Note: this story contains mention of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and secondary traumatization.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
Leonard Cohen, Anthem
There is a crack
Chakotay
The wall outside sickbay is thankfully unyielding. Chakotay leans against it, his back seeking the strength of the hard cold metal. If he could allow himself to feel something, he would let himself slide against the vertical surface and collapse on the floor.
But he can't. Not yet. Not here.
He stares at the palms of his hands, rubs them against his uniform trousers, once, twice, again, only to leave more dark and foul-smelling stains on the soft fabric. There's dirt embedded deep under his fingernails, and russet-coloured flecks dotting the back of his hands, a pointillist drawing of despair and death.
His stomach rises, and it takes all his will to swallow back the throat-burning contents. He so wants to cleanse himself inside and out, scour the dank, heavy stench off his skin. It won't be enough to erase the bleakness and torment he saw, the brutality, the hopelessness. But it'll be a start.
He pushes himself off the wall and walks towards the turbolift. He's got to go back to the bridge and discuss the captain's purchase price with the Ahmaric who know a good deal when they see one. As much as he loathes their cruelty and arrogance, and their flagrant disregard for the most basic rights of sentient beings, he can ill afford to get into a firefight with their government on moral grounds.
Voyager's mission is done, its goal accomplished. After three long months searching for the captain, the crew had found her at last among a throng of people sharing her fate—working in the depths of a dilithium mine until they fell, beaten, starved, forgotten. Living skeletons chained to wagons; the stronger ones crawling into dim tunnels with a blunt pickaxe in their hands; others heaving the rocks into the carts. Those people have no name, no future, no succour. Their only identity is a number embedded on a chip lodged between their shoulder blades, their humanity stripped away the second they fell into the hands of the traders.
Chakotay swings hard and hits the turbolift wall, splitting the skin over his knuckles. If only he could have rescued all the others too, freed them from a life of untold misery where death becomes the only escape.
He tells himself that he could not take them all. That Voyager is but one ship. That he can't risk the lives of all on board for a desperate mass rescue doomed to fail.
The door opens. He wipes his hands a last time and steps onto the bridge.
###
Tom Paris
~We must thank you for the conclusion of a successful trade, Master Chakotay. The Ahmaric government hopes we will see you back soon for another purchase, and—~
Chakotay turns away and makes a cut-throat gesture to Harry. The genial face of the Ahmaric representative vanishes from the screen.
"Set a course out of here, Paris."
"Aye, Commander."
Tom lets his fingers dance over the helm. He is glad to leave this area of space with too many star systems crammed together, suns with tens of inhabited planets, and planets orbiting too many stars in repudiation of the most fundamental laws of astrophysics in his expert opinion. He is eager to fly, not stumble any longer from one system to the other like an albatross with its wings clipped searching for a missing captain.
She'd disappeared at the end of a trade deal on Ouyen, discussing much needed dilithium, food, maps, information. The usual stuff Voyager is in so desperate need every few months.
Four days later, they'd tracked her down to a slave market on Prahran, only to miss her by a few hours. Tom thought Chakotay was going to order the planet to be razed to its bedrock. He was not going to argue after seeing the saleyards with their foul-mouthed bidders standing on walkways high above the pens full of people, dirty, exhausted and lost; the guards with neural whips, and the drone-like voices of the auctioneers selling the men, women and children as if they were cattle.
They'd done all they could, followed every lead, used every Starfleet tactic and quite a few others to track the captain down.
"Course set, Commander."
"Warp eight. Engage."
The bridge screen shows nothing more than streaks of light for the first time in months. Voyager is back on course to the Alpha quadrant. Janeway is safe. Surely, that is all that counts.
And yet, he can't help feeling guilty it took them so long to get her back.
###
Tuvok
"Commander Tuvok, the Captain's medical files are confidential, and she has not agreed to the disclosure of her medical information. She is also the highest-ranked commanding officer on this ship. I therefore cannot discuss her condition with anybody but her."
"Your wish to protect the Captain's privacy is praiseworthy, Doctor. However, it's in the interest of this crew to ascertain if she is fit to resume her position. She has experienced extremely trying circumstances for quite a long period."
"I can assure you that a couple more days of rest in her quarters will see the captain well on her way to a complete physical recovery. She has been most insistent to be back on the bridge as soon as possible."
It is not the captain's physical well-being Tuvok is concerned about after watching the numbness that shrouds Janeway like a tight-fitting cloak since her return. The lack of annoyance in the Doctor's voice, his usual tone when discussing the captain's health, confirms Tuvok's unease. As much as the EMH is only a hologram, the matrix he was created from is very much human, and humans have a surprising, if rarely used gift of revealing much by saying very little. That much Tuvok has learned working beside them for many decades.
"If you don't mind, I have a couple of patients waiting," the Doctor says after a few seconds where more has been exchanged between the two men than in the whole of four years.
The captain is back in her command chair two days later. Tuvok's disquiet grows as silence and stillness suffocate the bridge.
###
Harry Kim
Somebody has moved the captain's Ready room desk closer to the door, and her back is to the wall now. Her hand clamps around the cup when he approaches. Coffee sloshes onto the table top, but Harry pretends he's seen nothing.
He carefully places the PADD a few inches from the small brown puddle and takes a step back. She watches his movements with the same intensity and wariness as that cat with a broken leg he'd found in the alleyway behind the house one day when he was twelve or thirteen. The vet had said it'd been mauled by a dog most probably. He'd stated it was too traumatised to treat and the compassionate thing to do would be to put it down.
