Rockabye
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Voyager
Copyright: Paramount
"She says: Ooh, love,
No one's ever gonna hurt you, love.
I'm gonna give you all of my love.
Nobody matters like you.
And she says: Your life
Ain't gon' be nothin' like my life.
You're gonna grow and have a good life.
I'm gonna do what I've got to do."
- "Rockabye", by Clean Bandit, ft. Sean Paul & Anne-Marie
It was a nightly struggle for Seven of Nine to get Icheb to regenerate, but some nights were more difficult than others. Especially when, instead of claiming not to be tired, or pleading to finish some interesting scientific text, the boy simply looked up at his guardian's face with bloodshot gray eyes and told her the truth.
"When I close my eyes," he said, "I'm back in my parents' house. I can hear them talking about what to do with me."
Not the Borg cube. Not the place where he and his fellow immature drones had killed several people in failed attempts to assimilate them, where First had died due to his own stubbornness, where a baby had almost choked to death in a broken maturation chamber.
No, Icheb's nightmares were about a small, plain house and the people in it, who had turned their only son into a biological weapon.
On one level, Seven almost understood Icheb's birth parents. She knew – who better? – what a menace the Collective could be, how desperation could drive you to do what would otherwise be unacceptable deeds. She also understood, having been part of the Collective herself, how the greater good could be placed above the life of an individual. If giving up one child could save a species, why not?
Still, the one child was Icheb. And when she saw him standing there, tall and gangly in his favorite orange shirt, blinking against the harsh green light from their alcove, with a nightmare-haunted face, she wanted to kill Leucon and Yifay with her bare hands.
"You are safe," she told him firmly, as she had done several times before. "We are far beyond Brunali space, or Borg space. They cannot reach you. Even if they did, the Voyager crew would defend you to the best of their – our – ability. You have nothing to fear."
"I know," he said. "And I'm grateful." But it doesn't help much, said the weary downward tilt of his head.
Seven understood. Her own personal demons didn't always retreat before logic either. Still, not knowing what to say to him made her feel alarmingly helpless.
She looked over his shoulder at Mezoti, Azan and Rebi, standing in their alcoves with closed eyes and serene faces. Being younger than Icheb (Seven was trying to follow Chakotay's advice about treating them as individuals), they needed more regeneration time. Also, nightmares didn't seem to trouble them quite as much. The twins had each other for support, and Mezoti was bolder in her self-expression than the boys. When something upset her, she confronted it while awake, instead of pushing it back into her subconscious.
They had all been through horrors. Like Seven, they all had to cope with the fact that their families had been unable to protect them. But Icheb was the only one whose family had deliberately thrown him to the Borg.
Well, perhaps if rational arguments couldn't comfort him, perhaps something else could.
Seven's gaze fell on the computer console where she and the Doctor displayed the notes during their music lessons.
"The Doctor is pursuing a study," she said, falling back on the Borg-like neutrality that came easiest to both of them, "On the therapeutic effects of music. Perhaps you would find certain sonic frequencies to be … soothing."
"You want to sing me a lullaby?" Icheb's lips twitched with the hint of an incredulous smile.
She smiled back, finding as much incongruity in the idea as he did. He had the voice and body of a late adolescent, almost a grown man. Besides, affectionate displays were foreign to them both.
Still … "It is worth a try."
"I suppose," said Icheb.
He switched off the padd he had been reading and stepped up into his alcove. Seven came to stand beside him, as the Captain had sometimes done to keep her company during her early days on board.
Her mother and father, she remembered, had taken turns sitting on the edge of her bed when she had been unable to sleep as a child. They had sung to her as well. The word "lullaby" acted like a code, unlocking memories she hadn't known existed, of old songs and kisses on the forehead.
"Stock the galley, boil the full kettle," she sang in rough and halting Swedish, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb the other children. "Three wanderers are comng down the road … The first one limps, the second is blind, the third one does not speak … "
It was a song about not belonging, about being lost at sea, but also a song about hope.
She had felt so safe when her father had sang this song to her. In some ways that safety had been an illusion; not even the best of parents can protect a child entirely from the dangers of the world. She might not be able to protect Icheb either, the next time he was in danger.
But she would do her very best to try.
/
Author's Note: The Swedish lullaby is called "Byssan Lull", and you can find a lovely rendition of it on YouTube by a singer called Sofia Siven. I Googled the English translation.