THE BREEZE THAT MOVES ME

 PART TWO

“Define love.”

“Pardon?”  Janeway was jolted out of her daydreams.

“I said, ‘Define lo..”

“I know what you said, Seven.”

Pause.

“You are unable to do this.”  It was a statement that fell from Seven’s lips, not a question.

Slow down, Seven.  Let me get my breath .. 

“No … it’s just … not that easy to do.” Janeway stumbled around in her mind trying to think of a response to this phenomenally difficult question.  It was probably second only to asking someone to describe the intricacies of religion.  Only Seven could demand such instant answers to these deep questions and then treat you with incredulity when it took you time and effort to do so.  But then, that was one of the many things that Kathryn Janeway loved about Seven.  The woman had always marched to the beat of a different drum.

“Well, love is .. unfathomable.”  Great start!   “I’ve always found its definition illusive.”

“You have never been in love?"

“I didn’t say that.”

“You have been in love?”

Janeway found herself grinning.  Always black and white ….

“I’ve been in love ..” the Captain pondered the seriousness of the question, “really in love, twice.”

“So it is rare then?”

Now she really was grinning and gently laughed, “Well, no .. not exactly.”

She paused for a moment in consideration, thinking how best to continue.  “There are many different kinds of love.  Love for a family member or a close friend, love of a particular … concept, philosophy, pursuit ..”

Seven interrupted.  “I am not interested in those individual definitions.  I refer to .. love .. of another person, of intimate connection.  The love that Lt Torres speaks of with regard to Lt Paris, her all consuming passion for him and how it makes her hot with desire and that all she wants to do when they return to their quarters is..”

“I get the picture, Seven!”  Janeway suddenly felt warmer. 

When Seven spoke again, the tone had become quiet and subdued, and the Captain sensed an edge of desperation. 

“I need to know, Captain .. how one distinguishes between liking someone a lot .. and loving them .. really loving them.”  She paused and Janeway felt the tension in the young woman’s body.   “I .. seem to be inefficient at recognising this and .. I appear to have the capacity to hurt others .. considerably .. because of my .. deficiency.” 

“Seven, .. I’m not sure I can explain.”  There were some things Kathryn Janeway knew she could handle and some, she could not.  This definitely fell into the latter category.  How could you explain love to someone you loved but who didn’t know?

“Try … please.”   Understated anxiety.

Oh well, here goes nothing.

“I suppose love …  intimate love, between two people, is an emotion where a person … feels strongly for someone ..”

“Affection?” Seven queried.

“Yes … no.  Well, sort of.  No!”   Crystal clear, Kathryn!

“You can have affection for someone but .. love goes beyond that, it’s more intense.  Love means … an accepted loss of control and .. it’s an attachment …  a strong attachment … a very strong attachment …   This isn’t working!” 

“Continue.  You have only just started.”  Unrelenting demand. 

 Save a Borg.  Inherit the stress!

“Love is .. different to different people, but I guess .. love is about intensity and excitement.  When you are really in love, your body .. your mind .. you lose control.” 

OK, this is more like it.

“Your pulse races and the blood courses through your veins in anticipation of being with the one you love.  It makes you wild with desire and passion, and you get .. hot. It’s like an obsession which makes you ache and makes your heart swell, makes your body temperature rise …”

“It sounds unpleasant.” 

Janeway laughed warmly, “I think I’m losing something in the translation!”  She paused before continuing, her own voice then seeming to take on a distant edge, as she reminisced. 

“When you’re in love, Seven, it is the most extraordinary and wonderful feeling.  It makes you glad to be alive, grants you that feeling that you aren’t alone …that there is someone else out there that exists for you too, someone who cares for you as much as you do for them.  When you are in love, you are truly alive.” 

Janeway coughed irritably, and took a deep breath before continuing, the tone of her voice taking on a wistful, far-away quality.

“You find yourself longing to be with the one you love.  They are who you think of last thing at night before you go to sleep and who you think of when you first wake.  You think about them all day when they aren’t with you and when they are, you think about how you’ll miss them when they leave.  You care for them more than you care for yourself, and you put their needs before your own.  You don’t want to exist without them – they are your life.”

Seven listened to the longing and tenderness of the cadence and lilt, wondering if the Captain was thinking of anyone specifically as she spoke the words.

“When they’re talking with you, it’s always over too soon .. and you find yourself listening to the nuances of their voice, their inflections …”      The Captain’s voice trailed into a whisper.

“Never sell yourself short in love, Seven .  Be prepared to wait until that special person – the one – comes along and touches your heart .. really touches it, makes it sing.  Don’t ever settle for second best.”

