This story was a response to a challenge on the J7 Faction board, oh so long ago.
Challenge description: From the J7 Faction Backdoor Challenge: WORKFORCE RE-DO What if Jaffen and Kathryn were only good friends and Janeway moves in with Seven instead? Chakotay arrives and disrupts their happy life with stories about a lost ship far, far away from home and her brave captain. What happens when they regain their memories and return to Voyager?
Disclaimers:
The characters appearing in this story belong to Paramount Pictures Television and the writers of Star Trek: Voyager. My thanks go to Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan and the rest of the actors for breathing their own spice into these characters which can lead to such wonderful daydreams for myself and other fans. I am only taking this thing out for a spin. I will put everything back, none the worse for wear, and perhaps better off than before anyway.
Sexual Content:
This story contains explicit descriptions of consensual sex between adult women. If that sort of thing bothers you, go elsewhere. Further, if you are not over the age of consent for reading such material, or it is illegal in your jurisdiction, please stop reading now.
Beta thanks:
Beta reading thanks go to Beachbum for her insight on all things Trek and sharp eyes for the overlooked word, or the awkward turn of phrase. Thank you from the bottom of my ink-soaked heart.
Finding Love in the Workforce
By LZClotho
(c) October 2008
Clocking out at the end of her shift, Kathryn Janeway spotted the Efficiency Monitor standing by her office door watching the workers exiting the power facility. She watched the blond woman's face shift through several expressions. When it settled into lines Janeway could only interpret as dismay, she followed the gaze to see Annika Hansen had spotted Jaffen in the crowd.
He really had been very nice. Kathryn thought back over meeting him when her console was misbehaving. Resolutely she decided to be sure again that Hansen knew the fault for the work disruption lay entirely with her.
"Miss Hansen!" Even as Kathryn said it, the name sounded strange - like it was wrong to be addressing the woman this way. She smiled though when Annika - yes, Annika sounded much better to her ear - turned to look at her.
"Employee 8584. Do you require something?" Kathryn looked up into bright blue eyes and felt her cheeks heat as her gaze traced full lips.
She found her voice and stuck out her hand. "Kathryn Janeway. Yes, I wanted to apologize again for getting off task earlier today. The blame is entirely mine. Please don't put anything in Jaffen's file."
"Jaffen?" The blue eyes changed to the color of ice chips. "Oh, you refer to the male with whom you were flirting."
"I was just being..." Janeway paused. Had she flirted? "Nice."
"Well, you are off duty now. There is nothing to stop you from being... nice."
Kathryn was surprised that Hansen appeared miffed about the situation. Perhaps even... "Are you jealous?"
"Jealous?" Hansen hitched up her left brow, the one adorned with unusual jewelry. Kathryn's fingers actually tingled for a second with the desire to stroke it.
"Jaffen caught your attention? Don't worry; I'm not interested in him."
"You aren't? Then why did you flirt?"
Somehow the two women had continued to walk outside as they spoke. Kathryn shivered a bit in the blast of wind coming down the street. "I told you I was simply being nice. He'd caught me talking to my console. No one likes to be embarrassed."
"I do not understand."
"Why don't we go to dinner and I'll explain the difference?"
Hansen seemed intrigued by the invitation. "I have not yet consumed a meal with a companion. I accept."
Kathryn smiled. "All right then. How about we check out the new eatery on Street 47?" Her smiled broadened as Hansen, in a quirky way she decided she quite liked, said, "Acceptable."
Kathryn was charmed. On duty in the power facility, Annika Hansen was comprehensively professional and knowledgeable about every technology - she indicated how several systems were grafted together from various species' technology.
Kathryn sipped her Tarkalian ale before asking, "How did you learn so much so quickly? How long have you been here?"
Annika's adorable brow furrowed again in thought. "I believe I have possessed the knowledge for some time. I was recruited seven... or nine days ago?" The furrow briefly deepened then Annika's expression cleared and she continued, "But I have no detailed memory."
"You don't?" Kathryn considered her time on Quorra. She knew she came from another planet. Everyone here did, it seemed. She began to frown as well though when she could not recall back further than a few days. That's odd. She sipped her ale again and relaxed, sharing a smile with Annika Hansen over the rim.
