Rating: NC-17
Codes: J, Owen Paris
Summary: Twenty years ago, Owen Paris and Kathryn Janeway were prisoners of the Cardassians.
Date Posted: 2000 Apr 7
Disclaimer: Paramount owns pretty much everything.
Warning: Nonconsensual sex, violence.
My thanks to the stylus, whose excellent and memorable "Reaction Shots: Hell" made me think more about Owen Paris and the Cardassians,
shame and survival. The facts are a little different in this story.
This takes place after "Good Shepherd." Very minor spoilers for that episode. (And "Pathfinder.")
"When I was a girl, I was afraid of the ocean. I liked to swim, but--in a pool or a pond where I knew exactly what was beneath me. But in the open
water with no way to know what was down there--it scared me to death."
Janeway to Telfer in "Good Shepherd"
*** indicates change in point of view
by Boadicea
They say you can't remember pain, not really, and I think they may be right.
The pain that is within the normal range, the bruise where I was kicked, the cramp in my leg, I can remember that. And I remember there was a certain joy when the pain stopped. Of course, they gave me drugs, and I don't know how much of it was that. But no, I don't remember the pain.
I remember when they told him to fuck me, and I remember thinking that I should care, but I didn't. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe I was exhausted from the pain, maybe I was so focused on myself that it just didn't matter who did what to me, at that minute, as long as it didn't really hurt.
I told Telfer a story about being afraid of swimming in the ocean. I was never afraid of the ocean. But I couldn't say "I was tortured by Cardassians. They forced my superior officer to have sex with me. And after that I haven't been afraid." It would be an imposition, for one thing, and anyway, I never felt it was my story to tell. I can be afraid for others, but that is so close to anger at those who might harm them that it usually does not feel like fear. I have nothing left to be afraid of, for myself. I am afraid of failing, but not of dying.
I was afraid of dying, then. It came over me, when the pain stopped for a while, a wave of fear so great that it seemed to leave nothing behind it. I was sure I would die. The fear became sadness then. Maybe I should have been angry, I don't know. There was so little room to feel. Or the feelings were so big there was no room for more than one, I'm not sure.
I was leaning over, my upper body resting on something, I can't remember what. Another hypospray on my neck. My head swam, but no one was beating me.
They told him that if he didn't fuck me, they would hurt me again. They told him if he didn't fuck me, one of them would. I thought they would probably kill me anyway. But they seemed to have him convinced. And in retrospect, he was right. We were rescued before any of them touched me again.
If I had done something differently then, would it all have ended differently? If I had fought them, screamed at him not to do it, if I had wept, if I had done something other than what they told me to do, maybe it would have been different.
But I didn't care, I didn't know.
Maybe if I had done something differently, they would have killed me.
At the time I didn't want that.
***
Sometimes I remember that I was afraid at first that I couldn't do it, that I wouldn't be able. Physically. But I tell myself a lot of things, and I wonder if I made that up.
I know that there was a moment when she was before me, and I knew I could do it. Her face was turned to the side, resting on her arms. When I touched her, she didn't move, didn't flinch. Did I think she should flinch, should struggle? I can't remember. She wasn't tied, I know that.
I touched her because I didn't want to hurt her. Hurt her further, I mean, I had been listening to her scream, intermittently, for what seemed like hours. But also I wanted to touch her, had wanted to touch her. I wish I hadn't. They didn't make me do that, and what would a little more pain have mattered, in that hell? It aroused me, touching her.
There was a moment when she was before me, and I no longer saw the young woman I cared for, who had been tortured, threatened. I saw someone I wanted, with an animal want. Perhaps in my confusion I thought she wanted me. But I think it is more likely I thought she didn't, but should.
They had given me drugs, and I tried to ask, later, if there were drugs that would do this to me. My counselor told me to forgive myself. He told me anything I wanted to hear. They didn't know exactly what the drugs were, anyway-they were out of my bloodstream before I was tested.
I remember her face, resting on her arms. She looked tired. She seemed in pretty good shape, and for a moment I think I wondered if it had been her screams I had been hearing. I learned later they had just fixed her up, cleaned her up. Her hair was damp.
She was a pretty woman. I can't say I hadn't noticed. She seemed so unaware of it, so innocent. I think it annoyed me, that, that it never seemed to cross her mind that I would want her. Not that she did anything inappropriate. But there was a trust to her, a level of comfort at working with me. It's crazy I should have blamed her for that. But I did. I thought she saw me as another father, and I didn't want to be her father.
Maybe I made myself feel angry so that I could do it. Maybe I needed that distance. It was an appalling thing to do. To be forced to do, my counselor would correct me. I don't know.I remember that she made a noise, somewhere between a groan and a whimper. And then was silent.
