Fic: Revelation
Title: “Revelation”
Fandom: Sherlock / Star Trek: Voyager
Characters/Pairing: Chakotay/Lestrade, past John/Lestrade, Tuvok, Tom Paris
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Descriptions of injury; language; angst; fluff
Word Count: c. 3,000
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Chakotay comes to a realization after a disastrous away mission.
Notes: This follows “Regeneration.” In the VOY timeline, it takes place after “Message in a Bottle.” Originally posted months ago on my Tumblr. Written for kim_j_8472.
-----
Chakotay hadn’t had a knife held to his throat in years.
It was probably one life experience, he reflected, that he could have done without repeating.
But here he was, thousands of light years away from home, on what they had thought was an uninhabited planet (and he was going to have a very frank discussion with Harry Kim about that when they got back to the ship), with a seven-foot humanoid holding a silver blade against the hollow of his throat.
Fantastic.
Chakotay swallowed, feeling the edge of the blade cut into his skin. The rest of the away team - five in all, no match for the twenty humanoids that surrounded them - was standing ten feet away. They had all been disarmed, though their communicators had been left alone. Chakotay surmised this was because the aliens had no idea what the insignias on their shirts were meant to do - not that it mattered anyway, since they had been unable to raise Voyager. But a weapon, that was a universal thing. The natives had recognized that right away, despite the light years that separated their two societies, and had quickly relieved the away team of the phasers.
The humanoid holding the knife to his throat tightened his grip on Chakotay and barked something at Tuvok. This was the fifth time he’d done so in ten minutes, but it made no difference. The universal translator was either offline or the alien language was too unfamiliar for it to decipher.
“We cannot understand you,” Tuvok said again, patiently. “But I assure you, we mean you no harm -”
He took a step forward, hands up, and in an instant three of the humanoids converged on him, holding the phasers they had lifted off the away team. The alien holding Chakotay nicked the skin at the base of his neck, purposely, and Chakotay flinched in surprise.
“Stand down, Lieutenant,” he grunted, and Tuvok complied. The three humanoids lowered their weapons, and Chakotay let out a slow breath. He could feel liquid slide down the side of his neck, though whether it was sweat or blood, he couldn’t tell. “Try hailing the ship again.”
Tuvok complied, but all that met the call was static. The aliens appeared unconcerned about the fact that their captives kept touching their chests, which then emitted strange sounds.
Perhaps, Chakotay thought with a sinking feeling, they knew exactly what the Voyager crewmembers were trying to do. And they didn’t bother stopping them because they knew it was pointless.
There was no way they were going to be able to break through the interference and contact the ship.
Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. He couldn’t tell what the aliens wanted, or why the away team was being detained. The aliens had thus far made no demands that he could understand, and they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to transport their captives anywhere.
It was as though they were waiting for something. And Chakotay didn’t want to find out what it was.
The alien holding the knife to his neck suddenly began to speak. His voice was low this time, different from his earlier shouting, and his words were rhythmic. They were repetitive, too, Chakotay realized after a time. The alien was repeating at least three or four different phrases over and over, and each time his voice grew louder.
He was chanting.
There was no way that this spelled good news for Chakotay.
“Commander -”
“Yes, Tuvok, I can hear it.” He was surprised at how level his voice sounded. “Theories?”
“None that provide an optimistic outcome for you.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Chakotay tensed as the alien’s grip on him tightened. “Remember Bala IV?”
Tuvok nodded. “Indeed. But I do not see how -”
“Apply that attack pattern to this situation. We weren’t outnumbered there, but the two scenarios are similar. It’ll give you all a fighting chance.” The alien was keening now, and Chakotay felt the blade press against the side of his neck. He swallowed. “Go.”
The bite of the knife into his neck was sharp and cold, and the blade glided swiftly from ear to ear. The alien then plunged it into Chakotay’s stomach three times before releasing him.
Chakotay hit the ground knees-first, and he slumped onto the forest floor. There was no sound except the pounding of blood in his ears, and his vision tunneled until he could see nothing but the blood-soaked leaves on the ground in front of his face.
And then the world faded away.
--
When Chakotay woke, his throat was on fire.
A moment later, the pain in the rest of his body registered, and he batted away the hand that swam into his blurred view of the room. Or he tried to, at least. But he ended up doing nothing more than jostling the hand rather than knocking it away, and the hypospray was administered despite his efforts to stop it.
He recognized the stimulant almost instantly and cursed the Doctor to hell and back. The last thing he wanted to be right now was awake, but nonetheless he could feel the drug surge through his bloodstream. His limbs started to tingle, and his mind began to churn as he became more alert.