She enjoyed being here, she decided, surrounded by the variety of species. It was comfortable. Familiar in a way, but different too. She definitely liked being with Annika. She'd have to do something about that, she thought.
"Can I get you ladies anything?" A sandy blonde male in a dark vest, light shirt and dark pressed pants walked up to their table. "Name's Tom. Can I get you another ale? Some food?"
"You work here?" Something about his puckish nature had Kathryn smiling. She wasn't picturing him as the table service type. He seemed a little more animated than the average waitperson. She turned to her companion though. "Annika? Do you want something?"
"Perhaps something small. I find I'm not very hungry."
Kathryn reached across the table. "Two soups," she said to Tom, while caressing Annika's left hand, the one with the unusual jewelry. Annika's fingers shifted under her touch. She lowered her voice a little, adding a burr to it. "And some of the spiced bread with oil."
"All right." Tom smiled widely. "I'll be right back."
"Thank you, Tom," Kathryn said to him, though her eyes gaze never left Annika's.
Annika slid her hand from Kathryn's as Tom walked away. "Thank you." She seemed to collect herself a bit. "I would have had no idea what to order."
"You do seem a little unsure of things out here. And yet you're quite in command at the power facility."
"I am more comfortable working," Annika replied. "Socializing is... it makes me uneasy."
"Well, stick with me, and I'll show you how to have fun."
"Will this fun explain the difference between 'being nice' and 'flirting'?" Annika asked.
"Hmm? Oh." Kathryn admitted, "I told you I'd explain that, didn't I? I forgot."
"You are a very intelligent woman, Kathryn Janeway. I doubt you forget anything."
Kathryn was surprised. She smiled. "Or you." She lifted her ale in a toast motion.
"I possess an eidetic memory," Annika replied, sounding rote. Then she frowned. "That is why these lapses are so disconcerting."
"Lapses?"
"I am certain I have forgotten things - important things - but I do not know what they might be."
Kathryn reached across the table and squeezed Annika's hand lightly. She caught Annika's gaze when the younger woman looked up from the contact.
"Kathryn?"
They were silent for several beats. Kathryn slowly smiled. The emotional connection grew in the silence. Gradually the corners of both women's mouths drew up.
"Here you are, ladies. Enjoy." Tom arrived with their soup bowls and bread with a shallow dish of oil for dipping the bread. Annika passed her spoon when Kathryn requested it.
"That's being nice," Kathryn said. "Thank you."
To Annika's puzzlement, Kathryn put the spoon down and picked up a piece of the bread between her fingers, soaking it in the oil. Annika watched the fingers rise, a piece of bread pinched between them. Just beyond she found Kathryn's eyes, glittering as she smiled. "Here," Kathryn said.
Annika had no silverware. Kathryn brought the bread to Annika's lips. Oil transferred from the bread to her lips, and Annika licked it curiously.
"Go ahead," Kathryn said, never taking her gaze away from Annika's.
Opening her mouth, Annika felt and tasted the oil-soaked bread as it passed over her lips and touched her tongue. Then she closed her mouth, lips holding Kathryn's fingers. With her tongue, Annika licked the other woman's fingers, aware as she did so of Kathryn shaking. As Kathryn withdrew her fingers, Annika pushed the food to her back molars with her tongue, chewed and swallowed.
"That," Kathryn said, taking a sudden deep breath which drew Annika's gaze briefly to her chest. "Was flirting."
She returned Annika's spoon to her and they ate their soup in silence.
"Kathryn?"
Annika looked up to see Employee 1389 - Jaffen - approaching. She felt her back stiffen. She did not wish to converse with him.
Kathryn turned in her seat and greeted him. "Jaffen? Hello."
"Sorry I missed you in the crowd after work. Nice bar here." He sat down at another chair around the small table.
"We are still dining," Annika stated.
Kathryn's hand over hers on her knee made her instantly quiet. "Jaffen, I may have been misleading you earlier. I'm not interested."
"Not even in friendship?"
Kathryn paused. She shrugged. "As long as there's an understanding."
"Loud and clear." He mock saluted her. "So what are you drinking?"
"Tarkalian ales. But we're almost finished here. I hope you don't mind."
