Chapter III (day three, lunch, Drone)

The Mess Hall was relatively quiet for the beginning of lunch.  Neelix hummed behind the counter mixing up his newest concoction when Seven walked in.  She spotted her companion in the far corner of the room sitting with her back to the view ports.  The Bajoran noticed her arrival and smiled, pushing the padd she’d been staring at to the side of the table.  Seven figured Celes was sitting in the same position when she called for her to meet.  She took the sentiment to heart.

“Hey, Annika.”  Celes locked her eyes with Seven’s as she slid down into the chair opposite her.  “Sleep well last night?”

“Not particularly.”  She settled and rested her hands on the table.  “I’ve been assigned to an away mission.”

“Oh?  That nebula?”  She noticed Neelix approaching beyond Seven acknowledgement.  “When do you leave?”

“1900 hours.”  Seven looked up at Neelix as he settled beside them.

“Your usual, Seven?”

Seven looked at Celes looking back at her.  “Something light.  A salad perhaps?”  Celes nodded.  “Two servings.”  Neelix turned his attention to Celes now.  It was obvious from the slight shake of her fingers that she didn’t talk to the Talaxian much when she was there.

“Water, too, please.  Thanks.”  Her nervous smile faded after Neelix disappeared behind the counter again.  She caught Seven staring at her, an amused expression covering her usual stoic features.  “What?”

“Despite his appearance,” Seven said quietly, “Neelix does not bite.”

Celes barked out loudly with laughter causing the sparsly gathered crew to shoot her strange looks.  She covered her mouth as her laughter quieted to giggles, her skin reddening into a blush that could rival sunburn.  Feeling the heat rising from her skin, she attempted to calm herself even more by taking easy breaths, but it wasn’t working.  Seven kept an entertained stare on her at all times.  Celes guessed that was part of the cause of her flushing.  “Annika, stop…  You’re going to make me laugh again.”

With Celes mentioning her discomfort, Seven finally decided to stop purposely making the situation worse.  She didn’t want to call unnecessary attention to either of them.  “I apologize.  It was not my intention to cause you distress.”  Knowing it was a blatant lie, Seven couldn’t hide her grin.  She was, of course, only playing around.  It wasn’t something she did often, if at all with anyone; however, she felt comfortable enough with Celes to initiate it.  The Bajoran seemed to notice it right away, reaching out to slap her forearm as punishment for embarrassing her.

Seven offered her a sympathetic and honest smile after receiving the blow.  “I am sorry, Celes.”

Still calming herself, Celes took one overly large breath before relaxing her muscles.  Her skin was still red hot by the look and touch.  She felt as though her uniform was going to be incinerated right off her body.  “Just don’t do it again.”  Celes leaned forward over the small table, closer to Seven.  “At least not in front of a lot people I don’t know.”  She noticed Lieutenant Torres walk through the entrance to her left into the Mess Hall.

Seven caught the slight widening of her friend’s eyes coinciding with someone’s arrival.  She did not want to look and resisted the urge to do so.  “Who is it?”  A most odd proverb ‘curiosity killed the cat’ came into her mind after she asked the question.  She was not a cat and she did not wish to die from asking a simple question.  Celes’s lips moved silently, speaking the name she feared.  Her eyes rolled slightly and she hoped that B’Elanna would get her meal, eat it and leave without harm.  However, she knew the engineer far too well for her own good and figured a fight would break out some time before either of them exited.

“Don’t let her bother you, Annika,” Celes said quietly.  “She isn’t worth it.”  Apparently, the Lieutenant heard her whispered words.  Either that or she just decided to pick a fight for no real reason.  The young Bajoran’s hazel eyes clouded with fear as she watched the Klingon march her way to their corner.  “Uh oh…”  Celes hid her eyes from the oncoming trouble as best she could while trying to keep an eye on Seven.

