DISCLAIMER: It's Paramount's galaxy. The story is mine.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Chakotay's family introduce themselves to Seven—and they are a bit more… colorful than they were presented on Voyager. Chakotay's infamously twisted humor comes from somewhere—from being the quiet, studious, scientific kid in a family of eccentrics, and in a community where everyone has a gift and anything is possible, even naguales.

I've debated how much of a glossary to provide, and I've decided to go with my instincts and make it minimal. Most is, I think, easily understandable in context. But where something's important or interesting—and I remembered to write it down—I'll add a note at the end of the chapter. If you want something more—or if I've really butchered your native language and you want to vent—feel free to PM.

Deepest thanks to scifiromance for the beta and encouragement.

#

La Familia

Stardate 55450.83

El Pueblo de Ketzál, Trebus

Pakal followed Cisco out the door onto the porch, then stopped and looked out over the valley. The sun was the low gold of late autumn; this hadn't changed. No matter how anyone looked at it, the light was the same as it had always been and always would be. He closed his right eye and squinted—although it didn't matter which eye he closed as long as he squinted through only one of them—and then he saw the way other people saw: things as they were, now. There were hay bales scattered over the sparse fields, more than the year before or the year before that, but still not enough to provide for the pichú over the long winter. The apple trees were bare and as gnarled as his fingers against the sky, the meager harvest at its end. And the corn, the maíz, the foundation of their lives? There was enough to sustain them for a month, maybe two. They were reliant on the Federation, still, even as it made his old, withered skin crawl with shame.

But when he opened that eye again and squinted with the two, he saw the way he saw, what his mother called the twinsight, not only things as they were but as they would be. There were four times as many bales of hay in the pastures, the cribs were full of corn, the apples' branches bent low to the ground under the weight of the fruit, and the herds were abundant, growing heavy with cria and their winter fleece. So it was when he was a child, so it would be again. He saw it.

He stopped squinting and brought his eyes back to the porch. These things would not be without work. And there was work to be done now, although not of a physical nature. He set mugs of coffee in front of their guests and sat next to his husband. He looked at the two on the other side of the table. His nephew's sad eyes were scanning the valley and his enamorada's followed his gaze. Pakal cleared his throat, and when he had their attention, he offered the bottle of káapej to Chakotay. "De La Doña," he said in explanation.

Chakotay smiled broadly and poured a generous, but not greedy, glug into his coffee, then handed the bottle to his enamorada, the woman with the ojos celestes who wanted to be called by a number, which Pakal would not do. "Káapej, the local liqueur, made by La Doña, the local curandera," Chakotay explained. "It packs a punch."

"Thank you for the warning," she said. She was formal, contained, her movements and speech precise. She smiled at Pakal and nodded thanks, then poured a modest, but not stingy, amount for herself.

These Starfleet, Pakal thought, they require explanations for everything. He smiled. Chakotay had always been like that—even as a child, "por qué" was his favorite word, "pruébelo" his second. He sat back in his chair as the bottle was passed around. It was good to see his nephew again. A kakalotl cawed from a tree nearby. Pakal looked out over the valley with twinsight and decided to tell them a story—a story about welcoming guests to Ketzál.

He was six years old when Starfleet first arrived on his homeworld. The early corn had just been harvested and Pakal had just been given his full name. He was his father's son now, no longer his mother's baby. For the first time, he would be among the children scrambling for the first ear from the fire, a tradition de su pueblo. He'd been looking forward to it for as long as he could remember.

Then they had a fiesta, to celebrate that the Federation had remembered they were out here. And the viejos gave Starfleet the first ear of corn.

It was una tlamana for certain, Papá explained, as Pakal tried not to cry about it. A sacrifice. The gods would be pleased with his acceptance of the situation. El pueblo would be pleased—the Federation would provide medicine and education that would improve their lives; he would have oportunidades that Papá never had. But while the gods y el pueblo might be pleased, Pakal most certainly was not. It was a sacrifice to have to wait another year when he had already been waiting all of his life. He was still young enough that a year seemed an eternity.

"The Federation," his brother Kolopak said bitterly, "they show more respect for aliens than they do for us." They were at the market in the plaza. Kolopak was nominally minding the stall while Papá made deliveries; the boys were leaning against his cart, side-by-side, arms folded across their chests. Kolopak was twelve years old, twice Pakal's age, and knew more than twice as much as Pakal did, even though everyone said that Pakal was a very smart boy. "They preach fraternidad to otherworlders, but because we are different humans than they are, they want to turn us into clones."