Where were the others? Had they made it back? What were those aliens?
And who the hell just gave him another hypospray?
“Hold still, big guy.” It was Tom’s voice, not the Doctor’s, and Chakotay focused on him. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, and eventually Tom’s body sharpened. He grabbed Chakotay by the shoulders and pushed him back against the bed. “Easy. Don’t get up yet. Try to acclimate first.”
“…Fuck was that for?” Chakotay said - or thought he said, at least. The words didn’t quite come out right. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt swollen, and his voice sounded sandpaper-rough to his ears. Tom pressed a third hypospray to his neck, and Chakotay hissed in frustration. “Stop it.”
“That was a painkiller, which you should be thanking me for. Sorry about the stimulants, but Doc needs you awake. We need to check your fine motor skills.” Tom set aside his hyposprays and grabbed a medical tricorder. “That knife alone would have been bad enough, but it turns out the blade was laced with a paralytic. Wreaked hell on your organs, even after we’d gotten the bleeding stopped. Has the room stopped spinning? Good. Come on, up.”
It took him far longer than he would have liked, but eventually Chakotay was able to push himself into a sitting position. He swung his legs onto the floor and stood. He felt as though his head had been filled with lead, and he swayed a couple of times, but for the most part he was able to manipulate his joints per Tom’s instructions. He was even able to cross the room and back, though by the time he was finally allowed to lie down on the biobed again, his torso felt aflame.
“Explain,” he croaked at Tom, who had gone to replicate him a glass of water.
“Drink that, first,” Tom instructed, and Chakotay did the best that he could. He managed half the glass, which was enough to mollify Tom. “Everyone’s safe. You were the only casualty. We’re still investigating why those aliens didn’t show up on the sensors. The only thing I can tell you for sure - because we sure as hell didn’t stick around after the rescue - is that it looks like you were intended to be a ritual sacrifice.”
“Got that much already,” Chakotay muttered. “The mission?”
“Was a success,” Tom said. “You saved the ecosystem, at least, and we harvested the resources we’d been after. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize the planet was inhabited until it was too late, so this could very well be considered a major violation of the Prime Directive.”
“Fuck,” Chakotay swore quietly. He rested a hand on his stomach, feeling even through the fabric of his shirt the three puncture wounds. They had been healed now, of course, but the indentations in his skin wouldn’t fade immediately. “Damage?”
“You’ll have a scar on your neck for a while, at least until the wound heals enough where the Doctor feels it’s safe to take a dermal regenerator to the scar tissue,” Tom went on. “The stab wounds to your torso missed all your major organs, but you’d lost so much blood by the time we got to you that it almost didn’t matter.”
Chakotay winced.
“How long?”
“You’ve been out for about fifteen hours. You were in surgery for eight of those. Doc says you have to stay awake for an hour before I can let you go back to sleep - so, you’ve got about forty more minutes.”
“Great,” Chakotay sighed. He glanced around Sickbay, finally taking notice of how quiet, and how empty, it seemed. The Doctor was nowhere in sight, and ever since Greg had come on board the ship, it was rare to see Tom working down here. “Where’s Greg?”
Tom snorted. “Sleeping, if he knows what’s good for him. The Doctor was about ready to knock him out and drag him to his quarters himself. That man was elbows deep in your blood after we beamed you aboard, trying to stop the bleeding. He had to go into the decontamination unit after the surgery to get rid of the paralytic, which your blood had been tainted with. His hands froze up. And even after his shift was over, he wouldn’t leave Sickbay.”
Chakotay frowned. “Why?”
Tom arched an eyebrow at him. “You tell me. You’re the one he actually talks to.”
And that was a fair point, Chakotay supposed. Greg Lestrade was a reticent man, and not without good reason. A man of the twenty-first century who had, by way of the Borg, ended up in the twenty-fourth, he was still trying to figure out where he fit in a universe that had passed him by. Everything he knew was three hundred years out of date, and his young family was long dead. Captain Janeway had designated Chakotay to be his liaison, and together they had worked on finding Greg a place among the crew - and in this century.
He had started out in Astrometrics with Seven, but during the incident where the Doctor had been trapped aboard a Romulan vessel in the Alpha Quadrant, they had discovered that he had a knack for working in Sickbay.
“Married a doctor,” he’d said to Chakotay during one of their almost-daily lunches, giving a rueful smile. “Guess it must’ve rubbed off more than I realised.”
