121AN: This is a Star Trek Voyager and a Walking Dead sort of collision fic. I think it would always be helpful to know both shows, but I absolutely don't think it's completely necessary. I believe you can more than follow along out without ever having seen both shows. It might help more with picturing characters than anything, but there's also google for that (and imagination, of course). It's entirely AU for the Walking Dead, and it's partially AU for Voyager because we're pretending that the Millennium Plague took place in Earth's past. Everything else, hopefully, will be explained as the story goes on.
I'm writing this from my love of the two ships Janeway/Chakotay and Carol/Daryl. I'm writing it for fun and entertainment. I hope you might get something out of it.
Caryl does not figure too heavily into the first chapter, though they do have their moment, and you'll understand why by the end of the chapter. However, they will figure heavily into the rest of the story.
I own nothing from Star Trek Voyager nor The Walking Dead, though I love both.
If you choose to read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The ship rocked as shrapnel from the Araulian ship hit Voyager with full impact.
"Tom," Kathryn Janeway said. There was enough authority put behind his name that she didn't really need to give any other kind of command. He was a good at the helm, and he hardly ever had a problem anticipating what needed to be done.
"We're already backing out of range, Captain," Tom Paris offered.
"We've sustained no real damage, Captain," Tuvok offered. "The Araulian ship, however, has been destroyed."
Kathryn rubbed her temples with her fingers and stared out the viewscreen.
The Araulian ship was gone. Destroyed. There was nothing left of it, now, except floating particles in the air. There wasn't even enough of the ship left to identify it if she hadn't seen it floating in space only moments before. If she hadn't spent so much time aboard it in the past two weeks, she might have even led herself to believe that there never had been an Araulian ship—or the Araulian people, for that matter.
Voyager hadn't destroyed the ship. She'd never fired on them.
What they had done had certainly not been harmless, and Kathryn knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they hadn't seen all of the fallout of the Araulian's actions, but they hadn't done something that merited Voyager destroying their ship and taking the lives of all the people that had called the ship home.
There had been children on the ship.
The weight of it all hung heavy in Kathryn's chest.
"Life signs, Lieutenant Tuvok?"
"Scanning," Tuvok said. "There are none."
"Do you think it was some kind of ship malfunction?" Tom asked.
"It was too perfectly timed for a ship malfunction, Tom," Kathryn said with a sigh.
She was standing, white-knuckling the bar just behind the Captain's chair. She'd never made it any closer to the view screen in her discussion with Vin Taun—the head of the Araulians that had lived above the ship. Their final points of discussion had been a bit heated—of course they had been—but Kathryn had never threatened him, and everyone on her bridge could attest to that.
"Vin Taun chose to destroy the ship," Kathryn said.
"Perhaps," Tuvok offered, "he wanted to have control of their fate because he suspected that's what you would do when you said that it was improper for him to use the relocation device, and that you would do what you could to stop him from interfering with past events."
"I meant destroy the relocation device," Kathryn said. "Find a way to…to render it dysfunctional. I didn't mean to destroy the entire ship and its entire population. If Vin Taun was correct? Their species is now extinct."
"And their technology is lost," Tom said. He sounded a great deal more mournful over the loss of the technology than he did over the whole of the Araulian species.
"It wasn't perfect," Harry Kim lamented, "but it did get us back to Earth."
"An Earth that wasn't our home," Kathryn said. "An Earth that was—something out of a different time. We returned to the time of the Millennium Plague."
"The Walking Death," Tom offered.
"Even if it wouldn't have disrupted time to stay there," Kathryn said, "it wasn't our time. None of our families or friends would have been there. None of our loved ones. It would have been a world that none of us knew, really."
"Besides that," Tom added, "the Walking Death was a horrible plague. It wiped out eighty percent of the population of North America alone. The people that did survive? None of them came out of that time without some serious trauma to overcome. It took decades to rebuild."
"Maybe B'Elanna could have done something with the technology, though," Harry lamented.
"Tweaked it to get us back to the Alpha Quadrant at the correct time," Tom added, stepping up to help Harry when the younger man's words fell off.
Kathryn sighed.
"It doesn't matter now. The Araulian ship has been destroyed, Hap Soun took the relocation device with her when she returned to her ship, and we have other concerns to deal with now. Lieutenant Paris, please set a course for our previous coordinates. We'll get back to the Alpha Quadrant—it's just going to take us a little longer than the Araulian Head promised us."
"Yes ma'am," Tom said, almost mournfully, as he followed her command. She didn't even correct him for calling her "ma'am" instead of "Captain" because she understood that he was disappointed. "Course laid in," he offered. Kathryn cast one last glance out of the viewscreen to see the last of the debris disappear and then she turned to leave the bridge.
"You've got the bridge, Lieutenant Tuvok," Kathryn offered.
She heard his acceptance as she stepped into the turbolift.
They were all disappointed.
In the turbolift, Kathryn gave her destination command, let the turbolift begin to move, and then she demanded that it stop. She needed a dose of quiet and solitude that only the turbolift could offer her for the moment—and she could only have a moment.
