Katrina wasn't sure if she had any belief in a higher power; but they said non-believers were hard to find on a ship that was going down. If there was somewhere to go when you died, then she was sitting in limbo and waiting was her purgatory. It was getting hard to decipher where the lines between heaven and hell were anyway. Hell was the intermittent spells of torture at the hands of brutal captors. She refused to answer their questions, giving her name, number and rank, they in turn invented new ways to extract information. Ending her torture would mean she had broken and told them what they wanted to know, but the blissful end to a long and painful struggle, would plunge her into a new Hades, one where she had betrayed Starfleet, betrayed her friends, those she…cared for was as far as she could take that. Talking would mean her life had no further value to the Klingons, she might be shipped to Q'onoS for new forms of degradation and torture; she might be permitted to pass on to the next world, if there was one. The final punch to the face came hard, the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth and nose, then she was shrouded in the dark.
Her unconscious thoughts should have been dark nightmares, but in a testament to the strength of the human psyche, her's at least, her mind took her away from all this, to a safer place, to moments that although happy, were still tinged with a sheen of sadness. Heaven on the surface, its own kind of hell if she thought too hard about what might have been and what couldn't have been. She was young in her dreams, naïve and wide-eyed, full of ambition, with a burning desire to make the difference, no, to be the difference and so was he. Gabriel Lorca, young, idealistic, reckless and handsome. Well matched in spirit and determination, eyes fixed on the prize of a captain's chair long before he'd ever done as much as graduate.
Back in her cell now she plunged back into purgatory: waiting. Perhaps the struggle with waiting was indicative of the human condition, people wanted everything instantly. Waiting for things proved a hellish challenge. It was endless. Either waiting for the suffering that lay beyond the doors when they dragged her from her cell and returned her to perdition, or waiting for the jubilation of rescue that when she searched her soul, deep down she believed would never come.
She drifted in and out of sleep, dozing for short spells, ripped from her dreams by every clank of mental and moan from neighbouring cells. When she did sleep she dreamt of the final day at the Academy. Blue, cloudless skies and the bright sun beaming down on optimistic young cadets. His face, his mouth crooking into the wicked smile of a beautiful devil, his eyes twinkling in the sunlight, shining amongst rows of crisp new uniforms, the ceremony had just ended. The air buzzed with the excitement of every new venture and posting. Gabriel found her in the crowd, he pretended to bump into her, she knew he'd sought her out. Back then he was far more open, saw no need to conceal his intent: the innocence of youth.
"You gonna miss me, Kat."
"Maybe, a little," she said coyly.
"It wasn't a question, you are gonna miss me, I'll give you a little something to remember me by if you play your cards right tonight." His unwavering over-confidence was hard to counteract. Kat sucked in her cheeks and tried to fight her urge to smile and give in too easily. She knew she would drink until dawn then they would find each other in the crowd and stagger home together.
"I have a feeling you're a hard man to forget."
"That's me, unforgettable and hard," he waggled his eyebrows and she laughed.
"I meant more like a bad penny that just keeps on turning up, uninvited. You try to lose them, but no matter what you do, you just can't get rid of them."
"You still going off to study crazy people?" he asked.
"If you mean psychiatry then yes, Gabriel. If I wanted to study crazy people considering that stunt you pulled with the shuttle maybe I should get you to be my first research subject. You're lucky to still be here."
The image started to blur in her mind, his answer muffled and lost. She'd have sworn she could feel his fingers brushing hers as she tried to hold the image in focus, but it was gone, melting away as her Klingon overlords returned to administer further torture. She let her mind wander, it settled on the last time she had seen Gabriel. The harsh contrast between her last memory in the dark of his quarters and the scene under the vivid blue sky on Earth evoked almost as much pain as every sharp jab and laceration she endured during questioning.
Kat heard the dull clank of cold metal against metal. Her inquisitor held a steel rail she knew was going to thud against her sooner rather than later. She hung on to the memory of the cocky young man against an azure sky, bold and ready to face anything. The Klingon barked his demand for information again in broken English. She broke from her conventional response.
"Fuck you," she spat. Gabriel would have approved.
She felt the first few thuds then her mind took her elsewhere. Back to another world, filled with wide open space and lush green fields. It was the first time they had shore leave at the same time, it felt like an eternity had passed since graduation.
"Where are we going?" she demanded to know, as Gabriel dragged her on by the hand. "You know civilisation is that way," she gestured in the opposite direction.