Jaffen smiled as Tom approached. "Well, I'm not a fan of the Tarkalian myself." He told Tom. "I think these ladies would like to leave. I'll have a Jardin beer."
Tom looked at Annika. "Two soups and two ales is 17 credits."
Kathryn started to reach for the money. Annika stood and retrieved hers first, handing over 20 credits. "Keep the change," she informed him, reaching for the back of Kathryn's chair.
"Annika?" Kathryn prodded as the two women reached the street.
"I wish to continue flirting - in private," Clearly a fast learner, Annika finished the last word in a low voice, her breath brushing across Kathryn's ear, warm and inviting.
Kathryn smiled, pleased at the evidence that her companion's interests aligned so nicely with her own. "My quarters are this way."
Annika tingled everywhere her body touched Kathryn's. Walking along the street to Kathryn's apartment building her hand tingled - the one with the unusual jewelry - as Kathryn's fingers wrapped around it. Her cheek tingled where Kathryn's lips had touched it as they paused waiting for a pedestrian signal to cross the street.
Information bombarded her brain as Kathryn stripped off her clothes, revealing a wiry, powerfully compact body. Then as Kathryn removed Annika's clothes, her warm hands made Annika tingle all over.
Copulation. Mating. Species: human. Female.
Annika lay down on the cool sheets with Kathryn. Writhing under Kathryn's touch, she moaned and gasped with pleasure. Her body hot, her center felt molten as Kathryn stroked her within and without.
Kathryn cupped her face as Annika caught her breath. Their bodies aligned, Kathryn's knee continued slowly to rub against Annika's throbbing center. But it was the kisses, their lips meeting repeatedly, which told Annika what she wanted to do next as she tasted a piquant flavor - her flavor - on Kathryn's tongue.
Licking salts from sweaty skin, Annika reoriented their bodies, lifting Kathryn, to her gasping delight, over her and spreading her legs to explore the woman's warm wet center with her own tongue. Cunnilingus, she thought.
The term was clinical, and Annika wondered how she knew it. But the emotions cascading through her as Kathryn dipped her head and pressed her tongue and fingers to Annika's center were enough to drive all further thought of questions from her mind.
Even as she delved her tongue into the opening of Kathryn's sex, she felt Kathryn wrapping her arms around her thighs and forcefully licking her intimate flesh. "Kathryn!" she gasped. She rocked on the emotional surge from the experience, pulling her head back and watching her own fingers spreading and thrusting. She delighted in the fluid which coated her fingers. She licked at the opening again.
Her own lower body surged and convulsed. Kathryn's tongue again claimed the fluids leaking freely.
They both uncovered a throbbing clitoris and seized upon it, each woman crying out her pleasure around the tender nodule.
The sounds Kathryn made guided Annika's touch almost instinctively. Stroking Kathryn's back and finally seizing her buttocks, Annika pulled the clit between taut lips and pushed it this way and that with the tip of her tongue.
Kathryn's cries of pleasure increased. Her hips bucked and her body arched and quivered in Annika's hands. "Annikaaa!"
Annika's face was bathed in sweet fluid. Her own orgasm swept her as Kathryn closed her lips around Annika's swollen and tender nodule and the delicate touch of teeth rasped against the sensitive nerves. "Omegaaaaa!" Annika felt the sound rip from her throat.
The women lay together in the afterglow, arms hooked around thighs, gently stroking skin and breathing heavily.
Annika inhaled the air sweet with sex. She nuzzled against the side of Kathryn's knee by her face. It struck her that this experience was unique and she wished to savor it.
Kathryn's face, though out of sight to Annika at the moment, pressed into Annika's hip and she felt a light kiss of lips against her skin. "Annika?" Kathryn's voice was barely a whisper, and Annika sensed a fear of some sort behind the coming question.
"Yes, Kathryn?" She injected the calm peacefulness she felt at the moment into every syllable.
Kathryn sighed. "Will you stay?"
Annika nudged Kathryn, encouraging the lithe body to reorient until she could meet her gaze. Looking deeply into turbulent blue-gray eyes, she cupped Kathryn's cheek and kissed her lips softly. Then she answered, "Yes, Kathryn."
Kathryn fit her curves against Annika's and they pulled up the sheet together.
