Beside Herself

Part 01

Upon entering the placidly appointed, soothingly lit room, it was plain that there was something out of place on Tuvok’s well-known and well-loved face. Something that Admiral Kathryn Janeway hadn’t seen in long enough that its reappearance now was almost a physical shock: recognition.

“Captain, how long have I been here?” He sat tailor fashion on an ornately woven rug before a meditation lamp, facing the entrance to his room. The flame guttered and then recovered itself as the door slid closed behind this latest visitor. Paper sheets covered in a chaos of scribblings and equations sat in a tidy stack on one corner of the rug. An elegant if archaic ink pen anchored the pages against further disorder.

The Admiral’s expression softened and her eyes grew suspiciously bright at the crisply precise diction of the question, the use of her former rank, and at Tuvok’s long absent sense of acetic cleanliness having asserted itself upon the room’s normal state of disarray. The sound of years slipping past, of soul-deep comradeship and of profound loss whispered in the air between them before a drawn breath resettled her composure, “About six months, Tuvok. Why?”

“I do not remember coming here. I only remember brief periods of lucidity, however long ago those occurred, and being in Voyager's sickbay.” His eyes slid upward to take in her once chestnut hair, now streaked with silver, and then dropped to her collar, noting the change of insignia and drawing the logical conclusion with the brief lift of one brow. “I take it we have succeeded in returning to the Alpha Quadrant.”

Janeway gave a brief, affirmative nod, moving forward and crouching on the rug to bring herself nearer to eye-level with the Vulcan. “We've been home for almost a year.” The inexorable hiss of hourglass sands washed over her again in that moment. “I gather though that you didn't call me here to discuss the passage of time.”

Tuvok visibly drew himself together and straightened his seated posture, “Indeed, I did not,” he confirmed. “I called you here to deliver a message before I am no longer able to remember it. When I awoke lucid two hours ago, I recalled the promise I made to deliver it to you for the first time since my illness began to advance aboard Voyager.”

Janeway’s expression barely registered a change at the news save for a single raised brow given as leave to continue. Once upon a time, the merest word from Tuvok would have sent her hurtling across the galaxy on whatever cause he deemed important enough to bring to her attention… but he had been ill for so very long now and the line between reality and delusion was both transient and evanescent for this oldest of her old friends.

“It concerns Seven of Nine,” he dropped, studying her face closely.

That got her attention. She caught herself on the verge of leaning involuntarily away from Tuvok, away from the automatic stab of searing heartbreak that lanced through her at the sound of that name even all these years after Seven’s death.

Tuvok continued, undeterred by the sudden absence of color from the Admiral’s face, “There is an isolinear chip among my belongings from Voyager that was intended for you. My wife will have it.“

Janeway shook her head slowly, dismissively, mentally backpedaling from what was almost guaranteed to be a painful experience. With effort, her tone remained even, “What's on it that's so important after all this time?

“Seven's final moments,“ Tuvok was having none of Kathryn Janeway’s patented brand of denial and avoidance, not now when time was so short.

Janeway did draw back at that, shaking her head emphatically, hands coming up before her as if to ward off the blow of his words, “Tuvok, I can't watch that. You of all people know how long it took me to—“

He cut her off, the crack of command entering his voice for the first time in a decade, “You must! It was Seven's final request.”

The Admiral’s jaw set at that, clutching her annoyance at the well-deserved order like a drowning woman clinging to a raft and using it to force the lump in her throat back down, “Why didn't you give it to me then?” she demanded faintly, her voice a dry rustle of parchment.

Tuvok had known this woman for most of her life and did not begrudge her the settling effect of her brief flash of irritation. Having given her the required moment, he finally replied, “It would not have improved your state of mind at the time. To be honest, Captain, I was concerned that you might take your own life in the weeks following Seven’s death. I felt that her final words might have been the pivotal stressor to push you over the edge... so I copied the recording, erased that time period in Sickbay from the security logs, and concealed the chip, intending to give it to you after some time had passed. I apologize for the deception and for tampering with the logs, but I felt that it was an action of utmost necessity.”

Janeway narrowed her lips to a thin line and dropped her gaze to the meditation lamp’s reassuring flicker. A long plastic silence drew itself out as pain and profound affection for this man rose again in her throat, quicksilvering her eyes and stilling any excuse or justification that might have been on the tip of her tongue, “You always did look out for me, old friend.”

“As my mental state deteriorated,” he continued, normally stoic features creasing with consternation, “I forgot about both it and my promise to Seven of Nine.”

“It's okay, Tuvok. Really it is.” Small, elegant hands reached out then, grasping the Vulcan’s broad shoulders in familiar comfort.

“I forgot... forgot my promise.” Tuvok shook his head sharply, drawing back from the Admiral’s touch as though she were a stranger. “Promises are forever,” he informed her gravely, then shook his head again, his eyes clearing from the moment of confusion. “I am sorry, Captain. I seem to be slipping.”