Pakal had seen only one alien—a Cardassian—and he was kind of ugly. Scary ugly, with gray scales like an áain. He was hoping to see a Vulcan, but none had appeared yet among the Starfleet crew. He wasn't totally sure what a clone was—all right, he was not at all sure—but Kolopak was, and he obviously didn't think it was a good thing. That was good enough for Pakal.

A group of Starfleet officers strolled by. Kolopak eyed them under lowered lids, his expression surly, and Pakal tried his best to imitate him. The officers strutted like peacocks in their red uniforms. "Cabrones," Kolopak muttered. "Yo chingé a tus madres." He said it just loud enough for Starfleet to hear.

One of them smirked. Pakal remembered Papá warning them about a thing Starfleet had that let them hear Terran when people were talking something else—it was how they were able to speak to aliens. He wasn't sure what Kolopak meant but, by the rude gestures he made, he thought it might have something to do with the pichú macho humping la hendra. He was sure that if Mamá heard it, she would burst into tears and start chanting to Ixchel or María. He was absolutely sure that Papá would swat Kolopak once across the ass with his big hand, and then haul him by one skinny arm down to the Starfleet officers to apologize.

And that, to Kolopak, would be the worst humiliation. Pakal elbowed his brother in the ribs. Kolopak might have been twice Pakal's age, but Papá said he was getting más estúpido as he got older.

But Mamá had told him to never even think that something was the worst, because the gods and the ancestors would conspire to prove you wrong. Sometimes he wished he was católico like his friend Antonio, so he could make a cross on his forehead to ward off the results of stupid thoughts. But Mamá said that didn't work anyway.

But he still wished that he could and it did, because he had a very bad feeling about the crowd coming at them: a half-dozen of Papá's compadres with Papá in the center, and two Starfleet officers. Two of Papá's friends were trying to keep him from swinging at one of the officers.

"¿Qué chingados?" Kolopak muttered.

Júnior, Antonio's father, came running ahead, crossing himself. "Tu papá," he said to Kolopak. "He says he is a crow."

"¡Qué chingados!" Kolopak repeated, but he didn't once look at the sky.

Pakal did. Mamá said that he had la potencia, the gift, he could see… things. Agüeros. There was a big black bird in the sky, a kakalotl. He heard it shriek.

The Starfleet officers and Papá's compadres clustered around Kolopak, explaining the circumstances so fast and in such low voices that Pakal couldn't hear. Papá stood behind the cart, with his face up at el cielo. His eyes were closed and he swayed on his feet. He smiled. Whatever he was seeing behind his eyelids made him happy. Pakal closed his eyes and tried to see what Papá saw, but he couldn't.

Then the men approached Papá. Júnior took his arm. "K'in," he said softly. "Ven conmigo. Let's get you home."

"¡No!" Papá said, pulling his arm roughly away. "Vuelo." Pakal watched him sway. His movements looked like a kakalotl in flight.

Júnior looked at Starfleet. "He says he's flying," he explained.

Suddenly Papá looked at one of the officers, his face dark and angry. He bolted toward the officer, head down. He looked like a raptor diving for prey.

A third officer pushed his way into the crowd and gave Papá an injection in the neck. His knees gave out and the officer he'd tried to headbutt pushed him back so that he landed on his ass instead of his face in the dust. Papá's head lolled forward, and los compadres picked him up by the arms and started toward the house, followed by the three officers.

"I saw the bird," Pakal said to Kolopak. "I heard it."

Kolopak looked at him thoughtfully. "Vete," he said. "Tell them." Pakal followed Kolopak's eyes around the stall. Yatzil was looking at the early tomatoes; her baby sister Imix was in a sling on her chest. Yatzil saw Kolopak looking at her and smiled, shyly. "I'll mind the stall." He stood taller and smiled broadly, and as he sauntered over to Yatzil, Pakal could see the shadow of the man in the boy. He thought about this for a few moments, until Kolopak spun around and glared at him in frustration. "¡Ve!"

The compadres, except Júnior, were clustered in the yard, talking animatedly, all at once. "I saw the bird," Pakal said. They looked at him in silence for a few long minutes, then began talking again, all at once. He wondered if they ever understood each other. He pulled open the wooden screen door and went inside; it banged shut behind him but no one scolded. Papá was sitting at the table, head slumped forward, his eyes half-closed. Mamá sat next to him, leaning toward him, her brow knitted with worry, her lips drawn so tightly that Pakal couldn't see them. The Starfleet officer with the blue collar and the blue eyes sat on the other side of Papá, scanning him.

"Has this ever happened before?" the officer asked. His voice was deep and gentle, and the words drawled slowly out of his mouth. It reminded Pakal of the sound of the river over the rocks at the end of summer.