Sitting as still as she could, Seven steeled herself for whatever B’Elanna was going to toss at her.  “Lieutenant Torres,” she acknowledged the engineer’s presence next to her, but that was all.  She regretted Celes had to endure the volatile Klingon.

“Seven, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for everything yesterday.”  As she expected, the Borg turned swiftly to face her.  B’Elanna wondered if Seven might think her apology to be insincere.  She never made apologies.  “I’m serious.  I shouldn’t have been such an ass, but you caught me off guard!  What the hell was I supposed to say to that?”  Realizing how loud she’d gotten, B’Elanna toned herself down.  “Look, I’m sorry if I hurt your feeling’s or anything, but this thing with Tom has me off balance,” she glanced at the crewmember sitting to her right.  “Looks like you’ve found yourself someone else anyway.”  The dark haired girl looked up shyly, still trying to hide herself.  “I don’t bite.”

Celes laughed again, but quickly contained it.  “I’m sorry,” her voice was shaking again.  “Ann- Seven said something like that about,” she was about to say Neelix when the Talaxian took the moment to serve them their preordered lunches.

As Neelix invaded, placing the plates on the table wondering if the two needed anything more, B’Elanna completed, discreetly, the Bajoran’s sentence.  “Me, no, but I’m not so sure about him.”  Her comment raised a smile out of the young woman.  “What’s your name?”  B’Elanna plucked a small piece of lettuce from the Bajoran’s plate and chewed on it.  She also didn’t let it fly over her head that the woman was about to call Seven something other than her Borg designation.  The only only guess she had was Seven’s Human given name.

The Talaxian shuffled away as quickly as he came.  Seven was thankful for the interruption.  “I realize, now, that it was imprudent to ask you to,” she thought of a decent phrase, “go on a date with me.”  Glancing at Celes, she could see the relief passing over her features as B’Elanna returned her attention toward the Borg.  “If that’s all, Lieutenant?”

B’Elanna almost laughed at her dismissal.  “So, everything’s back to the normal between us?”

“If you’re referring to our intermittent fighting concerning my being right over your stubborn nature to realize it, then yes.  Things are back to normal.”  Celes burped once with a bubble of laughter as B’Elanna just gave her a startled look.  Seven was sure she’d like toying with people’s minds when she felt comfortable enough to do it.  B’Elanna’s reaction alone was priceless.

“All right; all right, I’ll get out of your hair.”  The Klingon stood, looking down on the Borg and her companion.  “I’ll see you tonight, Seven.”  She turned to look at the flushed Bajoran, whose name she hadn’t yet learned.  “Have fun,” she raised her eyebrows as she spoke and smiled before turning away.

Heading toward a table not too far from the couple, she tapped her Comm. badge, “Torres to Captain Janeway.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“I was wondering if you could come down to the Mess Hall.”  A mischievous smirk danced across the Klingon’s lips in anticipation.  “Are you busy?”

“Nothing that I can’t get away from for a little while.  I’ll be right down.”

She tapped the badge once more to close the channel before sitting.  With nothing more to do than twiddle her thumbs while waiting for the captain, B’Elanna kept a discreet eye on Seven and her friend.  ‘Or, more than friend,’ she corrected herself and was reminded of when Seven, less than a week ago, had come to her looking for what she was now witnessing from afar.  The scene bothered her in some way, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

B’Elanna had discovered something new in the past few minutes, though, to her surprise.  Seven actually had a sense of humor.  Her sarcasm was more than evident in the mix, too.  She questioned herself wondering if she was going to like a Borg with a sarcastic sense of humor, or not.  ’It certainly beats a Borg with no sense of humor.’  Another thing she’d noticed as she watched the Borg now was that she smiled.  The smiles coincided with the Bajoran half of the couple laughing, blushing or mirroring the smile.