At this, the shimmer along her lower lids beaded and streaked liquid trails of grief down her cheeks. Reaching to him again, Janeway drew his head down to her shoulder, wrapping thin arms around him, “Oh, Tuvok.”

Not reacting to the embrace, words began to fall from his mouth with no seeming connection to anything but disjointed memories. “Slip. Slipstream. Captain, the Slipstream drive will not work. The ship's hull will not withstand such forces.” Abruptly, Tuvok’s head rose from the Admiral’s shoulder, dark eyes finding blue with desperate intensity, the man inside the damaged madness scrabbling for purchase on a fleeting moment of sanity. “Captain, I will not remember this conversation.”

“Relax, Tuvok. I've got you.” She soothed, drawing him back down to her shoulder and stroking his graying head with a trembling hand. Glancing over, she retrieved his latest stack of insensible writings and placed them in front of him, “Just relax, old friend. Here's your pen. I'll remember for us both.”

Ten years later in another time and place…

The door of the Captain’s quarters hissed open without preamble, admitting a compact and silver-haired form who strode in as if she owned the place. The actual resident of these quarters was stretched out along the sofa, a mug resting on her chest, gaze torn from the unfamiliar stars by the arrival of her uninvited guest.

“You used to know how to knock,” Janeway grumbled crankily from her repose, turning her eyes back to the overarching windows. Temporal mechanics always gave her a headache and right now she had a magnificent one squatting right behind her eyebrows.

“These were my quarters. What can I say? Old habits,” The Admiral smirked cheekily, utterly unrepentant as she continued her path to the replicator. “What are you drinking?”

“Coffee,” the Captain sulked, completely unhappy with the way things had gone today and not the least bit hesitant about letting the Admiral know with her tone that Janeway considered the entire mess wholly her fault.

If the Admiral noted or paid any mind to the Captain’s fit of disgruntlement, she gave no sign, “Goes great with whisky. I'll join you.” The soft whine of the replicator reached the recumbent Captain across the room.

“I don't want any,” Janeway deflected, unaccountably annoyed at the offer since she had just been lying there thinking about trading up from caffeine to hard alcohol before the Admiral’s arrival. Was she really that much a creature of predictable habit? The thought rankled, not improving her mood or her headache in the least.

“No, you do,” the Admiral insisted, dropping into the chair at right angles to the sofa and tipping a splash of amber liquid from a tall decanter into a squat glass. “Trust me, you do. Or, at least, you will pretty shortly.”

That sounded ominous. “What have you done now?” Janeway demanded, sitting upright to face her older self and swigging a fortifying gulp of tepid coffee, suspicion and the beginnings of vague alarm tightening her features.

The Admiral sipped from her own glass, topped it up just a bit more, and gave a smoky chuckle at the Captain’s reaction, “God, I'd forgotten how imperious we sounded.” She slipped the decanter’s stopper into place and set it down on the coffee table with the soft tap of glass against transparent aluminum. “I haven't done anything, Captain. For that matter, neither have you, and that's the rub, isn't it?”

Janeway eyed the Admiral for a long moment and then tossed back the remains of her coffee, “I'm not going to like where this is going, am I?” Briefly considering the now visible bottom of her mug, she reached for the decanter.

“I have something for you,” the Admiral informed her, somehow remaining dignified as she performed the age old maneuver of bipeds everywhere, retrieving something out of a front pants pocket while seated. “Oh, it's a grievous breach of the Temporal Prime Directive to even tell you about it let alone show it to you, but here it is.” A negligent flick of her fingers sent the small object sailing the short distance to Janeway’s lap, her next words spoken mostly into her glass. “An old and dear friend of ours went to a lot of trouble to get that into my hands; now it belongs in yours.”

The Captain picked up the thumb-sized plastic piece, turning it over and peering at it. “It's an isolinear chip.”

“Very good. And they say Starfleet doesn't select for brains when it hands out ships,” the Admiral chuckled, another taste of blessed numbness burning its way down her throat. “It's a message.”

Janeway’s regard flicked from the chip to the Admiral, resigned trepidation sending one of her brows sliding toward her hairline, “Regarding what exactly?”

The Admiral’s jaw worked silently for a moment, the regrets and hopes of a lifetime latent in her words, “My past. Your future. The reason I'm here.”

The Captain weighed her desire to know against her headache, wiggling the chip contemplatively between thumb and forefinger. The headache was definitely winning at the moment, “I'm not sure I want to know.”

The Admiral sat forward in her chair and put her glass down, staring at the Captain disbelievingly, “Now your curiosity fails you? That chip contains Seven's final request.”

Janeway dropped the chip to the table with a clatter as if burned by it, color draining from her already pale face. She shook her head resolutely, “Take it back. I'm not going to look at that.”

The Admiral launched herself from her chair with a snort of disgust and paced back and forth several times in front of the coffee table before apparently coming to some decision and squaring off, hands on hips, to address the still seated Captain, “Let me tell you something that I didn't mention earlier in the corridor.”

Janeway looked up at the Admiral, brows rising in dismay, “You mean there's more?”

