I did not intend to write this tale because I honestly did not intend to write
any more Voyager fanfic. TPTB don't care about their characters, so why should I?
Nonetheless, because some version of the big doofus still exists inside me which
would not shut up until I wrote this down, to the extent that he started haunting
my dreams and everything, damn him, I give you...

CAPTAIN MILLER'S STORY
by YCD

She looked familiar from the moment her face emerged from the tunnel, so
he knew to hold his fire even before the dark man lowered his weapon and
greeted her: "Catrine." The leader of the local Resistance - Captain
Miller had heard of her, had been briefed about her, but nobody had had
a photograph of her so the shock of recognition was odd...as if there
were more to it than he could remember. Secret bunkers, now secret
tunnels, he didn't like it one bit, any more than he liked her obvious
familiarity with the strange technology--what did she know, and why
hadn't she relayed that information to the Allies? But her eyes met his
as she crawled out, and he knew he could trust her.

That she was a beautiful woman shouldn't have surprised him; she was a
nightclub owner, after all. She just wasn't what he pictured in a
freedom fighter. The scrappy dark woman, Bobby's past love, was more
what he'd expected. He got the feeling that the colored bartender didn't
trust the other one, the brassy blonde who was glaring at them all.
Miller could see why: that one seemed a little too Aryan, and a little
too rigid. Like the Nazis. Not like the girls of St. Clair, like Bobby's
old flame - hardly a knockout, but nothing to sneeze at either, big
brown eyes and a warm sassy smile. Bobby had said the girls of St. Clair
were all great in bed, but Brigitte was the only one he really fell for.
Must have felt like a kick in the guts to see her knocked up with a
Kraut baby...although she probably wasn't the only woman who'd put out
for the Nazis to protect her own. Miller glanced at Catrine again, at
her guarded expression, and wondered how far her resistance went when it
came to defending St. Clair.

He liked her people. The bartender was unerringly logical - Miller
approved of the man's analysis of the bunker and the superweapon the
Nazis were likely building in there. An escapee from Rommel, maybe, or
an African who'd moved to France before the war? He didn't seem French.
Miller knew Bobby was glad to see the tough brunette, and the blonde
singer seemed to know her explosives. Catrine was the enigma.

No way was he letting her get back into that tunnel alone. Partly
because he thought she might need his help, even if she was local and
didn't need protection; partly because he could tell she'd seen more
than she was saying. How could she have recognized those superweapons?
He'd read some theories about new warheads carrying high-yield
explosives and power from harnessing the atom, but nothing which would
make him think the Germans had developed a set of bombs so powerful that
an Allied air strike could set off explosions that would destroy an
entire valley. Catrine's statement made him vaguely suspicious, not of
her exactly, but of the whole situation. Maybe she was just trying to
protect her town from Allied bombs as well as German occupation, or
maybe she had her own agenda. There was too much stuff he knew nothing
about, mysterious bunkers, mysterious tunnels, mysterious beautiful
French women who risked their lives to defend their country.

When she cocked her head at him, he followed her in.

Miller had no choice but to let Catrine lead in the tunnels; she knew
where she was going, and besides, these weren't like any tunnels he'd
seen before. Strange technology embedded in the walls, with neon strips
glowing and brightly lit panels that looked like airplane controls. The
view from behind was nice, anyway. She never hesitated, her movements
sure and steady as she crawled without hesitation around corners, up a
ladder.

"You're a pretty gung-ho kind of gal, aren't you?" he asked her, partly
to make conversation, partly to see whether or not she thought it was a
compliment. His mother wouldn't have thought so, but the women he knew
in the war effort back home were pretty gung-ho themselves.

"Does that bother you?"

She didn't sound bothered, herself. "Nope." Then by way of excuse, he
told her he wasn't used to it, because he was a little afraid to tell
her he always liked the gung-ho ones. She reminded him of...well,
himself, in her determination to protect her people, but of someone else
too, someone he had known once, whose name kept slipping his mind right
as he was about to get a handle on it. He wished he could remember,
because he didn't like the idea that he could have known a woman like
her once and let her slip away.

