Notes: Sorry for the delay in posting. I hope y'all will appreciate the irony as much as I have, but I've been incredibly sick with the flu for the last couple of days, and haven't been able to do much except watch TV and sleep (and even only barely that). I will say, though, that it's been a great learning experience as well as inspiration for this story. Which I realize now is kind of sad maybe, that my big takeaway from this is "Now I can write this fanfic better!", but ah well.
Part IV: Pavor
Lieutenant Tom Paris dropped his plate on the table opposite Chakotay. "Mind if we join you?" he asked, and then sat without waiting for a reply. Behind him, Ensign Kim shuffled back and forth for a few seconds, glancing from the back of Tom's head to Chakotay, before sitting slowly in the chair beside Tom.
Chakotay, a spoon of leola root stew halfway to his lips, looked up from the padd by his elbow and leveled an unwelcoming stare at his new-come companions. "What can I do for you, gentlemen?" he asked, returning the spoon to the bowl.
"We were just wondering—" Tom glanced at Harry, who gave the barest hint of a grimace and nod, urging him on. "—wondering what was wrong with the Captain."
"Wrong with the Captain?" Chakotay repeated. He felt his fingers go a little numb, and a small tooth of irritated worry bite into the pit of his stomach—though the uneasy sensation could also be from the leola stew, he reasoned. "What do you mean?"
Tom pulled a face, a twisted paradigm of a pig's snort, and even Harry's reticence cracked to reveal a sliver of impatience.
"I'm pretty sure you know just what we mean," Tom said shortly. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. "Ever since that solar storm, she hasn't been quite…right."
Chakotay let out a long, slow sigh and sat back in his chair. He folded his hands in his lap, and smoothed his expression into one befitting a patient commanding officer. "And you agree with Tom, Harry?" he asked, looking at the young ensign.
Harry hesitated, looking once more to Tom, before saying, "Well, yeah. She's been quieter than normal, and she just—she doesn't look good."
So much for me being the one to blow the whistle on her, Chakotay thought with a touch of dry amusement. Seems you did that just fine on your own, Kathryn. Not, though, that she would ever be willing to admit that, Chakotay knew.
"Does anyone else share your sentiments?" Chakotay asked.
"Sure," Tom said, with a half-aborted shrug of his narrow shoulders. The movement made him look like a bird about to lean out of his chair and take to flight. "I mean, no one's really talking about it, but people are worried."
Chakotay fought to keep from rubbing his temples. "I see."
"Well?" It was Harry who spoke, to Chakotay's mild surprise.
In a moment of brash resolution, Chakotay made his choice.
He leaned forward once more, lowered his voice, and confessed, "The Captain's not feeling well. It's nothing serious," he assured them quickly. "She'll be fine in a couple of days."
Tom and Harry nodded slowly, their eyes wide. Neither of them had known the indomitable Kathryn Janeway to be sick before—and though he was loath to admit it, Chakotay realized then, watching something in their eyes break and reform, that Kathryn was painfully right. She was more than human to her crew; she was the Captain, and captains were meant to stand above their crew, meant to be great, meant to be more than simply mortal. Both Tom and Harry had seen her wounded before, had seen her exhausted, and worn to the bone, and barely able to stand from bloodless and sleep deprivation. But there was nothing quite so humanizing as realizing that their captain was afflicted with something so common as sickness.
"I tell you both this not so that you can go tell everyone," Chakotay hurried on, fixing both of the young men with hard almost-glares. "This stays between the three of us. I told you two this so that you can help minimize any rumors—or concern—the crew might spawn. I know you two," and he looked at Tom and raised his eyebrows, "are at the heart of the gossip factory on this ship.
"Chakotay," Tom said with a gasp, placing a hand over his heart as if struck.
Chakotay's eyebrows crept another fraction of an inch up his forehead. "Tom."
A beat, wherein Tom opened his mouth as if to argue—only to receive a gentle tap in his side from one of Harry's elbows. Then, "Okay fine. Don't worry. We'll help."
"The Captain doesn't want this getting out," Chakotay said. "If she knew I'd even told you two, she'd have me flayed."
Tom grinned. "Don't worry," he said again. This time, though, he sounded sincere.
"The secret's safe with us," Harry added.
"It'd better be," Chakotay warned.
