Title: The Same Spot, Twice
Author: Trek_in_Tandem
Summary: This is Seven and this is how things are.
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek. This story is for entertainment only. The only renumeration I seek is feedback!
The Same Spot, Twice
“What are you doing?” This is the first thing she says to me.
She comes to me after almost two years. After the formalities had been attended to with the proper regard--the debriefings, the reports, the inquiries that we called other things--and after everyone had found some foothold on life, no matter how illusory, some starting block for ‘moving on with their lives,’ that phrase the counselors repeated as if it meant something, after commissions were granted and retraining undergone and assignments made. After we’d all “settled in again,” or had pretended we knew what that meant and, further, that we had accomplished it, then, she came to me. I saw her all the time, of course. I’d taken care of her, or done what I called “taking care of her” in the darkness of empty rooms.
She had a life. She had work that interested her and respect for her successes and acceptance in a human world. She had accepted the concept of ‘free time’ and she used hers for leisure pursuits. She visited me at least once a week, usually more. We had quick lunches during work days and dinners in all the best restaurants of Earth. We still played velocity and sometimes tennis. She always won at chess and we were hell with a pool cue. We took in the sights, natural and historic. We visited research facilities and private collections. My rank and security clearance could get us into almost anything and my name alone got us into the rest.
But that evening, after almost two years, when she came, I knew it was different. She had access to my house in the hills and her habit had been from the beginning to come and go as she pleased. There had been evenings when she was there when I got home, with dinner waiting for me, eager to tell me of some detail of her work, or more often with no offered reason whatsoever. There had been evenings when I found her there, every table and desk and chair in my house covered with her PADDs and equipment, and she never spoke a word to me at all. There’d been mornings when I’d woken with the feeling that my house was fuller than I would expect to find her on the sofa or in the guest bedroom, asleep. She used my house as her own, as some sort of haven, I thought at times, or as extra office space when it suited her. I won’t say this seemed like any normal sort of relationship I’d have with a former crew member, even a protégé, or even any sort of normal relationship of any kind. But I’d given up on normal long ago.
I was Starfleet, after all, and a captain. And I spent 7 years alone in the Delta Quadrant with my ship and my crew and nothing else solid under my feet or at my back. Before that, my world was neatly divided into Time Before Starfleet and My Life, within which there was Before Command and Command. That one mission, that one day, and then it was Everything Else and This. Now that we are home, there is Everything Else and there is Voyager, and the present is somehow related to Everything Else, but I haven’t quite figured out how.
Seven had come into my life three years into the Voyager period, long after the meaning of normal had irrevocably changed for me. Seven, to whom hierarchy was irrelevant, some quaint human custom among a million others, all of which she had no use for. Seven, who saw no reason to follow my orders if she didn’t agree with them. And suddenly I had almost a nightmare scenario, didn’t I? A mutiny of one. I had this crewmember who disobeyed and gave me orders and questioned and challenged me whenever she wanted, in front of whomever she pleased, and it too was just part of my new norm. That discipline didn’t break down, that no one lost respect for me--it didn’t even surprise me. It never even occurred to me to think along those lines by that point. Perhaps I should have been surprised that, all things considered, she did come to respect me and, in some strange, unStarfleet, personal way, to pay heed to my commands and give me her loyalty. But it didn’t, not really. It was just Seven and this was how things were.
I had some unique sense of responsibility to and for her that I have never bothered to name. She’d come to my quarters in the middle of the night if she wanted to see me and I never discouraged her, except once when she was calling me to task, but it didn‘t do any good and she was right, anyway. I’d never allowed any officer, even my Exec, to speak to me the way she did that night, even when I was wrong. But it was as if I felt she had the right to do it, even when I pulled rank on her and tried to enforce the distance of authority out of anger. I couldn’t get away, though. It was like a familial connection, I suppose. An inherent bond, the mutual instinct to protect, obligations that aren’t really obligations because they are met with a willing heart. We had an intimacy I’d never allowed with a crewmember before the Delta Quadrant, not even with Tuvok, who was my friend. I had an unprecedented intimacy with the entire crew, but it was different with Seven. I’d go and watch her in her alcove when I had something on my mind, whether it had anything to do with her or not. Highly invasive thing to do, highly presumptuous of me, but somehow, it wasn’t. Somehow, it was acceptable, and that was how things were.
