Disclaimer: I don't own it, but I own my brain and my computer. So there.



Chapter Seventeen



Wheresoever thou art our agony will find Thee

Enthroned on the darkest altar of out heartbreak

Perfect. Beast, brute, bastard. O dog my god!

--George Barker



Dr. Crawford turned to the nurse behind her. "Mark that. Both twins successfully transported at 1434."

She had always known her smallness was a curse. The doctor had eventually given up and ordered a fetal transport, since she was never going to deliver both babies naturally. Not that Kathryn objected to the niceties of having her labour cut short. The painkillers still worked, but she could feel how tense her muscles were. That was going to hurt tomorrow.

She got one good look at the babies and began to cry unabashedly. They were Chakotay's children, no doubt. Both already had a crop of dark hair on the crown of their heads. Her mother would never believe that a Janeway could give birth to such a dark pair of babies. She hoped there was something of Seven in them, maybe something they'd grow into. She couldn't believe how small they were -those were the feet and fists that had caused her so much aggravation?

Chakotay also took a long look at his children from across the room, but somehow couldn't seem to convince himself to move. He looked at them for a long moment, listening to them scream about the very indignity of being born and then looked down at her. He . . . he looked at her as if he'd never seen her before.

"Kathryn . . ." he began, sort of choking on it. He couldn't seem to get anything else out.

She waved a dismissing hand at him. "Oh, I know. Never mind. Don't turn to mush on me." Throughout that admonition, she wept. "We have to take them to Seven as soon as they're able. She has to see them. Now. There isn't that much time to dawdle around."

"Aren't you tired?" he managed.

"Tired? God, no. I'm fine."

He sank into the chair that was beside the bed. "Well I am," he said, running a hand through his hair. "How can't you be tired? You've been up since I called you at . . . what? It was four in the morning?"

"Maybe. Who cares? I'll take energy if I've got it. Oh, wow. Coffee," she stated, realizing that point. "Chakotay, could you go get me a coffee?"

He eyed her warily. "Not with that many drugs in your system. Besides, I think that nurse has something else to give to you."

She frowned at him. In point of fact, she did feel a little giddy. Who wouldn't? This was some sort of day. Abruptly she crashed back down to Earth when a nurse gently deposited the unnamed baby girl into her arms. Kathryn hiccuped, trying not to bawl outright. She was beautiful, that little nameless child. She at least wasn't crying any more and looked sleepily upwards with blue-gray eyes. Kathryn wondered if they would be brown, like Chakotay's, when she was older.

"Oh . . . what are we going to name her?" she asked in wonder, fumbling at the buttons on the front of her shirt. She had to nurse them, she felt positively heavy with it. Damn hormones, screwing with her mammary glands. Every soft sound the baby made seemed bound to get her shirt soaked. Thankfully, her bra had a clasp at the front.

Chakotay didn't seem to know what to do with his eyes. "Seven said she was going to think about a name for her."

"Let's hope she came up with something. Ah!"

"What?"

"Nothing . . . I'm just glad babies aren't born with teeth." The baby girl didn't seem so much tired as ravenously hungry. Conversely, it calmed her mother. Everything was fine now. Nothing was going wrong and everyone involved seemed happy. Except for Acoya, he didn't seem to like being left out. His wailing didn't seem to bother his sister in the least, even as he was placed next to her. They were so small, she could hold them both at once with no trouble. Why were they so small? They weren't all that premature, only a week. She'd certainly been big.

On that thought she looked down, lifting a foot. Uncontrollably, she giggled. Was that me? "Oh, wow, I can see my feet again. Next, I'll be able to wear shoes that have laces without getting help."

"That's provided you aren't sore as hell," Chakotay murmured, finally seemed to have decided that it was all right to look at her, since she was only nursing the babies.

She made a face, feeling the tensity in her muscles. "Shut up. Don't rain on my parade."

He frowned at her quizzically. "What was in those hyposprays?"

"I don't know, but I don't think that's all of my good mood."

"Must be some of it. If I didn't know better, I could swear you were drunk."

"Three hyposprays to the wind," she stated, grinning. "No, that's not it. Come on, Chakotay. We have children! Stop looking so depressed. It's wonderful."

"It is, but I remember why we were here in the first place."

Her eyes stung a little. "What, you think I forgot? Why do you think I'm in such a rush to take these babies down there? Because the painkillers have gone to my head? And that's not even it! Starfleet doesn't use narcotic drugs, especially on women giving birth. Can't I just be in a good mood for once?"

He looked slightly contrite at least. "Well, you aren't anymore. Sorry."

"Don't be . . . it's not your fault. Just stop being such a doomsayer. And don't you dare be anything but elated when we get down there. Seven's depressed enough, she doesn't need your bad mood on her head too. She hates it when she thinks she's upset you. It's a strange guilt thing of hers."