Greg had been stationed in Sickbay ever since, learning new medical technology and anatomy - both human and extraterrestrial - under the tutelage of the Doctor. He took to it like a Vulcan to the desert, and Chakotay had learned that nothing made Greg happier than a long stint in Sickbay.
He enjoyed feeling useful.
Greg was a blend of many worlds. He was a husband and father, an enforcer of the law and a long-suffering detective. But that was a life long turned to dust, and in the centuries since Greg had also become an unwitting murderer; an accomplice to genocide.
And now he was a healer. He was always ready with a steady hand and a patient word, and he’d never so much as raised his voice to anyone in the time he had been on Voyager.
Greg carried with him experiences from three different lifetimes, and he had shouldered more pain than any human deserved to know. He was kind and he was wonderful, and Chakotay wasn’t sure how he’d ever managed without him.
Tom made idle chat for the next half an hour, regaling Chakotay with tales of his latest stints in the holodeck with Harry. He knew Chakotay had very little interest in their adventures, but it was sufficiently entertaining and kept him awake for the requisite hour.
“All right, big guy,” Tom said finally. He reached for a hypospray and administered another shot of painkillers. “That’s it for now. Go to sleep. Doc will be back to check on you in eight hours.”
Chakotay wasn’t sure if he managed to thank Tom before he fell asleep, it happened so fast.
--
It wasn’t the Doctor who woke him.
Sickbay was mostly dark the next time Chakotay opened his eyes, but he would recognize that silhouette anywhere. Greg was standing at a nearby console, quietly entering data into the computer system. His face was lit from below by the light from the computer, and it made him appear eerie - and at least ten years older than he actually was.
Well, it depended on how you looked at it, Chakotay supposed. Technically, Greg was over three hundred years old, and so he looked remarkably well for a man of that advanced age. On the other hand, the Borg had frozen his biological age at fifty-two, the time of his assimilation. Greg usually led his life now as though he was a man of fifty-three - unless he was feeling particularly irritable towards a member of an alien species and intended to shock them.
Then again, his cybernetic hand usually did that better than anything else.
“You’re staring,” Greg said mildly, breaking Chakotay out of his thoughts. He didn’t look up from the computer. “And you’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“You’re working,” was all Chakotay could think to say. Greg’s head snapped up.
“Did I wake you with it?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “I didn’t mean -”
“No,” Chakotay said hurriedly. “No, not at all. Woke up on my own.”
“I have some reports that I’m behind on. I was just trying to catch up.” Greg dimmed the computer display and came over to the biobed. He was wearing his standard twenty-first-century garb: jeans and a black shirt, with sleeves that had been rolled up to his elbows. It wasn’t too different from modern clothing, in all honesty, but denim was a fabric not often used anymore, and that style of shirt was nowadays only seen in holovids. “How do you feel?”
“Strange,” Chakotay said after a moment. He wasn’t in pain right now, but his limbs felt numb and the world was hazy, as though he couldn’t quite focus on what was happening around him. It was as though he was watching this through someone else’s eyes, and it wasn’t really happening to him. “I was wondering when you’d show up here.”
“The Doctor told me to get some rest.” Even in the dimly-lit room, Chakotay could tell that Greg’s eyes had deep shadows under them, and the skin was pinched around his mouth. He had the weary air of a man who had been up for more than a day, and his shoulders stooped with his exhaustion.
“And I can see that you did a spectacular job of that.” Chakotay had intended for it to be slightly teasing, but it came out biting instead. Greg lifted an eyebrow at him, and he sighed. “Sorry. Just… got a bit of a headache.”
“You were stabbed four times and the only thing you can think to blame your irritability on is a headache?”
“Oh, shut up,” Chakotay sighed, but there wasn’t any heat to it.
Greg snorted. “You’ll have to make me.”
Chakotay pushed himself into a sitting position with a soft groan. Greg automatically reached over to manipulate the controls and adjusted the biobed so that it rose with Chakotay.
“The Doctor would kill me for doing this right now, you realize,” Chakotay said when he’d managed to get his breath back. He hadn’t realized that merely sitting up would be so taxing. “I’m supposed to be sleeping.”
“I know,” Greg said. He pushed a pillow behind Chakotay’s back and then adjusted the blanket across his legs. “I’ve also got experience with troublesome hospital patients. Better to concede some battles than the entire war, I’ve learned. You can sit up, but if you think you’re leaving this bed you’ve got another thing coming.”
Chakotay felt a wry smile twist his lips.
“Aye, sir,” he said, giving a half-hearted salute. A smile graced Greg’s lips, and the sight of it heartened Chakotay.
“So how many shuttles is that now?” Greg asked lightly. “Five?”
