Prompt 36: "We'll figure it out." (C/7)

Episode: Repentance

/

When Chakotay went to Astrometrics to pick up Seven's report, he found that the stellar formations on the screen looked familiar. Something about that nagged at the back of his mind; it was unlike Seven to pore over maps of an area already left behind. It was also unlike her to stand as she was standing now, her hands unmoving on the console, her concentration lightyears away. The blue, green and pink lights of the screen cast strange and beautiful colors over her face.

She pointed silently to the padd she had set out for him. He tucked it into his pocket.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

"Ornalla the Mother and Paedos the Hunter."

Chakotay was mystified, but then she turned around and, with some difficulty, came back to the present moment. "I was searching for the constellations Iko invented. He used to tell me stories about them."

So she was thinking about the Nygean prisoner she'd tried to save. She had saved him, in a way – he'd accepted his death as a willing atonement for the lives he had taken – but that didn't stop her grieving. It shouldn't; the man had been her friend. They'd had the stars in common. It was a universal instinct, perhaps, for people who felt trapped or burdened, to look up at the sky for solace.

Chakotay stood beside Seven to look up at the screen. "What kind of stories?"

Maybe retelling them would help her, if only a little.

"They were inconsistent. The first time, he said the Hunter's role was to chase the Beast, but later, it was to protect the Mother."

"Maybe it changed because he changed."

The more he looked, the more he could in fact trace a pattern in the stars, as sentient beings did all over the galaxy when trying to make sense of the universe. As an anthropologist, he'd always been fascinated by the myths people created around constellations. This small fragment of a story, for example, told Chakotay more about Iko than the prison guards ever could have known.

After all, he, too, knew what it was like to choose to protect rather than hunt.

"I know he did." Her voice wavered. "It made no difference … why should he be executed for one murder while I am still free after assimilating thousands?"

Chakotay caught his breath in sympathetic horror. "Seven … you actually feel guilty for what the Collective forced you to do as a drone?"

"I do."

She really didn't need to. He remembered from his encounter with Riley Frazier just how irresistible the voice of the hive mind was when it entered your brain. Even that one time Seven had been severed from the Collective along with Marika, P'Chan and Lansor and had forced their minds together, she had been reacting as a terrified six-year-old child.

It must hurt so much, carrying that guilt, but a part of him understood.

"You were in no way responsible for your actions - "

"Neither was Iko. He was brain-damaged. Since my nanoprobes repaired the damage, he was learning empathy, just as I did after being severed from the Collective."

Chakotay was inclined to believe that Seven herself had done as much, perhaps even more, to redeem Iko than her nanoprobes. After being feared and mistrusted for most of his life, it must have been a relief to meet someone as forthright and open-minded as she was. Even her cool-headed courage when he'd held her hostage must have won his respect.

"He was an intelligent and creative man - " She glanced at the constellations on the screen. "And given the chance, he could have led a fulfilling life. Why did no one give him that chance?"

She had to be speaking rhetorically, since she already knew how Iko's appeal had gone. Chakotay privately thought that leaving the punishment of a crime up to the victim's family sounded like a recipe for disaster; it was a wonder that the Nygean justice system functioned at all.

"I used to believe in revenge too, you know," he admitted. "Like the Nygeans. If someone had caught the Cardassian officers who destroyed my home and let me sentence them, I'd have gone for the death penalty too. Revenge was why I joined the Maquis in the first place." Even after more than a decade, just thinking about it threatened to reignite the same slow rage that had smoldered inside him every day back then. He snuffed the embers out as best he could, avoiding Seven's eyes until he got through what he had to say.

"But it's never as clear-cut as you think it's going to be. You tell yourself you're fighting for a good cause, that there are lines you'll never cross, but the lines get blurrier the longer you fight."

He remembered watching the escape pods detach from a Cardassian ship he'd just destroyed, shooting each pod so no one would survive to report the Valjean's position. What had seemed so necessary at the time – the Valjean had been badly damaged too and couldn't have survived any Cardassian reinforcements – had haunted him afterwards. He couldn't help wondering how it must have felt for those soldiers, thinking they were safe only to die in floating tin cans, unable to defend themselves.

"If the Caretaker hadn't thrown my ship into Voyager's way, I don't like to think of what I would've grown into. Did I deserve the second chance Captain Janeway gave me? … Sometimes I don't know."

"Of course you do!"

The sudden fierceness of Seven's tone took him by surprise. She sounded protective, like she was on his side, even against his own personal demons. He met her eyes and saw they were blue as warp cores, blazing with conviction. She might doubt her own moral compass, but she clearly trusted his.

"My point is," he said, "I did get a second chance, and so did you. The fact that Iko didn't is a cause to grieve, but not to feel guilty. If he had been pardoned, what would you have wanted him to do?"

"I would have … " Pain and anger at the memory of her lost friend crystallized into understanding in her eyes. "I would have wanted him to live well."

"Don't you think he'd want the same for you?"

He recognized her smile, fleeting and unsteady as it was, as an act of courage.

"For you as well, Commander – and others on this crew," she said. "We must all adapt to our second chances."

"We'll figure it out."

They stood shoulder to shoulder a moment longer, and this time, Chakotay's imagination sparked to life. He could almost see Iko's constellations: the Mother spreading her cloak to shelter her children, the Hunter drawing his bow to aim at the snarling Beast that threatened them. Archetypal figures you could find in almost every humanoid mythology … so if the Mother's hair was golden and her cloak bright blue, the Hunter had a tattooed face, and neither of them looked at all Nygean, surely that was a coincidence.