A/n: I'm back! Now, I know everyone's been asking for an update of 'The Gift' as well as my other multi-chapter fics, but I hope you can all indulge me in letting me off with posting this one-shot to get me back in the writing groove. As will become obvious as you read, it begins just after the closing scenes of 'Scorpion, Part II' S04xE01. Unfortunately, I haven't acquired the rights to Star Trek: Voyager while I've been gone, but there is no copyright infringement intended.
'We have one thing the Borg can never offer, friendship.' Chakotay sighed as he recalled Kathryn's words, his grinding teeth providing another source for the headache building in his skull. He agreed with her, and in their way, they'd proved the strength of their own friendship today in the fact that Voyager was unassimilated, that he still wore the uniform of her First Officer and that he hadn't claimed her Captain's chair in a righteous mutiny, but did she really think that friendship alone would heal the trauma of being raised as a Borg drone? It certainly hadn't healed, not entirely, the gaping wound that was the division between Maquis and Starfleet; today was also proof of that. So how would it make someone cross the barrier into lonely humanity from the core of the Borg machine? Still, Kathryn had shown the renewal in their embattled friendship just by allowing him to retreat to his quarters rather than return to the Bridge with her, or when she hadn't questioned why he'd howled like a rabid dog upon regaining consciousness in Sickbay after being yanked from the alcove, the link snapping like an anchor's rope in the fiercest hurricane.
Yet his mind was still partially unhinged, still nailed to the threshold of the door which led to the dark, torturous pit that was the mind of Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One. That wordless howl of shock, fear and yes rage had been the only alternative he'd been able to grasp in that instant where he'd been the mouthpiece for the drone he'd violated and broken. Her venomous tirades of betrayed hatred had been the only words on his lips as he'd stared into the anxious faces of the Captain and the Doctor, her tantrum of terror the only thing able to rouse his body into the uncontrollable shaking that the Doctor had put down to the tremors of physical exhaustion. It had taken all of his own strength just to remain silent as they'd explained what had happened, looking over at the drone's body, unnaturally stiff in unconsciousness, with interest as his muscles and bones groaned under the weight of her implants and the last few seconds of her sentient thought echoed through his mind as screams, melding seamlessly with his own thoughts patterns until they became his own, clearer than memory.
He knew, hoped, this residual link would fade in a matter of hours, just as his first healing link with Riley and the Cooperative had done, but he'd known this was different when he'd fled Sickbay, seeking the distance that had been the unwanted remedy before, only to find that it haunted him just as intensely in Da Vinci and Kathryn's imagined workshop on the holodeck and then even in his quarters, the place in which his individuality took refuge during the most duty-bound of days. He'd only found a measure of solitude now because Seven of Nine had apparently fully succumbed to the depths of unconsciousness, he'd recognised the feeling from when Riley had fallen asleep in his arms after their lovemaking, it was like losing a limb, you knew it wasn't really there but you could still feel it sometimes. With Riley, that feeling of lingering, intermittent connection had brought him peace and contentment. Now he sensed Seven of Nine's presence in sluggishness, in tension and in pain. It was as if that phantom limb had been cut off only seconds before, while the agony of the mortal injury was still being transmitted to his brain. He could only be grateful for the Doctor's decision to monitor her overnight rather than intervene to restore what was left of her genetic humanity right away, he had no doubt that he would've been aware of the cut of the scalpel. Every so often the hairs on the back of his neck and arms would rise, feeling the invasive tickle of a tricorder passing over Seven of Nine's exposed skin.
He shuddered again, glad even of the weak warmth of the candle set out before him as he pressed his quaking hands into the mould of his Akoonah. This was the only way he could be himself, that he could banish her stubborn mind and the gruesome memories, both of the lost bodies of the drones he'd killed and the faces of the people she'd assimilated. "I am far from the sacred places of my grandfathers, I am far from the bones of my people, but I ask that you will watch over and guide me now even in this distant place. A-koo-chee moya…"
He recognised the forest glade in which he stood at once. Not only because it reminded him vaguely of Dorvan V without being a precise recreation, but because in recent years his most intense vision quests had been presented to him here. Occasionally his father would be waiting near that fallen log, gazing into the shallow pool of water. The forest was even darker than usual, only the two moons of Dorvan, one waning and one waxing, peeking timidly out of ominous rain clouds, lit the path ahead of him at all. His father was nowhere to be seen, but something pulled him towards the pool anyway. A sudden force knocked him to his knees by the water's edge, and he noticed as his gaze dropped that instead of his Starfleet uniform he was wearing the dark, hard-wearing clothes that had been his 'uniform', so to speak, in the Maquis. However, as he looked into the pool, his reflection, though rendered blurry and dark by the mirror of the murky water, showed the unmistakable red of his uniform. "What…" He began in confusion, his fingers clawing at the dirt bank as he peered down at the water, perplexed.