A man named Tuvok (Employee 8583) attacked Annika at the power facility the next day. Kathryn remembered how he had approached her the previous day suggesting some sort of connection. Kathryn held Annika in the safety of her arms as Tuvok was dragged away by Security to the medical facility. He was raving about people not being who they were supposed to be, and that none of them belonged there.
When their inoculations came up, Annika indicated she suffered a headache following the administration of the drug. Her vision had become disoriented and color skewed - green. She returned to the power facilities computer operations office and attempted to determine if the employee Tuvok's condition had been deemed contagious. Finding out it was not, she returned to Kathryn, who had gone to dinner with Jaffen in her stead.
"So, what did you find out?" Kathryn asked as they snuggled together in bed that night.
"The employee's condition was Dysphoria Syndrome, a non-contagious condition. However, that is not all I found in the files."
"Oh. What else?"
"Tuvok was accessing other employee files... 134 of them. Including yours... and mine."
"Why?"
"I do not know."
"We will look into it tomorrow." Kathryn kissed her chin as she snuggled beneath Annika's head. Annika winced. Kathryn noticed. "How about a massage for your headache?"
Annika rolled over as Kathryn repositioned herself nude across Annika's thighs. Working her fingers into the broad muscles from neck to buttocks, Kathryn lovingly eased Annika's pain.
"Thank you, Kathryn."
"Sweet dreams, Annika." Kathryn brushed aside the fine blond hair and kissed the jewelry under Seven's right ear along her jaw.
Kathryn was approached by a new employee the next day. He called himself Chakotay and, other than a disturbing staring, he left her alone after their initial exchange.
Kathryn was almost certain she was in love with Annika. The young woman was familiar and yet unknown to Kathryn at the same time. She enjoyed everything they discussed, even when they disagreed. They talked easily of their interests. After Kathryn mentioned over lunch that she liked stargazing, Annika took her that night to the top of her apartment building where she had assembled a hand-made telescope.
Kathryn marveled at the technological skill it took to build such a thing from essentially discarded trash. Annika rattled off astronomical data of surprising detail as they gazed together into the Quorran night sky.
But when she asked Annika where she'd studied, or for that matter, when Kathryn questioned herself about seemingly innate, but advanced, knowledge, both women drew blanks.
Following their inoculations, Annika's headache returned with a vengeance. Kathryn finally convinced her to ask the doctors for an analgesic. Annika left promptly at the close of her shift, agreeing to meet Kathryn back at her apartment. Kathryn pressed her key into her hand. "I'll see you there."
Kathryn looked into her beverage, ruminating. "I hope the doctors can do something for her headaches." She sat with Jaffen in the community bar.
"Maybe then you can stop worrying about her."
Sighing, Kathryn shook her head. "I'll never stop worrying about her. I think I'm in love with her."
"You're serious."
"Yes." Kathryn patted Jaffen's arm, standing. "I'm sorry if that hurts you, but... You're a good friend, Jaffen. But... Annika's more."
"Well," he said. "I hope for your sake, she's well soon."
"Thank you."
"Can I still walk you home?"
"I'd like that. I gave Annika my key to let herself in."
"So soon? You must care for her a great deal," Jaffen said.
"I do."
She shook her head. "We've been at her place, or mine, every night since our first date."
"Well, well..." Jaffen chuckled. "Too bad you saw her first."
She slapped his shoulder. "My girl."
He shrugged. "She always seemed a little stiff to me."
"She was jealous of you."
"Really?" He preened. She punched his arm again.
"Yes, really. I set that record straight immediately."
They walked the streets toward their apartment building, the conversation focused on the events of the past couple of days. No one had heard anything more about the man who had attacked Annika or any additional information concerning the young woman who had disappeared, B'Elanna Torres. The distance was covered quickly and together they entered the elevator.
Kathryn said, "We'll see you on the commuter tomorrow." She patted his arm. Standing now in the hallway between their apartments, she finished, "Good night, Jaffen."
Entering her apartment, Kathryn started for the ensuite when she was distracted by motion in the corner of her room. "Annika?" she called, turning.
A man crouched in the corner of the room, holding a phaser-pulse weapon.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"A friend."
