DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc and Viacom. The story contents are the creation and property of Djinn and are copyright (c) 2024 by Djinn. This story is Rated PG-13.

My Favorite Drug

by Djinn

 

Sometimes, when I'm lying alone in my quarters, when Seven is just across the corridor, so close physically but light years away emotionally, I think I should never have helped JL when he came to me in the desert.

 

I know, I know—of course I helped him. In any universe, I would help him. That's what I do. I help. Even people who forget about me for fourteen goddamn years.

 

Even the love of my life who even now is in her quarters...with Shaw.

 

I saw it, though. Them. The potential of them. I saw it so clearly when Worf and I joined JL and his motley crew of old guard and runaway Titaneers.

 

I knew that look, the initial look of distrust, the one that morphs into something bigger, something stronger.

 

She doesn't like to be told no. She doesn't like to be disrespected. But...she also craves acceptance. And I think screwing Shaw is the ultimate acceptance.

 

For now.

 

I don't actually know what she looks like when she's in love. But I do know what she looks like when she's infatuated. I've seen it for me and now I see it for him. But can he hold her? This man who caused her so much pain? Who refused to call her by the name she prefers?

 

Or will they run their course—well, that remains to be seen.

 

But my money's on them not lasting—because she's not built for the long haul.

 

Let me tell you why. Let me tell you the Seven of Nine that I knew.

 

That I love.

 

I didn't plan on meeting her. Which is a stupid thing to say because great loves often happen like a lightning bolt to the heart. But what I mean is I wasn't even looking.

 

I was drunk. I was stoned. I was broken beyond the ability of most things to glue themselves back together.

 

And I was trying to get Gabe to let me back into his life. I was trying to be a mother—and a grandmother—without being anywhere close to being ready.

 

I was not looking for love. I was barely looking for sex. Every now and then when I was in the desert, I'd put on a clean shirt and do my makeup nice and go to a bar I hadn't been to before and find someone who'd be fine for the night. I'd use my middle name only and go to their place and leave before morning.

 

No one got hurt. The sex was great. And I could go back home to my hovel in the heat and wallow some more. Life would have gone on that way if JL hadn't traipsed back into my life.

 

If I hadn't met Seven.

 

Truth to tell, when Seven first showed up on La Sirena, I thought Rios was going to go for her. He seemed so enamored by her reputation.

 

But then he went for Jurati. Cristobal's kryptonite has always been doctors. And pain. And booze. And all the things I understand so very well.

 

It's how we became friends. No, it's how we stayed friends when all the others abandoned us.

 

When Starfleet ceased to be our home even if it never left our hearts.

 

So, yeah, I was focused on my mission to get my son back. Seven was focused on her mission to kill the murderer of her son. We had sons in common, but neither of us knew that.

 

Until we talked about it. Until she found someone who also wanted her son back in her life desperately. Only my son was actually still here and I still couldn't have him. And that made me more pathetic than her.

 

It's weird to feel both loved and less than. Seven made me feel that.

 

Over and over.

 

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

I should probably start with JL. As his exec, I spent a lot of my time cleaning up after him. People in Starfleet used to joke and ask "Kirk or Picard?" as some kind of test—like which captain would you rather serve under.

 

I love the old man with everything in me, but...maybe Kirk's the better answer. And seriously, how different are they really? They both kept the same people around them forever, they both are legends, they both bucked authority to save a friend.

 

I just think maybe Kirk wouldn't have waited until he was dying to see a kid he abandoned.

 

Okay, once again, super similar, but Kirk was away from his son by dictate of his ex. And I'm not talking about Jack here. I'm talking about Picard's first "son." Picard made Elnor love him and then left, never looking back.

 

The same way he did to me.

 

And then guilted me into thinking it was okay to just drop by for a visit to Vashti, when we had a goddamned mission to do. Just because he was an old man who might die before he could get back there again. Old men die all the time—should they be allowed to pop back into the life of a person they built up and then ran from? Should they be allowed to discard the mission?

 

But my mission was my son so it ultimately seemed hypocritical to throw stones.

