fic: Acceptable Risk pt I of II (TNG/VOY) [rated M] J/C, C/P
Title: Acceptable Risk pt I of II || part II of II
Author: oparu
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Kathryn Janeway/Chakotay, Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard
Spoilers: none
Summary: AU. Commander Kathryn Janeway has been assigned to the Enterprise as Captain Picard's first officer after Will Riker takes command of Voyager. When Beverly Picard is taken by the Maquis, Kathryn has to go undercover and rely on an ex-Starfleet Commander Chakotay of the fledgling Maquis to get Beverly back.
Notes: for courylenwillows on her birthday. Happy Birthday darling!
Commander Kathryn Janeway had been impulsive enough to have a single one night stand in her mostly quiet love-life. Even in that she was sentimental and had kept in touch. The subspace messages they sent back and forth were far from love letters, most of hers were about adjusting to life on the Enterprise: of Captain Picard's quiet grace as a commanding officer and the constant teasing from his wife, Doctor Beverly Picard, that she'd come to realise was a well-meaning sign of affection. The most intimate their letters had been was the about Mark. She'd written late one night, and desperately thought of deleting it before her loneliness won out and she sent it.
Mark Johnson, who was safe, loving and gentle but had no desire to join the other Starfleet spouses on the Enterprise. Nothing she could say about the incredible opportunity it was for her to be the legendary Captain Picard's first officer, or how many new species and diplomatic missions the flagship of the Federation went on mattered to him. Mark wanted to stay on Earth, and while she'd been training and assigned to short-range missions like the Bonestell, that had been fine.
The Enterprise was no science vessel, like her early postings, nor a heavily armed, short-haul escort ship like the Bonestell. The Enterprise was the crowning jewel of the Federation fleet. She stayed out for months at a time, returning to Earth rarely and briefly. She was a great bird, a free, galaxy-spaning Albatross who wanted nothing more than to see what was out there and Kathryn loved it.
He understood, her lover of that one night, that the great romance of space exploration, was not a trivial fling that one could set aside for hearth and home. Home was the ship one was on and the course she followed. Chakotay understood that. When she'd received the last letter from Mark: the one that ended it, the rebellious voice in the back of her mind that had never truly believed Mark was right insisted that Chakotay would have joined her on the Enterprise. He would have supported her, because even through subspace, he always did.
Now, sitting in what had to be one of the the dingiest little clubs she'd ever been in, the air full of the scent of old salt, stale liquor, sweat and dirt, Kathryn tried not to think about the dreadful things that had been in her metal mug before it held the opaque, vaguely herbal swill that passed for beer on this damn planet. The bartender tossed a plate in front of her, bent metal with rice, a sauce that resembled tomatoes with the life boiled out of them and meat. The bread was tough but edible, and the sauce was enough to soften the crusts, even if it had no culinary value and barely any taste.
"I wouldn't eat much," Chakotay said softly as he passed behind her. His fingers brushed her back, displacing her hair and sending a shiver down her spine. He sat across from her, leaning low over the table. In his civilian leathers, what must serve as a Maquis uniform, he looked rakish and dark; nothing like the thoughtful Starfleet anthropologist she'd met at the wedding. The wedding was part of another life, before the treaty that had put Chakotay's home on the wrong side of the border and before his father had died defending it. There were new lines around his dark eyes and an anger in his body that smouldered even when he smiled. A new tattoo graced his temple, and if she'd had time to ask its significance, she would have, but now was not the time for curiosity.
"Our food's not gourmet, but it's better than this," he waved his hand over her plate and dropped it to hers. "I like your hair down."
"You told me to look like I was running," she replied in a whisper. Thanks to Doctor Selar, she had a fading black eye that was a sickly shade of yellowish green, fresh reddish bruises in the shape of fingers around her neck and a poorly healed scrape on her cheek. Her hair was mostly down, but dirty and unkempt.
"My compliments to your doctor," he muttered back, hiding a grin behind his cup. "She does exquisite work." He slid closer, and as she'd been told, Kathryn counted out a few coins and lay them on the table between them.
He ran his fingers over them, and then slid his hand up arm. When he reached for her face, Kathryn flinched, pulling away as if he meant to strike her.
"Good," he whispered. "Very good." Chakotay picked up her bread, taking it from her hand and giving a look that was half-smile, half-leer. "When I leave the table, wait a few moments then follow me. Keep looking around. Is your cover-?"
He didn't have to finish the statement.
Picard slunk in like a predator looking for an easy kill. He too was out of uniform, and while Chakotay's leathers held him blend in, everything about Picard's deep red and black screamed danger like a poisonous snake. He stood by the bar, but didn't order. Instead, he used it as a vantage point to scan the room. He raised an eyebrow at the Orion trader, matched gazes with the Nausicaan until he backed down and ignored all the others until he saw her.
Kathryn tried to hide, but did a poor job of it, just as she was meant to. When she tried to run, she tripped on the floor and fell perfectly into Picard's outstretched arms. His grip was kind, but his face was harsh and his voice was cruel.
"You hide here," he growled, then spat on the floor at her feet. "Here, in this cesspit. Did you think I wouldn't find you? That I can't find you on any planet, on any ship, anywhere you might attempt to hide."
She pulled back, flinching away from him as if she'd been running from him all her life. He released one arm, raising the other to cuff her across the face. Cowering in his rough embrace, Kathryn caught the apology in his eyes. Picard hadn't wanted to hit her, he thought it overkill, but Kathryn swore she wouldn't hold it against him. It was for Beverly, and that, above all other things, had convinced him.
As the alien refuse of the seedy bar backed away from them, she cowered, holding her hand against her soon to be swollen lip. "I'm sorry," she whispered, swagging in his arms. "I'm sorry. I'll never--"
He lifted his hand again, holding it over her head like a death sentence. Kathryn cried out, fleeing desperately back to avoid another blow. Picard stopped before he cuffed her and in a flash of steel his knife was in his hand. Letting it pull the fabric tight over her breasts, he traced it down her chest.
