Lack of Clarity
A/N: This is set mid-way through Voyager's fifth season and deals with the capture of Janeway and Chakotay by a xenophobic alien race known as the D'Chasther (pronounced De-Chast-Her). A warning that this piece does contain mentions of and brief scenes of torture.
This is a piece in four parts and will be updated every two days until completion.
This story started out as an idea that I had months ago to test Janeway and Chakotay's friendship. While working on this story, I read another story called Best of Strangers by Dax's10thHost. That story made me take a good look at these two, and some of those thoughts helped to shape the latter half of this story. For making me think, Dax, I thank you.
A huge thanks to my fantastic beta, Uroboros75, for the speedy beta work on this piece.
Music: Colorful Mind – Broken Iris
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
He wakes to shadows creeping along the walls.
His vision is filled with blurs of black and slate, morphing into each other before he can even determine where one ends and another begins. They stretch on before him, endless, infinite, like helices of obsidian eternity.
The notion makes his blood run cold.
He feels disoriented, displaced, and a slew of other sensations that he can't seem to identify. There's weight on his shoulders, pressing against the tops of his feet, the front of his shins. It doesn't take him long to realize that he's being dragged.
Dragged where? He asks no one, and everyone.
There's sound now, his ears reacting to the cacophony of voices around him. The sounds range from guttural to insidious, and each one spews out another stream of words in a tongue that he doesn't know.
The pain he feels next comes without warning, a sudden storm that bites up his calves and into his thighs. His shoulders burn, but the throbbing ache in his temple exceeds them all as it pounds with the ferocity of a dozen war drums against his skull. As time progresses the pain doesn't abate, crawling into his muscles, a festering gangrene.
Eventually, all movement stops, and the pressure on his legs and shoulders ease, leaving him in a moment of terrifying limbo before his body meets a hard surface; it's dry, a cloud of dust or dirt swirling against his skin. He tries to move and finds that he can only do so slowly without half of his body protesting. He spends a few minutes blinking away the shadows in his vision until at last they depart his company and leave him to his solitude, a solitude that exists in a foreign cell.
He takes stock of his surroundings, the memories wafting into his consciousness like fog. They take shape slowly, molded by a lack of clarity rather than his intuition. Pieces join together, mapping out the puzzle that showcase his current predicament, a predicament that becomes much more serious when he realizes that he wasn't alone in his mission.
Kathryn, he thinks, searching the corridor beyond the cell and letting out a heavy sigh when he finds nothing.
They had been trying to negotiate with a species called the D'Chasther, an incredibly xenophobic race that had refused to allow them passage through their space and responded to their inquiries with a firefight. Apparently, their own fears lead them to violence for the sake of their secrecy. He and Kathryn had been returning from a mission to gather supplies in a nearby system when they encountered the ship. It overpowered them and took them aboard as prisoners. He'd tried to protect her, to keep her out of harm's way.
They took her anyway.
Now he has no combadge, no phaser; nothing that he can use to contact Voyager or devise an escape plan, and no captain to bring back to the people that need her guidance on these turbulent seas. He feels nothing short of defeat, and his thoughts soon turn from worry to dark imaginings of where Kathryn might be and what they are doing to her. He hopes to whatever Spirits may be watching that the screams he hears never turn out be hers.
He can't understand why they would take them when they fear outsiders. If they were such a threat to their existence, then why take them into custody and hold them here?
Unless…
They want to use us or our technology to keep outsiders away, Chakotay realizes, a dark fear burrowing into his skin. If there was anyone who knew Voyager or her technology best, it was her Captain.
From the looks of the cell he's in, he can tell what kind of allure Starfleet technology would have to them. The lighting is typical (which essentially means it is poor), and the barrier at the threshold of the cell is a force field emitted by an orange band that wraps around the entrance. It's nothing short of impenetrable, and leaves no evident route for escape. It makes Chakotay want to rip down the walls in frustration; he will not allow them to destroy his captain while he sits here like an animal in a corral.
He punches the bulkhead, hard. The shock reverberates through his body, echoing through his bones and it feels good. He's at least doing something, not just sitting around moping; he will never back down if there's something that can be done.
Over the pounding of his fists he hears something else.
Footsteps.
