. Be proud that his position was resecured here, at least for a time, and then wonder where he really is now.

Hear him offer to get another hypospray.

"No!"

Search the boundaries of the bright, sterile space, startled to recall it with such vividness after so many years. Even the expression on the hologram's face is familiar when you rise onto your elbows and see the teal gown overtop of your summer skin.

Realize that is also gone, replaced with the pale white you'd known your whole life. Your other life, the dream life.

Find Chakotay an arm's length away, resting on his side and his eyes still turned against the world. Reach for him, only to have the doctor take your hand instead and explain:

"He's fine. He's still sleeping."

Wait until he's not.

While you do, argue with yourself, the Doctor, and Tom Paris over the duration you, too, have been unconscious. Know the answer of 'twelve hours' is as ridiculous of an idea as your persistent dialogue with these… imaginary people.

Be afraid to admit: they are right.

Stare at your hands. His face. Your hands again. Curl them into fists. Open them. Repeat. Practice self-reassurance: you haven't lost your mind, but it has been fucked with. Resist screaming that word across the still world around you. You might have, at some point, when you weren't a Captain. You might have acted out like your little sister.

Remember suddenly what it's like to be alive in a world where you might see her again.

There's that word again.

Retch when it rises in your throat. Feel the Doctor's photonic touch when he pulls the hair back from your face and lets you empty your aching stomach into a can. Dismiss his offer for something to ease that pain, too.

Find comfort in the pain. Wait. Watch. Hold your breath. Be still. Silently beg him not to open his eyes, because when he does, it means this is happening. And nothing else did.

Try not to gasp when sleep gives way to a familiar dusky brown.

Gasp.

Hear your name again, in the tone he usually reserves for just you. See the soft smile in his expression paint his smooth forehead into deeper lines. Chase an itch across your neck at the memory of that same expression seated between your thighs.

Record the Doctor's explanations as what they are: logical, reasonable, quantifiable. Note that Chakotay is doing the same in more ways than one, keeping his interior thoughts masked in ways you cannot grasp.

Hear words like: alien telepathy, psychological torpor, minor damage, and neurological warfare. Decide, when you're ready, you'll read the report yourself.

"…the architecture of the human brain is quite complicated, but as far as I can tell, you've experienced nothing more than twelve hours in stage-two REM."

Hear him ask, because to simply cannot. "Stage-two?"

"The dreaming stage, and my scans indicate both of you were having some pretty interesting dreams."

It's happened before – The Caretaker, the Bothans, the aliens who kept you trapped in your dreams.

"Captain?"

Kathryn?

"Yes, Doctor?"

Take from his expression you've missed something larger than a simple question.

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I still feel a bit muzzy."

Explore the feeling for the time it takes the Doctor to leave and return with a cup of something hot and familiar in his hands.

"Normally, I would discourage your caffeine intake, but…"

Study the cup in his hands. Try to reclaim the ritual of that first sip even before you touch the handle. Was it always this bitter? This harsh? Cough. Wipe your mouth with the back of your palm. Force a smile. Nod.

"Not traditional medicine, but it'll do."

Return to your quarters awake in a dream world, one-half of the person you've become in the last ten years. Break something. Anything. Don't even look at it or hold it long enough to feel its weight before it leaves your over-hand fist with a sobbing roar. Feel smug self-satisfaction for destroying something beautiful, for letting everyone else hear it, too.

These walls aren't thick and that scream wasn't shored up by anything more than your lung capacity.

Convince yourself his presence is born of that sound, and nothing else.

"Kathryn?"

Captain?

Wonder which he said, long before you wonder how he got in. Ask and answer the handful of transient why's before you attack the question he so artfully couched in the silence that followed.

Lie.

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, I didn't like the vase much either."

Decide humor isn't the best tactic here, even if you're laughing.

Dare to ask him, "What did you dream about?"

Revel in the way he sucks a long breath over his bottom lip; a sound you know so intimately, it nearly calls you across the distance that exists between you now. Stop yourself. Clench your toes into balls inside your boots so tightly the responding crank of recovering muscles shoots needles into the base of your spine. Relish that pain as much as the moral sank into your cheek, the copper-sweet tang of blood across your tongue, and the nails buried in your palm.

Try not to let go when he says, "The desert. My home. My family."

Realize all the sanity you had left rested on that answer, because if he'd dreamt the same dream, you would at least have someone with whom you could mourn its passing.

Know now he didn't. And you don't.

Hear him ask: "Why? What did you dream about?"

The desert. Your home. Your family.

Put your back to him. It's the only way you can survive now, and if the last ten years have taught you anything, it's that survival requires positions to change. Feel that heavy hand on your shoulder, trying to pull you back from the recesses of real despair.

"I also dreamt about things I never wanted to see again," he tells you. "About a person I never want to be again."

See your way out. Take it.

"Me, too."

Let him guide you around to face him, but close your hands into fists at your sides. Don't you dare touch him. And if you do touch him, know it cannot be with the same veneration you once did.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

Do you?

fini