Series: VOY
Rating: NC-17
Codes: J/Ka, J/7
Summary:Kashyk talks about his time on Voyager.
Date Posted: 99 Oct 31
Disclaimer: Paramount owns pretty much everything
To be a Devoran inspector is to belong to an exclusive club. Not many of us make it this far. Or for long. So we who are veterans have a bond. We need each other, since we dwell in a place no outsider can understand. Outside the inspectorate, even the Devore are gaharay.
Sometimes we tell each other our stories, stories of telepaths and aliens, of heroism and death -- ours and theirs; theirs and ours.
I have many stories to tell, and over the years, that is all they have become. Just tales, things that seem to have happened to someone else. Or that perhaps never happened at all.
Except one.
When I tell that story, I usually adopt a tone of male bonhomie that conceals much.
"On Devore," I begin, "it never would have occurred to me that hours of abstruse mathematics could constitute sexual foreplay. But on the starship Voyager, after an evening of -- call it calculation -- with Captain Kathryn Janeway, I was ready to fuck anything. Holograms. Telepaths. Prax."
My colleagues always laugh; they knew Prax. They urge me to say more.
I tell them that of course Kathryn was beautiful. They are content with that abstraction, and so I keep to myself the things that made her so. The fact that she spoke so directly in her indirectness. The soft, smooth hair that I could so easily imagine in tousled bedroom disarray. The eyes that were so expressive but that gave away so little. The walk that revealed her compassion and her viciousness. The fine curve of her cheek - I found that almost touching, somehow, an emblem of her strength. And her weakness.
I never tell these things to my counterparts, lest they think that the weakness is mine. Instead, if we have had enough wine and the hour is late, I fill their eager ears with salacious details. I tell them how her eyes and body sent an invitation so clear that I could almost believe that she was a telepath. I tell them how her tongue tasted of her rich, bitter alien brew; how her breasts filled my hands; how exciting I found the wet heat at her center, so different from Devoran women. I tell how hard she pulled me in when I penetrated her and how she met my thrusts with her own powerful rhythm.
But I do not tell them what really matters.
I don't tell them how close I was to staying on the gaharay ship. And I don't tell them why I didn't.
It was several days after we had discovered the pattern of wormhole appearances, several days after she had first come to my quarters. She had called off the armed guards, and I was free to roam the ship. Not that I had access to anything much, but it was a gesture.
She had an hour reserved on the holodeck--I don't remember how I discovered that--perhaps she mentioned it to someone. I decided to surprise her. I suppose it seemed like an opportunity to be with her--I was on the lookout for such chances. In front of her crew she was friendly, but gave no indication of our more intimate encounters. And I think I was mad to be with her--I had pretty much decided to leave the Imperium behind.
There was a pilot who liked the holodeck. I told him that I wanted to create something of my home, to share with the Captain. It was perhaps one of the few times in my life when I have obtained anything by simply telling the truth.
With his help, I created a fair approximation of my grandfather's house. I had not been there for nearly thirty years, but I remembered it well. It was outside the city, already in disrepair when I visited as a child. But so beautiful. I wanted her to know that there were beautiful Devoran things, and that I would leave them all for her.
There was a room at the top of the house. Mostly it was used for storage, but it looked out over the roofs of the house and outbuildings, and had been bright in the late afternoon. I had preferred it to the bedrooms below and had slept and played there. I remembered a box full of old toys, little military figures. I thought she might like to see that. I thought after I showed her the fruit trees, the courtyard, I would take her to this room. My low bed was small; I had programmed a thick carpet for the stone floor and set the time so the sun would slant through the window.
I had started the program a few minutes early, and was waiting for her. The door opened. But it wasn't her--it was the blond woman. The one with the metal tracery on her hand and face.
She was wearing exercise clothing, but did not seem surprised to find herself in the loggia of my grandfather's house. I stayed where I was standing, in the shade of a deep doorway, behind the young trees in their wooden planters. The half-enclosed room received morning sun; now it was filled with a soft diffuse light.
