Demons Among The Stars

Part 1

Written for the QCard Big Bang 2019, organised by q-card on Tumblr!

This is actually my first time writing in this fandom, even if I've been a Trekkie since I was a kid. I was very excited about this event and I hope I managed to make the characters justice!
This work was supposed to be a single once shot, but it got far longer than I had originally planned for it, so I decided to divide it in parts to make it more easy to read!

Mandatory side note: I haven't seen all ST -Voy, but I've done the necessary research to write the parts that somewhat involved that series. However, I reserved for myself some poetic licence when it comes to the timeline and the descriptions of the Continuum war.

My partner for the challenge was iscalox and you can find the lovely art (see banner of this chapter) the created for this story here: https://iscalox.tumblr.com/post/187466839909/my-art-for-qcard-bigbang-2019-the-fic-is-demons
Please, check out their Tumblr blog for more works by them. They have a great, unique style!

I hope you will enjoy it! Comments and questions are more than welcome and definitely encouraged!

29/02/2020: Full story officially revised and corrected.

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Space is theoretically endless. A boundless expanse of untouchable darkness, a black sea studded with the ever-changing colours of the stars. It's cold out there, the absence of any sort of warmth and gravity making it inhabitable for almost any form of life. Everything withers and freezes and dies once it's embraced by that impalpable blackness, if it's stripped of any sort of suitable protection.

All that considered, it was obvious that what he was currently experiencing had to be a dream, a fruit of his unconscious mind, the resulting image of the endless threads of his subconscious, weaved together. Mankind and science had taken a lot of steps forwards, made plenty of discoveries, explained phenomena that before had seemed like thick, unsolvable mysteries. However, for some reason, there were still plenty of undiscovered layers wrapped around certain functions of the nervous system, and dreams were one of them. There were plenty of theories, so many guesses had been made, but the concrete truth still felt out of reach, just as a vision that faded as soon as awareness started to fully come back.

In any case, even if he had no idea of where it had come from or why he was seeing this particular scenario, there were few doubts that he was stuck in a dream. He was floating in what had to be open space, without a spacesuit, without a ship. It was hard to describe because it was like nothing he had experienced before. There was no atmosphere, no air, nothing on his skin. Just...void. Nothingness. And yet there was no unbearable pressure, no deadly cold, even if his body was shivering, instinctively expecting both. The way they kept failing to come felt incredibly wrong, but it was hardly the only thing that was out of place. The stars, which were by now as familiar as the landscapes of his hometown, didn't look right. It was as if he had been seeing everything at the same time through his own eyes and from a point of view that wasn't his usual one.

He tried to shake his head, but he wasn't sure that he had managed. Everything felt so confused, so unreal. It made his brain spin, hurt even. And that was the only thing that felt concrete. The pain. Deep, insisting, penetrating. It was hard to grasp where it was coming from. It was totalising, it seemed to originate at the same time from the void of space itself and from inside him. He was extremely aware of it and yet it was almost as if some sort of barrier was standing between him and the icy feeling, shielding him from the real extent of what, even at distance, tasted like soaring agony.

Then, all of a sudden, everything came crashing down. The darkness twisted around itself, the light of the stars became brighter, so blinding that it seemed to obliterate every sense. All around him reality appeared to be literally falling into pieces, like a glass exploding into a thousand splinters, and behind it, behind the scattered fragments...