The BLTS Archive- Break
by michele masterson (libra471@aol.com)

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Warning:  This is about as dark as I've ever written.  Not happy.
Anti-happy. The enemy of happy.  Okay?

Disclaimer: Paramount Television owns the characters and Janeway's
little bit of backstory.

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I used to wonder what it would take to break her.  Not her body, for
it really takes very little to break the human body.  But I wondered
if it would even be possible to break her spirit, her will -- she was
always the strongest of us all.  Had lived through hell, had seen the
worst life had to offer.  Dead father.  Dead lover.  Dead crewmen.
Prison camps, unspeakable, unforgettable, unforgivable.  Maybe she was
one of those people who just took it, could always take it.

But, we all have a point.  We all have a limit.  And I don't need to
wonder anymore.

They returned her today.

Without apology, without provocation, without explanation.  Seven days
gone, vanished from the planet's surface.  We thought she was dead. We
hoped she did not suffer.

We were wrong, on both counts.

I saw her, once, when she materialized in sickbay, unconscious.  There
have been few times in my life when I tasted the desire to murder so
strongly that I shook with the prospect.  Find them.  Find whoever did
this.  And kill them.

I would have.  And I would have enjoyed it.

Paris threw up.  I did not know the doctor could curse, but he did.
Sometime later, the doctor had me escorted out of sickbay.  I don't
remember why.

She regained consciousness.  A week later she was on the bridge.  We
could not find the aliens who did this, and resumed our course for the
Alpha Quadrant.

That very night, she came to my quarters.   We sat on my couch.  She
did not tell me what transpired, and I did not ask.  But she broke
down and sobbed. Awful, horrifying, choking sobs.  I held her.
Strange, after all this time of wanting to hold her like I did, I
didn't want this.

And now, she comes to me, every night, and she is beyond consolation,
beyond control.  I can only hold her.  And she hates me for it, hates
that I can see what happened to her, hates that I know the cost.  They
got her.  She will never be the same, ever.  And part of me hates her
as well -- she had convinced us that she was invincible.  She had
convinced herself.  It was a universal truth.

And that is the worst part.  Because we know now that there is no
truth in the universe.  And things happen that should never happen.
And sometimes, you will lose more than you ever believed possible.

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The End