"You'll never," Picard repeated, his voice like frozen gravel. "You'll never..."
She caught his arm, pulling them together. "I'll find her," she promised. "Just do it."
"Thank you," he whispered into her ear just before the knife sank into her stomach, just beneath her ribs.
As they'd practised over and over, the blade sank into her flesh exactly where Selar had demonstrated to them. The pain took her breath away and whited out her vision. Kathryn had tears in her eyes as she sank down to the floor; both hands pressed over the wound as it began to ooze with blood. It coated her fingers and seeped into her clothing. The pain radiated from the wound, stealing breath as she fought to keep conscious.
The phaser blast cut through the silence, forcing Picard from her. Chakotay fired again, and again, until Picard was gone and the entire bar was starting to clear. In the chaos, she half-stood, dragging herself up enough for him to catch her under the arms and pull her away. As they crossed the threshold into the street, he leaned close to her ear.
"Faint and I'll carry you."
"I'm fine," she snapped back. Blood ran down her hip and was starting to reach her knee. It was messy, but it was a flesh wound. If Picard had hit her liver, she'd be dead already.
"I'm not being chivalrous," Chakotay promised her. "It's part of your cover. Trust me."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two Bajorans start to come towards her. Letting her knees go weak, she crumpled into his ready arms. He swung her up easily, as if she weighed little. Letting her head go limp was the hardest part, but she allowed it to loll over his arm.
"What did you find Chakotay?" a woman's harsh voice asked. "A lost rabbit?"
"He is one for strays," the man agreed. His voice was deeper and softer. "What will you do with her?"
"Her husband's a Cardassian collaborator," Chakotay explained. "She tried to buy her way off-world on one of our ships."
"And he didn't like it," the woman sneered. Her cool fingers touched Kathryn's cheek and neck. "Or her, apparently."
Other hands, most likely the man's pressed cloth over her wound. Kathryn jolted in pain. Chakotay flipped her up, burying her head in his shoulder as she nearly cried out.
"She'll need the doctor," the man holding her side said. "She's lucky we still have that Enterprise doctor. One of ours may have had some trouble with this."
"I couldn't leave her, Seska," Chakotay explained. "We can put her in with Doctor Picard until we find a way to get rid of them both. We're not in the business of having captives."
"We could always ransom the Doctor," the woman, who seemed to be Seska, suggested. "Surely the wife of the great Picard is worth an industrial replicator or a shipment of medical supplies."
"We're not terrorists or bandits," Chakotay reminded her with a sharpness in his voice than Kathryn had never heard before. "When we can release Doctor Picard safely, we will. Until then, we are lucky she will assist us at all. She's saved several of us already."
The mechanical hum was a ship's rear hatch. Not Federation, but maybe Bajoran, Kathryn couldn't be exactly sure from the tone. Chakotay set her down in the back. Lying her gently on the floor, he checked the crude bandage on her abdomen then leaned close enough to whisper.
"It's less than an hour from here, stay quiet, we'll be there soon."
Kathryn squeezed his wrist, kept her eyes tightly closed and tried to think of anything but the pulsating agony in her side. She'd been injured before, broken bones, phaser burns, and she could work through all of them provided she had something to do. Lying in the back of a Maquis ship, she assumed she was being flown into their camp without even a communicator to beam them out when she found Beverly.
Since Beverly had gone missing seven days ago, Captain Picard had been beside himself. If she had met him now, she couldn't have been able to tell, but over the last few months, Kathryn had learned that his emotions were there. Starfleet had been torn between launching a full assault against the Maquis or trying to find some way to relate to them. The Maquis had no formal leader and there was no way of knowing who to negotiate with, or which group had her.
Contacting Chakotay had been a long shot from the beginning but she'd been willing to try anything while Starfleet and the Federation were tied up in official channels trying to get permission from the Cardassians to search for her. Picard had no trust for Cardassians. Kathryn had read his file, but even that horrific description hadn't prepared her for the emptiness in his eyes when he'd looked across his desk and told her how much he worried for his wife's safety if she had fallen into the hands of the Cardassians.
Chakotay's insane and dangerous plan was the only chance they had of getting close to Beverly. Even if all they accomplished was making Kathryn a hostage as well, at least Beverly wouldn't be alone. She would bring her home, no matter what it took.
"Doctor, doctor, The ship's coming back," Ekahla called from the doorway into what served the Maquis village as an infirmary. Beverly sighed, pulling her thick red hair tighter into the band that held it. The little Bajoran girl was quick with her enthusiasm and slow with details. Would anyone else on the ship be injured? Were they bringing the medical supplies they needed? Were they finally over their obsession with security and ready to let her go?
An overzealous Maquis transporter program had brought her aboard a raider that was trying to steal medical supplies from the Enterprise. Unable to transport her back without risking their capture, the little ship had fled the Enterprise's tractor beam with her on board. As captors went, the Maquis were polite, stand-offish, stubborn and paranoid, but polite nonetheless.
She dragged herself off the stones, cursing fate for bringing her to this desperate place when her body was least able to handle it. Thirty-seven weeks was far too close to her due date for comfort, but she would be fine. She had time, Beverly reminded herself. Jean-Luc's daughter, their daughter, would just have to wait to be born until she was home safe on the Enterprise and that was all there was to it. She didn't have to go far from the makeshift infirmary before Chakotay brought her patient to her.
"One of the Cardassian collaborators stabbed her," Chakotay explained as he lay the unconscious body of the petite woman on one of the unoccupied cots. "It didn't seem serious, but she lost consciousness on the ride back."
"I suppose I should be grateful she didn't get in the way of a disruptor," Beverly replied darkly. She grabbed one of the stolen medkits, the one she'd made her favourite over the last few days, and slowly sat down on the floor. Crossing her legs made it possible to sit for awhile, but nothing was ever comfortable.
One of the elders, a woman who was part of Chakotay's former village called Iabara, touched her shoulder and handed her a cup of tea. "I'm sure you'll put her right, Doctor. The spirits think well of you."