I’d seen the backside of normal long ago and it was perfectly natural to me that Seven would treat my house not as a separate territory but as an extension of her own. I was working that evening when she came in. It was nothing I had to complete immediately, nothing at all important really. It was just the sort of thing I did when my duty shift was over and I was home for the evening and alone. Sure, sometimes I’d read or paint or go to the gym, go out for a run, play tennis or velocity on one of the holodecks Starfleet provided us, but often I’d read reports on things not even tangential to my duties, do a little research, play with engineering designs or theoretical equations. It was leisure to me, really, what others saw as work. It was what I was doing when Seven arrived and I wasn’t very intently focused on it. I was slouched in an oversized chair and I had a drink at hand. I was spending as much time staring at Millie, the puppy, curled up on the rug or out the window at the rain or into the fire I’d laid earlier as I was spending reading any of the PADDs scattered over my lap. This was what I called relaxing, unwinding. I wasn’t particularly intent on any one thing and so I was immediately aware of her entrance.
She came in wet from the rain. She was wearing a waterproof jacket that didn’t cover her head or legs and she hadn’t even closed the front. She must have been outside for quite a while because her hair and face were dripping and the front of her shirt was soaked to a dark blue. I could imagine her strolling along, oblivious to the rain, jacket blowing open from her slight momentum and the wind of the storm. I’d been around her these past years and I’d seen her begin to lose herself in theoretical work in a way none of us had time for on Voyager. She was still efficient, but sometimes she acted more like most of the brilliant scientists I’d ever known than I ever thought possible back in the Delta Quadrant. She’d walk around with that faraway look in her eyes that meant she was doing equations in her head or contemplating the relevancy of some obscure theory to her own work. It was the look she wore on the evenings she spent working in my house without speaking to me, not even noticing if I went to bed and left her alone. Sometimes it’d come over her in the middle of dinner and she’d stop eating or on the street and I’d take her arm to guide her around other people.
I could recognize the look in a heartbeat. I’d worked closely with dazed geniuses in my career and at times I’d even drifted around like that myself, completely involved in whatever was in my head instead of the world around me. It was never something I was prone to, and whatever small tendency I had for it went away in the face of command training. But I knew and I didn’t particularly mind if Seven drifted around my house for a while--especially since she sometimes cooked to busy her hands while she thought--or settled down to work in silence. Sharing space with Seven as a rainy late afternoon darkened imperceptibly into night and the fire crackled and my glass slowly emptied was a warm and cozy idea. I didn’t give this, or her, much thought, just snuggled into the comfort of my chair with some satisfaction and went back to staring at the rain on the glass of the window. I was thinking about this theory that had been pricking softly at my consciousness for a few weeks but hadn’t yet come to full term. The texts strewn around me were meant to prod my mind into letting me in on just what I was up to, but I wasn’t forcing anything.
I was aware of Seven taking off her coat, leaning out the still open door to shake it, dropping it in the entryway and closing the door before wandering out of sight, of her returning some unknown amount of time later with a towel she used to dry the floor and the coat, of her hanging the coat in the closet and leaving the room again. I went back to reading the current text without conscious decision. She came back into the room as I was sipping from my drink and I glanced up at her over the glass. She’d put on some of the clothes she kept in my guest bedroom for those times when she found herself here late at night or in the morning when it was time to dress for work. On the edge of my awareness, Seven buttoned the top of the silk pajamas I’d added to the guest room closet before she had thought to bring any of her own. My thoughts had grown a bit sharper and I leaned over the coffee table to make notes. She took her hair down and rubbed at it with the same towel from before. I felt her eyes on me and so I looked up with a smile, to greet her, but she didn’t seem to be focused on me, though she was looking at me, so I went back to my notes.