“I didn't make it to Sickbay in time,” the Admiral resumed pacing, crossing her arms over her chest and lowering her chin in a defensive posture against the pain of the memories dredged up now into the light of the present. “We were under attack, and I was on the bridge when Seven died. By the time the situation was under control and I finally got down there, she was already in the morgue.” Glancing over, the Captain’s command mask had fallen completely into place, damming any emotion from reaching her face. The Admiral let out a breath and continued, “Chakotay looked at me dead-eyed when I walked in and then left without saying a word. I had missed it all and she was gone.’

The Admiral shook her head and lifted it, years upon years of guilty regret and sorrow shining liquid from her lower lids, “I didn't even get to say goodbye.”

Reining in her tears–this was not the day for them–she locked eyes with the younger Captain and squared her jaw.

“So don't sit there and tell me you won't look at that,” the Admiral accused, fire flashing in her regard, “I know you worry every time she goes on an away mission that she won't come back. I know that every time some marauding band of yahoos out here jumps Voyager, you fear that the hull breach will hit Astrometrics or Cargo Bay 2 this time.” The Captain opened her mouth to protest but was silenced by the snap of grey eyes and the lifting of a very pointed index finger. “You refuse to think or talk about it, but it eats at you a little more every time you sit up in a cold sweat from another nightmare about being covered in her blood.” Janeway’s cheeks went ashen at that, the command mask failing as her eyes rounded. “Yes, I remember the dreams! I remember everything including the fact that you've never felt that way about anyone else on this ship!”

The Captain shot to her feet at that, outrage and something more written in the rigidity of her stance, “I care about all of my crew!”

The Admiral wasn’t about to back down now, not when her stubborn past self was wavering and on the ropes. Just a little more unvarnished truth ought to do it. Banking the fire of her tirade, she continued now more gently, more quietly, “Not a single other person on Voyager causes you to cut down on your coffee drinking while they're in harm's way because the extra acid nearly sends you running to the head to throw up. There've been a couple of times you've thrown up anyway. The night before we went to take her back from the Borg for the last time was a doozy, wasn't it?” The Captain threw her a killing look and stalked away from the sofa to the windows, the endless depths of the Delta Quadrant easier to face at the moment than her own steely regard. Relentless, her own voice followed her, “And then there’s that little issue of us being willing to fling our entire ship and crew into danger whenever she was—“

Janeway cut her off abruptly with a raised hand and a glare at her counterpart’s silver-haired reflection, “You’ve made your point.”

A long silence ensued, one Janeway fixed on the stars at the windows, the other draining her glass and setting it carefully on the coffee table. Eventually, the Admiral meandered over to stand beside her younger self, taking in the view. “You are in the unique position…” she said slowly, “…of being literally beside yourself, Captain. You can lie to who you are, but you can't lie to someone who has already been who you are.” Taking the Captain’s near hand in her own, she placed the isolinear chip into it and folded identical if less weathered fingers around it. “Here, this is yours now.” Still holding onto that hand, she dropped her voice to the register of secrets, “How many second chances do you really think the Universe is going to continue to hand us?”

At the doorway, Admiral Janeway paused, looking back at the Captain who had not moved from in front of the windows, still clutching the chip in her hand, “There's no such thing as absolution, Captain. There are only learning experiences, and, if we're very lucky, forgiveness from those we love.”

Janeway’s watery gaze remained fixed on deep blackness until long after the doors had closed, leaving her to her solitude.

Long after the end of her shift, Seven of Nine was still at her post in Astrometrics running and rerunning calculations on Borg cube telemetry from the nebula. Absolutely no error would be tolerable during tomorrow’s mission; there was already too much about it for Seven’s tastes that resided in the realm of speculation, too much that relied on the ‘hunches’ held by a pair of determinedly maverick Janeways. Tomorrow they would either finally reach the Alpha Quadrant or end up drifting as a cloud of dust and debris. She had every intention of minimizing the chances of the latter outcome by any means necessary… and it gave her something else to think about besides her earlier row with Chakotay. It didn’t help at all that thinking about Chakotay invariably lead to thinking about Captain Janeway and that, recently, only sent the pit of her stomach into a freefall and lodged a tight lump of misery in her throat.

She had ruined everything between them, she was certain. Where once their relationship had been challengingly and warmly fulfilling, ever since the last incident with the Borg Queen in which Janeway had risked everything including her command and her own life to bring Seven home, an increasing distance now yawned between them. Their weekly Velocity matches had dwindled in frequency to nothing, Seven hadn’t been inside the Maestro’s studio in months, and she had to reach into the eidetic records of her cortical node to determine when had been the last meal consumed in the Captain’s company. It seemed obvious to Seven that Janeway had rescued her as a matter of course, as she surely would have for any of her crew, but had no more time or energy for the problems inherent in shepherding a former Borg drone back to humanity. Not after Seven had caused such trouble. That she had done so to save the crew of Voyager from certain assimilation didn’t weigh much into Seven’s ruminations. The growing separation had been her fault, and now the chasm seemed too vast to bridge.