 

Also when do I ever say no to JL? He's always been one of my biggest drugs: he made me feel like someone special. Essential.

 

Until I wasn't.

 

I think Elnor felt that way too. I think that's why I was drawn to him...

 

Oh, hell, I should be honest. I felt a kindred pain with him, sure. But I didn't take him in as a surrogate son until it was clear mine was truly lost to me.

 

JL wasn't the only one who abandoned him all those years ago.

 

##

 

But you're not here to hear about JL and Elnor. Although they're gonna be in this story, like it or not.

 

You want to know about when I first met Seven.

 

I beamed her aboard our ship. She showed up, dressed in her Ranger gear, sexy as anything I have ever seen. Gave JL some sass talk about him owing her a ship and promptly passed out.

 

Any other time, I might have helped her, but the situation was still dire so we all just left her on the floor as the EMH made sure she wasn't dead until we could get the hell away from Vashti.

 

And then the EMH took her to the med bay, and Picard and Jurati went with him, and that was that. My first introduction to Seven of Nine.

 

I still don't know why she was there. Outgunned in her little ship and she wasn't forthcoming about the mission she'd been on. But she made the difference we needed, so we could get going—to Freecloud, where my mission lay. A mission I wasn't giving up for anything, not even such a pretty face.

 

Not even once I heard her reputation, knew she was ex Borg. The Voyager ex Borg. Hell, I figured Janeway might have talked to her about me in passing—her goddamned stalker.

 

I steered clear. Like I said, sex wasn't on my radar right then. And it was clear it wasn't on hers either.

 

But I knew we were on the same wavelength when I was dressing Rios up as a facer. I felt how simpatico she and I could be on a mission. I was glad she'd be there to protect my friends.

 

Because I wouldn't be. I was supposed to be done with them. I was supposed to find my son and the happy ending, even if neither of us was in any way ready for that.

 

Again, the streams cross—her son, my son. Both lost. What if we'd known then? What if she'd told me the real reason she wanted to be in the same room with Bjayzl? Would I have given up on finding Gabe to help her? Would she and I have been united early on, possibly so unbreakably that nothing that came later could damage what we had?

 

Only the mission doesn't work without her right where she was and me where I ended up being. But still it's interesting to ask what if? The intelligence officer in me loves to ask that.

 

The person who lost her over and over also loves to ask that.

 

The realist asks...what does it matter? We went our separate ways and everything happened as it did.

 

She killed Bjayzl and had nothing left to live for, walked into a hail of disruptor fire, and walked back out again. I had nowhere else to go but back to the ship, to the drugs, to the booze, to wallowing in the truth of everything Gabe said.

 

Except, of course, I was goddamned right about everything. Not a nut job. The conspiracy was real.

 

Only I didn't know that then.

 

And all I cared about at the moment was dulling my pain. Any and every way I could with what was on the ship. I was so compromised and yet...

 

I wonder whether, if Seven had been on the ship at that time, if she had seen how JL was willing to use me to get the diplomatic credentials he needed to access the artifact—how he didn't care that I was fucked up beyond all reason, that I was losing a friend for him—she'd have helped him and Riker? JL didn't even take me back to my room. Rios did—left the conn and took care of me.

 

But my friend JL? Too busy moving on to the next step of the plan—the next person he would use.

 

Hugh. Who I only knew by reputation. But Elnor stayed with him on the cube instead of coming back to us. So he was an even more lost cause than we were.

 

And JL just left him.

 

But back then, I didn't question how he treated me or anyone else, I didn't think much of myself. And he made me feel crucial. Part of something again.

 

But he used me, on that first mission. The second mission, with Q—that wasn't JL's fault. The third one, with the changelings and the Borg, he didn't even know I was part of it until Worf and I showed up.

 

But that sort of made it worse, you know? That I kept getting sucked into helping him when it was super unclear if he even knew where I was, if I was even alive.

 

The me of now, who's done the work, who's seen the goddamned light. Well, I'd tell him to go fly a kite.

 

But the thing is...he always does need us. And the mission comes first, always has with me. For any true Starfleet officer the mission comes first. Anything for the mission. Mission over all.

