You want me to talk to you about Chakotay.
Fine. He saved me from a rape, murdered the Cardassian on the spot. Of course he became my hero, but it would be months before I realized it was the last thing he wanted. Chakotay was a gentle man, still is. Blood on his hands is as deep as blood from his heart. He carries guilt, deeply, whether most see it or not.
But that day I was still naive and young, and he my hero. The Liberty, home in a universe of chaos. He led me there, introduced me to Seska, fit me into his crew, gave me worth. I fell more deeply every day, but never found the words to tell him. After all, he wore Seska's scent and I admired Seska in my own way back then. Between the two of them I felt like a lost child, being lead to and fro by the hand. They overwhelmed me, he the more, and as my feelings grew, so did my dissatisfaction.
So we became friends. I reached out to him, in the only way I could, and he took the time to care, to notice things no one had noticed since my father had left me. He watched my back with a hawk's eye and my heart with double.
Once, despite my efforts, my more Klingon urges rose to the forefront, and again he rose to the challenge, sweeping over the invisible boundary I had put between myself and everyone else, squatting before my pitiful attempt at a fire and watching me with those obsidian eyes. He unnerved me, and I jerked in unease, barely restraining a hiss as he halted my angry cooking, swiftly grasping my hands. I damned those puppy-dog eyes. "Chakotay, you're repulsive, you know that? Mooning, it's all you do. Mooning over that tight-lipped, wound-up excuse for a..."
He hit me. All right, it wasn't exactly a 'hit'...just a brawny push onto my rear. I guess I should have expected it. Moonie was sensitive.
"Torres..."
"I have a given name." I hoped my glare was half as effective as the shove.
"You hate your given name." His lips twitched, even if his eyes were still solid black with annoyance.
"Time lends new beauty to it." Involuntarily, I felt my jaw clench. Ah, hell, no, Klingons don't cry...
"Oh, spirits." The stoic warrior moved forward almost desperately, grasping my arms. "Lanna, don't you..."
"Damn it." Somehow, a small laugh overrode the sniffle, and he grinned as well, settling back. "I'm sorry, it has to be the hormones."
He tensed, the way he always did when it looked like a little inconvenience was about to screw his plans up. "Torres, not a baby?"
"No. The other type of Klingon hormones." Gods, I was tired.
"Blood fever." He nodded recognition, a hand gripping my arm. "How bad is it?"
"I'll be fine."
"Even under these circumstances?" He drew back, hesitated, then spoke. "Even if I offered?"
I couldn't help but glare. "I can't, Chakotay. You..."
"Torres, look at you. Do you really think I'd mind..." A swift amendment. "Circumstances considered, do you really want to put up barriers?"
I didn't know, but I did know..."I'd hold it against me. I'll be fine, Chakotay. I just need to tough it out."
"Well." He pushed up to stand, looking for all the universe like he hadn't just made the most humiliating proposition either of us had never wanted to face. "I'm here, Torres."
I knew, and cursed him for his timing.
I didn't sleep well that night...the camp noises seemed louder than ever, Ayala and Chell bickering over food stores, Seska nagging at Chakotay over some thwarted flight path, Chakotay alternately appeasing and yelling at them all. when things finally simmered down to the silent unease a Maquis night camp always was, he parked his bedding outside the doorway of the little cave I had claimed. I was grateful. I didn't think the fever was THAT bad yet, but if I had decided to go sleep stalking, it was nice to know a big burly Indian would be around to halt me. Eventually, I woke up in the middle of the night, and caught snatches of an argument.
"She needs me." His voice, tense, rationalizing, half-annoyed, half-pleading, as he always was with Seska. "It's the Blood Fever."
A nearby fire flickered, and her face caught in the light, jaw clenched, but the eyes stayed steady, face a near perfect mask. "Of course. She requires your assistance."
"It's...Seska. You need to talk to her. She NEEDS to mate, but she's stubborn enough to want to refuse. It could kill her."
She didn't respond, but I imagined her eyes penetrated my enshrouding darkness, drilling a hole through my chest. They quieted, and I turned back away, and slept restlessly.
By the next afternoon, I was hypersensitive, terrified. The feeling was strange, to say the least, and disconcerting. She spoke to me, in the glade, as close to sisterhood as Seska ever ventured, hands crossed behind her back, eyes burning a steady hole through my nose. We reached a one-sided understanding of sorts, that I needed him and he needed someone and she was quite used to the inconveniences of inferior emotional frailties, and that he would come to me that night, I needn't say a word. She understood, and wouldn't begrudge me my temporary satisfaction.
Kahless, how I despised her for that moment, though it would only be much later, on Voyager, that I truly realized she was no friend.
I retired early like the previous night, unusual, usually she was the one to slip out gracefully and give us privacy for conversation or cards or anything friendly. I think it was through her early bedtimes that I came to love him.
