Notes: Technically it's still Saturday where I live, so technically I'm not late. This chapter's only been very briefly (read: sketchily) edited, though - I'm so sorry. Also, I hope you all appreciate the amount of research I did on fever cooling techniques today; I really didn't learn anything new (boo!), but I did manage to give myself a headache trying to slog through a bunch of medical research about cooling methods for hyperthermia (which wasn't even really what I needed, so double boo!). Anyway, I'm really tired so I'm going to bed. (You all don't even need to know that? Oh well.)

I hope you enjoy.

Part V: Metus

"What do you fear, Kathryn?"

The world all around her was dark. She turned, feet planted on shadow, lungs drawing in darkness with quick, shallow breaths that she fought to control.

"Where am I? Who are you?"

A long sigh of silence. The darkness lay still, a flat, depthless eternity on every side.

Then, "Tell me, Kathryn. What do you fear?"

"Who are you?" she demanded, spinning on her heel again, trying—and failing—to pierce the darkness, to see who it was that spoke, to see where it was she stood.

A silent sigh, which shook the wreath of shadows. "You always were a stubborn woman. Very well: you may call me Virgil."

Kathryn narrowed her eyes—a pointless gesture in the darkness, but one that made her feel herself. "Virgil," she repeated. "As in the Roman poet?"

Silence.

"Fine. Virgil," she fought to temper her irritation, to keep her tone as free of condescension as she could, "why am I here?"

"Tell me, Kathryn, what do you fear?"

"Why," Kathryn snapped, balling her hands into impotent fists by her sides, "do you want to know what I fear? What does that accomplish? Who are you?"

"I am Virgil."

"So you've said." She took a long, steadying breath. "But who are you? I have yet to see your face, or your form."

"What do you fear, Kathryn?"

She clenched her jaw to keep from screaming. "Why do you hide?" she ground out instead. "How can I trust any being who is not even willing to show me their face?"

"I have none," came the calm reply. "Not yet."

"Not yet?"

"No. Now, Kathryn, what do you fear?"

Her nails bit into her palms, small crescents of burning pain. "I don't fear you."

"Of course you don't. But surely you must fear something."

"No."

"You are a poor liar, Kathryn."

She fought to swallow a scathing retort. She failed. "So are you," she said. "There are few I cannot lie to—and you are not one of the few." She thought of Chakotay, and of Tuvok, and of her father.

Another sigh—and with it, a crystalline ripple of the darkness. "Very well, Kathryn. We will do this the hard way."

And then she was falling.

~*x*~

"Please state the nature of— What happened?"

Chakotay looked up from where he knelt on the Sickbay floor, bones still tingling from the aftereffects of the transporter. The Doctor hurried forward, not waiting for Chakotay to answer, his lined face stamped with surprised, wide-eyed concern. A medical tricorder was already in one hand.

"I found her on her ready room floor," Chakotay said, scrambling up and back to give the Doctor plenty of room. "She's burning up."

"Of course she is," the Doctor snapped. The tricorder wailed in alarm. "Her temperature is 41 degrees Celsius. Help me get her on a biobed."

Chakotay returned to Kathryn's side and, while the Doctor hovered, still taking readings and mumbling to himself, Chakotay scooped his captain into his arms and carried her to the central biobed. It was, according to everyone but Neelix, the most comfortable one.

The panel slid up and over her, a black carapace that hid all but her neck and pale face. Her head lolled to the side, eyes closed and jaw clenched.

"What's wrong with her?" Chakotay asked.

"Not now, Commander," the Doctor said tersely, and then strode away, holographic mind already spinning a dozen lightyears ahead.

Chakotay held his breath, then let it out on a long count of seven. He stood barely touching the edge of the bed, the knuckles of his right hand resting lightly by her head. The longing to reach out and brush the hair away from her forehead ached in his wrist, in his fingers—and after a long three seconds, he gave in.

She was even hotter than she had been when he knelt by her on her ready room floor.

"Spirits, Kathryn," Chakotay murmured, running the palm of his hand over her hair. "Why didn't you leave early like I told you to? Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?"

She didn't answer him. He didn't need her to.

The bustle of the Doctor's footsteps warned of his return. Chakotay looked up, and saw him coming back with an armful of hyposprays and other various medical equipment Chakotay had no name for, and a very dark look on his face. Chakotay's stomach twisted uneasily.

"First thing's first," the Doctor said, laying his equipment down on a nearby try. "We need to get her temperature down. I've called for Kes, but until she gets here, you're going to have to help me, Commander."

"Anything," Chakotay said instantly.

The biobed's panel slid down at the touch of a button, and the Doctor handed Chakotay a laser scalpel. "Make sure the blade's on its lowest setting, and keep it at least two centimeters from her skin."

"What?" Chakotay asked, feeling dumb.