 

So many ways to say: use people, get them killed even. It's all fine so long as you get the job done.

 

Do I have to say that the clarity I'm getting, the work I'm doing, isn't with Worf as my sensei, even if I am working out with him when we're in the same place, or with Troi, even if she does remote sessions? It's with a therapist who isn't affiliated with this place. Even though that's probably a security violation.

 

The old me would have worried about that. The new me—well I value being healthy over my likelihood of further career advancement. It's better for me and it's better for Elnor and it's better for Gabe and Pel and my little gem of a granddaughter.

 

Everyone else is on their own.

 

##

 

Sometimes, when I think about what Seven and I had, I remember that she had Elnor first, on the cube, protecting him, turning into a Borg Queen, if temporarily, and he saw that. He knew what she was capable of. If I'd seen it, would it have scared me straight? Sent me running the other way? I'm still not sure.

 

One night, in a surprising moment of sharing, she told me that when she was the Queen and the Romulans spaced all those drones, she could feel every single death.

 

I try to remember that when I forget how fundamentally damaged she is. When she doesn't act like I want her to. When she closes down just when she should be opening up.

 

I know what she's lost and I know why.

 

Will Shaw know that? How much of him is the asshole and how much of him can love her the way she needs?

 

If it's even possible to love her and not scare her the hell off.

 

I remember running into Janeway after I got reinstated. How she stopped and in the middle of the corridor extended her hand and said, "We should have listened to you, Commander Musiker."

 

Chakotay was with her and he hung back after she moved on. "I heard you're with Annika."

 

"Yeah, she doesn't go by that anymore."

 

"Some things never change. Seven. Annika. Back again. Loving her is like trying to pin down quicksilver." And then he looked at me, really looked, and said, "But you know that already, don't you, Commander?"

 

Seven and I were in an off again period then. So I nodded.

 

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

It was the second time we ran into Seven that it hit me. She was standing on that ledge in the Borg cube, kicking off Romulan bodies, and holy shit...

 

Also, I'd just learned JL really was dying and I think I needed something else to focus on. Something good. Elnor was with her. She'd taken care of him and he'd taken care of her and maybe, somehow, I saw us as I wanted to see us.

 

A family. A new one I wouldn't fuck up. We could all take care of each other.

 

I fell in love with a concept. Of us, not her. Not at first. And the thing is, I didn't even realize it, even if through the rest of trying to stop Soji and the Romulans, I kept thinking of Seven, of Elnor, on the cube.

 

They were somehow the thing that kept me sane. This exceptional young man I'd once known as a child and this woman who was an infamous vigilante ex-Borg.

 

Looking back now, I wanted more than a family. I wanted someone to finally keep me safe. Two people who would never let anything happen to me.

 

Maybe not even let me happen to me. My own worst instincts. I could be my best with them.

 

I know, so much rational thought now over such an irrational urge then, but I was losing my true north. JL was going to die and who would I have left? I'm smart enough to know when to look for the next thing to obsess over.

 

Especially once he told me he loved me too. That the devotion I felt maybe wasn't as one sided as I often worried it was.

 

And then when he was gone, Elnor came to me. Not to Seven but to me. The part of me in pain understood his grief. The part of me that was so goddamned empty filled itself with taking care of him. The part of me that needed a son to love...found one.

 

Seven wasn't a part of that. I think it's important to say that now. I found out later she was drinking with Rios. She'd left Elnor alone and found a crusted soul like her own to spend that time with.

 

I should have paid attention then. I should have filed that away for the future.

 

When the chips are down—if the chips are emotional ones—she won't be there.

 

I didn't though. I was too busy being a mom to a kid who actually wanted one.

 

##

 

The thing with Seven is that she could have left, but she wanted to stay and help the ex-B's settle on Coppelius. We didn't leave right away because it took a while for the golem to be ready for JL's memory transfer.

 

Elnor already felt at home on the cube so I started hanging out there a lot. And she started coming to meet me when I showed up. And then I mentioned that I played Kal-toh and we could sit down and have something to do while we got to know each other.

 

Only, I wasn't exactly forthcoming. And neither was she, as it turns out.

