Disclaimer: I am not making any money of this fic, nor do I own Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation or the original series, or anything else I make references to. If you saw the character on any show, then it is not mine. The same goes for ships, planets, cultures, et cetera. This story will depict a loving relationship between two women and there are no apologies to be made over this. Chapter 4 title is also from "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down.

Genre: Action-Adventure, Drama
Rating: M
Codes: K/7, T/7
Feedback: Please, reviews are the food of the muse…

Home, Chapter 4
If not for me, then you'd be dead...

2373...

Kathryn had not anticipated an actual battle. But that was what she had on her hands. She cleared three sedative loaded darts from her gun before she had it removed from her grasp by a Kazon. That Kazon was down not a second later, courtesy of a dart shot by Chakotay. She smiled at him, but couldn't find her dart gun again so she grabbed up the odd, curving staff that the Kazon had been fighting with. It had bits of cloth tied to one end that mystified her, but it kept the other hand held weapons from touching her.

Jessica was a blur in the fight, her sword clanging against three different opponents' weapons at once, moving faster than Kathryn's eyes could follow. Not that she had much chance to look. It seemed that she defended herself long enough for someone to take her enemy from her only to have another, more experienced fighter on her hands. Her shoulders ached from the blows she delivered with the heavy staff and the deck was slick and cluttered with bodies.

She saw the blade moving towards her head out of the corner of her eyes. She dove. Too late, too slow, too damn bad. She screamed as the blade cut into her flesh, taking it in her left shoulder. Her opponent had gray skin and harsh ridges that disappeared into his blood-red hair from his nose. His eyes were pink and his sneer fell from almost blue lips. It lasted a second, no longer as a blade appeared from the middle of his chest.

Janeway threw up. She had seen bodies, carnage, blood before, but it was too close, the wound in her shoulder too deep and the smell in the room too thick. The next thing she knew, she was being dragged by her good arm to a corner of the room where no one was fighting. Jessica appeared in front of her and offered her a flask of water. Not knowing where it came from, Kathryn drank it. Waves passed in front of her eyes and she wondered if she was going into shock.

She screamed when she felt the burn against her shoulder, but then the pain lessened. Jessica was pulling off her jacket and treating the wound. Kathryn must have passed out because the next thing she knew, her wound was dressed and the battle had died down to a few hand to hands. B'Elanna was fighting another Kazon with a dagger, using her bare hands. Jessica had a sword fight that was slowing down, as both opponents felt the fatigue of prolonged battle. Jessica's opponent was twice her size and her sword went flying from her hands.

The girl didn't waste a second, she flung herself into a roll towards Janeway's fallen weapon and grabbed it up, showing Janeway how the strips of cloth were used, blinding her enemy with it before slamming the other side of the staff into the side of his head, disabling him. The end seemed very sudden, like someone had just shut the battle off. There were no more enemies to fight and even the music paused between songs.

No one was uninjured. Tuvok seemed the least touched, only sporting what promised to be an ugly bruise on his right cheek. Chakotay was limping slightly from a leg wound. Paris was wrapping what remained of his left hand in a white bandage. B'Elanna had blood running down one side of her face and what was left of her jacket had been sacrificed to make bandages.

Jessica had lost one leg of her clothing and she was almost covered in blood of various colors, making it hard to distinguish her own from the rest. The sight of a child covered in blood was almost more than Janeway could bear, but she forced herself to remain calm for her crew and stood up. The pain that burned through her arm wasn't as bad as it had been earlier, so she was able to mostly ignore it.

There was only one other person in the room. She had purple skin, black hair, a set of webbed wings and a long, thick tail. Her golden eyes looked around in fear and she lurched back against the chains holding her to the floor when Chakotay walked near her. She fell against the floor, crying and murmuring something that Janeway couldn't hear.

"Back off a second, Chakotay." Jessica said and he complied. Jessica walked towards the chained woman, cleaning the blood off her skin with a wet cloth she had retrieved from somewhere. She walked up to the frightened woman and demanded, "Why do you cower? Does a male strike such fear into your heart as to cause you to make a fool of yourself in the face of your allies?" It worked and the woman growled, reminding Janeway of a cougar she had once seen in a zoo, on Earth, as a child.

The woman stood tall and proud in the chains. "I am Letraya of the Irxen clan of the Moayan people. I am a warrior healer. I fear no one." Her eyes flashed and her wings tried to spread, but the weight of the chains held them against her back.

