Disclaimer: Paramount owns all of our souls…if we want them back we have to write nice things…so until I can find a better way to fight them…
Summery: J/C. They should know better by now. *smiles * Please R&R
You would think that after 5 years, the two of us would have learned that going on away missions together only got us into trouble. The curiosity isn't a good mix. Then you throw the stubbornness in, that's a big help. Mind you when the two of us ended up walking off the cliff, I wasn't all that surprised. I'm just a slow learner that's all.
"You hurt?" He asked me once we had recovered from our fall.
"I don't think so. At least not seriously." I told him. I got to my feet and brushed my self off. I looked up to the ledge that we had walked off of. Normally a tricorder would have picked detected the drop off, but there was a large amount of unknown energy blocking the signal; which is ironically what drew us towards it in the first place.
"Chakotay to Tuvok" He said tapping his commbage. There was no answer.
"Janeway to Tuvok" I said seconds later. Still there was no answer.
"The energy we detected must be blocking our signal." He said looking at me.
"Well there has to be a way out of this some how." I said looking around. "We could climb up or down."
"Can't go under it, can't go over it, need to go through it." I heard him sing softly to himself.
"What?" I asked with a huge smile.
"An old earth game." He said smiling back. "There is a trail over there. It's possible that it will lead us out of the energy field."
I put my hand out in the direction he was pointing in. "After you." I said.
He smiled at me as he walked by and we started on our way. The trail was steep. Sometimes leading down wards, sometimes up, but always straight. It gave me hopes that maybe we would be out of this thing sooner than we thought. The problem with thinking that things are easy is that they inevitably get worse as soon as you think such thoughts.
I didn't notice a large tree root that jettisoned from the cliffs edge. I tripped on it, catching my foot in the gap between it and the ground. I felt something tear in the back of my leg and something crack in my foot. As much as I wanted to keep going, and not let Him in on it, the scream that escaped gave me away.
"What is it?" He said turning to face me.
"My foot is caught." I said defeated. The amount of pain was astonishing.
He worked to free me from the tree root, finally giving in and using his phaser to cut it into a removable piece. In a perfect world that would have made things better; but this isn't a perfect world, and it only made things worse.
"Do you think you can walk?" He asked hopeful. I gave him a look that could have pushed him off the cliff. "I was just making sure." He said giving me a sad smile.
"Is the energy still strong here?" I asked. This time it was my turn to be hopeful. He took out his tricorder and checked. The look on his face told me everything.
"It's worse isn't it?" I sighed. He nodded.
"We must be in the centre of it." He sighed. He looked down at my leg. "That's only going to get worse. We need to get you back to the ship."
"Tuvok would have sent out a search party by now. He would think to look in this area; I mean someone must have seen us fall off that ledge." I said. It came across a bit breathless. The pain was a bit more than I had expected. It was almost as though there was more to the injury.
"You look a bit dizzy, are you okay?" He asked, putting his hand on my back to steady me.
"I feel rather dizzy." I admitted.
He looked down at the piece of tree root he was still holding in his hands. Something about it caught his attention cause the then put it aside and started looking for something on my foot.
"What is it?" I asked quietly. I put my hand to my head and closed my eyes, just to see if I could get the world to stop spinning for a couple of seconds.
"Poison. I could smell poison on the tree root, and you have a rather large scrape on your foot." He said getting up. "I'm going to carry you to a safer spot at least. There has to be a place around here with some water."
"Why don't you go look and leave me here. It'll make things go a lot faster." I said waving my hand at him.
"I'd like to believe that you're only saying that because of the poison." He sighed. "I will not leave you here on an unknown planet alone. It won't slow me down that much." With that he bent down and picked me up and started on his way. It felt as though he was running, that's how fast he was moving. Mind you I was barely conscious any more.
"Stay with me." He whispered in my ear.
He ran with me like that for quite sometime before setting me down. I heard him take out his tricorder and check the readings. I tried to open my eyes to judge his facial expression, but fail miserably.
I felt his hand on the side of my face. He brushed the hair off my forehead, and then did something I didn't expect: He kissed my forehead softly.
"Hang in there Kathryn. I need you too much for you to leave me now." He whispered softly in my ear. "Chakotay to Tuvok."
"Yes commander?" Tuvok's voice rang through the air.
"Two to beam directly to sick-bay." He said.
"Yes sir." Tuvok replied.
I felt the transporter beam engulf me and instead of the hard tree roots and rocks beneath me, a firm bio bed was there. That's the last thing I remember before waking up in sickbay twenty hours later. The doctor had released me to my quarters with a strict order not to return to duty for at least two weeks, to give my ankle enough time to fully heal. This mean I could return to duty in the next day or so.
The chime at my door rang
"Come in." I said not looking up from my book.
"Glad to see your doing better." He said when he walked in. I couldn't hide the large smile on my face. I look up at him so see he was doing the same.
"Thank you." I said simply. I put my book down and got up, slowly.
"For what?" He asked, looking puzzled.
"Everything you did on the planet." I replied walking over to him.
"I did what I needed to do." He said simply. "I was so afraid that I was going to lose you I didn't even think." He told me quietly.
He bent to kiss my forehead again, but I tilted my head and let my lips meet his. The look of shock on his face was priceless when we parted.
"What was that for?" He asked with a smile.
"Lets just say, I need you too." I said moving in for another kiss.
* END *
~LittleJaneway