That definitely soured the mood, and Chakotay grimaced. He hadn’t realized until now that the shuttle had been completely lost. He supposed it should have registered with him, given the damage it had suffered-hell, half of the port side had been vaporized after they’d launched the chemical into the planet’s upper atmosphere-but he hadn’t noticed much through the cloud of pain and the resulting run-in with the planet’s inhabitants. He had hoped he had imagined most of the shuttle’s damage.
“Your concern is touching,” Chakotay snapped. Greg offered him a wan smile.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’ve always been a bit rubbish at this.”
Chakotay instantly regretted his harsh words. Greg had suffered too much in his life already-hell, he’d had to unexpectedly mourn a husband and son who had been dead for three hundred years. The last thing Greg needed-the last thing he deserved-was Chakotay’s petty grievances.
So he lost another shuttle. At least he hadn’t cost any crewmembers their lives. He could endure the sniggers and the teasing that would inevitably follow him once he was released from Sickbay. At the end of the day, all that mattered was that this crew was safe and whole.
“You’re not rubbish,” he said softly. “And you’re not wrong. It probably is five shuttles at this point. Damn. Tom’s never going to let me live that down.”
“You saved an entire planet, you know,” Greg said gently. “And half a million lives - even though you didn’t know they were there in the first place. So you lost a shuttle. I think you’d say, in the end, that it was more than worth it.”
“And you wouldn’t?” Chakotay asked. He had intended for it to be half-teasing, but he caught a look in the other man’s eyes that took a moment to interpret. It was… sorrow. Abject sorrow, with a hint of fear and guilt. “Greg?”
Greg blew out a harsh breath between his teeth.
“In an ideal world-in an ideal universe-yes,” he said finally. “Yes, of course I would say that it was more than worth it.”
“But,” Chakotay prompted, his heart hammering hard against the inside of his ribcage.
“But I’m not an ideal man,” Greg said quietly. “And I’ve always known that I don’t live in an ideal world. If the worst had happened, I think I’d have given up those half a million lives in an instant if it meant that you wouldn’t lose yours.”
Chakotay stopped breathing for some moments. His vision tunneled, went hazy at the edges, and then an unexpected warmth spread through his chest.
“Oh,” he managed after an indeterminate amount of time. Greg gave him a sad smile and pressed his shoulder.
“I’ll go,” he said. By the time Chakotay finally gathered his wits about him, Greg was almost out of reach.
“No, don’t,” Chakotay said quickly, and his fingers closed around Greg’s wrist. He hauled him back over to the bed, surprising himself with his strength. “Just - hang on. What do you mean?”
Greg gave him a wary look.
“I don’t think this is the best -”
“You started this,” Chakotay said irritably, “now finish it.”
Greg stared at him for a long while, his face unreadable.
“All right,” he said in a low voice. He twisted out of Chakotay’s grip but grabbed hold of his hand, his cybernetic fingers sliding between Chakotay’s own. Chakotay’s breath caught in his throat, and a tentative question was on his tongue when Greg leaned in and kissed him.
It was soft and hesitant, and clumsy above all else. Their noses bumped and the angle of the kiss was strange, but the tiny voice of reason in the back of Chakotay’s mind reminded him that it had been well over three centuries since Greg had last kissed another person.
And then Greg tilted his head, parting his lips, and Chakotay’s voice of reason disappeared altogether.
When they broke apart, Greg had a hand curled around the back of Chakotay’s neck and the other braced on the biobed. Chakotay had grabbed a fistful of Greg’s shirt with the hand that wasn’t lying protectively on his stomach, and when Greg pulled back, Chakotay didn’t let him go far.
“What was that?” he asked dumbly. The corner of Greg’s mouth quirked.
“I’d have thought that much was obvious,” he said quietly. He carefully dislodged himself from Chakotay’s grip. “I should go.”
“Right.” Chakotay’s head was spinning, and this time it wasn’t because of the medication. Greg hesitated, passing a hand over his mouth as he considered saying something more.
“Listen,” he said finally, “about what happened - earlier, I mean. Not now. Er… Don’t do it again, yeah? Getting attacked like that.”
“Can’t guarantee it,” Chakotay said with a grim smile. “But I don’t go looking for it, if that helps.”
Greg touched the side of Chakotay’s face with cool fingertips.
“Stupid man,” he muttered after a moment, though whether he was talking about himself or Chakotay was unclear. Probably both. “Go to sleep. See you later.”
Chakotay knew he was pretty well out of it already thanks to his ordeal and the medication. But he liked to think, as he drifted off once again, that the farewell press of lips against his forehead wasn’t imagined.
