Disclaimer: Je n'ai reçu pas d'argent et je ne le recevrai pas pour cette histoire. (Ca m'est égal, que vous faites, Paramount)



Chapter Fourteen



WARNING!!!: BAD word alert, okay? Bad enough a word to make this chapter NC-17, you got it? Sometimes angst can run away with vocal chords . . .



He couldn't think straight. He didn't want to think straight, but he had to. It was beyond him, his clear thinking had come and gone in the moment of realization that Seven had not merely been sleeping. He wanted to scream; he wished devoutly that the tiled floor would swallow him up; he wanted to rise and pound a fist on the wall in ineffectual fury; he wanted to lie down and never get up again. This was not happening. It couldn't be. Oh, why hadn't she told him?

It had happened very early that morning, when he had been lying awake in the bed they shared, staring out the window and thinking of this and that-

Goddamn you, man. You were thinking of Kathryn while Seven was-

Chakotay had thought she was sleeping. She had been so still. Seven was always still when she slept, some sort of unconscious economy of movement that she even possessed when awake. Seven never did anything without a purpose, well founded or otherwise. He had turned on his side and looked at her, noticing for the first time how dark her complexion seemed. It almost seemed like the same sort of change that happened to paper when it wasn't taken care of. He had thought nothing of it, at the time.

Then he had listened, and found that the regular sound of her breathing was missing.

Oh, Spirits, how did I miss it. Kathryn was wrong, I can't take care of anyone . . .

The soft sounds that should have been there had been replaced by silence . . . and then a hideous shallow wheeze that made his heart constrict every time he heard it. Too many walks in damp weather, that ill-fated dash to the Captain's office . . . it had been too much for her to take.

Chakotay was now aware that every shallow breath might be her last, but had thought as much when he had first realized what he was hearing. In his panic, he had leapt out of bed, his thoughts surprisingly clear despite the fact that he was sure he was having a heart attack. He got dressed.

He had called an ambulance.

He'd called the Doctor.

Then he called Kathryn, who had been awake at the time, no less.

What was he doing? Why was he here? How was it that in the near two years they had been together, a blight had seemed to hang over Seven? Was that the price of her smile, her happiness? She claimed happiness, and she never lied outright. Could it ever have been different?

First the three months of agony while the Starfleet scientists and exoengineers were on the very edge of dissecting her, then her debriefing, which she had come out of looking so careworn it killed him. It made him hate Kathryn's precious Starfleet all over again, until he realized that what had happened to her had truly been a mistake. Then her influenza, the first blow to her health. She had recovered, become pregnant and swore off the alcove. Then she had miscarried, and almost bled to death. The Doctor, driven by her nagging, had tried to disengage more of her implants. The hologram had been as careful as possible -he loved Seven and was in more agony over damaging her than anyone, Chakotay knew that- but had injured her nonetheless. And then, they had tried for another baby . . . and here he was.

Here she was, near death on a hospital bed, he blood being artificially oxygenated and filtered, since her liver had shut down from the strain of keeping up with what looked now like pneumonia. Liver failure, influenza, pneumonia, miscarriages . . . these were all things that modern medicine could have taken care of easily . . .

If not for the implants, which complicated everything by rejecting infants, nullifying antibiotics, neutralizing hormone regulators and shutting down her organs. They even prevented transplants on the sole fact that they were there and could not be removed or made to accept new tissue.

Ironically, throughout it all, her cortical node was functioning beautifully.

She could not survive, even with the twenty-fourth century version of dialysis, effective as that could be. He had not heard the prognosis. He didn't want to know when it would happen.

And she had kept it from him! She had known for -what? A week? And he had been to blind to see, and she too backwards in her ways to tell him. He had an awful suspicion as to whom else had known before he had.

Curiously enough, Kathryn had not come knocking at the door. He knew she had come to the hospital. She wouldn't stay away if you bodily prevented her, yet she had not surfaced. She was probably in some waiting area, feeling guilty about things she couldn't control.

That was what Kathryn did. She acted when she could, but generally sat around chastising herself when no action could be taken. Like it was her fault, or something she could have prevented and hadn't. She and Seven were similar that way, but Seven only did it when she was sick, or had hurt someone else, and Kathryn did it when things happened to other people that she couldn't control.