Seven caught herself standing idle, hands resting still on the console before her, and let out a slow breath of quiet resignation. Mentally picking at such a sore spot wasn’t accomplishing anything, she decided. They would, if all went well, be on Earth very shortly, and that terrified Seven more than she would have ever cared to admit. Well, except to Kathryn Janeway… if they still talked about such things. With a shake of her head, Seven resumed her calculations, allowing the computer inside her skull to check and cross-check the data as her hands moved over various panels with inhuman fluidity and speed. Her nascent relationship with Commander Chakotay was not the arrangement of her dreams, she knew. He was attractive enough and, by her calculations, had enough interests in common with her own to provide for a reasonably varied interaction, but nothing about her holo-simulations or her real world interactions with him had ever caused her heart to flip in her chest and feel as though it were being squeezed by a large, fiery hand the way it did whenever her Captain praised her or turned on her that soft expression of pride and deep affection that Seven had craved. She supposed the silver lining to her bizarre working estrangement from Janeway had to be that she had become accustomed to scant signs of approval from her former mentor. She could admit to missing such pride in a wistful sort of way, but had become aware that she had adapted and grown beyond the need for it. What she had not grown beyond, she had recently discovered with some dismay, was the need for affection. Specifically, the affection of Kathryn Janeway. She had grown used to the small touches, the indulgent smiles, and the tenderness she would catch now and then in her Captain’s gaze. She found the absence of those things heartrending and had more than once been grateful to her nanoprobes for erasing the telltale signs of recently shed tears from her face before having to leave the relative privacy of Cargo Bay 2. It had been her intention, upon reaching Earth, to take Captain Janeway up on her offer of bringing Seven home to Indiana. She had planned to stay with the Captain for as long as could be managed, hoping that Janeway would come to want her to stay. She reasoned that once Janeway was no longer her Captain that she could then always be her friend and would perhaps even bestow those fond looks upon her much more openly and often. That offer seemed to have been withdrawn, as far as Seven could discern, and this more than anything else grieved her deeply. Earth had seemed much less a dauntingly unknown terror when it had been Janeway who would be introducing her to the whole of humanity. With that no longer an option, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea to position Chakotay as a shield between herself and the disorienting blur of undiluted Human culture. He was good to her, after all, and would protect her. Perhaps she would even feel her heart flip for him someday. She was Borg. She would have one more good cry over the entire thing, she decided, and then she would adapt.

Seven caught herself lost in thought again and pressed her lips together in annoyance as her hands resumed their work. She supposed it was to be lauded that she had recently found herself prone to the very Human activity of ‘woolgathering’, but it vexed her orderly and efficient soul to waste time in such a manner. It was equally vexing that the focus of her wandering thoughts seemed to be Kathryn Janeway the vast majority of the time. It was pointless and, more irritatingly, inefficient.

Seven had just resolved to put the whole dismal situation out of her head for the time being and focus exclusively on her work when her enhanced hearing detected the rhythm of a familiar, booted tread in the corridor approaching Astrometrics. It had been a while, a good while, since she’d heard those particular footfalls nearing her scientific domain outside duty hours. Where Janeway had formerly turned up in Astrometrics almost daily for one reason or another, in recent months she had only come down there personally when she wanted to use a piece of equipment in the lab. Communications and reports were generally submitted electronically. Seven felt her breath still as she heard the steps outside pause before the doors, just far enough away to avoid activating the sensor that would have opened them. She glanced back at the entrance and waited a full thirty-two seconds before she turned fully around, thinking to go to the doors herself and see what exactly was holding up the Captain. Just then, her ears detected the all but inaudible click and sigh of the door pneumatics preparing to open and turned back to her console quickly, resuming her work as though uninterrupted.

The doors to Astrometrics slid open and then closed again behind her, the deeply missed cadence of the Captain’s stride sounding from the deck as she approached. Seven of Nine did not look up from her panel or pause in the inputting of data as she greeted her visitor, “Captain.”

Kathryn Janeway came to a stop behind her Astrometrics officer, just beyond arm’s reach. Unnerved by the Captain’s silence, the sound of weight shifting from one foot to the other, and the faint tang of adrenaline wafted to Seven’s nostrils by proximity, she finally turned around, finding her commanding officer wearing an expression of utterly sprung composure like an ill-fitting coat. She tried again, “Captain? May I be of assistance?”

Janeway stood turning a small plastic chip over and over in her hands, staring at it as if it contained some vital answer yet to be divined. She looked odd, Seven decided, not at all like herself. Her eyes were gunmetal grey, the evidence of recent tears reddening the edges of her lids. Her face was ashen, shell-shocked, as though someone had just died. Before Seven could say anything further, Janeway tapped the chip several times against her other palm, an agitated fidget, and then thrust it out to her without meeting her eyes as if all resolve might be lost if she waited another moment to hand it over, “Here.”