Time passed and Seven’s movements faded into the background. Her footsteps on the hardwood floors in some parts of the house, then softer sounds of fabric and breath and sharper tones from the kitchen--all was mixed in with the patter of the rain, the whoosh and occasional spark of the fire, and the sighs of a sleeping dog. I was staring out the windows when she stepped into my line of sight and leaned against the edge of the desk to the right of the window. I gave her a half-smile as I came out of my thoughts. Her drying hair was curling in the open collar of her shirt and her feet were bare, but her eyes were focused on me now. Her eyes now had an expression I didn’t recognize.
“What are you doing?”
I looked at her, mind still leaning towards my reading, slowing my observations, and I was still wondering what that expression meant. I had now for the first time the sense that she had come to me, come to me for something particular, and the suspicion that whatever had distracted her earlier had nothing to do with work.
I reached over and found my glass, maybe buying time to catch up with her, took a drink, thought about her question. It was not a typical Seven question. I was quite familiar with Seven questions and with Seven tones. While your average person might offer this as a conversational opener, that wasn’t Seven’s style. If she asked what I was doing, it meant she wanted to know what I was doing. I thought about the possible meanings of her question. What are you doing at this moment? Too obvious. What are you working on? She’d have said that if that was what she wanted to know. There had been a hint of the sort of challenge in her tone that I hadn’t heard in a long while. Did she mean why was I basically ignoring her? I didn’t think so.
She stood still against the desk, heels of her hands pressed against the surface alongside her waist, long slender fingers loosely curled over the edge of the polished wood. I looked up at her face. She looked back at me intently, no impatience in her expression, no irritation. Just that look that I couldn’t quite interpret. The look that matched the tone.
What am I doing? Something in the way she’d spoken made the question feel, when I asked it of myself, like a question of self, of identity rather than action.
Kathryn Janeway, Starfleet, I found myself thinking. I found images of uniforms and pips and Voyager and stars at warp flitting through my mind. Scientist. I put down my PADD and my eyes found the window again. I live in this house but don’t call it home when I think of it. I am an admiral. I give orders, I evaluate situations and people, I plan and strategize. I follow the ships my people are on and I keep PADDs of research in the bottom drawer of my desk. I glanced back at her. Seven.
“What are you doing, Captain?” She crossed her arms under her breasts, settling onto the desk, still regarding me patiently, all soft strange challenge.
Seven who still calls me captain sometimes and sees my house as home even though I don‘t.
Did I just think ‘my people?’ I did.
What am I doing?
“Seven . . .” I dropped my chin and looked up at her from this new perspective, looked into her eyes, met that look head on.
What are you doing? What is your life, your purpose? What drives you? Why do you sit behind a desk all day and play scientist in your free time and dream about the stars at night? Why do you expect me to be in your house at any hour of the day, to arrive unannounced, to make you the occasional dinner, to come to you when something excites me, to come here when I feel adrift? Who are you? After all this time, what is this?
What are you doing?
She arched a brow when I paused, encouraging me to speak.
“I don’t know, Seven.” I ran a hand over my face, suddenly drained. “This is life. This is time passing. This is what comes next. I don’t know. I guess this is what people do when they don’t know what to do. We just . . . go on. We continue to exist.”
“Are you happy?” The look in her eyes, whatever it was, was more intense, more obvious. Then she dropped her gaze from mine. “Sometimes I do not think you are.”
It didn’t occur to me to just say yes. It didn’t automatically rise to my lips, as it would at any other time, as it would now if she were anyone else. “I don’t think about that. I mean, I don’t not think about it, don’t avoid thinking about it. It just had not occurred to me.”
She watches me and so I think about it. I think about work, about service to the Federation, about reports and details and big pictures and bigger pictures and meetings and decisions and orders. I think about all the journals I read in my spare time and the research I do myself, sometimes, for no real reason. I think about the satisfaction I get from a successful mission I ordered, from successful diplomacy, a good treaty, a new Federation member. I think about why I dabble in science. I think about thinking ‘my people,’ and that I meant the crew of Voyager, and about how I keep careful track of them as if I will be able to do anything at all should they come into harm’s way. I think about how there is Voyager and Everything Else and this present that I’m not quite sure of.