He supposed he was just as bad, believing her when she had said that taking care of people was his strong point and then berating himself when both of them had turned out wrong. It was ridiculous . . . this vicious cycle they had started. At first it had just been himself and Kathryn, and then due to myriad circumstance, Seven got pulled along too. Love, denial, argument, event, guilt. Not necessarily in that order, nor was that necessarily all that ever happened . . . but on and on it went, and he at least had no idea how to stop.

Ah, no, not everything was included in that list. Not that which drove the two of them from love into denial . . . love was a safe topic, as compared to a cloying tension that hadn't faded a jot since it had been recognized.

Recognized? That was when . . . what? As soon as I was beamed onto that bridge and had the death glare put on me? The prospect of dying because of a glare had seemed so . . . pleasant.

He couldn't even pretend to believe that Seven didn't know. Hadn't she demonstrated often enough that she knew bloody everything? Somehow, seeing her die was like betraying her . . . it was like he was purposely inserting himself into a situation where he and Kathryn would be alone, for lack of a better term.

And at times it still felt that he was betraying Kathryn by being in the hospital room instead of out in the waiting area with her. Vicious cycle.

He was an idiot. He should never have even tried to live anywhere near both of them at once. But he couldn't have left at any point. Was it arrogant to think that they needed him? Probably, but he knew he needed them -both of them- and thus far neither had shown any indication that the feeling wasn't entirely mutual.

Mutual feelings. Goddamn her, why couldn't Kathryn have shown him those mutual feelings before he got sidetracked?

Sidetracked?! No! No, no, no. Seven was not a sidetrack, not a diversion. Never.

Oh, Spirits, what was he doing?

"Chakotay?"

To hell with what he was doing, she was awake.

"Seven?" He reached towards the bed and clasped her hand in his, and was relieved to feel her returning squeeze. "Oh, Spirits, Seven . . . why?"

"Chakotay, what-?" She didn't manage to get it out, whatever it was. She was seized in a fit of coughing almost immediately, a terrible rattling hack that left her red-faced and tired when she finally leaned back into the pillow. "What is wrong with my lungs?" she wheezed. It was nearly unintelligible, the weary voice and the aphasia slurring the words together. "I can't breathe . . ."

"The Doctor thinks you have pneumonia," he said, trying to deny the sting of his eyes as he regarded her. Jaundiced eyes, dark circles under them, unbrushed hair from the night before, sunken cheeks. So ill. Dying.

Still beautiful.

She sighed, or rather wheezed. There was fluid in her lungs, which was why she couldn't breathe. She'd suffocate, if the toxicity in her blood was kept down in order to keep that from killing her. The Doctor said she also had the beginnings of acholia. He didn't know what that was, but it didn't sound good. Seven was dying.

And she had known.

Whatever threat he might have put to that was extremely tactless at this juncture.

She cleared her throat, looking at him with fathomless blue eyes. "Why what?"

He blinked. "What?"

"You said . . . you asked me 'why.' Why what?"

He looked at her, knowing the pain was in his eyes by the way she almost shied from him. Seven hated to see negative emotion from other people. It was something childlike . . . that she could not stand it herself when any part her family cried. Although, he knew well enough that Seven was no child.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"What . . . that I was dying?" she slurred, frowning at him. "I don't know . . . I just thought that maybe there was a better way to-"

"A better way!? To wait until you had to be hospitalized? Oh, shit, Seven! How can there possibly be a better way to tell me? Any way that I was going to find out was going to be . . . And Kathryn! This is what she was so upset about that day when I . . . why did you tell her?"

She made an outright face, which was uncommon for her. It bordered between raging and crying. "It was that or have you asking why I did not! I had to tell her because . . . because it's altogether possible that I will die before . . . she is their mother, as it was probably meant to be in the first place. I don't believe in fate or destiny, but does this not somehow seem ironic to you?"

His eyes stung. "Ironic?" He barked a mirthless laugh. "Ironic . . . that my wife is dying and my best friend is having our children? No, not ironic."

She cleared her throat again. "Poor word for it, perhaps. Maybe it is for the best," she said, a touch of cold logic creeping into her tone. "I am sure the Captain would make a more . . . natural mother, than I ever could."

He couldn't fight it, and the tears spilled over. Seven was dying, and she was saying maybe it was for the best? "Seven," he breathed. "Don't you dare."