Seven hesitated for a moment before reaching out to take the chip, staring in concerned puzzlement at the Captain and her strange comportment before dropping her gaze to the object in her grasp. Finding little by way of identifying marks, she finally asked, “What is it?”

“It’s an isolinear chip,” Janeway supplied immediately, glancing up for a moment before continuing to pick at one of her thumbnails.

“I can see that,” she informed the Captain, her reply coolly clipped from the habit of recent months and accompanied by the haughty arch of her optical implant. She shut her mouth as soon as her own tone hit her ears, instantly regretful of her instinctive chilly response to the Captain. It had been like this for so long, the distance widening with every encounter, every word, that here on the eve of the end of this journey she was at a loss as to how to even begin to mend things between them. She had recently become consciously aware that she easily matched Janeway in the areas of pride and stubbornness, and was just as aware that she wasn’t in the least helping matters at the moment. Deliberately schooling her voice to blandness, she finally added, “I presume that you have some purpose in giving it to me.”

Janeway managed not to visibly flinch at the icy retort, supposing it deserved and silently kicking herself. Of course Seven knew it was an isolinear chip. How did she always manage to approach this woman in just the wrong way? Firming her jaw, the Captain clasped hands behind her back before she worried her thumbnail down to nothing and finally met Seven’s eyes, “There’s a recording on it. You need to watch it.”

Seven turned to her workstation without further delay, grateful for a reason to put her back to the Captain’s difficult regard, and plugged the chip into the appropriate access port. “To what does this recording pertain?”

Janeway stopped just short of yanking the chip out of its slot. Seeing its contents again and in Seven’s presence would be an assault on her composure that she was certain she would not survive. Covering her aborted impulse forward by settling into her once customary spot against the side of Seven’s console, she managed to get out, “You. It’s about you. Your… future death.”

Seven clasped her hands behind in her usual posture and turned to fully face the Captain at this, her immaculately coiffed blonde head tilting inquisitively. The workstation processed the contents of the chip and queued up the recording to the primary screen, ready to be played. Seven made no move to activate it. “Would I be correct to surmise that you acquired this chip from Admiral Janeway and that its presence here is a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive?”

Janeway chewed briefly on her lower lip, eyes again downcast to her much abused thumbnail, and then released it with a short nod, “You would be correct on both counts.”

Seven yanked the chip from its port without hesitation and held it out to the Captain, “Then please take this back to the Admiral. I will not view it.”

The Captain then did something that outright startled the former drone. Pushing off her spot against the console, Janeway stepped right into Seven’s personal space and wrapped both hands around the one holding the chip, pushing it back to nearly rest against Seven’s chest. The Captain’s eyes were round with an emotional intensity that Seven hadn’t seen since this woman had informed her over a compression phaser rifle in the middle of a Borg cube that she wasn’t leaving without her. “Seven, please.”

Had Janeway just begged her to do something? Seven’s own eyes widened, and her voice thinned and rose in uncertain pitch, “Captain?”

Janeway recovered herself and released Seven’s hand, taking several steps toward the doors before turning back. With one hand propped on a hip for reassurance, her other rubbed her forehead and then smoothed down her face in an effort to calm herself. Finally, quietly, her eyes returned to Seven’s, “Please. View the recording and then come see me. We need to talk about this. Decide…” she gestured, spreading her fingers and pressing her hand to her own torso with a drawn and gustily released breath, “…what to do about it.”

Now Seven was definitely confused, “About what?”

The Captain shook her head, replying cryptically, “That’s what I mean.“

Seven straightened, growing frustrated with the obliqueness of this most unusual of conversations, “I do not understand.”

Janeway turned and strode for the exit, replying over her shoulder as she paused, framed by the open doorway and the bright light of the corridor, “You will once you’ve seen it.“

Seven stared at the closing doors for a long moment and then turned back to her console. It looked like the only explanation she was going to get was on that chip, and Seven was never one to dither when there was information to be had.

“Damn you.”

Seven stood in the doorway of Voyager’s VIP guest quarters, glowering at their sole occupant who had just been in the process of replicating herself another cup of coffee.

The elder Janeway glanced over her shoulder at the clearly livid former drone, her mouth quirking to a sardonic half-smile, “Hello, Seven. I was wondering when I’d see you again… although my Seven took at least another couple of years to start swearing at me.”

Thoroughly annoyed by the Admiral’s flippant response, Seven strode authoritatively into the room and intercepted Janeway en route back to her chair. She thrust the chip out stiffly, “Take this back. Do whatever you will with it, destroy it, I do not care, but do not show it to anyone else on this ship or attempt to give it back to Captain Janeway!”

The Admiral took in the sight of Seven at full froth with a long, measuring look and then, to the younger woman’s dismay, burst out laughing, “Good heavens, you’ve worked up quite a head of steam over this.” Obligingly, she plucked the isolinear chip from Seven’s grasp and tucked it into a pants pocket, settling back into her chair and putting her feet up on the adjacent footrest. Inhaling the fragrant steam from her coffee, she slanted her gaze upward again with undisguised fondness, plainly amused with her own reactions, “It’s probably all wrong on multiple levels that I’ve missed the sound of you ordering me around.”