The Bajoran puzzled her.  Somehow, with Seven - someone thought to be the most frigid being in the universe - the woman seemed to settle and be herself.  Though all she had to go on was the one experience with her just a few moments ago, B’Elanna figured that was all she needed to see the girl had a major lack of self-esteem.  Maybe all she needed was someone like Seven to push her to push her past what limits she had set for herself.  ‘Faith goes a long way,’ she thought thinking of the faith the captain had in her even when she didn’t have it in herself.

Nevertheless, herself with the Borg?  Unconsciously, her head shook saying no.  Sometimes, the fights and anger between them could have been seen as more than what’s seen by the eye, B’Elanna knew.  The thought of approaching Seven on a romantic level wasn’t lost on her.  But, unlike Harry or any of the others infatuted with Seven, she was hardly struck down to a nervous pile of goo when in her company.  Seven was constantly in her way annoying the hell out of her trying to take over her job.  She’d been better lately, but the Borg still drove her up the wall when assigned to work anywhere near Engineering.

A hand suddenly dashed across her view scaring her out of thought.

B’Elanna jumped back tossing her hands frantically in front of her until she realized it was the captain.  Sighing, she relaxed and sat comfortably again.  “Geeze, Captain.  Couldn’t you have warned me before doing something like that?”

Janeway was laughing at how jumpy her chief engineer was.  “I called your name three times, B’Elanna.”  She sat opposite of the Klingon.  “Have something on your mind?”

“Something like that.”  A bewildered expression settled over the captain’s face.  Idly, she shot a glance over at Seven and the Bajoran before beginning.  “You cannot say anything to Seven about this.  As much as I’d love a fight, I think she’d turn me inside out and dump me into the warp core for spilling this.”

The warning coming from B’Elanna struck an ironic cord with her.  “Coming from Voyager’s well regarded ‘Gossip Queen,’ I’ll make sure I keep my mouth shut.”  On the other hand, with the information being about Seven and the conversation she had with her a few nights ago, Janeway hoped against hope that B’Elanna wasn’t about to tell her what she was thinking.

When she’d entered the Mess Hall, she did notice Seven sitting with a crewman she didn’t easily recognize, and she reprimanded herself mentally for that.  The idea that Seven went to B’Elanna to ask for a date was an incredulous thought, but with Seven, there wasn’t much the woman wouldn’t do.  It was something that worried her from time to time knowing how much something might hurt her in the end.  But, what puzzled her more, or even bothered her, was that so quickly after B’Elanna refused her, if that was in fact what had happened, did Seven go out and find someone else.

“Very funny, now will you take this seriously for a minute?”  Janeway nodded at her.  “Yesterday,” she kept her voice as low as possible, “she came into Engineering and asked me to go into my office because she had some personal thing to talk about.  Of course, I was curious.  It’s Seven.  Seven hates me,” she shrugged.  “So, we go in there and she starts beating around the bush about asking me out.”  B’Elanna thought she’d see surprise on Janeway’s face, but there was nothing.  Not a flinch, a crack of a laugh.  Nothing.  “Anyway, I really didn’t know what to say, so I kept asking her why she wanted me to go to the holodeck with her.  I guess I pissed her off because she left without pursuing it anymore.”  She shot another glance at Seven, noting yet another smile adorning her features.  “Now, today, I come in here to apologize and find her with whoever that is over there.”  There was still no reaction from the captain.  “You know, I thought you’d say something about this, but you’re so passive.  Did you know?”

The captain visibly breathed in a heavy lungfull of air as she sat back.  A smile crept up on B’Elanna’s lips.  “So, you did know.”  Something in the captain’s eyes told her there was more to it than Janeway just knowing that Seven wanted a romantic relationship with a woman.  Something else told her she was about to find out.

Grimacing, Janeway figured out that passive wasn’t the way to handle B’Elanna’s so-called news.  Despite herself, and better judgment, Janeway decided to share some information.  “This does not go beyond the two of us.  Is that understood?”  B’Elanna nodded in acknowledgement.  “A couple of nights ago, after we got out of the void, Seven came to my quarters needing to talk.  It’s a common thing, really, but the conversation was far from conventional.”