She stopped him at the end of a corridor just before they reached what
looked like an access hatch, to warn him about the caves they were about
to enter and the folk who lived there. He thought he was ready for
anything, but he wasn't prepared to find mutants living in the caves -
that was what those people had to be, no amount of surgery or tattoos
could explain the misshapen heads and body markings. He'd gotten his own
tattoo under strange enough circumstances, just before he shipped out--
his men had put him up to it and suggested he get some curvy woman on
his arm, but the Indian who owned the place had looked him up and down
till he got the creeps and then told him an ancient legend about people
from outer space settling in America. He'd wound up with the strange
tribal mark on his forehead before he quite knew what had happened. It
marked him as different, but for some reason it felt special. Truth be
told, he liked it.

Women did, too. He caught Catrine glancing at it when he took her hand
to help her down from the rocks where she'd climbed to talk to the
drunken mutants, who'd thrown him a skein of the worst-smelling whiskey
he'd ever encountered. She seemed familiar with the stuff, but then, she
ran a nightclub. Who knew what sorts of people she'd had to cater to?
Again he wondered who she'd had to cooperate with, and how far she'd had
to go. He was willing to bet that she'd do just about anything to
protect her people. He didn't know whether to admire that or be a little
sick about it.

He also didn't know how to feel about how much she obviously knew about
the war, when he was so ignorant. Those mutants - there had been reports
of things the Nazi doctors tried on their own soldiers, but Miller
hadn't thought there had been time to develop a whole race of warriors
like these, and if Catrine was comfortable with them and could
communicate with them, they must have been around for awhile. It was
disturbing to realize that someone on his own side might have been
tampering with people like that. Was Catrine some sort of secret
scientist? That would explain how she knew how to use all the equipment,
and why she knew about the mutants, and the superweapons. But if she was
a scientist, what was she doing in the Resistance in St. Clair, instead
of working for the underground in Paris? Maybe St. Clair was somehow
central to the Nazi superweapon effort. Or maybe she just loved St.
Clair.

Obviously Catrine was a diplomat as well as a scientist if she'd managed
to wring enough information of out the Nazis in her club to realize she
needed to expose the bunker. She finished talking to the man in the
strange uniform who had appeared out of nowhere and walked back,
covering her mouth to stifle a yawn. He hadn't slept in over twenty-four
hours and he was willing to bet she hadn't either. "They aren't going to
finish that bunker overnight," he said when she was within earshot.

"What are you suggesting?"

"We should rest."

"You rest if you need to. I'm going ahead with these plans."

"Are you going to tell me exactly what these plans are?" he asked
pointedly.

Catrine took a long look at him, wary and prepared to fight, but a loud
guffaw arose from the mutant warriors, followed by an enormous belch
which made them grin at one another instead. "All right. Let's rest for
a few minutes," she agreed. Her arm rose to rub her shoulder. He waited
until she had dropped her pack and started to rest against a rock before
he circled behind her, pushing her hair off her neck.

She froze as he began to knead her shoulders, massaging the tight
muscles of her back, and it hit him that she wasn't some girl from back
home who expected him to court her, put on a show for her and then beg
for what he knew they both wanted but she wasn't supposed to give him.
French women weren't like that. They were supposedly looser, they'd
never had Prohibition, they were probably used to saying yes or no based
only on what they felt like doing. Again he remembered what Bobby had
said about the girls of St. Clair, again he wondered how much this woman
had done to defend his own side, how much it had cost her, what she
really wanted.

Catrine tensed, then relaxed unexpectedly, letting her head fall forward
so that her hair once again fell across her neck and his hands. As he
swept it up and over her shoulder, she murmured something in French,
something that sounded like "chaque au teint."

Everyone of the color? Each with the complexion? His French wasn't too
good, although he'd had no problem understanding the bartender and the
other civilians he'd worked with. All from the same background, maybe?
Or was it supposed to mean that he and she were cut from the same cloth?

He turned her toward him, and was startled to see tears in her eyes.
He'd thought of her as focused on her job, not wasting time sweating
about the people under her, but maybe she was hurting for those she'd
lost, and those she was about to lose. The Americans would clean the
Nazis out of St. Clair, give her city back to her...and then what? With
what she knew, what she'd seen, she wasn't going to be able to go back
to being a nightclub owner. "Leave the war outside," the colored man had
said was her motto to customers. Catrine was even more complicated than
he'd thought.