Seven remained quiet and suddenly the Captain felt exposed, embarrassed, as if she had revealed more about herself than the actual description of love.  She felt vulnerable. And for Earth’s sake, Seven must know about passion … if she’d gained nothing else from Chakotay!

“Oh I don’t know, Seven.  You just know you’re in love because .. your toes tingle!”

“Your toes .. tingle?”  The ex Borg questioned incredulously and with some scepticism.

“Yes, well, .. mine do,” Janeway confessed, mildly embarrassed.

“You have felt like this .. twice?”

Again, the Captain hesitated, then after some thought.  “Yes.   I was in love a long time ago  .. Justin.  We were engaged to be married but ... he died.”  A myriad of bitter memories flooded back.  “Yes .. he made me feel that way.”   He really had done, from the very first minute she had met him, she had felt that connection.  She still missed Justin and knew she always would.

The Captain suddenly felt the urge to pursue a line of thought which had been bothering her for a while.

“Does Chakotay make you feel like that?” 

Seven was hesitant in her response, and the Captain felt the supporting body behind her tense again.

“He does not.”  One could not fail to miss the descending tangent in the voice and the quiet lilt of sadness.

“Ah.”  Why did this woman always make the resilient Captain Janeway feel so much?   “Then, perhaps he isn’t the one.”  She hoped she hadn’t just crossed over that fine line, but Seven was seeking honesty.

“I had already come to that conclusion.”  Seven voiced sadly.

Silence.

“You okay?”  

“I am fine, Captain.”  But she wasn’t and although the Captain could hear this in the young woman’s voice, she felt strangely unable to respond.  Instead, she simply placed a hand on Seven’s knee, in quiet support.

*****

“I .. terminated the relationship with Chakotay.”

Seven’s statement broke through the quiet unexpectedly, and immediately refocused the Captain’s attention away from the rather unpleasant dull ache that had been building up in her side and back – an ache that was now starting to get considerably worse.

Janeway was aware that something was wrong between Chakotay and Seven, had naturally assumed it had to do with a turn in their relationship but she was surprised that the affair was actually over.  The union had seemed very passionate and intense, very alive, despite the recent problems.

She could hear the distress in Seven’s voice and her heart automatically wanted to reach out to the young woman.

“I’m sorry, Seven, I didn’t know.”  She paused, waiting for Seven to elaborate further but when she didn’t, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Almost as if the other woman had not heard the question, “I never meant to hurt Chakotay .. but I have.  The closer he became to me, .. the less I wanted that .. closeness.  I do not understand how we became as close as we did, it all seemed to just happen as if I had no part in it.  I suppose I must have wanted that  .. physical connection once .. but now I do not.  Now I have hurt him and I did not want to do that.”

“Did something happen?”

“Happen?”

“To make you feel this way?”

“No.  I .. Chakotay and I are ultimately not compatible, not meant to be.  Our relationship has failed to mature …it has concluded amicably and, he says, he understands and that we are still friends.” 

The Captain smiled grimly to herself.  Seven’s words always took on the Borg persona when she was defensive .. or just a little unsure of herself.

Silence again.

“Sometimes Seven, even when things seem so right, they just fail to work out.  I guess in the end, the chemistry isn’t fully there.”

“Chemistry ..” Seven whispered, her thoughts a million miles away.  “I finished with him because I wanted something more, something beyond the physical  ... and I realised that I could never .. love him.”

Janeway tightened her grip on Seven’s knee as another slightly more aggressive cough gripped her, forcing her attentions on grabbing bites of breath in between the coughing fit.

“Are you alright, Captain?”  Seven focused her attention on the other woman who was clearly having some respiratory difficulty.

“I’m fine, Seven.  Dust in all the wrong places!”  Joking the episode off, the Captain quickly diverted the woman’s attention back to, what she considered, more important issues. 

Her voice, sounding hoarse, “These things, matters of the heart, are always difficult and painful, especially when they go wrong.  But Seven, be kind to yourself.  This is your first real experience of a relationship.  I know you don’t want to hear this now, but there’ll be other romances out there for you and, I don’t doubt for a minute, the right person will come along and .. be the one for you.”

Janeway felt Seven breathe deeply and could only imagine how cut off and alone this woman must sometimes feel, and especially now.  When the ex Borg replied, it sent a chill down the older woman’s spine.

“I do not think that I am an easy person to love, Captain.  I believe that my time with the Borg has made me unapproachable and .. too different.”  Seven’s sense of isolation had never seemed more heartbreaking to Kathryn Janeway than it did at this moment. 

