50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Summary: Kathryn Janeway can’t help breaking hearts, but at least she never does it the same way twice.
Characters: Janeway, Sisko
Codes: Janeway/Sisko
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Paramount. I'm just having a little twisted fun with them.
Notes: When I posted A Long Journey on tumblr, @caladeniablue asked 'Fic to go with this?' and it got me thinking. This is the result. (If you have a request for a lover Kathryn could leave, email me!)
Rated M
twelve | The Sisko
Requested by @amoderngirl. This ficlet takes place on another plane of existence, after Benjamin Sisko disappears into the wormhole to become a Prophet, and after Bookverse!Kathryn Janeway is assimilated by the supercube, rescued by SuzyQ and taken off to the Continuum (I think – it’s been awhile since I read The Eternal Tide and frankly I never understood it that well anyway).
~*~
“The Q do it simply by touching their fingers together, you know.”
“How uncharacteristically Vulcan of them.” A sense of bemusement colours the not-air between them. “How exactly do you know that?”
“I watched them once.”
“Kathryn Janeway, you voyeur.”
“You know what they say. We are explorers.”
A rich sense of amusement filters through the ether. “You’re full of surprises. I always thought you’d be such a straight arrow.”
What remains of the Kathryn Janeway she once recognised projects an image of herself, hands on her hips and jaw lifted. “You know better than to let appearances fool you, Ben.”
“Ben,” repeats the entity. “It’s a long while since anybody’s called me that.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I miss Jake,” the Sisko replies. “I miss Kasidy.”
“I miss my family, too.”
If it’s possible to draw closer to another entity that exists beyond time and space, they do. And though it bears no resemblance to what corporeal beings do to be close to one another, when they separate Kathryn feels a sense of the languor and satisfaction she remembers feeling when she inhabited her body.
“Better than the Q,” she decides, and feels laughter suffusing the not-space around her.
“Maybe you could get used to it,” the Sisko suggests.
But before she can ponder that, the nothingness around her changes form, taking the shape of a dusty desert road, a pair of Q, and a plan to restore her to her physical body, and any memory Kathryn might have had of moments or aeons spent with the Sisko is lost forever.