Prompt 47: "Did you get my letter?" (C/7 & Sekaya)

Episode: "Author, Author"

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Well, that's just great, thought Sekaya. The first time in seven years I get to talk to Chakotay, and the transmission goes spotty. This is exactly why Papa preferred the old ways.

She gave her comm screen a good whack against the table, but the static didn't clear. Three minutes. They had three minutes and were wasting it on malfunctioning technology. Not that she knew what she'd say to him, anyway. They'd been writing to each other for three years, but face to face – even via screen – was a different matter.

"Stand by, Commander. I can correct this." A young woman's voice, crackly and indistinct, came through the line.

Sekaya was startled. She'd assumed the communications were private. But of course they wouldn't be; whatever feat of high-level engineering required to send a message from the Delta Quadrant would have to be complicated enough to require a specialist present.

Whatever the officer was doing, it seemed to work, because the static cleared up. She could see a room with blue-gray walls, lit by bright computer screens, with metallic double doors. In the foreground was Chakotay – oh, how she'd missed her stupid big brother, he was fit and healthy and had a dimpled smile on his face, and even the Starfleet uniform suited him – and standing next to him, so close their shoulders brushed, typing on the console with fingers that glittered with metal, was …

"Great Spirits! You're Seven of Nine, aren't you?"

Sekaya knew that Voyager had a liberated Borg drone on board, but she had been picturing a gray-skinned zombie, not a pretty woman in her late twenties. Some of what Chakotay had written about his strange new shipmate suddenly had quite a different ring to it. She would have to read those letters again.

"Affirmative," said Seven of Nine. "I will leave if you prefer … "

She began backing out of frame, with an awkwardness – no, a wariness – that reminded Sekaya instantly of the trauma survivors she tried to counsel as a shaman.

"No, no, stay. I've been hoping to introduce you." Chakotay put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She stayed. "Seven, this is my sister, Shaman Sekaya of the Inheritor Nation."

He shot a stern look at Sekaya through the camera that said Be polite. She shot him another look right back: What do you take me for? It was amazing how this nonverbal shorthand could come back, even after not seeing each other for so long. She'd show him how polite she could be.

Now, what positive thing could she find to say about Seven? Several, actually. She had rarely seen her stubborn brother change his mind so completely about a person as he had about her in the past three years. Somehow the terrifying machine woman who was a danger to the whole crew had become the teammate who turned to him for spiritual advice, helped him salvage historical artifacts like the Ares, and pulled him out of sinkholes on Demon-class planets,

"Pleased to meet you, Seven. So," she smiled at the Borg woman, "I take it I have you to thank for saving my brother?"

"To which occasion are you referring?"

"What, there was more than one?" Trust Chakotay to downplay how dangerous his life was so she wouldn't worry; he'd done the same when he was in the Maquis, the absolute idiot. Didn't he realize that she'd worry about him anyway? "Just what have you been doing out there?"

"Didn't you get my letters?" Chakotay asked innocently.

"Clearly you didn't tell me enough in them."

"Commander Chakotay is highly capable." A hint of warmth came into the Borg woman's formal voice. "So is the rest of this crew. I assure you, ma'am, our journey is as safe as circumstances permit."

"Highly capable, eh?" Chakotay gave his colleague a teasing, sidelong glance; their eyes met briefly before she looked back down at her console. "You didn't seem to think so on Ledos when you came to rescue me."

"That was a misunderstanding." Seven of Nine actually blushed.

Good heavens, the two of them were flirting. Sekaya didn't know whether to be curious, appalled or amused, but curiosity won out. "Are you going to tell me what happened on Ledos, or do I have to wait until you get home?"

"Nothing happened," Chakotay demurred a little too quickly. "At least … Let's just say our mission took a detour. Our shuttle was down, I broke my ankle, and we lost track of each other in the jungle, but I ran into some of the locals and they were very helpful. They treated my injury and gave me a place to stay the night. Fascinating people, Kay, I wish you and Father could've been there! They were hunter-gatherers, with a gesture-based language, but their healing methods were so effective even our Doctor was impressed … "

His eyes shone with academic fervor. Sekaya braced herself for one of his lectures, but Seven headed him off neatly: "When I found him, he was lying in a cave surrounded by strangers with spears. For all I knew, they could have taken him captive."

"So, in storms Seven with her flashlight - "

"I did not storm."

" – And says, "Step away from him!" And they scattered everywhere." Chakotay grinned.

"I am not in the habit of frightening strangers if I can avoid it," she added, turning back to Sekaya with a self-conscious twist of her human hand against her cybernetic one. "I was only … "

"You were only looking after my clumsy big brother," Sekaya finished with a smile. "Fair enough. He does take a lot of looking after."

"Be careful, little sister," Chakotay rumbled in mock anger, but still looking happier than she'd seen him look in ages. "Or I'll tell her what's embarrassing about you."

"I don't care if you do," she retorted. "As long as you don't disappear for another seven years."

"I'll do my best."

His smile faded. His eyes conveyed a silent apology for everything they'd been arguing about in their letters; all the times he had left her and the old ways behind, first for Starfleet, then for the Maquis.

She'd been so angry with him, still was, but it was a surface kind of anger. Underneath it, she was mostly grateful he was still alive, and seeing him in person only made that stronger.

"Thirty seconds of comm time remaining," said Seven.

"Keep writing, Tay," said Sekaya.

"You too. Send me all the news from home - "

"I will."

"Tell the cousins I said hello - "

" – And don't do anything stupid out there."

They spoke over each other rapidly as the seconds ticked down in the corner of the screen, only understanding about half of what the other said, but it was enough to guess.

"Ancestors guide you," he said, with a sincerity she never would have believed possible ten years ago. Could it be he'd found faith out there, of all places, or had that happened earlier?

"I'll keep you in my prayers," said Sekaya, bowing with her hand over her heart. "Both of you," with another bow for Seven of Nine, who looked surprised, but not displeased.

The connection broke.

For a moment, she sat alone in her empty cottage, looking out through her kitchen window at the bare brown fields that were the result of Cardassian agriculture on her once green planet, with a blank screen and cold cup of tea at her elbow, and she felt very much alone.

Then she got up, smoothed her dress, tossed her braid back over her shoulder, and headed out the door. She had a million things to do and not enough time to do them. She brushed her fingers against the medicine wheel tapestry on the wall, and it gave her strength.

He was alive. He was happy. She would see him again.

And until then, there was always the next letter.