Fan Fiction
TITLE: Chakotay's Holidays: Whatever Mama Wants, Mama Gets
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
RATING: PG
CODES: C/T
PART: 10/?
DISCLAIMER: Paramount will little note, nor long remember, what I do here. But
they still own the VOY copyrights, so they get a shout-out anyway.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Diane Bellomo for betaing this story.
SUMMARY: Dreams of his mother prompt Chakotay to visit his estranged sister,
Lukaya, who lives among the Rubber Tree People.
Before this year's graduation exercises, back when he was grading scores of papers and projects and calculating final grades, Chakotay, anthropology instructor, had colored his moments of relaxation by making plans for the university year's end. Some of them had been purely recreational (though as to that, he doubted whether he actually had the price of a trip to Risa), and some of them had been in his field of study (perhaps he could have tagged along on DaChut's planned excursion to the temples of Nova Mundus), and some of them had been for the sake of pursuing old friends (he never HAD found out what his old Academy roommate was up to). All of them, as he recalled, had had one thing in common: they hadn't involved tramping his way through a Central American jungle.
Oh, well. At least it wasn't as hot as he remembered.
Trudging weary-footed along behind his lanky, taciturn guide, Chakotay held on to that meager consolation. Of course, the last time he had come to the land of the Rubber Tree People, it had been high summer, and hot and humid enough to make even a son of Dorvan think twice or thrice about having left the air-conditioned comfort of the nearest hotel.
That time he had come at the behest (no, call it command, for that was what it had been) of his father, Kolopak. This time he had come because he had dreamed of his mother, Sokanon. He had dreamed memories of her, and they were so strong and real it was as if he was living them again.
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"And the boys are going down to the field to see if we can find any bones from the beings who lived here before us and can I go?" Ten-year-old Chakotay gave his mother his best pleading look, with all his heart willing her to say "Yes."
Sokanon, wife of Kolopak and mother of Chakotay and Lukaya, considered the matter thoughtfully. But then, she had always been the most deliberate person in the village -- a trait Chakotay might approve of when her deliberations resulted in the answers he wanted, no matter how unconventional or untraditional, but one he seldom appreciated during the process. "You will be back for supper?" she said, at last.
"Yes, yes, of course." He was willing to promise anything, if only he could get to go.
"You will take good care of your tools?"
"You know I will." Tools were on the short list of things which Chakotay respected and was himself deliberate about; they were far too essential for his explorations, and far too hard to replace when they were damaged or broken.
"You will take your sister?" She indicated six-year-old Lukaya, who wore two long braids, a homespun dress, and a look of avid fascination.
"WHAT?" He was dismayed. "But she's just a baby!"
"I am NOT!" Lukaya said indignantly.
"Yes, you are!"
"Chakotay, you know how fascinated your sister is with anything that interests you." Sokanon's firm, quiet voice put an end to the argument. "And you've hardly spent any time with her today. If you take her, then you may go."
"MOTHER!"
"She is of your blood, Chakotay. She will be your sister after all your friends have gone their own ways." His mother was unbending. "I mean it, Chakotay. Both of you go, or neither of you do."
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Sokanon stepped through the doorway and into her teenage son's room. Even at well past forty, she was a handsome woman, tall and unbowed, with shining hair and perfect cheekbones. She was thoughtful where her husband was intuitive, introverted where he was gregarious, restrained where he was expressive. Those who knew her (which, to some degree, included all of her home village) thought her son was far more like her than he was like his sire.
And yet it was that son, that personality-dual, with whom she was clearly angry.
"Chakotay, why did your sister run away from our house just now?"
Young Chakotay lay on his bed, book (a real paper one -- how barbaric!) in hand. He looked up sullenly. "How should I know?"
"You were arguing with her. A deaf man would have heard how your voices were raised."
"So?" he said, a little smugly. "We had an argument. So what."
"This is what. I want to know what kind of brother drives his own sister out of his house."
"Hey!" Indignation brought him off the geometric-print bedspread and onto his bare feet. "I didn't start it."
"I don't care who started it," Sokanon said implacably. "You're the older, and you have the greater responsibility."
"That's not fair!"
"In what way? Your father and I don't begrudge you when you claim privileges for being older. But you don't get privileges without responsibilities. Now, go and get your sister."
"What? I won't!"
There was no bend in Sokanon's posture or her words. "She is your sister, and you will get her."
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Sokanon emerged from the tiny house she shared with her daughter. Lukaya, conspicuously, did not. Chakotay, former Starfleet officer and now a commander of Maquis, strongly suspected that she was still steaming with the anger she had so recently poured out on him: anger that he had left, anger that he had returned, anger that he had not done more to honor their deceased father in life or in death.