Mamá shook her head. "No, nunca jamás," she said. "Dioses mío."

Pakal scooted along the wall, with his back against it, trying to stay as far from Papá as he could. He wouldn't admit it to either of his parents and certainly never to Kolopak, but at the moment Papá scared the crap out of him. He crept behind Júnior, and stopped at the door to the salón. If he had to—if Papá moved in any way—he could bolt across the room and out the front door to safety. He'd done it before, escaping Kolopak and his friends.

The officer with the blue eyes set his scanner on the table and peered at Papá's face. "He's coming around," he said softly. He smiled reassuringly at Mamá, then he turned his head and looked at the other Starfleet. "Go back to the ship." One of the officers started to break in, but the blue-eyed officer cut him off. "That's an order, Lieutenants. Dismissed."

The officers snapped to attention. "Yes, sir," they said in unison, then turned crisply on their heels and marched out of the house. Pakal looked at the blue-eyed officer, impressed. He thought Kolopak might like his style—even if he was Starfleet.

Papá blinked a few times and shook his head. "¿Qué pasó?" he muttered. He looked at the officer. "Who are you?"

"Just a doctor who happened to be in the neighborhood when you needed assistance," he said with a friendly smile as he started to scan Papá again. "Leonard H. McCoy, chief medical officer aboard the USS Excelsior."

Júnior's mouth dropped open. Mamá's eyes opened wide. The revelation snapped Papá completely awake. Everyone knew who Doctor McCoy was—even way out here on Trebus. He and his compadres had saved the Federation's ass more times than anyone could count. Mamá sprang to the stove and started fresh water for coffee. This was big, bigger even than La Doña coming to visit. Pakal wondered if Captain Spock was on the Excelsior too. He hoped so. He really wanted to see a Vulcan, and Captain Spock was the most famous Vulcan of all.

"Estoy bien," Papá said, waving the scanner away. Mamá squinted at what was left of the last night's apple cake, trying to decide if there was enough to go around, or if she should just give Doctor McCoy the entire chunk.

"You're not fine," Doctor McCoy said. "You were disoriented and hallucinating."

"Dioses mío," Mamá mumbled as she ground the coffee beans.

"Estoy bien," Papá repeated. He pushed back his chair and stood up. "There's work to do."

"You need a complete examination," the doctor insisted.

"K'in," Mamá said, "listen to el médico…"

"I saw the bird," Pakal said. "A kakalotl. I heard it."

All faces turned to him; all but the doctor looked more surprised that he was there, than by what he said.

"Now, son…" Doctor McCoy said gently.

Papá smiled broadly and put his hand out to Pakal. "Ven acá, m'hijo," he said. He looked at Mamá. "We'll see you for supper."

As they walked out the door, Pakal turned to Mamá and the doctor. "I did see the bird," he said.

#

The kakalotl cawed again. "I saw the bird," Pakal said to Chakotay and Seven. "But I never saw a Vulcan." He sat back in his chair and took a long swallow of coffee, his eyes fixed on Seven's face.

Chakotay looked at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her reaction to his uncle's story. Her brow was quizzical, her eyes somehow both incredulous and skeptical, and the rest of her face remarkably placid, except for the tiniest quirk at the corners of her mouth, more in thought than in mirth—although there was probably a good bit of that suppressed, too. The infinite subtleties she could express without uttering a word never ceased to amaze him. He rested his elbow on the arm of his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The infinite eccentricities his family could express also never ceased to amaze him. And even now, closer to the midway point of a human lifespan than the beginning of it, he could still learn something new—like that his abuelo had started having hallucinations long before Chakotay was born, and that his father had a schoolboy crush on his aunt when his mother was an infant.

And that Leonard McCoy had coffee and apple cake in Abuelita's kitchen.

He probably should have paid more attention to these stories when he was younger.

"¡Bravo, Tíos, bravo!" Kana set a basket of apples on the porch and clapped, slowly and loudly. "¡Bravo!" She climbed the three steps, looking at the uncles. "Mi hermano returns from the dead, and for the first time since he joined Starfleet, brings a woman home to meet us, and you decide to inform her—before she's spent a full hour on the planet—that we're a family of naguales o lunáticos." She shook her head. "She's a scientist, Tíos. I doubt she believes in naguales…"

Chakotay leaped from his chair and interrupted her with a crushing embrace. "Gods, I've missed you," he murmured, into her ear. "And that is exactly why."

