A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far! I hope you continue enjoy this story. You get two chapters today! Enjoy!
Chapter 7
"Computer, turn off alarm clock," Chakotay mumbled sleepily. He instinctively reached for Kathryn, but his hand only grasped empty space. He opened his eyes with a frown, listening for any signs of her already up somewhere in their quarters. Nothing. So she hadn't come back at all last night. He knew she had scheduled a meeting at 0700 with the Maradib and Gianfarian delegates, so she should have been back by now, getting ready. Rubbing sleep – and mild concern – from his face with his hands, he got up and quickly took care of his morning routine. "Computer, locate Admiral Janeway," he asked as he buttoned his shirt and pinned the new combadge he'd replicated for himself to his chest.
"Admiral Janeway is in Holodeck 1."
"The holodeck?" Chakotay repeated to himself, baffled. Not wasting a moment, he quickly made his way there, a part of him dreading what he would find; he still couldn't quite shake the mild unease that had crept into his stomach at her expression when she'd left last night. She hadn't been particularly cold or distant, more like distracted… clearly something had been on her mind. Was it something he'd done or said? He'd lain in bed with eyes wide open for an hour last night trying to figure it out, waiting for her to return.
So when he entered the artificial environment he couldn't help a pang of relief that she'd chosen Leonardo DaVinci's Florentine workshop and not New Haven – and then felt a pang of guilt (and foolishness) for even entertaining that thought. He should know better than to doubt her by now. Finding himself in this particular program, he was suddenly reminded of the book he'd gotten for her the day before – it had completely escaped his mind to give it to her last night, but seeing her still enjoying DaVinci's workshop confirmed his intuition that she would like the book. He came to an abrupt halt when he spotted Kathryn at last: asleep, slouched over the table in DaVinci's cluttered workshop, her head on her arm amid PADDs and papers from DaVinci's character. Smiling with relief and a swell of affection, he felt all of his concern vanish as he approached her quietly and put a hand on her back to rouse her. "Kathryn."
She startled awake and Chakotay started gathering her PADDs for her. One of the PADDs caught his attention though – it looked like the report describing the chemical and molecular composition of the residues left behind by the weapon that had hit Dråkin-Mati's shield. One trace element in the chemical analysis in particular drew his gaze – Kiradil. But before he could think any more on it, Kathryn straightened, rubbing sleep from her face with her hands.
"I fell asleep," she stated, surprised.
"Apparently."
"What time is it?" She rubbed her neck.
"You have about 25 minutes before the meeting. I can get the ball rolling for you, if you need more time to get ready."
She shook her head. "No, it's fine. Why in the world did I schedule that meeting so early…" she muttered to herself, still trying to shake off sleepiness, stretching her back and neck.
"Kathryn, this report," Chakotay started as he showed her the PADD he'd been looking at. "This molecule that was listed as a residue in the weapon's signature: Kiradil. I've heard that name before."
She frowned but stood to her feet to look at the PADD he was showing to her, her hand still on her neck. If they hadn't been pressed for time Chakotay would have offered her a rub. Perhaps later. "You have?" She asked in surprise. "I'm not familiar with it."
He smiled. "That's because you didn't spend two hours walking around with Prime Minister Kumara yesterday while he explained at length how the new alloy that the Maradib call Esheeyab have been used to reinforce the structures of the settlement. Kathryn, Kiradil is one of the components of that Maradib alloy."
Kathryn's gaze shot to his face, suddenly wide awake. "Are you saying that the Maradib may be behind this after all? Do they use it in their weapons?"
He shook his head, biting his lips. "I don't know. All I know is that this specific element has been part of Maradib technology for a long time – it's fairly versatile and can be alloyed with a number of metals and elements, and it occurs naturally in one of the moons orbiting Maradibaya."