"Good. Well, Doctor Letraya, I'm Jessica Rozhenko, of—" Jessica froze as Letraya fell to her knees in front of her. Jessica cleared her throat. "My reputation proceeds me, huh?" Letraya only nodded. "Just call me Jess. Give me a sec and I'll have you out of those chains." Jessica searched through the bodies until she found her sword. Letraya watched her every move and held out her wrists as far apart as they would go for Jessica to cut through the chains. A few minutes of hacking and pulling later, the Moayan woman was free.

"Thank you, Jessica." Letraya said. She smoothed out the ragged loincloth and half-shirt she wore for clothing, which was about the only thing that would fit her unique anatomy.

"Jess," Jessica corrected, looking distracted. She had been wandering in and out of the other cells, but found no more prisoners to free. "Are you all that's left?"

"The other prisoners were taken to other parts of the ship," she agreed. Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose, then covered her eyes with one hand. She took a deep breath, and then gave a sweep of her arm, indicating that they should move out.

"The infirmary is on the next deck, but we'll have to kill the forcefield dividing this part of the ship from the next before we can get up there." Jessica, who moments earlier had been excited and wild, now seemed depressed—her voice dull and her gait no longer floating. B'Elanna trotted up next to her and took her hand. She leaned into the contact, but didn't really cheer up.

She led them to the Aurora's equivalent to a jeffries tube and stopped.

"This it?" B'Elanna asked.

"The controls are in here. I'm not sure how safe this is, though. Maybe you should let me rip it up." Jessica was distant and downcast as she spoke, but the care was in her eyes as she looked at B'Elanna. B'Elanna glared at her.

"I did not come all this way to let you botch this up," she growled. She pushed Jessica out of the way and crawled into the tube. Jessica followed and Janeway ordered Tom, Chakotay and Tuvok to spread out and watch for anyone who might disturb them. She heard the voices of B'Elanna and Jessica, but not the words because of the music. For ten minutes, there was nothing, then suddenly, she heard shouts and she looked into the crawl space to see Jessica and B'Elanna backing out, then an explosion caused her to look away.

Jessica tumbled out of the passage, coughing and reached in to grab B'Elanna by the ankles and pull her out. B'Elanna was clawing at her throat, where an angry welt burned, just below her larynx. Letraya dropped to the floor and began scanning B'Elanna. Finally, she looked at Jessica and shook her head.

"I cannot help her without a surgical center." Jessica shoved her aside and felt B'Elanna's throat. "Her trachea is crushed..." Jessica ignored the healer and pulled out her knife. She stood and yanked open a circuit panel and grabbed some wiring from inside. She cut a piece off, about four inches long and pulled out the wire inside. She hurried back to B'Elanna, who was still conscious and looked into her eyes.

"Do you trust me?" Jessica asked. B'Elanna nodded. Kathryn watched as Jessica pulled out a stiletto that had been hidden inside her boot and held it just below the welt. With a quick motion, she cut B'Elanna's throat open and turned the knife to make a hole exactly wide enough for the piece of tubing that she then inserted. Kathryn heard the hissing from the tube, proof that the primitive tracheotomy had been a success. "Don't try to talk. When we get to the infirmary, the healer can fix your throat, but for now, you'll be able to breathe and that's what's important."

B'Elanna sat up and nodded, touching the wound. Kathryn was impressed.

"Where did you learn to do that?" the captain asked.

"Saw it done once, a long time ago." Jessica got up, took three steps and collapsed, panting against the wall. Immediately, Letraya was scanning her. Jessica tried to shoo her away. "I'm fine."

"You are, in your language, venstru."

"Yeah, so what?"

"You will die soon, if you don't get blood. You have lost too much."

"I'll live long enough," Jessica argued and tried to stand. Letraya pushed her down and glared at her, showing her the readings.

"Choose a donor."

"You are a doctor, you know that it's not that simple." Letraya suddenly turned and began scanning each of Kathryn's people and herself. She looked over the data and pointed to B'Elanna.

"She is a match."

"Of course she's a match, her house is a cousin house to that of my Callayna. We share two races in common. But it's out of the question." With this, B'Elanna stormed up to Jessica and knelt, glaring, in front of her. Jessica looked away and B'Elanna jerked her around to face her. The intense look in her eyes and the way Jessica was flinching told Kathryn that B'Elanna was mentally screaming at the girl. She looked to the healer questioningly.

