DRAG
by Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)

RATING: NC-17
CODES: J/7
SUMMARY: This is a bit weird but I dunno ... you might like that kind of thing. Dedicated to the lovely Mercy Croft, who has raised the bar for dark fic in recent months. I hope she knows how much I love her.


I see Seven. Seven sees me.

She sips champagne from a flute the colour of her eyes, and we're not even a crowded room apart. She's two meters away, with just three people between us, and she's standing at the bar.

I think she is surprised to see me. I guess she doesn't know I'm Mrs. Le Marchand now. Her sipping falters and she spills a little when her eyes meet my eyes. The champagne drips a dark patch on her breasts.

The breasts are a surprise. I hadn't been exactly sure what to expect, but I hadn't expected breasts.

I smile a little at her, a sad smile. Her eyes are wide, afraid, but her jaw is set and arrogant. Seven of Nine. How little she changes, even when she changes completely.

She is still beautiful. Full lips, full eyes. Blonde hair, shaved close at the sides and quiffed high at the top. No grey, but then she's only thirty eight. Now I'm old I think everyone is old.

She pretends to ignore me; flicking her eyes back to the bar and putting the flute down. She licks her lips and swallows. Her adam's apple bobs in her throat under a layer of stubble. Then she looks back at me.

It's not a look I would ever have expected to see on Seven of Nine. It smoulders. Blue ice.

I let go of Sherona's hand, touch her shoulder and excuse myself. She smiles and nods without a pause in her conversation. Her laugh, loud, infectious and intoxicating, is just white noise. I am held by Seven's eyes.

I go to Seven. Stand beside her. I notice her hands first, holding her glass by the stem. Long fingers, long painted nails. Hair on her fingers.

"Hello Seven," I say, and look up at her face.

Was she always this tall? I can't imagine she was. If she had been this tall on Voyager I could never have stood up to her.

"Hello Captain," she responds, even though I have been an Admiral for a decade.

"I wondered if you'd be here," I confess.

"I did not know you would," she confirms. "Are you interested in modern theatre?"

I shake my head, though it is not exactly true. "I'm here with Sherona Le Marchand," I tell her, nodding over to my wife. My loud, brash, egregious actress. She is centre of attention over by the canapés, half a dozen scientists speaking to her breasts.

Seven looks at Sherona, analysing her. Her lips purse. "Ms. Le Marchand is a talented individual," she manages. The words don't sound easy for her.

"So are you," I tell her, and for a moment she looks at me with something huge in her eyes, something too big for me to read. Then it is gone. "I hear great things about your work here on the station," I continue.

She smiles graciously. "I am at an advantage," she says. "I have the knowledge of ten thousand species to rely on."

A polite conversation. Small, humorous. We fall silent and she looks around the room, her gaze flicking from face to face. Ten years have passed and we have nothing to say. Or maybe too much we can't mention.

"You look ... well," I tell her. I want her to look at me again. The way she used to on Voyager when she was my Seven.

She does look, a slight smile on her lips. "Does my appearance surprise you?" she asks. A slight arrogance about her tone, something defensive. Momentarily I wonder if she decided to undergo this change because she knew it would fluster people.

I can't look her in the eye. I look over her shoulder; down at my hands. A question about her appearance and I can't look at her while I answer.

"Chakotay told me what you ... what you had done," I tell her.

"Did he," she says. Irritation in her voice.

I nod. I don't want to tell her any more. I have the feeling Chakotay's pain and bewilderment would be pleasing to her.

She looks away again and takes another sip of her champagne.

This isn't right. I've thought about this moment so many times over the last ten years, and I never imagined this. This awkward silence, not being able to meet her eyes. The buzz and chatter of conversation and laughter all around us. Somehow I imagined we would do this alone somewhere.

I imagined that it would feel like it did on Voyager, where I was the Captain, where she was my protégée. Where she hung on my every word and I had control.

Now I have no control. I am inches from her and a decade from being her Captain. I can't remember how to hold that wall between us, and every feeling I ever felt for her is right here.

