Chapter Text
2/4 Time Signature
Adagio
🎼~~~ Chakotay ~~~🎶
Chakotay’s eyes narrowed.
Why was the Captain gripping the armrest so tightly?
She was annoyed, yes. Her unfocused, eyes-forward glare was to be expected.
Kashyk’s voice would make anyone react that way.
And his voice over the comm on Voyager was a sign of the hell they would all walk through until the Inspector had completed his gleeful violation of Voyager’s every hold and hideaway.
But the Captain’s grip told another story entirely.
Chakotay wanted to provide whatever support he could. The last time Kashyk was aboard, she’d spit a terse order in response to Chakotay’s hand on her lower back.
“Don’t.”
And Chakotay understood. Clearly, she didn’t want Kashyk to know the extent of her affection for Chakotay.
So, Voyager’s First Officer stayed by his Captain’s side without acknowledging the panic only he could see.
Why was she so terrified?
🎼~~~ Kathryn ~~~🎶
The tumbling feeling in her abdomen.
That was always the first sign.
Kashyk’s voice was nauseating. But not nearly as repulsive as the thought of what would happen in the next few moments. His sneering summons. The dismissal of the others. The slide of his gaze starting at her toes and ending at her mouth… her fists at her sides, his breathless commands, his fingers... the pain…
Be a Starfleet Captain, they said. It’ll be incredible, they said. Boldly go, they said.
Where no man had gone before.
She wished she hadn’t so effectively prevented Chakotay’s comforting reach during Kashyk’s last visit. She wished Chakotay would reach for her now. Wished she could have his steady hand to hold before she had to face the predatory Inspector who was likely settling into her chair in the next room at that exact moment.
Kashyk’s sable eyes.
The curve of his brow bone.
The too-thin nose.
His hands.
She hated the images that flooded her field of vision, not quite, but seemingly before she heard Paris’s dreaded declaration.
“Devore ship coming into range, Captain.”
She couldn’t look at Chakotay.
Wouldn’t?
No… she wouldn’t reveal, so she couldn’t look at him.
He would know. In a hair’s breath of a glance, he’d know.
She had to appear annoyed, but placid.
The heat in her face, her chest, between her legs…
She hated this heat. This was the next sign.
“Remember our agreement,” Kashyk’s post-climax whisper had invaded her ear last time, his eager grip on the tenderest wound.
She remembered the agreement.
But she absolutely would refuse to ‘remember’ the pale man with the dark control who ripped her body from her mind.
And her mind from her heart.
She would push thoughts of him away with the force and discipline of a Starfleet Captain.
I’m Kathryn Fucking Janeway! She focused on the rage, the punishing guardrail that kept her from showing her hand…
…to the Devore.
…to Kashyk.
…to Chakotay.
Chakotay… without looking to her left, she knew the expression. His indrawn lips, the way he avoided biting them in that damn fine poker face he could drop over himself like the damn fine Captain he was.
A damn fine man.
She briefly wondered what Kashyk would have demanded if Chakotay had been Captain.
Where no man had gone before.
She took refuge in memory… The past few months of teaching Chakotay the mechanics of classical music and showing him each instrument in an orchestra. He’d taken to stringed instruments more than woodwinds, teasing the vibrations of each instrument once his understanding caught up to his skill. She could see the graceful arc of his fingers curving around the guitar… the pads of his fingers on the viola… the discoloration of his knuckle where he’d ninged the harp string, trying to make the smoothest of glissandos…
Stop, she begged her brain. It’s not safe!
The image of Kashyk’s gloat stole her focus, superimposed over the Bridge’s viewscreen, while Chakotay’s weighted concern drifted in and out of her awareness.
But under it all?
The terror.
She didn’t want to admit how deeply she’d been affected by Kashyk’s previous sessions. Dabbing honest-to-goodness make-up over the dark circles under her eyes (due to her new fear of dermal regenerators), facing down meals where she couldn't eat, enduring rage-fueled Velocity matches with Holo-opponents who never let her win… and worst of all, laughing and smiling for Chakotay.
So that he would believe the ‘sessions’ in her Ready Room were mere bullying.
For all the things she couldn’t control about the universe, she could at least control this: Chakotay would believe with all his heart that she was untouched, unharmed, and still in command.
She willed it to be so.
She would make it so.
🎼~~~ Chakotay ~~~🎶
“Captain Janeway, please report to your Ready Room.”
She gave Chakotay a long-suffering eye roll, then tilted her head toward him the way she always did when leaving to go to a dull away mission. Chakotay responded with an encouraging nod, letting her know he was a room away.
She gave him a warm smile, reassuring him as best she could that she could handle her part.
But then, she stood. And he saw her hands tremble.
Her hands…
Captain Kathryn Janeway… trembling.
Chakotay felt a terrible twisting in the pit of his stomach as he watched her saunter, bravely readying herself.
As the door slid shut behind her, he caught a glimpse of the Devore team, closing in around her, all at least a whole head taller than her, figures in black that could do anything they liked with no repercussions…
Chakotay could at least comfort himself that she was standing at rapt attention, cool as a cucumber.
