NEGATIVE BURN
by Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)

RATING: NC-17 and dark. VERY dark.
CODES: J/C, with a backdrop of C/7
SUMMARY: After Voyager’s return, strange things happen to Kathryn Janeway when she starts an affair with her former first officer. Written for the QoS Truly Twisted competition, so please exercise caution if you dislike the disturbing.


Kathryn woke up with a hangover, and Chakotay wasn’t there. Seven was, which was strange because she hadn’t seen the former drone in months. But there was something about the smell in her nostrils, the taste in her mouth, that reminded her of being with Seven of Nine.

It probably wasn’t surprising. After all, she was sharing Seven’s husband. It was only natural that parts of him smelled and tasted like parts of her.

She swallowed the taste, faintly metallic, with a long plug from the bottle she had been sharing with Chakotay last night. Funny how they both had the same tastes in hard liquor ... funny how it had only emerged since they had been back on Earth.

It seemed like he wasn’t dealing with anything too well either.

She dragged herself out of bed sluggishly, every part of her aching and disgusting with twelve-hour-old semen, sweat and saliva. Her head rang. She had to be up, dressed, at her desk and briefing Captain Picard of the Enterprise in twenty minutes.

While she stood in the sonic shower, arms covering her breasts even though there was no one watching her, she thought about Chakotay. She couldn’t help it, even though she suspected it was more of a habit than the feelings of a woman in love. She pictured him as he was right now, home probably, making excuses to Seven about where he had been all night.

Sometimes she tortured herself with it. How exactly was Chakotay when he was with his wife? Somehow, Kathryn didn’t believe it was the way he was when he was with her.

Otherwise, why would he need this affair so desperately?

Not that the sex wasn’t ... electrifying. Strange and beautiful, not at all the way she’d imagined it would be with her former First Officer. On New Earth (the closest she’d come to taking this step while in the Delta Quadrant), she’d kind of pictured slow, reverential lovemaking where he worshipped her body and soul.

But having sex with Chakotay wasn’t like that at all. It was fast and urgent, dizzying, overwhelming. When he fucked her she lost all sense of herself, all sense of right and wrong, up and down. Her skin burned and her brain fizzed.

And when he came inside her, his come was cold.

It was strange, but something he put down to his Indian heritage. He seemed embarrassed about it, and since she hadn’t slept with any other Indians, she didn’t push it.

She got out of the shower and dressed in the drab, grey-shouldered uniform she had come home to. Everything had changed while she was in the Delta Quadrant. Everything was a stark, military version of the Starfleet she had left behind, and nothing like the Starfleet she had dreamed of.

She worked all day on auto-pilot, like she always did now she was home.

At night, after she transported out of the office, it began again. He was waiting for her in her kitchen, a glass of her liquor already in his hand.

“How do you get in?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. She had changed her security system over and over, trying to catch him out.

He shrugged, looking into his drink. “I was Maquis,” he said. How very Seven of him, she thought.

“Of course you were,” she replied, putting the day’s PADDs on the table. It was doubtful she would look at them, actually, but then it was doubtful she would go into work again for another week. That was the beauty of being a renegade Admiral. No one cared if you went to work or not. Sometimes she went in once a month, and the work waited. The other Admirals were pleased.

Chakotay drank in silence, not looking at her at all, but it didn’t matter. Already she wanted him powerfully. He looked amazing in his soft red pants, and the bulge where his cock was made her mouth water.

“How was your day?” he managed eventually, a little above a murmur.

She looked down at the ground. “I missed you,” was all she said. The vulnerability in her voice surprised her. Then she was close to him, and all she could smell was Seven, metal and cruel.

She wanted to suck that smell off of him, wash the Borg away and bathe him in her sweat and her arousal and her humanity. In the morning, when she was alone again, she didn’t want Seven there. Seven was eating her.

She took off her jacket deliberately, dropped her pants to the floor. Beneath, she was wearing black lace underwear, completely non-Starfleet. Funny how she’d worn the regulation stuff every day when she was in the Delta Quadrant, though.