“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself,” the Captain whispered in response.

“I .. do not make friends easily .. neither do I attract suitors.”

“You attracted Chakotay.”   Sometimes you have to shine a light on the obvious!

“Chakotay .. is different.  He has known me for seven years and has learned to understand me.”   But Seven did not see the light, it was as if she was blind.

Captain Janeway frowned.  Sometimes she was just overwhelmed by how much this younger woman had to face.  Learning to be human again, learning to develop adult relationships, in an adult .. very adult body, and yet with the mind of .. not a child, never a child, but the complex mind of both an innocent and also one who, simply by nature, analysed, evaluated, diagnosed every single action and thought.  Seven was just a novice in these things and so painfully vulnerable.

Softly, “You have quite a few admirers, Seven, I can assure you.  Don’t underestimate yourself.”

“With the exception of Chakotay, I am not aware of any others.”

“Well, what about the doctor, Harry Kim and Lt Chapman, to name but a few?”

A barbed response quickly bounced back.  “The doctor is a hologram, Harry is attracted to anything female that breathes and Lt Chapman avoids me.”

The Captain felt an involuntary smile force its way onto her lips, and she found herself having to contain the gentle laugh that threatened to spill.  She started to cough again as the breath caught in her throat, forcing her to breathe more deeply.

“Seven, .. I know for a fact there are others out there who care for you very much and who would give their right arm to go out on a date with you.”

“Lt Chapman nearly did,” the young woman said dryly.

This time, the unavoidable laughter bubbled up in the Captain and, uncontainable, forced her into a coughing fit, which she alarmingly only just managed to control.  That ache in her side and back had just gone up a big notch and now registered itself as pain.

Fighting to ignore her physical discomfort, “Oh Seven, believe me, they’re out there.”

“Name them.” Seven challenged quietly.

‘Well, your captain for one.’ Janeway thought.

A mass of butterflies suddenly took flight in the Captain’s stomach as she fleetingly considered the affect her declaration would have on the poor young woman if she inappropriately declared how she felt. 

Stammering a response, “I don’t think that would be very ethical.”   ‘Got out of that one nicely, Kate.’

Seven didn’t immediately respond to the Captain but when she did, she merely mumbled a quiet but tender, “Thank you.”

“For what?”  Confusion.

“For … caring.”  Pause.  “For assisting me to feel better.”

A powerful swell of emotion, like a large wave slapping into the side of a small sea vessel, overpowered the injured woman. Almost stunned into silence, it took the resilient Captain a while before she could continue. 

“Seven, you have no reason to feel like this .. to feel this bad.  You have so much going for you.  You are an intelligent, thoughtful, caring and sensitive human being, who cares more about other people’s feelings than your own.” 

Janeway shifted position slightly to ease the pain, “You are more concerned about how Chakotay is feeling, and how you wished you hadn’t hurt him, than you are about how bad this all makes you feel.  That makes you such a very special person, Seven, it’s what makes you so attractive to others.”

Desperate to assuage the woman’s fears, “Seven, life hasn’t been very kind to you but you’ve risen above all the hardships and emerged a beautiful woman, both inside and out. Anyone with a grain of sensitivity ..” She stopped to breathe. “and understanding couldn’t fail to see these qualities in you.”

The ex Borg heard but did not believe.  “I do not see them queuing.” 

Gently, “Maybe they want to queue but, for whatever reason .. can’t”.

“I do not understand.”

“Well, maybe they feel uncomfortable.  Maybe they think you’re too unobtainable, aloof, that they will not come up to your standards, be what you need … that they will be wrong for you.”

“Wrong for me?”

The incapacitated woman laughed wryly, “Oh, insecurities play havoc with humans.  Maybe they think they’re not as intelligent .. not worldly enough .. the wrong rank .. too short, too tall, too young ..”  Janeway swallowed hard, before finishing understatedly, “..too old.”

Seven pushed back against the rock she leaned upon and considered the words.

“Surely, that is my decision to make.” 

Janeway tilted her head back a little against the other woman, wishing she could see the other’s face but the angle was wrong and even if it hadn’t been, the natural light of the caves was insufficient. 

“Yes, I guess it is but matters of the heart .. attraction, love, they tend to make us all a little vulnerable and sensitive … a little shy.  We don’t like to get turned down in matters of love.  No one likes to feel rejected, so sometimes we choose to simply not declare our interest.”  Almost as an after-thought.  “Silly really.”  

Seven of Nine unexpectedly reached out and took one of the Captain’s hands and placed it in both of hers, rubbing it as though to warm the delicate hand. Captain Janeway did not remove her hand but accepted the comforting gesture.  How she longed to be able to return this gentle gesture in the hope it could escalate into something more meaningful.  Now if only the feeling of pressure in her chest would abate.

