Five

Starships are built with mechanisms to withstand hull breaches. It's vital for a vehicle designed solely for the cold, unforgiving voids of deep space.

Unfortunately, both forcefields and emergency bulkheads require power to operate – power that Voyager no longer had.

They'd lost decks six and seven before Janeway even reached the stream of evacuees running for their lives. The ones that weren't running were trying to manually close the bulkheads that would save the rest of the ship. The force of the sucking void was shocking – Janeway narrowly avoided being ripped out into the nothingness of space along with Voyager's badly needed escaping atmosphere – oxygen they could not afford to lose and had no way of replacing. Clinging against the buckling wall of the corridor, she watched in helpless horror as Vorik lost his grip. The Vulcan flailed, grasping uselessly at nothing as he disappeared into the grave of space.

She clawed her way forward, thrusting a portable oxygen tank at Mike Ayala, the only other person still living in her vicinity. The breather she was using herself could last another ten minutes, perhaps less. But if they couldn't close the bulkhead in a fraction of that time, they may as well not bother at all.

When the bulkhead finally moved, it slammed down so fast that she was unable to escape its trajectory. The last thing Janeway remembered before consciousness left her completely was the searing, unimaginable pain of her arm being crushed beneath two tonnes of tritanium alloy.

The Doctor severed the damaged limb cleanly and without undue incident. It left Janeway with her elbow and a smooth stump that, strangely, she could still articulate. Of course, there was no chance of making her a prosthetic replacement. There was no power to replicate the required materials and in any case, no time to spare between the increasingly frequent emergencies.

Kathryn was OK with it. At least she was still alive. At least she still had one good arm. You can do a surprising amount of good with one good arm and a hypospanner.

After the accident – the latest one – she slept more, which she found frustrating but that the Doctor did his best to encourage as a sign that her body was healing. He told her to sleep as much as she could. Tuvok added his voice to the Doctor's. The vulcan was now her de facto first officer, after all. Despite the best efforts of them both, Kathryn tried not to give into the frequent exhaustion – there was so much to do and so few of them left to do it and anyway, who among them wasn't exhausted and more deserving of rest than she would ever be?

Still, it became increasingly hard to resist the heavy weight of her eyelids.

After that first encounter with Chakotay, he visited her regularly. He became, in fact, a presence as common in death as he had been in life. She heard him in her sleep, although his pleas were always incomplete and only ever half-heard as she slumbered in her quarters or on the sofa in her ready room. When she woke, he was there too. Invariably, he would be sitting beside her with a soft smile that quenched her anxiety over the fact that, moments earlier, she had been unable to hear what he was trying to tell her.

At first, it was difficult to accept. She wondered what had happened to her mind, that it so regularly and willingly conjured this spectre into being. A scientist should not indulge in such flights of fancy so easily, she told herself. It was painful, too - so painful, to have him so close and yet know that he was still so far away.

Eventually, though, she realised that there was comfort in it. The only comfort, in fact, that she was ever likely to get. In the midst of all that turmoil, his ghostly presence became her well of calm. And it was costing the crew nothing. What harm could it do?

She no longer reacted with tears as soon as he appeared, either. Instead, his presence became a solace she started to crave. It was a heavy irony, one of which she was fully aware, that Chakotay dead was now more present to her than Chakotay alive had been for a long, long time.

Kathryn – wake up. You've got to-

She woke in her quarters and blinked into a darkness lit only by the stars outside. Her arm ached and there was an itch in the centre of her palm - the one that was actually now only a memory in her over-crowded mind.

Chakotay was lying beside her, tipped on his side, watching her with a slight smile. His presence had become so regular that it no longer surprised her to see him, wherever she happened to be.

"I've got to what?" Kathryn asked in a voice still rough with sleep as she turned towards him. She saw immediately that he was no longer in his Maquis clothes. He was, in fact, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of grey sweatpants. Instantly, a powerful memory resurfaced – New Earth, a morning when she'd accidentally caught him on the return from a run and watched as he'd half-stripped and tipped his head back to enjoy a sudden, refreshing shower of rain.