Chakotay moved against her, fingers on the lace trim of her bra. His touch was normal. warm. Exposing her nipples, which were darker since he’d been fucking her. Bringing the left one to his mouth. His hot tongue, swirling over the peak he pulled with his teeth. Normal, hot, wet. Just like Mark, Justin, Jaffen. Then it happened. Her blood lit and her knees buckled. She was in his arms, rocking, groaning. Overcome.

She was on the floor, naked on top of his clothes and hers. On the kitchen floor. Open, while his fingers pushed inside her and stroked her with trails of ice. While his mouth burned her nipples with a chemical tongue.

Then he was inside her, and she was whimpering. It was agony, and she couldn’t seem to get enough of it. Her legs couldn’t open wide enough, her vagina wasn’t deep enough, there wasn’t enough room in her entire body to take him in.

“Cha ... Cha ... Chak ... o ... ohhhhh ....” She could hear herself trying to choke out his name, but it was a voice that seemed to come from the Delta Quadrant itself.

Her mind called for his mind, her body talking right through her skin.

Chakotay. Chakotay. Chakotay. Over and over again like a train, like the rhythm of his white-cold cock in her body, his icy breath, shuddering in her ear.

Panting, words, her name, again and again.

“Kathryn ... Kathryn ... Kathryn ... so beautiful ... oh yes ... Kathryn ... so good ... so lovely ... take it slowly ... yes ... oh God ... God ... Kathryn ... Kathryn ... Kathryn ....”

Her nails bit into the chicken-flesh of his shoulder, trying to drag him, body and soul, inside her. He was meant to be inside her, the very centre of her, her reason for living and the last thing she had left from Voyager that was still hers to cling on to.

Except, of course, that he was Seven’s, and she was only stealing him.

He hissed in her ear as he came, moaned that he loved her, that he loved her, he had always loved her, that he was sorry, so fucking sorry.

His come was ice cold.

---

She woke up, and threw up.

Well, at least it got the taste of Seven out of her mouth. It must have been the guilt, but today she could feel Seven’s eyes on her, too. Like she was just outside the window, watching Kathryn.

She went back to bed, a cold, wet washcloth over her eyes. She felt weird, every part of her. Hot skin but with cold, cold bones. She must be coming down with something.

There were bites around her nipples, perhaps they were infected. The bruises were spreading, her veins looked grey and her nipples swollen. They were full and they hurt.

The lovebite she had on her neck felt the same. Sore and gritty, a bruise that trailed into the veins around it. Her legs were agony, like they were going to drop off at the hips. Her belly was moving in slow, quaking cramps, making her feel sick all over again.

She had to look. Ice fire was dancing through the lower half of her body. She was sick. Really, really sick. She edged to the side of the bed and pulled off her panties, head pounding. She parted her legs in front of the dressing table mirror and gasped. Bile rose in her throat again, and this time she couldn’t run for the bathroom when vomit spurted from her mouth and nose.

It poured down the front of the t-shirt she wore, but she barely noticed. She was frozen, looking at her sex. It was grey, decaying, the flesh cold and in spasm. She brushed her fingers over it and the hair fell out in clumps.

This was serious. She had to call someone. A doctor, Starfleet Medical. Someone had to help her. Chakotay had a horrible disease and he had given it to her while they fucked.

But she couldn’t tell anyone. It would get out, Seven would find out if they were both treated for the same sexual disease.

No, she had to call Chakotay first.

She dragged herself across the bed to the console, called him. Put it on an urgent, encrypted channel. Seven would be out by now, she would be working. Chakotay would be home alone.

He answered, just woken up, even though it was almost midday.

“Kathryn?” he asked. She must look like shit, judging from the fear on his face.

“Chakotay, I’m sick,” she said. “You’re sick ... it’s everywhere you touched me. Where you bit me. Inside me ...”

“Okay,” he said. Which wasn’t exactly the response she had expected. “Stay there.”

“No, I have to call somebody. I’m sick.”

“You can’t, Kathryn,” he told her. “Seven.”