Fandom: Sherlock / Star Trek: Voyager
Characters/Pairing: Chakotay/Lestrade, past John/Lestrade, Tuvok, Tom Paris
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Descriptions of injury; language; angst; fluff
Word Count: c. 3,000
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Chakotay comes to a realization after a disastrous away mission.
Notes: This follows “Regeneration.” In the VOY timeline, it takes place after “Message in a Bottle.” Originally posted months ago on my Tumblr. Written for kim_j_8472.
-----
Chakotay hadn’t had a knife held to his throat in years.
It was probably one life experience, he reflected, that he could have done without repeating.
But here he was, thousands of light years away from home, on what they had thought was an uninhabited planet (and he was going to have a very frank discussion with Harry Kim about that when they got back to the ship), with a seven-foot humanoid holding a silver blade against the hollow of his throat.
Fantastic.
Chakotay swallowed, feeling the edge of the blade cut into his skin. The rest of the away team - five in all, no match for the twenty humanoids that surrounded them - was standing ten feet away. They had all been disarmed, though their communicators had been left alone. Chakotay surmised this was because the aliens had no idea what the insignias on their shirts were meant to do - not that it mattered anyway, since they had been unable to raise Voyager. But a weapon, that was a universal thing. The natives had recognized that right away, despite the light years that separated their two societies, and had quickly relieved the away team of the phasers.
The humanoid holding the knife to his throat tightened his grip on Chakotay and barked something at Tuvok. This was the fifth time he’d done so in ten minutes, but it made no difference. The universal translator was either offline or the alien language was too unfamiliar for it to decipher.
“We cannot understand you,” Tuvok said again, patiently. “But I assure you, we mean you no harm -”
He took a step forward, hands up, and in an instant three of the humanoids converged on him, holding the phasers they had lifted off the away team. The alien holding Chakotay nicked the skin at the base of his neck, purposely, and Chakotay flinched in surprise.
“Stand down, Lieutenant,” he grunted, and Tuvok complied. The three humanoids lowered their weapons, and Chakotay let out a slow breath. He could feel liquid slide down the side of his neck, though whether it was sweat or blood, he couldn’t tell. “Try hailing the ship again.”
Tuvok complied, but all that met the call was static. The aliens appeared unconcerned about the fact that their captives kept touching their chests, which then emitted strange sounds.
Perhaps, Chakotay thought with a sinking feeling, they knew exactly what the Voyager crewmembers were trying to do. And they didn’t bother stopping them because they knew it was pointless.
There was no way they were going to be able to break through the interference and contact the ship.
Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. He couldn’t tell what the aliens wanted, or why the away team was being detained. The aliens had thus far made no demands that he could understand, and they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to transport their captives anywhere.
It was as though they were waiting for something. And Chakotay didn’t want to find out what it was.
The alien holding the knife to his neck suddenly began to speak. His voice was low this time, different from his earlier shouting, and his words were rhythmic. They were repetitive, too, Chakotay realized after a time. The alien was repeating at least three or four different phrases over and over, and each time his voice grew louder.
He was chanting.
There was no way that this spelled good news for Chakotay.
“Commander -”
“Yes, Tuvok, I can hear it.” He was surprised at how level his voice sounded. “Theories?”
“None that provide an optimistic outcome for you.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Chakotay tensed as the alien’s grip on him tightened. “Remember Bala IV?”
Tuvok nodded. “Indeed. But I do not see how -”
“Apply that attack pattern to this situation. We weren’t outnumbered there, but the two scenarios are similar. It’ll give you all a fighting chance.” The alien was keening now, and Chakotay felt the blade press against the side of his neck. He swallowed. “Go.”
The bite of the knife into his neck was sharp and cold, and the blade glided swiftly from ear to ear. The alien then plunged it into Chakotay’s stomach three times before releasing him.
Chakotay hit the ground knees-first, and he slumped onto the forest floor. There was no sound except the pounding of blood in his ears, and his vision tunneled until he could see nothing but the blood-soaked leaves on the ground in front of his face.
And then the world faded away.
--
When Chakotay woke, his throat was on fire.
A moment later, the pain in the rest of his body registered, and he batted away the hand that swam into his blurred view of the room. Or he tried to, at least. But he ended up doing nothing more than jostling the hand rather than knocking it away, and the hypospray was administered despite his efforts to stop it.
He recognized the stimulant almost instantly and cursed the Doctor to hell and back. The last thing he wanted to be right now was awake, but nonetheless he could feel the drug surge through his bloodstream. His limbs started to tingle, and his mind began to churn as he became more alert.