Chakotay watched the two friends leave, carrying their food with them to a larger table where B'Elanna and the Delaney sisters met them a few minutes later.
His appetite soured, Chakotay cleared his table and left the mess hall. He walked through the corridors for an aimless minute, lost in his thoughts and the tooth buried in his stomach. When he reached the turbolift, though, he paused. He felt the weight of the padd in his hand, and the metal fasteners holding his pin of command against his neck, and the tightness in his legs and back and bones from the long day. Standing in the sudden, cool silence of the corridor, with the hum of the engines beneath his feet and the hush of the air vents above him, Chakotay's skin pricked and sparked with a flare of remembered pain—of white light scorching, of blisters rising and bursting.
"You may experience some phantom pains for a few days," the Doctor had told him, and the rest of the bridge crew, after treating their solar burns. "Thanks to me you won't have any nerve damage, but nerves really don't appreciate being scorched."
Chakotay wondered if Kathryn had been to see the Doctor for her radiation treatment that day. He doubted it.
Mind made up, Chakotay stepped into the turbolift, and ordered, "Deck three."
There was no answer when Chakotay rang the chime at Kathryn's door. He waited for a long thirty seconds, then rang it again. Again, no answer.
Chakotay frowned. He took step away from her door, telling himself she was in bed or in the bath, and he shouldn't be bothering her.
He took a step back toward her door. Lifted a hand to ring the chime again. Hesitated.
Don't infringe on her personal space, Chakotay told himself sternly. She won't appreciate your hovering.
He turned, and was halfway to his own door when the tooth of worry grew into a jaw. It seized his gut, clenching his stomach between teeth of uncertainty. He stopped, feet anchoring to the floor, his entire spirit and body shrieking in silent warning.
Wrong way.
The words echoed through his mind, through his bones, through his blood. His breath came hard and fast against his lips, and his nails bit into his palms. The jaw sank its teeth deeper, and deeper still, until his stomach clenched in an anxious vice.
He and Kathryn were close—closer than he had been to anyone in his life, save perhaps his sister Sekaya. He and Kathryn knew each other's minds, each other's thoughts and feelings. Reading her was like breathing, knowing her like smiling.
Something was wrong. He knew something was wrong.
It was time to stop ignoring his instincts.
"Computer," Chakotay called out, turning back, "locate Captain Janeway."
[Captain Janeway is in her ready room.]
Chakotay stood, rooted to the spot for a fraction of a second. Then a curse, and a burst of energy, and he was all but running.
There was no answer to the chime at her ready room door—just as there hadn't been when he had tried to go to see her at the end of his shift, to make certain she left the bridge. There was no answer to the frantic pounding of his fist against the door, either.
He tried the door panel. Nothing. He rang the chime, and pounded again.
"Dammit, Kathryn," Chakotay pleaded, soft and nearly silent beneath his breath. "Answer the damn door."
Silence.
"Computer, override privacy lock on Captain's ready room, authorization code Chakotay Alpha Tango Five Eight Nine."
[Privacy lock overridden.]
The door slid open on silent runners. Chakotay stepped inside.
On the floor, halfway to the couch beneath the viewport, lay Kathryn.
She appeared to be unconscious, though her eyes were slit open just enough for Chakotay to catch a glimpse of glassy blue and bloodshot white as he knelt beside her. She lay half on her side, half on her stomach, one hand caught beneath her chest unable to reach her commbadge, the other stretched out as if she had tried to pull herself forward. Her skin was ash-white and scorching dry, like bone and acid and plaster. When he touched her, he could not help but hiss—with expected pain, with sympathy—for her skin seared his palms.
She was burning.
As he rolled her over, her hand fell against his leg. He pressed a cool palm against her cheek, already reaching for his commbadge, murmuring again and again, "It's going to be alright, Kathryn. I'm getting you to the Doc."
Her fingers tangled in his pant leg. Her lips moved.
Chakotay hesitated. He told himself it wasn't just a trick of his mind, desperate for her to be all right.
He leaned down.
She moved, her fingers twisting against his leg, her head tilting half an angle so she could look at him. Her breath labored in her chest, dry and hot and rattling. Her lips moved again.
"You came." Her voice was less than a whisper and little more than silence. "You—"
She fell limp.
Chakotay slapped his commbadge. "Chakotay to Sickbay. Medical emergency. Two to beam out."