A/N: I needed a break from Living Daylights bc it gets harder to write the series. (That will teach me for doing a time travel story!) Anywho, I'm calling this a mashable story since I took parts of the episode from "Human Error" and "Endgame" and mashed them together until they made more sense than the original ending. Then added a happy ending. (P.S. I don't write code, so please suspend your disbelief there. You'll understand when you get to it.)

Equal Opportunity
Chapter One: Unattainable

U.S.S. Voyager somewhere in the Delta Quadrant
Stardate: circa 54672.7

Voyager's Mess Hall was festooned with streamers and food and chatting crewmembers. B'Elanna Torres sat as a queen in the center of a sofa and she held up a square white cloth with a familiar embroidery and laughed. "Starfleet diapers."

"Standard issue," Harry Kim added about his baby shower gift.

"It will certainly come in handy."

Lt. Tom Paris, her husband, handed her another gift to open. Smiling, Captain Kathryn Janeway glanced up to see a curious look on the face of her Borg crewmember. She nonchalantly passed the refreshment table and took two flutes of synthehol and meandered toward Seven of Nine, who loitered uncomfortably on the periphery of the party.

"Seven," the Captain whispered, offering a glass.

Seven accepted it with a faint smile. "Thank you."

Seven held the glass stiffly as she continued to watch the happy couple open as they commented on gifts for their unborn child. The Captain sipped her wine, her eyes fixed on the beautiful face unmarred by Borg implants.

Seven felt the burn of the gaze and looked at the Captain for a moment before looking away. She swallowed hard.

"Now that you've had all of your Borg implants removed, have you considered having your own family one day?"

Seven whipped her gaze around. She watched as the backs of the Captain's fingers trailed her brow that had once been marked by the occipital implant over her left eye. "A child, perhaps," the Captain whispered. "And a…partner."

Seven leaned into the touch, but it was too late. The Captain dropped her hand, but she remained fixated on the Borg's reaction.

"A partner? Along the Ferengi line of thinking?"

The Captain smiled. Seven marked the crinkle lines around the joyful eyes and the lips that tugged up to reveal pearly teeth. It made her entire face light up. Seven realized she liked it.

"No. Heavens, no," the Captain said lightly. "I mean partner as in…" Then Janeway looked up, holding Seven with her piercing blue eyes. Then in a whisper that explained it all: "Lover."

"Lover," Seven repeated, as if tasting the word for the first time.

"You have thought about it, right?" she said after taking another sip of wine.

Seven felt herself stiffen. She was barely able to manage the day-to-day stress of platonic relationships. To embark on a sexual relationship with anyone would be like trying to light a candle in space. Again, she felt the prickle of the Captain's scrutiny and looked away just to be able to breath. "I have considered a relationship," Seven admitted haltingly.

"Oh? Is there a lucky person on board I should congratulate?"

Seven pursed her full lips slightly and squared her shoulders before looking back. "Self-congratulations are in order then."

Janeway's smile faded somewhat. "I don't think I understand, Seven."

"You, Captain," she said. "I want you."

Seven counted. It took Captain Janeway's face a mere two-point-six nanoseconds to blank. Then it took another point-three nanoseconds to fade to a mixture of alarm and regret. "Seven," she said gently. "I hope I haven't encouraged you by accident."

"You are my mentor and the archetype of intelligence and grace," she said. "You have been yourself. That is what I require."

The Captain strangled a small sound in her throat that Seven took to mean distress. "I'm sorry, Seven," she said. "I'm deeply flattered, but I am cannot bridge the gap between us."

"The gap?"

"You've said it yourself. I am your mentor. Your Captain. Your commanding officer."

"But I am not a member of Starfleet," Seven said, alarm growing in her face.

"No," she said. "But I still hold power over you. It would be a profound abuse of my oath as an officer to enter into a relationship with a member of my crew."

"Tell me you do not feel the same way," Seven said, with a lift of the chin.

Captain Janeway looked around before she spoke. Her features were soft with compassion. "No," she whispered. "I do not feel the same way."

"Computer, halt holodeck simulation."

The Captain was stopped mid-sentence, just as she was about to add more useless data to the rationale. Her lips were pulled together as in a kiss and her eyes were focused on Seven's lips.

Seven stepped around the holographic Captain. She glanced down to find the Captain's hand reaching out for her own. She touched her hand. It was a curious sensation. The feel was neither alive nor inanimate, but something in between. She had designed this holodeck program to assist in her further assimilation into the human culture with careful attention to the Janeway character, whom she'd asked the computer to model after the Captain's own journals.

"So this is rejection that I feel," Seven whispered to the holographic facsimile of her desires. "It is most painful."

