Disclaimer: I'm just borrowing this. Paramount isn't using it anyhow.



Chapter Five



Chakotay had taken his mandatory Starfleet science courses like anyone else, but the conversation between the Doctor and Kathryn was a little over his head. Talks of gametes, zygotes, blastocysts and meiosis were more than somewhat beyond him, in the context which they spoke. He was too busy trying to collect his wits.

Kathryn. She was probably the most incomprehensible human being he had ever met in his life, and probably the most incomprehensible of any being. He knew it was in her nature to want to help, she presided over her Voyager family like some sage matriarch, the glaring mother hen. But this was beyond what he had expected.

Kathryn offering to bear his and Seven's children? That one thought boggled the mind, let alone the subsequent ones. He wasn't an idiot. He knew why the Doctor objected, making dubious comments throughout the two days since his and Kathryn's dual breakdown in the corridor. He wasn't sure if he didn't agree, in some context.

Kathryn, that scheming woman, had of course told Seven first. The mere hope contained within the older woman's idea had even sent Seven willingly to the alcove that Starfleet Medical had installed for her. She trusted him to do whatever the Captain asked, and to make her hope manifest itself. Kathryn had known that her acceptance meant his.

Having had enough of their science, he had left the small laboratory to get some air in the corridor beyond. They had been speaking earnestly as he left about incomplete karyotypes and what that implied. He wasn't sure he wanted to know yet. He knew what a karyotype was, and incomplete did not sound good.

He wasn't interested in the genetics.

But Kathryn, the ever-avid scientist, wasn't going to let him get away without knowing such tiny details. The door behind him cracked open, and she came out. She gestured to him.

"Let's take a walk," she stated, not requesting, commanding.

Out of pure habit, he followed her up the hall.

She looked at him carefully out of the corner of her eye. "There is an unforseen problem," she said quietly.

He was tempted to ask what else was new.

"There is a secondary reason for Seven's failed pregnancies. Apparently over ninety percent of the ova in her body are incomplete. There was some fault in the meiosis, even before she was born. There are and average of only eighteen chromosomes in each cell. There are supposed to be twenty-three."

He thought about that, grasping some of it. Genetic fault. "And what does that do?"

"It explains the strange karyotypes. Your children were genetically incomplete. Even without Seven's implant problems, the babies were never going to live, Chakotay."

He drew a shaking breath. Curse upon curses. So what did that mean? That even with outside help, Seven could still not have the children she craved so terribly? He passed a weary hand over his eyes. "So now what?"

She frowned pensively ahead. "There is an old procedure, developed a couple years after the turn of the millennium, that can correct faulty egg cells. It was outlawed during that period when everyone got paranoid about genetics. It was never picked up again. We aren't in the same boat, but the Doctor thinks he can adapt the procedure . . . provided the Medical Council clears it, which is iffy."

"What does it involve?"

"Grafting genetic material into the most complete cells we find . . . basically adding the genes she's missing. It would likely have to be my genetic material, since I'm the host mother."

"What's so wrong with that?"

She looked uncomfortable. "Well, Chakotay . . . it complicates things more than they already are. In the end . . . any children born from such gene therapy have three parents. To a lesser degree, the baby would be my baby also. Two genetic mothers and . . . a father."

He had to force himself to keep walking. Yes, that was complicated. Three parents? In the literal sense? What great confusion . . . What if this hypothetical child never showed any of Seven's characteristics? Quite a muddle, in the real sense. Native American genes, Irish, Scandinavian?

"We will have to ask Seven about it, when she wakes up," Kathryn murmured almost apologetically. "I'm sorry, Chakotay . . . but it is something. Isn't it?"

"It is," he agreed slowly. "Are you even sure that you will do it?"

She looked offended. "Of course I am. I'd like to think you know me better than that. I've made up my mind. I'm not going anywhere unless you do."

He almost laughed at her. Kathryn! What could you do with a woman like Kathryn Janeway? That was a question he had asked himself for years. What to do about Kathryn? To laugh at her, yell at her, say nothing . . . to love her as she never had him? To be Kathryn's friend, and to watch her come back in kind, eight years later. It was more than that, so much more. His feeling for her had yet not been named in any spoken language.

He felt a familiar pang of guilt. Seven, he loved to distraction . . . but not to the exclusion of all else. Wasn't that the way it should be? He had married her, promised to exclude all else, in roundabout terms.

Did he?

No. He was yet being trailed around in the wake of something he could not have, and could not control. Spirits save him from the day when he saw Kathryn Janeway controlled by anything.

"All right, Kathryn," he said.

"What?"

"I said all right. You get your way. You always do."

"Not always, Chakotay, or we'd be somewhere far different."

"You said this had to be cleared by the Medical Council?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, but the Doctor can do it. He can be very persuasive."

"The Doctor agreed?"

"I can be persuasive too."

He did laugh at her that time. He hadn't laughed in a long while.

She knew that too, and looked at him, a grin spreading across her face. "It's good to hear you laugh again, Chakotay. You have no idea."

"It's good to see you smile," he replied. "There hasn't been enough of that lately."

"I agree. I'm sorry you had to miss me telling Seven . . . she has a brilliant smile, as I'm sure you know."

His good mood crashed inward, and this time he did stop walking, staring at Kathryn with all the desolation he felt in his eyes. "She . . . smiled?"

The Captain's light expression crumbled as well. She began to cry again almost immediately, looking up at him with a desperate apology in her eyes and holding her hands in the air as if she was going to take his face in her hands. "Oh, Chakotay, I shouldn't have said anything . . . I'm so sorry."

