IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager, Janeway, Chakotay.
PART SEVEN
Already the queasiness had taken hold of her. Her eyes were on the main viewscreen, the face of the M'rath filling it ominously.
"On condition that you leave this area of space on the instant, Voyager," the M'rath barked. "You have one hour."
"That is all we need. We'll be on our way."
She shrugged as she indicated Harry cut visual and the screen showed again the debris of the skirmish with three M'rath vessels. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Turning tail would be the best in the circumstances.
She turned to Tuvok.
"Commander, you're in charge of damage control."
Tuvok nodded and as he left, Rollins was already on hand to take his place at Tuvok's station.
She didn't want to look at Chakotay. Their conversation in the sickbay still rankled. He had been harsh and she had cursed the doctor for informing him of her condition and her plans to terminate her pregnancy. Her body was changing. It was as if she could feel the foetus breathing, struggling for breath, wanting to get out.
She had almost lost it in sickbay when Chakotay challenged her.
And the doctor stood by, ready to eject both of them out an airlock. She had felt the bulkheads in sickbay closing in on her, making her light-headed with fear and hysteria. She never slept, had been on duty 'til well after midnight. And then this morning, when she entered sickbay, Chakotay was there…
*
"We're pregnant," he said. There was a gleam in his eyes, a hesitant joy that waited for her reaction before springing into fullness or despair.
"I am pregnant, Chakotay."
She saw the despair replacing the hesitant joy, the cloud settling in his eyes. She didn't care. It was her baby, her decision.
"Doctor tells me you want to consider termination, Kathryn. It's my child too."
"Correction, Chakotay. I have already decided to terminate."
What did he know?
"I want our baby. It's a living part of us."
"What happened was not supposed to happen, Commander."
"What, the sex or the pregnancy?"
She blanched. They had sex? Didn't they make love? Twice that night? Wasn't it the most liberating experience she had had? She had always been unresponsive and with Mark, she had been at her best faking for his sake. Mark was so sweet, so gullible, so unbelievably kind and unquestioning. But Chakotay delivered her that night from the chains of her torture at the hands of the Cardassians. Even now, the little she shared with the EMH was still too hard, too traumatic to tell Chakotay.
She was losing the baby anyway, so what difference did it make? She wasn't going to carry past four or five months. The last time a Cardassian soldier impregnated her, the foetus remained a full three months. Back on the Al Batani she had been hysterical after her ordeal and when she miscarried, she didn't know if she should cry or laugh. The Al Batani's doctor had been sworn to confidentiality. But he told her that she would always miscarry in the unlikely event of falling pregnant again. The Cardassian butchers had seen to that. She had wanted to expel any foreign body mixed with her ova out of her womb, never to see it, never to think about it. Her obsession had been all consuming. She had suppressed her trauma for years, became an upstanding captain in Starfleet, one of the youngest females to command a vessel. No one knew.
Now the Cardassian butchers, their scientists and their rutting soldiers had come back with a vengeance. Her body recoiled intensely, instinctively, horribly. It had rejected Owen Paris's sperm then. It was going to reject Chakotay. More than that, her reason was fleeing in the face of her fear and the intense hatred she had for what happened so long ago. Chakotay's face became a Cardassian's face and the EMH became a Cardassian butcher. She couldn't see clearly past them. Calm, utterly precise and calculating butchers who carved her insides.
"Kathryn…?"
"No way, Chakotay. Doctor, I'm ready for termination. I can't keep this baby. I told you yesterday. We're at war. I cannot be distracted."
"My God, Kathryn, you're letting a skirmish with hostile warmongering aliens come in the way of the most beautiful thing that can happen to a woman!"
"It is not the right time, Commander," she bit back, seeing his anger rise in the way his eyes flashed, the joy and despair gone. Her stomach was heaving. There wasn't much time. Her foetus was flawed. She didn't want it.
"Not the right time? What about the baby? Doesn't it deserve to live? Don't I have a say?"
