Author's Notes: Hello and welcome to chapter four! It's been a little while since I've been able to update this one, but life just gets in the way sometimes. This one and Perfectus are my babies... and What We Need.. anyway, thanks so much to Scifiromance and Starshine for letting me tell them a story! XOXO!
Obligatory Legalities: Oh, I didn't own them in the last chapter, but I TOTALLY do now... uh huh... I wish.
You know the drill- READ, ENJOY, REVIEW!
~LM
XXX
Happenstance: noun: 1. A chance happening or event. 2. Coincidence.
XXX
Seven was shaken awake by a hand wrenching into her hair, pulling her painfully from laying down to sitting with one swift jerk. Another hand grabbed her left wrist, and was picking at the silver bands that laced across it. When her eyes snapped open and focused, she was surrounded. Ten men stood before and around her- unfamiliar and foreign and speaking hushed but excitedly in a language she did not know. One held a jagged stone knife, its blade pressed against her throat, before he spoke to her. His voice was low and forceful, but his words were nonsense.
"Who are you?" she demanded, but her voice was a startled squeak. They paid her no mind.
The natives were tanned with black hair and eyes so dark brown that they glittered like polished ebony in the glow of the two lit torches they carried with them. The group was dressed in crude linen loincloths and leather breeches, their chests bare but for the myriad of paint and tattoos they decorated themselves with, and the leather straps that held bows, quivers, and daggers. The man holding her hair knotted in his hand turned her face up as another held its torch closer, all examining her in the firelight. She reached up with her free hand to yank her hair away, but another native caught her human limb in his, and twisted it behind her back.
Two others grabbed her legs as she was forced onto her back, and the blade that had been held to her throat slashed its way down the front of her biosuit, splitting it away from her neck to her navel. As she caught sight of the native with the most elaborate facial markings- his face painted entirely black but for a jagged red lightning bolt from his hairline to his chin- stepping up to her, his hands loosening the ties to his loincloth, she realized what they were about to do. That knowledge returned her fully to her senses.
"Chakotay! CHAKOTAY!" she screamed. The abruptness and the volume startled the men assailing her. They immediately flew into a bustle of motion. Someone grabbed the newly cut edges of her biosuit and ripped it open, exposing her bare breasts to the cold air of the atrium as the elaborately marked leader tried to settle between her knees. She screamed, twisting her body, pulling at her arms. "Chakotay! No! Let me go!" Another hand came down to cover her mouth, muffling her next scream as she struggled. With all her enhanced strength, she bit down until the coppery taste of blood flowing over her tongue gagged her. The hand was wrenched away, followed by another hitting her across the face hard enough to whip her head to the side. Again, the biosuit was cut, the knife knicking the skin of her belly as it drew down.
"Seven!" Chakotay's voice echoed in the chamber as he drew to an abrupt halt at its entrance. His eyes widened in surprise as he took in the commotion in the room centered around his blonde companion. Four of the men were holding her down. Two held torches to light the room. The remaining four were in various stages of undress. Chakotay had his phaser out and pointed at the men without having to think about what he was doing. "Let her go!"
At the sight of him, the natives paused. Besides the funny clothes and the facial tattoo that was all wrong, he looked far more similar to them than whatever the female was. Still, he wasn't one of them. They turned their daggers towards him, ready to get him out of their way so they could finish with the strange female.
"I'm warning you!" said Chakotay, setting the phaser to high stun. He dodged the dagger experimentally thrown at him, aiming and shooting the native that threw it. The male crumpled to the floor with a pained groan. "Seven, run!" With the natives suddenly preoccupied with their fallen comrade, Seven managed to scuttle away from the men and back towards him. Chakotay was then able to grab her arm and haul her up to her feet. He gave her wrist a sharp tug, and together they ran out of the long tunnel to the smaller mouth of the cave where he had just moments before been off in his own world. At the edge, he quickly grabbed his bag before they dipped out began to slip and skid their way down the steep red clay hill towards the woodline. "Down here!" Chakotay huffed, pulling her with him into the woods for some much needed cover. Behind them, they could hear the natives yelling in the cave as they recovered enough to give chase.
"Where?!" Seven yelped, nearly tripping over a tree root.