"Sorry," she whispered. "Commander...Captain." He blinked at her slip.
Confusion over the American title, or was she remembering someone else?
A German? But she was looking right at him, her intense blue gaze
cutting right through him. Again the chill of recognition, the sense
that he wasn't remembering something important. He put his finger under
her chin, turned her face up to his. Watched as her eyes flickered over
his hair, his tattoo, his mouth. Involuntarily he had leaned closer to
her, breathing her in, she smelled like a woman, traces of perfume and
soap, she inhaled sharply as his face drew level with hers.

He hadn't meant to kiss her, but as he did it he realized that the
possibility had been in his mind since he first laid eyes on her. There
was something ironic about it, Maquis leader and Allied Captain, but the
attraction had been instantaneous, and he couldn't keep his mind off it.
Bad idea, to get into this state in the middle of a war, but it had also
kept him focused--he forgot how tired he was, her mission became his
mission. And now they were one and the same.

God she smelled good, even through the smoke from the mutants' campfire.
And she tasted good too, a faint stickiness where what was left of her
lipstick rubbed off on him as her mouth opened for him. He was surprised
at the ardor of her response. One arm around his neck, holding him
tightly to her, the other gripping his forearm. Her chest thrust forward
against his, fingers barely grazing his hair. When his mouth slid away
from hers to taste the skin of her throat, she murmured the French
phrase again: "Chaque autre."

Like every other? Was she saying he was acting just like every man? Or
did she mean they were meant for each other?

He remembered another foreign phrase: carpe diem. No time like the
present, that was the American equivalent. There might never be another
chance. Tomorrow they might both be dead. Whether their cause succeeded
or failed, whatever happened in the morning, they were together now,
tonight. For relief, for pleasure, for whatever they could find. Except
that he didn't want this just to be another wartime fling. "Catrine..."
he started to tell her. "This isn't how I'd want...not one night in the
trenches..."

Her fingers found his and linked through them, clasped palm to palm, and
for a moment he almost remembered. Why she was familiar. What was real
and what was illusion. She shifted back to look into his eyes, though
hers were still filled with tears. One finger from her other hand came
up to press his mouth into silence. She knew what he was trying to say,
didn't want to let him say it, because she knew. This was it, their one
chance. As she let her finger fall from his lips, he nodded, "Yes,
ma'am," just to make sure she understood.

"Captain," she admonished, and kissed him again. Hand on his chest,
bending him backwards with her body. He tugged his fingers free from
hers so he could get both his arms around her. They made love on top of
his jacket on the cold ground, clinging to one another for warmth, for
protection, and for affirmation of something he couldn't name. Bobby had
been right about French women liking things you couldn't even pay most
American girls to try, but that wasn't what made it the greatest
experience he'd ever had. Catrine touched him as though she knew his
body, and he found that he knew her too--not like they had actually been
lovers before, but as if he'd loved her from afar, watched and
fantasized and dreamed of her body, imagined what it would be like. A
wish fulfilled. When she came, she gasped once more the French phrase
whose meaning had been eluding him, and although he still didn't know
what it meant, he did know what it referred to. Himself. That was all
that mattered.

Afterwards she was very quiet, though she had cried out so loudly that
the mutants had woken and guffawed and shouted at them to keep it down.
He tried to hold her, but she kept pulling back. It didn't surprise him
exactly - for some reason that, too, was familiar, even expected. But he
finally asked her whether anything was wrong.

"I should never have gotten involved," she whispered.

"You mean in the Resistance?"

Catrine looked at him sharply. "With you. With anyone, while I have this
much to accomplish." She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
"I can't afford to be afraid of losing one person."

The vehemence of her words moved him. "Well, I intend to survive," he
said as offhandedly as possible. "And I'll come back to St. Clair, after
the Nazis are gone and I get my men out safely. You won't lose me."

"You'll forget me." Her voice had a bleak finality. "You'll forget me
when this mission is accompished. After the bomb goes off."