Kathryn nodded, taking this in. "Alright, you take Emani back to Ensign Wildman and- where did she go?" Chakotay followed her gaze around the room, puzzled. "I brought Emani here last night – she fell asleep with the dog, right there…"
The dog was still sleeping by the fireplace, barely sparing them a look, and there was Kathryn's discarded jacket on the floor, but Emani wasn't there. Chakotay rubbed a hand over his face, unable to quelch a wave of concern. She must have wandered off. No one would harm her on the ship, but there were many dangerous places for a child who didn't know anything about them… When his eyes returned to Kathryn, her expression was tight with guilt, worry and dismay, her fingers massaging her forehead anxiously.
"I'll find her," he told her. "You go ahead and focus on the meeting."
She shook her head in self-reprimand as she started walking toward the exit, grabbing her jacket on the way and still looking around and under various pieces of furniture, in case Emani was hiding somewhere. "I should have kept a closer eye on her, I -"
"It's not your fault. She ran off on me yesterday, too," Chakotay assured her as he wandered around the room as well, looking in all the various crooks and corners in the workshop. "You go handle the fate of interplanetary diplomacy, I'll handle our little runaway." He sent her a reassuring smile, hoping his quip lifted some of her guilt.
She snorted, shaking her head, but she paused just before she went through the exit. "I could search with you, who in that room is going to complain if I'm a few minutes late?"
Chakotay smiled, but shook his head. "Really, Kathryn, it's fine. She'll be fine."
She hesitated, but then nodded. "You'll tell me the minute you find her?"
"You'll be the first to know."
With one last nod Kathryn left the holodeck, and Chakotay placed his hands on his hips. "Now, if I were a five-year-old girl, where would I go?"
oooOooo
"Lara, wait up!" Harry called as he jogged after her. The sun was getting slowly higher over the horizon now, and the welcome freshness in the air from morning dew was already starting to evaporate. Today was going to be another hot one.
Lara didn't stop walking as she crossed from the relief shelter to the volunteer tent, where volunteers could be dispatched or organized into teams. When Harry was close enough he caught her elbow.
She snatched it away but spun on him in a flash, her expression a mix of anger, frustration and restlessness. Harry immediately raised his hands in defense. "Hey, take it easy. I'm just trying to help."
She gritted her teeth and looked away, and Harry saw that unshed tears still made her eyes shine.
"What was that about?" Harry asked more gently. "You don't have to tell me, but I'd like to help, if I can."
She shook her head angrily. There was a restless energy coming off of her in waves, her hands were clenched into fists at her side and her jaw muscles worked. But then she exhaled and wiped a hand over her face. "I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you, it's just…" She let out a frustrated growl. "Argh, Devin just keeps going on and on about that explosion story and I... I just want to forget about it and move on!"
"Okay. Fair enough," Harry replied, still studying her closely. Why did he feel like this whole lab accident was a bigger deal than anyone was saying? It had certainly seemed to affect Devin and Lara very deeply.
"Hey, you two, we could use your help, if you're just going to be standing there," an unfamiliar voice called out to them. One of the medical corps officers from the dispatching tent was staring at them with mild amusement.
Harry smiled and raised his eyebrows at Lara. After a moment, she nodded, and a small smile touched her lips. "Alright. Let's get to work."
oooOooo
It was Tom who found Emani first, unexpectedly.
After Kathryn had left the holodeck, Chakotay had turned off the holodeck program, in case Emani had wondered off "outside" DaVinci's workshop and into holo-Florence. But Emani wasn't in the room. So he'd asked the computer to locate her, only to be answered with: "Unable to comply. This name has not been registered." Chakotay had been so distracted with everything that he'd forgotten to register her as a passenger when he'd brought Emani on board.
So he'd informed security next before contacting Ensign Wildman – no, she hadn't seen her since last night, when Admiral Janeway had offered to take her on. So Chakotay had started walking, more or less systematically, stopping by the mess hall, Engineering, the childcare center, Holodeck 2, sickbay, without any success.
He was running out of ideas when his combadge came to life. "Paris to Chakotay. I heard you lost something. She's here, in the shuttle bay."
When he entered that room a few minutes later, Chakotay found Tom and a number of other crewmembers loading supplies into the various shuttles, no doubt getting ready for a second day of search, rescue and relief on the surface. "Tom? Where is she?"
