Chakotay shook Sara awake with gruff gentleness after ship’s morning had come about, leaving Seska in charge of the ship while he attended to…her. Surprisingly enough she was coherent almost immediately, rubbing at her huge, socketed blue eyes and stretching.
“Did you sleep well?” his voice never rose. He was imperturbable, Sara realized, rather like a shrouded Vulcan capable of emotions but choosing not to portray them.
She nodded wordlessly.
“You need some more food and a shower.” Chakotay informed her. “Empty your pack.”
Sara obeyed instantly, unfastening the enclosure and uncerimoniously dumping the contents out on the recently cleared-off bed. Chakotay sifted through everything thoroughly: two changes of clothes, both dirty, two pairs of underpants, spare socks, hairbrush, two or three hair fasteners, water bottle and the notorious chocolate bars that she had told him about last night. No soap. No shampoo. No toothbrush. He sighed. This was not going to be easy.
“Very well. Put all that back and come with me.”
Again, she obeyed. What was this girl, an automaton? She never questioned a damn thing. He wondered momentarily about asking her to jump out of an airlock just to see if she would do it.
In less than two minutes flat everything was swiftly packed again and she wore the pack on her back.
Chakotay spent a few minutes procuring the necessary items and turned on his shower for her, for once giving someone a water shower instead of the usual sonics. With the grime she wore, she needed it. He even risked the energy and replicated her new clothing, black shirt and leggings that actually fit. He patterned the shirt after the one she had been wearing -- high necked T-style, more of a man's shirt actually, save for the length that hung almost mid-thigh. He left them on the table with a padd note that he would be waiting outside the door; when she was done, she was to open it to let him know.
Twenty minutes later she opened the door to crane her neck up at him, a pale face made even paler by lack of dirt and the dark clothing she wore, hair squeaky-clean and still wet, freshly braided into a tight plait that hung almost ¾ of the way down her small back. Only her thick-soled boots gave her a slight bit of height.
“Very good. At least you follow instructions.”
“Yes, sir.” She said. Chakotay grunted.
He took her shoulders and moved her out of the way to be able to enter his quarters again. “What do you eat for breakfast?”
“I don’t.” Sara told him. He looked at her sharply.
“Pick something. You’re not skipping any meals.”
Sara shrugged. “Whatever you were going to have is fine.”
“Suit yourself.” Chakotay replicated oatmeal, two bowls. Sara ate slowly, in the manner she had last night over the meat-and-potato stew in the crew mess. Chakotay wondered if she was savoring real food or trying to put on a show for him.
They finished at almost the same time; out of habit, it seemed to him, she picked up both bowls and utensils for the recycler.
“Can you answer some questions for me now?” he asked her, when she sat again. She nodded.
At least he’d hear her speak. “Where did you come from?”
“Bajor.” She told him promptly.
“No…before that. Where did you start out?”
“Earth.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
Sara shrugged. Chakotay guessed the word ‘home’ held very little meaning for her. “Where are your parents?”
Sara stared at him, a numb expression on her face, her blue eyes shadowing over more at the question. He took the hint. “Your family?” his next question.
“Don’t have one.”
"Is that so?" he looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and disbelief, deciding whether to believe her.
Sara sighed. "Look. I'd tell you if I knew. But I don't."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I don't remember what happened to me," she told him honestly. "I had to have a family once...I had to come from somewhere, after all. But now..." her voice trailed off.
“How old are you?” he asked her curiously.
A long moment of silence passed between them, in which he could tell she was debating a lie. He was almost sure of it. The look on his face apparently changed her mind.
“Thirteen. Almost fourteen.”
“How almost?” he was shocked. Thirteen and that small?
“I forget exactly. Not much. A couple of months, maybe.”
“Maybe?” his eyebrows raised disbelievingly. "You don't remember your birthday?"
She shrugged again. “No, I remember that. I just lose track of time in space. No sunrises or seasons.”
That was certainly true. He sat back in his chair, thoughtfully. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”
Sara cocked her head to one side, looking for all her size like a lost puppy, considered, and nodded. “Where am I?”