"I don't know you. How did you get into my apartment? Where's Annika?" She glared at him. If he had done something to Annika... "Wait... You're the new employee at the power facility."
"Chakotay. That's right."
"Well, Chakotay, you can just let yourself right back out."
"Kathryn, listen to me. We have to get off this planet. Voyager's waiting for us, for you. The crew needs you."
"What crew? What Voyager? What are you talking about?"
"Your crew, your ship. You were brought here against your will and somehow they suppressed your memory. You are Captain Kathryn Janeway of the United Federation of Planet's starship Voyager."
"You're holding a weapon on me," she said. "Why should I trust you?" But her posture relaxed visibly.
He put the weapon down and started to his feet. "Good. We can contact Voyager using the triaxilating frequency..." Kathryn stepped back. When he stepped forward, she grabbed his leading arm, punched her fist into his solar plexus and dropped him back to the ground. She ran to the corridor yelling for Security.
In the corridor, Chakotay tried to bring her down. Hands grabbed her. She started to scream again. An arm tightened around her chest and her mouth was covered with a fist. She couldn't get her hands free but she was far from helpless in the fight.
She opened her mouth, caught the edge of her attacker's hand in her teeth and bit down.
The pain reaction gained her some room. She widened it with elbow thrusts. She screamed. She kicked. She finally turned and landed a knee to his groin. He dropped like a stone.
Breathing heavily, she looked up at the sound of feet running toward her.
Jaffen had heard the commotion next door. Annika rushed into the hallway with Quorran Security. As Chakotay was dragged away yelling, Kathryn gratefully enfolded herself in Annika's arms.
"Take care of her, Annika," Jaffen said.
"I will." She kissed Kathryn's forehead. "Now, Kathryn, let's go sleep."
Annika guided Kathryn from the doorway to the apartment bedroom. She felt safer although her mind swirled with everything the mystery man had said. "He said he knew me," Kathryn confessed to Annika as the women lay down in bed together, attempting to sleep. "Like the other employee in the power facility knew you."
"He was obviously charming you to rob you or for some other nefarious purpose," Annika suggested.
Kathryn huddled closer to Annika as they crawled onto the bed together. "I love you, Annika."
"I love you, too, Kathryn."
Kathryn snuggled with Annika until the younger woman's breathing indicated she had finally fallen to sleep. Annika continued to struggle with pain as she slept, evident in her twitching despite another dose of analgesic. Not wanting her own confused thoughts to bother her already troubled partner's sleep, Kathryn left the bed and pulling on a robe, walked into her living room.
Walking to the replicator she requested a hot drink. She lifted the mug to her lips and mulled over all the information of the last several days. It seemed absurd to her that somehow her mysterious visitor, the employee Tuvok's illness, B'Elanna Torres being missing, and inexplicably, her partner's devastating headaches were all connected. But Annika told her that all of them had come to Quorra on the same day.
But she didn't remember a moment of it. Rubbing her temple, she went to a communication console. Chakotay had given her the name of a ship "Voyager", available on a triaxilating frequency. She activated the system and programmed the frequency. "Starship Voyager," she began.
The screen crackled to life. "Voyager here. Captain?"
"Let's just stick with Kathryn Janeway," she replied. "There's a man Chakotay down here says he knows me. And he knows what happened to another employee at the power facility."
A woman stepped into the frame. "Yes, Captain."
Kathryn recognized her as she spoke. "You're the woman missing from the plant."
"Yes, Captain, and Chakotay is correct."
"But you remember who you are."
"We're coming to get you, Captain. We're going to get all of Voyager's people off the planet."
Kathryn cut the transmission. The missing woman, B'Elanna Torres, was aboard this Voyager? Kathryn looked toward her bedroom. Annika's lapses in memory? Her own? She reactivated the comm system. "Voyager?"
"Yes, Captain?"
"Can your doctor cure my girlfriend's memory?"
"Your girlfriend?" B'Elanna seemed a little surprised.
"Yes, she suffers terrible headaches, but the doctors here are unable to do anything for her, and they may be linked to this memory loss."
"We're just coming into range. I'll beam her aboard."
Kathryn shook her head. She wasn't willing to risk Annika's safety. "Me first. Show me what you have and I'll decide."
There was a pause. "Ah. Well. All right."