"Thank you," she said, taking the tea. "Tell them I appreciate their support."
Beverly held her tea in one hand, opened her kit with the other and ran a tricorder over her patient. She was human, female, around thirty-five years of age. She was either military or led an exceptionally dangerous life. She'd had several injuries repaired over the years, and most of them in a Starfleet hospital. Beneath the blood-soaked make-shift bandage on her side was a deep knife wound that had just skimmed the patient's liver. She took a long drink of her tea and set it down. This would take awhile, whether the spirits helped her or not.
Glancing up at the patient's face, Beverly gasped in shock. Even with the bruises, her freshly swollen lip, the dirt and the scrape across her cheek, Kathryn was easily recognisable. She dragged the tricorder back up and kept reading. The bruising was faked, brilliantly so but the split of her lip was real. Beverly had taught Selar that technique for creating old bruises and she recognised it. So they'd snuck her in here by letting Chakotay rescue her. He had to be involved. He'd met Kathryn before and Beverly knew they'd maintained a correspondence.
Filling a hypospray with a local anesthetic, Beverly numbed Kathryn's abdomen and studied her clothing. She could ease off the jacket, but the undershirt was ruined.
"Ekahla," she called. "Ekahla, my patient is going to need a shirt. See if you can find one, will you?"
The girl nodded, running up to take a look. "She's human."
"Yes," Beverly answered, using her laser scalpel to split Kathryn's shirt down the front. "Chakotay said she was trying to get away from a Cardassian collaborator."
"Why would anyone work with them?" Ekahla asked, her young face contorting with hatred. "The Cardassians are monsters."
Beverly sighed, she couldn't just say they were, even if she believed most of the time. "Sometimes it may seem that way. I don't know much about Cardassians, I've never talked to one the way I talk to you. I've never had one trust me, and I never trusted one of them."
"I'll never trust one."
"You never know," Beverly smiled at her as she finished peeling Kathryn's shirt from her body. "When my Grandmother was a little girl, younger than you are, she was terrified of Klingons. She thought all of them were monsters and she didn't know how we could ever be friends with them."
"The Klingons have rules," Ekahla argued. "They have honour. If they made a treaty with us, they would keep it. Not like the Cardassians."
"Now I have a friend who's a Klingon and he would agree with you. They've been our allies for a long time and we have great respect for each other's cultures." As she worked, Beverly pulled cotton out of the stab wound and wished, for the hundreth time since she'd been kidnapped, for a biomedical scanner. If she had sickbay, she could construct the wound on her screen and clean it automatically. Here she had to use the microforceps and do her best on her own.
"But my grandmother was still afraid of them once," she continued.
"Are you saying my grandchildren might be friends with a Cardassian?" Ekahla asked suspiciously.
"Stranger things have happened in the universe," Beverly promised. "Now, if you go find me that shirt, I can be done with her injuries by the time you get back."
The child scampered off and Beverly sighed heavily. Refugee camps and shattered villages were no place to grow up. If these villagers had just allowed the Federation to resettle them, Ekahla could be in school instead of learning morality from a kidnapped Starfleet doctor with an awful crick in the base of her spine.
"I don't know what Jean-Luc promised you in exchange for coming out here," Beverly muttered sarcastically down Kathryn's unconscious form, "but it better have been something good."
"She came because she knew me," Chakotay said, emerging from the shadows of one of the doorways. He had a way of being everywhere. "I heard you talking to Ekahla."
"You don't agree," Beverly replied, digging a few threads of out the fringes of Kathryn's wound. She was almost ready to sterilise it.
"You have an optimistic heart," Chakotay continued, crossing the room to kneel down next to Kathryn and watch Beverly work. "She took a great risk coming here."
"You took a big risk helping her save me," Beverly reminded him. "I know how your people feel about Starfleet, and it's just a few steps higher than how you feel about Cardassians." Her comment was light enough, but his face hardened into a stone mask of anguish.
"This isn't Starfleet's concern," he snapped, suddenly cold. "If it was, the Cardassians wouldn't be a problem and a lot of people would still be alive."
Beverly recoiled a little, keeping her eyes on her work and taking the attempt at levity out of her tone. She finally had the wound clean enough to sterilise and she ran the sterilising field over Kathryn's skin again and again before she used the smaller unit to clean the inside. The liver damage would only require minor work and the injury itself was almost perfectly benign.
"Who stabbed her?" she asked, trying to change the subject. "It's a little extreme to actually wound her before bringing her here."
"Her service record is too clean," Chakotay replied, taking the sterile generator from her hand and holding it up with a light so she could work easier. "No one would believe someone with her record going rogue for the Maquis."
"You couldn't just pass her off as a former lover who just couldn't live knowing she was apart from you?" Beverly asked, trying her smile again.
This time he returned it. "You're a romantic."
"A hopeful one," Beverly retorted. Her laser suture ran over the damage to Kathryn's liver and she had to trust her experience as much as her tricorder. She'd had worse conditions, but this was frustrating. She just had to rely on her senses. "If this was your work, you were just a little too low. Half a centimetre higher and I wouldn't have to repair her liver."
"That was Captain Picard," Chakotay explained, grinning a little. "He made a very convincing merciless thug."
"And yet I can never get him to take a part in any of my plays," Beverly complained, sealing a vein that had been responsible for most of the bleeding. "There we go," she murmured victoriously. "It's just the skin and muscle tissue now."
"She'll be all right?"
"I'm a miracle worker, remember?" Beverly teased. The crick in her spine ceased being painfully numb and flared up to an electric, shooting pain before she had to shift position.
"And you?"
Beverly set down the laser suture and rolled to her hands and knees. Stretching slowly in a yoga pose, she eased the pain away for the moment. When she sat back up, Chakotay was watching her. "I need to go home. Not that I don't trust you or the people here; I belong with my husband." She smiled weakly down at her belly before she looked up at him. "I've been promising him he'd be there when she arrives. It means a lot to him."