Seven’s hands fisted in aggravation at her sides, “Do not be facetious!” she stormed. “You are attempting to manipulate Captain Janeway, and you are attempting to manipulate me!”

The Admiral let her head fall against the chair back, looking up at Seven now with a pained expression, all teasing gone from her tone, “I’m attempting to save a slew of lives, Seven, yours and Tuvok’s among them, and trying to prevent a matched pair of mistakes that have ruined the lives of everyone involved.” Righting her silvery head, she added before sipping her coffee, “Well, except for yours. You ended up dead. Lucky you.”

This threw cold water all over Seven’s ire, her impressive and enhanced mind racing to reconcile this new fact with the contents of the chip and her earlier encounters with the Admiral in Sickbay and Cargo Bay 2. She was just on the verge of understanding what drove this woman, she was sure. There was something missing though, some bit of information, “You keep mentioning mistakes. Explain.”

“Oh, Seven, where to start,” she sighed, waving a hand toward the sofa. “Sit. Please.” For once, Seven promptly did so without protesting that she preferred to stand, arranging herself at attentive right angles on the cushions.

Taking another scorching swallow of coffee, the Admiral settled deeper into her chair and took a steadying breath, “Mistakes. Let’s see.” She addressed her comments to the mug cradled in her hands, “My mistake, among many that I’ve made, is sort of a complicated, multi-part blunder. It takes talent to screw up like this, believe me.” Another breath, another sip of coffee, “I was not honest with you the one time you desperately needed me to be. I remained silent when I should have spoken up. Hell, Seven, I just didn’t try hard enough with you. I’ve spent all the days of my life after getting Voyager home thinking about what I wanted to say to you, all the while trying like hell not to think of you at all.” Sad, lost eyes turned then to search Seven’s face, no attempt made to hide the truth of her long-buried feelings for this woman whom she had once rescued and who could have rescued her had she possessed the sense to have allowed it.

“Can you imagine,” the Admiral continued, dropping her head against the chair back once more and regarding Seven from the corners of her eyes, “Grief as fresh twenty-three years later as it was on the day it was born? I got very practiced at shoving it down.” This was it, she realized. Her last chance to say what she hadn’t had the courage to put into words so long ago. Her next breath was downright unsteady as she put her mug down on the table beside her chair and stood. She’d always thought better on her feet. Three steps out and she stopped, turned around to find the younger woman’s uncertain gaze. She’d already spent too many years unable to sate her eyes on the sight of this woman. Looking at Seven, from that first moment in Sickbay, had been like a balm to her parched soul. Again, the hiss of sands slipping through the glass of time urged her on. There weren’t many grains left to her.

Smoothing her tunic unnecessarily, a deep, shaky breath passed audibly from her lips as she forced down her natural reticence, the thick-built walls from decades of hiding such scars now cracking under the weight of the inevitable and her own determination. Another breath and she plunged ahead, afraid that the words might evaporate to nothingness if she did not speak them immediately, did not divulge this most vulnerable of her buried secrets, “I somehow managed to resist the impulse to flush myself out an airlock in the weeks after you died, but it was a near thing a couple of times.” The cracks became fissures, her eyes becoming glossy with the unshed tears of a lifetime.

Seven’s eyes grew round at that, vague suspicions and wonderings solidifying finally into tentative certainty. This thing with them, with the Captain… The evidence suggested that it did not run all one way. Before she could speak, the Admiral forged ahead, hands clutched tightly together before her, “It was months before I stopped crying myself to sleep on the nights I didn’t work myself to exhaustion to keep from thinking. After that, I saved my tears for your birthday, the anniversary of severing you from the Collective, and the anniversary of your death.” Her voice caught on her last words, broke, throat and eyes betraying her, choking her speech and failing to hold back the dammed torrent of tears as fissures gave way and fell completely. Her head dropped, eyes squeezing shut and mouth crumpling as she fought for control.

Seven stood abruptly, dismayed that this break in the Admiral’s composure was causing her own throat to tighten and her eyes to prickle with the gathering of moisture. Unbidden, she found herself imagining what the Admiral’s life must have been like. What she herself would feel if she were suddenly looking forward at a future devoid of Kathryn Janeway… especially knowing what she now knew. This was compassion… empathy… sharing the pain of another human being. That this particular human being wore the face, voice and manner of the most important person in her life made it impossible for her to remain where she was, impossible not to offer the comfort of touch that had been offered to her so many times in the past. Now she understood.

Seven hadn’t taken more than a step forward when the Admiral halted her with a raised hand. Struggling to regain her composure, a long, shaking breath filled her lungs and then left her in a slow exhalation, eyes still closed, “No… I need to say this. All of it.” Her arms folded together over her midriff in a posture of unconscious defense as she raised her head, meeting Seven’s stricken regard. After a painful silence, she summoned a rough whisper, “I finally shut down and dismantled your alcove three years later… when Tuvok caught me standing in it for the umpteenth time and threatened to tell the Doctor. I was a single psyche eval away from being relieved of duty.”

