notes: Wow look at me getting this out early! Some people begged, and I relented. (They didn't have to beg all that hard.) I hope you enjoy!

Part X: Curare

Two hours after finally falling asleep, Chakotay jerked awake to the incessant beep of his combadge. He rolled over groggily, slapped his hand down on the badge, and mumbled a bleary, "Chakotay here."

"Commander." It was The Doctor. "We need you."

Chakotay was out of his bed and halfway to the door, throwing a loose shirt on over his sweatpants, almost before The Doctor's voice had died away. Pinning his combadge to his shirt, Chakotay all but ran for his door, colliding with a table's edge on the way.

Kes opened Kathryn's door at the first chime. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and dark, and if he had not already heard it in The Doctor's voice, Chakotay would have known then that something was horribly, dreadfully wrong.

"She's in here, Commander," Kes said, then turned and led him through Kathryn's living room, her bedroom, and into the bathroom.

Kathryn was screaming. She was laid out on the floor, stripped down to bra and underwear, and as another weak, barely audible scream escaped her cracked and bleeding lips, Chakotay watched in horror as she arched up and back, smashing her head into the floor and contorting her spine into an awful, cracking curve. Her eyes were open and glassy, unseeing, her legs spasming beneath her. Her right hand grasped empty air; the Doctor held her left.

"Commander," The Doctor said with a gasp of relief, looking up to see Chakotay and Kes standing in the doorway. "Thank you for coming."

"What do you need?" Chakotay asked, brushing past Kes to kneel by Kathryn's side. She screamed again, and Chakotay moved just in time to prevent her from cracking her head against the edge of the sink cabinet as she thrashed.

"Her fever spiked," The Doctor explained. His voice was terse, edged with barely restrained fear. "We need to get her into the tub—but I'm afraid she's going to hurt herself."

"What do you need?" Chakotay asked again.

The Doctor looked at him, then looked at Kes, then down at Kathryn who had at last relaxed into a slump. She was panting heavily, and though her eyes were still open, Chakotay could tell that she was not seeing the ceiling above them.

"Get into the tub," The Doctor ordered. "Kes and I will lift her in. We're going to need you to hold her—though not too tight. I don't want her hurting herself because you're holding her too tightly when she goes into another seizure."

Chakotay nodded. "Okay," he said. "I can do that."

He stood and crossed to the tub. It was filled a little less than halfway with water barely cooler than room temperature. He stepped over the low tub wall, then sat down slowly with his back against the front ledge. The water soaked his pants and the lower half of his shirt almost instantly, sticking the cloth to his skin and splashing onto his arms and chest.

"Ready?" he heard The Doctor say. "I want to get this done before she has another one."

"Yes," came Kes's calm reply.

Then the two appeared in Chakotay's line of sight. Kes held Kathryn's legs, while The Doctor supported her head and shoulders. The moved carefully, deliberately, but with an air of barely-restrained haste. Chakotay did not want to think about what might happen if Kathryn had another fit while they were in the middle of carrying her.

Chakotay opened his arms, and as The Doctor and Kes moved to lower her over the edge and into the tub, he placed his left hand in the small of her back, helping to guide her down. For half a moment it was an awkward tangle of arms and hands and Chakotay's legs, Kathryn's limp body the center point of a flurry of uncoordinated movement—and then she was down, sliding into the temperate water and into Chakotay's arms.

She screamed.

Chakotay's arms tightened instinctively around her as Kathryn thrashed, too hot skin coming into sudden contact with the lukewarm water. She fought his hold, fought the water, and above it all she screamed again, a high, keening pitch that made Chakotay's teeth ache and his ears ring.

And then The Doctor's voice, rising high above hers, shouting in his ear. "Loosen your hold, Commander. Loosen your—"

Chakotay loosened his grip. Kathryn thrashed, clawed at Chakotay's arms and the sides of the tub—and then, abruptly, she went completely still.

"Kathryn?" Her name came unbidden to Chakotay's lips. She trembled in his arms, her entire body shuddering as wave after wave of tremors wracked her bones. Her back was propped up against his chest, and as he slid down a little deeper into the water, he felt her hands close over his clasped across her stomach.

A hand fell on Chakotay's shoulder. "Very good, Commander," came The Doctor's, as if through cotton. Chakotay looked up, barely seeing, barely hearing—the only thing that seemed to exist in the same reality as him was Kathryn, lying trembling and gasping in his arms. "Keep her like that for a few minutes."

She whimpered. He could feel it in his arms, in his chest. Her breath came in little gasps that sounded painfully like choked sobs.

"Doctor," Chakotay said, blinking and focusing on The Doctor's face, lined with worry. "Are you sure this is necessary?"

"I've never in my existence seen a fever spike as rapidly as hers just did," The Doctor said. "If we had tried any subtler ways of slowing its progress, I am afraid we might have lost her. Which is to say: yes, Commander, this is necessary. It will only be for a few minutes, though."

Chakotay nodded. He turned back to Kathryn, cradled between his legs, between his arms. "It's going to be okay," he murmured, lost again already in the world that existed only between him and Kathryn. "This is going to be over soon."