The trembling was clearly gone.
But at what cost?
What wasn’t he seeing?
He had to come up with a way to get in there.
Prax’s exit with the other two guards did not soothe Chakotay’s anxious nerves. Nor did the command that Bridge officers move to the conference room for holding. Prax didn’t stay, but then, he never did.
Instead, the two guards at the door ushered Paris, Kim, and Chakotay to a far corner. And soon, two more guards entered to ensure compliance.
While Paris and Kim huffed into chairs at the table, Chakotay used what little space they’d been allotted to pace. He wanted to hear what was going on in the Cargo Bay and the Transporter Room… but more than he wanted to breathe, he wanted to be in the Ready Room, holding Kathryn’s hand through whatever could be causing her to tremble.
Images of the worst possible reasons behind her reaction suddenly flooded his brain.
He searched his memory for the previous times the Devore had come aboard. What had she been like after those inspections?
Reviewing each in turn, he sought the clues.
The first, deceptive time after the argument with the Inspector about harboring telepaths. The second, treacherous time with the all-too-violent guards in Sickbay and on the bridge. The third, excessive time when the rest of the crew had tried to look bored while harboring the Brenari.
And now, this time...
In each of the instances, Kathryn had held Chakotay back as she went to her Ready Room. Alone.
But no trembling?
She seemed tired… possibly even ‘spent,’ after each of these times… but she laughed and smiled at dinner with him on each of those nights.
Surely, she would have told him if something had gone amiss.
A lowered eyebrow stopped his pacing. Would she really, though?
Enough.
Chakotay waited for the next part, where four guards would become two. When they did, he tapped Paris on the shoulder, who silently and without question rose from the chair and followed Chakotay to the guards at the door of the conference room.
“I need to see Kashyk.”
“You are not the Captain. Inspector Kashyk only deals with the Captain of the Vessel.”
“I’m the senior male officer. And I demand you respect my right to speak to the Inspector.” Chakotay had no idea if this would work, but he lifted his chest to challenge the guard, who was but a centimeter or two shorter.
The guard looked annoyed but pressed a button on a comm and then turned to have a quiet conversation.
“Step back,” the other guard used his titanium rifle as a barrier.
Chakotay bowed his head and stepped back. Thanks to his experiences with the Cardassians, he was accustomed to playing off of authoritarian ego to make the strategy work.
Paris followed suit but maintained a menacing expression.
The first guard put his communicator back in his side holster and stood at attention to one side of the entrance. The other guard joined him on the other side.
“Well?” said Tom, trying to menace some more.
Chakotay knew better and motioned Tom to sit.
It had worked.
Kashyk was on his way.
Whatever he’d been doing to make Kathryn tremble, she’d have a reprieve. And Chakotay had an idea.
🎼~~~ Kathryn ~~~🎶
Kashyk’s conversation with the person on the comm was terse. Which Kathryn would pay for later, she was sure.
She held the shreds of her dignity together as best she could, naked, right where he’d left her. She knew the consequences of moving and dared not even breathe, let alone drift out of position.
Kashyk and the person on the comm spoke in a shorthand language she didn’t know. But apparently, something required Kashyk’s presence.
He turned back to her.
“Wait here, Captain.” He lifted his pants, fastening them at his waist with a series of clicks. “Please.” He trailed his fingers up her thigh, squeezing the tool he’d been using to ratchet her body up to a higher degree of misery.
He exited, leaving her alone in the room. She knew there were guards outside. And she knew that the rest of Kashyk’s team were destroying days of careful work—Voyager crew creating the illusion of empty storage so that the Devore could quickly scan and then be on their way.
But she did not move. She did not cover herself or change position in any way, though she did allow tears to fall from under her blindfold...
So long as she upheld her end of this ‘agreement,’ she still had a shred of hope that Kashyk would uphold his part.
Instead, she tried not to think about the past hour. Or the next few weeks of silently agonized vigils she would keep in the dark of her quarters, unable to even read.
The pain of his control was unbearable.
But not nearly as unbearable as his threats.
She would not think that, either.
She focused on her fingers, the pads of her fingers. And then on the things she could imagine from her position. The window, the recessed lighting bars, the barrier, the coffee table, Kashyk’s coffee, still steaming on her desk… in her mug… Chakotay’s fingers on the guitar as he sat on her couch… one of the strings snapping as she tuned it just a little too far… that string hitting Chakotay’s face… making him bleed…
Not safe! She clung to the words.
She had to focus on something else. Something meaningless.
The bulkhead in the mess hall.
Leola root life cycles.
Tricorder operation manual appendices.
At least she’d stopped shaking. Kashyk had punished her for that.
She wondered what could possibly have drawn Kashyk away.
He reveled in her physical reactions when the flood of images overpowered her…
Though the reprieve was welcome, and her body’s ongoing suffering in this particular position was difficult to endure, she knew she would pay a far greater debt when he returned.