IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager, Janeway, Chakotay.
PART ONE
THREE YEARS LATER
Dorvan V was a dry planet situated in the Demilitarised Zone and destroyed during the Federation-Cardassian war by the Cardassians despite a treaty in 2370 that no side engage in hostilities in this area of space. It left the planet decimated and almost all its inhabitants either killed or enslaved. Those who survived and fled during the offensives returned to rebuild the planet and recreate the picturesque small towns and villages that were the features of Dorvan V.
An M-Class planet, Dorvan's proximity to its sun created an almost year round warm season, with occasional precipitation during the lower temperate periods the only relief. It also marked the moderately changing weather patterns as spring, though not dramatically cooler than summer.
Seven of Nine alighted from her shuttle, the heat of the late afternoon hitting her so sharply that she gasped for a second before finding her breath again. Then she shielded her eyes with her hand, peering in the distance. The landing area was functional, almost primitive compared to the modern smooth surfaces all over Earth, Earth's moon and the planets Mars and Jupiter.
The skirt she wore offered greater comfort and coolness than a tight fitting cat-suit would have offered. She had discarded that mode of dress soon after they had returned to the Alpha Quadrant and had the option of wearing Starfleet uniform or plain clothes. She smiled to herself. The only Voyager officer who had commented that she looked "great" in a dress was Harry Kim whom she was about to assimilate into a collective of two.
She began to walk towards the village a short distance away, the red slate roofs visible, the street almost incongruously dotted with palm trees. Much rehabilitation of the land had taken place, she realised. Despite the desert features of the planet, the villages all appeared like small oases. The outlying areas sustained mostly chaparral suited to the dry weather conditions.
She had announced her pending visit to Dorvan's Senior Council. Chakotay had not been present but he must have been informed of her plans. No one had come to meet her at the landing pads, a not surprising occurrence, given the nature of her visit, or, just the fact that it was someone who knew him from Voyager who wanted an audience with him. He may not want to meet her, but as Captain Janeway remarked on numerous occasions, "Sometimes you just have to punch your way through."
Her mind was filled with the purpose of her burden; it would not render any relief until she had spoken with Chakotay. Already her heart hammered, not with the old, unaccustomed flutter of a bygone crush, but the prospect of defending to him the woman who meant the world to her. If anything touched Kathryn Janeway to the core and inflicted boundless hurt, it touched her too. For were they not in essence mother and daughter? Did she not find all her heart and affection bound to the one person in all of humanity who gave her back just that? One who watched with great care and love every faltering step she took towards becoming human again? One who nurtured her, counselled her, sometimes held her close in wordless solace?
If the need arose she would use excessive force to get Commander Chakotay to comply to her request. She hoped it wouldn't come to that. She was not Dalby or Ayala who trounced Commander Chakotay to within an inch of his life. The only reason they kept him alive, ostensibly, was that they couldn't kill a tiny infant's father.
She hoped that Chakotay would ponder over her words and not take long to make a decision. For Captain Janeway's sake, Chakotay needed to be by her side.
The heat was stifling and although she was not perturbed by it, it was a slight inconvenience to her. She thought idly how it was the height of summer here on Dorvan V when northern hemisphere Earth experienced the height of winter. She touched her cortical node, feeling the heat of it under her fingers. She needed to be in a cool place and preferably find water to quench her raging thirst.
At an airy abode near the end of the dusty road that ran through the entire village with its rows of houses flanking the central walkway, she paused, took in a deep breath and knocked. These were the co-ordinates of Chakotay's abode given her by the Council. It was several minutes before the door opened and a woman stood before her, her mouth marked by a droop, shoulders slumped and her appearance untidy. She looked dissolute, unkempt, a marked contrast to her Voyager days. Seven wondered absently why this woman hadn't left Dorvan V sooner than the three years given her to remain on the planet.
"Seven of Nine," Sarah Hargreaves drawled, "what brings you here?"
"I must speak with Chakotay," Seven replied, her initial instinct to greet Sarah lost in the woman's obvious sneer. "Where is he?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Because I demand that you do. If you don't, I will not leave here until I have found him. Now, Sarah Hargreaves, are you going to comply?" she asked the woman, taking a step forward and preventing Sarah from closing the door on her.