 

She left out that Starfleet had turned her down—that more than anything, she'd wanted to be a part of it. That she was lost without the structure Janeway had provided. I didn't understand the look she gave me when I told her, after too many shots, that I'd been kicked out of Starfleet. But now I do.

 

Contempt. For throwing away what she'd kill to have.

 

I didn't tell her my addiction story. I was off snakeleaf. She drank like, well, like a Fenris Ranger does. It seemed important to her that I could hold my own with the bourbon.

 

And I didn't want to see more of the contempt. Not while I was trying to win her. Not while it was so much fun to sit with her and Elnor with our legs hanging over the cube, watching the sun set over the water as she and I nursed our whiskies.

 

So we'd sit and play Kal-toh and she'd beat me but not without effort, and we'd throw back the shots. I kept the bottle near me so I could control when and how much. At least I had that much willpower.

 

But falling in love with her happened in a haze. I was buzzed at the very least most of the time we played. Most of the time we flirted. Some might say I wasn't in my right mind when we were first falling in love.

 

But I'm a functional alcoholic and I can do most things buzzed. Except keep my family together. Not with Jae and Gabe.

 

And not, as it turned out, with her. Elnor, I managed to hold on to. But Seven—Chakotay was right. Like trying to pin down quicksilver.

 

But I didn't see that coming. I was happy. JL was alive in his new positronic body. Starfleet was letting me in again—but still not her. Although I think she didn't ask. She preferred Schroedinger's rejection—better to not know what they might say and think that it could be yes as easily as no. So I was working late and Elnor was at the Academy.

 

I was falling so hard for her and my new life that I started to cut back on the booze, and then I quit altogether and she noticed.

 

And she asked.

 

And I told her. The whole dirty saga. The way I kicked my career to the curb and lost my family.

 

Lost my son.

 

That's when she started to pull away. That's when she started to get...unsettled.

 

To be fair to her, though, I was working and Elnor was studying and she was what? Supposed to just sit on her ass at home?

 

Although there are other ways to make a difference than being a Ranger. Better, safer, smarter ways. Like private companies that might have killed to have her knowledge working for them. She was accomplished in so many fields. She didn't have to be a vigilante. Especially once the synth ban was lifted. Not that she was a synth but some employers might have viewed an ex Borg as skirting the line a little too close.

 

So she had other options. Being a Ranger was just the easy one—the lazy choice.

 

I made the mistake of saying that to her when I came home one day and found her halfway through a bottle that I knew was unopened the day before.

 

I didn't know it was the day her son died. By the time the fight ended, I did. I felt sick inside.

 

But she could have told me. I'd have taken the day off, spent it with her. Distracted her or just held her—whatever she needed.

 

Like I said, when the emotional chips are down, she's not there.

 

I'm going to be interested to see how she handles that day if Shaw lasts that long. Will she tell him or will she check out the way she did on me?

 

It'll break my heart if she lets him in. Because then it won't be her damage that kept her from telling me. It will be mine.

 

Anyway, she was gone the next day. Out on La Sirena with all the emergency holos merged into one because it was less stress to deal with a single entity.

 

She came home beat up but with a grin on her face. Danger seemed to make her happy. I know Shaw called her reckless.

 

Sometimes I thought she was suicidal in the risks she took. And that hurt. She had me. She had Elnor. I'd moved on from my first family. I'd accepted they were lost to me and was going to make it work with this new one.

 

Why couldn't she?

 

##

 

I know, I know. I'm telling you what's wrong with her but not what's right. Not why I fell, why I'm still here.

 

But...I'm not sure this was about her at first. I know that sounds weird but hear me out. I'd been living, in disgrace, in self-imposed exile, mad at JL, mad at Starfleet, mad at, well, everyone.

 

And then JL showed up and reminded me why I loved him. And then that first mission kept confirming all the things I'd said—the things no one would believe, the conspiracy that actually was a conspiracy, not just a theory. And then there was danger and us fighting it as a crew—and that's a high, trust me, you can't replicate with drugs.

 

And then he died, and then Elnor came to me, and then...she was there.

