As Close As I Could Get
 

This was as close as I could get to you. If I can't have you, at least let me be you for a while. They say you loved him, once. They say you do still, but something about the hunger in those eyes that you never dared let rest on me leaves me unconvinced. But maybe there was a time when you wanted him. Long ago, before I came into your life. He loves you still, I think you know that. I move in your shadow, we both do. I don't have the luxury he does, of closing my eyes and pretending I'm touching you. In the cold, quiet night, when his touch is warm on my skin, he wants to cry out your name. I hold him close to me, trying to feel what you felt for him, and whisper softly in his ear. In those moments, my voice drops, turns huskier. I pray and pray that he will forget who I am and where he is and let your name escape his lips.

"Kathryn".

I say it only in my mind as his grasp on my arm tightens momentarily, then loosens. How stupid this is, both of us locked in a passionless embrace, both of us thinking only of you. How do you spend your nights? With whom? Rumours abound. They say that once you got back to Earth you were seen at functions with a string of women. All blonde, all tall and slender. All clones of me. Did you try to fuck me out of your system, Kathryn? Did it work? Or do you wake next to them in the early, grey hour, hating them for not being me, hating me for not being there, and hating yourself for not asking for what you wanted when you had the chance.

Every so often, he suggests we get in touch. Maybe have diner with you, meet you for drinks before the theatre. He wants to show me off, show that he's finally over you, show that he's hurt you in the only way he can anymore. "She was your mentor," he says.

You were. Mentor, teacher, enemy, friend. Captain. You were everything to me and now I have to pretend that you were nothing but my Commanding Officer, once upon a time. I can't. I can't spend an evening making idle small talk and knowing that every touch of his hand on mine pushes you a little closer towards madness. Pushes me a little closer too. Although I suspect there isn't very far to go, anymore.

I cut my hair. Did you know? Before a forced, tense, boring dinner with Tom and B'Elanna. Were they surprised? I think Tom was. I think B'Elanna knew why I did it, I think she always knew why . . . nearly did worse. I sat for hours with the bottle in my hand, wondering what I was doing. I thought I wanted to efface everything about me that you fell in love with. I wanted to change myself so that you would not recognise me if I saw you in the street. But now I wonder. . . I wanted to change myself, but into whom? If I wanted to change from Seven into Annika, become my own person after all these years, then why was I sitting there with a bottle of hair dye, the red mousse seeping over my fingers? In the end, I didn't do it. But the hours he spent on my hair, combing it out, brushing it, plaiting it. . . I felt like a ghost, the ghost of the woman he loved before she became the woman I loved. So I cut my hair and you disappointed him all over again.

I come to sign my name on this letter I don't intend to send, and realise I don't know what to put. I don't know who I am anymore. Legally I am Annika Hansen, but that will change soon. The Borg implants have left my body but not my mind, never my mind. Thanks to you I am no longer Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One. In the eyes of my fiance I am neither. In his eyes I am the woman he still loves, although he would deny it if I ever cared enough to ask him. When I enlisted Neelix's help in seducing the man I still have to stop myself calling Commander (even though, secretly, I think he would like it), he asked me why I was doing it. Why I was stepping into your life with a man who only thought of and dreamt of and wanted you. Because you never let me into your life, not enough. You thought I was too close, so you pushed me away again and again. In the end, this was as close as I could get.

---

The End