She pulled back and grinned at him, holding his face in her hands, as his eyes took in hers. She hadn't changed much, not really—new frown lines between the brows, strands of gray in her hair. But the smile was the same, the light in her eyes. "You're still too serious, Big Brother," she said. "Pero también te he extrañado."

Seven hung back, hesitant. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close; her back was tight with nerves as he introduced them. Seven offered her hand to Kana, but Kana hugged her instead. It took Seven a second to clasp her hands, briefly, to Kana's back. "Bienvenidos a nuestra familia," Kana said.

Seven smiled, a genuine, warm… relieved smile. "I am happy to be here," she replied.

Chakotay looked at his uncles, and then remembered Sveta's father, long ago, sitting sternly behind the desk in his library, his icy gray eyes—the same color as the landscape framed in the window behind him—inspecting Chakotay up and down. Even in his cadet's dress uniform, he knew he'd never pass muster. He rubbed the back of Seven's neck, sympathetically, and her shoulders relaxed, a little.

Pakal stared at her face. She awkwardly tried to rearrange her hair to cover her implants. Chakotay glared at Pakal.

"Perdóname," Pakal said to Seven. "Lo siento. Mi sobrino tells me with his eyes that I'm rude." He smiled contritely as Chakotay cringed. "Your eyes are… extraordinary."

Kana sat and buried her face in her palm.

"My eyes?" Seven repeated.

Pakal nodded, definitively, as if his meaning was incontrovertibly clear. Seven's brow furrowed in confusion. "Thank you," she said finally. "The left is cybernetic. Voyager's doctor did an excellent job matching the pigment of my human eye."

Cisco's left brow rose slightly—reflex or empathy? Pakal peered closely at Seven's cybernetic eye; Chakotay wondered what that view looked like from her perspective.

Kana stood, raised her hands, and rolled her eyes at Los Tíos. "Okay, let's give our guests a chance to settle in before supper." She turned to Chakotay. "And get a break from los locos," she muttered.

"I haven't said a word," Cisco pointed out in protest.

"You married him," Kana said.

Her cabin was about four hundred meters up a slight grade and through a grove of Treban pines. Los Tíos led the way, on either side of Seven, each pointing to things he thought important, one or the other occasionally taking her off the path into the brush. Chakotay lagged behind with Kana. He stopped as they entered the grove and looked up at the treetops, some forty meters above. That these old-growth woods survived was nothing short of a miracle. The firestorm had raced through the valley, from Old Ketzál to the sea, encroachment on the high pastures and forests blocked by geology and favorable winds. Even so, ash fall had smothered the land untouched by fire, and the rain's chemistry had been altered by the debris in the atmosphere. The pastures were scraggly and full of brush; the bottom land, once some of the most fertile on the planet, was gray and sterile.

But here, in the filtered sunlight in the grove, everything was as it had been, before. "Remember how Father used to bring us up here to meditate when he thought we weren't being appreciative enough?" Chakotay asked.

Kana chuckled. "He used to bring you up here to meditate," she said. "Because you were always so… contrary." She winked to let him know she was teasing, but he scowled at her anyway. "Me, he brought up here to find mushrooms." She nodded toward Seven, Cisco and Pakal, who were crouched at the base of a tree about ten meters away, examining the ground in front of them.

"They're gathering mushrooms?" Chakotay asked, incredulously. Not that he'd mind—Seven made a delicious mushroom soup. It just seemed like an odd thing to do with her, right off the bat, before they'd even shown her where she'd be staying.

"Treban tour guides, sharing their favorite foraging spots," Kana said brightly. "It's not like we have an abundance of tourist attractions around here." She laughed. "They seem kind of intrigued by her."

"What the hell was that about her eyes?" Chakotay asked, his tone more irritated than he'd intended.

Kana looked at him sharply, then laughed. "¡Ay! That was awkward," she agreed. "In fairness, I think all Pakal was talking about was the color."

"The color?" he asked, frowning. "It's not like they've never seen blue eyes before."

Kana looked up at a kakalotl's caw, and then studied Chakotay's face. "It's the shade of blue, I think," she said at last, with a shrug, leaving him with the distinct impression that she'd left something unsaid, that there was something he was supposed to know, but didn't. Which pretty much summarized his life on this planet; it was good to be reminded of that early.

"You really don't think it had anything to do with the Borg hardware embedded in her face?" Chakotay asked.

Kana smiled grimly and shrugged. "Borg aren't high on the existential horror list here," she said. She gestured toward the sky with a sweep of her arm. "They're out there, somewhere. Mythical. We're probably too primitive to interest them." She chuckled. "Now if you'd brought home a Cardassian…"

He snorted loudly and exploded in laughter which he thought could be fairly described as maniacal. He laughed until his sides ached and his face hurt. He laughed until his tears made his cheeks burn. He laughed until he fell to his knees. Gasping for breath, he looked ahead on the trail. Seven and Los Tíos had stopped and were watching him, quizzically. Kana eyed him more warily, as if monitoring him for the first signs of dementia.

