Depression

Authors Note: Thanks for the lovely reviews!

It wasn't a fitting end for a Starship Captain, Kathryn Janeway thought ruefully to herself as she stared into the sky, blood pooling underneath her from the gaping hole on her torso.

Her mind was askew, drunk without a drink, her body feebly pumping the last of her precious blood supplies through her emptied veins.

Someone was gripping her hand, talking to her a voice edged with panic.

"Stay with us Kathryn. Don't die on us now, god damnit!"

If she could have, she would have smiled softly at them and told them it was okay, death comes for all of us, after all. But she couldn't. Her mouth was stuck closed, everything about her was numb and as she stared into the clouds above she felt like her last tendrils of life were withdrawing, leaving behind a hollowed husk for her team members to take away.

'What happened to you?'

Oh there he was. She was lying on a grassy knoll, her face warmed by the sun as someone lay behind her, entwining their fingers in her own.

'I think I died.' Janeway replied, rolling over with a smile and resting her head on Justin's shoulder.

'How?'

Kathryn let out a small laugh.

'In the way all good Captains should go out. Protecting their ship and their crew.'

Justin stretched, his hand coming toward her face to gently push back a stray hair, his expression a relaxed smile.

'You're not a Captain quite yet, Kathy.' He said with a wink, 'Just one in training'.

'Well this Captain in Training just passed Spock's Starship Command Track exam.'

'You mean you're in?' Justin asked, his smile becoming a grin.

"I'm in." Kathryn said with a grin as Justin cheered, tightening his arms around her and rolling her across the grass as she laughed.

"What happened to you?"

Kathryn shook her head, cleaning the cobwebs out her mind as she looked up at her first officer. Chakotay was staring at her, concerned, a PADD griped tightly in his fingers.

Kathryn looked across her desk, locating her favorite cup with her eyes and reaching to shove it in her ready room replicator.

"Coffee, black."

The replicator lit for a second before she removed the now warm cup full of brown liquid and moved over to her couch, taking a sip of the heavenly liquid as she settled herself.

"Kathryn?" Chakotay came to sit next to her as she patted the space with her hand, an unspoken request he accepted without a thought.

"The negotiations broke down." She answered finally with a restrained sigh.

Her first officer raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I guessed."

"It looks like the Karoban people aren't looking to trade." The Captain continued, rubbing her sore neck with one hand as she took another sip of her coffee. "When we got there they had already been approached and seemingly warned we were coming. They didn't even want to hear us out, they opted to shoot first, as questions later."

"They had jamming technology." Chakotay stated, remembering the terrifying moment on the bridge when they found they couldn't beam the away team back to Voyager.

"It seems someone in the quadrant doesn't want us getting back to Earth." Janeway replied, leaning back into the comfort of the cushions, shooting Chakotay a tired, tight smile.

"I thought we wouldn't get you back." The first officer continued, looking down as his weathered, worn knuckles. Janeway and her team had broken the jamming device, allowing Voyager to beam them back to the ship but not before considerable sacrifice. Kathryn had been trapped in an explosion at the facility with Seven the smoke had cleared on the beaming platform to reveal a bloodied Seven of Nine clutching an even bloodier Captain Janeway.

"You did." Kathyn replied, sensing his pain and reaching over to gently grip his clenched hands, "The doctor had to piece me back together again, but here we are, we survived."

"Head towards home?" Chakotay asked with a smile, momentarily tightening his hands around the Captains before standing up.

"Steer this ship towards to the Alpha Quadrant," She said with a grin, taking his outstretched hand and pulling herself to her feet, "and don't look back."

"What happened?" Seven of Nine asked with her usual sharp tongue as the leadership group settled into their chairs around the table.

"At 0300," Chakotay said with a sigh, "During a survey of a world with significant underground deposits of dilithium, the away team were attacked by an unknown, hostile force. Ensign Markham was killed by propulsion weaponry and Captain Janeway was kidnapped. It seems there was a jammer activated on the planet shortly after she was taken. We managed to get the remaining team back to Voyager but the Captain's bio-signature is being blocked by a similar device we saw on the Keroban home-planet."

There was an uncomfortable silence at the table.

"What do they want with the Captain?" Tom Paris asked, frowning at the news that Kathryn Janeway was being held captive.

"We don't know." Chakotay answered, scrolling down the PADD in front of him.

"How are we going to get her out?" B'Elanna was next to ask, her eyes scanning the holo-planet looking for a weak point.

"I'm ordering two away teams to take shuttles down to the planet." The Commander answered, "Fully armed. A scan of the planet indicates that they've taken the Captain underground. We'll be using Voyager's torpedoes to make a targeted blast on the planets surface – breaking an entrance for the teams to enter and retrieve the hostage."