“Have you ever been turned down, Captain?”

“Can’t say I have but that’s because my partners have usually approached me first.”

“I see.” A simple response but Janeway instinctively knew there was more to follow.

“Have you ever .. not declared your interest … for fear of rejection?

Had Seven been able to see Janeway’s face, she would have seen the normally indomitable woman roll her eyes towards the cave ceiling.   Oh, Spirits.

The injured woman shifted uncomfortably.

“Captain?” Seven pushed.

Janeway responded just a little too quickly, and in doing so, showed her nervousness.

“I heard.”  Pause.  “Yes .. once.”

“You feared rejection?” Seven could not hide her astonishment. Janeway found this rather comforting.

“Yes.”  A quiet, dignified response.  End of the matter.

“Anyone who would reject you, would not be worthy of your affection, .. of your love.”

It was spoken with such intensity of emotion and such genuine, sincere feeling that Captain Janeway felt her stomach muscles tighten in emotional response. 

Despite the empathy and beauty of Seven’s words, they cut the Captain to the quick.  How painful it was to have something .. someone .. so precious, so near to you, and to be so in love with someone  who was completely unobtainable.  How cruel life could be.  Not for the first time, Janeway felt her eyes turn to watery pools. 

“Why, thank you, Seven.”  Not the best response but it was all Janeway could muster at the time.

A little nervously, “It is .. my pleasure, Captain.”

Thinking the discussion over, Janeway closed her eyes in discomfort, concentrating on the once simple, innate act of breathing but which now was becoming more and more difficult as time progressed.  She had done more than break a few ribs. The alarming build up of chest pain, the increasing shortness of breath, the chest tightness and the creeping fatigue … she did not want to admit it but her symptoms were beginning to cause problems .. nasty problems.  If she could just hang on until the rescue team …

Seven’s voice gently cut through the silence.

“Captain, are you .. shy .. in matters concerning love?”

The Captain wondered if perhaps her injuries were the least of her troubles!  Seven was probing and asking some of the most personal, intimate questions she’d ever been asked.

“Shy?”  Janeway queried, deliberately being obtuse in order to slow the conversation’s direction a little and give her chance to think.

“You spoke of those who are sometimes shy in declaring their attraction to another.”  The voice was cool, unemotional but you sensed an agenda behind the words.

Janeway didn’t immediately respond, so Seven continued, “This person you did not declare your interest in … you did not tell him .. because you were shy?”

The Captain felt like a turkey, sitting next to a pack of marshmallows, just before Thanksgiving.  To be honest, or not to be honest? That is the question!  The words of Shakespeare flooded through her head.

With a very hesitant reply, “Yes … and not a ‘him’ .. her.”

“Her?”

“Her.”  Janeway clarified.  Are you suddenly deaf, Seven?

Seven’s interest was kindled.  “She never declared her interest in you?” 

Captain Janeway just shook her head.

“So .. the feeling was not mutual?” The young woman continued to question.

Probe, probe, probe.  Drive it home, Seven.  “Apparently not.”

Pause.

“But …”

Janeway abruptly interrupted her. “Don’t you want to talk about something else?”

“No.”  A quick, abrasive response.

Worth a try.  Janeway realised that she was not going to be able to evoke an easy ‘get-out clause’ in this conversation.  This little expedition really was turning out to be a disaster, in more ways than one.

Seven forged ahead, “But what if .. she .. did not tell you of her attraction, her love .. because she also feared rejection, and was a little shy?”

Janeway considered the merits of the interesting hypothesis.  “Then I suppose we are both like passing ships in the night … and what could be, will never be.”  There was such exquisite sadness in the response.

Seven considered the Captain’s words and replayed them over in her head a few times before it suddenly dawned on her.  The Captain had spoken in the present tense.  ‘We are both like passing ships in the night ..’

“Captain, for two people to be in love but not know about it for fear of telling the other, .. and to then lose that opportunity, that would be what humans term, a tragedy?”

“Yes.”   A melancholic response.

Seven took a deep breath and then continued, “Tell me again, Captain.  You say that you have been in love twice …”

*****

“Why this sudden interest in my love life, Seven?”

“Why are you being evasive, Captain?”

In a somewhat barbed response, “I’m not being evasive!  I just think you have enough to occupy your mind without wanting to listen to my problems.”   I’m being evasive.

“You have problems?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did.”

“Yes, well .. I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“Indeed?  You are attempting to define the term ‘love’, for me.  Your answers help me to better understand.”