After a long pause in which it seemed to her that Hargreaves was weighing her options, she simply pointed with her head in the direction of the opposite end of the town.
"The habak. You will find him there. Elizabeth is with him…I think."
Seven nodded, then turned away from the door, not heeding the way it was slammed shut by the irate woman. She didn't look back again, feeling relieved to be out of Sarah Hargreaves's sight. The woman's appearance had surprised her. She had always been well appointed, attractive, dressy in her off duty hours and, according to Samantha Wildman, an excellent exobiologist. But Sarah Hargreaves had always irritated her in what Seven could only now, with hindsight define as pure human instinct, and an irrational one at that. On Voyager Sarah Hargreaves had been the sweetest, most caring of individuals as seen through the eyes of the crew who stood by her side when she was pregnant. But Seven of Nine had known that under the saccharine, cutely sucking exterior lurked a manipulative little bitch.
Only she was aware of Sarah's deceit.
And Captain Janeway.
Seven had been surprised that senior crew like Tom Paris, B'Elanna, Tuvok and Magnus Rollins had never seen through this woman. Why she had resisted Sarah's sticky charm at the time she could never quite understand. Was it because she was instinctively suspicious of the "too good to be true" idea of manner and deportment in any person? She had come to understand that individuals had flaws. Commander Chakotay had them, Captain Janeway had them. She learned the hard way that Seven of Nine also had them. It made men and women human. Sarah Hargreaves projected too flawless and there-in lay the mistake she made. Seven gave a sigh. The woman was a non-entity for her, not worth assimilating for she had no distinctiveness that was worth adding to her fount of knowledge.
The outlay of the village as she had studied it from her charts made finding the habak easy. A place - usually the upper floor of a building with a rough looking stack through the centre of the ceiling - where men and women could embark on vision quests.
She entered the cool abode that housed the habak and stepped gingerly up the short flight of clay steps to what served as a mezzanine level. She knew it was Chakotay sitting there, his back to her. The black, cropped hairstyle was unmistakable and remarkably unchanged from his Voyager days. He must have ended his meditation only moments before where he had been seated at a small fire. He had lifted his hand off the akoonah, stood up and turned at the sound behind him.
Chakotay's mouth curved into a smile that rested there only a brief moment before it vanished and his face became aloof again. Aloof and stiff, unanimated, and, in a split second of dawning realisation for her, unfulfilled by his vision quest.
"Annika…"
"Where is Elizabeth?" she asked without preamble. Sarah had told her that Elizabeth was with her father, but she saw no child here.
Chakotay looked weary, was the thought that came to her. Weary and sad, with the same droop to his face and shoulders she had seen on Sarah Hargreaves. But Sarah's bearing was one of discontent whereas Chakotay's sadness exuded from his frame, springing from something deep and distant, a sadness not relieved by his quest for peace.
Seven had no time for niceties with this man. There was a time she thought that of all men on Voyager Chakotay had the greatest sense of honour. There was a time she thought that he could be someone who could watch over her like a loving, caring partner. That was not to be. She had soon been disillusioned on that score. She didn't mind. She was sensible and mature enough to realise that he had been a passing fancy. A romantic passing fancy that died in its infancy. From all such experiences she understood a person could only grow, learn, mature, adapt. Now, she could hate Chakotay all she wanted to.
"Elizabeth," he replied as she followed him down the steps to the cool front room, "is with my sister."
It spoke volumes.
"Why?" she asked nonetheless, thinking to needle him would be a good chance of getting a reaction from him, getting a little more animation in his face.
"Why do you think? Have you been to Sarah's house?"
"Sarah's house. She does not live with you?"
"No – "
"Is she not the mother of your child?"
"Mother?" it burst heatedly from him. "Sarah is no mother."
"Chakotay, forgive me for putting it bluntly, but you did choose her to be the mother of your baby."
"Why are you here?" he asked, a query understood, but also a clear attempt to avoid discussing Sarah Hargreaves.