“I’ll call the Doctor,” she said. “He’ll help me. He’ll be discreet.”

“No,” he said sharply. “He’s in love with Seven and he’ll tell her. I’ll sort it out. I’ll get someone to help you.”

“Okay,” she nodded, trusting him. “Please hurry.”

He looked at her, locking his eyes with hers. “I’m sorry, Kathryn,” he said to her.

So he should be, she thought as she sunk back to the cool sheets to shiver and shudder and puke again all over herself. She was going to die.

---

She woke up, and Seven was there. At first she thought she was seeing things. A hallucination from the fever, a symptom of her guilt.

“You’re not here,” she croaked. Her voice was distant, electronic.

Seven didn’t look at her. She was doing something. She was holding Kathryn’s hands. Kathryn’s legs were open, she was naked. She was cold.

“Is she okay?” A voice from somewhere else. Chakotay’s voice.

“It’s started,” said Seven, not looking up. “She’s pregnant and it’s started.”

“I’m pregnant?” Kathryn heard herself say.

Chakotay and Seven ignored her. Perhaps she wasn’t even speaking out loud.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Chakotay said. “It’s horrible.”

Seven’s fingers, the fingers of her Borg hand, up inside her. Tubules from those fingers extended, interfacing, attacking.

“No ...” Kathryn groaned. This time Seven looked at her. “Don’t hurt my baby ...”

“Don’t worry, Admiral,” said Seven, her aquamarine eyes flickering with the pleasure of the Borg. “It’s not your baby. He is mine.”

Something cold came out of the tubules and Kathryn passed back to oblivion.

---

She woke up alone, not at home. The pillow felt strange underneath her head because her hair wasn’t there any more. She could barely see. All along her arms, the veins throbbed with grey, and they were moving visibly.

She tried to scream, to cry out, but her tongue was slack and her mouth was paralysed. Her mouth tasted of dead blood.

But she could feel the baby moving. She could feel his thoughts inside her head, just the way it had been when she was Borg. The baby seemed surprised that she was there, awake. To be honest, so was she. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. Her belly was swollen as though it had been several months, but maybe the baby was growing fast. Seven could probably do that.

She was Admiral Kathryn Janeway, hero captain of Voyager. She would be missed by someone if she had been gone too long.

Shadows passed over the wall in front of her periodically, over and over. Chakotay came and went during the day, Seven over and over by night. They did things to her, checking the health of the baby, injecting things into her system through the implants that grew from her flesh. She kept her consciousness a secret. It was only periodic anyway.

Sometimes, after Seven left, Chakotay would come in and sit by the bed for a while, just looking at her. Sometimes he would sit and hold his hands across her belly, feeling the baby move.

Sometimes, though, he would stroke her face as she pretended to sleep. she could hear him break and sob. Sometimes he sobbed her name.

His touch was warm, normal.

One night he raped her, from behind, pretending he was making love to her. Holding the baby in her belly in both hands, his warm lips on her shoulders and neck, kissing, kissing.

He squeezed her breasts as he got close, and thick milk, like one of Seven’s nutritional supplements, ran between his fingers like tears. He thought she couldn’t feel him. She had never been more conscious in her life.

He came, warm as bathwater, crying her name into the place where her hair would have been. She doubted Seven knew he was doing this. She certainly wouldn’t liked it when he kissed her numb lips and whispered

“Wish it was real Kathryn. Wish it was you.”

---

She woke up to searing agony. Worse than anything. Feeling like she was going to burst.

The baby’s thoughts in her head, worried as she was. He was being squeezed. Seven was already there, clinical and calm. Between her legs, which were white and grey and pink, assimilated.

She couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t cry out with the pain, made worse by whatever it was that Seven was putting into her bloodstream to speed up the process. She couldn’t push, even though the urge was almost overpowering. Her body and Seven had to do the work by themselves.

“Her heart rate’s elevated,” said Chakotay, disembodied, out of her field of vision.

“That is normal,” Seven snapped, not wanting the distraction.

“You sure she can’t feel it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she hissed. “Assist me, Chakotay, the child is crowning.”

