An AU introduction to the whole Voyager series, to put the odd J/C relationship in a different light.
Captain Kathryn Janeway sat watching the man beside her, the near-stranger she must now trust with the lives of all her crew. She had understood him the moment he spoke the words "Captains' Dance." The practice dated from the earliest days of space exploration, long before humans entered the game, although human captains had engaged in the practice from time to time. Starfleet considered it part of the mythology of space travel and took no formal position on its propriety. Janeway had first heard it explained during an Academy training exercise led by a Vulcan professor named Sunek. They were simulating first contact situations when another cadet raised the question of a mysterious ritual known as the Captains' Dance.
Sunek had hesitated, then suspended the simulation to sit the cadets down on a rock outcropping for some impromptu instruction.
"The Captains' Dance," he had explained, "is a highly risky maneuver attempted only in survival situations where trust must be forged quickly. It is possible in first contact situations, and therefore relevant to today's instructional goals. A Captains' Dance takes place in private between two starship captains. During the encounter, the goal is to share the maximum degree of physical and emotional intimacy, to share personal secrets that will allow each captain a rare degree of insight into the other's character."
"Exactly what kind of physical intimacy are you talking about?" asked the cadet who had brought up the subject, a Bajoran named Chalan Morio who specialized in awkward questions. "Do you mean sex?"
Sunek, being Vulcan, did not stumble over his answer. "For Vulcans, who are physiologically incompatible with many Alpha quadrant races, the Captains' Dance typically consists only of a deep mind meld – the deepest form of intimacy for a Vulcan, but not quite the full physical expression of the traditional Captains' Dance. For sexually compatible captains, the ritual means sexual intimacy, an expression of trust and mutual vulnerability that can cement a shaky alliance."
Janeway had ventured a question. "Do the crews know what's going on?" Although she had difficulty imagining circumstances in which she would consider a Captains' Dance, she had far more difficulty imagining how she would explain it to her crew, let alone hold her head up around them afterward.
"A Captains' Dance must be kept strictly private between the two leaders involved, and never mentioned after its conclusion," Sunek had told them. "I warn against it for humans, although I must confess that my one experience with the ritual was a transformative moment in my life. My knowledge of my counterpart added greatly to my own comprehension of her species."
"What species was that?" Chalan Morio had wanted to know.
"I cannot speak of it," Sunek answered.
Young Ensign Janeway had tried to ask more questions about the practicalities of the ritual, but Sunek had changed the subject to a discussion of the next set of tactical challenges in their training exercise. She remembered being very disappointed. She had come across mentions of the Captains' Dance here and there in histories of space travel – Captain Kirk seemed to have been an enthusiastic practitioner – but until this day, she had found nobody willing to discuss what exactly the ritual was. Her father had reacted as if she'd asked about his own sex life and told her she had no reason to know about such things.
Then at the end of the exercise, as they were flying back to the starbase, Sunek had taken a seat beside her and said in a voice only she could hear: "You must only consider a Captains' Dance with a worthy partner, someone with whom you would consider intimacy under less urgent circumstances. Consider carefully, but do not dismiss it out of hand. The value correlates highly with the risk."
Sunek had moved off quickly to finish his report on the training exercise and Janeway had been left with a sense that a door had opened on a dark and dangerous region, with no proper training on how to navigate. Aboard Voyager, faced with a dangerous new quadrant of space to navigate, the memory came back to her as fully formed as if Sunek had spoken his warning the day before.
To be continued….