"I wish to see the child." she parried instantly.
Chakotay hesitated a moment, then dropped his gaze. She wasn't going to grace him with any information judging by the querying look in his eyes. He didn't need sympathy and she wanted to prolong his agony. If anything, he could at least have sent Captain Janeway pictures, let her know how the child was doing. But he punished his captain, friend and lover then as he was punishing her now. While she concluded that he had been justified in many aspects surrounding Elizabeth's conception and birth with regard to his attitude to Captain Janeway, his behaviour subsequently was to her personally, unmanly and reprehensible.
"Come," he said softly and walked out the abode, into the bright sunshine that beat down on them. She followed him, staring at his back which was suddenly a little more rigid, proud, than it had been inside the habak. They walked some way, then turned left into a side path. She almost bumped into him when he stopped suddenly.
A house bigger than the first one, with an airy large foyer that offered immediate respite from the stifling heat. She heard a child's voice coming from somewhere in the house. Minutes later a woman appeared, a woman who looked like a female version of him, but without the tattoo. Seven frowned as she took a step forward.
"My name is Nyala," the woman who looked like Chakotay said in friendly greeting, her voice even, unsurprised. "I am Chakotay's sister. You must be Seven of Nine. I have heard much about you."
"I hope that what you have heard was good."
"Oh yes. You are much admired, Seven of Nine."
Seven thought there wouldn't be much to admire once she had finished her business here. If her work on board Voyager and now, at the Starfleet's Science Institute could be classed as admirable, she would dispute it and claim it simply as labour. Still, she nodded her acceptance of Nyala's words and waited for Chakotay to reappear.
When Chakotay came back, a little girl was attached to his hand.
"Here. This is Elizabeth," he said morosely.
"Chakotay, my brother," Nyala chided gently, "you are very unfriendly."
"Get done with your business, Annika, then leave."
"I will leave as soon as I have done with my business," she parroted him.
Nyala bent down to the child's height and caressed Elizabeth's hair. Then she pointed to Seven.
"Sweetie, this lady here would like to meet you."
But Seven of Nine who had seen the child enter was struck by several things at once. The way the child clung to Nyala's skirt, for one. She looked diffident, reluctant to open her mouth in front of a stranger and one who still wore Borg implants. The child's hair was smooth and probably brushed just before she was brought out. Golden brown hair that hung just past her shoulder blades. Elizabeth didn't smile, but kept clinging to her aunt, a thumb perilously close to her mouth, much like a baby would suck. Didn't the child ever have friends?
But it was Elizabeth's eyes that were the most arresting.
Seven remembered the first time she had seen Captain Janeway when she had been fully Borg and in the first days after she had been severed from the Collective. It was not Janeway's hair or her bearing or the way she pulled her mouth when she was set on a decision she had made. It was not the upward curve of that same mouth that indicated humour, a perplexing thing for a Borg to assimilate. It was not Janeway's uniform, her mode of dress and address or shiny pips that designated her rank which captured her. Nothing then which signified and entrenched even at that early stage of her reintegration into humanity for a lonely Borg woman-child that spoke for Janeway more than what she was seeing in Elizabeth.
It was Janeway's eyes.
Direct, blue-grey eyes that refused to back down even when most trapped. Eyes that changed colour with her emotions – anger, humour, the pitting of wits against every known foe of the Delta Quadrant, that challenged Seven of Nine's own superior knowledge and advantage. Eyes through which many had received Janeway's compassion and pardon and fairness.
"Remember, a single act of compassion can bring you in touch with your humanity…"
Janeway taught her that and she was here to do the same for the former captain of Voyager. It was the compassion in Kathryn Janeway's eyes which made her for all time not just a captain, but a woman of excellence.
Those eyes stared at her now, from the eyes of Elizabeth, daughter of Chakotay.
She bent down like Nyala had done earlier and touched the child's hair gently.
"Hello, little one. My name is Seven of Nine. You can call me Annika. What is your name?"
The child hid her face in her aunt's skirt, then slowly, reluctantly peeped at her.
"My name is Elizabeth."
