Title: The Captain, part 7/15

Author: Becominglight

Rating: M for Mature Audiences

Category: Romance, Angst

Genre: Slash

Pairing: Janeway/Seven

Summary: What happened in the universe where Voygager took 23 years to reach Earth? What really motivated Admiral Janeway to return? Loosly woven through final few season of STV, this is the story of how Janeway the Captain also became Kathryn the woman.

Spoilers: Pretty much the whole series!

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. Please don't sue…

Author's Notes: I wrote this without thinking about slicing this up into sections… so it some may be a bit arbitrary…Please comment, I really appreciate!

Part 7

The cave was dry and that was the most important thing. It was deep enough to be out of the eddies of wind that wipped around the entrance so they moved to the back where it widened like a gourd. Seven lowered Janeway gently onto a patch of dusty dirt and used the light of the tricorder to illuminate the wound, dismayed she knew so little about medicine. Blood was flowing steadily and made it difficult to assess the damage properly. She pulled open the rucksack and was relieved to find a first aid kit, fumbling with the latch to see what was inside. On the floor Janeway groaned.

"Here," Seven said and she injected her with a pain suppressant. Janeway relaxed visibly and lay a moment, drained.

"Thank-you."

Seven was scanning the wound with the tir-corder but it was dishearteningly unhelpful, it was not designed for medical use and merely indicated what she already knew. There was blood and lots of it.

"Kathryn." She said feeling a tinge of panic rise. "I require your help in treating you."

Janeway pulled herself up, trembling with shock and blood loss, to look at her leg for the first time.

"Oh my." She said weakly. "Clean it, have to clean it, then stop blood."

Seven took the drink bottle, dribbling it onto the wound to see where the blood was coming from. She pressed some gauze to the ruptured blood vessle and saw the blood stem with relief. She could now see that there were tiny stones embedded in the flesh, and grabbing a pair of tweezers, began to extract them, the tips scraping gritty as they found purchase. It was slow work made worse by poor lighting. Janeway watched to begin with, but her strength was sapped and she let herself fall back and listened to the moaning echoes of the storm as they reverberated against the granite rock. Finally it was clean and Seven rinsed the wound, sprayed with antiseptic and bound it.

"There," she said as she sat back on her haunches. She propped Janeway against the wall away from the congealed blood and water pooled in the depression of the floor. Placing her hand on her head, as she had seen Neelix do with Naomi Wildman when he was still with Voyager, she could feel clamminess. Janeway's eyes were glazed and her head lolled alarmingly.

"Kathryn?"

The voice sounded distant and unreachable to Janeway's ears and she hummed fuzzily. She felt incredibly heavy, leaden, as though the ground beneath her was made of foam and she was sinking into it. She supposed her blood pressure was low but was too drained to care much. She shivered and felt fingertips brush hair from her face, heard the unzipping of her jacket as Seven removed it, removed her shoes, and the sensation of the survival blanket as it was pulled up, the thin gauze soft on her skin, trapping the heat, warming her up. Seven slid in behind her, pulled her against her body and it felt so good, so soothingly good. Janeway fell asleep.

It was dark when she awoke. She stirred and discovered that she was lying her injured leg perched on Seven's torso, her arm flung over her breast, her face pressed into a soft neck.

"Kathryn?" whispered a voice close to her ear.

"My leg hurts. I need water." She croaked, disgusted by her mealy mouth. She felt Seven shift, heard the unscrewing of a cap and felt the cool edge of the bottle against her lips. The liquid was bliss.

"There is only one pain relief injection left. Would you like it now or later?"

"Later."

She was stiff but didn't want to move. The darkness swallowed up logic, blurred the edges of reality and she felt like the universe had shrunk until the only things that existed were their two bodies cocooned in the blanket, the sound of the storm outside. She fell asleep again, held by strong arms.

In the morning she awoke to the throbbing of her leg.

"Morning." Seven said and brushed hair from her eyes.

"Morning." Janeway said. She was conscious of her body tightly pressed to Seven's. She was conscious of how good it felt and she was now aware of enough to know that this was heading into dangerous territory.

"I'm going to freshen up." She said and extricated herself reluctantly and woozily got to her feet. She felt the static of dizziness envelope her.

"I need your help, Seven." She said feeling weak and hating it.

Seven aided her to the mouth of the cave. Outside the storm raged on, the whipping rain echoed mutely, the lightening slashing across the cloud cover, thunder roaring. If anything the storm had worsened. Janeway furtively tried her comm badge.

She needed to relieve herself, a rather awkward affair given that it was a cave. She glanced back to Seven who had delicately moved away and turned her head. She somehow managed to pull her shorts down. She felt tired and sore. She felt dirty. Her shorts were filthy from the fall and she was sticky from mud and sweat. She caught some water into her cupped hands and washed her face.

Back inside they sat down on the blanket, zipped up in their jackets. Seven peeled away the bloody bandage, exposing the wound all purple and blue, red and swollen. It looked nasty but fine. Seven cleaned, disinfected and redressed it with the remaining clean bandages from the first aid kit.

"Thank-you, Seven." Janeway said sincerely observing her administer to her with meticulous care. "Not just for this, but for saving my life."

"You have saved my life more than once." Seven replied seriously. She moved away to wash the bandages as best she could at the mouth of the cave and came back pink faced and cold. She gave Janeway an energy bar left from their lunch and they shared it. The other they kept for later. They drank the water form their water bottle and sat, knowing there was nothing they could do until the storm passed.

They were two peas in a cavenous pod, isolated by the storm, under siege. The world ended at the cave of the mouth, the sheets of rain were like veils that lead into realities that did not quite exist in their little patch of calm. They sat and watched the rain fall over the cave mouth. They had somehow edged into each other over the course of the hour, until their sides were touching. And then somehow their hands were interlaced, quite naturally, quite delightfully. Janeway though about letting go but there was something so perfect and right about how they fitted together that it seemed wrong to stop. Or to stop her thumb that lazily caressed Seven's hand, or to stop from leaning her head on that strong shoulder. It was all done in silence, as if not talking meant they weren't really doing what they were doing at all. Weak and tired from loss of blood, Janeway drifted on gossamer wings.