"Kathryn knows that," he said, taking a long look at the pale skin Beverly had just repaired. "I think that's why she volunteered after I sent her a really terrible plan. Captain Picard has had quite an effect on her."
Beverly smiled a little easier when he relaxed.
"I can't stay here too long, but I'll come check on you both when she wakes up." He touched Kathryn's shoulder as he passed. There was a sweetness and a familiarity in the gesture that spiked Beverly's curiosity. When Kathryn was awake again, at least they'd have something to talk about.
"We could just pass them both off to the Orions," Seska growled. "Let them deal with them."
"A non-aligned transport, the Yridians or the Grisari, would be kinder," B'Elanna volunteered from her seat on the floor. "Doctor Picard can claim asylum the moment they cross the Federation border. The Orions can't be trusted to turn them over to Federation authorities."
"But they will turn us over," Mike argued. "How do we know that we can trust Doctor Picard and this woman not to tell Starfleet everything they know."
"A woman who was unconscious when we flew her in?" Chakotay reminded them, wishing they didn't have to be so paranoid. "She knows very little about us. Unless she's capable of finding her way by the stars and drawing a map for the Cardassians." He glanced around his fellow Maquis. It was far from a staff meeting on a Starship or a morning briefing at the Academy. His life had once been organised, full of rules and regulations and now he had ramshackle democracy and two Starfleet officers he was honour bound to get home.
"I'll wait for Macias and Kalita," Chakotay decided for his group. "We'll decide when they get here." Seska's expression was still dour, but B'Elanna and Mike were both happy to take him at his word and move on to the next problem in their day. A fussy targeting scanner on one of the raiders and a shield grid badly in need of repair before it went up against the Cardassians again. Beverly and Kathryn were his problem, and with the exception of Seska, who trusted no one, everyone else in his camp would welcome having a doctor and ignore yet another human refugee as long as Kathryn made herself useful.
He sighed, leaving the small stone building they used as headquarters and walking out along the edge of the cliff. The view wasn't much during the day. The Badlands made for lousy skies that were more grey-brown then blue, but the sunsets and sunrises were nothing short of incredible. He leaned against a scrubby tree and let the smell of the wind ease his thoughts. He was a rebel, not a monster and he would find a way to get both of them home safely. The sun sank down towards the distant mountains and turned the lowest rim of skin to orange.
Perhaps Beverly had been right all along. It would have been easier to have made a deal with her husband as soon as they'd taken her. Everything he knew of Captain Picard suggested he was a reasonable man. Anthwara respected him very much, even though he had not been able to write a workable treaty with Picard. If the Enterprise's captain commanded that much respect from a wise leader like Anthwara, then perhaps they could...
They could what? Put Beverly and Kathryn on a raider just outside the Badlands and let the Enterprise pick them up the next time they were on patrol? The chances were just better than 50-50 that a Starfleet ship would pick them up first. Even then, all it took was one gung-ho Starfleet security officer who wanted to bring down the Maquis and Chakotay would have two more deaths on his conscience. The Caradassians had taken too many. They would never get their hands on Kathryn. Not while he still had breath to fight them. Did she know that? Had she been so willing to throw herself into his hands because she still trusted him?
He'd been sure that once he'd left Starfleet her letters would have stopped. At the very least he'd expected a subspace lecture on the finer points of Starfleet duty and obligation. Instead of fire and disappointment, all she'd had for him was empathy. Her father was dead and losing him had sent her into a spiral of depression so dark that she'd never expected to leave it behind. Chakotay had read her letter with a mute kind of envy. Perhaps depression was the same as anger, only directed inwards instead of outwards like his rage.
"No irons?" Kathryn asked, calmly strolling along the ridge towards him. "I came to and I wasn't chained to the bed."
His laugh was a lot darker than it would have been just a few months ago when they met. The innuendo she meant gently stirred something in his stomach. Beverly had healed the bruises on her face, real and faked. Kathryn's thick auburn hair was down and the simple, undyed shirt they'd found for her was just too large enough to make her look smaller. She'd had to roll up the sleeves and the split neckline fell just a little lower than was decent.
"We're civilised barbarians," he replied, smiling as she ducked under a branch and chose one to lean on. "It's good to see you in the flesh, even if the circumstances are less than ideal."
Kathryn's infectious little smile faded and she reached for his shoulder "Chakotay--"
He knew she was about to mention his father, and instead of letting her dredge up that pain, he stroked her cheek. When she didn't pull away, he slipped his fingers deeper into her hair and pulled her close enough to kiss. With the tree branch between them, he couldn't pull her that close to him. She gasped, surprised by kiss but she met his ardour instead of pulling away. Her ips were warm and sweet. Tasting her, Chakotay remembered better times.
"You deserve better," he whispered as they broke apart.
"Than you?" she smirked, ducking under the branch between then and insinuating herself between him and the trunk of the tree. The bark rustled behind her and he dropped his hands to her slender hips.
"Than Mark." He'd read that letter twice before he'd thrown the PADD across the room.
"I knew it wasn't going to work," she confessed, her hands clinging to the tree behind her. "I never would have--"
"But we did." He ran his hand up her side, brushing his thumb over her breast.
Kathryn's smirk returned and her knee brushed against his leg. "Well, I'm not the not the type to jump into bed with just anyone."
Chakotay had known she felt guilty. One drunken night together was nothing to feel guilty about in his mind, but she'd been the one with the fiancé. They'd left it alone, becoming friends who never spoke of their beginning. Now she was free and he was the one trapped. Mark had redeeming qualities, and he'd made her happy when she'd needed someone. The Maquis couldn't make him happy, but it did keep him the rage from burning through the last of his humanity.
She let go of the tree and pulled his head down to kiss him. Kathryn kissed him harder than he had, invading his mouth with her tongue. Pressing her against the tree, Chakotay lifted her slightly off the ground before she let him go.
He held her cheek, losing himself in her deep blue eyes. "I can't be more than this."
"Who said I wanted anything more?" Kathryn purred. She flicked her eyes wickedly from left to right. "So, your bunk or mine?"