His smile broadened. "That wasn't me. I think you were dreaming."

Despite her best intentions, her gaze wandered down his torso, just as it had five years previously. His form was outlined in the faint light, a landscape of honed muscle and smooth skin.

"You're beautiful when you sleep," he said.

Janeway blushed, and was then annoyed at herself for doing so. It was also faintly ridiculous, she realised, to have such a reaction to the words of a ghost that existed only in her own mind. Those words could only be wish fulfilment. Had he ever called her beautiful in life? Yes, once. New Earth, again…

"As stumpy as I am?" she asked, actually coaxing a laugh into her throat as she lifted her truncated arm.

"You'll always be beautiful to me, no matter what."

She tried to say something in return and then sighed, her head against the pillow as she studied his face. "It's absurd."

"What is?"

"You're dead, and I'm still struggling to tell you how I feel. Why do we do that? Why do we always leave it until it's too late?"

He was still smiling. "It's not too late."

"You're dead," she repeated, tears finally pricking at her eyes.

"Touch me."

Her heart jumped. "What?"

Chakotay's smile deepened. "Touch me."

She hesitated. "But… you don't have form. You – you can't have. Your body has no mass, it-"

He laughed and to her shock she could feel the motion, vibrating lightly through the mattress they shared. "Don't be the scientist right now," he said, softly. "Trust me."

Kathryn swallowed, her heart – her battered, aching heart – now thumping with a different kind of pain. Tentatively, slowly, she reached out her fingers until their tips were almost against his chest. She hesitated, watching his ribcage rise and fall with breath he couldn't possibly need.

"Touch me," he whispered, again.

Her fingertips brushed over where his heart would rest. She drew in a sharp breath at the feel of his skin. It was cool, but with the warmth of life running beneath. He felt alive. He felt gloriously, beautifully alive. She slowly brushed the backs of her fingers down to trace his left pectoral, and then his upper abdominal muscles. She felt fresh tears on her face.

"I don't… I don't understand…"

He took her hand in his and squeezed it. "The effect is brief here," he admitted. "I can't sustain it for long. You are right that I have no mass – on this plane, anyway. But on the next – after death – it's not so different from life. I'm real, Kathryn. I'm not in your head."

Even as he spoke, she felt the hand holding hers drifting away, as ethereal as smoke. Her heart clenched with the loss, feeling it acutely. It had been so long since she'd touched him in life. Every casual expression of warmth between them had been extinguished long before his life had been destroyed before her eyes. Her hand, alone again, reached up to wipe away a fresh storm of silent tears.

"I miss your touch," he told her. "I miss making love to you in the rain."

Her hand froze over her face. A second later she dropped it and looked at him. "I – we never had that kind of relationship, Chakotay. We didn't… we were never lovers."

The smile he levelled her was impish, his eyes teasing. "You're not the only one who dreams, Kathryn Janeway. And now I can dream all I want."

She was suddenly assaulted by an acrid smell of fumes, her lungs full of them enough to make her cough. Janeway angled herself up to look around the room, coughing. "Is that burning?"

"It doesn't look like it," Chakotay said, sitting up and surveying the room. "Don't worry. Just relax."

The smell had dissipated as swiftly as it had come. She rubbed a hand over her face. "I'd better get up to the bridge. We've still got one internal sensor up there with minimal power. There might be something leaching into the conduits."

"Don't go," he said. "Stay here, with me. Someone else will deal with it. You need to rest."

She looked down at him, still aware of his bared skin, of the tiny trail of black hair meandering above the low waistband of his sweatpants. Her fingers still tingled with the memory of their passage over his muscles. "I can't," she said. "I'm the captain. It's my responsibility. And perhaps they need help."

"You've only got one arm, Kathryn," he pointed out. "What do you think you can do?"

She frowned and looked away, hurt but determined. "Plenty. Also, I need to get the Doctor to check me again. If you're not just in my mind…"

Janeway was halfway to her feet when an explosion knocked them out from under her. She crashed to her knees, reaching out to brace herself with both hands, forgetting that one of them was a phantom.

[TBC]