A smile tugged at his face. “On my ship.”
“Oh.” She thought another minute. “Are you a freighter captain?”
“No.” Chakotay wasn’t going to play twenty questions with her. He didn’t have the time. He decided that it would be best if he was honest with her from the beginning, holding nothing back, brutal or not, she would know the truth. “Sara…I’m not sure I can explain this in terms you’ll understand.”
“Try me.” Sara told him simply, sitting back in her own chair as well, crossing her arms over her chest. Somewhat of a casual challenge.
“All right.” It was her choice, what she wanted, at any rate. “Ever heard of the Maquis?”
Sara blinked. She had a faint memory of someone talking about them – savages, murderers he called them, outlaws and renegades that burned planets and had no regard for civilized life. “Yes.”
“That’s what we are.” Chakotay waited for her reaction. To her credit she wasn’t horrified. She wasn’t even surprised. She did look a bit curious, and he waited for her next question.
“Is it true that you…break the law?”
“No.” Chakotay answered automatically, and then regretted it. “We protect people, that’s all. We just do it in our own way. The people that consider us outlaws…they don’t understand, really.”
“Why?” Sara asked possibly the most hated word of a child’s vocabulary.
“It’s like this, Sara,” Chakotay was serious. “Some of us came from planets in a part of space that were given to other people…”
“The Car…Car…” Sara struggled with the word.
“Cardassians.” Chakotay told her, surprised at what she knew. “That’s right. The Cardassians decided that they wanted so much space, and the Federation decided to give it to them. Only some of the planets were in a part of space called the Demilitarized Zone – a big place separating the two regions, Federation and Cardassian. In the DMZ, some of the planets became part of the Federation, some were given to the Cardassians.
“The problem is,” Chakotay continued, “The Cardassians weren’t satisfied with what they got, and decided to take more. Only the Federation won’t do anything about it, because the Cardassians aren’t stupid enough to get caught. So we protect the planets that can’t protect themselves.”
Sara chewed the thought over in her mind, teeth chewing her lower lip. “That’s it?” she asked, somewhat amazed. Chakotay caught the flicker in her eye. “You protect people and they don’t like you?”
“They call us outlaws because they see us as a threat,” Chaktoay snorted, for the moment forgetting he was talking to a thirteen year old girl. “Most of us on this ship are ex-Starfleet. Do you know what Starfleet is?”
Sara nodded. “I know what they are.”
“Starfleet doesn’t like us because we attack the Cardassians, who complain about the ‘peace treaty’ they negotiated and threaten to cancel it. The Cardassians don’t like us because one, we’re human, and two, we make things hard on them.”
“So that’s what you do…attack Cardassians?”
“We do a lot of things. We raid ammo dumps, we attack Cardassians, we generally make life hard on them while trying to protect innocents in the DMZ.”
“How do you get what you need?” Sara asked curiously
.
“Friends. Some of the time, at least. Some of the time it’s necessary to steal, or we get wind of something useful through the grapevine that’s been dumped somewhere and take it from that, salvage it, make it usable again.”
“Chakotay?”
“What?” she was so damned childlike…
“What’s that mark on your head?”
“A tattoo.” She was skirting dangerous ground, and she knew it, but he explained anyways. “It’s a mark of my tribe.”
“You’re an Indian?” Sara asked.
“In a manner of speaking.” He smiled faintly.
“Why are you a Maquis?”
Chakotay stood suddenly, causing Sara to do the same. Her chair tumbled backward, she did it so fast.
Whatever had happened to her, she sure was jumpy. “Would you like to see the ship?” he asked her softly.
She nodded.
He walked her through the decks of the three-decade old cobbled together collage, sturdy decks and artificial gravity plating the only thing brand-new about it. The engine had recently been refit, having suffered badly from the Cardassians during a battle. There wasn’t much to see. He showed her the mess hall, where she’d been the night before, the crew quarters, the weapons locker, medical compartment, transporter room, small shuttle bay in which two shuttles squeezed side by side with barely enough room to open the hatches or stand upright. They ended up in the bowels of the ship, near the food stores and walked into Engineering just as B’Elanna uttered a curse that Chakotay suspected had very little to do with her human half.
