Maybe tonight. The ship was surprisingly quiet, even with the Admiral's unexpected arrival, though there was no guarantee it would stay that way. However, he should have a few hours to himself, assuming there were no false labor pains or other crisises. (It was amazing really, how many problems one small crew could get themselves into. He couldn't imagine how they would have survived this long without him.) Maybe tonight he would have time to dream one last time.
He decided on candlelit chandeliers in a grand ballroom. Sometimes he opted for a more intimate setting, but not tonight. Tonight should be special, memorable. And the music should be…how about a Chopin piano waltz? Conventional, but no less beautiful.
Beautiful—a gigantic word, but not one nearly large enough to encompass what he thought of her. If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear the sound of her hair, loose and flowing for a change, brushing shoulders bare except for the briefest of straps holding up a floor-length ball gown. Blue, maybe, to match her eyes. He loved her in blue.
She softly touched him on the shoulder and he turned to face her. As always, his breath caught in his throat at the sight of her (an affectation, yes, but who would know or care?). A stab of pain (actual pain) shot through him as he realized that she had never been what he had wanted her to be to him and now she never would. The promise in those eyes as they looked at him would never exist outside of this room. "I already have all the help I need," she had said. Their friendship hadn't been the same since his "death-bed" confessions, but hadn't she already known or at least suspected? How could she not have seen it?
The music began and he shook off the questions. Now was not about what was, it was about what might have been.
"Seven of Nine, may I have this dance?" He bowed.
"That would be acceptable, Doctor."
The non-descript man in the tuxedo, a hologram, but a man none-the-less, gathered into his arms the holographic facsimile of the woman he loved and they began a slow waltz around the ballroom. This would indeed be a night to remember, come what may.
After tonight he would accept the inevitable, give up the fantasy she had represented for so long, and delete this program forever, but for tonight he could dream, relishing the feel of her in his arms, the smell of her hair, the sound of her voice. His heart swelled with the music and filled the room with an emotion beyond the capacity of holoemitters, as the sleek ship sailed on through the long, dark night, toward home.