Chapter Text
Ayala had just stepped out of the briefing room when Chakotay called after him.
“Mike. Wait up.”
He stopped. Mostly out of habit. Ignoring the first officer rarely ended well.
The meeting with the Akritirian guard had been rough. Chakotay had done the talking. Ayala had stood there and looked like someone you didn’t argue with. That was his role. He did it well.
They’d told the woman they hadn’t found her father.
They’d tried. As much as anyone could in the few minutes before the patrol boarded Neelix’s ship. Before Paris bled out. Before the captain broke entirely.
No one on the station had known the man. No one remembered him. No closure. No comfort.
Ayala was grateful that kind of conversation stayed above his pay grade.
“Chak,” he said, then corrected himself. “Sorry. Commander.”
“No worries,” Chakotay said. Too lightly. “That rescue bring back any Maquis memories?”
Ayala kept his face neutral.
If Chakotay really wanted to know what prison extractions looked like, he wouldn’t be asking him in a corridor.
“Security’s already been briefed,” Ayala said instead. “What to say. What not to say.”
Chakotay nodded. “The Doctor isn’t saying much.”
“He won’t.”
“And Tuvok?”
Ayala shook his head once.
They walked in silence for a few steps. Then Chakotay tried again.
“How’s the captain?”
Ayala stopped this time.
“As far as I know,” he said, “she walked into Sickbay on her own.”
“And Paris?”
“He was alive when they sealed the doors.”
That was all Ayala was going to give him.
Chakotay swallowed. “Okay.”
Ayala almost added something else. About blood. About how she wouldn’t let go. About how Paris had done most of the talking once they were out.
He didn’t.
“That’s all I’ve got,” he said. “Commander.”
Chakotay nodded again and turned toward the bridge.
Ayala watched him go.
He wasn’t the only one who was worried.
Not even close.
<<>>
I woke to the unexpected sight of Kathryn sitting beside my biobed.
For a second my brain tried to claim this was some leftover nightmare, a hallucination crawling up out of the clamp’s residue. Then the memories settled in with blunt force. The knife. The burn in my gut. The floor slick with my blood. Shouting. Phaser fire. Her voice snapping at me not to fall asleep.
I’d disobeyed her. Not my first time. Probably not my last.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
She was holding my hand.
From the outside she looked almost fine. The bruises were gone. Her hair was long again, loose but clipped away from her face. I made a note to ask the Doctor how the hell he’d pulled that one off. She still looked pale though. Pale and tired in a way makeup wouldn’t touch.
She wore the same awful Sickbay gown we’d both been stuck in the last time we ended up here together. We’d agreed never to mention that episode again.
“Hey,” I said. “Guess we’re alive.”
“Looks like it.” She managed a small, tired smile that still felt real. “The Doctor removed the implants. He says there shouldn’t be any lasting neurological damage.”
I reached up and felt along my scalp. No clamp. Plenty of hair. Not as much as hers, but more than the scratchy prison stubble. My fingers drifted to my forehead, checking for Akritirian ridges. Smooth skin. I let out a breath.
“No worries,” she said. “You look human again. The Doctor also accelerated our hair regrowth. He’s quite pleased with himself. And who knows, it may be a skill he can use again.”
“I’m glad I’m back to normal. Wouldn’t want to look like the star of an Academy recruitment vid.”
She touched her restored hair lightly, almost reverently. “I’m embarrassingly grateful to have mine back. Not to mention my sanity. I was afraid that was gone for good.”
I squeezed her hand. “I think if you know you’re insane, that’s the definition of the Catch-22.”
She huffed a soft breath. “So I’m Yossarian.”
“Maybe we all are.”
“In the prison,” she asked, “or Voyager?”
“That would be the question.” I tried for a lighter tone. “I can’t believe Voyager actually found us.”
“Apparently they had help from some unlikely sources,” she said. “An odd assortment of terrorists and a prison guard. I’m sure it will all be detailed in Tuvok’s report.”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to call her Kathryn anymore. Captain felt wrong in this moment. I decided to skip titles altogether.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I mean, was the Doctor able to take care of everything?”