The Doctor pressed the laser scalpel into his hand. "Her clothes, Commander," he snapped. "Leave her undergarments, but the rest need to come off."

Chakotay's fingers closed around the scalpel. "Right," he said, his mouth and throat suddenly very dry.

He started with her boots, pulling them and then her socks from her feet and dumping them on the floor. Then her pants: he unclasped them gingerly, his fingers feeling very large and clumsy, and then slid them down over her hips. She was so small, he thought, carefully easing the cloth away from her skin, that her waist would almost fit in his hands.

This is not how I imagined undressing you, Kathryn, he thought wryly, and dropped the discarded pair of pants on top of her boots.

Her uniform jacket joined the growing pile a few seconds later. When he reached the turtleneck, however, Chakotay realized he was going to need the scalpel the Doctor had given him. He slowly picked it up from where he'd dropped it on the biobed mattress and, holding his breath, he turned it on and readjusted the scalpel length and intensity to its minimal setting, as the Doctor had instructed.

The idea of using the scalpel so close to his captain's skin was unsettling. One wrong or careless move and he would cut her. His hands were steady enough to gut and skin a rabbit—but that was with a traditional knife; he had never handled a laser scalpel before, save for once when he had cut off a man's hand to free him from a Cardassian shackle, and once to cut a prisoner's implant out of a Bajoran woman's thigh. In both cases it hadn't mattered if he did damage; in both cases, the damage was the point.

Not here, though. Not now. Not on her.

"What's taking so long, Commander?"

The Doctor's voice cut through Chakotay's thoughts. He glanced up, and saw the Doctor frowning at him.

"Commander, this isn't the time for dallying—or for some manly display of chivalry. Get her clothes off now, and then get to the replicator and get a gallon of cool water, sponges, and at least five icepacks."

Chakotay shook his head—one quick, sharp jerk. "Of course," he said, half a mumble and half a curse meant for himself, and looked back down in at the scalpel in his hand.

Do it, he told himself.

The mesh material, meant to protect from radiation and aid in scattering phaserfire, parted before the scalpel like water before a knife. It was, Chakotay thought as he cut through the last strip of cloth away from Kathryn's neck, little different than gutting a rabbit.

She's so small, he thought again, when the tattered halves of her tank at last joined the pile of clothes on the floor. She was always so large standing on the bridge, sitting behind her desk—even lounging on her couch, on the nights Chakotay joined her for dinner. She was larger than him, larger somehow than the ship. Larger, even, than life itself it sometimes seemed.

Yet there, lying more than half naked on the biobed, the Doctor moving about her head like a moth fluttering around a candle flame, the sharp white of her standard issue bra and underwear barely paler than her flesh, she seemed—human.

Chakotay pulled his gaze away and hurried for the replicator.

Idiot, he told himself. Now is not the time for philosophical epiphanies. Right now she needed him—his help, his support—and letting his mind wander would only keep him from the help she needed.

They were just finishing packing ice around Kathryn when Kes arrived. The Doctor must have already explained the situation, Chakotay decided, for Kes showed no signs of shock or dismay when she came in through the door, only deep, radiating concern.

"Ah, Kes, you're here," the Doctor exclaimed, with the first hint of a smile Chakotay had seen since he had arrived with Kathryn. "I need you to start sponging cool water on the captain's bare skin. Commander," he turned to look at Chakotay, who had stepped back in a hurry to make way for Kes, "I need you to go to the captain's quarters and start preparing an ice bath. I know she has a tub, and we can transport her there if need be."

"An ice bath?" he repeated slowly, staring hard in growing horror at the Doctor. "That borders on barbaric."

"If her fever doesn't come down, we won't have much choice. But I hope we won't have to use such a drastic measure."

"Doctor, surely there's another way."

When he was very small, the oldest child of two of his parents' friends had come down with a terrible fever overnight. The boy, only a year older than Chakotay, had been delirious within an hour. The village healer had decided that the only way to bring the fever down was with an ice bath. Chakotay could remember standing in the family's living room while his parents helped the healer, holding the family's youngest child by the hand and listening to the boy screaming.

He had died two days later from pneumonia.

"I will do what I deem necessary," the Doctor said waspishly. He glanced up from the medical tricorder in his hand to glare at Chakotay—and then something in his expression softened fractionally. "She'll be fine," he said, with a hint of reassurance. "I'm a medical professional. I know what I'm doing, I assure you."

Chakotay nodded. "I know you do, Doctor," he said quietly. It's just that I can still remember that little boy's screams, he added silently.

It's just that I'm not sure I can bear to hear her scream like that, he did not add.

Chakotay turned on his heel and strode for the door. Now is not the time for fear, he told himself, or for doubt. The Doctor knows what he's doing. You believe that, Chakotay reminded himself.

You have to.