“I don’t see how.”

“No. Clearly, you do not.”  The tone oozed disdain.

Changing the subject, “How is your leg, Captain?”

A sharp response.  “Fine!”

“Good.”  Pause.  “We will continue then.  Mark Johnson, your fiancé ..”

Like a homing missile!   “Ex fiancé, Seven .. he terminated the relationship.”

“Yes, I recall.  He was a fool, Captain, and not worthy of your love.”

“No, Seven, he was right.  You can’t expect someone to wait for what might be forever, on a chance of maybe seeing the other again.  You can’t deny someone the opportunity to get on with their life.”

“But you loved him?”

Loved him.  Loved him.  Loved him?

The two words kept reverberating around her head. Had she ever loved Mark?  Was that such a difficult question to answer, when she knew in her heart she never had?  Not that her affair with Mark had been a sham or something dishonourable.   She had been very .. fond of him.  She had had a great affection for him – still did.  But love?  No.  She’d never really loved him.

Their relationship had been borne out of childhood familiarity and the warmth of close friendship.  Such was the territory of their affections.  When they had met later on in life, they’d built on that and further found an intellectual connection that brought them comfort.  A way to end each other’s loneliness, their relationship had simply progressed into a union of comfy convenience.

No.  She had never loved Mark.  Nor had Mark truly loved her.  They had both accepted deep affection in place of love.

Subdued, the Captain chose to answer the question, giving away much of the intrinsic inner and complicated motivations that made her who she was.  “I had a very strong affection for him.  I still do.  We had known each other since childhood.”  She took a deep breath.  “I .. we .. eventually gravitated towards each other when we met again, years later.  I guess we both knew we weren’t head over heels in love but I always thought the love would grow out of deep friendship.”

She paused as if afraid to admit the truth.  “So, .. no.. I never really loved Mark , and both of us knew it.  Perhaps another good reason why he was able to put the past behind him and move on.”

“Not a foundation for a sincere loving relationship, Captain.”  

“No.”

Silence.

“But you have been in love twice.”  Seven’s escalating inquisitiveness kept pace with Janeway’s levels of discomfort.

Janeway just moved her head, nodding.  Damn Seven and her eidetic memory. 

“Yes.”

“Before this mission on Voyager?”   

Probe.  Probe.  Probe. Seven made the Spanish Inquisition look like amateurs and Janeway could sense the circular finger of doom, slowly honing in on her.

“No.”

Why was she divulging so much personal information? Perhaps there were two reasons.  Was she trying to comfort Seven in some way by showing her that even star ship captains occasionally made a mess of their romantic relationships?  Was this where her honesty was coming from?  But was she also suddenly daring to tell the truth  – to let the personal Janeway have primacy, just for once?  She dared to tell Seven what she really felt for her, if Seven would just help and ask the right questions.  

And Seven’s questioning tactics were doing so well!  She was skilfully adopting the ‘closed question’ technique, demanding only the monosyllabic response, and lulling the respondent into thinking they were not giving away much information.

But each question tightened the noose, gaining, step-by-step, simplistic answers but always creeping deeper towards the core of information that the young woman was invariably seeking.  For Janeway, it was nothing short of the old Chinese torture technique of dripping water on the forehead.

“Whilst on Voyager?” Seven continued.

Suddenly overcome by a surge of personal cowardice and a desire to protect herself, Janeway interrupted what was turning into ‘Twenty Questions’ and decided to finish this line of questioning before things got too raw, too painful.  Her answer was a little too sharp, a little too emotional.

“Yes!”  She snapped, the voice brittle.  “Someone on Voyager, Seven, but they don’t know because .. it’s not a love that could ever be returned.  I know they could never see me in any romantic liaison so it’s what you call unrequited love.”

Janeway swallowed hard in an attempt to keep her rising emotions in check.  “Sometimes these things happen and you just move on.”

Abruptly, and with no warning, Captain Janeway suddenly arched back in pain and started to cough violently.  Her breathing grew laboured and was soon reduced to ragged gasps.

Seven reached for a wrist and felt the woman’s pulse, her heart rate had increased dramatically.  She could do nothing but support the other woman and wait helplessly whilst the attack was played out and the Captain desperately fought for air.

Eventually the coughing fit subsided but although over, the Captain still struggled to get the air back into her lungs and had to apply all her concentration on focusing on that small, but vitally important objective.  She breathed as though she had just run a marathon, and at speed.  And there was now an unpleasant, ominous, ill-boding sound coming from her chest.

