The thrum and hiss as the Delta Flyer lands in the shuttle bay should be agreeable to Seven, but they trigger only a rush of apprehension, like acid in her gut.
The sensation is irrational. She is home. Safe for now. In any reasonable person this would provoke feelings of pleasure, of satisfaction.
Her body evidently does not consider her a reasonable person.
Ensign Paris is rejoicing somewhat loudly about their return, anticipating his reunion with Lieutenant Torres. No doubt he found it difficult to adapt to her absence during these last few weeks. It is doubtful that anyone had similar feelings about Seven's absence.
But they came for her. That is sufficient. It should be sufficient.
The door opens, and Ensign Paris departs immediately, throwing her a cursory grin as he does. The Captain and Lieutenant Tuvok also head to the hatch, the Captain pausing a second to smile at her before leaving
"Seven?" It's the Doctor. She'd almost forgotten him. "Come on."
He offers her a hand up, but she ignores it, rising unaided to her feet. The world blurs like a sensor-sweep incorrectly focused.
She blinks rapidly and her surroundings return to their usual levels of clarity.
Vaguely aware of the Doctor at her side, she stumbles out of the flyer. The bay is familiar and airy, but too bright after days upon days of shadows and green flashes. The Doctor nudges her elbow, gesturing towards the door, and she follows his direction.
Hiss-click. The doors open and there are people, so many people. The flyer crew yes, but also Commander Chakotay, Neelix, Ensign Kim, even Lieutenant Torres. They all turn to her, but their faces are a fog of colour. The air is so hot. The lights too bright.
Someone says something, steps forward, but it's too late. Seven passes out.
"Doctor, what's wrong with her?"
"Did the Borg do something?"
"Please, give her some space." A hand on her shoulder, and a familiar, quiet, beep-beep-beep. "She's coming to."
Seven opens her eyes to a mass of grey above, and leaning into it, the Doctor's familiar face. He gives her a small smile. "Seven? How are you feeling?"
The others are still there. They hover on the edge of her vision. Waiting to reprimand her for her foolishness? Her betrayal? She bolts upright, but the effort sends a red spike through her head and stomach, and she can't keep from gasping.
"No more of that." The Doctor scolds, but gently.
"Is she alright?" That is from the Captain. Seven tries to focus on her, to respond, but remaining conscious seems to require all her attention. The air feels thin.
The Doctor doesn't reply at first. He puts an arm under Seven's shoulders, lifting her to her feet and holding on when it becomes clear that her legs are useless at present. Then, to the others: "She will be. However, she's been through quite an ordeal so I'd like to request no visitors to Sickbay for the next forty-eight hours. She needs to rest."
The captain replies, but the words are a blur of sound. Then Lieutenant Torres is inputting something into a panel, and Seven and the Doctor are beamed away.
When they materialize in sickbay, the world blinks out again for Seven. It could only have been for a few seconds, but when she comes to a second time, the Doctor has scooped her up and is carrying her across the bay. She opens her mouth to protest, but even that small gesture makes her vision lurch and twist green, and before she can catch her breath, the Doctor has put her down on a biobed. It's in the small bay, furthest from the door.
Planting her hands on the mattress, she takes a deep breath and swings her legs back over, trying to disregard the way her vision narrows to a thin line. The Doctor doesn't protest but puts a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Take a moment," he says, squeezing. "Just breathe."
Such a strange thing to say. As if she wouldn't be breathing.
Apparently satisfied that she won't be getting up right now—an assumption she longs to correct him of, but fears herself incapable of doing so at present—the Doctor departs, vanishing into the staff area behind his office. Seven stares blankly at the wall. She always seems to end up back here.
Something thuds gently onto her shoulders and she flinches. The Doctor is back already and has wrapped a blanket around her. "Here, hold this," he says softly. "You're shivering."
She is. She hadn't noticed before. Gripping the blanket, she tries to think of a retort, but her mind is inadequate to the task.