Janeway realized theconversation was going to reveal too much to the Klingon, but she started it, she might as well finish it.  “B’Elanna, I’m trusting you with this,” she sighed.  B’Elanna seemed overly concerned as if she was going to reveal some life altering information to her.  “She and I were in Astrometrics going over some data, and I caught her out of some trance.  I don’t know what came over her, but she grabbed my hand and brought it up to her face.”  B’Elanna’s jaw dropped minutely.  “I ran out, but later on she came to my quarters.  She told me she felt something, but whether it was for me or just needing someone in general she didn’t know.”

She knew the captain wasn’t done, but she had to know.  You don’t run out on someone you have no feelings for.  “Um, Captain, as freely as we’re speaking now, can I have permission to do it just in case you yell at me for what I’m about to say?”  Janeway laughed at her, taking all blame unto herself.  “I’m getting the impression you rejected Seven, too.  Right?”  The lingering smile from her laughter faded quickly into a frown.  B’Elanna knew she needed to tread lightly.  “If you have no feeling’s toward Seven, then why did you run out on her in Astrometrics?”

Stunned to silence, Janeway sat motionless in her chair.  “I…  B’Elanna…”  The engineer would have shot down any explanation she had at this point easily.  “I don’t believe,” she took her time in formulating her response, “I have an answer to that.”  She found herself looking down into her lap.

The honesty in Janeway’s words told her to lay off, but not before getting a final word in on the subject.  “Maybe you should think about it some, Captain.”  Janeway brought her gaze back up, fixing her stormy eyes on B’Elanna’s.  “And, if you need to talk, I’m only a channel away.”

B’Elanna knew more than she did at the time.  She figured it paid off to have spoken to both parties getting two different perspectives.  “If I continue to make excuses?”

Janeway’s eyes followed her as she stood.  “I’ll kick your ass until you see the light.”  She bent down and wrapped her arms lightly around the captain’s upper body, squeezing tight only for a short time.  Feeling Janeway hug her back, she smiled, tugged one last time and straightened up leaving a hand to linger on her shoulder.  “Thanks, Captain.”

“What for?”

“Everything,” B’Elanna smiled, tightened her grip comfortingly on Janeway’s shoulder then strode toward the door.

Kathryn sat in shock, trying to figure out what B’Elanna meant by ‘everything.’  What had she done to warrant a ‘thank you?’  She shook the thoughts off remembering where she was, hoping that she didn’t look too dumbfounded.  Looking to her left, she set her eyes on Seven and the woman she was sitting across from.  Both were smiling, Seven a little less enthusiastic.  As she noticed Seven glancing from the corner of her eye, Kathryn turned to look at the view port.

It didn’t work.  From the corner of her own eye, she saw Seven stand and walk over.  She whispered an obscenity under her breath.  When Seven reached her, she pretended not to notice hoping that maybe she’d go away.  That didn't work either.

Seven noticed the arrival of Kathryn only minutes after B’Elanna had left Celes and her table.  The Klingon’s discreet eye wasn’t as discreet as she liked to think.  When the captain woke B’Elanna from a reverie, they ended up in a deep, and quiet, conversation.  Now that B’Elanna left, the captain was staring at her, too.  “Captain?”  Her friend and captain uncovered her eyes and looked at her with a deceptive smile on her lips.  “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Seven.  Why do you ask?”  Kathryn’s voice came out as if she were out of breath.

“Is the Lieutenant well?”  She wanted to know what they spoke about, but she knew Kathryn wouldn't let on.  Despite that, Seven had to ask.

“Everything’s fine, Seven.”  Kathryn glanced past Seven to the half empty table.  “Who’s your friend?” she spoke with a smirk playing on her lips.

Seven turned her head, looking at Celes, then back to Kathryn.  The captain was taken back at the expression she must have been wearing.  “She is part of your crew and you do not know who she is?”