“That’s B’Elanna,” he pointed to a pair of legs that stuck out from under a console. “She’s half-Klingon, half human, and the best damned engineer anyone’s ever met.”
Sara nodded, staring at B’Elanna’s boots that shifted, turned, grunted and squirmed before an arc and yelp made everyone jump. B’Elanna cursed again. Hard brown eyes peered out at Chakotay and Sara standing a meter away. “Are you here to work or just for the guided tour?” she snapped at Chakotay, while staring hard at Sara and then looking away. “Because if you don’t mind, I really could use a…”
Before the words were out of her mouth a hyperspanner lifted from a nearby toolpack and floated its way across the compartment, hovering silently within reach of B’Elanna’s roughened hand.
“…Hyperspanner.” B’Elanna stared in dumb amazement along with Chakotay and two others at the small girl standing next to him. She plucked it from midair and came out from under the console to examine Sara. “Did you do that?”
Sara nodded up at her. B’Elanna wasn’t all that big – even though her Klingon ridges from her mother’s side gave her added height – but she still towered over Sara. B’Elanna looked at Sara again, at the hyperspanner and back to the small girl.
“What’d you do?” she asked Chakotay. “Rob a cradle?”
Chakotay’s face turned stony. Sara for her part just blinked. Why, oh why, did Chakotay know that it wasn’t the first remark about her size.
“She’s the cause of the mysteries, isn’t she.”
B’Elanna nodded knowingly. “You’re lucky it was Chakotay that found you – some of us would’ve shot first and asked later. What’s your name, girl?”
“Sara.” Came the answer.
“Good.” B’Elanna picked up one of Sara’s hands in a free one and looked it over, back and palm. “Small hands. And you have nothing to do. Come here and help me with this.”
Sara obeyed immediately. Chakotay watched, leaning against a wall, as the young girl settled beside B’Elanna, floating tools over the compartment and heads of others to aid in the repairs, and then for whatever reason was able to position her body laying flat on top of the taller woman. Chakotay caught sight of a scar that ran the back of her arm, along her tricep, and disappeared into the sleeve of her shirt as it fell with the weight of the artificial gravity. He was ready to protest when, under instruction and after a moment’s look at a schematic, Sara put her own hands in the wires of the console -- but whatever she did was right, because it flickered to life.
“There.” B’Elanna slid out from under. Sara scrambled out and stood, offering an again-grimy hand to help her up. The engineer checked some readings and cast another glance at Sara.
“Thanks.” She said shortly. It held no warmth or gratitude, though her dark eyes seemed to soften for a brief instant.
Sara shrugged as if it was nothing. B’Elanna looked at Chakotay. “Is she a new addition?”
Chakotay looked at Sara. Sara looked at B’Elanna. “Well?” The woman was impatient. “I could use her help. Everyone could.”
“I suppose she is,” he said quietly, after a moment of thought. He didn’t like the idea, and Sara knew it. But she had just proved her usefulness…and she was a telepath, she could come in handy now and again, if for nothing else than sensing if a potential recruit was honest immediately. It gnawed at him that taking in a child was not a good idea. He’d never wanted children when he was a part of Starfleet, and this was a thousand times more dangerous than that profession.
Then again, what else was he going to do? If he went back to Earth he ran the risk of being discovered, not that it troubled him to the point of not returning but if he was to be caught he’d rather it was for something other than being a good samaritan. But – if he returned her, what would become of her? At least if she was with them he could be sure that she was housed and fed properly. Perhaps it was ensuring an early death, but if she went, so would they all. It wasn’t a comforting thought that a life would end so soon, but from the shadows of her eyes Chakotay could reasonably suspect she wouldn’t be facing it for the first time.
They’d have to talk about it. Soon.
Chakotay let the thought filter over to Sara, who nodded, and, leaving her in B’Elanna’s care, departed. He had a lot to catch up on himself.