The Araulian's were destroyed. Their technology was gone. Voyager, really, was no worse the wear for the short trip to the past that had happened during the Araulian's test run with their relocation device. They'd spent relatively little time in Earth's past, and the Araulian's ship had self-destructed before they'd been able to use the device to do anything they'd planned to do in their own history.
Voyager's crew had only really lost the two weeks that they'd dedicated to working with the Araulians for what they believed to be the good of both species. Beyond their time, they'd only really suffered the emotional strain of having their hopes for a quick return home dashed—once again, it seemed—and they'd lost a little of their confidence in the honesty and trustworthiness of other species.
Voyager and her crew would be fine.
But Captain Kathryn Janeway still had to deal with another problem. It was a very great problem, and she wasn't sure, yet, how she was going to handle it.
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The eyes of her first officer smiled at her when he saw her walk through the sickbay doors. They also offered her sympathy.
Chakotay would know that she was struggling with knowing what to do and how to handle this. He stepped forward to meet her and put his hand on her shoulder as a show of solidarity. She took comfort in his touch. Being a captain, sometimes, was a hard job. The unpleasant things were always left up to her.
At least, Kathryn thought, she was lucky. By happy accident, she'd managed to find a first officer that completed her in more ways than she'd ever imagined one could. She had been exceedingly grateful to have him by her side since they'd gotten stranded in the Delta Quadrant—70,000 light years from their home.
"How are they?" Kathryn asked.
She wasn't even sure what she wanted as an answer. Of course, she wanted the two humans to live—she wasn't a monster—but she was sure that life wasn't going to be easy for them if they did survive. They were far outside of their time and they could never return. Like the crew of Voyager, they would be stranded. The only difference would be that Voyager had hope of making it home, even if she might not do it within the lifetimes of everyone there.
The natural "lifetimes" of both these humans had passed centuries ago.
"They're stable for the time being," Chakotay said. "The Araulian weapons were set to stun, but their charges were strong for human physiology."
"What Commander Chakotay is trying to say," their Emergency Medical Hologram—the ship's only doctor—added as he approached Kathryn and Chakotay, "is that they have suffered some internal injuries from the weapons' fire, but it's nothing that I can't repair. The man sustained a direct hit to the chest. His injuries are more extensive, so Kes is prepping him for surgery now. I'll operate on his companion when I've finished with him."
"But you're confident that you can help them?" Kathryn asked.
The EMH beamed. He was arrogant, but he was usually good enough at what he did to earn him the right to such arrogance.
"Confident enough, Captain, that you should begin giving orders to have their quarters prepared," the doctor responded. "I'll want to keep them overnight for observation, but then I'll be ready to release them and to open sickbay up to meeting the other urgent medical needs of the crew."
Kathryn laughed to herself. She was thankful for the slight hint of amusement that bubbled up in her to relieve some of her stress. She patted the EMH on the shoulder.
"Just do your best. May I see them? Before you get started?"
"Certainly," the EMH said. "They are both currently sedated in case they should wake, despite their injuries."
"I thought it might be for the best," Chakotay said. "Waking up, injured and three hundred years in the future, might be too much for them to handle all at once."
"I think you're right," Kathryn said. "Baby steps."
She made her way over to the biobed where the man that the Araulian scientist had brought on board was prepped for surgery. He was covered with a lightweight blanket, and it wouldn't be long before they closed the shields around him to begin. Kathryn leaned over the man. When she'd seen him before, Kathryn had thought he might be dead. The Araulian weapons were foreign to the Voyager crew and he'd been fired upon as soon as the protective bubble that transported him onto the ship—against his will and against Kathryn's will—had been removed. He wouldn't have been hit quite as directly, Kathryn was sure, except for the fact that, upon seeing the Araulian raise the weapon to fire, he'd covered his companion's body with his own and threatened the scientist that had fired on him immediately after.
The dermal regenerator had healed most of the damage on the man's face, and the rest would be healed soon.
He was a man out of time, but he was a man, just the same as any other human man that Kathryn had ever known. This particular man was tanned, quite in need of a shave, and had probably known some really difficult times dealing with the Millennium Plague, but he was just a man.
And he was, evidently, a man who was very much in love. He had never hesitated to cover his companion's body with his own.
Kathryn reached out and brushed some of the hair out of the face of the man who lie on the table. She didn't know who he was. She had no idea what to call him. She didn't know if he could hear her or what he would think of her if he could. She still wanted to offer him some kind words of encouragement, though.
"It's going to be fine," she said softly. "You're in good hands. Both of you. Our doctor is going to fix everything and—maybe you won't find life with us so disagreeable after all." She smiled to herself. "I can already tell that you're both survivors. Adaptable. That will serve you well. All you have to worry about right now, though, is feeling better. Healing." She started to walk away, but she stopped. She smiled to herself at the man who was, to a degree, suspended in time for a moment. She thought about who he was. Who she already knew him to be. "Don't worry about her," Kathryn said. "We'll take care of her. She'll be here when you wake up. I promise."