He backed away, letting her free long enough to take her hand and lead her away. "I have something better."
onto part II of II
Author: oparu
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Kathryn Janeway/Chakotay, Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard
Spoilers: none
Summary: AU. Commander Kathryn Janeway has been assigned to the Enterprise as Captain Picard's first officer after Will Riker takes command of Voyager. When Beverly Picard is taken by the Maquis, Kathryn has to go undercover and rely on an ex-Starfleet Commander Chakotay of the fledgling Maquis to get Beverly back.
Notes: for courylenwillows on her birthday. Happy Birthday darling!
Commander Kathryn Janeway had been impulsive enough to have a single one night stand in her mostly quiet love-life. Even in that she was sentimental and had kept in touch. The subspace messages they sent back and forth were far from love letters, most of hers were about adjusting to life on the Enterprise: of Captain Picard's quiet grace as a commanding officer and the constant teasing from his wife, Doctor Beverly Picard, that she'd come to realise was a well-meaning sign of affection. The most intimate their letters had been was the about Mark. She'd written late one night, and desperately thought of deleting it before her loneliness won out and she sent it.
Mark Johnson, who was safe, loving and gentle but had no desire to join the other Starfleet spouses on the Enterprise. Nothing she could say about the incredible opportunity it was for her to be the legendary Captain Picard's first officer, or how many new species and diplomatic missions the flagship of the Federation went on mattered to him. Mark wanted to stay on Earth, and while she'd been training and assigned to short-range missions like the Bonestell, that had been fine.
The Enterprise was no science vessel, like her early postings, nor a heavily armed, short-haul escort ship like the Bonestell. The Enterprise was the crowning jewel of the Federation fleet. She stayed out for months at a time, returning to Earth rarely and briefly. She was a great bird, a free, galaxy-spaning Albatross who wanted nothing more than to see what was out there and Kathryn loved it.
He understood, her lover of that one night, that the great romance of space exploration, was not a trivial fling that one could set aside for hearth and home. Home was the ship one was on and the course she followed. Chakotay understood that. When she'd received the last letter from Mark: the one that ended it, the rebellious voice in the back of her mind that had never truly believed Mark was right insisted that Chakotay would have joined her on the Enterprise. He would have supported her, because even through subspace, he always did.
Now, sitting in what had to be one of the the dingiest little clubs she'd ever been in, the air full of the scent of old salt, stale liquor, sweat and dirt, Kathryn tried not to think about the dreadful things that had been in her metal mug before it held the opaque, vaguely herbal swill that passed for beer on this damn planet. The bartender tossed a plate in front of her, bent metal with rice, a sauce that resembled tomatoes with the life boiled out of them and meat. The bread was tough but edible, and the sauce was enough to soften the crusts, even if it had no culinary value and barely any taste.
"I wouldn't eat much," Chakotay said softly as he passed behind her. His fingers brushed her back, displacing her hair and sending a shiver down her spine. He sat across from her, leaning low over the table. In his civilian leathers, what must serve as a Maquis uniform, he looked rakish and dark; nothing like the thoughtful Starfleet anthropologist she'd met at the wedding. The wedding was part of another life, before the treaty that had put Chakotay's home on the wrong side of the border and before his father had died defending it. There were new lines around his dark eyes and an anger in his body that smouldered even when he smiled. A new tattoo graced his temple, and if she'd had time to ask its significance, she would have, but now was not the time for curiosity.
"Our food's not gourmet, but it's better than this," he waved his hand over her plate and dropped it to hers. "I like your hair down."
"You told me to look like I was running," she replied in a whisper. Thanks to Doctor Selar, she had a fading black eye that was a sickly shade of yellowish green, fresh reddish bruises in the shape of fingers around her neck and a poorly healed scrape on her cheek. Her hair was mostly down, but dirty and unkempt.
"My compliments to your doctor," he muttered back, hiding a grin behind his cup. "She does exquisite work." He slid closer, and as she'd been told, Kathryn counted out a few coins and lay them on the table between them.
He ran his fingers over them, and then slid his hand up arm. When he reached for her face, Kathryn flinched, pulling away as if he meant to strike her.
"Good," he whispered. "Very good." Chakotay picked up her bread, taking it from her hand and giving a look that was half-smile, half-leer. "When I leave the table, wait a few moments then follow me. Keep looking around. Is your cover-?"
He didn't have to finish the statement.
Picard slunk in like a predator looking for an easy kill. He too was out of uniform, and while Chakotay's leathers held him blend in, everything about Picard's deep red and black screamed danger like a poisonous snake. He stood by the bar, but didn't order. Instead, he used it as a vantage point to scan the room. He raised an eyebrow at the Orion trader, matched gazes with the Nausicaan until he backed down and ignored all the others until he saw her.
Kathryn tried to hide, but did a poor job of it, just as she was meant to. When she tried to run, she tripped on the floor and fell perfectly into Picard's outstretched arms. His grip was kind, but his face was harsh and his voice was cruel.
"You hide here," he growled, then spat on the floor at her feet. "Here, in this cesspit. Did you think I wouldn't find you? That I can't find you on any planet, on any ship, anywhere you might attempt to hide."
She pulled back, flinching away from him as if she'd been running from him all her life. He released one arm, raising the other to cuff her across the face. Cowering in his rough embrace, Kathryn caught the apology in his eyes. Picard hadn't wanted to hit her, he thought it overkill, but Kathryn swore she wouldn't hold it against him. It was for Beverly, and that, above all other things, had convinced him.
As the alien refuse of the seedy bar backed away from them, she cowered, holding her hand against her soon to be swollen lip. "I'm sorry," she whispered, swagging in his arms. "I'm sorry. I'll never--"
He lifted his hand again, holding it over her head like a death sentence. Kathryn cried out, fleeing desperately back to avoid another blow. Picard stopped before he cuffed her and in a flash of steel his knife was in his hand. Letting it pull the fabric tight over her breasts, he traced it down her chest.
"You'll never," Picard repeated, his voice like frozen gravel. "You'll never..."
