Sweet Surrender

---

It doesn't mean much.
It doesn't mean anything at all.
The life I've left behind me
Is a cold room.
I've crossed the last line
From where I can't return.
Where every step I took in faith
Betrayed me.

And sweet, Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give.

---

I should hate her. In my more bitter moments, I think I do. It's because of her that I'm alone. Alone, but with all these strange thoughts filling my mind, voices taunting me. These voices, they come from somewhere inside of me. Not Borg. Annika. Without her I would still be one among many, I wouldn't know pain or anger or love. Especially love. What was it she saw in me that drew her to my side? Underneath all that circuitry I think she glimpsed some small vestige of humanity, dedicated herself to finding the woman beneath the technology. And I can't help wondering why she did it.

But I know why I succumbed. The strength of her personality stunned me. So small a human, so insignificant. And yet there was a warmth in her eyes that made me feel loved. Suddenly, surrender didn't seem so horribly unappealing after all. It was so hard to comprehend, that she wanted me for who I was, not for what function I could serve. Here, I am not one among many. I am important, my opinion matters, to her if no-one else. I make some pithy contribution, something, anything to get her attention for a moment. It works, and a warm glow suffuses me as her eyes light on me for a second, soft with affection and praise. She leans forward, scanning all of our faces, the intensity in her eyes hypnotic. She waves her hands around, emphasizing whatever point it is she's been making that I haven't been listening to.

Once, I regarded those motions as inefficient, a distraction. But even then, I was spellbound by those little actions that are uniquely hers, that she is not even aware of. And now I find my mind wandering to places I never knew existed. . . Does her mind travel there as well?

In the early hours of the morning, when she can't sleep, when she's all alone? She doesn't want this any more, we can all see that. . . Her solitary lifestyle stifles her, but there are walls that can never be broken down, barriers that cannot be avoided. We observe more than she thinks - our lives depend on her moods, on any one of us knowing just how far we can push her. . .

---

You take me in
No questions asked.
You strip away the ugliness
That surrounds me.
Are you an angel?
Am I already that gone?
I only hope
That I won't disappoint you,
When I'm down here
On my knees.

And sweet, Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give.

---

I owe her everything and I try to repay her in kind. Everything I do is for her alone. When I began to reclaim my humanity, I thought that they were forcing it upon me. My safety net had disappeared, and the only voice I could hear was my own. But from that dark place of confusion and loneliness, I was always aware of the touch of her hand, the sound of her voice. I was never wholly alone. Even when the sound of her voice grated against my ears, when I wanted to push her away and not let her near me ever again, wanted to hurt her for what she was putting me through. . . something prevented me.

In part, it was sheer desperation - I had nothing else to cling to, no home, no familiar face. Just a terrifying tide of emotions I had never experienced. I did not know how to be afraid, but it seems I was a fast learner. But something inside me told me she was my lifeline. I have no illusions - I was completely at her mercy, scared and vulnerable. She could have submitted me to endless rounds of brutality, in the name of scientific experimentation. Could have punished me for acts I committed when I was acting only as part of one big machine. But she held me when terror and pain racked my body, stripped of the technology embedded in my anatomy. She saw through my hostility, recognised the fear in eyes that were not used to seeing, in the voice that was not used to speaking alone. Showed compassion, humanity, what I have come to recognise as love.

And she showed it in the gentlest of gestures. The brush of her hand on my skin, patting my shoulder, holding me in the occasional tight embrace that I live for. I seek her approval like a child from a parent. I stand in Astrometrics and fumble around, to chart a course back to a far-off planet that I do not remember, because it is what she wants. She gave me a home, and I will try my hardest to give her one. In those moments when her eyes are on me alone, filled with praise, I exist for no-one else. The tenderness with which she treated me confused me, at first. I waited and waited for her hidden agenda, but it never came. I know she is flawed, that part of her wanted me to turn out moulded exactly in her image.