“I’m fine.” At my look she added, “Seriously. My feet, my throat, bruises, everything.” She put weight on the everything.
The injuries the Doctor could treat were gone. The rest weren’t the kind medicine could reach.
“Besides,” she added quietly, “I wasn’t the one who technically died when we arrived in Sickbay.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” Her voice softened. “Tom, I was so scared. If Tuvok had been minutes later—”
“But he wasn’t.”
She nodded. “He wasn’t.”
She squeezed my hand again.
She was quiet for a moment, then added, almost casually, “We were also treated for a whole collection of internal and external parasites.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Yes,” she said dryly. “Apparently the implants weren’t solely responsible for all the itching.”
“Yuck.”
“I think we should add it to our list of things to never discuss again.”
The faint humor faded, just a little.
She drew a careful breath.
“Listen,” she said, “before the Doctor comes over, we should talk.”
I braced.
Here it was. The talk. The regret. The protocol. The speech about mistakes and boundaries and professionalism and moving forward. I nodded, trying to keep my expression open, steady, ready.
“We were treated for two alien infections,” she said. “Both of us.”
I blinked. “Both of us?”
“Yes.” Her voice softened. “The Doctor believes you contracted them from me,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
For a moment she looked like someone held together by will, afraid the whole thing might unravel if she moved wrong.
“I wasn’t apologizing for the infections,” she said. Her gaze dropped, then lifted again quickly. “I meant that he knows we slept together. He has sealed the relevant entries in our medical files. They’re accessible only to him under restricted protocol.”
I stayed quiet.
“But he may… view you differently,” she continued. “And that might make it harder to return to normal.”
There it was. Not judgment. Not shame.
Consequences.
She took another breath, steadier this time. “Tom… about what happened down there… When circumstances push people past reason, it can blur lines of judgment. And when we return to duty, it’s important we’re clear about—”
She stopped.
The rest of the sentence hovered between us, unfinished. I watched her search for the right words and fail to find them. Something in her expression wavered. Not regret. Not embarrassment.
Fear.
The fear of saying the wrong thing and losing whatever fragile thing we still had.
“Clear about expectations,” she tried again, softer now. “And about what… comes next.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine too fast, like she hadn’t meant to look at me yet.
She was trying to draw the boundary.
She just couldn’t do it cleanly.
And I didn’t say a word, because anything I said felt like it might tip the moment into something neither of us was ready for.
Before she could gather herself to finish the thought, the Doctor swept in, crisp and loud, and the moment dissolved under a tide of medical jargon: electrolytes, neural stability scans, immune boosts, dermal regeneration, nutritional infusions, detox. I let most of it wash over me.
We never finished the conversation.
I let the Doctor hustle me through getting dressed, mostly because Kathryn clearly needed the armor of a uniform back on her shoulders. I couldn’t have cared less.
Once the quarantine lifted, the doors opened and our friends surged in. Harry and B’Elanna went to me. Chakotay and Tuvok went to her. Too many voices rose at once. Too much food was offered. Too much pretending none of them knew what had happened.
Kathryn stood in the center of it all as if she’d been carved back into the captain she was expected to be. She nodded. She thanked them. She accepted Chakotay’s steadying hand.
I watched her from the edge of my biobed and knew the performance cost her more than she’d ever admit.
We were released that afternoon, ordered off duty for seventy-two hours.
As Kathryn stepped toward the exit, Chakotay appeared with a PADD.
“Let me walk you to your quarters,” he said. “You should rest. I can bring dinner and update you while you eat.”
She nodded, grateful in a way that tugged at something low and fierce in my chest.
But before she followed Chakotay out, she paused.
Just a second.
Her eyes found mine.
Something warm and unguarded flickered there. It was real and quiet and entirely hers, and for a moment I saw all of it before she pulled her rank over it like a shield.
Then she turned and left with Chakotay.
I sat on the edge of an empty biobed, realizing she’d tried to put all the boundaries back in place and hadn’t quite managed it.
<<>>
Captain Janeway walked onto Alpha shift three days later like she’d never been gone.
