It was a question with no answer; she knew that when she asked.

She knew, also, that talking to herself in the mirror was never a good sign.

She was sitting at the vanity, pinning her hair up. Not with the practiced motions she mimed every morning, but with hesitant fingers that trembled against the clips. One tendril wisped out against her cheek, then looped loosely into the twist, then wound up and over the crown of her head. She'd always styled her coif as the voice of her office, but this one was for evening wear, and meant to convey a far more intricate aria of subtlety: I'm happy, but in a sober, respectable fashion befitting my rank; not so staid I can't dazzle, not so dazzling I can't lead; casual and approachable among friends, but never unprofessional. As always, a façade of lies.

Of course she could decide about her hair tomorrow, when she was getting dressed — but she didn't want Seven to see her like this, crumbling, with the toll of years exposed by her faltering hands. A dry run of the up-do this morning, and then she'd shower and leave her hair to cascade around her shoulders. She'd chill the bottle of champagne that was idling conspicuously on the coffee table.

Seven was coming home tonight. Just in time for Voyager's five-year anniversary gala.

It was Friday, and she'd taken the day off. No one was expected, so she was surprised to hear the computer's alert. Standing on her doorstep was a striking woman of indeterminate species, with a domed forehead and graceful cheekbones accented by cartilaginous ridges. Her skin was greenish and her lips arabesqued into an enigmatic half-smile.

"Admiral Janeway," the woman said.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I know you." Reflexively, Janeway drew closed the vee of her robe.

"I've changed since the last time you saw me. But surely you can still recognize an old friend?"

There was something unforgettable in the inflection, in the suggestive cadence of her greeting. Like an optical illusion, the face resolved into a familiar picture. Janeway gasped.

"Before you call the authorities, or skip straight to vigilante murder," she went on, nonchalant, "why don't you let me explain why I'm here."

Five years after the end of her journey, Janeway was pragmatic or suicidal enough to step aside. She made a sarcastic welcoming gesture and said, "Seska, please come in."


: year five :

"How are things on the home front?" This has become something of a running joke, Seven's attempt to rhetorically soften the tedium of Janeway's desk job.

It's one of their rare video links over subspace comm.

"Fuck the home front," Janeway says, pinching the bridge of her nose. For her, the joke is starting to wear thin. "What's the news from home?" Which refers, even more morbidly, to the Delta Quadrant.

"We've taken on another passenger," Seven says, "not a Borg escapee, this time." They'd just be making small talk if it weren't for the way Seven's pupils dart downward, avoiding eye contact. Janeway pays attention.

"Oh?"

"A lone survivor from an explosion on a penal transport ship — she was a political prisoner, an intellectual. Her asylum papers went through with Starfleet, and she's joined our research group for the duration of the voyage. She shows quite an aptitude for Borg technology." Seven's voice is warm.

"No doubt she's beautiful, too." Janeway hates that it comes out petulant.

"Please don't," Seven says. "We can't have this conversation over a commlink."

"I'm sorry. It's just that I miss you." It's a slapdash attempt to patch the tatters of a relationship. In truth, she's not sure if she misses Seven, or the way things used to be with Seven.

Seven doesn't answer.

::


"And why in hell would I risk my career to smuggle you, of all people, to Cardassia?" Janeway had her hands on her hips, staring down Seska in the middle of her living room. Seska was unarmed, the computer verified that automatically. But there are weapons other than the ones you strap to your hip.

"Well, if you've spent your reserves of neighborliness, perhaps you should ask yourself how I've managed to travel all the way back from the Delta Quadrant." Seska smirked. "Not many ships with Borg slipstream drives, are there?"

The jumbled pieces of the world snapped into formation with a click — and the puzzle-picture they revealed made Janeway stop breathing and white-knuckle the back of a chair.

"Inside information on what your darling Seven has been getting up to during her eighteen-month cruise — might that be worth something to you?"

Janeway was off-balance. She was out of practice and absent her erstwhile game face. "You," she sputtered, "if you touched her..."

"Well, I could tell you all about it," Seska stepped so close that Janeway's breath, quickened with rage, was hissing over her cheek, "but wouldn't it be more fun if I showed you?"

She raised her hand to touch Janeway's face; Janeway slapped it away, viciously. "I'm only going to say this once: I'm reporting your treachery to Starfleet immediately and recommending that you be considered a criminal at large. I'd advise you to get out of my house before security arrives."

"Oh, come now, play nice," Seska crooned. She was delighted. This time, she moved more quickly, grabbing Janeway's head between her palms before Janeway could block. Janeway yanked and twisted, scrabbling at Seska's arms. With two fists in Janeway's hair, Seska pulled her forward, as if into a kiss. But instead she sank her teeth into the meat of Janeway's shoulder, just above the point where its arc met her collarbone. Janeway felt two pinpricks, a tingling that started in her fingers and toes. The room went blurry around her and twenty seconds later she was paralyzed. Seska lowered her to the floor.