"What does she want to say?" Latraya asked.

"I don't have to translate for her. This is out of the question." She punctuated each word by pounding her fist against the floor. B'Elanna looked at Jessica and again, the girl flinched. "No!" B'Elanna smacked Jessica upside the ear, producing a yowl from the girl and a dirty look. "Fine. She's asking if I'll live without her help." Letraya turned to B'Elanna and shook her head, no.

B'Elanna once again began glaring at Jessica, who was huddling against herself, looking as if she wanted to sink into the deck plating. She kept shaking her head and B'Elanna held out her wrist. Jessica closed her eyes and covered her head with her arms, burying her face against her knees. B'Elanna slapped her leg and Jessica looked up, her eyes magenta. Kathryn walked towards the huddle, wondering what that color meant. She had noticed that each emotion Jessica felt caused her eyes to change color. Normal for her seemed to be a medium blue.

B'Elanna grabbed Jessica's hand and forced her to look into her eyes. "I can't, Bel. Never a sentient being. What if I can't stop?" B'Elanna pounded the wall three times, as if to say 'I trust you.' Now Kathryn really was confused. She thought that they were talking about a transfusion, though she couldn't see how they planned to do it. Now she knew that they were talking about something else, but what, was beyond her.

Suddenly, B'Elanna grabbed the knife that Jessica had dropped after the tracheotomy and stabbed her wrist. Jessica grabbed both her arm and the knife and tossed it from her. Then she glared up at B'Elanna, who just looked stubborn. Jessica hissed, baring fangs and Janeway couldn't move fast enough to stop the strike. She froze as she watched Jessica jerk her head, biting into B'Elanna's wrist. A moment later, her jaw worked, sucking, against the wound.

Kathryn thought she was going to be sick.

B'Elanna grimaced, as though in pain, then Jessica glanced up into her eyes and B'Elanna just froze, looking as though she was suddenly unaware of what was happening. Janeway thought, wryly, 'Well, maybe if her people came to Earth, this is how the legend of vampires came to be.' After a couple minutes, Jessica licked B'Elanna's wrist clean and then huddled in the corner, refusing to face anybody.

B'Elanna shook herself as if she was coming out of a dream and she looked down at her wrist. It was undamaged. Janeway grabbed the wrist and examined it. Only a slight bruising, like a hickey, remained.

"Are you alright?" Kathryn asked B'Elanna, who nodded. The Moayan healer scanned her and nodded as well.

"Already, she is replenishing what has been lost, which is not enough to drain her. Jessica cannot replenish her own blood supply, so she must take it from others."

"I usually only take from animals. Which I later eat." Jessica said softly, obviously embarrassed. B'Elanna touched her shoulder and she jerked away, huddling further against herself.

"It doesn't make sense, medically, that you drink it to replenish your blood. It would make more sense if you were given transfusions," Janeway said.

"If it's introduced directly into my bloodstream, my body sees it as a pathogen and destroys it. I have a gland in my stomach that converts compatible blood into the type my body uses and then sends it to my bloodstream. Actually, it's only the red blood cells that my body uses. I have white blood cells in abundance." Jessica still didn't turn around and her voice was muffled.

"So your people, the Shashans, are like—" Tom didn't get to finish.

"Not Shashans—venstru. It's from an infection by a snake that was supposedly eradicated five centuries ago. The infection was from the snake's venom, which is acidic and deadly to most species. Shashans have a mutable genome, however, and when the snake bit us, the venom mutated and bonded with our cells, creating physiological changes that, while life threatening, are also beneficiary.

"It caused us to develop a super-platelet, if you will, that can heal wounds at an almost visible rate. It also raises our immune system to almost impregnable standards, including an immunity to all poisons, with the exception of those that attack the blood. To those, we're even more helpless than a normal Shashan. Also, our red blood cells can't hold their cohesion and must be replaced at least once a month.

"Oh, yeah. It makes us really hard to kill, too. Like I said, we can heal almost anything. Short of bleeding to death or cutting off my head, I'm not likely to die by injury." Jessica muttered the last part so quietly that Janeway had to strain to hear over the music.

"So it's only people bitten by the snake that have your... condition?" Janeway asked.