She shook her head, more at herself than anything else, looking down and dropping her head again, this time to run her hands over her face, dashing the wetness from her cheeks and chin with her palms. “I never recycled your things, you know,” she related, sucking in another breath and wiping damp hands on her pants. “I sealed them in a stasis crate and took them off Voyager with me when we reached home again. In another timeline, they’re still in the back of my bedroom closet.”

Another glance down, another blink, another fresh pair of tears undoing her effort at drying her face, and she looked back up at Seven, “I take them out on the crying days because… your scent still clings to your biosuits and your hairbrush.” A heartbreakingly self-deprecating half-smile raised one corner of her mouth in a brief quirk, “I guess one last unscheduled crying day was in order. Fitting, really.”

Unable to hold her place for one more moment, Seven was grasping the Admiral’s thin upper arms in two determined strides. This close, every line, every mark of time and of grief and of gravity lay exposed beneath Seven’s intense scrutiny. Reddened lids and cheeks made the older woman’s eyes blaze cobalt in contrast as they rose to meet her own, small hands rising to grasp her elbows. Touch was definitely not irrelevant.

The Admiral searched Seven’s eyes, looking for she didn’t know what. Whatever she might have expected, she had not counted on finding sympathy and the beginnings of tears there, and it shook her. She had been so stupid back then, as stupid as her younger self still was now, but had Seven really understood the nuances of how things were between them this far back? She opted for point-blank honesty to cut out any chance of ambiguity. They were all out of time for misunderstanding. She found herself suddenly exhausted, nearly out of words and almost drained of her vaunted fortitude. Time to cut to the chase, “Does it shock you that you meant so much to me? That I became an obsessed, broken old woman who’s had twenty-six years to enumerate the ways I failed you by isolating myself from you?” Fresh tears fell, but her eyes held Seven’s unwaveringly now. This was too important, this was what she had upended the order of the Universe to say. She whispered, finding her courage at last, “That I waited until your body was cold before saying out loud that I… that I loved you?” There. It was said. Retreating to safe ground was no longer on the table as an option.

Without words, for none were needed, Seven pulled the surprised and trembling Admiral to her and wrapped long arms around her back. The older woman stiffened momentarily in habitual resistance to intimacy and then all the starch went out of her as her shoulders shook and she buried her face in Seven’s shoulder, wetting the fabric of her biosuit with silent sobs and clinging to her for dear life. This was no shame, she knew. She had earned this moment of redemption in this woman’s arms, paid for it with every shed tear and drop of blood it had cost her to get back to this place. She cried for the goodbye she’d never gotten to say, for the bartering of the love of a lifetime and her own humanity to get her ship home, for every second of every day of every year that she’d had to live with aching cold emptiness where Seven of Nine should have been.

Long minutes passed, Seven stroking her back and hair as though comforting a child, before the Admiral managed to draw the tatters of her shattered composure back around herself. She hiccupped softly and sniffed, her head still on Seven’s shoulder as she wiped at her nose with the back of one hand, the other still clutching the younger woman to her tightly. Another sniff, another wipe at her eyes and she whispered roughly, tears still in her voice but the oppressive weight seemingly lifted from her shoulders, “That was my mistake, Seven. I’ve spent the last twenty-three years paying for it with every breath I’ve drawn that you were denied. So, yes… you have every right to damn me. What I’m doing now, here; there was no choice I could make other than this.”

When the Admiral finally collected herself after a longer-than-proper stay in Seven’s arms and pulled back, she let go without protest and stood still as Janeway walked around her to take up her mug again for a long swallow of cooled coffee. Half-turning to look at the Admiral’s back, she asked, “What was my mistake? I presume the other of the ‘pair of matched mistakes’ was mine.”

Not turning around, Janeway replied softly, the echo of decades of self-recrimination audible in her voice, “Your only mistake was in settling for what started out as an experiment and ended up being a comfortable arrangement.”

“You speak of my relationship with Commander Chakotay,” Seven stated, not a question. Being a brighter woman than her Captain when presented with the facts of a complex situation, she already knew at this point where the conversation was headed and found herself, somewhat to her own surprise, now eager to get to the conclusion.

The Admiral’s sharp ears pricked up at the tone of Seven’s statement, and she made her own half-turn to eye the former drone speculatively. She hadn’t directly addressed the earlier declaration of love, and yet that had sounded suspiciously like comprehension of emotional nuance just now. Another slow sip of coffee went by before she replied. “Yes.”

Because it was the thing to say and happened to be true, Seven eyed the Admiral right back and offered, “The Commander is an adequate romantic partner and will ease my assimilation into Human culture on Earth.”