"Dare what?"

"Don't . . . compare yourself . . . to her."

Seven sent him a scathing glance. "Why not? You do."

His mouth fell open. When he realized it had, he shut it, but the expression was out in the void now. He groaned, letting go of her hand so he could sink his face into his own. "Is that . . . what you think? Is that why you're saying all this? Because you think . . . you think that is some point of your death that then I . . ."

"Is that so wrong? Why does it hurt you? It doesn't hurt me. In fact, it seems logical, overused as that word is. You shouldn't let me keep you alone for . . . and what about the babies? Acoya and the female twin? They need two parents-"

"Oh, shut up, Seven. You don't know what you're talking about," he said, aghast. What was she saying? That he should just treat her death as an opening to run straight for Kathryn? That it had no deeper meaning than that she was not present. She would be gone. Never again would she even be around to say such indelicate things. She had all the tact of a deck plate sometimes. "Seven, I love you. I love you. This isn't about Kathryn or the babies or even me . . . you're dying. Doesn't that mean something?"

"Are you sure that you will be rid of me so easily?" she countered, though slightly gentler this time.

"What? Do you plan on coming back to haunt me?" he demanded through his tears.

Spirits . . . yes, I wish you would.

"If that's what I must do. Chakotay . . . I . . . I'm not trying to say that I think you are or would ever be . . . unfaithful to me but . . ." She drew a breath. "Don't treat it like you'll be betraying me if you stay with the Captain. I hope she realizes that too. I just -I want . . . you to be happy. Both of you. You can adapt."

"Oh, fuck adapting," he grated.

She was unimpressed be his profanity. "Nevertheless, you can and you will."

"Not if I die with you."

That got her. She stared hard at him. "You do not mean that. You . . . had better not mean that. You cannot. We have an alliance, and it is not two party. You cannot waive that."

He blinked. "What did you say?"

"I said we have an alliance."

"That's-"

"The fourth thing I ever said to you? Yes. I use it knowingly."

He grimaced. "You remember that?"

"Of course. I remember everything, even if there were some things I didn't understand, like why you kept the phaser rifle up when I told you to put it down." She paused, coughing. "I remember when I asked where the Captain was, and you looked so worried. I see it was worry now, I didn't then. I remember when you threatened to blow us all out into space . . . and you did, even though I survived. Now I know I was right in a way. We lack harmony, cohesion . . . but not greatness. I saw greatness in you, even though I didn't want to admit that a human individual could be . . . great."

"When . . . how did you arrive at that?" he asked, blinking more tears away.

"We were linked, remember?"

"Yes, of course. I always have. You . . . you were there then."

"I was, and I saw even if I didn't like it then." She smiled softly, even as she coughed a bit. "You were . . . the first person I remember calling me Annika. I remember you, Chakotay. There is no one else I'd rather share my thoughts with."

He choked back a sob. "Me neither. I'm so sorry Seven . . . for all of this."

"Don't apologize to me," she stated firmly. "I am not the victim. All I got out of this was betterment. There is nothing I regret . . . except perhaps hurting the Captain. I must speak with her. I . . . I hated her, sometimes, you know?"

"Yes. So did I. Sometimes."

"No, not like that. I mean I really-"

"Wanted to kill her?"

"Yes . . . but in the nicest possible way. She is why you must not even consider 'dying with me.' Our alliance is three way. She to us, you to us and I to both of you. You see that, right?"

Yes he saw, but only the painful part of it . . . until perhaps now. Seven, she had turned it into something supporting . . . that no one feeling was undermining another and there was no conflict. That . . . that he could love them both, as far as she was concerned.

But Seven was dying! His wife, his love . . . everything. How could she think that he would not die with her, even if not in the literal sense. He was dying already. He still wanted the floor to swallow him up.

Seven gestured at the door with a stiff right hand. "Go talk to the Captain. Straighten this out with her. Please. She needs it, I think."

He rose almost unconsciously to do as she wanted. "You always were my better half," he murmured sadly, bringing her other hand to his lips.

She smiled wanly, setting back into the pillow. "I'm not your better half," she replied as he moved towards the door.

She cleared her throat again. "I'm only a third of you . . . though undoubtedly the better of those."

He had to laugh, even through fresh tears.



To be continued

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