"Back to.." Chakotay dodged under a low tree limb in their path, making sure to jerk her down too so she didn't hit it. "..the shuttle!"
"-kay." She grunted, falling to one knee as a vine caught her ankle. Her hand was wrenched from his by the fall, the arm crossed over to hold her chest up forced away to catch herself before her face impacted the hard ground.
"Seven!" Chakotay slid to a stop, scrambling back as she stood up- nearly colliding with him. They met in the middle, stomach to bare stomach as he grabbed her free hand again. Something whizzed past his ear, hitting the tree trunk behind him. He turned his head after it, blanching when he saw the two foot long arrow embedded into the bark, still vibrating from impact. "Mierda!"
Another arrow shot past Seven. "Run!" she hissed, pushing him back into motion. The rest of the way back to the crater and shuttle was a tumbling, sliding half-hour long run, dodging under and around tree limbs and bushes. Finally, near the bottom, they managed to pull ahead of the natives, sloshing into the cold water their ship rested half in. They quickly lowered the hatch enough to squeeze through, then shut and locked it behind them.
Chakotay pulled Seven with him up into the dry cockpit where they finally began to catch their breath. Seven leaned heavily against the bulkhead by the door, her breath wheezing gasps as she held her ruined biosuit together over her chest. Chakotay doubled over, his hands braced on his knees as he coughed.
Suddenly, he spun on her, grabbing her by the upper arms and looking her over. A surprised squeak came from her mouth as her eyes widened. He gave her an apologetic look, easing the strength with which he held her arms. "Are you hurt? Are you okay? Did they-? They didn't-" His eyes squinted with a wince as he looked at her exposed belly.
To her great shame, his words- the acknowledgement of what had almost happened to her- broke the dam of her new emotions. Her eyes suddenly were overflowing with tears as quiet sobs began to shake her body. Her chest hurt and burned with exertion from thirty minutes of running, and now her throat burned from trying to hold in her crying. "I- they-"
"Hey, shhh." Chakotay murmured, seeing her distress and pulling her gently to him. "It's okay now." The blonde trembled as he wrapped his arms around her, one hand rubbing her back as he watched the woods through the windscreen for natives.
Seven's first instinct was to wrench herself away, her whole body stiffening as it came into contact with his. She was not one to be coddled, and that she wanted nothing more than to lean back into him and let him chase her boogeymen away was enough to further embarrass her. That she couldn't hold back these new, stronger feelings made the whole thing worse. A month ago, she could have put what happened behind her and moved on as soon as she was safely out of that situation- Borg efficiency at its finest, live in the now and not the past, this is only a vessel she was using for a short time. When the Doctor told her she had to remove her failsafe, she hadn't realized the depth of the changes to come.
Two minutes into her downward spiral reflection, they heard before they saw the natives rush into the crater their shuttle had carved before it hit the water, their excited yells becoming awed and fearful murmurings. Seven clutched his arms at the sound as another shot of adrenaline coursed through her body. With the jagged hole torn in the side of the ship, anyone could look in and see them. "Hide." she whispered. "Chakotay, please.."
He turned his head back to her with a nod, pushing her up towards the helm. "Down here." he whispered, gently prodding her to crawl beneath it. He crawled down after her, pressing her against the metal beneath with his body, trying to make them as small and innocuous as possible. "Shhh." There they lay still, listening as the natives outside examined their crash site and the outer hull, hoping they remained unseen. He turned to look at her over his shoulder, his body facing the cockpit. Seven's face was pressed tightly against his shoulder, her whole body shivering behind him. "Hey, are you alright?"
"N-n-no." came the muffled reply. "Shhh."
Outside, they could hear the men talking, their voices deep and argumentative. Randomly a knife or some other object would tap or scrape along the plating outside, ringing inside and sending chills down Seven and Chakotay's spines. At least a few of the braver natives had entered the water, sloshing and splashing their way around the giant foreign structure as they examined it. After a good half hour, their voices turned more awed and hushed until finally, Chakotay could hear them traipse back into the trees.
"Are they gone?" Seven whispered after a moment of silence.