She caught his arm, pulling them together. "I'll find her," she promised. "Just do it."
"Thank you," he whispered into her ear just before the knife sank into her stomach, just beneath her ribs.
As they'd practised over and over, the blade sank into her flesh exactly where Selar had demonstrated to them. The pain took her breath away and whited out her vision. Kathryn had tears in her eyes as she sank down to the floor; both hands pressed over the wound as it began to ooze with blood. It coated her fingers and seeped into her clothing. The pain radiated from the wound, stealing breath as she fought to keep conscious.
The phaser blast cut through the silence, forcing Picard from her. Chakotay fired again, and again, until Picard was gone and the entire bar was starting to clear. In the chaos, she half-stood, dragging herself up enough for him to catch her under the arms and pull her away. As they crossed the threshold into the street, he leaned close to her ear.
"Faint and I'll carry you."
"I'm fine," she snapped back. Blood ran down her hip and was starting to reach her knee. It was messy, but it was a flesh wound. If Picard had hit her liver, she'd be dead already.
"I'm not being chivalrous," Chakotay promised her. "It's part of your cover. Trust me."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two Bajorans start to come towards her. Letting her knees go weak, she crumpled into his ready arms. He swung her up easily, as if she weighed little. Letting her head go limp was the hardest part, but she allowed it to loll over his arm.
"What did you find Chakotay?" a woman's harsh voice asked. "A lost rabbit?"
"He is one for strays," the man agreed. His voice was deeper and softer. "What will you do with her?"
"Her husband's a Cardassian collaborator," Chakotay explained. "She tried to buy her way off-world on one of our ships."
"And he didn't like it," the woman sneered. Her cool fingers touched Kathryn's cheek and neck. "Or her, apparently."
Other hands, most likely the man's pressed cloth over her wound. Kathryn jolted in pain. Chakotay flipped her up, burying her head in his shoulder as she nearly cried out.
"She'll need the doctor," the man holding her side said. "She's lucky we still have that Enterprise doctor. One of ours may have had some trouble with this."
"I couldn't leave her, Seska," Chakotay explained. "We can put her in with Doctor Picard until we find a way to get rid of them both. We're not in the business of having captives."
"We could always ransom the Doctor," the woman, who seemed to be Seska, suggested. "Surely the wife of the great Picard is worth an industrial replicator or a shipment of medical supplies."
"We're not terrorists or bandits," Chakotay reminded her with a sharpness in his voice than Kathryn had never heard before. "When we can release Doctor Picard safely, we will. Until then, we are lucky she will assist us at all. She's saved several of us already."
The mechanical hum was a ship's rear hatch. Not Federation, but maybe Bajoran, Kathryn couldn't be exactly sure from the tone. Chakotay set her down in the back. Lying her gently on the floor, he checked the crude bandage on her abdomen then leaned close enough to whisper.
"It's less than an hour from here, stay quiet, we'll be there soon."
Kathryn squeezed his wrist, kept her eyes tightly closed and tried to think of anything but the pulsating agony in her side. She'd been injured before, broken bones, phaser burns, and she could work through all of them provided she had something to do. Lying in the back of a Maquis ship, she assumed she was being flown into their camp without even a communicator to beam them out when she found Beverly.
Since Beverly had gone missing seven days ago, Captain Picard had been beside himself. If she had met him now, she couldn't have been able to tell, but over the last few months, Kathryn had learned that his emotions were there. Starfleet had been torn between launching a full assault against the Maquis or trying to find some way to relate to them. The Maquis had no formal leader and there was no way of knowing who to negotiate with, or which group had her.
Contacting Chakotay had been a long shot from the beginning but she'd been willing to try anything while Starfleet and the Federation were tied up in official channels trying to get permission from the Cardassians to search for her. Picard had no trust for Cardassians. Kathryn had read his file, but even that horrific description hadn't prepared her for the emptiness in his eyes when he'd looked across his desk and told her how much he worried for his wife's safety if she had fallen into the hands of the Cardassians.
Chakotay's insane and dangerous plan was the only chance they had of getting close to Beverly. Even if all they accomplished was making Kathryn a hostage as well, at least Beverly wouldn't be alone. She would bring her home, no matter what it took.
"Doctor, doctor, The ship's coming back," Ekahla called from the doorway into what served the Maquis village as an infirmary. Beverly sighed, pulling her thick red hair tighter into the band that held it. The little Bajoran girl was quick with her enthusiasm and slow with details. Would anyone else on the ship be injured? Were they bringing the medical supplies they needed? Were they finally over their obsession with security and ready to let her go?
An overzealous Maquis transporter program had brought her aboard a raider that was trying to steal medical supplies from the Enterprise. Unable to transport her back without risking their capture, the little ship had fled the Enterprise's tractor beam with her on board. As captors went, the Maquis were polite, stand-offish, stubborn and paranoid, but polite nonetheless.
She dragged herself off the stones, cursing fate for bringing her to this desperate place when her body was least able to handle it. Thirty-seven weeks was far too close to her due date for comfort, but she would be fine. She had time, Beverly reminded herself. Jean-Luc's daughter, their daughter, would just have to wait to be born until she was home safe on the Enterprise and that was all there was to it. She didn't have to go far from the makeshift infirmary before Chakotay brought her patient to her.
"One of the Cardassian collaborators stabbed her," Chakotay explained as he lay the unconscious body of the petite woman on one of the unoccupied cots. "It didn't seem serious, but she lost consciousness on the ride back."
"I suppose I should be grateful she didn't get in the way of a disruptor," Beverly replied darkly. She grabbed one of the stolen medkits, the one she'd made her favourite over the last few days, and slowly sat down on the floor. Crossing her legs made it possible to sit for awhile, but nothing was ever comfortable.
One of the elders, a woman who was part of Chakotay's former village called Iabara, touched her shoulder and handed her a cup of tea. "I'm sure you'll put her right, Doctor. The spirits think well of you."
"Thank you," she said, taking the tea. "Tell them I appreciate their support."