Tom gestured to the Delta Flyer. "In there. I tried to get her to come out, but she didn't budge," Tom told him quietly. "I need to work on my kid charm."
Chakotay patted his shoulder gratefully on his way to the Flyer. "Emani?" He called as he stepped inside and walked toward the cockpit, straining his ears to pick up any sounds she might make. "It's me, Chakotay. You don't have to come out if you don't want to, just tell me where you are so I know you're safe."
At the sound of his voice there was movement from the front, and then Emani was rushing out from where she'd been hiding under the main console and ran to him. One look at the anxiety on her face was enough to remind him to loosen the tension from his shoulders and put a reassuring smile on his face.
"There you are!" Chakotay said as he swept her up when she reached him. "Are you okay? We were worried about you."
She nodded, hugging his neck. "I just got a little scared because I got lost and I didn't know where to go."
Chakotay nodded, watching her for a second. That anxious look had vanished from her face, replaced by a mix of guilt and relief. "Here, let's sit for a minute." He sat her down into one of the seats and he settled across from her, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs to be at eye-level. "So what's going on? Why did you leave the holodeck without telling Kathryn?" He prodded, trying to be gentle but stern. "Remember what I said yesterday? About not running off? There are dangerous equipment and rooms on this ship, you could have gotten hurt."
"I didn't mean to, I swear!" Her face fell in dismay, so Chakotay touched her knee.
"Hey, we're not angry with you, we were just worried about you. Can you tell me why you left, or what you were looking for? Maybe I can help" Chakotay waited patiently, hoping that if he were patient enough she might open up to him like she had the day before about wanting to go home. But in lieu of divulging anything else, she frowned for a moment. But then she perked up again. "What's that?" Her eyes had wandered to his chest and she was looking curiously at his combadge.
Sighing at her evasive maneuver, Chakotay stood and unpinned the combadge to show it to her as he went to sit down next to her on her seat (she was so small that they could share when she scooted over) – thinking by the same token that he should get her a combadge of her own so that this didn't happen again. "It's for communication. With it we can talk to each other across the whole ship, and sometimes beyond. Here, try it. Who would you like to call?"
She thought for a moment, tapping her lips with her finger in a very adult-like gesture. "Kathryn," she decided, but she looked at him as if asking for his approval.
Chakotay's smile widened, pleased (but not entirely surprised) that Kathryn had succeeded to make an impression on her. He'd expected Emani to want to call Naomi. "Good choice." Chakotay handed her the combadge. She took it in her small fingers, bringing it closer to her face to study it, her brows furrowed in concentration as she turned it over to look at it from all possible angles.
"Is Kathryn your girlfriend?" She asked suddenly, still squinting at the combadge.
Chakotay barked out a laugh in surprise at the direct question. "Yes, I suppose you could say that," he replied after he'd recovered. The word 'girlfriend' didn't even begin to describe what Kathryn meant to him. She was his… well, everything.
"How does it work?" Emani asked, not really paying attention to his answer.
"Just press it," he instructed, "and say: Admiral Janeway to the shuttle bay."
Emani brought the combadge closer to her lips. "Am'ral Janeway," she said in a small voice and Chakotay smiled at her mispronunciation – clearly she was unfamiliar with the term. Her eyes rose back to him in question as she faltered, having forgotten the rest.
"To the shuttle bay," Chakotay mouthed with an encouraging nod.
She echoed the words slowly in the combadge and then she smiled, chuckling excitedly, barely containing the rush of excitement, her earlier fright apparently all forgotten.
"Good. I bet she'll come rushing in soon. But while we wait, why don't you tell me what you did in the holodeck last night?" He figured if he made her comfortable telling him things, she might confess what she was doing here eventually. And admittedly, Chakotay was also curious to find out how she had ended up with Kathryn in the first place.
Emani's face brightened, her eyes lighting up, as she told him the whole story before proceeding to tell him all about the holographic dog, including everything she had learned about dogs in general – from Kathryn, he assumed. For some reason, the thought of them sitting in Master DaVinci's workshop talking about dogs made him smile. Kathryn had been toying with the idea of them getting a dog ever since they'd settled on Earth. Chakotay didn't mind one way or the other, but so far she had always talked herself out of it – much to his entertainment. So he knew from first-hand experience how enthused she could be about the topic. And now apparently she'd found a disciple.