 

I wanted to keep the good feelings going. I even—to a certain extent—felt like I had my own demons under control. I could drink but I wouldn't do drugs. I could drink but only three glasses. I could drink but I'd add seltzer. I could drink one glass a day.

 

Until I decided I couldn't drink, and by then the lie had become our life. When Seven met me, I drank with her. Once I re-entered Starfleet, I gave it up.

 

She took it personally.

 

Wow, we've been over this, right? Maybe that's easier, just go over this one point like a stuck record. Rather than telling you what's good about her.

 

Okay, fine, here's the list. I mean leaving aside how rock solid gorgeous she is because that attracts but it can't keep. Not for me anyway.

 

She's so smart, so quick. She sees so far down the road when she analyzes. She can keep up with me—and I can keep up with her, and she's not used to that and frankly neither am I.

 

Shaw can keep up with us too. The three of us often work closely together, and he is not dumb by any stretch of the imagination. That does, on occasion, worry me.

 

She's generous in bed, loving and soft when you want her to be and other things if you need that too. She's not afraid to say no to something but she never seems to judge the request.

 

She can be incredibly sweet, incredibly tactile. She loves to spoon when she sleeps and doesn't mind if you comfort her after a nightmare.

 

She has a lot of them. Sleep for her is a thing she has to do, not wants to do.

 

There's deep inside her a wounded child. It makes her yearn to be put first. Her parents put the Borg first. Janeway put getting home first. Chakotay was in love with Janeway even if he tried to pretend he wasn't. Bjayzl put profits first—and yeah, I think Seven did love her. The betrayal hurt worse since she felt something. Since she trusted.

 

I put Elnor first. I put my health first. I put my career first. I'm sure that's what she'd tell you if you asked and she was in a mood to answer.

 

That's another thing—when you earn her trust, it's so heady. She doesn't trust easily.

 

Once she lets you in, there's an intimacy in how she shares things. I don't mean sexual things, I mean anything. Secrets, memories, fears...those aren't for those not inside her personal bubble. And her bubble is made of Borg shields so it's not something you can storm. You have to be invited in.

 

And for me, the fact that she was strong, was a fighter, wasn't ever afraid to wade right in—that didn't hurt either. I love strong people. I love people who want to make the world a better place.

 

And that she genuinely does. Despite everything else, despite all the ways she's hurt me—and she'd no doubt tell you I hurt her—she does want to do the right thing. She does want to leave the world better than she found it.

 

But...

 

Yeah, there's always a but. She has a profound level of guilt for the number of souls she assimilated. And from what I got her to tell me, bits and drabs here and there in conversation—never all at once—it was a lot of goddamn souls. You have to know that about her to understand that at times redemption will trump personal loyalty.

 

And the chance to forget she was ever Borg... Yeah, I saw how that went.

 

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

##

 

By the time the Stargazer Incident happened, Seven and I were so shaky even JL pulled his head out enough to notice. You know it's bad when that happens.

 

But I'd kept Elnor with me. I told JL it was to keep an eye out for all the ways his absolute candor was going to get his ass kicked.

 

But really, it was for me. Because I was so goddamned lonely. My girlfriend couldn't be bothered to show up to our son's graduation. Medical supplies were more important than a milestone both personally profound for Elnor but also for Starfleet in general. The first Romulan...

 

But, now that I know Starfleet wouldn't let her in, how could she bear to come? To see that even a Romulan—after everything that happened, everything they did on Mars—was more welcome than she was.

 

But she hadn't told me that yet and so all I felt was hurt and resentment and anger. But not the need to drink, not the need to find one of my favorite drugs. I was so used to her disappointing me the bigger shock to the system might have been her actually trying.

 

But...I'm not blameless. I know you're only getting one side of the story, so I'll try to be honest here. I'm not blameless. I pushed—I...manipulated. I kept Elnor with me by mindgames I'd first used on Gabe. I tried it on her and she was resistant.

 

But look at how her parents were. What they did to her as a child. How many times was she mind-fucked into behaving, into not being a normal child and instead one who could sit quietly while terrifying creatures were beamed on and off their shuttle, while her parents beamed on and off—and left her alone in their ship.