Because I loved Seven of Nine. I did. I loved her in that way you can only love those you can't have. Madly, obsessively. Crazily. But then that was the way I did everything, those last few years on Voyager.

I put it down to my isolation, the overwhelming responsibility, the awareness of my own mortality. What a perfect symbol the two of us were in my head back then: the terrified aging Captain clinging to the young immortal Borg.

"What made you do it?" I ask her, and this time I force myself to look. The man's suit, the man's boots, the cropped hair. The deep voice, the adam's apple. The facial hair. The broad shoulders.

Seven blinks. No one has asked her this before. Lovely, tolerant Starfleet I suppose. What the Borg wants to do ...

"It was what I wanted," she replies.

"Mmm," I say.

She chews the inside of her mouth, looking irritated once again. "I require air," she tells me.

Then she is gone, pushing through the groups of people gathering to see my wife perform her play. She has left her champagne on the bar and I watch it, the bubbles rising lazily through the pale liquid. Lip gloss in a shade of pink on the rim.

I understand Seven of Nine. She likes to be caught between two worlds, it defines who she is. Human and Borg, adult and child, woman and man. She is all of these and none of them.

I understand you, Seven of Nine.

I follow her through the gathering people, towards the large doors that lead out into the gardens. Outside it's wet and evening; the droplets glistening on the leaves and on the carefully cut grass.

Perfect plants line the bluestone path, leading down to a lake and some trees, their branches rising and falling in the wind. A beautiful place, a beautiful place to get some air.

But I know you, Seven of Nine.

She won't be here. She won't want to be among the chaos of nature, no matter how honed and clipped and tamed it is.

Below the garden is an elevator to the shuttle bay. I take it, feeling Seven all around me here. The clank of the metal grille beneath my evening shoes, the cool efficient panels thrumming in the walls.

Seven, Seven. I follow her like a trail of breadcrumbs. Listening to her soul speaking deep inside my soul. Knowing.

The elevator comes to a smooth halt and I exit, onto the solid metal of the deck. Here, too, I feel Seven. The hybrid of this place, garden above and shuttle bay below, the rainwater dripping down through the light fixtures, smelling of plants and oil, all in one. All in one.

Seven is walking ahead, the shape of her back, her broad back with its narrow tapered waist, disappearing into the shadows.

I follow her, not calling her name. Just letting her hear the sound of my footsteps behind her, falling into rhythm with her footsteps.

I am with you Seven, I am here.

I catch her in the shadows by the runabout used by the Betazoid Ambassador. In the dark where I can't see her, I catch her and I kiss her. Not thinking about Sherona, not thinking about much at all. Arms around Seven's shoulders, mouth against her mouth, hands in her hair.

She groans in her deep voice, hungry and strong. Breaks the kiss to pant in hot gusts across my cheeks and eyes and then kisses again, missing my lips and tonguing my chin before burrowing back into my mouth with her eating, eating teeth. My mouth aches, spread wide, and my face is ripped by her stubble.

She presses my back against the duranium hull of the runabout and lifts me with her strong arms so my feet aren't even on the ground. Kissing, kissing. Her hands hard and muscular on my breasts and waist and on my thighs. Yanking my skirt up, the skirt of my black cocktail dress. For a moment I see my own legs, white in the light like the flesh of a moon. Seven's hands stroke the curves of them and pull at my panties.

Yes Seven. Do this. Do it.

She pulls them off and throws them aside, damp side up, into the light where anyone can see them.

She is on me, pressing me high on her body to bury her face in my breasts. Unfastens the front of my dress with her teeth and pushes into the gap she has made. Her sandpaper chin rasps against my vulnerable breast and she breathes her wet breath in hot lusty gusts on my flesh.

I am hers, letting her have me. Letting us both have the moments we could never have on Voyager.

Her hand comes up to remove my breast from the cup of my bra and then her teeth are on its prize; the nipple, pulling, tugging, biting. Seven of Nine is not a gentle lover.