The Doctor steps in front of her, one hand tilting her head up. She meets his gaze, trying to summon pride or strength or anything that might stop him looking at her with something horribly close to pity, but she's empty. No fuel left for petty emotions.
A drone again after all. A mindless automaton.
"Hmm." The Doctor's hum breaks her out of her grey misery. He moves his hand to her forehead briefly, then to the side of her neck. Taking her temperature, her pulse.
"Why are you doing that?" The words escape her out of habit, a vague instinct to question, independent of any real curiosity. "You have more sophisticated means of taking readings."
He smiles slightly. "True. But my instruments tend to make you a little tense. An effect I'd rather avoid right now."
I am not tense. But the thought too, lacks emotion. "Now?"
"You're in shock, Seven. Psychologically at least."
She frowns. "No." A longer sentence feels needed, but the words are far away from her, and her vocal subprocessor seems incapable of rendering them into speech at a distance.
He doesn't argue with her. Instead he turns to a nearby trolley—when did he bring that over?—and picks up a hypospray. Her eyes follow it as it seems to float across the dim, oddly lurching room . . .
"Seven?" The Doctor is suddenly in front of her again, his hands on her shoulders. "Are you alright?"
She stares at him, swallowing rapidly.
"Of course not." And he snatches a bowl from a nearby tray.
After that unpleasantness, she's exhausted, and wants nothing more than to find a dark corner where she can sit and not think. But the Doctor appears to have other ideas. After injecting her with a couple of hyposprays—she doesn't know what's in them, and is too tired to ask—he leaves again briefly, and returns with a set of scrubs. He puts a hand under her elbow, tugs. "Come on."
Where? She eases her feet to the floor and stands, pleasantly surprised when her legs take her weight. But the Doctor guides her across sickbay with a hand on her arm anyway.
Oh. The bathroom. The Doctor taps the controls at the side and the door slides open.
"Here." He presses the scrubs into her arms. "Take a sonic shower. You have ten minutes and not a second longer." At her frown, he adds more gently, "It'll do you good to wash the remnants of the cube off."
Nonsense. Her mind protests. Molecular remnants of the poly-alloy that—but she shuts it down. Nods.
He's frowning at her now. "Ten minutes. Don't lock the door."
She drifts inside, the door hiss-clicking behind her.
Logically there's no merit in what the Doctor said. There are no visible remnants of the cube on her, save for the neural processing adjunct, which presumably will have to be surgically removed at some point. And any molecular residue will not be removed by a simple sonic shower.
Yet there is something satisfying about the thrum of the sonic pulses against her skin. Somehow she feels lighter than she has in weeks, which is ridiculous. She may have lost some body mass while on the cube, but certainly she has lost none in the last few minutes.
Nevertheless, her skull feels almost buoyant, as if it might float away. She sinks down to sit on the floor, holding her head somewhat gingerly.
Thud thud thud. She jumps, anxiety spiking through her veins. Phasers-drones-attack
"Seven?" No, it's only the Doctor. "Are you alright in there? Time's up." His voice is gentle, but there's a thrum underneath it, not unlike the sonic pulses.
"Seven?" He prompts again.
"I— just a moment." Grabbing the rail on the back wall, she pulls herself up on legs suddenly weak. Whatever was in the Doctor's hyposprays must have worn off. She leans against the wall, drawing in a deep breath. Then reaches for the scrubs.
She feels oddly vulnerable, padding barefoot across sickbay, half-supported by the Doctor who was not convinced that she could walk unaided. (And his concern is perhaps justified.) But she has grown used to vulnerability lately, as a fragile human amongst thousands of armoured drones. And if she falls here, the Doctor will catch her. She won't be yanked up, silently reprimanded for her weakness by a bruising metal hand. She is pathetic enough to be grateful for that.