Beverly held her tea in one hand, opened her kit with the other and ran a tricorder over her patient. She was human, female, around thirty-five years of age. She was either military or led an exceptionally dangerous life. She'd had several injuries repaired over the years, and most of them in a Starfleet hospital. Beneath the blood-soaked make-shift bandage on her side was a deep knife wound that had just skimmed the patient's liver. She took a long drink of her tea and set it down. This would take awhile, whether the spirits helped her or not.
Glancing up at the patient's face, Beverly gasped in shock. Even with the bruises, her freshly swollen lip, the dirt and the scrape across her cheek, Kathryn was easily recognisable. She dragged the tricorder back up and kept reading. The bruising was faked, brilliantly so but the split of her lip was real. Beverly had taught Selar that technique for creating old bruises and she recognised it. So they'd snuck her in here by letting Chakotay rescue her. He had to be involved. He'd met Kathryn before and Beverly knew they'd maintained a correspondence.
Filling a hypospray with a local anesthetic, Beverly numbed Kathryn's abdomen and studied her clothing. She could ease off the jacket, but the undershirt was ruined.
"Ekahla," she called. "Ekahla, my patient is going to need a shirt. See if you can find one, will you?"
The girl nodded, running up to take a look. "She's human."
"Yes," Beverly answered, using her laser scalpel to split Kathryn's shirt down the front. "Chakotay said she was trying to get away from a Cardassian collaborator."
"Why would anyone work with them?" Ekahla asked, her young face contorting with hatred. "The Cardassians are monsters."
Beverly sighed, she couldn't just say they were, even if she believed most of the time. "Sometimes it may seem that way. I don't know much about Cardassians, I've never talked to one the way I talk to you. I've never had one trust me, and I never trusted one of them."
"I'll never trust one."
"You never know," Beverly smiled at her as she finished peeling Kathryn's shirt from her body. "When my Grandmother was a little girl, younger than you are, she was terrified of Klingons. She thought all of them were monsters and she didn't know how we could ever be friends with them."
"The Klingons have rules," Ekahla argued. "They have honour. If they made a treaty with us, they would keep it. Not like the Cardassians."
"Now I have a friend who's a Klingon and he would agree with you. They've been our allies for a long time and we have great respect for each other's cultures." As she worked, Beverly pulled cotton out of the stab wound and wished, for the hundreth time since she'd been kidnapped, for a biomedical scanner. If she had sickbay, she could construct the wound on her screen and clean it automatically. Here she had to use the microforceps and do her best on her own.
"But my grandmother was still afraid of them once," she continued.
"Are you saying my grandchildren might be friends with a Cardassian?" Ekahla asked suspiciously.
"Stranger things have happened in the universe," Beverly promised. "Now, if you go find me that shirt, I can be done with her injuries by the time you get back."
The child scampered off and Beverly sighed heavily. Refugee camps and shattered villages were no place to grow up. If these villagers had just allowed the Federation to resettle them, Ekahla could be in school instead of learning morality from a kidnapped Starfleet doctor with an awful crick in the base of her spine.
"I don't know what Jean-Luc promised you in exchange for coming out here," Beverly muttered sarcastically down Kathryn's unconscious form, "but it better have been something good."
"She came because she knew me," Chakotay said, emerging from the shadows of one of the doorways. He had a way of being everywhere. "I heard you talking to Ekahla."
"You don't agree," Beverly replied, digging a few threads of out the fringes of Kathryn's wound. She was almost ready to sterilise it.
"You have an optimistic heart," Chakotay continued, crossing the room to kneel down next to Kathryn and watch Beverly work. "She took a great risk coming here."
"You took a big risk helping her save me," Beverly reminded him. "I know how your people feel about Starfleet, and it's just a few steps higher than how you feel about Cardassians." Her comment was light enough, but his face hardened into a stone mask of anguish.
"This isn't Starfleet's concern," he snapped, suddenly cold. "If it was, the Cardassians wouldn't be a problem and a lot of people would still be alive."
Beverly recoiled a little, keeping her eyes on her work and taking the attempt at levity out of her tone. She finally had the wound clean enough to sterilise and she ran the sterilising field over Kathryn's skin again and again before she used the smaller unit to clean the inside. The liver damage would only require minor work and the injury itself was almost perfectly benign.
"Who stabbed her?" she asked, trying to change the subject. "It's a little extreme to actually wound her before bringing her here."
"Her service record is too clean," Chakotay replied, taking the sterile generator from her hand and holding it up with a light so she could work easier. "No one would believe someone with her record going rogue for the Maquis."
"You couldn't just pass her off as a former lover who just couldn't live knowing she was apart from you?" Beverly asked, trying her smile again.
This time he returned it. "You're a romantic."
"A hopeful one," Beverly retorted. Her laser suture ran over the damage to Kathryn's liver and she had to trust her experience as much as her tricorder. She'd had worse conditions, but this was frustrating. She just had to rely on her senses. "If this was your work, you were just a little too low. Half a centimetre higher and I wouldn't have to repair her liver."
"That was Captain Picard," Chakotay explained, grinning a little. "He made a very convincing merciless thug."
"And yet I can never get him to take a part in any of my plays," Beverly complained, sealing a vein that had been responsible for most of the bleeding. "There we go," she murmured victoriously. "It's just the skin and muscle tissue now."
"She'll be all right?"
"I'm a miracle worker, remember?" Beverly teased. The crick in her spine ceased being painfully numb and flared up to an electric, shooting pain before she had to shift position.
"And you?"
Beverly set down the laser suture and rolled to her hands and knees. Stretching slowly in a yoga pose, she eased the pain away for the moment. When she sat back up, Chakotay was watching her. "I need to go home. Not that I don't trust you or the people here; I belong with my husband." She smiled weakly down at her belly before she looked up at him. "I've been promising him he'd be there when she arrives. It means a lot to him."
"Kathryn knows that," he said, taking a long look at the pale skin Beverly had just repaired. "I think that's why she volunteered after I sent her a really terrible plan. Captain Picard has had quite an effect on her."