Chakotay found himself grinning as he listened to Emani speak – her expressive inflections, her slight accent, her little voice, her mispronunciation of some of the unfamiliar words she had learned. The day before she had been fairly quiet around him, in shock of everything that had been happening around her. But he was now discovering that she was, in fact, an absolute chatterbox. And much to his surprise, he found it endearing.
Emani was in the middle of telling him about how the dog had scratched her hand with his claws – he didn't meant to, she added quickly – when Kathryn rushed inside the Flyer. Her head whipped around as she looked for them, and her shoulders sagged in relief when she spotted them sitting together.
Emani immediately ran to her – and into her, her arms going around Kathryn's legs. Kathryn's look of stunned pleasure was quite something and Chakotay grinned to himself as he stood to join them. She stroked Emani's head distractedly as she met his eyes. Then she redirected her attention to the girl, lifting her up into her arms and holding her against her hip to better look into her face. Emani instinctively folded her arms and legs around her like a little monkey. "Now, young lady, I was worried about you," Kathryn admonished gently. "How did you get here?"
After a moment of Emani's hands fiddling with Kathryn's pips at her collar, that guilty look back on her face, she spoke at last. "I was looking for something," she admitted in a low voice, brows furrowed, as if afraid that they would reprimand her. Chakotay sighed, relieved to see that she was willing to open up to Kathryn at least.
"What were you looking for? Maybe we can help you find it," Chakotay said, exchanging a glance with Kathryn.
Emani looked between the two of them in indecision for a moment before she returned her attention to Kathryn's collar. "At first I looked for Naomi because I wanted to show her the dog, but I couldn't find her. I tried to go back to the room with Kathryn because I didn't know how to find you," she said with a look at Chakotay, "but I got mixed up… So I looked for… the outside," she said, as if she didn't know how else to describe it, "to go home, but I couldn't find it either." She faltered, her face drawn into a pout. "I thought Katie would want to know about dogs too."
At this Kathryn's eyes shot to Chakotay's, her dismay written all over her face. Chakotay decided to take over so she wouldn't have to.
"Alright. If going home is what you want, we'll see what we can do about it, okay?"
She shook her head. "I miss home sometimes, and my toys, and Mr. Travid… but I only looked for the outside because I couldn't find anyone. I got scared."
Chakotay exchanged a sigh with Kathryn. "Okay. Well, now that we've found each other, how do you feel about some breakfast?" He suggested with a hopeful smile.
She nodded so Kathryn put her down to the floor.
"Good. Give us a second, will you, Emani?" Chakotay motioned with his head for Kathryn to step aside, so she followed him and stood close so they wouldn't be overheard. Meanwhile, Emani immediately started pushing buttons on the console and grabbing control sticks, making engine sounds with her mouth that would make Tom proud.
Chakotay leaned in closer to Kathryn to lower his voice. "Maybe we should take her back to Travid. I wanted to give her a restful environment away from the trauma of it all, but maybe this is all too much for her to deal with. Clearly she misses her home."
Kathryn frowned. "Normally I would agree. But she doesn't have a home anymore, and you said Travid hasn't been relocated yet. What is he going to do with her?"
Chakotay drew in a long inhale, slightly surprised that, of the two of them, Kathryn would be the one to argue for not returning Emani to Travid. "I don't know."
"That's not all," she added, her voice even lower. "Last night I found out that her young friend, my namesake, didn't survive the attack…" Chakotay let out a long, devastated sigh at that, rubbing his forehead before placing his hands on his hips. Kathryn went on, "And truth be told, we don't really know if it's really safe on the planet yet. So, under the circumstances, it might be better if she stayed with us for the time being. We'll just need to keep a closer eye on her."
Chakotay's brows creased. "You think there might be another attack coming?"
"Well, until we can find those responsible or figure out who or what the target was, I'm afraid we can't rule out that possibility."