When they reach 'her' biobed, he helps her up onto it (it seems a lot higher without her shoes), and she does not protest when he lifts her legs up onto it after her. He raises the head of the biobed and she is secretly glad when he presses her lightly back against it. The room seems to consist of soft eddies of gold and blue, and supported like this, she can watch them with no fear of falling.
But again, the Doctor appears to have something else in mind. Pulling the blanket she discarded earlier up over her, he gives her shoulder a reassuring pat. "Wait here." His face blurs into beige clouds and a wisp of a smile before he retreats to his office, already talking to someone on his communicator.
It's so quiet here. She'd forgotten how quiet it could be on a ship of just a hundred and fifty humanoids. (Her brain tries to chime in with a more exact count, but she dismisses it.) On the cube, the hum of the collective was constantly at the back of her mind. A chorus she was excluded from. A song, the words of which she couldn't quite catch.
And even now, after everything, part of her still wants to hear them. Always will.
But as a piece apart from the whole, the hum had been maddening. And added to the groaning of metal, the clunk of metal feet, to the guilt and the pain and the loss, it had been unbearable.
It is a relief to be somewhere quiet again.
Hiss-click. Sickbay's doors have opened. She leans forward, swaying a little when gravity doesn't seem to keep up. She can't see who it is though; the Doctor's office is in the way.
Likely not a coincidence.
The Doctor is speaking to someone, but she can't make out what he's saying, or the other voice.
Hiss-click. The doors have shut again. The Doctor reappears, carrying a tray.
"Here you go," he says cheerfully as he reaches her, setting the tray down across her knees. "The mess hall had closed for the night, but when I reminded Mr. Neelix who'd missed out, he was only too happy to bring you some leftovers. Don't worry," he adds. "I meant what I said earlier. No visitors. Even if Mr. Neelix is your morale officer."
She smiles slightly. It is good to know that Neelix does not seem to consider her a traitor. But his efforts at cheer are often fatiguing at best, and maddening at worst.
The Doctor taps her leg. "Eat."
She's been trying not to look at the tray on her lap. Under the Doctor's expectant eye, she does so now, and is vaguely relieved to see a bowl of bland, yellow paste, a similarly unspectacular bread roll, and a glass of water. Neelix knows her preferences, but often ignores them.
Still the idea of eating, of assimilating even non-sentient plant matter, seems grotesque, and she can't bring herself to touch any of it.
"Seven." The Doctor squeezes her blanket-covered ankle. "You need to eat something."
She shakes her head, her stomach twisting. "I'm not hungry." She pushes the tray away an inch.
"I didn't ask if you were," he replies with undeniable truth. "But I'm a little concerned that you aren't. The readings I took of you on the Flyer indicate that you're malnourished. Did the Borg not feed you?"
Feed her, like she was a child. "The collective—" A drone grabbing her roughly, injecting a calculated dose of vitamins and calories into her neck. "—they had other things to concern themselves with. As should you."
"You're my patient, Seven," he reminds her. Then, perhaps seeing the cold fear in her face, "and my friend. I want to help you."
"You can't," she says dully. Bluntly.
The Doctor watches her for a moment, his face inscrutable. He taps her ankle once more. "As I'm the doctor here, why don't you let me be the judge of that."
She shuts her eyes.
"Let's start with something small. Can you drink the water? You're very dehydrated, and the fluids I gave you earlier will only go partway to addressing that."
She wants to. But the idea of swallowing anything still feels repulsive, and she shakes her head.
"Why not?" When she doesn't answer, he sighs. "When did you last eat or drink?"
She opens her eyes, stares at the wall ahead. "Before I left Voyager. The collective… they had other ways of ensuring I remain functional."
"Which were?" His voice is neutral.
"They injected me with something. Nutritional matter. Fluids."
"Regularly?"
She looks down at the tray. Her guts lurch. "At first."
"And later? Seven?"
She meets his gaze blankly. "Later, I would not let them."
Poor Seven! Part two is now up. I'd love to hear your feedback, as I'm currently plotting out a couple of other Voyager H/C stories.