So that night I retired early, and through the partition saw him approach the cave, saw her signal, the barely perceptible nod in my direction, firelight heightening the severity of her always displeased face. He hesitated, touched her shoulders, but she pulled away, heading off, and he came into my alcove, smelling of sweat and frustrated desire. He had wanted her, let himself want her, worked himself up into a lather, so that he could accomplish the duty of the evening and bed me. My anger burned, and the tears more so, but...how could I have hoped for anything else?
Maybe he sensed the emotional withdrawal, his eyes registered shift in emotion, that little softening to pity I hate even now. Stepping from his clothes, he stretched out alongside, kissing my forehead in soothing, pushing my nightshirt off. His touch was firm, but gentle, he recognized the needs and how to quench them, and didn't seem to mind the scratches and bites. We came, loudly, in the same moment, and I wondered if she heard. He did not leave immediately, as expected, but instead rolled onto his side, cradling me on his chest, awkward comfort. Giving in, I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed. Human tear ducts. Worthless anatomy.
I knew it wouldn't happen again, of course. Chakotay saw me as a little sister, if not in that moment, in every other moment. He was either blind to less fraternal feelings or managed to ignore them with a poker face Tom would envy. And so I went to sleep in his arms, and woke up alone, and until Tom came along, I stayed that way. I didn't want anyone else. Truthfully, I'm not totally certain I ever have. That's why I'm spewing out my life's torment to you.
I'm afraid.
You keep asking me about this baby I had doubts about bringing into the universe, about my childhood. Yeah, that's part of it, but not the bigger part. You have access to my medical files. You ought to know. I shouldn't have to tell you...but then again, maybe you want that too. Some sort of psychoanalysis they teach in the latter Academy years, or special training?
This baby isn't a firstborn to her mother.
Hybrid conception isn't easy, or painless, or without cost. The infamous Spock was little more than a highly priced lab rat. I've heard that Ambassador Worf and the late Jadzia Dax were having profound difficulty conceiving before her death cut the dream off completely. Miral...Kahless knows, Miral was a surprise, and she had her defects, thankfully fixable.
Three months or so after that night with Chakotay, I began noticing things. Nausea. Increased irritability. Unsteadiness, less agility. I suspected, but wasn't ready to admit, so when Chakotay offered me a mission away from the Liberty, I took it. I was four months along by the time I left, and almost beyond explaining the belly roll away as fat. We didn't eat enough to have muscle, much less fat.
Four months later I collapsed on an alien street and woke up hours later in a neutral medical facility. Shabby place, but serviceable, I was given my medications, informed that the 'infant hybrid' had been removed via surgery, and left alone, free to walk out at any time. They didn't volunteer vitals. I was too much a young, angry coward to ask.
I returned to the Liberty, and Chakotay, and his empty-minded affection, and I hated every moment of it.
Voyager. When Janeway destroyed that array, she took a whole lot more than the Alpha Quadrant from me. I was about to contact my father. I had begun to imagine confronting Chakotay with my little secret, demanding that he help me find our little baby, dead or alive. I was ready to wipe that smug smirk off Seska's face, stand up for my longings and my sacrifices and my mistakes.
After the Caretaker, though, what use was it? I knew Chakotay, and knew his principles. He wanted to make me Chief Engineer, wanted to show his fraternal pride, wanted to have a friend to confide in amongst the upper ranks. Revealing the truth, confronting him with my feelings...he would have felt honor-bound to tell Janeway, and Janeway would have felt Starfleet-bound to thumb me a crewman's position, far away from polluting distance of those high and mighty command protocols she was already trying to impress upon Chakotay.
So I didn't tell. Seska still got the Indian. I got a whole lot of nightmares and guilty, sleepless nights. I suppose Miral was a revisitation. The Doctor knew of my previous pregnancy, of course, no self-respecting holographic program could miss such a thing. No, I didn't alter his program to keep it a secret. I talked to him. I cried on his photonic shoulder. He had a soft spot, all the way back to the beginning, and maybe I did use that, while mistreating him. He never told the captain, or showed Tom any in depth scans. My secret was kept.
Until now.
I found the child. Nearly eight years old, happy, well-adjusted, adopted by a human family. I won't instigate contact. I won't tell Chakotay. He'll have his own Borglets someday, and that little accident of ours doesn't need the disruption, and there would be disruption. It's Chakotay's nature, to protect his own, even if the protection is the harm. No, I won't let Chakotay in on this weakness.
You do have a gift at prying things out of people, you know. You've been sitting there an hour, smiling that funny little smile of yours, and I've spilled all without so much as a word from you, Counselor. You'd probably like to pass this on to a higher power, edge around the confidentiality clause. I guess that's why I came to you...this you, the holographic you...instead of flesh and blood Counselor Troi. And I suppose that's why the flesh and blood Troi directed me to this program. She seems to be a kindred spirit. She seems to understand, in either form, but this one is better. It can be erased.
If only the past were so easy.
FIN
