Prompt 57: "There is enough room for both of us." (C&7)

Episode: "One"

/

Chakotay came out of stasis at the same time as Kathryn. Her signature raspy voice asking after the crew was the first thing he heard. It didn't feel exactly like waking up from a nap, though, as the Doctor had promised. He felt dizzy and shaky, with a pounding headache, and had to take several deep breaths before he could pull himself to a sitting position.

"We cleared the nebula," said the Doctor, unexpectedly subdued, as he helped Kathryn climb out of her stasis chamber. "The crew is … well, most of the crew is fine."

"Excellent work, Doctor. What about Seven?"

"Seven is … oh, Captain, Commander, please believe me, I did everything I could."

He wrung his hands, looking from one CO to the other with imploring eyes. He seemed to have aged in the past month, but surely that was impossible? Or maybe it was anxiety that had carved his frown lines so much deeper into his face.

Chakotay's hands tightened along the edges of the stasis chamber. He hauled himself out and went to stand beside Kathryn, staring down the Doctor for answers.

He'd warned her from the beginning that putting a mentally unstable ex-Borg with no respect for authority in charge of Voyager was a bad idea. Worst-case scenarios ran through his head, one after the other: She'd sabotaged the stasis chambers. She'd had a malfunction in her cybernetic implants and died. She'd tried to turn Voyager's course around and contact the Collective …

"What the hell happened?" Kathryn asked.

"The radiation caused severe damage to Voyager's systems, including my mobile emitter. Seven had to reroute power from every available source to keep the stasis chambers running, even … even life support. By the time I managed to repair my emitter and get down here, she was half frozen and asphyxiated in that corner."

The Doctor pointed to a spot between the wall panel and Kathryn's stasis pod. Chakotay could picture Seven right there, curled up and gasping, ice forming on her biosuit. His own breath hitched painfully in his chest.

"Is she going to make it?" he asked.

Kathryn and the Doctor turned to look at him in surprise, as this was the first time he'd spoken. His voice was a rusty croak.

"I hope so, Commander, now that we're out of the nebula." For once, the EMH didn't sound the least bit proud of himself; only weary and matter-of-fact. "To be completely certain, I need to wake up the rest of the crew."

"Do it, Doctor," said Kathryn. "Oh, and … "

"Yes, Captain?"

"Thank you for everything. We couldn't have done this without you." She squeezed the Doctor's arm and looked up at him with affectionate pride.

The hologram inclined his bald head in respectful acknowledgement and turned to the next stasis pod in line.

Chakotay followed him as Kathryn was doing, offering soothing words and the occasional hand down, but his mind was only two-thirds on the job. Of all the smiles of relief from the crew that greeted him, all the sarcastic banter between Harry and Tom and the Doctor's repeated assurances that the stasis chambers had worked and everyone was in good health, he couldn't stop thinking about Seven.

Of all the possible outcomes, giving up her life to protect the crew was one he'd never even considered.

What did that say about her … or him?

/

Seven couldn't get used to the mess hall being crowded again after it had been empty for so long. She clutched her glass of nutritional supplement and forced herself to concentrate on finding an empty seat.

There did not seem to be one. All her shipmates must have had the same idea and were clustering in tight groups, pushing tables together, laughing and talking over steaming bowls of soup as if they hadn't seen each other in a month, which was true. Only Commander Chakotay sat alone, frowning at a padd and ignoring his soup, but she couldn't possibly disturb him.

("I never wanted her here in the first place.")

She backed away. One of the many useful qualities of a liquid diet, she thought wryly, was its potential for consumption anywhere on board, with or without a table.

"No, please, sit down." The Commander nudged the chair opposite him with his boot, pushing it outward. "There's enough room for both of us."

She sat down and sipped her milkshake at the steady pace she had learned, slow enough to avoid what the Doctor nicknamed brain freeze, fast enough to avoid wasting time. Her tablemate ate his soup at the same pace. Neither of them spoke. Seven wondered which of the Doctor's social lessons applied to this scenario.

What did you say to a man when you kept remembering his face, burned and bloody, staring at you with contempt during one of the worst moments of her life?

("She'll fall apart before we get out of the nebula.")

"Listen, Seven … " His real voice was softer than his hallucinatory one. "I can only imagine what you must have been through, but you did a very brave thing. We all owe you our lives."

"You are mistaken, Commander."

"How so?"

"Rerouting life support was not brave. It was simply an attempt to compensate for my own selfishness. I had previously begun to disconnect the stasis chambers in order to preserve my own life."

("I knew she didn't care," an imaginary Tom Paris sneered in her memory.)

The Commander's eyes widened and put down his spoon. It clattered sharply against the bowl.

"My worst-case scenarios … " he murmured.

"You were correct. I am a danger to this crew."

He said nothing for so long that she began to fear that was his only answer, that he'd given up any attempt to speak to her because she was beneath contempt. When he did speak, she almost dropped her glass.

"I don't believe that. Not anymore."

"Explain."

"I read the sensor logs from the bridge, you know. All they told me is that someone was suffering from extraordinary mental strain and still chose to come through for us."

Seven poked holes into the viscous milkshake with her straw, lost for words.

"I was wrong about you, and believe me," his dimples became visible for less than a second, "I'm grateful."

She thought of how his past self had tried to eject her from the airlock, and she knew what he meant.

"So am I, Commander."