Where were the others? Had they made it back? What were those aliens?
And who the hell just gave him another hypospray?
“Hold still, big guy.” It was Tom’s voice, not the Doctor’s, and Chakotay focused on him. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, and eventually Tom’s body sharpened. He grabbed Chakotay by the shoulders and pushed him back against the bed. “Easy. Don’t get up yet. Try to acclimate first.”
“…Fuck was that for?” Chakotay said - or thought he said, at least. The words didn’t quite come out right. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt swollen, and his voice sounded sandpaper-rough to his ears. Tom pressed a third hypospray to his neck, and Chakotay hissed in frustration. “Stop it.”
“That was a painkiller, which you should be thanking me for. Sorry about the stimulants, but Doc needs you awake. We need to check your fine motor skills.” Tom set aside his hyposprays and grabbed a medical tricorder. “That knife alone would have been bad enough, but it turns out the blade was laced with a paralytic. Wreaked hell on your organs, even after we’d gotten the bleeding stopped. Has the room stopped spinning? Good. Come on, up.”
It took him far longer than he would have liked, but eventually Chakotay was able to push himself into a sitting position. He swung his legs onto the floor and stood. He felt as though his head had been filled with lead, and he swayed a couple of times, but for the most part he was able to manipulate his joints per Tom’s instructions. He was even able to cross the room and back, though by the time he was finally allowed to lie down on the biobed again, his torso felt aflame.
“Explain,” he croaked at Tom, who had gone to replicate him a glass of water.
“Drink that, first,” Tom instructed, and Chakotay did the best that he could. He managed half the glass, which was enough to mollify Tom. “Everyone’s safe. You were the only casualty. We’re still investigating why those aliens didn’t show up on the sensors. The only thing I can tell you for sure - because we sure as hell didn’t stick around after the rescue - is that it looks like you were intended to be a ritual sacrifice.”
“Got that much already,” Chakotay muttered. “The mission?”
“Was a success,” Tom said. “You saved the ecosystem, at least, and we harvested the resources we’d been after. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize the planet was inhabited until it was too late, so this could very well be considered a major violation of the Prime Directive.”
“Fuck,” Chakotay swore quietly. He rested a hand on his stomach, feeling even through the fabric of his shirt the three puncture wounds. They had been healed now, of course, but the indentations in his skin wouldn’t fade immediately. “Damage?”
“You’ll have a scar on your neck for a while, at least until the wound heals enough where the Doctor feels it’s safe to take a dermal regenerator to the scar tissue,” Tom went on. “The stab wounds to your torso missed all your major organs, but you’d lost so much blood by the time we got to you that it almost didn’t matter.”
Chakotay winced.
“How long?”
“You’ve been out for about fifteen hours. You were in surgery for eight of those. Doc says you have to stay awake for an hour before I can let you go back to sleep - so, you’ve got about forty more minutes.”
“Great,” Chakotay sighed. He glanced around Sickbay, finally taking notice of how quiet, and how empty, it seemed. The Doctor was nowhere in sight, and ever since Greg had come on board the ship, it was rare to see Tom working down here. “Where’s Greg?”
Tom snorted. “Sleeping, if he knows what’s good for him. The Doctor was about ready to knock him out and drag him to his quarters himself. That man was elbows deep in your blood after we beamed you aboard, trying to stop the bleeding. He had to go into the decontamination unit after the surgery to get rid of the paralytic, which your blood had been tainted with. His hands froze up. And even after his shift was over, he wouldn’t leave Sickbay.”
Chakotay frowned. “Why?”
Tom arched an eyebrow at him. “You tell me. You’re the one he actually talks to.”
And that was a fair point, Chakotay supposed. Greg Lestrade was a reticent man, and not without good reason. A man of the twenty-first century who had, by way of the Borg, ended up in the twenty-fourth, he was still trying to figure out where he fit in a universe that had passed him by. Everything he knew was three hundred years out of date, and his young family was long dead. Captain Janeway had designated Chakotay to be his liaison, and together they had worked on finding Greg a place among the crew - and in this century.
He had started out in Astrometrics with Seven, but during the incident where the Doctor had been trapped aboard a Romulan vessel in the Alpha Quadrant, they had discovered that he had a knack for working in Sickbay.
“Married a doctor,” he’d said to Chakotay during one of their almost-daily lunches, giving a rueful smile. “Guess it must’ve rubbed off more than I realised.”
Greg had been stationed in Sickbay ever since, learning new medical technology and anatomy - both human and extraterrestrial - under the tutelage of the Doctor. He took to it like a Vulcan to the desert, and Chakotay had learned that nothing made Greg happier than a long stint in Sickbay.