With innate tenderness, Seven instinctively, and gently, lifted the Captain’s torso up and back a little, to help aid the airway.  She stroked away errant hair that had fallen across the Captain’s face but it did not fill the younger woman with encouragement when she felt the now clammy coating of perspiration that rested there.  This signified the onslaught of a temperature or worse, a fever, something even the dampening chill of the caves could not repel.  She continued to stroke the forehead, like a mother calming a sick child, eventually leaving her hand in place on the woman’s brow.

“The attack is ebbing, breathe slowly, Captain,” she quietly encouraged. 

Listening to the woman’s laboured breathing, Seven’s face became a picture of intense concentration, as she noted the subtle changes in Janeway’s inhalation, gradually slowing but not returning to levels of ease prior to the attack.

“Captain, my first opinion of your injuries was deficient.  They are worse than my initial diagnosis.  I will try and find the tricorder again, if you can jus ..”

Janeway placed a hand on Seven’s knee to stop her, “Please .. stay.” 

“If I can locate the emergency supplies ..”

“You didn’t find it .. before,” the voice rasped as air was forced into lungs, “why .. now?”

“At least let me examine you.”

Seven met with no resistance as she moved her fingers deftly and efficiently over the woman’s upper body.  Gently probing the ribs on Janeway’s left hand side, the Captain’s body arched again in pain.

“Your injuries are extensive.  I believe you have suffered broken ribs and they have done further internal damage.”  Then, with a tenderness of nature that Seven seldom allowed others to see, “Your situation is not good.”  The statement was loaded with concern. “I’m sorry.”

Janeway tweaked Seven’s knee supportively, “Not your fault.”

“What can I do to make you more comfortable?”

“Nothing, Seven.”

But the young woman very carefully moved in closer, so she could rest the Captain’s head on her shoulder, and held her as tightly as she dared without causing more pain. The Captain’s condition was deteriorating and fast. 

*****

Seven sat with her back against the hard rock, mildly aware that she was uncomfortable.  But she would not move for fear of disturbing Captain Janeway who had only recently fallen into an exhausted and fitful sleep. 

The past few hours had been traumatic for the starship captain who had continually had to fight one coughing bout after another, each one increasing in severity, and each one increasing the ominous gurgling sounds from the chest.  All were making her progressively more lightheaded, dizzy and weak.  The prognosis for Captain Janeway was not good.

It had been a disturbing time for Seven too, alone with her thoughts.  Janeway’s rapid deterioration had forced her to consider certain issues more quickly than she had expected.  But being here alone with the Captain, those once immensely difficult issues that had plagued her of late, now became clearer. What had once confused and distressed her, no longer did.  Sudden she understood everything.

Seven had had time to re-evaluate what it was she felt for this woman. She had known for a long, long time that she had very strong, positive emotions where Captain Janeway was concerned.  Her problem had always been in defining them.

Did she simply have enormous respect for Janeway, who had rescued her from the Borg and had then set about the demanding, challenging task of re-humanising her?  Was it then, a massive amount of gratitude?   Or was it an affection brought about by the woman’s extraordinary patience and moral strength as she mentored the ex Borg, willingly giving her precious spare time of which she had so little?  Or was it a genuine friendship that had slowly developed between the two of them as they had come to know the other more deeply?

Or was it more, something she had suspected and which had, in truth, caused her to extract herself from the relationship with the unfortunate Commander Chakotay?

These important questions had all demanded clarity in answers, but instead she had initially only received inner messages relaying confusion.  But suddenly, the confusion was clearing and now, lying here with the Captain in her arms, feeling the places where flesh met flesh, the Captain’s face resting against her own skin  … everything was, at once, blindingly obvious.

The simple act of holding this woman in her arms was throwing a cascading array of emotions through her body, experiencing sensations and feelings she had not felt before, but knew their source.  Love.

The small and fractured conversations she had had with Janeway in the last few hours had finally cemented her understanding of what it was that existed between the two of them.

Her thoughts returned to their last conversation ….

¯¯¯

A quiet voice with little energy attached behind it, “You okay, Seven?”

“I should be asking you that question, Captain.”  Tender. Caring. Warm.

“ Easier …”  The injured woman lied, pre-empting Seven’s obvious question but the ex Borg would not have asked, since she only had to listen to know that the Captain’s breathing was getting worse and she could feel the heat increasingly radiating from the other’s body.  A sick heat.

Time was becoming a precious commodity and Seven feared it was something that the Captain might not have much of.  A need to explain herself to Janeway suddenly became an urgency.

“What I had with Chakotay was .. physical.”  The expression was empty, the intonation devoid of any emotion.