Harry hadn't listened of course, and had brought the cat home, its bone reset. For days, it hid behind the couch, trembling, shaking, hardly eating anything, because even if the leg didn't hurt anymore, there are much deeper wounds she remembers. And when she looks at him, all he can see is fear.
The cat had escaped one morning, tearing through the opened front door. It vanished into the terrifying world outside, and Harry never saw it again.
He wants her to feel safe, to not shudder at sudden noises or jump at a loud voice coming from the bridge.
"Dismissed." A week back in the command chair, and her voice still sounds like gravel falling over rocks.
"Yes, Ma'am. Sorry, Ma'am."
As he leaves the ready room, he feels her eyes on him, eyes so big they were the only sign she was still alive when she returned to the ship.
He is not one of them. He is not a stranger. She shouldn't be afraid of him.
But he does not know how to tell her that.
###
Tuvok
"What can I do for you, Tuvok?"
"The question is more how can I help you, Captain."
"I am fine, thanks to you from what I've heard."
"My part in your rescue was but small. A matter of logical inferences, that is all."
Following leads from bribed officials, paying whatever was asked for in exchange for meagre information, tracking down rumours and transaction ledgers, they'd finally traced a woman fitting her description among a lot of three hundred slaves sold to an Ahmaric mine owner. All purchased very legally from the C'ltuth, the Ahmaric government had said. The C'ltuth had gotten their cargo as part of a packaged deal in exchange for some farming equipment from the Djuki Mala, who had acquired what seemed to have been a planet-worth of people from a fleet of Relac traders. How the captain had gone from Ouyen to Prahran to Relac, Tuvok has never found out.
"No hunch? No gut feeling?" she asks.
She does not smile. Her repartee is nothing more, he senses, than words pulled from her memory and strung together for his sole benefit. As if all human feelings behind those words, what impart meaning to them, have been deliberately discarded.
If she were Vulcan, he would think her well on her way to recovery.
"No, Captain."
"So, what brings you here?"
Her hands flutter over PADDs and an empty coffee cup. She is already tired of his attention, of his unasked questions she has no intention of answering.
He wants to say, You, my friend, but it is too early. Or too late. So, they talk about security rosters instead, and the silence remains.
###
Chakotay
Ever since she's been back on duty, she's gone straight to her quarters after pulling two shifts in a row. In his opinion, she's killing herself.
"Please, come and have dinner with me. In the mess hall, if you prefer."
He thinks she'll be less likely to bolt if she is around people.
She glances behind her as if to check her escape route, and it takes all his self-control not to reach out and hold her tight.
"Thank you, Chakotay, but I'll eat in my quarters."
He forgets about his vow not to pressure her, to let her be, to wait for her to ask for help even as he is sure she will not. Without thinking, he takes two steps forward, looming over her. "Kathryn, don't…"
Isolate yourself. Ignore what has happened. Shut me off.
Her face turns paler than he thinks is possible, and she blinks, eyes fixed on him. This close to her, it does not take him long to realise she is petrified, holding her breath and frozen to the spot until he retreats slowly, his hands opened.
"I am sorry, Kathryn. I am so sorry."
She's shaking so much, it takes her two tries punching her access code—a new one he's noticed—before the door to her quarters opens and she disappears inside.
Chakotay stands in the corridor long after her door has swished closed. Then he turns back and goes to the holodeck.
###
Tom Paris
He remembers his mother looking at his dad the same way the crew look at Janeway.
At the time he'd been just a kid. Pretty clueless in any case, but even then, Tom knew something bad had happened to his father after his last stint as captain of the Al Batani heading the Arias expedition. Something big. Something that would colour their relationship for years to come. Not that the breakdown between the two of them was entirely his father's fault. Far from it. Well, not entirely anyway.
But it's the same expression, and with the benefits of a decade of personal disasters, Tom knows how it feels to be at the receiving end of the sad looks that follow the captain, the conversations coming to an abrupt end when she enters a room. Pity is not a sentiment he likes to see in others' eyes.
###
Neelix
He stirs a large bubbling pan, large red drops splashing over the rim, and tosses in more chillies.
They'd made more first contacts over the twelve weeks the captain went missing than in the previous twelve months, and the ship's food stores are stacked. Not that Voyager had found much to trade for. The main economy in the entire sector they've left is based on indentured workforce and slavery. Settlements are raided, people snatched, traded, bartered, bought and moved around at the speed of light. Those who resist, those who refuse to accept their lot, learn fast.
The pan flares, and he jumps back, the flames singeing the low ceiling.
He didn't know. He is just a rough-around-the-edges trader who should have tried harder to confirm the vague warnings he'd heard years ago about the Ouyen sector. He's been wrong before, his knowledge based more on hearsay than personal experience the further Voyager hurtles away from his old trading routes. Soon, he'll have nothing more to rely on than folktales and myths. As a trader, he used to make a good living based on such information. But this ship needs more, and its captain has always given Voyager what it needs, even if it almost cost her her life.
What has this ship ever done for her in return? he asks himself, wiping his face. He keeps her coffee pot full at all times, and that's about it.
He can't think what else he can do for her and he is panicking.
This story was greatly inspired by Primary Emotion, a Stargate SG-1 story by amaradangeli, available on Archive of Our Own.
I thank my two betas, BlackVelvet42 and CarlynRoth for their terrific work.