I think of Seven coming in, minutes or hours ago, and I look at her. Not hours; her hair is still wet. I think of how I felt when I saw her, of my spontaneous smile that she didn’t see, of how I felt when I expected her to spend the evening working in silence next to me. I think of how it didn’t matter to me if we ate dinner together and talked, if we spoke at all. I think of that feeling.
“Sometimes, I’m happy,” I say. She considers this, eyes drifting lazily away from me. She moves, begins to walk around the room. She never has been one to remain still if she wasn’t working. “You, Seven, are you happy?”
This is also something I have not thought about and I suddenly feel stricken because I should have. I straighten in my chair and follow her with my eyes. I wait a long time for her to answer. She sits on the sofa, at right angles to me, and strokes Millie with her toes, so lightly the puppy doesn’t wake. I am patient, but eventually I know she is not simply formulating a reply.
Surely she’s thought of this before, of whether or not she is happy, if she thinks about whether I am. “Seven.” I wait a moment but she doesn’t look up at me so I go on anyway. “I don’t think it’s the human condition to be always happy. Or always unhappy, for that matter. I think joy, sorrow, pain, anger—all the extreme emotions—are bolts of lightning. Bright but fleeting. The normal emotional condition, the baseline is . . . far more mellow,” I eventually finish. Then I add, “Something less intense.”
“Normal,” she says and it sounds halfway like a question, halfway like a private musing she’s spoken aloud. But Seven doesn’t usually think aloud, so I do.
“I’m not sure what normal is. I mean I’m not sure what normal is for me, anymore. This,” and I gesture vaguely around at my house but I mean my entire life and Seven’s place in it, “is not what I would have called normal once. But now, it’s what is, my daily life, and so I guess it’s normal now.” And I’m not talking about emotions anymore. I suddenly realize I’ve derailed the conversation.
But Seven is following me. “Before,” and I know what she means with just that. It’s a word with a world of meaning. “Normal for me was the Collective, the hive mind, no individual thoughts or desires or actions. Or emotions.”
My Before can’t be put into as few words so I don’t try. “I lost normal out there, too,” I say. “But whatever our situation, I don’t think the human condition changes. I think great emotion always comes in small bursts and the rest of the time . . .” I spread my hands. “We just exist.”
“Lightning,” she says musingly. Then she looks up at me for the first time since she sat. “Do you?”
She seems doubtful. “Don’t you?” I return.
After a moment, during which she returns her eyes to Millie: “It seems lacking.”
Suddenly there is a lump in my throat and I feel like sobbing. I never sob. She looks up at me again and I return her gaze for a while before saying, “Yes.”
She says, with a tone of absolute certainty, “You were happy in the Delta Quadrant.”
I continue to meet her eyes but I say nothing.
“You were happy,” she repeats. “There was . . .” A pause. “I don’t know. Sometimes you were worried, or angry, or frightened,” she whispers this last and I incline my head, the old signal of permission, assuring her it’s okay to say this aloud. “Maybe you wished to be in the Alpha Quadrant. But there was always—a baseline, as you said. It was different than it is now. I didn’t see such things then, but now I see them, and I know that you are not happy as you were then.”
I feel like I am slowly falling into myself, imploding. “You’re right,” I hear myself say and I realize that she is. I realize that then, no matter what else, I was doing what I loved. I was a captain, what I was born to be. An explorer and a scientist. I had people I cared about all around me, and I protected them and provided for them. My daily life was a life of discovery and new challenges. And all of this is what made me happy. I wonder if I am going to have to put all of this into words for her. I will try if she asks, I know.
“You were a captain,” she says, and for the first time, I hear that word mean to her what it means to me when she speaks it. Yes, she still calls me captain, sometimes, and I know she does this because I am her captain, because whatever respect and loyalty she came to have for me is tied up in that word. Whatever affection and trust. But I have never before heard the knowledge in her own voice when she speaks it.