Insane. She was going insane with the pain, all the Borg systems Seven had installed in her body working to ease the child, but not her. She was supposed to be oblivious.

It hurt, it hurt, it would never stop hurting, she would die, she would rip apart and bleed to death right there.

Then Seven was pulling the child from her body, and she could still feel his thoughts, even as she heard his first cries. He was frightened and he didn’t want to leave her. He loved her. She was all he had ever known.

When Seven cut the cord, throbbing with nanoprobes, his voice stopped. He was crying still. It was awful. Chakotay took him from Seven’s arms, wrapped him and wiped him, even though he was quite clean and white. She wanted to see him.

Seven did something to her, something which started her body healing. The pain went away a little, and she started to relax.

She started to sleep.

---

She woke up, and it was the summer. She had her hair, and there was a rose in a vase beside the bed.

She felt fine.

The Doctor was there.

“Welcome back, Admiral,” he said.

“Doctor,” she whispered. “I had a baby.”

“No, just the flu,” he said, quite cheerfully. “A particularly nasty strain you picked up on Risa last month, I believe.”

“I didn’t go to Risa,” she said. Already it was a struggle to keep her eyes open.

“You’ll feel better soon,” he told her nonetheless. “You’re over the worst.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. Then “Seven ...”

“Seven had a baby, yes. Last month. They still haven’t settled on a name yet, but then ... who am I to judge them?”

Something clicked in her brain, and then she could remember. Seven being pregnant. Seven coming over happy, with champagne for the three of them. Celebrating. Chakotay being happy.

Chakotay’s smiling face against her nipple, biting with his cold teeth. The baby, a boy, talking to her without saying a word, saying that he loved her. His mouth on her nipple, sucking cold thick fluid from her body for hours at a time. His chilly lips on her breast.

Seven celebrating, sitting in the garden in the spring, with the baby in her arms, breastfeeding him.

The baby had Seven’s eyes and Seven’s colouring. The baby had red hair. The baby was an Indian, dark hair, dark eyes, full lips. The baby had no hair, his head was bald. The baby had a star-shaped implant on his brow. The baby smelled like coffee, the baby was a vision.

---

She woke up screaming, and the Doctor wasn’t there. She had her period though, and everything was normal.

She sat on the toilet to clean herself, head pounding. Everything looked fine. Her uniforms were in the closet, boots in a row on the floor. She had different soap and a different toothbrush. On the window ledge was an ornament she had been thinking of replicating.

Her mind told her things about a vacation on Risa, about work she’d been doing, about a promotion for Kim. She remembered falling sick one night. She could remember what she’d been eating, what she was wearing.

When she went to her console, there was no listing of Chakotay’s private number.

But she’d met a man on Risa and had a relationship. How unlike her. They’d parted after a few weeks because their tastes were different. It had only been a fling.

Then she saw the ornament she’d replicated didn’t quite go with her decor. The dress she remembered wearing on her birthday didn’t fit her round the bust. She’d made personal logs, despite the fact she’d stopped once she returned to Earth. In them, she looked happy and relaxed and tanned.

Sometimes, sitting in the bath, if she thought about it hard enough, she could make her breasts lactate.

She knew what happened. She remembered. For whatever reason, they hadn’t known that she had known what they were doing. They didn’t realise she’d remember.

She stayed away. Went to work every day, threw herself into reports and projections and tactics. Tried to remember what had happened, tried to blot it all out with drink and work and an affair with a man that wasn’t even humanoid.

Sometimes, late at night, she thought she heard the baby, speaking in her mind. She woke to nothing, to a cold room and a cold bed, echoing with Chakotay’s voice.

“Wish it was real Kathryn. Wish it was you.”

One night, she drank until she got the nerve to go and see them.

Seven answered the door, placid as ever. Kathryn had sort of expected the exhaustion of a new mother, the dark circles, the dishevelment. But she looked good. Upright and serene.

“Admiral,” she said, not even looking surprised to see her. If anything, she looked disinterested.