"Civilisation will be there when we get back." He drew her in, she allowed it. Hands snaked down her back, then back up to her hair. Her breath was shorter, he leant in to kiss her and she kissed back, surprised at the delicate softness, surprised and the sounds and feelings it created. She had missed him.
Kat remembered vividly the wounded look on his face when she had told him her promotion would pull them apart for the foreseeable future. She could read his face so well back then, she could see it hurt him. These days she couldn't tell what was real and what was a clever act to conceal the darkness that lurked beneath. He'd always bent the rules, maybe even played by his own, but she generally knew how he was feeling. Now she couldn't tell if his smile was real or just a veil to disguise how broken he was, or even if it was the grin of a madman. She could no longer trust her instincts or rely on their past.
Slumped back in her cell, her will was close to breaking. There were no heroes in war. Philippa Georgiou, a fearlessly brave but compassionate Captain, a credit to Starfleet, now nothing but a ghost. Countless thousands, the casualties of war, all reduced to memories and a posthumous decoration. Even Gabriel, though blood was still pumping through his body, something had died in him that might never spring back to life; it was optimism. His soul was a darker place. Brave to the last, but a shell of a man. She wanted to curl up and let the dark take her. Her pride and sense of duty wouldn't allow it. If so many could sacrifice so much, she could fight on. She could not bring herself to disrespect the echoes of every silenced voice. Kat was going to fight on. It might be a vain hope, but there was still hope. She steeled herself and waited. They'd be back and she'd be ready to face what came.
The torture chamber was hot. Gusts of hot air and floating ash filled Katrina's lungs. She knew those flames weren't for warmth and she had no doubt that burning agony was on its way.
Her mind was the only place of safety, trading the heat of the room for a shady copse and the soft brush of a cool breeze. There amongst the trees they sunk down into the grass, bodies entwined, urgent hands clawing at each other's clothes. Gabriel's mouth at her neck, lost in the moment; lost in each other.
She lay with her head on his chest, basking in the hazy afterglow as he stroked her hair.
"You know I have a new posting. Another week under my own sun, then I'm back out there amongst the stars."
Kat sighed, they were always ships that passed in the night. One or both of them always posted elsewhere, destined to be separated by their own success.
"You gonna miss me?" he said.
She propped herself up to look at him. He had said that before, but this time some of that over-confidence had evaporated. It really was a question this time.
"Yeah, I'll miss you."
That was how it played out. She took comfort in knowing they were never truly apart, but it was only ever a cold comfort, they were never truly together either. Perhaps they had wasted so many years, playing out glittering careers. Now it came to this. That said there was a marked change in him. He wasn't the man he used to be. Bruised and manipulative came to mind. Kat longed for the way it used to be.
They had fought. Not for the first time. His words were harsh, she held on to that feeling of anger and frustration he could easily extract from her, it gave her strength for the fight she was in with her own body and gave her a tangible focus to distract herself from the burning pain that ricocheted around her body. He told her being an Admiral was only ever a walk on part in the war, that it was easy to wade in after the event and criticise, or see things in such sharply defined black and white when you were light years away from the heat of the moment, with only a split second to make life or death decisions that could have repercussions that rippled across the fleet. Holding the moral high ground was so much easier from a back office. Maybe he was right. She certainly couldn't do anything from here. Her lead role was confined to a cage. Perhaps that was true of Michael Burnham. Her fleeting but pivotal role sparked this and now she was confined, the bars of prison replaced with a new kind of cage, albeit a gilded one.
Kat's pain was starting to subside. She wondered if she did come out of this alive if she'd be just as broken as Gabriel. Equals once more. Two very lost souls, high-profile enough to be watched intently, kept in a fish bowl by Starfleet's elite, trying to keep their heads above water but swimming against the tide. If she could go back, would she do anything differently? She didn't know, but with Gabriel she had been running over the same ground for decades. A game of cat and mouse, who would break first. They'd have the same fight on a loop. She'd tell him he was reckless, he'd tell her she was uptight and too caught up in protocol, they'd wind up rolling into bed together like they were still two cadets. She dwelt on the same old fears. That she would end up alone, that she had let something special slip by, that time was her enemy.
In a sea of pain and anger, his face kept her going, gave her hope beyond all hope that Discovery, that Gabriel would come and get her any day now. They had moved her to a thankless place full of bodies, full of their own kind.
"Oh Gabriel," she whispered aloud. The door started to open.
"I wish you were here."