 

For hours.

 

Coming back to reward her with their yawns and their need to have some down time after being alert on a Borg ship all day—be a good girl, play in your room, put the headphones on.

 

She was denied the basic love and safety a child deserved and then was manipulated into thinking she was wrong to need it.

 

It's no wonder that she rebels against it now. Or, I guess, that she prefers serving alone with the holograms, where she controls the playing field. Where no one can leave her because she's already done the leaving.

 

My heart aches for the child she was. But my heart also aches for what the woman she is can do without a seeming thought. How badly she can hurt me.

 

And this was before we went to the past. Before she lost her implants.

 

Before I realized a Seven without implants didn't want me. A Seven who could have anyone wasn't going to have me.

 

Would she be fucking Shaw if she didn't have implants? He's the perfect one to take up with, given his history, given his hatred of the Borg. If he's with her, then she must be fine. Because he's everything Starfleet and everything Borg hater and not, well, me.

 

##

 

The strangest thing about the implants is that I didn't even notice when they were gone. I was too fixated on the fact that my on-again off-again girlfriend suddenly had a husband. A husband she was mildly flirtatious with, even if it was for the mission.

 

I was too busy ragging her for figuring out her commitment issues to notice that a few pieces of metal were gone.

 

She's always been beautiful to me. It never occurred to me that such a small change would make such a huge difference to her.

 

Although it wasn't that small. I know now how much of her is Borg. I didn't understand it then. But Elnor told me what he heard on Freecloud. How many implants she really had.

 

Did she feel different all over? Not just prettier but internally different? She will talk about this but only so far.

 

With me anyway. I have no idea what she shares with Shaw.

 

And then the implants—or lack thereof—became a moot point because we had to steal a Borg queen and get the hell out of there.

 

The thing was, Elnor and I made it a game, bringing down the transport shields. I let him get beat up and didn't even worry about him—or what he was doing to the guards once I let him off the leash.

 

But then it wasn't a game anymore. Not when Seven's asshole of a husband shot him. Not when the trip through time downed the power, which killed the biobed that was keeping him alive.

 

My boy was dead. Seven was there—sort of. She could have helped me close the drawer with his body. We could have said goodbye together. Instead she stood with the others. A little ahead, her show of support, but I was too angry for it to be enough.

 

Looking back now, I can see how she was trying to take care of me. Offer comfort I didn't want once that drawer was closed, slowing me down when I was set on warp ten as far as the mission went. And if that's all that had happened between us, we might still be together.

 

But it wasn't.

 

It started when she was changing into the clothes suitable for time travelers to blend in. I was too angry to focus on it then but when I replay it, I should have paid attention.

 

The trouble is, I honestly still hadn't clocked the impact of her having no implants. She was beautiful with, she was beautiful without, so no issue. Right?

 

Wrong. I should have noted how she was staring at herself, the...wonder. I guess I never understood till later in that mission how important being normal was to her.

 

Is it kind of her fault that I didn't know? Probably.

 

Is it kind of my fault for not digging? Probably. But let's be clear: you could dig but only so far before she shut down.

 

Like trying to pin down quicksilver.

 

At the tower she got us into, playing the guard masterfully, I was too caught up that she'd talked about us being engaged—was she thinking about that? Could she possibly be? And if not, would she really use that as our excuse to get up to the top of that building when she had to know how much it would hurt me.

 

I asked her, see. I asked her to marry me when she'd gone back to rangering, when being alone with a hologram was better than sitting around our place. I asked her so I'd know that even if she was gone, she was mine.

 

She said no. Her reason: too soon, not ready for that, her past, my past. She was gracious—I don't want you to think badly of her for not wanting to marry the mess I still was.

 

But to say we were engaged? When I was already hurting and running on a blistering rage. I should have said something, once we got up to the top, once the view was ours. While I'd still lost a son: something she could resonate with.

 

But the mission came first. So I played along. I smiled prettily and let her take the lead and then marvel that the security guard actually liked her.

 

Because right, our son is dead and the security guard didn't think you sucked. Which is more important?