Her freshly replicated uniform, a size smaller than before, fit her with regulation precision. Her hair was swept back into her usual complicated bun. Her makeup was restrained. The only sign of what she’d survived were the faint shadows under her eyes, the kind no amount of concealer could erase.
In the Alpha Quadrant she would’ve been grounded for months. Medical leave. Counseling. Full fitness evaluations to decide whether she was stable enough to sit in her own chair again. Protocols wrapped in more protocols.
Out here, the EMH followed whatever his latest subroutines would let him get away with, and apparently those cleared her with no counseling at all.
That was the day I realized Kathryn Janeway knew exactly how to rewrite a hologram when she needed to.
<<>>
My door chimed.
I looked up from the dim glow of the padd I hadn’t been reading and let out a slow breath. I’d been pretending to wind down for the night, but sleep hadn’t come easily since Sickbay. Every time I shut my eyes, something from the chute pressed in at the edges. The heat. The shouting. Her voice breaking on my name. I was tired enough to fold in half, but the moment I got near a bed, my whole body went tense again.
It wasn’t just the memory of almost dying. It was the realization that if I had, she would’ve been dragged back into that place alone. No one to steady her when the clamp turned her mind inside out. No one to keep her safe from the men who watched her every move. I kept seeing Pit’s knife and the way she screamed when they pulled her away from me. I kept seeing what would have come next.
That thought woke me faster than any nightmare.
It had been like that every night.
So when the chime sounded, I blinked at the chronometer. Nineteen hundred hours. Maybe Harry again. Harry had been trying to feed me at regular intervals ever since I left Sickbay. I appreciated it, I really did, but I didn’t want company tonight.
I crossed the room and hit the panel myself. I didn’t want to call out an invitation. It’d make whoever it was harder to send away.
The door slid open.
Kathryn stood there.
She wore civilian slacks and a cream blouse. Her hair was loose, held back with decorative combs. She might’ve looked put together if not for the dark circles still sitting under her eyes. I knew I had the same set.
I hadn’t seen her anywhere but the bridge since we were discharged.
Now she stood in my doorway holding a pizza box in one hand and two bottles of beer in the other.
“Have you had dinner?” she asked. Her voice was steady. Her eyes weren’t.
I stepped back. “No. Come in.”
It was pepperoni. My favorite. We ate the whole thing. I inhaled two thirds; Kathryn finished the rest. She said she was saving room for caramel brownies, so I replicated them using her mother’s recipe. They were perfect. I made her a cup of coffee too, because of course I did.
She held the cup with both hands, like she was cold.
“I can’t sleep,” she said at last.
I nodded. “I’m not doing too well on that front either.”
She took another breath. I could see how much it cost her.
“Could I stay here tonight?”
The answer was out of my mouth before I even thought about it. “Of course.”
I had no idea if this was healthy. I had no idea if it was wise. I doubted it resembled any approved method of trauma recovery. But later that night, long after the cups were empty and the lights had dimmed, we both slept straight through until morning.
That had been a month ago.
We hadn’t slept apart since.
We never talked about it. Not the first night, not the tenth. The silence between us made the whole thing feel stranger, as if naming it might break whatever thin, warped logic was keeping us stitched together.
Sometimes she commed me with a quiet request that I come to her quarters. Sometimes she showed up at mine with pizza and a couple of beers, like that first night. Sometimes I found myself at her door instead, because her quarters were nicer and because, after everything, being near her felt more like rest than anything else did.
Turned out Captain Janeway was also very good at fooling internal sensors. As far as the ship knew, she slept in her quarters every night. And I slept in mine.
I was almost certain Tuvok knew. The Vulcan had started giving me a particular kind of look every morning. Not disapproval and not concern. Just something quiet and razor sharp that said he understood exactly what was going on and was filing it under “things not relevant to ship’s security.”
I still had no idea what we were now. Lovers. Survivors. Two people hanging on to whatever had kept them alive when nothing else had. A relationship. A dependency. Something fragile and necessary and impossible to name.
But Kathryn had said once that I wasn’t complicated.
Maybe she was right. But I knew what settled her when the dark closed in. And I knew that holding her through the night kept my own nightmares from clawing their way back.
So I decided I didn’t want to find out what would happen if we ever stopped.