He ceases his venting and moves cautiously towards the entrance, where he can see shadows lurking over the floor of the corridor. There's a tall form, humanoid, but with a few too many arms to be human, and there is also a smaller shadow that is lead alongside the taller one, struggling to keep up.
The guard rounds the corner and stops at Chakotay's cell, where he finally sees who the guard was escorting.
Her hair is disheveled, her uniform torn and bloodied. Her face is marred by dirt and a smattering of bruises. If he had a phaser, this D'Chasther would be dead seconds after that force field went down. The guard trains his weapon on Chakotay before pressing a few keys on the panel outside the cell.
"What did you do to her?" Chakotay asks, hands curling into even tighter fists at his side.
The alien studies him for a moment, then deactivates the force field and throws Kathryn into the cell. She stumbles, her balance thrown, and he manages to catch her before she falls into the dirt at his feet. She lets out a groan of pain and sinks into his arms, too weak or too hurt to put up any sort of fight.
The guard says nothing, only narrowing its fuchsia eyes at the command team and re-establishes the force field before moving off, its feet crunching the dirt beneath them as if it were made of bones.
Chakotay takes her over to the bunk on the one side of the room, gently lifting her up onto its surface before clearing her hair away from her face. There's a gash above her right eye, a crimson talon that curves along her brow bone. Her skin is speckled with dust and dirt, but what prickles the flesh on Chakotay's neck are the marks, the bruises that sneak over her cheekbones and mar her jaw line. The marks are an angry red, a sign that they are recent. Her eyes are barely open, the lashes shiny in the dim light; he wonders if she's been crying.
He takes her hand, which she clasps as she blinks in the light of the cell. "Kathryn," he whispers. "It's me; it's Chakotay."
She groans before opening her eyes fully, the irises a stark blue against her skin. She lets out a sigh before repeating his name, then closes her eyes again as she nibbles her lower lip for an instant.
"Where are we?" she asks.
"What I would assume is a D'Chasther holding facility. They captured us after they overwhelmed the shuttle. Do you remember?"
She says nothing for a moment; then pushes herself into a seated position, much to Chakotay's chagrin. She always pushes herself too hard, and even in cases of hostile capture, she stills drives herself beyond the very notion of limits.
"...Yes," she answers as she runs a hand along her temple, her finger grazing the mark along her brow. "We were separated. The D'Chasther took me for int–" She stops short, but he already knows what she means, the marks on her face say more words than she ever could. "For some questions," she finishes, releasing his hand.
"About what?" Chakotay asks as she swings her legs over the side of the bed. "What do they want with us?"
"Voyager," Janeway replies, stifling a groan of pain that he hears anyway. He places a hand on her shoulder to encourage her to take it easy for a little, and her eyes acknowledge it with a stern look into his. She looks back out to the doorway of the cell before continuing. "All they kept asking me about was our technology, how it worked. They wanted to know about our weapons, transporters, propulsion, replication technology; they wanted the whole damn ship's outline!"
"Did you tell them?" he asks cautiously, knowing that Kathryn would be very hesitant to admit that she has a breaking point, even more so that someone actually found it.
"No," she answers, hands planted at her sides. "They can ask all they want, but they'll never get anything out of me." She leans forward slightly, causing her hair to fall around her face, hiding it from Chakotay.
He settles himself on the bunk next to her and reaches for her face, carefully placing a curved finger beneath her chin to raise her gaze. She lets him, and he's almost surprised that she's allowing such a thing. "Did they do this?" he asks, motioning to the marks on her face.
"The D'Chasther aren't a particularly patient people," she replies solemnly.
"Kathryn…" he begins, but she cuts him off.
"I'm fine," she admonishes, jerking away from his hand.
He refuses to take her resistance as a reply, pressing forward with his words out of care rather than curiosity. "Kathryn," he says gently. "You are not fine. You were beaten by an alien race that we know hardly anything about."
"I know very well what they did to me, Chakotay," she hisses before looking into his eyes. The blue of her irises is shadowed with glistening ghosts of something that she has yet to divulge, and his instincts tell him that that information will be far from pleasant.
"The D'Chasther don't just favor their fists in interrogations," Janeway says, folding her hands in front of her as her eyes disappear beneath the auburn curtain of her hair. "They also seem partial to some sort of… electric shock weapon."