"Captain, Commander, perhaps a better locale than the sickbay to war over your baby?"
"I'm not leaving here until you have performed the procedure, Doctor."
They heard the doctor sigh.
"Fine. You go ahead and kill that baby."
"It's a foetus. It's mine, and my decision."
"What about my rights? What about the baby?"
"I have sovereign power over it, to make any decision over its fate, and that includes termination."
"So help me God, Kathryn. You want to kill your own child?"
"If that is the way you're seeing it."
"Captain Janeway imbued with Federation ethics, of the preservation of life before all else."
"You don't understand, Commander. I am going to mis - "
"Then make me understand, Captain. How can you stand there and calmly tell the father of your child you have sole right over her destiny? That you can kill it in the blink of an eye? Obliterate it from your existence because it's an inconvenience to you?"
"I - "
She hated that he referred to the foetus as a baby. In the laboratory the butchers constantly talked of embryos and foetus. She didn't want to give it identity. She didn't want to think of baby girl or baby boy. She didn't want to think.
Then Chakotay threw her with his next salvo even before she could explain.
"Or, Captain, dare I say that killing your child is entirely in character for you?"
"Oh, my God, Chakotay," she said, deeply distressed by his accusation. "You know that isn't true..."
He was angry. His hands had long balled into fists. He looked like he wanted to strike her. The EMH stepped between them, pushing them apart.
"Please, officers! Captain, perhaps you should tell - "
"Doctor, not a word."
"Just like you went after Ransom, right, Captain?" Chakotay sneered as he cut in. "It didn't matter that he did what he did to ensure his crew's survival, you were going to kill him - "
"Chakotay, please…"
"And Noah Lessing would have been dead, remember? Didn't you almost kill him too? How many times did you cross the line?"
"Don't - "
"Let's go further back, now that we're on the topic of sovereign power. You thought nothing of killing Tuvix just so you could get Tuvok and Neelix back, never mind that Tuvix begged for his life, Captain. Yes, he begged for his life! A living, breathing, fully functional member of the crew, and you terminated his existence. So in charact - "
"That is not fair, Commander."
"Commander," the EMH said as he pushed Chakotay away from her, "you are upsetting the Captain."
"She's about to terminate my daughter. What do you think I should do. Let her go ahead and cross the line again?"
"You haven't considered other options."
She wanted to flee the sickbay. She didn't want to look at Chakotay again. He hit her hard. She was the captain. It was her task, however unenviable it was, to make decisions that would serve her crew best. However much it pained her to make those decisions, she had to make them to get her ship to Earth. Their goal was getting home. Her goal was to lead them home.
Blinded by tears, she stared at him.
"I am the captain of this vessel. I am the captain… I don't have the luxury of leaving major decisions to anyone else."
"Then let me help you decide for this life, Captain."
"I will abort, Chakotay. It's my decision."
"There are other options, Captain."
"I'm not listening to you - "
She turned and would have fled the sickbay had Chakotay not pulled her roughly back, forcing her to face him and face his wrath.
"I'm pleading here for the survival of an unborn baby. You cannot fault me on that, Kathryn."
"We can find a crewmember willing to surrogate, Captain," the EMH said, his voice coming through the haze of her near hysteria.
"What...?"
"Yes," Chakotay agreed, "a surrogate. That way you won't disfigure your precious body. It won't be a captain's inconvenience."
"That is not why I would consider it, Chakotay."
"Fine, I've got some reaction from you at least. Please, Kathryn, give me a few days. I'll find someone to carry your baby for you. But don't kill her. Don't kill this child..."
She stood rooted to the spot for several long minutes, unaware of the fact that the doctor had moved away and returned with a hypospray.
"Just something to relax you, Captain."
"No!" She recoiled at the sight of the hypospray. She strode quickly to the doors, leaving the two men behind, hearing their exclamation of outrage.
*************
END PART SEVEN