Fic: "A Heart That Beats"

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"A Heart That Beats"

Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager

Pairing: Chakotay/Paris

Summary: In the aftermath of the Kazon takeover of Voyager, Chakotay finds himself a reluctant parent to the child Seska left behind.

Putting this monstrosity behind a cut to avoid annoying you all:

First off, this ficlet is an AU that assumes that Seska really was pregnant with Chakotay’s child, and it serves as a coda to “Basics.” Amal is the name Chakotay chose for himself in the episode “Workforce.” Some of the dialogue in the fic was taken directly from "Basics."

The journey of this particular story is a long one, especially for something that clocks in at merely 2,000 words. I have always had issues with the “Basics” storyline, ever since I first started watching Voyager, and years later when I finally met someone else who also liked Voyager and C/P, naturally those feelings surfaced again. I actually wrote this 18 months ago, and had a completed fic of 13K words that sat in my drafts folder for over a year because it just didn’t feel right. kim_j_8472 had all the right suggestions for how to fix it, but even then I just couldn’t pull this story together in a form I was happy with. Cue finally deciding to cut over 10K words and paring down the story so that it was just a single snapshot; a tag that I felt the episode desperately needed.

Long story short, this ficlet (and the subsequent stories in this ‘verse that I’ll post later on) wouldn’t be here if not for Kim, and I’m so grateful that she has been my cheerleader and my sounding board and someone who loves Chakotay as much as I do. All of the stories in this ‘verse are for you, dear. :)