Kathryn stole another glance at the young Bajoran.  “Seven, there are far too many people on this ship to know every one of them by name.  I’ve passed the Crewman before, but we’ve never spoken.”  Seven was still unhappy, which made her uneasy.  “Her name, Seven?”

“Come over and ask her yourself.”  Seven, irked, turned on her heels taking easy, yet forced, strides back to Celes.  She wasn’t sure if she cared whether or not the captain followed.

“What’s wrong?”  Celes glanced over to where the captain was then leaned forward toward Seven and whispered, “You invited her over here?!”  A simple nod as a response made her eyes go wide and forced her to sit as upright as possible in her seat.  By the time the captain made her way over, Seven’s expression turned from angry to passive.  It worried Celes.

“Ladies,” Kathryn nodded, sitting in the chair B’Elanna had previously vacated.  Seven kept quiet and sipped at her drink.  The Bajoran remained strained.  “I don’t bite, Crewman.”  The Bajoran’s tight lipped stature faltered quickly.  Her laughing outweighed Kathryn’s own light chuckle.  Even Seven was smiling.  “Have I missed something?”

Seven sighed.  “Yes, you have.”  Celes’s laugh was addictive.  She fought the urge to follow suit and bit her tongue.  “Celes,” she gave Kathryn the easy way out and caught both of their attentions, “and I were having a conversation earlier about a certain crew member having the ability to bite.  B’Elanna commented that she did not bite when she stopped to apologize.  Now, you have made the same comment.”

Kathryn thought about it for a moment, not really finding the suggested humility in it.  “I guess you had to be there.”

“Indeed.”  Celes coughed another short laugh before regaining her composure.

“I don’t believe we’ve formally met, Crewman.”  Despite Seven offering her the Bajoran’s name, she wanted to get it out of her herself.

“No, Captain.”  With the spotlight on her again, Celes felt her nerves fraying and muscles tightening up.  “We work in entirely different circles,” she added lightly.

“Not entirely.  You work with Seven?”  The woman nodded slightly.  “I’ve seen you in Astrometrics a few times,” she dipped her head slightly.  “I’m only sorry it took me this long to sit down and talk with you.  But, now, I think it’s time to get back to work.”  Kathryn took her time in standing, but walked from the grouping of tables first.

Celes stood soon after, moving over beside Seven as she stood.  They both made their way to the captain side by side.  “Busy for dinner, Annika?”  Her eyes widened as Seven’s given name slipped from her mouth.  The captain turned her head in question, but Seven seemed unaffected.

“After I return from the away mission, no.”  Seven noticed the reaction Kathryn had to Celes using her first name.  She wasn’t sure why, but she was happy for the uncertainty in her expression.  “However, the mission may last a few hours.  I do not wish to make plans only to break them.”

“How about whenever you get back, come and find me?”  Seven nodded at her.  “Good.  I’ll see you later then.”  Celes smiled warmly before turning to the captain.  “Captain.”  Before ducking from the room, she smiled at Seven again.

Seven returned Celes’s smile easily truly not wanting her to leave.  As the doors slid closed, she turned to Kathryn.  “In time, she’ll be less nervous around you and the rest of the senior staff.  Please make a note to remember her name.”  She turned easily and exited the room leaving Kathryn to her thoughts.

Kathryn followed Seven from the Mess Hall, but waited for an empty lift to take back to the Bridge.  Seven’s apparent rudeness caught her off guard and she didn’t want to have an argument in such a confining space.  She stepped off the lift onto the Bridge heading directly for her ready room.

Chakotay nodded to the captain as she stepped down the stairs on her way to the ready room.  He noticed the concern lacing her classic features.  “Captain?”

She held a hand up at her first officer.  “You don’t want to know, Chakotay.  Trust me on this one.”  Before he could say more, she disappeared into the sanctity of her ready room promptly asking the replicator for a strong cup of coffee.