"I think so." Chakotay whispered back, turning his head to look at her over his shoulder. She remained huddled against his back, and in the dark of the shuttle, beneath the helm, he couldn't make out more than the light shape of her head. Slowly sliding out of his hiding place, stretching his cramped leg muscles, he eyed the scar. "I'll check."
Two pale hands grabbing his shoulders stopped him. "Please don't."
"I have to." he returned gently, easing her hands away with his own as he continued to slip out from beneath the helm. "It's okay- I'm only right here."
"You were only supposed to be 'right there' earlier." she whispered, following him out.
Chakotay sighed, watching her slip out next to him. "I'm sorry. Really sorry." he said, standing and walking to the aft. "I didn't realize how far from you I had wandered. Thankfully still in hearing range." A small hum of agreement was all he received as he turned back to glance at her over his shoulder. Her biosuit was a ruin- muddy, wet and shredded around her calves and split open from collar to.. He quickly averted his eyes. "Did you.." He swallowed. "Did you bring more clothes?"
Seven's face flushed with sudden shame, her hands coming up to cross over her exposed chest. Since when did she feel shame at having been seen without clothes? Forcing the question aside, she shook her head even though he wasn't looking at her to see. "No." she answered softly. "I didn't."
Chakotay nodded. "Don't think we can get the replicator up and running." he said, trying to make his voice teasing to lighten the mood. He sighed, crossing his arms before slowly turning his head back towards her, careful to meet her eyes and nothing more. "Guess you will have to borrow some of mine then." At her raised silver eyebrow, he moved across the cockpit to his bag. When he turned back towards the blonde, he had a bundle of soft blue in his hands. "They're pajamas but they'll have to do."
Seven started to reach out to accept them, but stopped before she released the edges of her ruined suit. "I-"
"Here." Chakotay set them on the dark console beside her, then turned to go back into the aft to give her privacy. "Go ahead and change. I'll wait out-"
"No!" Again, her hand shot out to his, halting his step. "Stay. Don't leave." Just as quickly as she had reached out to him, she recoiled, turning away from him and towards the clean clothes. Her face burned hotter than a warp core. "Just turn around. Please."
The Commander swallowed again, turning away from her to face the dark grey wall behind him. "Okay. Turned around." Behind him, he could hear the soft rustle of fabric and the click of her shoes before she kicked them off. After a few more moments of quiet, her hand on his shoulder turned him back towards her. His clothes seemed to swallow her. Their heights were similar, but his powder blue sleepshirt hung around her like a poncho, emphasizing how slender she was. His blue and white plaid pajama pants hung off her hips, the blue cord tied as tight as it would go to keep them from slipping off. The bottoms pooled over her feet so that only her bare toes stuck out from beneath, the nails painted a bright red. He grinned. "You paint your toenails?"
She looked down to her feet with a scowl, pulling his shirt in tight to her belly to see her toes. "Oh. No. Naomi Wildman did before we left." she answered softly. "It is an activity she enjoys and Samantha Wildman allows when she is in my temporary custody."
He had known- most of the ship, really, had known- of her affection for Naomi Wildman, but he never would have guessed she would have allowed the little girl to paint her nails. He started to open his mouth to tease her- a gentle jest to bring a smile back to her face- but one glance into her eyes halted him. Even in the dark he could see how loosely she was held together, her hands trembling as she tried to hold them still in front of her belly before hiding them behind her back. She stood to her full height, trying to keep her chin up in her ever-aloof military stance, but she wasn't fooling anybody- least of all herself. Instead, he gave her a little smile, reminded of what had just happened to her. What if that had happened to Sekaya? To B'Elanna or Kathryn or any of his other female friends?
"Thank you." Seven said quietly, wringing her hands behind her back. When he met her eyes with an inquiring eyebrow raised, she clarified. "For the clothes.. and for.. coming back so quickly."
"No problem." he returned gently. "I'm shouldn't have left you alone. I won't make the same mistake again." He could tell she was about to protest- tell him in her own words that she was a big girl who could take care of herself- but she stopped and nodded once instead.
"We can't stay here." she said softly after a few breaths. "They will likely return."