 

Only, she never thought of him as our son. I just didn't know that yet.

 

##

 

It was a damn miracle we got Rios back from ICE. Seven and I were bickering more than we were working together. It was a relief to get back to the ship, back to Jurati and Picard and the Laris lookalike.

 

The night at the Gala, I told Rios it was nice to see Seven travel light for a while, without the baggage from the Borg implants. I meant it.

 

But, it hurt so much that she was so far away from me. I'd lost Elnor, and she'd brought up Gabe earlier as if to rub it in without meaning to: what a shit mother I am.

 

And then, when I was standing at a bar, desperately wanting whisky but going for club soda instead, she was talking to strangers. Laughing with strangers.

 

We could have been dancing. Or I could have been there as her date. But she was off by herself. Again.

 

Move us this far into the past and she still didn't want to be with me.

 

It didn't help that completely sober I hallucinated Elnor. Again. I guess guilt will do that to a person.

 

It's not like she and I only argued on that mission. We made some headway. I understood what she was missing—maybe always would be—now that she wasn't Borg. And she called me manipulative and I was, and I told her a truth that was hard to share: how Elnor staying in Starfleet was my doing. How I guilted him into it.

 

Because I couldn't lose him too. But then I did. He died in my arms.

 

A lie, her son died in her arms. Mine died unwatched while I admired the medallion he wanted me to get from his pocket. I missed his death.

 

But it sounds better to say he died in my arms. And who was going to correct me?

 

But she and I came together as a team when we fought against the Queen and her army. It felt good, it felt right. I told her she sounded like a captain.

 

And then she told me she'd tried to get into Starfleet. I learned the truth in the middle of the chateau's moldering kitchen. I learned what she'd kept from me this whole time.

 

That she hadn't trusted me with the truth.

 

But I hadn't trusted her with mine—the addiction—not at first so maybe that was fair.

 

I took the high road. I told her she'd make a great captain. That when we got out of this—but she told me me we weren't getting out of it.

 

I agreed with her. This was our last stand. Even if we'd be sprinting taking it, it was a last stand.

 

And our last moment together.

 

There should have been a kiss. I felt it then and I feel it again as I talk about this. But there wasn't a kiss until after I convinced Agnes to intercede with the Borg Queen and stop her from murdering Seven. After Agnes did the impossible and formed a new kind of Queen. After that Queen—one who understood mercy—saved the woman I loved.

 

And gave her back her implants.

 

And I saw her face when she realized they were back. The...despair. The hopelessness that she'd sloughed off when they were gone.

 

Elnor called me nihilistic, but Seven...Seven made me look like an amateur.

 

I wanted to help her. I wanted to make her see herself the way I did. I begged for her life because she was worth it. With implants or without, she would always be worth it.

 

But what was I worth? That's the question I should have been asking.

 

What the fuck was I worth?

 

I can tell you: I was worth the broken Seven's time. I was worth the ex-Borg's time. I was worth the love of my life's time only when she thought we were stuck on Earth forever.

 

The only time she kissed me was after it was clear our future was in the past, and after it was clear that she was back to being the thing people feared.

 

The thing she feared.

 

Borg.

 

She kissed me and it was sweet and good and I wanted to know what it meant. I needed to know.

 

And she told me to let it breathe.

 

What person in love says those words? To the woman they've abandoned and been angry at and...

 

But that's not when I left her.

 

Oh? You thought she left me. Nope. I left her.

 

It was later, when there was no La Sirena for her to run to. When I was coming home with Elnor's favorites. One big dinner while the ship was in for meetings and then he and I would be off again.

 

I found her in the bedroom, a half-drunk bottle of bourbon and no glass next to her. She was watching something on her padd. A video she kept replaying.

 

A compilation video, I learned as I stood and listened, as she didn't look up at me. Of her son and her.

 

I didn't even know she had one.

 

"Is that new?"

 

"No." Her voice was dead. That should have been my warning. But I knew by then it wasn't the day he died.

 

It was his birthday. Another date I didn't know until I stepped into it, tact suspended.

 

I asked her if she maybe wanted to put the padd away. That our Elnor was coming over.