His hand flew up to protect his eyes as a blinding green light suddenly flashed in front of him. Blinking painfully, his heart dropped sickeningly into his stomach as he looked up and saw shadow rapidly consuming his forest escape. Within a metre of where he was kneeling was black and impenetrable to his eyes, but within a few seconds his eyes focused so that he could pinpoint enough greenish light to be able to see part way into the depth of the darkness. Borg alcoves loomed, forming row upon row, replacing the trees as if the forest itself was being assimilated. Nausea welled up into Chakotay's mouth as he sprang up with a hoarse yell as he recalled the devastation wreaked upon the real version of this forest by the Cardassians, there was no way in hell he was going to allow one deranged Borg drone to destroy his vision of it in the sanctum of his own mind. She, or whatever presence was at work here, seemed to pre-empt him though, a tornado of thousands, perhaps millions or even billions, of voices and fragmented memories exploded out from the shadows. His hands clamped instinctively to his ears, but that didn't block out the roar of white noise that deafened him and obliterated his own sentient thoughts. Only when the blast waned to keening wails, terrified shouts and quiet sobs echoing throughout the forest could he regain his sense of self again, and it was only after the sounds of the Collective had lessened to the sound of one woman's single, blood-curdling scream did his rage return enough to blindly rail at the monster. "Get out of here! You don't belong here you damned Borg bitch!" he snarled before his last cry became a scream of his own, "Get out of my mind!"
A soft sob seemed to make the shadowed edge of the forest quiver and a second later a pale face, crumpled with hurt and streaked with tears, appeared before him. He didn't need to wait for the rest of the waif like figure to appear out of the shadows for him to recognise her stricken face immediately. "But you asked for me." She mumbled tremulously, her huge blue eyes unblinking as she gazed at him while gnawing fretfully at her fragilely gold hair, "I…I left the others when you called…but I don't want to be alone Mr Chakoday."
"Annika…" Chakotay whispered, guilt instantly wiping away his rage as he took an involuntary compassionate step towards her, trying to absorb her words. During the link, while truly sharing her memories, he'd been aware that she wasn't an English speaker and could understand her as clearly as he could have with a universal translator, but however his mind, or their minds, were projecting her now, she spoke with a very thick accent, Scandinavian of some sort maybe, and stumbled over his name. "I know I asked you to listen to me, and I'm glad that you did…" He swallowed hard, "I'm sorry, I know it's scary, it is for me too. Come here…"
She nodded, her thin shoulders relaxing in relief, but as she left the shadows completely to walk towards him he gasped in horror as he saw that she was leading Seven of Nine, in all her grotesque Borg glory, out with her by the hand. It was as if she were guiding a blind woman and indeed Seven of Nine for a moment looked utterly out of it and unaware of what was around her, but as little Annika led her, quite happily, towards Chakotay it was as if a light had been switched on in a blacked out room. Her stance, which had been slumped and withdrawn, went bolt upright as if she'd been electrified and she looked straight at him with that single, piercing, human eye. It instantly disturbed him that that eye was identical to the child's innocently wide pair. "Commander Chakotay." She sneered.
"What are you doing here with…" Chakotay started to hiss out, before looking pleadingly down at the little girl, "Annika, what…"
"You did not think our link would be any less potent than the one you shared that irrelevant faction the Cooperative did you?" Seven of Nine questioned, her gaze narrowing malevolently as she cocked her head at him, "Do not concern yourself. We will not delude you into sexual intercourse."
Chakotay snapped at the allusion to Riley, "My concerns should be irrelevant to you, right? Why are you here? You made it perfectly clear earlier that you didn't want to be in my head anymore than I wanted to be in yours!"
Annika looked up at him in bemusement, "We told you. You freed us from the others, but we don't want to be alone." She repeated in a patient tone.
"We are alone because of him!" Seven of Nine spat out in a violent burst of emotion she shouldn't have had, wrenching her grey hand out of Annika's small one, "With the others we were safe! One! Whole! Perfect!"
"The Borg have been deluding you!" Chakotay retorted, "You haven't been safe or whole since you were that little girl!"
"You know nothing, you gained nothing from the Collective mind and you destroyed this drone!" Seven of Nine screamed at him, fists clenched at her metal plated sides, "I…We cannot function this way!"