At this, Admiral Janeway turned to fully face Seven of Nine, arms folding over her chest with her mug resting on one forearm. Now Seven was just playing devil’s advocate, she was sure. A sudden rush of memory assailed her in that moment, this one more sweet than bitter. It had been one of the few times she had outright flirted with Seven and the inadvertent catalyst that had begun Seven’s interest in participating in Human mating rituals, “I thought you didn’t require a romantic relationship.“

Seven did not quite smile in response, but her blue eyes softened in shared memory. Ducking her head briefly in acknowledgement of both the past moment and the question inherent in the present statement, she replied, “After having had the inhibitor removed from my cerebral cortex, I have found that I have… ‘emotional needs’ of which I was previously unaware. “

“You used to bring things like that to me,” the Admiral nodded, beginning to trust Seven’s grasp of the situation at hand, trusting Seven not to hear recrimination in that loaded statement of fact where there was none.

Seven did not disappoint, blending her own history with Captain Janeway seamlessly in her mind with the Admiral’s past, “You have been… perpetually unavailable.” A statement of fact in kind with no attendant accusation. This was a clearing of the air not an assignment of blame. “I had no choice but to resort to experimenting with holographic simulations. Commander Chakotay was willing to participate in my experimentations off the holodeck. I find that I enjoy ‘dating’.”

The Admiral gave a regretful little twist of a smile and stepped forward, squeezing Seven’s upper arm gently with her free hand, thumb grazing an affectionate reacquaintance over the starburst implant under her biosuit there, “I know, Seven. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you; so is she, for that matter. Actually, you really ought to be having this discussion with her instead of wasting your time with a bitter old fossil.“ This last was delivered with a wry twist of self-deprecation that Seven recognized as characteristic of this woman and let it go.

The rest of the Admiral’s remark raised Seven’s brow and implant at once, “You do not wish to continue this conversation?” Things had been progressing so well, she thought, and Seven wasn’t certain at all that she was ready to face the Captain just yet.

Janeway shook her silvery head with a gentle chuckle. This woman was a treasure. How in the world she’d managed not to see that for so long… “On the contrary, this has actually been fairly cathartic for me. It’s just that you’re not going to find any resolution to those ‘emotional needs’ here.” Her eyes sobered as she recommended to Seven with all seriousness, “You and your Captain have a lot to talk about.”

Seven tilted her head, brows lowering with relief that she was not, in fact, being booted out that very moment to go and have such a talk with the Captain. That conversation was going to require what the Captain called ‘a running start’. “Very well. I will ‘think on it’,” she capitulated graciously.

That seemed to satisfy the Admiral. She nodded, giving Seven’s arm one more little squeeze and an affectionate rub before releasing it, “That’s all I can ask.”

Admiral Janeway went to move past Seven then, aimed generally toward the replicator beyond her and probably in search of a fresh cup of coffee. The Admiral, however, wasn’t the only one who had things she needed to say in this conversation. Reaching out as the older woman drew level with her shoulder, Seven caught Janeway’s hand with her own, causing her progress to halt and curious slate blue eyes to swing back around in search of her own. It was Seven’s turn now to take a steadying breath, reassured by the flip of her heart in her chest and the fluttering sensation in her belly that this was right, “Admiral, I wanted to tell you… that it seems obvious to me from what ‘your Seven’ said in that recording that she would also have ceased to function with grief had it been you who had died in her place.” Pulling gently on the Admiral’s captured hand, she faced the smaller woman squarely, reaching up with a hand that some detached part of her brain recognized was trembling to cup the Admiral’s face, “I feel I can safely say on her behalf that had she known the extent of your feelings, Chakotay would never have held any attraction for her.”

Janeway froze at Seven’s touch, eyes rounding in startlement as she realized what the younger woman wanted. She didn’t deserve this. In spite of herself though, she leaned her face into Seven’s palm, after all this time lacking the will to pull away. There didn’t seem to be much meaning to perpetuating self-denial at this point. Still, she had to say the right thing for Seven’s sake, even if it came out a husky whisper, “Seven, please don’t.’

Undeterred, Seven took in her own feelings, the look on the soft, upturned face before her, and the physical responses being reported to her through her sensor-laden fingertips. The Admiral loved her, and she was now reasonably certain that what she had felt for most of the time she had known either version of this woman was love as well. Sliding her fingers into silky silver hair, she took another half-step forward, bringing her into grazing contact with the Admiral’s body. “You are still Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway, and you have upended time itself to give the Captain and myself a second chance,” she murmured, close enough to smell soap and shampoo, coffee and a tinge of whisky. The round blue eyes staring up at her went warm and dilated all at once. It was all Seven needed to see. “Allow me this,” she coaxed, trying out tenderness in her voice for the first time, “I have no words to adequately express gratitude for such a sacrifice.”

Unable to do or say anything else, Admiral Janeway gave herself over to the moment, lived and loved and anticipated a lifetime in the space of heartbeats. “Oh, Seven,” she whispered. Her eyes slid shut as Seven’s lips brushed and then claimed her own, any doubts she might have ever had about her purpose here evaporating like morning mist, and Seven of Nine was her sunrise.