"Seska was Cardassian," Chakotay said finally. He'd introduced them on Hakton VII; Kana was there for political negotiations, he and Seska on a weapons run.

"¿Qué chingados?" Kana murmured.

They hadn't gotten on well; Seska had been at her neediest, clingiest—most manipulative, he knew now—and Kana had no patience for drama. He'd assumed at the time it was Seska's low self-esteem—the child of the labor camps meeting an ambassador and renowned historian. Kana was a denizen of the rarified twin towers of Federation academia and politics. Seska was self-educated, street smart—or so the story went. He'd wanted to protect her. She played to that, masterfully.

He nodded. "Seska was Cardassian," he repeated. "A genetically-altered agent planted on my ship. In my bed." He spat the last word out, the taste of that betrayal still bitter.

Kana's eyes were wide. "You were that important that the Obsidian Order planted a spy on your ship?" she asked. A sly grin spread across her face. "Tracked by the Federation and Cardassia? 'Mano, I'm impressed."

He snorted. "What would you call that?" he asked, with a tight smile. "Looking on the bright side?"

She chuckled. "We find our scraps of pride where we can," she said. "And our heroes."

He felt a cold draft of air blow through and shivered. "I'm no hero," he said, coldly.

Kana cocked her head and smiled, a small, sad sort of smile. "Uh, yeah, 'mano, you are," she said gently.

He shook his head. "There's nothing heroic in revenge," he insisted, his voice raspy, thinking of the first Cardassian he'd dispatched with his bare hands; it had been self-defense—the Cardie would have killed him as easily—but still he remembered the satisfaction, the elation, as he'd felt his opponent's skull shatter against the rocks, and how he repeated the pounding again and again. Now, his stomach clenched in disgust and he fought the urge to vomit.

She put her arms around him and hugged him close. He closed his eyes, leaned into her, and breathed deeply. "Maybe not," she conceded. "But you fought for us. That's all that matters here."

Was it enough? Did it make up for all the years he'd spent trying to get as far from here as he could? Could anything he'd done since the Federation betrayed them make up for his abandoning them all those years before? They held each other tightly, swaying slightly, while Los Tíos and Seven watched them from a distance. "That's not what I wanted," he whispered.

She pulled back from the embrace and smiled sadly, cupping his cheek in her strong, capable hand. "Yo tampoco, hermano," she said. "But no one asked us what we wanted."

#

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The North American landscape is rich in native plants and animals that were misnamed by European settlers, who named new-to-them things after something similar back home, without any sort of botanical or zoological connection. Thus, we have a lot of "roses" that really aren't roses at all. Frankly, it's easier to use vocabulary that already exists, rather than make stuff up—both for settlers and for writers. So on Trebus, an "áain" (Mayan for alligator) is a native reptile with powerful jaws. "Maravillas" (Spanish) are marigold-like wildflowers. And K'in says he's a "nagual" (Náhuatl), a person capable of turning into an animal, in his case a "kakalotl" (Náhuatl), a Treban corvid, similar to a raven or crow.

"Pichú" I made up—based on something, although what that was is long forgotten. The pichú is a native ruminant that the early colonists domesticated. It's similar to a Terran alpaca, but with a crimped fleece, like a sheep, and larger, like a llama—a good, all-purpose animal for a colony on the frontier, something that provides fiber, milk, meat, fertilizer, and can act as a beast of burden on terrain where land vehicles can't go. Like alpacas, a male is a "macho," a female is a "hendra," and a baby is a "cria." And like alpaca cria, pichú cria are the cutest things on the planet. That's probably not important, but I thought I'd mention it.

When Chakotay was a kid, "why" was his favorite word, "prove it" his second-favorite.

"Pueblo" refers to both the village and the people in it.

Doctor McCoy. I figure if he can appear at 137 in TNG, then it's not such a stretch to imagine a seventy-eight year-old McCoy serving under his old comrade Sulu on the Excelsior in 2305. Humans live a great long time in the Star Trek universe; it makes sense that we'll be hale and hearty well into our dotage. And what better place for a country doctor to make a house call than on a country planet?

Yes, Kolopak was a foul-mouthed, punk-ass kid.

When Kana and Chakotay meet each other, she says, "I've missed you, too." In her final line of dialogue, she says, "Me neither, brother."