He took the proffered embrace, his eyes stinging. Even in her bid to apologize for hurting him, he was equally remorseful for hurting her further. Kathryn didn't deserve to have to deal with them either. She was home, she should be happy, not running damage control at Starfleet Medical. All the focus was on taking care of them, but who was taking care of Kathryn? Wasn't that his job? Men like him did not deserve such friends as Kathryn Janeway.

"You are going to be a good father, Chakotay," she said fiercely as he held her to him. "And Seven will be a mother. I will make sure of that. I promise."

"What about you?" he asked.

"It isn't about me."

"That," he said, "is where you are wrong."

***



Oh, black, dreamless oblivion. Well, not oblivion exactly, but it was good enough. She was slightly aware through the haze of drugs and mechanical whirring. She hurt. Her entire lower body burned in pain. She wanted to move, to sit or to lie down, but she was on enforced rest. She bore her pain in a semiconscious blur.

People moved in and out of the room. Friends, doctors . . . waiting vigil for some indeterminable time. The Doctor was there, and Chakotay, talking. The Captain. Ensign Kim? Lieutenant Kim. Harry had come and left. Naomi Wildman, voice choking, avoiding Chakotay's eyes. Commander Tuvok, low voice. Lieutenant Torres trading sharp words with an orderly. Then no one, then a doctor. A nurse. A stream of vagrants in and out for what seemed like mere seconds; for what seemed like eternity.

Dull pain.

Sometime before -a day, an hour?- she had been awoken and told about what the Doctor and the Captain knew, by Chakotay, who remained neutral throughout until she made her decision. Her child, his, theirs . . . the Captain's? She had made her decision, despite the fact that in a very real sense she was going to share her motherhood with the most threatening aspect of all. It would be her baby.

Two more days of regeneration, the doctors said as if they had such knowledge. Two more after four days meant six. In three the Doctor gained clearance, and when she woke up the truth would be known.

Five genes. Five of the Captain's genes to her eighteen and Chakotay's twenty-three. Only five. A whole five! She seethed, dull resentment rising. That was more intrusion than any before, and yet it was the greatest thing that she could have done. Resentment and gratitude battled. Seven of Nine and Annika.

"Regeneration cycle complete."

She was supported by unseen arms as she nearly fell from the alcove, her legs afire with pain. She was not used to standing for six days, and there were other stresses on top of that. There was no scar, but the operation had occurred and with surgery came convalescence.

The people who supported her were strangers, two nurses under the supervision of a pinch-faced doctor who appraised Seven's weakened state with cold eyes as she was moved to the bed. Where was Chakotay? Where was the Captain? She had to know. Had to hear it. From them. One of them. Both of them.

She groaned as she was settled into the bed, stiff muscles protesting any movement. The doctor ordered more painkillers. Seven tried to object. She had to be awake! She had slept for six days, surely she could stay awake now! Give her a medical airgun, numb her lower body. She had to be awake when they came.

B'Elanna Torres entered, and looked wide-eyed at the empty alcove on one side of the room. She then unleashed a string of abusive language at the doctor and his two nurses for not informing anyone that Seven's regeneration cycle was over. Seven didn't particularly like B'Elanna. She was too hotheaded, but she was Chakotay's friend and she had just saved her more drugs by using that hotheadedness to drive the strangers out. That in itself warranted gratitude.

Resentment. B'Elanna Torres had a daughter.

"You feeling any better? Need anything?" the former Chief Engineer asked, surprisingly concerned as she fussed with the bedclothes. "Goddamn," the other woman muttered as she straightened the blankets and sheets. "Could they have moved her any rougher?"

"Where's Chakotay? The Captain? I need to know what-"

"They're getting that checked out. Stay still. You'll hurt yourself."

"But when did-"

"Right after the Doc got the procedure cleared. We'll know today, Seven. Don't worry. It'll be all right. And if it didn't work, they'll try it again. They had what, five viable embryos? You could end up with quintuplets, if they all worked out."

"One."

"Have it your way. It's your party. So besides that, you need anything?"

"Water."

"That can be arranged," B'Elanna replied, walking over to the small replicator on the other side of the room and commanding ice water. "How do you feel?"

"Sore."

"Wow, it's monosyllable time, huh? They'll be around soon. It's a simple scan, five second thing. And if you got good news, Chakotay will probably come running." She extended the glass of water, which Seven took gratefully, laving her parched mouth and throat. B'Elanna watched her for a moment, and then her mouth curled up slightly.

"What is so amusing?"

"I was just thinking. This is going to be one good-looking kid."

"The child's appearance is irrelevant."

"Well think about it! If this kid gets your eyes, Chakotay's dimples and Janeway's crooked smile, there will be nothing that child won't be able to get just by looking at people."

"That is irrelevant."

B'Elanna shook her head. "So boy or girl?"

"Pardon?"

"Which would you rather, boy or girl?"

"I do not care. Only the health of the infant is important."

"If that isn't the most over said phrase ever . . ."

"Do be quiet, Lieutenant."

B'Elanna Torres snorted, laughing a little. "Oh boy, won't this be an adventure."

Seven heard footsteps and she discarded her drink hastily in favour of watching the door. She ignored the Lieutenant, and was rewarded for her troubles when the door opened.

There stood the well-known countenance of Doctor as he paused in the doorway.

"Well?" B'Elanna demanded before Seven could.

"Where is Chakotay?" Seven cut in.

The Doctor bided his time. "I took it upon myself to come tell you, because Chakotay won't move from the spot he's standing in and the Captain's too busy bawling."

Seven nearly panicked.

Until she saw the smile spread across the Doctor's face.



To be continued.

***