Janeway stirred, slightly moving her head closer into Seven’s neck, catching the welcome scent of the woman. Seven felt the breath on her skin.

Urged on, “It was a powerful, exciting and passionate relationship but .. it was not enough.”   Confusion, almost shock, edged the blonde’s voice. “I wanted something else, something more, something beyond the physical.”  Pause.  “What I had with Chakotay was not .. love.”

Captain Janeway, not for the first time since this journey had started, found herself unable to comment, choosing instead to give the other woman time, time to continue whatever was yet to be spoken.

Almost a whisper, Seven continued, “and it is not possible to love someone … when you are in love with someone else.”

A million thoughts hit Janeway.  Seven loved someone else .. not Chakotay. Now fighting the heat, the light-headedness, she struggled to make sense of what she was hearing.

“Oh?”  Such depth of intelligence, Kate.

Seven didn’t seem to mind the minimalist response.

“I too have felt .. been .. attracted to someone for a long time but never thought they felt anything for me.”  She paused.  “It wasn’t until recently that I realised my feelings for them were love and that, they too, might hold me in the same regard.”

Would it be so very unacceptable for me to be in love with my Captain?

Continuing, “I was .. too shy to tell them how I felt, too afraid to have my feelings rejected. I did not fully realise that my feelings of ..love .. might be returned.”

Now it was Janeway’s turn to probe, her heart full of anticipation.

“Did you ever tell .. that someone?”   

Seven hesitated, then with a slight tremor present in the soft tone.  “No.  Perhaps I should have done.”  Stillness.  “Perhaps I still should.”

Janeway would have held her breath if she had had any spare to hold.

And then, with Seven’s innate ability to cut through all the social niceties and the accepted traditions of how things should be conducted, she delivered the ‘broadside’.  In just a volley of seven words, she bombarded Janeway’s ramparts completely without warning and left her defenceless.

“Captain, .. do I make your toes tingle?” 

Maybe it was the lack of oxygen to Kathryn Janeway’s brain, or simply her increasing level of fatigue brought about by her continued effort to just breathe but it took what seemed like an eon for her thoughts to make sense of what Seven had just said, and of the implied implications.

A lump came into her throat and, at first, she was unable to say anything.  Then she quietly whispered a simple, ‘Yes’, as she simultaneously, weakly, raised her right hand up blindly into the dark, vacuous air and instantly felt Seven’s fingers wrap around and entwine with her own.

“Yes.”  She simply repeated.

“Then it is not unrequited love, Kathryn.”

Seven leaned her head closer into the other woman’s, and let it rest there.

Neither of them said anything.  Neither of them needed to say anything. There was an unspoken understanding between them, and things had suddenly become beautifully clear to both.

After a while, Seven whispered, “Chakotay has never made my heart ache or occupied my thoughts at the beginning and close of the day. He has never made me care more for him than myself.”  She paused to breathe in the scent of Captain’s hair. 

“But you do.”

Kathryn Janeway closed her eyes and brought Seven’s hand to her lips where she delicately kissed the long, slim fingers.

“Hell of a time .. for us .. to find this out, Seven.  We have …”  Janeway tried to laugh but she was just too weak now.   “ ..impeccable timing!”

Janeway now lost her valiant attempt at controlling another approaching spasm and all Seven could do was hold the Captain as she fought to live.

Seven’s thoughts were consumed with the rescue team.

Please come quickly.

¯¯¯

*****

Seven of Nine, once Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero One, slowly but surely, became aware that the biological entity she was holding in her arms, the precious human life form known to her as Captain Janeway, was dying.  The life was quite simply, gently, but assuredly, fading away minute by minute.

Knowing this, recognising this hard, logical and undisputed fact with all her Borg enhanced intellect, still sanctioned the competitive wave of humanity surging through her.  She found herself tenderly pulling her Captain closer, wrapping her arms around the injured woman and cocooning the hurt officer’s ice cold hands in hers, as if willing her own life force into the other body.

“Please .. do not leave me.”  The younger woman whispered to the other.

A stranger might have mistaken the inflection of the voice as devoid of emotion, but it wasn’t.  Those familiar with Seven would have recognised the barrage of passion and pain in those words.  For hidden beneath the clipped Borg tones was tenderness and love for the other.

Slim, finely chiselled fingers moved slightly in the hands of the younger woman who instantly, protectively, wrapped hers more closely around them.

“So .. sorry, Seven .”  Breathing now was so impossibly laboured and difficult for the Captain.  “So many … things .. to say …” A pause. “.. regrets ..”   A weak cough and a liquid reverberation from the lungs.