Chakotay nodded, turning to look out at the night sky. The nebula above them kept the area lit as much as a full moon on Earth would have. They wouldn't have any trouble traveling at night. "Right." he agreed. "We should pack up what we can and take it with us." He looked back to their few bags and belongings piled in the cockpit. "We only need to survive for about a week or two. I'll start packing up. Why don't you go ahead and plot us a course with the tricorder. Find us a nice camping site a few miles from here. I know there's a tent somewhere in this.. mess.." He trailed off as he began to search through the wreck that was the aft.
Partially reassured, Seven let out a quiet sigh, relaxing her stance to take up the tricorder from their pile of belongings and supplies. The little tech was flipped on and Seven had it taking readings before Chakotay had a single cabinet or hidey-hole opened. She settled the small device down on top of their meager baggage to assist Chakotay in searching for any more valuable supplies they would need, but the numbers on the screen kept drawing her attention back. The time and coordinants kept flipping back and forth. One fifteen AM, four thirty-two PM, one sixteen AM, four thirty-two PM, one seventeen AM, four thirty-two PM. With a scowl, she took the tricorder back into her hands. "Chakotay?"
Chakotay had just found the emergency tent stuck down below the edge of the water, sodden but intact. He held it out to drip away from his torso as he turned his attention back to his companion. "Yeah?"
"This tricorder is malfunctioning." she murmured absently, turning it over in her hands.
"Huh?" He shook out the last big drops of water from the tent and stuffed it under his arm. Next, he grabbed the strap of her small portable regeneration case and the longer strap of his duffel. He nearly dropped them all as Seven sucked a sharp breath in beside him. Frightened eyes found his as she held the tricorder out to him to examine. "What's wrong?"
"There are two hundred and seventy-four life signs on the other side of the cave system we were just in." she said in a voice that started small and gained strength as she shoved the tricorder into his arm to shoulder a few bags herself. "And forty-three on this side heading our way." Her regeneration case was plucked from his grasp as she made her way to the hatch. "I have to go."
"Hey, wait!" Chakotay caught her by the arm. He showed her the screen again. "They're going slow and won't be here for thirty minutes. Grab some of this stuff first and we will go."
Her eyes were half wild when she looked back at him. "Commander-"
"That's an order." he returned, his voice firm. "We have to take everything we can with us, Seven. I know you're scared-"
"I am NOT." she denied in a harsh whisper.
"Don't lie to me." Chakotay handed a few more of the bags to her. "Here- let me set up a beacon so Voyager at least knows where to look for us when they come, okay?" He waited for her nod before turning to go back into the cockpit to grab what he would need. "Just have to wire up this-" As he pulled a tall silver tube from beneath the helm, Seven breezed past him, yanking open the helm console and pulling the motherboard up from it. Before he could move to help her, she had the beacon on, flashing, and hooked up to its own power source.
"Let's go." she said, tucking the subspace beacon below the helm and out of sight. She grabbed up her bags again and the tricorder, making a beeline for the hatch.
"Okay, okay. Let's go."
XXX
A domed bit of outer hull was thin enough to float, and turned in the water like a bowl, held the majority of their meager things. A bit of cable became rope to pull it along the river as they headed East and away from the shuttle and the now occupied mesa to the West. As Chakotay pulled the makeshift raft along the edge of the river, Seven, microfilament in hand, continued to fiddle with the malfunctioning tricorder. She turned it over as she walked, opening the sealed backing and peering down into the circuitry with her enhanced eye. There were no loose connections nor any other visual defect that she could see. The tricorder seemed to be in as pristine condition now as when it had been replicated. So why the malfunction?
"Come on, you stupid.." Chakotay mumbled, yanking the cable to pull the raft past a bit of reeds it had become stuck on. With a sigh, he dropped the cable and leaned down to shove the float back out into the water. "Seven, a hand?"
The blonde paused her step, turning to look down at him. Without a word, she stepped up beside him and used one bare foot against the edge of the raft to shove it back off of the reeds. She ignored his snort to continue tinkering with the tricorder.
"Or a foot." Chakotay rolled his eyes, standing and brushing the sand from his knees. "Whichever." Retrieving the cable, he continued to pull the float along the water's edge. "Have you figured out what is wrong with that tricorder?"
"..No."
After a second of silence, he glanced back at her over his shoulder. She trailed along behind him, her focus on the equipment in her hands and not on him or their surroundings. Again, he rolled his eyes, turning his attention back in front of him before he tripped over the rocks or branches that littered the short beach. "How far do you think we've gone now?