Sparkles filled Kathryn's eyes and she closed them against the disorientation. When her body felt solid again, she opened her eyes to see B'Elanna Torres standing at a console a short distance away, and she herself stood on a low dais. The dark-haired young man next to her beamed widely and enthused, "Welcome back, Captain."
She frowned at the eager voice. "Hello," she replied with reservation. "What's your name?"
He seemed upset by the request but after he glanced at B'Elanna, he replied, "Ensign Harry Kim, ma'am." He saluted her.
Her eyes widened. "Yes, um, well.."
"I'll take you to see the Doctor," B'Elanna said stepping around the console.
Reluctantly Kathryn walked toward the door Torres had indicated. They walked through corridors, devoid of people. If this was a starship where was the crew? The whole thing gave her the willies. Entering a door marked Sickbay, she was brought up short by a form materializing in the middle of the room.
"Please state the nature - " The man interrupted himself. "Captain!" He smiled broadly.
"So they say," she replied dryly. "Who are you?"
"The Doctor. Captain, if you'll step over here..."
"Why?"
"I'd like to be sure of my diagnosis."
"There's nothing wrong with me. Except you and I don't agree who I am." She gestured between the Doctor and B'Elanna Torres. "My girlfriend has physical problems but the medical authority on Quorra hasn't been able to cure it."
"Girlfriend?" The Doctor sounded just as baffled as B'Elanna had been earlier.
"Her name's Annika," Kathryn said with exasperation. "I wasn't just going to beam her up here into God knows what before I checked you people out. Now if you can't help me, I'd like to go home now."
B'Elanna reached for her arm. Kathryn backed up. "Captain, Quorra is not your home. Your home is Earth, in the Alpha Quadrant. You are the captain of this vessel. We're all trying to get home. You're our leader."
Kathryn needed to think. She rubbed her temple. She jumped as the Doctor came near her with a device - some part of her provided the name 'tricorder'. "What are you doing?" she demanded.
"Just gathering some information, Captain."
"Well, stop it. I'm leaving."
B'Elanna and the Doctor visibly consulted in silence while Kathryn visibly grew more agitated. Finally the Doctor nodded. "My apologies, Kathryn Janeway."
"All right, Kathryn, I'll send you back to Quorra."
B'Elanna accompanied her in silence back to the transporter room. When she stood on the dais again, B'Elanna said, "Think about it?"
"I'll contact you."
B'Elanna handed her a device. "Take this. That way our communications won't be monitored by the Quorran authorities."
Kathryn stared at the arrowhead-shaped device, her mind filling with disjointed images. Confused, she closed her fist over the device. "Fine."
B'Elanna ordered, "Energize."
Following transport, Kathryn was once again in her quarters on Quorra. She looked around and her gaze intersected Annika's as the taller woman leaned against the bedroom door.
"Kathryn? Where did you go?"
"We'll talk in the morning. Let's go back to sleep."
"Kathryn?"
"I don't know, Annika." She looked at the communication device in her hand, then placed it on a nearby table. "I don't know yet."
The security officer Annika had tipped off about the commonalities in the personnel files uncovered, with Annika's assistance, anomalies at the medical facility. They needed to get in there again to look around.
Jaffen, Kathryn, Annika, and the security officer sat around a table at the bar, with Tom standing nearby with his drink tray.
"I can't go in. I've been pulled off the case."
"You will take me in," Annika said. "I am suffering from Dysphoria Syndrome."
"Annika!" Kathryn was concerned.
"We must find out the truth. I know you agree with this."
"But - " Kathryn began. "I can't ask you - "
"You are not asking, Kathryn." Annika grasped her hand.
"Annika," Kathryn urged. "Be careful."
"I will, Kathryn." Annika cupped Kathryn's hand to her lips and kissed the palm. Then she got up from the table and went with the security officer to enter the medical facility.
Kathryn and Jaffen headed for the power facility to disable the shielding blocking off-planet sensors as Voyager had requested. She looked over her shoulder once to see Annika disappear into the darkness. Be careful, my love.
Kathryn walked around her quarters on Voyager, stunned. So it had all been true. She and the rest of Voyager's crew had been seized and brainwashed, and put to work in the Quorran facility for weeks. The Doctor indicated her engram resequencing would take a few appointments. In the meantime, she was told to familiarize herself with the things in her quarters and to stay there.