***
It hurt for a moment, but nothing like the way they had hurt me. I had screamed earlier, screamed at them, at the pain, screamed so that the scream became everything, and I felt I could not really scream, and hurt, at the same time.
I heard myself cry out as he pushed into me. It sounded as if it were coming from a long way away, from another person somewhere. And then I shut up, and unlike before, it wasn't worse when I was quiet.
I felt nothing. Oh, if I tried, I could feel my body, the cramp in my leg, his movement in me, his hand on my waist. But it was sensation without meaning. Not real pain, not pleasure. Nothing.
They were trying to break him, of course. Turn me against him, perhaps, though they had probably figured out that I knew nothing. I think they were going to rape me in front of him, and then this seemed better. Seemed better to me too, at the time; Cardassians are larger than humans, as they had pointed out. Several times.
He came in me. They told me to stay where I was. They started immediately to taunt him, but I wasn't paying attention. I had heard a noise, someone outside.
It was Justin.
***
I heard her voice when Barclay contacted Voyager. She sounded so . . . happy. Her voice was deeper than the last time I had spoken to her.
There used to be whole days when I didn't think of it, not consciously. Whole days when I didn't really remember what I did. Of course it was always there, it had become a part of me, but I didn't think about it. That's over now.
Again the Cardassian base fills my mind. I have been over every path of thought so many times that they are worn smooth, these imaginings about what I could have done, or not done, these fantasies of a world in which we were never captured, or she escaped, or I protected her. My mind slips over them, and rests on that room, on that day. Her face resting on her arm. My hand. And then Cardassians dead on the floor.
***
There were three of them, three Cardassians in the room with us. And then they were dead, and someone was putting down his weapon to help me with my clothes. And then we were running.
I sat in a transport, next to Justin, and Owen. I was dressed, blankets wrapped around me, drinking something hot. And I think I was happy. Maybe I should have been angry. Maybe I was and didn't know it. But we were alive, and they weren't. And I was, I was happy.
Later I felt ridiculous that I had felt that way. Naive and stupid. And homesick for that feeling I had on that transport, that we had made it. That everything would be all right.
He was so changed.
He didn't say anything. Not to Justin, or the other commandos, not to the officers who debriefed us, not to me. He didn't want to look at me; he pulled away when I came within a few feet. I thought he needed time. I tried not to think about him, not to care that he was no longer comfortable with me. I was a reminder, I understood that. But there were moments when I wondered if I disgusted him.
Justin knew. He'd seen some of it, I think. He wasn't disgusted, and I was grateful. We became lovers and he made love to me carefully, very gently, always facing me, always looking at me. I wasn't sure that I loved him, but how could I not?
Admiral Paris was different with everybody. People wondered what the Cardassians had done to him, that he was such a changed man. They seemed to assume they had let me alone. Justin and I were affectionate in public, and rape survivors don't behave that way, do they? And the physical pain was gone; and beatings make strange conversation. I talked about it to the counselor, but no one else. I was proud of how well I was coping.
Then Justin told me my father had asked him what happened.
The thought made me feel sick. Not my father knowing, but the thought of Paris, when he knew my father knew. When he thought it was me who had told him. I didn't think he could stand anyone knowing--that he had been afraid, that he had been helpless, that he hadn't been hurt, that he hadn't resisted, I didn't know--but I felt it would destroy him, what was left of him. I asked Justin not to. He said he wouldn't, unless he was ordered to do so. I think he told him that day, though I never knew for certain. That last afternoon, my father seemed darker somehow. Not different to me, exactly, but different. I felt shaken.
Everything was falling apart.
I don't think it had anything to do with my hesitation, the fact I saved neither of them. But I have never been completely sure.
***
Now no one knew. No one but us, and the Starfleet counselors who were bound to secrecy.
When she was lost, when Voyager was gone, when they made the official pronouncement, do you know what I thought? That now there was no one. My son was dead, and this woman that I wanted, that perhaps I loved, and hundreds of others, and I thought, now there is no one who knows. It's gone.
I disgust myself.
I remember the freckles on her arm. I remember wanting not to hurt her, wanting no one to hurt her. I remember hating myself for putting her in danger in the first place. I remember crying. I have always wondered if there is any way she could forgive me. I never asked. Perhaps I will.
***
I told Telfer that I was afraid of the ocean. I told Tal that everyone makes mistakes, even me. It's a joke, really. Harren told me that I have an impressive ability to delude myself. I don't know what is self-delusion anymore and what is knowing what I need to do to survive. I know that our mistakes have the power to consume us. I live outside mine when I can.
END