He enjoyed feeling useful.
Greg was a blend of many worlds. He was a husband and father, an enforcer of the law and a long-suffering detective. But that was a life long turned to dust, and in the centuries since Greg had also become an unwitting murderer; an accomplice to genocide.
And now he was a healer. He was always ready with a steady hand and a patient word, and he’d never so much as raised his voice to anyone in the time he had been on Voyager.
Greg carried with him experiences from three different lifetimes, and he had shouldered more pain than any human deserved to know. He was kind and he was wonderful, and Chakotay wasn’t sure how he’d ever managed without him.
Tom made idle chat for the next half an hour, regaling Chakotay with tales of his latest stints in the holodeck with Harry. He knew Chakotay had very little interest in their adventures, but it was sufficiently entertaining and kept him awake for the requisite hour.
“All right, big guy,” Tom said finally. He reached for a hypospray and administered another shot of painkillers. “That’s it for now. Go to sleep. Doc will be back to check on you in eight hours.”
Chakotay wasn’t sure if he managed to thank Tom before he fell asleep, it happened so fast.
--
It wasn’t the Doctor who woke him.
Sickbay was mostly dark the next time Chakotay opened his eyes, but he would recognize that silhouette anywhere. Greg was standing at a nearby console, quietly entering data into the computer system. His face was lit from below by the light from the computer, and it made him appear eerie - and at least ten years older than he actually was.
Well, it depended on how you looked at it, Chakotay supposed. Technically, Greg was over three hundred years old, and so he looked remarkably well for a man of that advanced age. On the other hand, the Borg had frozen his biological age at fifty-two, the time of his assimilation. Greg usually led his life now as though he was a man of fifty-three - unless he was feeling particularly irritable towards a member of an alien species and intended to shock them.
Then again, his cybernetic hand usually did that better than anything else.
“You’re staring,” Greg said mildly, breaking Chakotay out of his thoughts. He didn’t look up from the computer. “And you’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“You’re working,” was all Chakotay could think to say. Greg’s head snapped up.
“Did I wake you with it?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “I didn’t mean -”
“No,” Chakotay said hurriedly. “No, not at all. Woke up on my own.”
“I have some reports that I’m behind on. I was just trying to catch up.” Greg dimmed the computer display and came over to the biobed. He was wearing his standard twenty-first-century garb: jeans and a black shirt, with sleeves that had been rolled up to his elbows. It wasn’t too different from modern clothing, in all honesty, but denim was a fabric not often used anymore, and that style of shirt was nowadays only seen in holovids. “How do you feel?”
“Strange,” Chakotay said after a moment. He wasn’t in pain right now, but his limbs felt numb and the world was hazy, as though he couldn’t quite focus on what was happening around him. It was as though he was watching this through someone else’s eyes, and it wasn’t really happening to him. “I was wondering when you’d show up here.”
“The Doctor told me to get some rest.” Even in the dimly-lit room, Chakotay could tell that Greg’s eyes had deep shadows under them, and the skin was pinched around his mouth. He had the weary air of a man who had been up for more than a day, and his shoulders stooped with his exhaustion.
“And I can see that you did a spectacular job of that.” Chakotay had intended for it to be slightly teasing, but it came out biting instead. Greg lifted an eyebrow at him, and he sighed. “Sorry. Just… got a bit of a headache.”
“You were stabbed four times and the only thing you can think to blame your irritability on is a headache?”
“Oh, shut up,” Chakotay sighed, but there wasn’t any heat to it.
Greg snorted. “You’ll have to make me.”
Chakotay pushed himself into a sitting position with a soft groan. Greg automatically reached over to manipulate the controls and adjusted the biobed so that it rose with Chakotay.
“The Doctor would kill me for doing this right now, you realize,” Chakotay said when he’d managed to get his breath back. He hadn’t realized that merely sitting up would be so taxing. “I’m supposed to be sleeping.”
“I know,” Greg said. He pushed a pillow behind Chakotay’s back and then adjusted the blanket across his legs. “I’ve also got experience with troublesome hospital patients. Better to concede some battles than the entire war, I’ve learned. You can sit up, but if you think you’re leaving this bed you’ve got another thing coming.”
Chakotay felt a wry smile twist his lips.
“Aye, sir,” he said, giving a half-hearted salute. A smile graced Greg’s lips, and the sight of it heartened Chakotay.
“So how many shuttles is that now?” Greg asked lightly. “Five?”