She rounded the holographic body and stopped once again in front. She ran her fingertips over the auburn locks that flowed down in a large wave over her right ear. A finger traced the delicate eyebrow, down the chiseled cheek and along the jaw line to the faint dimple on her chin. Seven hooked her finger under the Captain's chin, kissing the holographic Captain lightly on the lips.

She felt an explosion of moisture between her legs and registered the acceleration of her heart rate. Seven leaned in and kissed the lips of the holographic Captain again. She palmed the Captain's cheek. She made sure to remember every detail, the small, round scar at the corner of Kathryn's eyebrow, the nearly purple starbursts of her irises, the pucker of her lips. It wasn't real but it evidently would be as close as she would get to holding the real woman.

A melancholy like the Borg had never known threatened to knock her off her feet and reached for something to steady herself. The shoulder under her hand felt real through the fabric of the holo-Janeway's uniform and she rubbed her thumb along the holo. "Goodbye, my Captain," she whispered before she closed her eyes and pressed her lips against the replica's.

Then Seven straightened, her hand still cupping Kathryn's cheek. "Computer, delete the Captain Janeway character in the Seven Lambda Seven program."

The Captain disintegrated away from her touch.

"Character deleted."

The Borg implants rematerialized on her face simultaneously and Seven was left standing, fluid in a halted timeflow. She continued to watch the spot where the Captain had stood, inhaling deeply. The distress manifesting into stabbing pains in her chest.

She pressed the heel of her hands to her chest and tried to rub it away. "My solution was faulty," she said in a monotone.

She tried to turn but stumbled instead, finding a holographic perch on the arm of the sofa where the unreal B'Elanna Torres held up another baby present, this one a mobile given to her by the Doctor.

The stabbing pain began to radiate to her back and then her head. "This is not real," she told herself.

But the ache was heedless of her plea.

"I require a substitute," she said to the frozen holograms that remained. She finally tore her eyes away from where the digital Janeway had stood to look around the holographic Mess Hall. Seven of Nine studied each of the female crewmembers, discarding each out of hand. Some already operated within a relational parameter, such as Lt. Torres. Some appeared to prefer exclusive heterosexual partnerships. She considered the possibility that Kathryn Janeway fell into this category as she had been engaged to marry at least two other males. The pain intensified and desperately, Seven groped for a something to relieve the vacuum that Kathryn left.

She stepped around one of the women and nearly staggered into the frozen and isomorphic projection of Commander Chakotay. She studied him head to toe. Even as Seven directed her mind from the loss, her pain subsided.

On the sexual scale, Chakotay was overwhelmingly masculine. His features were not altogether unappealingly and Seven had noted that other women found him attractive. She had never considered their relationship anything other than professional. Even now, she felt none of the electrostatic charges on the surfaces of her body as she had with the Captain. Yet, he was attainable, unlike Kathryn Janeway, she thought.

Her breathing became labored again as she thought of never having the one person she desired. Could she live with that? There is a way. She programmed several of her Borg nanoprobes, using them to target her pleasure centers.

But instead of repairing or assimilating, the Borg nanoprobes that would operate in her system for the rest of her life could also perform other functions. "Pavlov," she said of the Terran doctor who had discovered "conditioned response" to induced to stimuli.

She entered the functions of the 500 nanoprobes that she had released into her blood stream. It was a simple but elegant program: "private function

loadPleasure(event:Chakotay):stimulate{
var input:Kiss = new Object();
var op:HormoneOperation = :

var input:Caress = new Object();
var op:HormoneOperation = :

var input:Embrace = new Object();
var op:HormoneOperation = : var op:HormoneOperation = =
= input;
(); }

Seven considered the sparse words that would direct her nanoprobes to produce the desired physical effects. "In time, it will become real," she assured herself.

Then she programmed more nanoprobes. Their stimulus was a friendly Janeway and their output was pain, specifically the dilation of the blood vessels in her head and the induction of muscle tension in the neck and head all to induce a blinding headache. If the stimulus continued, the nanoprobes were directed to induce nausea and finally vomiting.

"I will train myself to live without you, Kathryn," she whispered.

She stepped in front of holo-Chakotay and slipped her hands behind her back. "Computer, resume program."

Immediately, Chakotay came to life, blinking as he nearly careened into Seven of Nine. "Seven," he said.

Seven allowed herself a faint smile, even as she felt the nanoprobes performing their duty to sufficiently stimulate her on his behalf. "Commander."

"We were just about to toast the happy couple, would you like to do the honors?"

She nodded once and turned to face the soon-to-be new parents, raising the flute to them. "My pleasure."