Seska undid the belt of Janeway's robe and parted it. Underneath she was wearing a silk nightgown with spaghetti straps. It was delicate and clung to her skin, outlining her in its pearly sheen.

"The Borg have developed some remarkable technologies of bio-weaponry — as I learned under the tutelage of our very own ex-Borg expert," Seska said. She was sliding the hem of the nightgown slowly up Janeway's thighs. "I took the liberty of test-driving some of them on myself. That was just a mild hit of nanoprobes to take the fight out of you — I'm overjoyed to see you're as much a spitfire as I remember."

Seska left Janeway sprawled on the carpet, disappeared into the bedroom. When she reemerged she was naked from the waist down and wearing a shimmery-red, self-seating dildo.

"Are you going to explain to Starfleet how your girlfriend fucked me?"


: year four :

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Janeway taught Seven that expression; now she wishes she hadn't. She's sitting at her desk, encircled by stacks of reports. Her hand is touching the closest one but she isn't reading it. She knows, without turning, that Seven is standing in the doorway.

"Seven, I'm trying to work."

"You are not," Seven says, her voice threaded with a dangerous undertow. "Please talk to me, Kathryn."

"About what?" Janeway is brittle, ready to flame to ashes like dry tinder. Seven's hand alights on her shoulder, and she flinches.

"It has been 42 days since your last social engagement. 79 days since the last diplomatic function you attended. Starfleet has stopped assigning you new projects. You don't eat; you don't sleep. It has been 18 days since we last made love." Seven lists her evidence clinically, but there's a desperation to her catalogue of symptoms.

Janeway stands up, takes a step away from Seven. "This is my life now. This is me. I'm not a captain anymore," she says, waving her hand in a gesture that encompasses the cluttered desk, the cookie-cutter apartment, the Fleet housing complex.

"This is not you."

"Don't tell me who I am." The wire-edge of bitterness that stretches between them is taunt as a bowstring. Janeway buries her fingers in Seven's hair, kisses her punishingly. She tastes like youth, like second chances, like a season waxing.

"Why don't I start making those 18 days up to you?" Janeway says. It's an evasion, but Seven won't refuse.

They're in bed. Seven is on her back, naked, arching her breasts into Janeway's devouring mouth. Janeway's jacket is unzipped, but she's still wearing her uniform. Both Seven's wrists are pinned under her forearms. "Don't need food," Janeway hisses through teeth tasting flesh, "I'm going to eat you alive."

She takes Seven by the elbow, hauls her onto her stomach, pulls her arm behind her diagonally so she can't easily shift. Straddling Seven's ass, she reaches back and pushes three fingers inside her. Seven bucks, chokes out "Please" and "Yes," works her free hand underneath herself to press her clit. She doesn't stop circling it as Janeway's weight lifts, as she pulls Seven's hips up off the mattress, and enters Seven with her cock in a single thrust. Janeway's rhythm is fast and brutal, fingertips leaving bruises like a brand at the bend of Seven's hip. Seven's face is buried in a disarray of sheets, and she moans, muffled, leveraging her body back into Janeway from the shoulders. Lost, Janeway comes without waiting. She palms Seven's ass, spreading it open with clenching fingers. Her thumb slides along the wet crevice, inches inside the hole that's winking above her cock. Twice-anchored, Seven comes with her.

Seven goes to the bathroom. When she comes out, Janeway is wearing satin pajamas. Climbing into bed, Seven slips one hand underneath them, stroking Janeway's bare stomach.

"Let me touch you," Seven says, kissing the pulse-point on her neck.

"Not tonight, Seven, I have work in the morning." Janeway turns out the light.

::


"Ready to find out what you've been missing?"

Janeway's heart was racing. Every nerve prickled, but she could move her limbs only with superhuman effort. Seska had stripped her naked.

"Seven likes to start with the hands." Seska took Janeway's arm, awkwardly limp and unresisting, and sucked her fingers into her mouth one at a time, in a sickening parody of sensuality. She wrapped the slick digits around her cock, which was a wedge of dead weight against Janeway's stomach. Seska pumped it into Janeway's hand.

"She likes to study every inch of me, as if I'm one of her science projects." Seska licked the tendon that outlined Janeway's armpit, the faint crinkle in the skin underneath her breasts, the trail of longer hairs that bisected the swell of her belly, leading downward.