“Seven.” I stand up and hold out my hand and she stands too. I’m still holding my hand out in the space between us when I say, “I am happy when you are with me.” And it is something I am giving her, this little truth. I can feel the intensity in the look I am giving her as I will her to see the importance of what I’m saying. Then she takes my hand, the first time she has ever touched me for the sake of touching alone, and I know that she sees. “You make me happy.” I articulate each word precisely and it is painful because I want to cry again. My voice sounds shaken and vulnerable to my own ears.
But then her hand on mine is hesitant and fleeting like a butterfly that will dart away if I move, and so I wrap my fingers around her wrist and press my palm firmly against hers and now her hand is in mine. She returns the pressure and we are hand in hand.
‘This life I have now,” I begin, wondering what I’m saying, “You are the lightning.”
She looks into my eyes and I know that she is seeing right into me, past the barriers of a starship captain, into the core of me. She’s always done this to me. “You don’t believe it.”
I know what she means. I smile for what seems the first time in years and I know it is a wavering smile, a smile almost a sob. “No,” I say softly. “That we have to spend most of our lives merely existing, plodding along? No, I don’t believe that.”
“And the feelings?”
“It doesn’t have to be brief flashes in a void of numbness. It doesn’t have to be vague satisfaction or disappointment.” I raise the hand that is at my side to her arm. I slide the hand that is holding hers along her arm without releasing her until her hand rests on my arm. I step closer until I have to tilt my head back to look up into her eyes. “We can live always in the blaze if we’re lucky.”
She brings her other hand up, too, and now our arms are entwined. “Kathryn,” she begins but I speak at the same time.
“You never answered me.” She starts over but I haven’t paused and so we are speaking over each other.
“Kathryn—”
“Are you happy?” The pleasure of my name, so rarely on her lips, catches me unaware and rocks me so that I don’t know how I got my question out.
She interrupts herself again to answer. That slight smile lights her face and she says, “I think I am one of the lucky ones.”
I know what this means. I know.
“You speak of this life we have. The life I have, you made for me. You did that for me. I am happy except when I suspect that you aren’t.”
I pull her closer, into my arms, against my body. “I’m happy now, Seven,” I say against her neck where I’ve pressed my face. And it’s not this exact moment I mean, though I am joyful at this moment. I mean now, from this day, the Rest of My Life.
“Normal will be the blaze you speak of,” she says against my temple, and her words caress my hair. “I can feel that blaze. In my chest.” Her hands are solid at my back.
I smile against her. My lips brush her skin and I realize that I’m going to kiss her, but first I give her the name. “Love.” I brush my lips against her throat as I draw my head away, more veneration than kiss. Behind her I see a glance of the night through the window, starless darkness, the rain still coming down. What are you doing? Then I see only her. “This is love,” I tell her.
“Yes,” she agrees and I realize I’m stating something that's been obvious to her. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do if I want to keep up with this woman. “This is what you should be doing,” she replies.
“This is what I’m doing,” I tell her. And from now on, it is. I touch my fingertips to her jaw, just barely, so that her skin tickles me, and then I let the touch be born, press my fingers against her face, thumb under her jaw, and I nudge her down to me. I give her my lips in the same way, an offering at first, barely there, and then the promise, full and strong. I’ve linked my hands behind her head, in the mass of hair at her neck, and I press my lips harder and harder against hers as if I can make our mouths one, as if through metamorphic pressure. She presses back, and sometime between the moment her lips part for me and the moment when I draw back to graze her mouth with my tongue, I come to understand that I have found a new adventure, the adventure, and that I now know exactly what I’m doing. Here is the meaning I hadn’t realized was lacking.
She echoes me uncannily but it seems perfectly normal, of course. “I lack nothing now. I love you.” And I don’t even wonder where Seven got such fervor as what I hear in her voice. I know, and it’s me. This is Seven and this is how things are.
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