“Good evening, Seven,” Kathryn greeted cheerily. The alcohol helped with that.

“Annika,” she corrected.

“Oh I see,” Kathryn said with surprise. Her brain told her she was supposed to know Seven was using her human name now.

“How can I be of assistance?”

“I was hoping ... I could see the baby.”

She expected Seven’s reaction to give her away here. “It‘s 2100,” she was told instead. “The baby is sleeping.”

“Oh I see. Is Chakotay there?”

“Chakotay is sleeping as well.”

So he was doing all the donkey work then. Why was she not surprised?

“Can I just come in and take a look at the baby?” she asked. She was damned if she was going to be fobbed off now. Not when she was this drunk.

“No,” said Seven flatly.

“Why not?” she slurred.

“You are intoxicated, Admiral.”

“So what?”

“I do not wish you to damage my child,” she was told icily.

“I won’t! I’m fine, I won’t ...”

“You are not welcome here. You are not a part of this family, and you may not arrive unannounced whenever you wish.”

“Fuck you, Seven!” she yelled at her, really seeing red. “I know, you know! You think I don’t know ... but I know! I know about your fucking ... family and it’s all a lie! That’s ... MY child! Your husband wants me, and that is my goddamn baby!”

Seven’s lower lip quivered slightly, and her human eye filled up with tears. That was the confirmation Kathryn had been waiting for. “Go ... home,” she said in a voice that was pure Borg.

“No, I won’t!” she screamed. “I want my child!”

Seven looked terrified. “Chakotay!” she called, again and again.

Eventually, he came, untidy and sleepy. “What do you want, Kathryn?” he asked her coldly.

“I was awake,” she said. “I remember everything. That baby is MY baby. I want him back!”

“What?” said Chakotay. He looked at her as though she were mentally disturbed. He was standing in front of Seven, all protective, which made Kathryn mad. She had a little phaser, a Type I, in the back of her jacket.

“Look,” he was saying. “Go home. You’ve obviously had a lot to drink, and you’re going to feel really stupid about this in the morning, so do yourself a favour and go home before you make it worse.”

“Chakotay does not love you any more,” Seven said.

Big mistake. Kathryn took out her phaser and held it right at Seven’s head. Chakotay practically pissed his pants right then and there.

“What the hell are you doing?!” he gasped.

“Shut up!” she yelled at Seven.

Memories of fucking Chakotay like an animal in her mind now. In a motel room by the sea. Here, in the house he shared with Seven, in their bed. In her bed too, listening to him groan about how he never wanted to let her go. Clinging to him, thinking, thinking that he was all she had left, how much she had lost since she was home.

Memories too of him ending it. Telling her it had to end. Telling her how guilty he felt about Seven, that she couldn’t give him what he wanted and what he wanted was a wife and kids.

These were false memories. She knew they were. She wouldn’t let them stop her. She could remember crying, clinging to him. That was not what Admiral Kathryn Janeway did.

She pointed her phaser at Seven and shot her. Not to kill her, just to stun her. Her Borg shields didn’t work, and she fell on the floor.

“Annika!” cried Chakotay. She phasered him too. He hit the ground hard, cracking his head on the doorstep as he crumpled.

She didn’t give a shit. The baby was calling her, speaking to her the way he spoke to her from inside her own body. He wanted her to rescue him, take him away somewhere, somewhere they would be safe, and she could cuddle him and feed him and raise him as her own.

Her breasts ached.

She found him in his stark little crib, asleep. He was dark like Chakotay, and his eyes were large like Seven’s when she woke him. He looked at her without recognition, but then it had been a while. She hadn’t had hair.

She picked him up. He started crying. He was wearing a little pink dress with lambs on, soft and woollen. She stared at him. He stared at her.

She laid him down, shaky, on his changing mat and undid his diaper. Just to check. He was a girl. Seven and Chakotay had a daughter.

But that couldn’t be. She’d seen him, when he came out of her body. He was male. He was male. She’d had Chakotay’s son, she was sure of it.

She put the baby back in her crib. Dropped the phaser.