"And when she fucks me, it's slow and deep, as if she's logging every sensation." Clutching one of Janeway's thighs for purchase, Seska worked the tip of the cock into her with agonizing precision. Janeway couldn't writhe away, couldn't push forward, couldn't close her muscles against it because that just made Seska use a crueler pressure. She managed to turn her head to one side, and Seska gripped her chin and pulled it back around to face her. Janeway closed her eyes, tried to detach herself from her nipple, insensible as a shriveled prune under Seska's fingertips, her cunt, leathery and numb as a desiccated corpse. The dildo pulsed and self-lubricated obliviously inside her, but she felt no pleasure, no pain. What she felt was every moment of helplessness, of worthlessness, of barrenness since she'd returned to Earth spiraling into her center — which was gaping open, and let them all leak out.

Janeway knew when Seska came by the way her fingernails scored her chest, by the way she keened "ah, ah, ah" as she thrusted.

Seska pulled out, detached the dildo with a grunt and tossed it aside. "Now," she said, "you can report me to Starfleet. You can make accusations, gather evidence, testify at my trial — if I don't succeed in giving your security forces the slip. You can see holos of me on the news, think about me every day, more or less, until I'm safely ensconced in one of your humane Starfleet prisons, enjoying three squares and weekly counseling sessions. Or, you can get me onto a transport to Cardassia, incognito, and you'll never see me again. I give you my word on that — though given our past, I don't imagine that means much to you. So unfortunate. Here's where you can contact me with your decision." She pulled a padd out of her breast pocket and laid it on the coffee table. She kissed Janeway on the lips, put her pants on, and showed herself out.

When Janeway could move again, she seized the bottle of champagne by the neck and smashed it on the corner of the table, sending the padd careening onto the carpet. Then, she retrieved it from among the fizzing shards of glass, and sent a message to one of her underworld contacts with the coordinates it specified. She groped and wobbled into the kitchenette to get an electric sweeper, and started cleaning up the mess she'd made.


: year three :

"Don't you ever ask yourself what might have happened?" Chakotay is tracing the ridges of her spine with his fingertips. Janeway is turned away from him in the bed.

"What — if we hadn't gotten stranded in the Delta Quadrant, and instead remained on opposite sides of a war? If I hadn't been your captain, and I'd thrown you in the brig instead of making you first officer? If the Admiral hadn't swooped in to rescue us, and we'd spent another 13 years lost in space?" Janeway has little use for speculations and regrets.

"If we'd never taken Seven on board. If she hadn't ended up with me, or you. Do you think there's a parallel universe like that out there, somewhere? Look at us, Kathryn — we're both riding desks."

They hadn't really spoken in years — since the debriefings ended. Since she was promoted to admiral (benched) and he was offered an honorable discharge (booted out). Since she stole his girl. But Seven is off on a research station, and Janeway is treading water at HQ while she tries (futilely) to wheedle a spacebound mission out of Starfleet, and she thought it was time they put the tangled past behind them. One dinner-date. She sits up, holding the sheet against her to cover her breasts.

She says, "This never happened."

::


"Anybody home?" Seven said it warmly, tentatively, into the darkened room. Easier, they'd thought, to have their reunion here, rather than in the policed and public surrounds of Starfleet HQ, where Seven had been quarantined for three days of mandatory evaluations.

Janeway was coiled in the corner of the sofa, clutching her robe around her like a shroud.

"Kathryn!" Seven said when she saw her, dropping her bags and falling to her knees alongside. Janeway's posture, closed and twisted, warned her against touching.

"Seven, I have to tell you something." Janeway wasn't looking at her. "I slept with Chakotay."

Seven sat back, hands on her thighs. "When?"

"More than two years ago."

"Kathryn, do you still love me?"

"More than I love myself."

Seven took a breath. "I had an affair."

Janeway said, "I know."

"You know?"

"Is it over?'

"She's a civilian. She wasn't required to stay for the debriefings. I haven't heard from her, and I have no way to contact her. There were no promises."

"She came here."

Seven sat up straighter. "What?"

"It turns out I know her." Janeway barked out a bitter laugh, half-sob.

"Kathryn?"

Janeway got up, crumpled to the floor when she couldn't quite stand. "Look," she said, and pulled the collar of her robe aside just enough to revel the tiny, grey-ringed double puncture.

"But, that looks Borg." Seven was groping for purchase. "Who did this to you?"

"Seska," Janeway said. "Seven, she was Seska."

"Your Cardassian infiltrator? Kathryn, I know this separation, these past years, have been difficult for you, but I think..."

Janeway reached around the sofa, retrieved the dildo from where Seska had discarded it. "Scan this, check the DNA," she said, cutting off Seven's skeptical conciliations. "Just humor me."

Seven went into her study, with its equipment and databases. Ten minutes later she came out, shaking.

"Oh no," she said, "no." She pulled Janeway into her arms, then, and clung to her as if both of them might blow apart.

