Echoes
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Voyager
Copyright: Paramount
For the second time that night, a noise in Cargo Bay Two disrupted Seven's regeneration cycle. Her eyes snapped open. The source of the noise was a data padd which had clattered to the floor. Its owner, crouching to retrieve it, looked up at her with rueful gray eyes.
"Seven? Did I wake you up again?"
"You did."
"I'm sorry … I will be more careful." He stood up, replaced the padd on top of a precarious stack by his computer console, frowned at it, then pushed them together into a tidier alignment.
"Computer, time," said Seven.
"Oh-one hundred hours and thirty-seven minutes."
"Icheb." Groggy and disoriented as she was, Seven tried to force some authority into her voice. "At this hour, you should not be using padds at all, let alone dropping them. For the last time, you must regenerate."
"But this article about the Bajoran wormhole is fascinating! Please let me finish it first, and then I promise I will regenerate. Did you know that – "
Something about the order she had just given her young student, combined with the way his face lit up with wonder at his discovery (not to mention her fatigue) caused the room to blur in front of her tired eyes. She found herself looking at another pair of curious gray eyes; a paper-white face; the gleam of polydutonic alloy in the shape of Borg armor. I wish to assimilate more information!
She squeezed her eyes shut and One turned back into Icheb, thin and black-haired and Brunali, with no visible implants except the one on his eyebrow. Icheb, staring back at her with a puzzled expression bordering on hurt.
"Seven, are you listening?"
"Step into your alcove, now." In her effort to prove to him (and herself) that there was nothing wrong, her voice came out sharper than she had intended, causing Icheb's eyes to widen with pained surprise. He ducked his head and gathered up the stack of padds, intending to replace them in their box.
"You will be tired tomorrow," she added more softly. "Would you not rather attend your lessons functioning at optimal efficiency?"
"I suppose I would."
He looked up with a small shrug, his awkward, adolescent way of acknowledging she was right, and headed for his alcove. "I am … grateful … for your concern, Seven."
Seven of Nine, thank you, another, deeper voice had spoken from that same alcove, almost two years ago, without any clarification as to why. She had not understood then, but she wondered if perhaps One's gratitude had been similar to Icheb's. Thank you for your protection, even when I do not need it; for your guidance, even when I refuse it. Thank you for caring.
"You are welcome," was the last thing she said before they both re-initiated the cycle.
=/\=
Seven remembered One dying on the biobed, his forehead streaked with blood, after having single-handedly destroyed that Borg sphere. They will pursue me … As long as I exist, you are in danger. I was never meant to be.
During the first weeks after One's death, her memories had followed her just like this, snatching her up at the most inconvenient moments, leaving her breathless with a strange, disembodied pain she did not understand. You're grieving, the Captain had told her softly. It's a natural human response. I promise you, it will get better in time.
And it was better – sometimes. At other times, her regeneration cycle still provided her with nightmares about watching him die all over again, tearless, powerless, stumbling through Sickbay like a sleepwalker as his armored corpse lay behind her.
And that was precisely the reason why she could not accept Icheb's cortical node.
She glared at his flushed, pain-distorted face as he stood opposite her, both of them leaning on the same workstation in Sickbay, snapping at each other like two sides of the same coin. She could not fathom Icheb's foolishness. He was sixteen years old. His plan was risky to the point of being suicidal. How could he not know that allowing him to die for her would be infinitely worse than dying herself?
How could she lose another child?
But even as they argued, she could hear the ring of truth in Icheb's words.
"You've been telling me I need to rely on others," he said. "But you refuse to rely on anyone! You hid your condition from the rest of us – you're the one who needs to learn to rely on others. Isn't that what the people on this ship do? They help each other?"
That last sentence was spoken over his shoulder to Captain Janeway, who nodded, her eyes warm with respect for her aspiring cadet. Despite herself, Seven's own respect for Icheb began to grow. It was the most mature she had ever seen him.
He was like One, making a sacrifice, not blindly, but with his eyes wide open to the risks. A sacrifice for his Collective - his family. Who was she to deny him that?
You are hurting me … but I will adapt.
"You may proceed," she said through gritted teeth. Icheb's triumphant smile was the last thing she saw before the Doctor's hypospray hit her neck.
Two weeks later, standing by the bedside of her bone-thin, exhausted, mercifully alive foster-son, Seven knew joy as she had never known it before. It was a fragile thing, fluttering in her chest every time she looked into his bloodshot gray eyes and remembered how easily they could have been closed; fragile, but impossibly strong. Icheb would live to take his Starfleet courses, to rise in the ranks of Voyager and possibly even elsewhere in the Alpha Quadrant, to achieve extraordinary things, to make her proud. Icheb would live.
If only One had survived to know him …
"My ocular implant," she said, watching the teardrops on her cbernetic hand catch the light. "It's malfunctioning again."
"On the contrary," replied the Doctor, scanning her. "It's functioning perfectly."
And it was.