Seven glanced up at him, then back behind them, before answering. "Four hours.. About seventeen kilometers.."
"Not far enough."
Remembering the night before, Seven shook her head. "No. Not far enough." A shiver ran through her frame before she turned her attention back to the tricorder, but whether it was from the cool breeze or the memory of a stone knife cutting her biosuit open she couldn't be sure. Perhaps both. With another shake of her head, she put it out of her mind. "Why.. won't you.. work?" she mumbled, taking her microfilament and holding it between her pursed lips. A flick of a metal tipped finger lifted the metal plate protecting the power source.
"Are you talking to that tricorder?" Chakotay asked, amusement in his voice.
"..No." Her voice held an edge of frustration. She stabbed the microfilament into the power source, forcing the tricorder to do a hard restart. As it clicked and beeped in her hands, she called up her own chronometer for the time to use as a baseline before reprogramming the malfunctioning tech. The numbers flew across her mind's eye, scrolling along as they continued to tick off time in heartbeats. It was only then, as the numbers missed a beat, that she stopped to pay more attention to what her cortical array was trying to tell her. A chunk of time.. was missing. "..what?"
Seven's attention turned fully inward. 'I have an eidetic memory- I can't lose time!' The numbers continued to scroll past, and there is was- a bit of missing data ninety-three hours long. 'I'm BORG! I CAN'T LOSE TIME!' There was no way that they had been exposed to enough radiation to affect her chronometer- not without killing them in the process. So where had the time gone? "..what?!"
Chakotay took a few seconds to register that Seven was no longer following him. Her footfalls had been soft but even, and he had unconsciously been using their rhythm to march along to. When he glanced over his shoulder, he did a double-take so hard he nearly gave himself whiplash. Seven was stock-still, her eyes wide and horrified, hands clutching the tricorder so hard that it was creaking under the stress. The fifteen feet between them was closed in three steps before he took hold of her upper arms. More worrying was that she didn't react at all to his touch, her eyes unfocused staring out over the water. "Seven?" He shook her shoulder. "Hey! Seven!" He put one hand to her cheek, turning her face to his. "Seven! What's wrong? Are you hurt? What is it?"
Like a switch thrown, she came back alive. The burn in her lungs let her know she had been holding her breath. With a gasp, she sucked in a lungful of air, her eyes focusing on Chakotay's. "Chakotay?" She dropped the tricorder without a thought, her hands coming up to close around his wrists. "Chakotay, the tricorder- it-it-"
He glanced at the fallen tech before meeting her eyes again. She was worrying him. "What about it?"
"It's not wrong!" she answered. Her eyes flickered away from his, landing on the raft, the water, up to the sky and the nebula clearly visible in it, then back to his. For a few seconds she looked as lost and wild as she had been after they had plucked her from the Collective- a scorpion ready to strike out to defend herself. "It isn't malfunctioning!"
"Woah, woah, calm down." He shook her grip off of his wrists, sliding her hands into his own. She took two deep breaths, looking down at his thumbs as they smoothed over her knuckles, metal and skin alike. When she met his eyes again, she seemed calmer. "Now, what is wrong?"
"The tricorder isn't malfunctioning." she answered.
"What? Then why aren't they keeping time? Why aren't they calibrating correctly?"
She nearly scowled, her eyebrows drawing down. "They are."
"No.." He shook his head. She may be a genius, but he was no idiot. He had looked at the same tricorder- had read the same incorrect data. She'd only showed it to him five times since they had started walking.
"Yes!" she countered. "Chakotay, I have a gap in my memory!"
He scrunched his nose. "A gap?"
"A gap. I'm missing data-"
A sigh breezed past his lips. "Seven, you hit your head pretty hard when we-"
"No, that's not it, Chakotay." she shook her head. "I'm missing data from-"
"You said you were knocked out in the crash- that you woke up under the bench in the aft! The radiation-"
Again, she cut him off. "Listen to me! My chronometer never stops- not unless I die!" The lifted eyebrows let her know he still didn't understand. "Whether I am awake or asleep, my cortical node keeps time. It does not stop. It does not skip a beat."