To hell with her, then. Let her choke on that anger. His heart was full enough without another dose of her bile.
Sokanon, now shorter than her son and very gray, hugged him with surprisingly strong arms. "Fight well, my son. Be well."
"Be well, Mother." He hugged her back. He might have failed to protect one parent (Lukaya's gibes would not have hurt so much had they not been of one piece with his own guilt), but this one he would give everything to keep safe. He turned to go, but Sokanon stopped him with one long-fingered hand on his arm.
"You won't say farewell to your sister?"
"My sister doesn't want anything from me," he answered, bitterly certain.
"Give it anyway," Sokanon said quietly.
"Mother, I--"
"Chakotay." Sokanon's dark eyes were infinitely sad. "She is your sister, the only other child of my body. Where you go--" she struggled for a moment, but forged on. "Where you go, you may not return. Don't let her last memory of you be poisoned by guilt and anger."
"Mother--"
"If you won't do it for her, do it for yourself. Do it so that as you fight you'll know that there is one more here who guards your spirit with her prayers."
"I--" He had no idea what to say.
"If you won't do it for her, and you won't do it for yourself, then do it for me."
He went into the house, and he did as she said.
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Back in the waking world, Chakotay uncapped his water bottle and swallowed a few mouthfuls, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He kept walking, though his thoughts were far from the trail.
Chakotay's mother hadn't been present at his last meeting with Lukaya. Sokanon had been killed in the battle of Dorvan, though she was too old to have been any sort of threat to the Cardassians or their too-potent allies, the Dominion. As for Lukaya, by all accounts she had fought like the warrior she was, but it had availed her nothing; she had been captured. The Cardassians had held her until the end of the Dominion War, releasing her long after she had been given up for dead.
And when they released her, she had been -- changed. Chakotay had seen as much even in the few minutes he had been able to talk to her, during one of Voyager's brief communications windows with the Alpha Quadrant. But that short interview had done nothing to prepare him for the reality of seeing her again in person.
Lukaya had come to him in prison, where he was being detained pending trial for his actions against the Federation. Her appearance he now knew, so even though it wrenched his heart to see his pretty little sister so thin and sallow and gray, he was not surprised by it. That her posture was so defeated, her clothing so shabby, her tones so low -- that he had not expected.
"Is this the best your precious civilization can give you for all your service, Chakotay?" she'd asked, the flick of her dark eyes indicating the force field that imprisoned him. "A cage?" He tried to explain that his incarceration would be temporary, even short-lived (or at least, that he had reason to hope so), but she was having none of it. "They betray you just as they betrayed me. Well, I've had enough of your modern world's empty promises. I've applied to return to the land of our ancestors, and I've been accepted. If you're wise, brother, you'll join us."
And just like that, his last living kin had left him. He hadn't seen her since.
Lately, though, his dreams of Sokanon and Lukaya had forced his thoughts down new/old paths until he realized that, though his sister might choose to leave him, and his world, behind, nothing forbade him from visiting her in hers.
A rustle somewhere nearby drew his attention, and he realized there were people around him. All around him. The instinct of a former Maquis warrior threw him into a defensive posture for the split-second until he remembered that those who lived here would not come to attack, certainly not to attack a man who bore the same tattoo as they.
The guide called a greeting, in the ancient language Chakotay vaguely remembered but had never learned to speak. And the people emerged from amongst the densely-gathered trees.
They were men and women, clad in soft, shapeless garments of homespun, the men in tunic and trousers and the women in simple shifts. The cloth bands that lay across their brows held a stone ornament, incised with a sacred symbol.
The guide spoke briefly to one of the eldest men. Chakotay heard his own name mentioned, and that of Lukaya. The elder turned and said clearly, "Lukaya!"
She came to him, dressed in the simple garb of the Rubber Tree People. With her came a small boy, similarly clad, his headband circling a forehead that bore the tear-shaped central ridge characteristic of a Cardassian. But his eyes -- Chakotay felt a lump building in his throat -- oh, Chakotay had seen those eyes in his dreams, in the face of his mother, Sokanon.
Lukaya smiled at her brother, a peaceful smile such as he hadn't seen from her since before he'd gone to the Academy. "Welcome, Chakotay." She hugged him. "Our mother told me in a dream that you would come." She tugged the boy a step closer. "Ce Acatl. This is your uncle."
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Chakotay returned to his apartment a week later, to find a series of messages from B'Elanna Torres, detailing the rigors of Miral's first bat'leth lessons. "I didn't really plan to get her started so early," she told him, half-bemused, "but I kept thinking it was what my mother would have wanted."
Chakotay smiled. Clearly it was not only Native Americans who were well advised to give their mothers what they wanted.