 

I put it that way to bring her back to me, to us, to the present, to what was good in our life, in our family. To the talks she and Picard and Janeway had been having about her getting into Starfleet finally. Maybe she'd be assigned to my ship. Maybe we could serve as a family.

 

So she needed to stop wallowing. Icheb had been dead for so long. She'd avenged him.

 

I wanted her to do what I wanted her to do.

 

Like always. She wasn't wrong. I manipulated.

 

But it was out of love.

 

"He's not our son. He's yours." She looked up at me and her eyes were dead, the way I imagined a drone's might be. "My son didn't have a god handy to bring him back to life."

 

So much resentment. Anger. Rage, even in the icy scrape of her voice.

 

"He didn't do it for me. He did it because Elnor was important to JL."

 

"Well, it's a shame Icheb wasn't. Next time I take in a kid, I'll be sure it's someone Picard doesn't want to lose."

 

And she lay there, drinking straight from the bottle as her eyes met mine, as if saying, "I can do this. You can't."

 

And that was the moment I knew I had to let her go. That if I didn't, she'd turn into a bigger and more toxic addiction than booze or drugs ever had been.

 

I didn't tell her that day, not on her son's birthday, that it was over. Elnor and I ate on the patio and he asked about Seven and I made some excuse, and then the next day we went up to the ship.

 

And I waited three days, just to see if she'd be better once the birthday was past. If she'd reach out.

 

But she didn't.

 

And at the end of the three days, I commed her and asked her to put my stuff in storage, and she said she already had.

 

And that was that.

 

Until I left the ship and rejoined Intel and a while later Elnor followed me to an earth assignment.

 

And then he followed me here.

 

After what I'd done for her, stayed with her, helped her take and keep the bridge—she thought she owed me when I asked that she find him a place.

 

And I let her think that.

 

As I was introducing Elnor to Gabe and Pel, as he and Gabe played video games, as I sat around a table with my family, only one thing was missing: her.

 

But then she asked me to be her first officer, and I said yes, because her cohort were the Voyager people who were way ahead of her career wise, and she hadn't bothered to make friends out of her peers while on Titan. Or no one close enough to trust to be her first officer.

 

Although there may be people who think she chose me because we're together. That we're hiding it. They look for us to slip up, and fail to see that she and Shaw are going at it right under their noses.

 

And even though it hurts to see her with him, I keep my mouth shut and do my job and be the essential exec she needs, the same way I did for JL.

 

 For two reasons.

 

My career—this is a plum assignment and I can go anywhere after this. And my son—I love serving with Elnor.

 

I'm lying to you again. Because there's a third reason. There's Jack. Special counselor to her. He's imprinted so hard on Seven she might as well be a Borg Queen.

 

I owe JL that much. To keep an eye out for him. To make sure that he doesn't get in so deep he begins to forget who his real parents are.

 

And that she doesn't do anything stupid or reckless with his life, because I'm the voice of reason while she...

 

While she's maybe falling in love with the most boring captain in existence.

 

Although the way he looks at her... It's a long way from boring.

 

Elnor has told me we should leave. That she's never going to let me back in. He worries that I came here for her.

 

He sees a lot. Maybe that's reason four. Or maybe it's reason one and I just won't admit it.

 

He doesn't think she'll come back to me—he never says us.

 

But I think she will. More importantly, I think I'll let her back in. Once she's worked through her ex-Borg shit by being with the captain most likely to hate an ex Borg. If they implode, it'll be because she leaves him, finally free of the shackles she's let those implants become.

 

And in the meantime, she and I have found our rhythm as a command team. We're good together and the bridge crew trusts us.

 

And every now and then I see her eyes go soft as she looks at me. Or we laugh the way we used to, and she reaches out, her hand gentle on my arm. And I find an iota of hope in this strange existence.

 

She's the love of my life.

 

No, she's the love of my life...so far. If I find someone else, someone who can make me feel the way she does, then I'll let the idea of her go.

 

Although who am I going to meet on a ship?

 

And really, what's going to make me feel the way she does? Seven of Nine: my favorite drug.

 

FIN