Horror fills him, eating away at his senses as he imagines nightmarish technologies from the darkest ages of history. He moves to sit next to Kathryn and places one of his hands over her clasped ones. "Did they use it on you?" he asks gently, wanting more than ever to simply wrap her in his arms and take her from this dreaded place.
"Once," she answers, and her voice ripples through the air with the admission. Her hands drift apart, letting his fall to her side as she reaches to her right side and places her hand on her ribs. It takes him only moments to understand, and it rips into him with ferocity. They had hurt Kathryn and he had been here in the cell, unable to help her or protect her.
"How bad is it?" he asks, reaching out a hand that she stops. She turns her eyes back to him, and something inside him whispers that she is trying to keep a certain distance for the time being. They may only be friends, but their friendship has developed a certain closeness that could be used as leverage by less favourable parties should the opportunity arise. He drops his hand and she settles her own across her lap.
"It hurts like hell," she confesses after a moment. "But it's nothing that I can't handle."
Chakotay knows that voice, that tone that she uses like a cloak in her emotional charades. She's drawing from strength, but her admission whispers that the injury is something that she must handle until they are rescued.
"Voyager will come looking for us," she says. "We've been gone more than forty-eight hours; Tuvok will suspect that something has gone wrong."
"Even if that's the case, how will they find us? The D'Chasther captured the shuttle and we have no way of communicating with Voyager."
"Evidence is everything," she replies swiftly, a hand curling beneath her chin. She reduces her voice to a whisper before continuing. "The D'Chasther didn't destroy the shuttle, so Voyager will have little ground to assume that we're dead. Hopefully they'll follow the ion trail of the D'Chasther here."
"It still leaves a lot to chance," Chakotay answers in his own hushed tone.
Before Janeway can answer, there is the sound of footsteps treading along the corridor, accompanied by another ominous sound that neither one of them can place. The sound grows, growling against Chakotay's reserves of patience and control.
He's about to move for the entry when Kathryn takes his face in her hands. She moves his face so that he is facing her, and the expression in her eyes is that of his captain, drawing from everything that she has left.
"Listen to me," she says, her tone serious and unwavering. "They will come for you, Chakotay. They would not have kept you alive otherwise." The pressure of her palms against his skin intensifies slightly. "Promise me that you will tell them nothing. Promise me that," she pleads, and through the shock of such a raw command he manages to nod, gently moving her hands away from his face. Her expression is fatigued, even as she tries to hide it. Her eyebrows slant downwards at the ends, tapering out at the edges of her anxiety.
He wouldn't let them destroy Kathryn Janeway or Voyager.
"I won't," he answers, placing his hands over hers before moving them away from his face. Promise is a thing of great significance to him, almost sacred in its bonds. It is only as strong as the links that are its foundations; one small slip can tear the entire thing apart.
He doesn't intend to be that fatal break.
Kathryn quickly moves her hands away as the footsteps grow louder, silenced only when two monsters of guards stand before their cell. Their armor gives little away, their entire identities shut away like secrets long preserved. It's a justification of their xenophobia, as well as a custom meant to stir unease in the air around them. They stare at Chakotay and Kathryn for a moment before speaking, and Chakotay is shocked when they speak their words in English.
"You," one of the guards says, motioning at Chakotay. "Come with us." Their tone is even, heavy like titanium and equally lifeless. He briefly looks towards Kathryn, whose own shock is painted across her face in colors less vivid than his own, masking most of it to the untrained eye.
Her expression is unwavering, lips pressed into a tight line as her eyes watch him. They are icy against her skin, frozen by the dreadful notion of what awaits them in this incarceration. He feels his own sense of dread, though he knows that if he wants to ensure their survival he must cooperate.
He stands and moves towards the opening, where the force field fizzles for a moment before going out. Their weapons are already raised; one aimed at him and another pointed in a direction that would surely meet Kathryn's body if fired. He steps over the threshold, his movements careful and slow. He eases into caution for not only his own sake but for the sake of time, as if a few more seconds will spare them from some of the trials they could face in this labyrinth.
He looks back into the cell for a moment before the guards shove him forward, sending him stumbling into the gritty light beyond. In the moment before he saw Kathryn sitting on the bunk watching him, eyes fixed on him with something he can't define rumbling within them.