Chapter Text
Kathryn dragged herself from the floor, unintentionally leaning on the giant sore bruise he’d given her when he threw her in. Her chest felt like someone had ripped it open and rubbed sandpaper on her ribs. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a proper breath.
She grunted and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling her way to the bed that aligned with the back wall. He’d ordered two guards at the Brig station and another four outside. She would have felt flattered if she wasn’t so goddamned weak. Using two fingers, she gently palpated her ribs and abdomen, searching for injuries that would require care. She noted the terrible swelling and places her fingers could not touch due to tenderness. Then she turned to face the guards, so they could not see as she slipped her uniform trousers down enough to inspect the bruise on her hip. As she did so, the lights slowly increased in the cell. The two guards at the station leaned back and folded their arms as if she were providing them a show. Damn the blush that rose from beneath her torn undershirt and spread across her face.
She returned her trousers to their place around her waist with a restrained whimper and nodded to the guards as gallantly as possible.
Never let them see you react, Kathryn, she thought.
They looked disappointed and lowered the lights again. The unnecessary head movement caused blood to rush into the black eye she’d received from Chakotay—no, she would not allow herself to call him that—from the newly minted Maquis Captain.
His backhand in the corridor had been swiftly followed by a knee to her gut. The force was wholly unnecessary, given the mismatch of his size to hers, but that didn’t seem to be the point. The point was brutality, which became clear in the next few moments when the Maquis Captain inserted his boot directly into her upper abdomen. As she rolled and curled in on herself to protect her precarious vital organs from the blows, she was lifted by her elbows and then held against a wall while he used boxer fists to deliver well-practiced punches to her face, stomach, and finally, a direct hit to her chest, causing her already re-arranged ribs to further crack and disband. The Maquis Captain hoisted her to one shoulder, tossing her over with no regard for the agony it caused. The walk to the brig was a breathless, squirming torture she hoped to never re-live. He allowed her to dangle and writhe such that she lost consciousness and re-awakened to cracking sounds in her chest several times. She woke when he threw her into the cell, where he glared at her with angry triumph.
She touched her black eye with a wince, then gingerly sat on the bed. What little strength she had needed to be preserved for planning. It wasn't easy to recline with her ribs in such bad shape, but she allowed her aching abdomen to rest and stole a look under her shirt to see the huge black bruise the Maquis Captain’s boot had bestowed there. She would not cry.
Would.
Not.
Instead, she took mental stock of the other things that were causing her pain. Hip, abdomen, chest, neck - both sides, right cheek, and eye… she reached up to feel the sticky blood on the top of her head and recoiled at the mere touch of her gentle fingers. She tried to take shallow breaths to accommodate the barking coughs that punctuated nearly every wheeze. The rising anger only made her breathe faster and more deeply, so she closed her eyes in an attempt to focus on keeping calm. The dim light was doing its work, persuading her to abandon alertness for a drowsy fog. Or maybe that was the injuries. She shook her head and tucked her neck so that her pounding head might relax enough to let her sleep.
=/\=
“Food.”
The guard pitched the plate at an angle that caused most of the food to spill onto the floor. She knew this trick; the Cardassians loved seeing prisoners eat off the floor. Even though she was starving, she played the fake and forced her body—agonized as it was—to roll over so her back was to them.
Never let them see you hunger, Kathryn, she thought.
She heard them talking and discussing her injuries, joking about the bloody mess she’d made on the floor when the Maquis Captain had thrown her in.
Now that she had slept, the situation felt worse. Kathryn could clearly picture his hardened look, the betrayal of his thoughts behind the terribly villainous expression. But she could not allow this to dominate her ability to plan. She had to think of a way out.
As the conversation behind her calmed, she moved through her pain to a position almost on her stomach. Here, she could face away and pretend to sleep while monitoring their lack of discipline in their guard duties.
She'd learned from her time with the Cardassians that all guards struggled with boredom and even the most disciplined officers lapsed in attention. So, she just needed to wait for their glance away and she could stealth move to the floor to carefully scoop up the food. There was no smell to motivate her, so she suspected it would be some form of grain-based sludge. She had no idea if they’d gotten to Neelix, but if they hadn’t, he would surely try to sneak in some flavor, knowing it was coming to her cell on the brig.
She glanced at the two men outside her cell, refusing to name them in her thoughts. The first “guard” sat against the station wall, putting his feet up on the nearby bulkhead as the talking lulled. Their casual tone made it seem like they were at a friendly party, not guarding a prisoner.
A dangerous prisoner, she thought darkly.
She waited for the other guard to lean against the station’s outer barrier before risking a small movement. The reaction was an involuntary curl of her abdomen from a jolting twang, causing her to bite back a pained cry. She steeled herself and focused on silence before moving from the bed to the floor. Glancing at the station to make certain they hadn’t noticed, she rolled her eyes at their continued positions of repose.
Their loss.
She silently pulled herself, army-crawl style, to where the food had landed on the floor of the brig. Sidling up to the wall, she curled around the food and gently moved the plate behind her so that if anyone looked, they would see the plate and what she hoped would look like her sleeping frame.
The exertion raised beads of sweat on her forehead and made her hands shake as she scooped the food to raise it in her mouth. She grimaced. As predicted, it was a grain-based meal, but it tasted worse than flavorless, worse even than Leola Root; it tasted like the grain had turned. Still, it was some form of nutrient, and who knew when she’d get another? So she shoved her hand into her mouth without further thought about what the food contained. Swallowing was a new level of torture. She hadn’t remembered an attack on her throat…? Oh wait, as she’d been held up against the wall, he’d choked her.
Still, she redoubled her efforts to eat as much as possible, forcing herself to swallow, no matter how painful.
Suddenly, the light shifted, turning the dim to full.
She froze.
She thought it would be the guards… but no.
“Kathryn, this is unbecoming a Starfleet officer, don’t you think?”
The Maquis Captain stood just outside the cell, watching her.