A Challenge One, Prompt Two Story

I can't even begin to tell you the last time that I wrote a Voyager story. Years. But last night, tremblingmoon and I were talking about Voyager and Kathryn Janeway, and I began to feel nostalgic and I remembered why, and how much, I had loved the character. And so, I took one of the gorgeous prompts from the first even_angels_ challenge, and wrote this. Who knows, maybe Kathryn and I will become re-acquainted *g*.

And yes, I know that challenge is over, but what is the point of being one of the ones making the rules, if, occasionally, you can't break them? *g*

Drowning
Fewthistle
Challenge One, Prompt Two
Star Trek: Voyager
J/7
Words: 510




Words aren't always simple when they have to embrace the consequences of life. If there was a lesson that Kathryn Janeway had learned out here in the isolation of the Delta Quadrant, it was that nothing is simple; and everything is. Life, death. Love, hate. Loyalty, betrayal. All infinitely nuanced, and all starkly fundamental.

It was another endless night; just one more in a soul-crushing season of long nights. Outside the distressed white hull of Voyager, the yawing sea of blackness tugged at them, drawing her ship and her crew deeper into the frozen pit of space. In the darkness of her quarters, Kathryn watched as the patternless pattern of stars swept by them, momentary beacons of light; small, ineffectual, they offered neither direction, nor solace.

They were low on supplies, low on spare parts, low on deuterium. The most advanced ship in the fleet, the pride of Utopia Planetia, now battered, bruised, listing badly to starboard. And what of her captain? The indomitable Kathryn Janeway, daughter of an admiral, just as battered, just as bruised.

Sometimes, in the incalcuable hours until morning watch sounded, Kathryn felt that all of her beliefs, all of her Starfleet ideals had been rendered meaningless here on the other side of the looking-glass; like a call to worship the one true God, only to discover a pantheon of other Gods, many more powerful, more brutal and cruel than Kathryn could have dreamt in the worst of her hellish nightmares.

Yet, still she clung to those beliefs, to a code of behavior, to a zeitgeist that offered her little more than a spar to keep her afloat. She had quickly discovered that even one small piece of driftwood was preferable to drowning. Drowning was not an option.

In another part of Voyager, Seven of Nine regenerated in her chamber, her piercing blue eyes shuttered, her expression almost innocent, and a little wistful. Kathryn knew this, for many an empty evening found her standing in the Cargobay, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of Seven’s breathing, wondering at the dreams that danced silently behind those closed lids.

Kathryn longed to know the contents of those dreams. She stood for hours, wondering if Seven’s visons were brilliant, vivid with bright colors, or hazily tinted in sepia-tones. Wondered if she was in them. She always slipped away into the empty corridors of the ship long before Seven’s eyes blinked open to a new day. Kathryn knew that she could drown in those eyes, in the possibility of redemption in their azure depths. But again, drowning was not an option.

So Kathryn perservered. She stayed strong, she never faltered, never wavered. To her crew, Kathryn Janeway was a rock upon which to stand; solid ground amid quicksand upon which to build their hope that they would one day get home. It was only at night, here alone with the distant stars and her ever-present fears, that Kathryn felt the icy waters rising up around her, the cold numbing her limbs, pulling her gently under.

All things scream silently, she thought: We are a God in ruin.