Missing D7 Scenes: Season Six
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek Voyager
Copyright: Paramount
1. Equinox
Seven stood in front of the shiny metallic holodeck doors. It was precisely the time and place she had agreed on with the Doctor for their duet session. Just you, me … and a tuning fork. She could still recall his arch, playful expression, the way he'd rocked on his heels and leaned just a little closer to her face. As if they were still singing partners, still mentor and protegée, still … whatever they had been. As if everything were normal between them.
She knew he was on the other side of that door, running his music room simulation – a soundproof room with a grand piano, as many other musical instruments as the holodeck database could produce, shelves full of scores, recordings and works on musical theory, and a window showing the most beautiful weather phenomena: sunrises and –sets, moon phases, soft snow or gentle rain.
One more step and the doors would swish open for her. They would sing together, laugh together (at least he would laugh and she would feel silently amused), and she would be as happy as a former Borg was capable of being.
So why couldn't she take that step?
Just as she thought this, the doors opened on their own. She flinched internally, although her body gave nothing away.
The room was rather darker than she had expected. Outside the window, which was opposite the door, it was autumn – the air was soaked with heavy, slanting rain and the usually green fields littered with soggy leaves. The Doctor stood in front of her, looking so obviously – so incredibly – the same.
"Hello, Seven," he said, with a shaky smile.
That same green uniform jacket with the silver commbadge and black shoulders. Those same black pants and shiny black shoes. The features of his face, homely as ever – wide mouth, deep wrinkles, sparse brown hair. Those hazel eyes. He was a hologram, of course he should look exactly the same. Yet it unnerved her, because he wasn't the same. Nothing was.
Sixteen hours earlier, that face had smiled down at a restrained Seven in the Equinox sickbay with all the warmth of a Terran alligator. That beautiful tenor voice had calmly, even cheerfully, described the way he was going to manipulate her cortical node to access information on Voyager's security codes. Her higher brain functions – speech, mobility – will be severely damaged. He had sung as he worked on her.
She had seen the Doctor altered before – quite recently, in fact. A sentient weapon of mass destruction had hijacked his programming, and of course she had taken all possible steps to neutralize the thing, but her emotional equilibrium had hardly been touched. The weapon using the Doctor's holomatrix hadn't sung, or cracked jokes, or talked with his hands. It hadn't been him.
She nodded in greeting and entered the room.
"I've got the tuning fork," said the Doctor, holding it up and tapping a pen against it to make it chime. "Now, where were we?"
They went through their usual vocal exercises with an efficiency that was almost mechanical. The few jokes he made fell flat. Seven was rather relieved at first; at least she didn't have to puzzle out the vagaries of his so-called sense of humor or get distracted from the music. Two years ago, she would have noticed nothing wrong. Now, only her ingrained Borg manners kept her from throwing up her hands and shouting like Torres.
After a set of arpeggios, she glanced up – and knew what was wrong.
"Doctor," she said, "You have not initiated eye contact since the beginning of the session."
His hands dropped away from the keyboard as, with a sigh, he finally looked up at her.
"Haven't I?"
"Why not? You specifically informed me once that eye contact is important during social interaction. It establishes – "
He cut her of with an upraised hand. "All right! I'm sorry. No need to quote back at me like that. Quite frankly, Seven … this is awkward."
For some inexplicable reason, hearing that from him made it a little less awkward. She felt she could breathe easier. She was not the only one having trouble.
"I can't blame you for feeling … uneasy … at the sight of me," the Doctor continued. "After all, I nearly caused you permanent brain damage."
"I do not blame you," she hurried to say.
"I know. You already told me so."
"And you have already expressed your regret." She remembered him in Sickbay, shoulders bowed. I hope you don't think less of me … It's quite unnerving to know that a push of the button can turn me into Mr. Hyde.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde was a nineteenth-century novel about a scientist who had essentially spliced himself into two entities – his good side and his evil side. The Doctor had 'recommended' it to Seven (read: pestered and prodded her into reading it) and they had discussed the moral and philosophical implications of the story together. Seven had not expected to find a real life example so close to home.
"You … he enjoyed it," she said abruptly.
The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain.
"He manipulated my vocal processor while performing the operation. He forced me to sing 'My Darling Clementine' with him."
She didn't even like that song – which was probably a mercy, since if she had liked it, the memories evoked would inevitably cause her distress the next time she heard it.
The Doctor's eyes suddenly snapped open, glowering. "I know! I was there, I had those disgusting thoughts and actions in my cognitive processors! I remember looking down at you, cuffed to the bed, trying so hard to reroute the commands along my subroutines and getting blocked by Maxwell Burke's goddamned codes! Do you have any idea what that feels like, Seven? To be a puppet inside yourown body?"
Seven shook her head. She clenched her fists behind her to hide their trembling. She had been posessed by several different consciousnesses once, due to contact with a Borg vinculum, but she did not remember any of it.
"I would never – ever – have behaved like this of my own free will," he said qith quiet intensity, standing up and meeting her eye to eye. "Seven … my friend, I swear - as soon as we've installed a security program for my ethical subroutines, no one will ever turn me into that person again. I will never hurt you."
"I believe you." She truly did. Whatever that other hologram with his face and voice might have done … this man was her ally, beyond a doubt.
"You were so very brave, Seven, not giving away Voyager's codes. If you were Starfleet, they'd have to promote you or at least give you a medal."
Seven thought of the terrible effort it had taken, to stand at attention for Ransom and keep saying 'No' in the face of certain mental violation. In spite of her pity for the beleaguered man, with the premature lines in his face, who had committed these atrocities out of sheer loyalty to his crew. He had hated himself more than Seven ever could. Now he was dead, for the sake of his crew and Voyager both, and his punishment was out of their hands.
Loyalty had kept Seven upright when nothing else could – to her Captain, her crewmates, and the memory of her best friend. She didn't think of it as courage – only the bare fact that she could not have borne it if her own weakness had caused their deaths.
"I acted out of necessity," she said bitterly. "I do not desire promotions or medals."
"I know. Neither do I … although I wouldn't deserve one in any case."
She wanted to place her hand on his shoulder, as he had a habit of doing when she needed comfort, but she hesitated, wondering if it was appropriate. Would a hologram, who did not even have a sense of touch the way organic beings did, receive any benefit from a touch?
Regardless of that, the tension between them seemed to be gone – or rather, re-settled into their customary tension. Was it the effect of his raised voice? She wondered wryly. Perhaps one could conclude that if they still argued, they were more or less the same individuals – therefore, their strange friendship could and should remain intact.
"Why, Seven! Are you … smiling?" The Doctor's own face began to brighten a little.
"I was not aware of doing so."
"You were! I thought you had a bit of a smirk on your face when you challenged me to a duet, but … goodness gracious. You should really do it more often. It transforms your entire face."
Part of Seven was irritated – if he was going to have such an excessive reaction to every movement of her face, perhaps she ought to stop smiling altogether. Part of her was , this was unmistakeably the Doctor – no one else, not even the Captain, would be quite so delighted by Seven's emerging humanity.
"Computer," said the Doctor, "Play What A Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong, instrumental only. Together now."