Voyager Lost

**WARNING!** This story contains a consentual romantic relationship between women. If this offends you or IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, LEAVE NOW!!

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Paramount Pictures and other guys in suits who make more than I do. No infringment is intended.

Relationship: Janeway/Wildman

Timeline/Spoilers: Uses "Basics," as its premise, but is set in the first season before the birth of Naomi.

Archive: Please ask first.

Rating: NC-17 as a precaution.

Status: Just getting started.



                             VOYAGER LOST


“What can I do?” Kathryn whispered empathetically, wrapping a comforting arm around the other’s shoulders.

Sam leaned into the warmth and fought back tears for several moments. “Bring Voyager back,” she whispered finally, succumbing to silent tears.

Kathryn clasped her other arm around the very pregnant Samantha, encircling her in an awkward embrace. Sam, who couldn’t care less about awkwardness, leaned in to rest her head on her captain’s shoulder and wept in the encroaching dusk. Kathryn did what she could to soothe the ensign, crooning appropriate platitudes and rubbing her back comfortingly, all the while her mind buzzing in a new fervor. She could hardly admit it to herself, but she had been in more-or-less a daze all day long. She had to start thinking beyond daily survival and start thinking about morale. Sam had hardly been the first to break down. Kes and a few crewmembers had lost it as soon as Voyager disappeared off the horizon with the Kazon hijackers, several others as the despair hit them throughout the day. If Kathryn wasn’t careful, it would get her too, and she couldn’t risk her emotions infecting the crew.

A crewman some ten or twenty meters away started singing a familiar tune of sorrow and redemption. The strains of the Earth hymn hung tantalizingly in solo for a few lines until another crewman jumped in to add his voice. At the chorus, several more joined, and by the end of the chorus, it seemed a small impromptu choir had amassed.

Kathryn listened in awe. No matter how silly it seemed, the impromptu performance seemed just the perfect thing to allow her people to express their emotions. By the second verse, the shock wore off, and she started to recognize voices. Harry Kim. Chakotay. The Delaneys. After a moment, she bitterly realized she was straining for voices that she wouldn’t hear: those of Paris and the Doctor.

Samantha listened, gratitude pouring from her with her tears.

By the third chorus, Kathryn was startled to hear another, alien voice join the now-familiar words: Neelix. Even Neelix, abandoned here with the rest of them, felt a part enough of the crew to lend his voice to the group which was becoming his family. It was then Kathryn realized that the most important voice was missing from the group. Kathryn started to sing.

Samantha was startled at this turn of events. She had never expected the Captain to join in. Not only was she not religious, but Sam had been sure the other woman would have retained that barrier she so firmly held between her and her crew. Yet here was Captain Janeway, hesitantly warbling slightly off-key. She raised her head to watch this event first hand, and caught Janeway in a blush. Still, the Captain must have felt it was her duty to continue, for continue she did, to the end of the hymn.

When the song died, applause kicked up from singers and non-singers alike, and Kathryn knew it wasn’t her they were applauding, but each other for encouragement. A crewman had done what the Captain couldn’t: he had bonded them through their pain and made them stronger.

When Tuvok was quite sure the outpouring of human emotion was over, he cleared his throat and raised his voice to be heard throughout the camp. As touching as it was, a sing-along could alert predators to their presence and mask the sound of their approach.

“This is Commander Tuvok,” he addressed in the darkness. “We know very little about this planet or its cycles and we have an arduous task ahead of us. I suggest we settle down and get as much rest as the local night allows.”

Distantly, Kathryn began to hear the scrapings of bodies being settled and murmurs of “good-nights” being given.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” praised Sam softly beside her.

“I can’t,” she admitted truthfully.

Sam looked Kathryn in the eye with gratitude. “But you did,” she whispered and hugged her Captain as tightly as her bulk would allow.

As if this action wasn’t embarrassing enough, Kathryn thought she faintly felt the sensation of Sam’s unborn child moving against her. This over-familiarity was not one that Kathryn felt she had earned nor deserved, and she hastily broke the embrace.

“We should get some sleep,” she suggested firmly. “It’s been a while since I’ve roughed it.”

When Sam peeled away, Kathryn felt she immediately missed the contact, but she held her control in check. Clearing away the ground of obstructions as best she could, Kathryn resigned herself to an uncomfortable, lumpy bed of sun-hardened earth. A half-meter away, Sam laid down beside her with effort. Kathryn knew that however poorly she was feeling, Sam would have it twice as bad because of her condition, and she began to reconsider Sam’s role in the following days. After a minute or two, Kathryn rolled onto her side, facing the ensign.

“Sam?”

At this distance, with the last strains of the local sun quickly disappearing, Samantha was little more than a shadow against a dark background, yet Kathryn could clearly make out the swell of the woman’s abdomen. Unbidden, a desire to reach out and touch that sacred place welled up in her. She realized she wanted to feel the assuring touch of carefully sequestered life again.

Sam turned her head and nodded before realizing the other woman probably couldn’t see the motion. “Yes, Captain?”

Kathryn clamped her hand into a painful fist as punishment for her thoughts before calming herself and starting over by remembering the duty she had to protect mother and child, and how difficult that was going to be in such a hostile environment.

“Sam, I want you to stay here with a few others at camp tomorrow.”

It took a moment for Sam to realize why the captain was making such a request. “Captain, I’m perfectly able of pulling my own weight,” she protested. “I’m a biologist. You need me out there.”

“I know what you’re capable of, Samantha, but until we find a substantive protein source, I don’t want you exerting yourself any more than you have to.” She paused for emphasis. “You have a baby who needs you more than we do.”

Sam opened her mouth and closed it soundlessly. She could hardly argue with that reasoning though she believed the crew would need her skills even more in this environment. For not the first time, she rued the fact that her pregnancy was holding her back. As if in silent protest, she felt her unborn baby move in her womb, and Sam relented, wrapping her arm around her bulge and mentally apologizing to the baby.
“Aye, Captain,” she answered finally.


* * * * *


To her disgust and embarrassment, B’elanna realized she was practically spooning with the Captain. She rolled away violently and sat on the ground stretching her muscle groups in place. She suspected that everyone was going to be sore from their unyielding beds. She scanned the horizon to see what had awakened her, and realized dawn was about to break. It was something she could almost smell rather than see, and for a moment, she wondered if that was a full-blooded Klingon trait, or a Human one. She shuddered as she remembered the smell of Kathryn’s hair – not that it was unpleasant, but that such familiarity was a social more’ in either culture. She strained to remember how she had gotten in that predicament in the first place. Dimly she remembered awakening to the changing of the guard that Tuvok had set up around the camp. She remembered the chill soaking through to her bones. And finally, she remembered the groggy reasoning that warmth was preferable to cold, and cursed herself for her weakness.

She stood up and looked around, making out clumps of people in the near-dawn lightening of the sky. At least she wasn’t the only one: most of the groups within eyesight were likewise huddled together for warmth. Even the Captain and Ensign Wildman at her feet were curled up facing one another. Shaking her head to herself, she realized she was just glad no one had caught her in the compromising position, and hoped fervently that a fire could be maintained by the next evening. It was then she registered another bodily weakness, and quietly jogged away in search of a likely location to relieve herself.