She whimpered in reply, and Chakotay wondered if she could understand him.

"Just hold on, Kathryn," Chakotay whispered, bending his head down so that he was speaking against her ear. Her hair stuck to his cheek. "This is going to be over soon. Just hold on."

~*x*~

Tom dropped his bowl of oatmeal down on the table and flopped into a chair. "Good morning," he said cheerfully.

B'Elanna, seated on the other side of the table, glared at him. "Take it down about seven notches," she said, voice only a little kinder than a growl.

"Oh, but B'Elanna," Tom chirped, "isn't it just a wonderful morning?"

"Maybe eight," was B'Elanna's retort.

Tom turned to Harry, sitting beside him. "And what about you?" he asked. "Are you Grumpy Pants this morning too?"

"No," Harry said blithely. "But then again I wasn't up until 0430 working on the warp core either."

Tom grimaced, looking back at B'Elanna. "0430?" he repeated.

"Yep."

"Ouch."

"Yep."

"How's it coming?" Tom asked.

"Worse than expected," B'Elanna said unhappily. "It's probably gonna be at least another three days before we can do any better than impulse."

"That bad, huh?"

Harry elbowed Tom in the side. "If you'd been down here on time, you would have already heard B'Elanna wax long and not-poetic about it."

B'Elanna mimed throwing a spoon of oatmeal at Harry's head. "I'm plenty poetic."

"Not when you're running on an hour and a half of sleep," Harry replied.

"I have to agree with Harry on that," Tom said.

"Fine, Mr. Bright Shoes," B'Elanna grumbled.

Tom sobered. "But really, repairs are going that badly?"

B'Elanna nodded. "When it's this bad, the captain is usually down in Engineering helping out. She hasn't been down since the first evening, though."

Tom shared a glance with Harry. Harry looked back at him with half a frown—which deepened when he saw the darkness in Tom's expression.

"What is it?" he asked.

Tom hesitated only for a second. Leaning in, he said quietly, "I think something's really wrong with Captain Janeway."

B'Elanna looked from Tom to Harry, then back to Tom. "Why do you think that?" she asked. "I mean, it's odd that she hasn't been around, but that doesn't mean something's wrong."

"I talked to Chakotay last night," Tom said. "He was exhausted. And he all but bit my head off when I asked if he was okay."

"We're all exhausted," B'Elanna pointed out. "And no offense, Tom, but you're not exactly someone who commonly asks after Chakotay's wellbeing. He probably thought you were up to something."

Tom glanced at Harry again, who looked somber. "True," he said, turning back to B'Elanna, "but Harry and I found out the other night that the captain's sick."

"Okay," she said slowly. "That still doesn't mean something's really wrong. We would hear if she was in any danger, wouldn't we?"

"Would we, though?" Tom asked. "She wasn't on the bridge at all yesterday."

"She wasn't," Harry agreed. "Which I thought was odd, but the commander didn't say anything, and neither did Tuvok."

"Maybe she just doesn't want to get anyone else sick," B'Elanna said. "Seriously, you two are acting like there's some conspiracy going on."

"We didn't say conspiracy." Tom looked at Harry, and Harry shook his head. "We're just saying that something is wrong. I mean, have you ever known the captain to not be down in Engineering when Voyager's in as bad of shape as she is right now?"

"No," B'Elanna admitted. "But still—"

"It's just weird," Tom said, cutting in. "You have to agree with that much, at least."

"It is weird," B'Elanna conceded. "I still don't know that it's as much of a big deal as you're making it out to be."

Tom rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair. "Who would have ever thought you'd be the voice of reason?"

"When it comes to you two, plenty often," B'Elanna shot back.

"Let's see if she's on the bridge today," Harry said, dragging the conversation back to topic before it could spiral in yet another friendly argument. "If she's not, Tom or I will say something to Chakotay or to Tuvok. Surely we're not the only ones who'll have noticed, and who will have questions."

"And if she is?" B'Elanna asked.

Tom shrugged. "Then you were right, and she probably just didn't want to get anyone else sick."

B'Elanna nodded, satisfied, and took a final bite of oatmeal. "Well," she said, dropping her spoon into the empty bowl, "let me know what happens."

"We will," Harry said.

"Okay. Well then, I'll see you two at dinner," B'Elanna said, and stood.

Harry and Tom watched her walk away, then turned to each other.

"You really think something is wrong?" Harry asked Tom softly.

"I do," Tom said. "You didn't see Chakotay last night."

Harry shook his head, sitting back. "But why would they keep something like that from us? Don't we have a right to know if something is wrong? She's our captain."

"I know," Tom agreed. "But you know how Chakotay and Tuvok are."

Harry snorted. "Sure. But still."

"Which is why," Tom said, finally digging into his own oatmeal, "if she's still not on the bridge today, we'll ask them about it. And we'll do it in front of everyone, so that they can't just sidestep the question."

"Okay. But you'd better hurry up and finish eating," Harry said, "or we'll be late for duty. And I doubt that'll be a very good start, if we're going to try to question either of them."

Tom took two more heaping bites, then nodded. "Okay," he said, standing quickly. "Let's go."