Chakotay was taken aback by this backlash, as human as anything got, and once he realised that he couldn't lash back at her with quite the same bite. "It seems like you'll have to adapt your functions Seven of Nine." He told her frankly, remembering the conviction in Janeway's face as she spoke of the possibility of rehabilitating the drone.
"No!" Seven of Nine growled, "You will take us back to the Borg!" The assimilation tubes embedded in her left hand extended, and she made to advance upon him, but before Chakotay could react in his own defence, and as Annika choked out a shriek of horror, a recognisably human hand shot out of the darkness and grasped Seven of Nine's shoulder, causing her to stop in her tracks as if she'd hit a barrier. Chakotay stared in disbelief as he met the gaze of the hand's owner, who was standing at the drone's shoulder, still restraining her. It was this figure, who to others would perhaps be the least disturbing of them all, who made him stagger back. Her face had exactly the same features as Seven of Nine, they were from the same adult mould that little Annika had grown into, but this woman had a human, if right then ashen with distress, pallor to her skin and no implants, with long wavy hair, darkened a shade into true gold from Annika's lighter base colour, framing her face. He didn't have a chance to take in much more than that, other than the fact that a third set of those sky blue eyes existed, before the woman gave the child a reassuring glance, with Annika easily smiling back, and melted completely back into the darkness like an apparition.
"Who was that?" Chakotay asked Annika with difficulty.
Annika frowned at him as if he wasn't seeing the obvious, suddenly looking eerily older than her apparent years. "She was me…" She reached out for the lost looking drone again, who accepted the touch, "…her, us." She said emphatically.
Seven of Nine, who seemed to have recovered her cold Borg composure, saved him from having to mull over that strange answer. "What is going to happen to us?" she asked bluntly.
Chakotay sucked in a breath, bracing himself for another attack. "The Captain thinks you can regain your humanity, that it's not too late."
Her one eye flashed at him, "She does not know what she is asking of us!" she snapped with a note of frustration and accusation.
"She never does." Chakotay admittedly unguardedly, involuntarily sharing the thought with her at the moment it occurred to him, which unnerved him. "But there's no malice in it." He amended quickly.
"Do not make a hypocrite of yourself Commander." Seven of Nine advised him coolly before something like a sigh left her, "You should have deactivated this drone as decisively as you did the others in it's temporary Unimatrix."
Chakotay grimaced as he realised she was voicing one of his one thoughts. "I have enough deaths on my conscience." He answered grimly, "I wasn't going to add yours if I could avoid it, and I did avoid it."
"You have dispatched Cardassians, your most hated enemy, with more dignity than what you have done to 'save' me." Seven of Nine replied, appearing not to notice her slip into first person, "You have killed them swiftly, you don't like suffering even when enraged, yet you conspire with Janeway to prolong mine without hesitation."
Chakotay flinched as if she'd slapped him, memories of bloodied Cardassians, memories he was suddenly sure she was forcing on him, appearing even behind his eyelids as he squeezed his eyes shut for the briefest moment. She was purposefully reopening his old war wounds as if it would stop her own thawing heart from bleeding. Resentment at the tactic smothered any pity, and made his tongue brutally honest, "The last thing I was thinking about was your suffering, I was thinking of my crew, that you were leading them to assimilation and so I used the most efficient way of removing that threat." He told her harshly, a chill running down his back in warning as he saw understanding in her pinpoint gaze.
"You protected your Collective." She stated, "Thus there is nothing more for us to say to each other."
Chakotay gulped, cold and nauseated, "You…" He hesitated as he saw that same ethereal saviour from earlier, a barefoot phantom in virginal white, hovering on the border where the moonlit struck the shadows. Half hidden between the fallen tree and the bulk of a Borg alcove looming over her, she stood at equal distance between himself, the drone and the little girl, holding herself back from them all. She stood with the strict stance of an umpire at a boxing match, but her face, stained with drying tears that still flowed freely down the child's cheeks, was pensive as she watched them intently. Chakotay unlocked his gaze from hers, remembering his words, though he said them more quietly than he'd intended, as he turned back to Seven of Nine, "You may just thank me one day for what I did."
Seven of Nine jerked her head up defiantly, "This drone will not be assimilated by humanity. That is impossible."
"We are lost." Annika proclaimed solemnly, before her expression softened into curiosity, "Where are we right now Mr Chakoday?"
Chakotay peered down warily at the little girl, "Honestly, I'm not sure." He admitted awkwardly, "I've always been able to come here for guidance, and that's what I wanted, but I'm not sure why I'm here now."
"Why we're here." Annika corrected as she slid down onto the grass with a childish giggle, looking around inquisitively, "Where are all the animals?" she asked, gasping in delight as she spotted what she was seeking, "Look, there's one!"