"Previous interactions with this unknown race," Seven said, picking up in the momentary silence after Chakotay, "Indicates they are technologically at a level similarly to Earth in the 21st century. We can expect projectile weaponry and primitive defenses."

"That jammer doesn't seem to primitive." B'Elanna said with a frown. Seven looked at her sharply. She really does look like an ice queen, Chakotay thought to himself.

"The jammer we destroyed on the Keroban home planet was of simple mechanical design based no doubt on previous experiences with hostile advanced races."

"Seven," Chakotay interjected before B'Elanna's prominent vein in her forehead grew any larger, "You're leading away team one. Tuvok, you're leading away team two. Let's get her back people."

"What happened?" Janeway asked weakly, blood bubbling out the side of her mouth as her lungs struggled to take in air.

"You were captured by a race known as the Tran Captain," Seven of Nine said softly, lifting the weak, bloody body of Kathryn Janeway into her arms.

"They blamed Voyager for the increased presence of the Borg in the Delta Quadrant. They planned an ambush for you when the away team came to inspect dilithium deposits. You were taken to their underground caverns and have been tortured extensively. We are here to rescue you."

Janeway rested her head against the warm torso carrying her weakened frame and closed her eyes against the world, which was moving far too quickly around her for her stomach to handle.

She was in a cell, she remembered. The leader of the Tran, a ruthless military leader who hadn't even given her his name had stormed in, slapping her painfully across the face the second he stepped inside the cramped, dirty space. She hadn't fallen to her knees, the pain left her reeling but she held her ground. She had turned her head back to him, her cheek a stark red, her eyes full of water she refused to shed and her hair loose across her face and it had infuriated him. The next thing she knew she was on the ground and his boot was kicking her repeatedly.

She had heard the snap of her ribs shattering, the piercing pain of one driving through her lungs and other internal organs. He was screaming at her, spittle flying from his lips but she couldn't hear. His kicks kept coming; he pulled her up by the collar of her uniform and pushed her against the wall where her head collided painfully with the wall behind it. Galaxies spun lazily in front of her eyes, solar systems and stars making a universal journey across her consciousness as she slid ungracefully to the floor.

She sat there for several hours – she wasn't sure where the Tran had gone, but she couldn't move. When sirens started to scream, the world around her shuddered and he rushed back in, his lips a thin, cruel line as he raised his weapon and with a single pop, she felt excruciating pain fill her, radiating from here he had just fired into her stomach, hot blood pumping out onto her fingers. Her front was warm, her own life force pouring out over her but her back was warm as the Tran leader fell to his knees, a look of surprise on his features as Seven of Nine walked past his body and pulled the weakened Captain into her strong arms.

"How are you progressing disabling the jamming device?" Seven asked into her comm badge. B'Elanna's stressed voice sounded around them.
"We're making progress, we're under fire from soldiers around here – I need another ten minutes!"

"Act as quickly as you can," Seven replied, looking for a second worriedly down to the Captain who was zoning in and out of consciousness in her arms, "The Captain may not have that long."

"What Happened?"

Chakotay and the Doctor were hovering above her as the sky spun lazily in and out of focus.

"The Tran shot her." Seven of Nine answered, her voice disembodied and coming from somewhere out of sight "They also beat her severely. B'Elanna is attempting to destroy the jamming device. She expects it will be another few minutes."

"I don't think we have that long." The doctor answered tersely, running a scanner over the Captain.

"She'll be fine won't she Doctor?" The Commander asked, his voice alarmed.

Kathryn stared past him, up into the sky above. Somewhere above that blue sky was Voyager. From here, a distant guiding star.

She could hear her something thumping in her ears and she felt both warm and clammy, stars drifting across her vision.

"Damnit B'Elanna," she heard Chakotay yell, "We need that jammer down, now!"

It's too late. Janeway urged to say. I'm already dead.

The sun should have been blinding, it was a sunny day with a brilliant blue sky on this godforsaken planet, but instead the world was coated in a wash of light grey, dulling everything and everyone.

The world looked as it did when she would stare out the window of her childhood home at Christmas time, the frost from the night hardened into ice on her window, blurring everything outside.

Someone was taking again and in the distance she could hear gunshots, similar to the one that was taken into her stomach.

If she reached out, as she tried to do but her limbs were already dead, she was sure she could reach Voyager. To pull it into her arms and protect it from the universe.

I have unfinished business here. She sighed to herself as she imagined Voyager flying across her consciousness.

"Stay with us Kathryn. Don't die on us now, god damnit!"

But Kathryn Janeway, Captain of the Starship Voyager was already dead.