But now she cares about the person I have become. Even, perhaps especially, when I contravene her orders she does not reprimand me with the same force she uses with any of the other crewmen. She looks at me, with that mixture of affection and exasperation on her face, and I know she would have me no other way.

---

And I don't understand.
By the touch of your hand,
I would be the one to fall.

I miss the little things.
Oh, I miss everything about you.

---

Sometimes we seem closer than others, and that sets my veins on fire. The warmth in the pit of my stomach as I open my eyes after my regeneration and she's standing there, looking at me with an expression I can't read. And I'm not a fool. I know that sometimes she looks at me with longing, with a regret for what she cannot have. Wants to reach out and touch me, see how I'd respond. But I'm off- limits to her, we all are. In some pact she's made to herself, she has to be alone, has to be unreachable. But I sense that I'm making her question that. Making her see how she's been hiding her own humanity, turning herself into a Starfleet drone. The Federation are her collective. But the Federation are far away, in the Alpha Quadrant. . . maybe we will all learn to adjust to our new surroundings.

But she can never know how I feel. Know that sometimes I get distracted at my post, thinking about her. The flimsy excuses I make to go to her quarters at any hour, with some new data she needs. All so transparent, but she mustn't know how deeply I feel it. But whenever the latest shortcut back to Earth fails, all I want to do is take her face in my hands and kiss it tenderly. Beneath her aura of command, she is just as vulnerable as the rest of us, but she does not have the liberty of showing it. So she projects everything onto me. Urges me to interact romantically with other crewmembers while trying to silence the nagging voice of jealousy in her head. Tries to catch me off-guard, find my weak spot when she herself must pretend to have none.

I think this is one of the reasons she enjoys my company. I can read her well, and she knows I will not judge her. I am only repaying her compliment. . .

---

It doesn't mean much
It doesn't mean anything at all.
The life I've left behind me
Is a cold room.

---

I spent eighteen years not knowing how it felt to be loved, to be cared for. Not knowing the weight of responsibility, when someone is prepared to trust you against all the odds. It is a high price to pay, for freedom. Trust earned, lessons learnt, it's all a morality tale to her. Sometimes all she sees is black and white. But her feelings for me are a grey area. I know, and the others know, that my boundaries are different from theirs. I can take liberties with her that would earn anyone else a reprimand, or a stay in the brig. But a harsh word from her is worse than any punishment.

And I know, no matter how strong her feelings, how bad the ache of loneliness inside her, that harsh words are exactly what I would get if I stepped outside of protocol and told her how I felt. If I cupped her face between my palms, drew my mouth to hers. . . if I did any of those things that flit through my mind as I'm watching her, standing by her, breathing my scent. . . Those walls would go up again, this persona she forces herself to adopt would be shrugged on like a second skin. Lies would crawl out of that beautiful mouth, profaning it. . .

I'm sorry, Seven, I just don't share your feelings. . . .It would be inappropriate. . . You know it goes against protocol. . . I can bear anything, the guilt and shame of this secret that makes me break contact every time I feel her getting through to me, makes me tear my eyes from hers when I feel my pulse start to race. . . I can live with that. But for her to tell me, for those words to hang in the air, that we can never be. . . I would rather go back to the Collective, never have another individual thought again, anything but hear her say those words. Unable to look at me, her voice a mask of repressed feeling, or worse - confused embarrassment at the thought of emotions she has never even entertained, trying to work out how to be tactful to poor, dear Seven. . .

No. Death, assimilation, anything rather than that. So I must sit here, drawn to her like a moth to a burning flame. There is a term "a knight in shining armour". Kathryn. She rescued me, saved me, saw what no-one else was willing to see. If that is the only expression of her love I am ever witness to, it will be enough. And I know, even as I think these words, that I am lying. It will never be enough. But it is all I have, and I cling to it, cling to her, in those moments when I am lost and frightened.

Pray, Kathryn, that some day you will learn to do the same.

---

End