Chakotay exhaled heavily in relief as he too saw the sleek, emerald green body of his animal guide slithering swiftly across the grass. "Waanaki!" he called out her name sharply, "What's going on here?"
The snake paused briefly in its journey, lifting her arrow shaped head off the ground to glance at him distractedly, lisping her tongue out at Annika, who laughed, before setting off again determinedly. The fourth occupant of the forest, the silently observing human woman, had followed Annika by sitting on the grass, posed as if she were at a picnic party, her legs stretched out comfortably as her the long, floating fabric of her white dress fanned out over the greenery. Despite her refined, easy posture, she was still watching the scene unfolding in front of her with an air of saddened thoughtfulness. Chakotay could only gape as Waanaki smoothly slipped into the woman's lap, who relaxed visibly as she began to run her hands over the snake's cool scales, her lips moving in silent speech. He shivered as he watched, disturbed and bewildered. Your animal guide was supposed to be your soul reflected in nature, the vessel the spirits spoke through, the most private of spiritual secrets. He'd always been taught not to speak of the form his animal guide took to anyone, and he hadn't, not that he ever been yet willing to admit that his guide was a snake, a creature he'd been fearful of since childhood. And now his guide seemed to be comforting her?
He crouched down on the grass to look at her, "Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely.
In response, the snake lifted her head up to the woman's ear and said something. She seemed to listen, but her face was hesitant, even dubious, as she looked over her shoulder at him. "You can see me?"
Chakotay frowned at that, struck by her beauty that he hadn't quite taken in before. She looked like that drone, she was that drone, but she also convincingly wasn't. It seemed a cruel trick that his mind was playing on him, to make this imagined human ghost of that drone stunning, or maybe she was intentionally drawn to be bewitching by Seven of Nine's vengeful mind in order to torment him. "I can…see you as clearly as the other two now." He replied carefully.
She blinked at that, "Is that so?" she said faintly, her pale throat quivering as she swallowed, "No one has ever been able to see me before." Her voice was also striking to his ears, as formal and precise as Seven of Nine's monotone but lacking the abrasiveness. The lightest trace of the Nordic accent that had clung to Annika's voice was just about audible too.
Chakotay gulped as he studied her, struggling to respond to that. "Are you Annika or Seven of Nine?"
"Both and neither." She answered resignedly, turning her lithe body to fully face him.
"Well…what do you call yourself?" Chakotay tried again.
She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, "I have never required a name as yet."
Chakotay's frown deepened as he tried to piece together what he'd heard. It seemed as if he was faced with the adult Annika who'd never really had a chance to exist as well as the lost child and the bitter drone. "Just how many versions of you am I going to see?" he questioned in exasperation, starting to gesture back towards the girl and the drone, only to see that they'd disappeared. He and the woman were now alone in the brightening forest.
"All of them." An amused and secretive smile passed over her lips at his expression, "In time, not now." She arched a golden brow at him, "I have as many 'versions' of myself as you have of yourself Chakotay."
Chakotay glanced uncomfortably down at his Maquis clothing, remembering the eerie differing reflection. As he looked away from the woman, he heard the distinctive cry of a raven, a startled gasp leaving his throat as the massive bird swept down and landed on his knee. As he was drawn into it's yellow gaze, he knew that this bird was…Annika's animal guide with as much certainty as he knew Waanaki the snake was his. Without consciously sending the command to his hand, his fingers began to run over the raven's gleaming black feathers. When its beak opened, a male voice rather than a brittle caw was heard, "You will be assimilated." The raven advised him, "But the Collective will never claim you and your individuality will be strengthened."
"What do you mean?" Chakotay asked desperately, unnerved.
"Do not worry Chakotay." The young woman advised him. As she spoke, the raven left Chakotay to perch on her shoulder, despite it's massive bulk, confirming his suspicion that it belonged to her. She smiled at him regretfully, "You will not see me again for a long time, but you when you finally do, do not be afraid of me, please."
"I don't think I could be." Chakotay murmured, surprising himself but reassured when Waanaki slipped back off her new favourite's lap and approached him.
"You've seen all you need to see for now." She told him, black eyes glittering as the forest faded away.
He woke in his quarters, now completely alone, physically, mentally and emotionally, and for now at least, he relished it.
A/n: Please review. Probably the most surreal piece I've ever written, but I hope you liked my rampant foreshadowing, and Chakotay did talk to his dead father in a vision quest so I think the concept stretches to the surreal. Waanaki means 'peace within' in one of the Native American languages.