He nodded, tugging on his earlobe, letting out a long sigh. "Alright. We agree then, it's safer for Emani to stay with us for the time being. I'll replicate her a combadge so that this doesn't happen again."
She nodded, her gaze settling on his face. "I know it's a burden for you to keep watching her – I would do it, but I can't really free up my-"
Chakotay shook his head, interrupting her with a confused frown. "What are you talking about? I'm happy to take her. Besides, I'm the one who brought her onboard. She's my responsibility. I was thinking I might take her to the daycare center for a while. She'll have a chance to play with the other kids, and hopefully give her some sense of normalcy."
Kathryn nodded, but she was still eyeing him closely, as if he had turned into a puzzle she had to solve. "Good idea."
"Alright Emani, ready to eat?" Emani nodded and hurried to join them.
He felt Kathryn's gaze linger on him a moment longer, and then she shook herself. "I'd join you but unfortunately I need to go back to the meeting. They're already pulling each other's hair in there."
Chakotay nodded, lips twitching. "Then you better go back in there before they move on to other body parts."
She snorted before turning on her heels. Before she could leave, Emani caught her hand with both of hers, effectively stopping her. "I'm sorry I left without telling you before, Am'ral Kathryn! I didn't want to wake you because Mr. Travid always says I have to be as quiet as a mouse when he's sleeping."
Kathryn's shoulders sagged and her gaze darted to Chakotay before returning to the girl. "Well Emani, you were a very convincing little mouse, I'll give you that."
"Briefing room to Admiral Janeway."
Kathryn rolled her eyes in annoyance before she pressed her combadge, tossing an exasperated look at Chakotay. "Janeway here."
"Admiral we have a bit of a situation here… Captain Peres requests your presence ASAP."
"I'll be right there." Kathryn nodded with a long sigh before she returned her attention to Emani. She bent over to lower her voice, changing her expression into one of mischief. "Between you and me, I don't mind a little noise. In fact, I'd rather you wake me next time, okay?" Emani nodded and Kathryn smiled, touching Emani's little chin with her knuckles in a quick caress before she straightened. "I better go."
"I'll come be your wingman in a few minutes," Chakotay told her with a crooked smile.
"Take your time, something tells me we'll be in there for a while," she drawled.
After Kathryn left, Chakotay redirected his gaze to Emani. He offered her his hand again and she took it, swinging their arms happily as they exited the Flyer. It amazed him how quickly her moods could turn around.
Tom met with them in the shuttle bay, smiling. "Where are you two heading now?"
"Mess hall."
Tom smiled. "Oh I'm heading there myself, to meet B'Elanna and Miral before I go back to the surface. I'll walk with you." As they exited the shuttle bay, and Emani dropped Chakotay's hand to run and skip ahead, Tom tossed Chakotay a sidelong grin. "I gotta say, you seem to be getting the hang of this," he commented, sounding impressed.
Chakotay's lips curved into a half-smile. "Let's not jinx it just yet."
Tom snorted. "No, seriously. I didn't think you'd last through the day, yesterday. But now I realize I shouldn't be surprised at all. You've always had the patience of a saint. That's an extra valuable virtue, where kids are concerned." After a brief pause, Tom added, nodding to himself. "And immature adults, too, I guess." Chakotay smiled, but then Tom went on. "Have you and the admiral ever discussed it… kids?"
"No," Chakotay interrupted quickly, somehow uncomfortable discussing something so private with Tom, even though their friendship had deepened since Chakotay had resigned from Starfleet. "No. Not yet."
"I didn't mean to pry. All I meant to say was that you'd be great at it. Both of you." Before Chakotay could reply, Emani came back to them and Tom grinned at her, resting his hands on his knees to meet her eyes. "Now Chakotay here told me how fast you can run, but I'd like to see for myself. How about we race to the end of the corridor?" At Emani's eager nod, Tom grinned. "On your mark, ready, set, go!"
Chakotay shook his head in a mix of exasperation and amusement as they took off, giggling, down the corridor, just barely avoiding running into startled crewmembers. But he had to admit, Tom's words lingered in his mind.
oooOooo