That definitely soured the mood, and Chakotay grimaced. He hadn’t realized until now that the shuttle had been completely lost. He supposed it should have registered with him, given the damage it had suffered-hell, half of the port side had been vaporized after they’d launched the chemical into the planet’s upper atmosphere-but he hadn’t noticed much through the cloud of pain and the resulting run-in with the planet’s inhabitants. He had hoped he had imagined most of the shuttle’s damage.
“Your concern is touching,” Chakotay snapped. Greg offered him a wan smile.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’ve always been a bit rubbish at this.”
Chakotay instantly regretted his harsh words. Greg had suffered too much in his life already-hell, he’d had to unexpectedly mourn a husband and son who had been dead for three hundred years. The last thing Greg needed-the last thing he deserved-was Chakotay’s petty grievances.
So he lost another shuttle. At least he hadn’t cost any crewmembers their lives. He could endure the sniggers and the teasing that would inevitably follow him once he was released from Sickbay. At the end of the day, all that mattered was that this crew was safe and whole.
“You’re not rubbish,” he said softly. “And you’re not wrong. It probably is five shuttles at this point. Damn. Tom’s never going to let me live that down.”
“You saved an entire planet, you know,” Greg said gently. “And half a million lives - even though you didn’t know they were there in the first place. So you lost a shuttle. I think you’d say, in the end, that it was more than worth it.”
“And you wouldn’t?” Chakotay asked. He had intended for it to be half-teasing, but he caught a look in the other man’s eyes that took a moment to interpret. It was… sorrow. Abject sorrow, with a hint of fear and guilt. “Greg?”
Greg blew out a harsh breath between his teeth.
“In an ideal world-in an ideal universe-yes,” he said finally. “Yes, of course I would say that it was more than worth it.”
“But,” Chakotay prompted, his heart hammering hard against the inside of his ribcage.
“But I’m not an ideal man,” Greg said quietly. “And I’ve always known that I don’t live in an ideal world. If the worst had happened, I think I’d have given up those half a million lives in an instant if it meant that you wouldn’t lose yours.”
Chakotay stopped breathing for some moments. His vision tunneled, went hazy at the edges, and then an unexpected warmth spread through his chest.
“Oh,” he managed after an indeterminate amount of time. Greg gave him a sad smile and pressed his shoulder.
“I’ll go,” he said. By the time Chakotay finally gathered his wits about him, Greg was almost out of reach.
“No, don’t,” Chakotay said quickly, and his fingers closed around Greg’s wrist. He hauled him back over to the bed, surprising himself with his strength. “Just - hang on. What do you mean?”
Greg gave him a wary look.
“I don’t think this is the best -”
“You started this,” Chakotay said irritably, “now finish it.”
Greg stared at him for a long while, his face unreadable.
“All right,” he said in a low voice. He twisted out of Chakotay’s grip but grabbed hold of his hand, his cybernetic fingers sliding between Chakotay’s own. Chakotay’s breath caught in his throat, and a tentative question was on his tongue when Greg leaned in and kissed him.
It was soft and hesitant, and clumsy above all else. Their noses bumped and the angle of the kiss was strange, but the tiny voice of reason in the back of Chakotay’s mind reminded him that it had been well over three centuries since Greg had last kissed another person.
And then Greg tilted his head, parting his lips, and Chakotay’s voice of reason disappeared altogether.
When they broke apart, Greg had a hand curled around the back of Chakotay’s neck and the other braced on the biobed. Chakotay had grabbed a fistful of Greg’s shirt with the hand that wasn’t lying protectively on his stomach, and when Greg pulled back, Chakotay didn’t let him go far.
“What was that?” he asked dumbly. The corner of Greg’s mouth quirked.
“I’d have thought that much was obvious,” he said quietly. He carefully dislodged himself from Chakotay’s grip. “I should go.”
“Right.” Chakotay’s head was spinning, and this time it wasn’t because of the medication. Greg hesitated, passing a hand over his mouth as he considered saying something more.
“Listen,” he said finally, “about what happened - earlier, I mean. Not now. Er… Don’t do it again, yeah? Getting attacked like that.”
“Can’t guarantee it,” Chakotay said with a grim smile. “But I don’t go looking for it, if that helps.”
Greg touched the side of Chakotay’s face with cool fingertips.
“Stupid man,” he muttered after a moment, though whether he was talking about himself or Chakotay was unclear. Probably both. “Go to sleep. See you later.”
Chakotay knew he was pretty well out of it already thanks to his ordeal and the medication. But he liked to think, as he drifted off once again, that the farewell press of lips against his forehead wasn’t imagined.