"It gives me joy to meet with you, little one. You cannot know how much…"
She was satisfied. She had seen Elizabeth who bore such a striking resemblance to Kathryn Janeway.
Seven stood up and nodded to Nyala who quickly left the room with Elizabeth, leaving her with Chakotay who had stood motionless while she had spoken with the child. He looked belligerent, an emotion contrary to what she supposed a result of a vision quest had to be. Didn't one pursue peace or peaceful answers through such a quest?
"Why are you here?" he repeated his question of earlier.
"Captain Janeway has expressed a desire to see Elizabeth."
"She gave up that right three years ago."
"Elizabeth is her daughter too."
"A little late to remember that."
"Her surrogate is an unworthy mother."
"Leave Sarah out of this."
"I cannot, Chakotay. Sarah is guilty as you are guilty of your own condemnation of Captain Janeway."
"I'm not going to stand here and listen to you, Annika. I'm not taking my daughter to see – "
"Her real mother. Remember that, Chakotay, while you are still drowning in your own ignorance and anger and self-pity. Captain Janeway is still Elizabeth's mother."
"What kind of mother would give away her child? Tell me!"
Seven of Nine thought how she saw her own mother assimilated by a Borg drone, how her body slowly turned into a network of veins that turned flesh to a shadow of that flesh – an exoskeleton of metallic armour, blood that was no more human but filled with millions of nanoprobes that charged like parasites through her - assimilating, reforming, enhancing, engineering with harrowing ease the human body. Her mother's body. A body that had reached to her young, scared little girl cowering in fear, a body that in its dying moments screamed that her little girl be saved. As Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01 Seven of Nine never afterwards heard her mother's voice again, for it was drowned in the voices of millions of drones.
There was no saviour for her mother.
And Captain Janeway saved that little girl many years later.
"A woman" she said slowly, her eyes burning, "from whom the choice to raise that child had been removed."
It didn't give her pleasure to see the way Chakotay blanched at her words. An hour ago she had been ready to take him to Earth by force. Now she hoped that her words struck a chord somewhere.
"What are you saying?"
"Just that, Chakotay. Captain Janeway only wishes to see Elizabeth this one time."
"It's too late," he said with disheartening ease. "She gave up that chance. Left me no choice but to raise my daughter – "
"Her daughter… And I do believe she tried to see her baby when it was born, a request denied her by you and your cohorts, despite the fact that she begged you."
He sighed heavily.
"She never wanted the child. Never! Everyone knew that. Sarah was the most suitable surrogate. Besides, she – "
"Was in love with you. And, Chakotay, even in my own insufficient understanding of human foibles, she used you…"
"I am not prepared to listen to more of this, Annika. Leave me, and leave me with my daughter."
"Funny."
"Why do you say that?"
"The night after Sarah Hargreaves gave birth to your daughter, she said the same thing to Captain Janeway."
"What?"
"Captain Janeway was compelled to visit sickbay in secret the night after the baby's birth. Sarah was not aware that the Doctor had left the sickbay audio running in order to record the baby's breathing while he was offline. I…stumbled upon it only two months later when the doctor asked me in B'Elanna Torres's absence to upgrade his programming at Starfleet Medical. By then you had already left for Dorvan V with your surrogate and baby – "
"He never said a word?"
"That, Commander, is something you must ask Captain Janeway. Her primary desire, however, is to see her daughter…"
Seven could see the warring emotions in Chakotay's eyes, the way his fingers clenched and unclenched, the twitching nerve, the throbbing at the hollow in his neck. He looked for a moment shattered. Eyes that clouded, gazed at her.
"She never wanted the child, Annika. She tried to kill Elizabeth, remember? Three times! She had no interest, nothing. Even when I asked, she was indifferent. Why now? Why now, three years later, with a surrogate mother who has dishonoured me and my daughter? Sarah…you must understand… She has not been a mother in Kathryn's absence. I have raised Elizabeth mostly on my own… Why now?"
"Why didn't you return to Earth then?"
"That…is my business, Annika. She gave away her baby, remember? So why now?"
"To grant a dying woman her last wish."
*********************
END PART ONE