He nodded. "I know, and it makes me feel guilty right back."

"Poor Chakotay. How did you get stuck with us, hmm?"

He shrugged. "It was a combination of the Caretaker, a field commission, seven's lessons with the Doctor and a whole lot of sleepless nights."

She made a face at him. "Commander, I should think you were hinting at something."

He snorted. "Who said I was hinting? It was obvious, if you ask me. It was obvious if you ask anyone. Did you know that your standard bulkheads between quarters are only about half a metre thick? That's a fact that weighed heavily on me for a long time."

Her eyebrows climbed. "Is that an admission?"

"Since when do I have to admit anything? You know the story by now, I hope."

"Well, not all of it, but we've got plenty of time. It's not a crime, you know."

He looked at her seriously. "What isn't?"

"To love both of us."

"That's awfully presumptuous of you," he stated calmly.

"Yes, it is, but I presume correctly, don't I? And I can afford to be presumptuous. I outrank you."

"We aren't on the ship, Kathryn."

She snorted, looking down at the children. Their children. "No, but didn't you know that mothers automatically outrank fathers? Seven and I will show no mercy, you know. Now you hold them while I straighten myself out, and we'll go down there."

"Yes, ma'am."

***



"Someone else call it. I can't do it," the Doctor said, his voice deadly quiet.

Seven had been in great pain, he could tell. Some part of her cortical array just would not let her succumb to pain, and so she had stared at him with wide, alert eyes, gasping air into her lungs, but to no avail, because her heart had given up on working.

And he'd caused her more pain by shocking her heart and injecting enough stimulant medication to almost have her seizing. She held his hand with the good left one, her near-useless right hand clutched in a stiff, spasmodic fist as she fought with her rebelling body. She had always had such control over herself, what had happened to that?

He had seen some sort of guilty look in her wide eyes, as if she was apologising for causing such trouble. He'd have put up with any kind of trouble if it would have made her healthy again. But to do that, one would have to rebuild her almost completely, and that smacked of the Borg. He hated the Borg with a passion that he didn't know was in him. They had done this to her. They had damned her to an early grave.

At least now she seemed peaceful, like she was no longer fighting with anything.

The Doctor wished for a moment that he was human . . . so that he could feel something other than artificial anger and pain. He knew it was artificial, he could almost hear himself accessing behaviour protocols. How did it feel just to feel? Without a second thought, just being subject to an emotion rather than an algorithm that told him he should feel terrible about everything.

The only reason he couldn't call it was that his behaviour protocol thought that was something he should feel and say.

But was that it? He didn't think so. There was no behaviour subroutine that was specifically programmed to deal with this, so he supposed he was improvising. It didn't feel like it, despite that. Artificial as the thought was, he wanted to go decompile himself.

He loved her, and for a moment she had seemed to see that. That there was something beyond algorithms. She had never seen that before, he didn't think. She'd never given any indication of thinking of him as more than a walking database, albeit one that was her friend. "Tempus fugit," she had said. Time is fleeting . . . oddly appropriate, considering.

And then he had kissed her forehead.

She had smiled slightly, and died very quietly, but for the raucous alarms of the various monitors trained on her. She would never see her children, and they were what she had died for. Fate was so terribly cruel to her, and why was that? What had she ever done to deserve such trouble? But somehow . . . somehow she had been happy. He didn't understand, he was only an interesting piece of technology.

"I said call it," he snapped at the nurse at the foot of the bed.

Seven looked like she was sleeping, but she was so pale, even through the yellow cast of jaundice. She was so beautiful, and she had neither known nor cared about it that he could discern. Did Chakotay know better?

It had been some time since her death, and no one had called it, as if he passage had gone unnoticed. That pained him. She was too remarkable not to be noticed. And then it came, the final words of the medical profession. A cap to everything.

"Time of death: 1435."

And he'd wanted them to call it, yet he didn't. It was so final. She couldn't be gone. Not dead. Not Seven . . . not her beautiful mind, her carefully reined-in imagination. Not the woman he had taught to interact with humans. No, certainly not her. Someone else.

And yet, Seven of Nine was dead, having never seen her children.

Where was Chakotay? He should have been here with her . . . No, he was with the captain, who was giving birth. Wasn't it an impossible circle? Where should the Commander be, with his dying wife or with the woman who was giving birth to his children and whom he had loved so obviously for years? Impossible thing.

Wasn't that the truth of it? This was not something that could be pulled apart and justified, it just was.

But where was Chakotay. He wasn't going to page him for this. That was too cruel, even if he was jealous and angry that the Commander was not there in the first place. Now, had Seven known that at all? Probably not, she ignored things when it suited her.

He found that, as he held her lifeless hand, he could not bear to think of her in the past tense.



To be continued

***