Something happened when she mentioned the bomb. Not that he didn't trust
her, but it made him realize that there was a big piece she wasn't
telling him, even bigger than the superweapons or the mutants. How had
she known about what was inside the bunker? How did she know how to
navigate the secret tunnels, and about all the experiments they were
witnessing? It wasn't just technological secrets she was keeping from
him: she was keeping her own, too. Who she really was. What she really
wanted. For a moment he almost got angry.

Her mission was his mission. That was what he had decided, wasn't it?

"Maybe you were right before about getting done quickly," he said. "So
it will be over. We'll need a few days to put things back together here
and do recon once the bunker blows. We'll have more time to rest then,
and we can talk." Her look was grateful.

"I think that once you get inside the bunker, a lot of things will
become clear. Have you got the explosives?" He showed them to her.
Without another word, she took his hand and led him back towards the
tunnels full of all the materials he didn't recognize. Panels made of
something stronger than glass, metals thinner and tougher than any he'd
ever seen before. There was something strangely familiar about them,
too. Something which he was shown once and then ordered to forget? He
didn't have answers, and stuck with what he did know: putting together
the timer for her bomb. He took orders well. He'd always been told that,
it was one of the reasons he'd made captain.

"Will you tell me what we're blowing up?" he asked.

"If I told you we were blowing up a relay terminal controlling neural
implants using nanoprobe technology, would it mean anything to you?"

"Nope." Silence. "You must think I'm awfully dumb," he burst out. "All
this equipment that I don't know how to use. And all these secrets we
didn't know were going on."

She shook her head in the negative. "Captain, until yesterday I had no
idea what was going on. No idea. If Mademoiselle de Neuf hadn't forced
me to see what was really at stake, the Nazis might have controlled this
entire region. Now that I do know, you must believe me when I tell you
that you and I are fighting for the same things, and failure could mean
the end of the world."

They had reached the end of the corridor she'd been leading him down,
and emerged into what looked like a laboratory. Huge instruments with
more controls than a plane, screens showing graphs that changed
constantly. Bright overhead light, translucent walls that were harder
than any material he'd ever touched before. There was one Nazi inside;
Miller took the guy out. More coming, though, so he went out into the
corridor while Catrine ran her hands over controls of a type he didn't
recognize. Whatever this place was, she was an expert on it. He was glad
she was on his side.

A blast from one of the Nazi rifles, then a rumble. The soldiers burst
past him, he heard sounds of battle within. His last coherent thought
was of Catrine, praying that she would be all right--hoping that after
the war he could stay in France for awhile with her, tell her about his
home in Indiana, ask her whether she'd like to see it with him. Another
image burst into his head, Catrine yet not Catrine, wearing a different
uniform, fighting at his side. Kathryn. The name escaped his lips as the
two of her merged, just as the two of him merged, himself and the other
man with tattoo, chaque autre, the name she'd been calling him, the name
she had made his. Then Captain Miller died.

* * * *

When Chakotay came to, he was in the corridor outside sickbay with dead
Hirogen all around him. He was mystified as to how he had gotten
there...the last thing he remembered, he had been fighting to defend the
bridge, standing with a rifle by the lift while Janeway studied a
console, attempting to determine why the Hirogen were surrounding the
holodeck.

Janeway. Kathryn. He could sense her everywhere, although he couldn't
see her--he could smell her presence, sharp and sweet. Had he carried
her to the medical labs? Was she injured? Inside sickbay, he found blood
by the shattered console...hers, but not enough to suggest a fatal
injury. He knew she must have fled before that explosion, probably back
to the holodeck to defend their people. And he knew he had to find her.

Later, when the captain and Ensign Kim had destroyed the holoemitters,
Chakotay tracked her down back in Sickbay. Wounded, she seemed slightly
more distant than usual, not quite meeting his eyes. She told him
"Captain Miller" had been most helpful to her, thanking him with a
glassy smile. He knew that there was something he wasn't remembering,
some information she had failed to relay in the official report--she was
keeping a secret, something she had decided it was best if he didn't
know. For a moment he almost got angry.

Her mission was his mission. That was what he had decided, wasn't it?

Chakotay chose to trust her enough not to ask any questions. Kathryn was
pretty gung-ho when she was protecting her people, and they were cut from
the same cloth.