Before I could think of a way to explain my presence, Kathryn arrived. She too was wearing exercise clothing. I was going to look ridiculous when they changed the setting to the court or whatever space their sport needed. I realized then that I need not lie--that I could simply say I had been playing with the holodeck.
But they didn't address the computer. They watched each other. Seven wrapped her arms around the front of her waist, holding her shirt as if about to pull it over her head, but Kathryn indicated they should sit. They sat on one of the long white chaises which had been so popular with my mother.
"Seven, I did sleep with him."
"Yes, I know."
"I wouldn't, if you'd said you minded."
"Does it change your feelings for me?"
"No, of course not."
"Then I do not mind."
Kathryn raised her hand to the other woman's face. Those elegant fingers, caressing the cheek of that strange part machine woman. There was a hesitation, a moment of questioning, something, and then they were kissing. Kathryn kissed with an intensity, an abandon, pressing her lover back and down amongst the cushions.
I did not watch all of it. Perhaps I was afraid of being seen--I can no longer remember exactly. But just as I know my colleagues would love to hear this, would love to hear about two exotic alien women having sex, I cannot describe it to them. I do remember that they did things I hadn't known possible--perhaps aren't possible for Devorans--human women have small hands.
But it is her cries that I remember best. She moaned and shouted and called to her god and it excited me at the same time that it distressed me. I knew then that with me it had been nothing.
After, they dressed slowly, discussing something to do with sensor calibration--perhaps to reestablish the distance between them. Kathryn was flushed, her hair tousled. I was surprised that she did no more than smooth it with her hand; she had been so careful when she left me. Then I remembered that they were ostensibly playing some physically demanding game.
Seven finished fastening her shoe and looked up. "How was he?"
"You are jealous." Kathryn's tone was concerned.
"No, I am curious."
"He was fine, Seven. It was fine. It isn't relevant."
Her tone was such that the other woman said no more.
I wondered why she hadn't said that I was terrible, left her unsatisfied. Kindness perhaps. She had tricked me. She didn't want me, and there was no place for me on her ship. Still, she had not been unkind.
The world dissolved around me. I stood pressed against the grid of the holodeck; standing by the door, they did not look back.
"Who do we say won?"
"You did, Captain. You always win."
A crooked smile. "Nice setting, Seven." And then the door opened, and she strode out.
"I thought it was yours," Seven said, puzzled, realizing that she was talking to herself. And then she, too, disappeared into the corridor.
I didn't think, until later, about why she had slept with me at all. I think I thought at the time that it was to quell rumors about her affair, but that makes little sense. Probably it was to lull me into the belief that she trusted me.
But sometimes I like to think it was something else, something a little more genuine. Not desire--if that played a part, it was a small one. I think that she wanted me to leave the Imperium. Not just because it would be easier for Voyager if I defected. I think she wanted me to leave this life because she thought it was bad, and going to bed with me was the only sort of trust she could afford to show me. She could not trust me with her ship, her crew, but she trusted me with her body. She wanted to seduce me from my duty, and it nearly worked. Of course, for her, it wasn't a seduction--she believed her principles, her humanitarianism. To her, it would have been a redemption.
They do not ask me what became of her. It is not the sort of thing we ask each other.
I knew when I saw them together that I would return to duty. And that I would try to take the telepaths, destroy the wormhole--that was my job. But I always intended to let her go--perhaps from the moment I saw her, small and fearless and beautiful. Willing to do anything for her strange principles.
I tell my story to the other inspectors. They listen attentively. I know they would love to hear more, to hear how the human women are almost like men in their response, their release sudden and intense.
And so, gradually, that becomes part of my story. But I tell it as if she had been this way with me, had moaned and called out my name and told me she loved me. Had cried out as the tension left her body, had sobbed softly with her face in my hair.
And, who knows, perhaps one day I will believe my story.
End
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