"Or have the venom introduced any other way. In my case, it was a dagger through the heart. I don't know why it laid dormant in me, but it did—for ten years." Kathryn flashed to the scar on Jessica's chest and wondered how young she was when she was infected. "I was a week old." Jessica supplied, obviously reading Kathryn's mind. "I was stabbed with the same infected dagger as my mother. She died, I didn't."

"But I thought you said it made you immune to most injuries," Tom asked.

"The first thing it does when it kicks in, is to kill all the red blood cells in the body. If they're immediately replaced, then you survive. If not..."

"How did you survive a dagger through the heart at such a young age?" Tuvok asked.

"The vennst venom healed it. Like I said, I don't know why I didn't die or why it didn't kill all my red blood cells, I just know that until I was ten years old, I was unaffected."

"So what did you bleed to save your life?" Tom asked.

"My sister. The only other sentient being I've ever taken blood from. And only because she forced it down my throat."

"I am curious," Tuvok began. "You say that you are part Klingon, yet you have no brow ridges. You appear to be completely human, with the exception of your color-changing irises. Yet, you are also Shashan, which I will admit ignorance to the appearance of. Do Shashans look like humans? And is their genetic material so dominant as to completely eradicate the physiology of Klingon, which is known to be a very dominant trait?" Tuvok's questions obviously got Jessica's attention, because she turned to face him.

"Y'know? That's why I simultaneously love and hate Vulcans. Too damn observant for their own good." Jessica stood and faced Tuvok. Then she glanced at Chakotay. "You won't be sick, will you?"

"I was only sick because you didn't warn me," he answered. Kathryn wondered what the hell was going on.

"I'm not giving any warnings today." Suddenly, Jessica's bones seemed to crunch. Her skin literally crawled and small, Klingon ridges appeared on her forehead. Her outfit strained and popped as her body size grew and she gained about three inches, bringing her up to 5'3". Her skin paled, rather than darkened and a line of black 'spots' ran down the right side of her body. Her ears lengthened and thinned into points, longer and thinner than a Vulcan or Romulan. Her eyes widened and her pupils changed shape, constricting to slits. Her nails darkened to black and curled into sharp, thick claws. In the end, she looked like a meld between the boy they had seen earlier, human and Klingon.

"What the hell?" Kathryn asked, both startled and angry at the secret.

"Shashan means 'shape changer,' Captain," Jessica explained.

"Then what do you need us for? You could just turn into a Klingon warrior and get this ship back on your own," Kathryn fumed.

"It's not that easy. Shapes are like fingerprints to a Shashan. We can change into any species we see, but only within our gender, age and approximate size. Also, unless we know the exact makeup of their internal systems, it's just a cosmetic change. Only the most advanced shape shifters amongst us can change their gender or appear to look like someone else. I'm actually really bad at shifting shape. I mean, I'm detailed and all, right down to organs, but it takes a lot out of me and I can only hold the change for up to twenty-four hours. After that, my body reverts to the shape I was born with."

"Which is?" Kathryn asked.

"Human. But this is what I am, genetically. Human, Shashan and Klingon." With that, her outfit chose to rip and show exactly what that meant. Jessica clutched at the leather and cursed. She was clad only in her weapons and their holsters. Everyone tried to look away, but stood, transfixed by what they saw.

Like on a Trill humanoid, the spots went all the way down. But so did the scars. They were on her belly, her ribs and her legs. All different shapes and sizes. When Jessica turned her back to dig in her backpack for something new to wear, Kathryn could see the whip marks down her back, the wound from the arrow and the scar that matched the one over Jessica's heart in front. As she watched, one of the whip wounds ripped and blood ran in a red stream down her back.

Janeway heard Tom's intake of breath and saw B'Elanna flinch, though she had to have seen the wounds earlier. Kathryn felt her heart reach out to the wounded girl. Jessica didn't react, she just threw on another outfit from her bag. She put on black jeans and transferred her weapons holsters from her leather 'pants' to almost blend in with the dark material that she strapped them over. Then she put on a blue bra to holster her breast dagger and a black, loose-fitting shirt to go over it. Finally, she put her boots back on and retrieved the knife that she had thrown earlier and slipped it into her left boot.

"Infirmary's not far. Let's get moving." Jessica pointed the way and the group followed her in silence.

To be continued…