For a moment the pain is too much and I think I will have to push her away. I grit my teeth and pant until I'm okay, until the pain becomes a white hot pleasure and my nipple glows with it. It throbs blood for her.

I understand you, Seven of Nine.

I am a thing she could not conquer and yet I was always utterly hers. No wonder she hates me so much.

I gasp against her neck as she touches me, the slide of her hard Borg hand over my soft wet sex too much to contain. I make noise, too much noise, but the friction is unbearable. She'll burn me to the bone.

She shifts against me and fumbles with her pants; parts my legs and presses me higher on the runabout's hull. I am hot, face throbbing and scarlet with lust. Breath loud and echoing.

Seven's eyes glitter; a piece of hair flops into her eyes. She shifts her weight and thrusts her hips. Something hard between us, nuzzling, working, seeking entry. Seven grunts and slides inside me.

Oh. Oh God. I gasp and groan and take it - take her - into me. It's been years, almost twenty, since I've been with a man but I remember how it feels to have a cock inside me.

What am I doing? What am I doing?

I did not expect this. I am dizzy and lost. The fat head and throbbing shaft inside me, Seven's breasts against me, against my breasts. Her soft lips and sharp teeth kissing hard. The stubble of her growing beard and the taste of her lip gloss. No sex I've ever had has been like this. Seven is everything.

I feel split, I feel violated, I feel open and full and overwhelmed. I listen to myself breathe and it is not a pleasant sound.

This is what it must be like to be assimilated, I think. To lose yourself to someone who is everything at once. No wonder Seven didn't want to leave the Borg.

"Yes," she hisses. "Captain."

She thrusts, banging me against the hull repeatedly until my back aches dully and my breath burns my throat.

"Oh God," I say, a prayer against her hair as she takes me. Makes me come, a silver starburst of an orgasm that makes my blood fizz like nanoprobes. My fingers clutch her shoulders, digging into muscle and a Borg implant.

Her face, its gusts of breath, nestle to my shoulder as she comes too. The rush of hot sweet sticky fluid deep inside surprises me. She went this far? This far?

Oh Seven why did you do it? What did you do that for?

She lifts her head and looks at me and all at once she is sweet Annika, the first time I saw her de-Borged, in the cargo bay on my ship. She looks impossibly beautiful, totally female.

I lean towards her and kiss her soft sloppy lips, and I notice tears in her eyes.

She lets me go and walks away, across the room to straighten her suit and brush at the stains. I pick up my panties but I don't put them back on. I use them to clean her ejaculate from my thighs and then I throw them away.

I want to say something, but she isn't even looking at me. She has her back to me, buttoning her jacket.

I trace the lines of her, trying to remember them. When I wake up tomorrow in my big grand house on Earth, I want to remember the real Seven, not the feminine ghost I once loved.

She turns to me, chewing the inside of her face. "The play is about to begin," she says. Head high and proud. "Your wife ..."

"My wife is on tour a lot," I tell her. But that sounds wrong, like I want an affair. I didn't even mean to say that.

"Can I contact you?" I ask. "Speak to you sometimes?"

Seven chews her face some more and the water, dripping relentlessly from the garden above, sounds a like horrible rain.

"Why?" she whispers. Her eyes wide and her pupils full of light.

"Because I regret that I haven't."

Something unfathomable crosses Seven's face, a turmoil of emotion. Desire. Love. Lust. Hate. I see hope and fear and awful, awful sadness.

I want to take her hand and pull her out of it all, take her away and save her, but I can't.

I'm not the Captain any more. I have no Voyager, no mission, and no passionate crusade to protect my crew. All of that has passed. I'm someone else now. We both are.

I understand you, Seven of Nine. I think you understand me. We can't pretend we're everything we've left behind.

She looks at me with the ice-blue eyes of the Borg I loved and says "You may call me on occasion if you wish."

She turns and walks away, taking the elevator at the other end, the one that leads into the complex proper. She isn't even going to stay and watch the play.

I watch her disappear before I leave. I don't look back.

THE END