Beverly smiled a little easier when he relaxed.
"I can't stay here too long, but I'll come check on you both when she wakes up." He touched Kathryn's shoulder as he passed. There was a sweetness and a familiarity in the gesture that spiked Beverly's curiosity. When Kathryn was awake again, at least they'd have something to talk about.
"We could just pass them both off to the Orions," Seska growled. "Let them deal with them."
"A non-aligned transport, the Yridians or the Grisari, would be kinder," B'Elanna volunteered from her seat on the floor. "Doctor Picard can claim asylum the moment they cross the Federation border. The Orions can't be trusted to turn them over to Federation authorities."
"But they will turn us over," Mike argued. "How do we know that we can trust Doctor Picard and this woman not to tell Starfleet everything they know."
"A woman who was unconscious when we flew her in?" Chakotay reminded them, wishing they didn't have to be so paranoid. "She knows very little about us. Unless she's capable of finding her way by the stars and drawing a map for the Cardassians." He glanced around his fellow Maquis. It was far from a staff meeting on a Starship or a morning briefing at the Academy. His life had once been organised, full of rules and regulations and now he had ramshackle democracy and two Starfleet officers he was honour bound to get home.
"I'll wait for Macias and Kalita," Chakotay decided for his group. "We'll decide when they get here." Seska's expression was still dour, but B'Elanna and Mike were both happy to take him at his word and move on to the next problem in their day. A fussy targeting scanner on one of the raiders and a shield grid badly in need of repair before it went up against the Cardassians again. Beverly and Kathryn were his problem, and with the exception of Seska, who trusted no one, everyone else in his camp would welcome having a doctor and ignore yet another human refugee as long as Kathryn made herself useful.
He sighed, leaving the small stone building they used as headquarters and walking out along the edge of the cliff. The view wasn't much during the day. The Badlands made for lousy skies that were more grey-brown then blue, but the sunsets and sunrises were nothing short of incredible. He leaned against a scrubby tree and let the smell of the wind ease his thoughts. He was a rebel, not a monster and he would find a way to get both of them home safely. The sun sank down towards the distant mountains and turned the lowest rim of skin to orange.
Perhaps Beverly had been right all along. It would have been easier to have made a deal with her husband as soon as they'd taken her. Everything he knew of Captain Picard suggested he was a reasonable man. Anthwara respected him very much, even though he had not been able to write a workable treaty with Picard. If the Enterprise's captain commanded that much respect from a wise leader like Anthwara, then perhaps they could...
They could what? Put Beverly and Kathryn on a raider just outside the Badlands and let the Enterprise pick them up the next time they were on patrol? The chances were just better than 50-50 that a Starfleet ship would pick them up first. Even then, all it took was one gung-ho Starfleet security officer who wanted to bring down the Maquis and Chakotay would have two more deaths on his conscience. The Caradassians had taken too many. They would never get their hands on Kathryn. Not while he still had breath to fight them. Did she know that? Had she been so willing to throw herself into his hands because she still trusted him?
He'd been sure that once he'd left Starfleet her letters would have stopped. At the very least he'd expected a subspace lecture on the finer points of Starfleet duty and obligation. Instead of fire and disappointment, all she'd had for him was empathy. Her father was dead and losing him had sent her into a spiral of depression so dark that she'd never expected to leave it behind. Chakotay had read her letter with a mute kind of envy. Perhaps depression was the same as anger, only directed inwards instead of outwards like his rage.
"No irons?" Kathryn asked, calmly strolling along the ridge towards him. "I came to and I wasn't chained to the bed."
His laugh was a lot darker than it would have been just a few months ago when they met. The innuendo she meant gently stirred something in his stomach. Beverly had healed the bruises on her face, real and faked. Kathryn's thick auburn hair was down and the simple, undyed shirt they'd found for her was just too large enough to make her look smaller. She'd had to roll up the sleeves and the split neckline fell just a little lower than was decent.
"We're civilised barbarians," he replied, smiling as she ducked under a branch and chose one to lean on. "It's good to see you in the flesh, even if the circumstances are less than ideal."
Kathryn's infectious little smile faded and she reached for his shoulder "Chakotay--"
He knew she was about to mention his father, and instead of letting her dredge up that pain, he stroked her cheek. When she didn't pull away, he slipped his fingers deeper into her hair and pulled her close enough to kiss. With the tree branch between them, he couldn't pull her that close to him. She gasped, surprised by kiss but she met his ardour instead of pulling away. Her ips were warm and sweet. Tasting her, Chakotay remembered better times.
"You deserve better," he whispered as they broke apart.
"Than you?" she smirked, ducking under the branch between then and insinuating herself between him and the trunk of the tree. The bark rustled behind her and he dropped his hands to her slender hips.
"Than Mark." He'd read that letter twice before he'd thrown the PADD across the room.
"I knew it wasn't going to work," she confessed, her hands clinging to the tree behind her. "I never would have--"
"But we did." He ran his hand up her side, brushing his thumb over her breast.
Kathryn's smirk returned and her knee brushed against his leg. "Well, I'm not the not the type to jump into bed with just anyone."
Chakotay had known she felt guilty. One drunken night together was nothing to feel guilty about in his mind, but she'd been the one with the fiancé. They'd left it alone, becoming friends who never spoke of their beginning. Now she was free and he was the one trapped. Mark had redeeming qualities, and he'd made her happy when she'd needed someone. The Maquis couldn't make him happy, but it did keep him the rage from burning through the last of his humanity.
She let go of the tree and pulled his head down to kiss him. Kathryn kissed him harder than he had, invading his mouth with her tongue. Pressing her against the tree, Chakotay lifted her slightly off the ground before she let him go.
He held her cheek, losing himself in her deep blue eyes. "I can't be more than this."
"Who said I wanted anything more?" Kathryn purred. She flicked her eyes wickedly from left to right. "So, your bunk or mine?"
He backed away, letting her free long enough to take her hand and lead her away. "I have something better."
onto part II of II