She could hear Chakotay groaning, coming round. She sat down on the bed, the bed she’d fucked him in. The bed she’d had the baby on, the bed she’d lain on for all those months, all those weeks, all those days, whatever. She’d been here. It was real.

“Where’s the phaser?” he demanded, charging into the room.

“There,” she said, and showed him.

He picked it up and held it. He didn’t want her to get it back. Behind him, she could see Seven, on the sofa, fully conscious. Her hair was fine, she looked fine.

The baby was looking at her, quiet and accusing. She had full lips and a dull stare.

“What … the hell are you doing, Kathryn?!” asked Chakotay.

“I don’t know,” she said. It was the truth. So many memories, so many conflicting images inside her head.

Seven was on her feet now, closer. “I do,” she said. “I know exactly what she was doing.”

Seven on her knees in front of her, Seven’s hand on her face. Ice cold. The sting in her neck, the choking. The distant sound of Chakotay’s astonished voice, and then …

The baby was back. Throbbing, moving in her belly, listening to her. Hearing her thoughts. The sickness, the pain, the paralysis. Kathryn could hear herself gasping and panting and crying.

She could hear the baby’s thoughts. The baby was real. Seven was real. Seven’s thoughts, cold and precise as her Borg eye, enraged and hurt as her human eye. Tears coming from her human eye.

Kathryn had an affair with Chakotay. Chakotay was in love with Kathryn.

Red pubic hairs in her bed, the scent of another woman’s sweat and sex. Coming home to things that were moved, to a drunk husband who was in hell everyday with his guilt.

Being Borg, being young, being half a six-year-old. Furious. Crying and stomping, breaking down at work. Wanting to kill Paris and Torres and Naomi Wildman for being happy. Wanting everything they had.

But hating Kathryn. Hating her for being such a coward, for collapsing under the weight of the Admiralty, for drinking like Chakotay. For being like Chakotay. For being what Chakotay really wanted.

Kathryn, the part that was still Kathryn, felt her nose bleed.

“Annika, stop it!” yelled Chakotay, a million times. Splitting her head. “She doesn’t need … assimilating!”

He pulled her off, and the tubules ripped from Kathryn’s neck. Kathryn spasmed, spat up blood. There was the beginning of a star-shaped implant underneath her cheek, hard as an extra bone.

“You … did it?” she heaved.

Seven was breathing hard as well. “Yes,” she said. “And none of it was real.”

“What? What did you do?” Chakotay shouted. He was furious and bewildered.

“I gave Janeway false memories,” Seven said. “I made her pregnant with our child. I made her believe that you and I had conspired to make her pregnant, and that we took her child away.”

“Wha … HOW?!”

“Nanoprobes,” she said, as if no other explanation was needed.

“Why?” was Chakotay’s next absurdity.

“To punish her for taking my husband,” she said, face quite blank. “Or trying to.”

“Oh,” said Chakotay.

“You’re lucky … I didn’t KILL you …” Kathryn managed.

“I don’t think so,” said Seven dispassionately. She went over to the crib and picked up her silent child and rocked her.

Kathryn had her head in her hands.

“You came here to get the baby?” Chakotay asked her.

“I heard his thoughts,” she said. “I couldn’t let him go.”

He was looking at her. Gazing. Calm dark eyes, unfathomable. Private. “Our baby,” he said. Then “Our baby,” again.

Seven looked like she was going to be sick.

“I should .. I should go home,” said Kathryn. She looked at Seven and her baby. She didn‘t want to be here any longer. “I hope it was worth it,” she said.

“No,” said Seven, and her baby started to cry.

Chakotay’s eyes followed her out of the front door, and down the path as she walked back towards the transport station. She didn’t close the door behind her.

Back home, she sat in a warm salty bath and cut Seven’s implant from her face with a replicated blade. She healed the wound with a dermal regenerator, barely feeling anything.

Her nipples hurt, but she couldn’t make them lactate. She wondered if she ever really had. She wondered if she had ever really wanted that at all.



THE END


Email about it!

Read more stories in the same category as it!

Get right away from it!