"I'm sorry," Janeway said, huddled fetally within Seven's embrace.

"How did this happen to us?" Seven was crying.

"I've failed you. I couldn't be the woman you wanted me to be, the woman I was."

"What I want for you is your happiness, but you don't let me help you. You left me — you've been leaving me for years, preemptively. I want to share your existence, not compete with you at a career, a beauty contest, a homeland, like we used to compete at Velocity."

"I surrender," Janeway said. "I'm forfeiting it to you — myself, my life, all of it."

"Then I'd like to give yourself back to you."


: year two :

"Do you want to open your present now?"

It's an anniversary. They're cross-legged on the floor by candlelight, drinking champagne out of the bottle.

"Mmmm," Janeway says. Her mouth is busy at the curve of Seven's neck, fingers tangled in her hair.

Seven reaches under the sofa and produces a box wrapped in silvery foil. Janeway laughs, shakes it, makes ridiculous guesses like "concentrated dilithium, just what I wanted" and "a new spanner — you shouldn't have!"

"Your deduction is inefficient," Seven says. She's teasing. Janeway splits the paper with her fingernails. Inside the box is a bulbous, columnar form in red, the size of a zucchini. Janeway lifts it, perplexed.

"Look." Seven points at a spidering of wires that rings the base, disappearing into the artificial fleshiness. She touches a dial and tubules extrude from the bottom, a field of wriggling digits. "It will attach itself to you, transmitting sensation from along its length directly to your nerves. I designed it for you." Seven is proud; also, blushing. Comprehension hits Janeway like a splash of cold water.

"You want me to..."

"Well, in my research..."

"Seven, is this because... do you miss men?"

Seven coughs. "We never... I have never... I wanted you to be the first."

Janeway strokes the shaft of the dildo with a new reverence. She kisses Seven, whispering "Yes."

::


"What do we do now?"

It was a whisper into the silence. The crying was finished. They were sitting with their backs against the sofa, not touching.

Janeway said, "Seven, help me."

Seven looked at her, for a moment that arced across the span of years. Then she leaned over, put lips on lips. A velvety pressure, a warm waft of breath, the pull of wetness, and finally open mouths, all glide and softness.

Seven cupped Janeway's head, guided her closer. "I will erase her," she said. She started at the fingertips, kissing Janeway's palms, the veins in her wrist, the papery crease of her elbow. She slid Janeway's robe off her shoulders, consecrating every inch of skin with her hands. She cradled Janeway against her chest, spoonwise, arms encircling her, and covered her center with four fingers like a benediction.

"Can I show you something, a new form of communication I've been practicing with the other ex-drones?"

Janeway's eyes were closed. She was wet under Seven's hand. She nodded.

Seven followed the sweep of her shoulder to her nape. Two pinpricks, sharp as surgery. (Even after deassimilation, the Borg interlink node penetrates the brain stem and can never be removed.) Seven pressed her lips to Janeway's jaw as their minds merged.

A schizophrenic ecstasy. Thoughts interleaved, melting together into a stew of revelation. Private tragedies, secret excesses, the ragged fabric of the self unfurled over a boundless, liquid stock of love. Janeway/Seven arched her back and pushed Seven/Janeway's fingers inside her. "Yes," they said, "yes."


: year one :

"Why do you think the admiral came back for us?"

Seven doesn't look at Janeway as she says it. She looks at the flower she's twirling between her fingers, plucks the petals off it one by one. They're sitting on a bench in the Starfleet grounds, still there every day for the hearings.

Janeway waits until there are three petals left. "I believe," she says, "that the admiral had regrets."

"I have never known you to countenance regret," Seven says, brow furrowed, "it is one of the aspects of your individuality that I admire."

You've never, Janeway thinks, seen me lose something I couldn't live without. "Have you heard of a genre called soap opera?"

"A serial melodrama dating from Earth's twentieth century. How is it relevant?"

"I just never thought my life would become one." Janeway pauses, takes a breath, crushes the denuded blossom as she covers Seven's hand with her own. "I love you, Seven. More than I've ever loved anything." I would die for you, she thinks, die for you, again.

::


"Ready to go?" Seven touched Janeway's arm gently, as if she were a statue in glass. Janeway was sitting at the vanity in feathery, clinging layers of tissue-silk. Their eyes met in the mirror.

"Seven, I'm resigning from Starfleet. I'll announce it at the reunion tonight." Seven's hand tightened, five metal ridges against Janeway's bare skin. "Good," she said. There was a vast expanse of promise in the word.

Janeway watched Seven leave the room, resplendent in black tux pants. She traced her reflection with her fingertips, the waves of hair that fell loose around her shoulders. She asked herself a question: "Where to?"

: end :