Sitting down and looking at the stars passing outside the window, Kathryn wished Annika was there, wanting the young woman's body to curl into. She sighed. Not Annika, Seven. Seven of Nine. Kathryn had had an affair with her Astrometrics officer.
The young woman also had been ordered to limit her duties while treatments were underway. Kathryn leaned on the back of her couch and gazed at the stars, recalling the bright blue of Ann - Seven's eyes. Damn it, she thought, curling her fist on the cushion. Everything was so vivid. Much more so than the slow-returning memories of her life before Quorra.
The door chimed to her quarters. She frowned and turned. She hoped it wasn't Chakotay. She'd beaten him up pretty soundly when he had been in her Quorran apartment. She wasn't sure how to apologize for that yet. "Come."
Annika walked in. She was dressed very differently from the last time Kathryn had seen her, as they were separated when Voyager beamed them all up. She stood from her chair and smiled. "Annika!" She frowned at the same time the other woman did. She apologized, "I'm sorry. Seven."
"Captain, I..." Seven's voice trailed off. She squared her shoulders and tucked her hands behind her back, looking down at the floor.
Kathryn recognized the young woman's struggle. "It's... all right. We... weren't..." She wanted to release the young woman, obviously uncomfortable, from their intimate relationship. But she couldn't bring herself to say the words. "Do you...? Could we...?" she tried.
"The memories remain from Quorra, Ka - Captain."
"I know."
Seven looked up, her expression devastated. Kathryn couldn't stand it any more. She reached out. Seven stepped into the embrace, returning it, their bodies clinging to one another, comforting and comforted by the contact.
After sharing an equally relieved kiss, Seven whispered against Kathryn's hair her deepest fear. "What would have happened if you were from Voyager... and I was not?"
Kathryn kissed her throat. "I'd have asked you to come with us."
"And if I had wished to stay on Quorra?"
Kathryn stepped back. "Do you?" She was surprised.
"The Doctor informs me that had I not returned to Voyager, my Borg systems would have continued their breakdown. The Quorran medical staff's constant injections were suppressing my nanoprobes. Another six days and I would have died."
Kathryn gasped and hugged Seven again.
Seven disengaged this time. "Unlike Quorra, we are not equals on this ship," she observed.
Kathryn watched Seven sit down, an unusual circumstance, and recognized the gravity of what she was about to say as the young woman rubbed at the thigh of her biosuit.
"Yes, protocols are clear," Kathryn responded, rubbing the back of her neck as she settled on the couch next to Seven. Taking the woman's left hand, tracing the Borg filaments she had mistaken for jewelry, she laced her fingers with Seven's. She recalled every touch of this woman on her body - and the memories from conversations on Quorra blended with the memories before that.
Giving some hint of her thoughts, she exhaled, "Annika." She paused, waiting for the blond to lift her head and meet her gaze. "Do you want to end this relationship? What we have? What we've shared?"
A lump formed in her throat as she watched Seven's eyes, waiting.
Seven too fought a lump in her throat. In silence, eyes beginning to water, she shook her head.
"I don't either." Kathryn cupped Seven's cheek, thumb tracing the full bottom lip. "Annika, nothing with you has ever been easy. Not your deassimilation from the Borg. Not your life here aboard Voyager. But." Kathryn paused. "I'd like to try to continue our relationship. We found something special on Quorra. I don't want to lose it."
Seven exhaled. "I... did not wish to lose our closeness either."
Kathryn shared another kiss with Seven. "For appearances, perhaps for a while, you and I should probably keep separate quarters."
Seven kissed her, and Kathryn let her arousal govern her next words. As they broke apart she asked huskily, "Do you need to regenerate tonight?" She reveled in Seven's scent surrounding her and nuzzled the long column of her throat.
"I do not," Seven answered.
Moving out of her lover's embrace, Kathryn stood and took Seven's hand. "Good."
She led them both to her bed. Bodies familiar, Kathryn Janeway and Seven of Nine made love deep into the night as Voyager headed once again for the Alpha Quadrant, all aboard her safe and sound.
THE END