Seven lightly placed her lips to the Captain’s cheek.  The skin was so soft but damp and cold.

“Things will be different yet.  Please … hold on until we are rescued.”

A word fell from Janeway’s lips but Seven could not make out its form.

“Just try!” 

Emotional desperation was now etched into the very fabric of Seven’s words and a small sob emanated from the back of the young woman’s throat, “Do not make me live without you .. please .. do not make me do this.”

But no words, comforting or otherwise, were returned from the other woman and Seven, in a moment of awareness, felt the dead weight that had become the Captain who lay motionless, no longer breathing.  All of the erratic, alarming chest noises had ceased, to be replaced by the eerie stillness and quiet of the caves.

A moment of acute panic, saw Seven move the fingers of her hands that held the Captain’s, and horrified, she felt those precious fingers simply slip and fall from hers to hit the hard, unforgiving ground.

And in the deadly peace of that cold sepulchred vault, a woeful and inconsolable sound reverberated around the cave, like an animal in pain, echoing down through unhearing shafts of hard, unforgiving, murderous rocks.

“No..oo!”

*****

The Present

Lying here in this bed, the quiet tears roll silently down my face, and my breath catches. Emotion overwhelms me once more, irrespective of the amount of times I return to this nightmare that holds me hostage.

“It’s only a nightmare,” my lover gently counsels, her voice lost somewhere between my breasts, her breath saturating and seeping into my skin, becoming a welcome part of me.

“It is always so real … I am back there  .. alone .. and I feel the pain of loss again.”

This time she says nothing but lifts herself enough to drag her body up mine, the sensation sending a catalyst of desire through my awakening and responsive body.  This woman can ignite the fire in me like no other.  I want no other.

She elbows herself up close to me and plants little kisses around my neck and throat, nuzzling the tender and soft skin she finds there, running her lips slowly up over my chin, finally resting those succulent lips upon mine.  My lips now betray me and open, allowing her access but whilst her tongue gently probes, her kiss is tender and supportive, nurturing, not yet invasive and passionate.  This always comes later, when she is sure I am fine and recovered from the nightmare.

She allows her nose to rub mine, from side to side, her lips still just touching mine, her breath intermingling with my breath.  Her shoulder length, soft, silky hair cascades around my face and I smell her familiar scent which fills my senses to overflowing.

I am lost in her, a wonderful sensation and I smile.  Her beautiful eyes are closed but she senses my smile and understanding the intimacy of its meaning, smiles seductively back.

Her hands have now moved back down and are partially under my back again, as she lifts her face and opens her sleepy eyes.  Blue eyes, the colour of the deepest blue summer sky, lock like a navigational fix, onto mine.

“But the captain didn’t die, did she, Seven?”  The words are rhetorical.  “She lived.”  Her eyes flash sex and passion as she moves her body seductively on mine.  She is always hungry for me when she wakes, yet always protective of me when she sleeps, her arms about me tight.

I smile more.  Only she elicits this reaction.  Only she makes me smile … and she knows it.

I move my knee fractionally against her sex causing a shock wave of desire to throb through her.  She moans and has to stir to control herself, temporarily losing herself in the moment.

“Just making sure you are alive, Kathryn,” I whisper into her ear, my lips retreating to touch the beautiful cream soft skin of her cheek.  I am still smiling.

“Seven …” she gasps, “trust me, I am very much alive .. and likely to become more so if you don’t go easy with that knee!”   The radiance of humour which is hers alone, melts my heart. 

I adore the sound of her voice first thing in the morning … raw, deep, husky and sensuous.  The vibrations of that voice resonate around and fill my head like a narcotic intake.  I move my leg again teasingly.

“Wicked Borg ..” she mutters as her face lowers once more, her lips making contact with mine, this time her tongue probing deeper into me.

She wants me now.  My hands slide down her back and find her buttocks which I push closer into me, feeling her wetness on my body.

“Seven ..” her whisper becomes misplaced in the groans of her arousal and I know she is lost now in the moment as I too, begin to spiral down into that obsessive, zealot state of ecstasy.  Her arms tighten around me and I feel their strength, I feel them tremble.

And just before that time when I will completely overdose on this adoring and passionate woman, in the split second before I completely lose myself in her, a last rational thought forces itself to the surface.  And I again give thanks, that the rescue team found us in time and that the Captain was saved.

I could have lived without Captain Janeway but I would not have wanted to.  Life has taught me that if you are lucky, one person comes into your life and gives it true meaning and purpose.  Makes your toes tingle.

The Captain was my life, is my life, will always be my life.

I am but the leaf and she is the breeze that moves me