"The radiation-"
The wild look came over her eyes again, the ice blue turning electric. She ripped her hands from his, clutching them together beneath her ribcage as a tremor ran over her frame. "No! It does not STOP, Chakotay! It does not skip time!" Her gaze flickered back out to the water, the raft, the nebula, the woods to her right, the long line of the river ahead of them. "And I have a gap!"
The Commander changed tactics, letting her back away from him to pace to the water's edge and back. Her hands wrung beneath her bust, pulling his shirt tight to her body. For a second she looked small, swimming in her borrowed clothes. "Alright." he acquiesced, making his voice soft and gentle. "You have a gap. Tell me what that means."
"It means nothing good and everything bad." she answered, her bottom lip catching between pearly white teeth for a second as she continued to pace. "There is a temporal difference between whatever anomaly we are inside of- this pocket of space- and the bit of space we were observing the nebula from."
"Temporal?" The follicles on his arms began to tighten, the hair bristling over a sea of goosebumps. He gulped softly, thumbing his nose. "Temporal?"
"There is a time difference." Seven murmured, her focus beginning to turn inward again, a hundred calculations zooming across her mind's eye.
He scowled. "I know what temporal means, Seven!"
The blonde ignored him, pacing to the water and back once more before stopping in front of him. "I'm missing ninety-three point seven two one hours."
"What does THAT mean? English, Seven."
"The gap is three point nine days long.. and there is no way that either of us laid in that shuttle for that-"
"¿Qué significa eso?!"
"That's the time differential." she clarified. "For every one hour spent in our.. regular space, ninety-one point four one two hours passes on this planet."
Internally, he reeled. Externally, he met her eyes before spitting out a disbelieving, "¿QUÉ?"
"And Voyager isn't scheduled to rendevous with us for another ten days." she said softly, "That is twenty-one thosand, nine hundred and thirty-eight point eight eight hours.. or nine hundred and fourteen point one two days.. or two point five.. years.." She trailed off as she watched the disbelief on Chakotay's face morph to anger. Unconsciously, she took a step back from him, watching his fingers curl his hands into fists at his sides.
"We're going to be here for dos malditos años before they will even know we are missing?" His voice was deadly quiet, his eyes closed as he gulped again.
A wave of nausea rolled over Seven, and she plopped down into the sand, curling her knees to her chest. As she sat, she went over the numbers again- double and triple checking. Maybe she made a mistake. Please, let it be a mistake.. The same numbers came up.
It wasn't a mistake.
With a hissed breath, the Commander turned around, his arms crossing over his chest as he stalked back to the raft's rope that was slowly being pulled into the water with the current. Reaching down, he wrenched the cable up from the sand, nearly yanking the nose of the raft down into the water with the force. Quickly he held the rope above his head, keeping the makeshift float from taking on water and ruining what few- and now quite precious- supplies they had.
Still curled on the cool beach, Seven watched Chakotay yank up a handful of reeds and throw them into the water, kicking every raised bit of sand like it had done him some wrong, and cursing under his breath in English and Spanish. A particularly solid bit of wood washed up along the bank didn't give as easily as the dunes of sand, and he let out an angry growl before reaching down and flipping it back into the water. The blonde had never observed this kind of behavior from adults before. She had seen a handful of tantrums from Naomi Wildman here and there, but the girl was not prone to them. This was an entirely new beast.
Four minutes and thirty feet away he spun back to her, the hand not holding the cable balled in a fist around the latest bunch of green reed that had made the mistake of growing so close to his path. "Well? Are you coming or not?!" he yelled back to her. "We're stuck here for two pinche years with a bunch of scalp you- rape you- murder you- fucking natives! ¿Por qué estás sentado allí?!"
Seven's eyes widened in surprise, but his voice kicked her into gear. She scrambled up to her feet, grabbing the tricorder as she did so, and then jogged after him. When he was sure she was following, he turned back to lead, jerking the raft along beside them.
XXX
Translations:
¿Qué significa eso?!- "What's the significance?"
¿QUÉ?- "WHAT?"
dos malditos años- two fucking years
pinche- expletive
¿Por qué estás sentado allí?!- What are you waiting for?!
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~LM