In His Place
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch Novels
Copyright: Paramount/Kirsten Beyer
Doctor's Personal Log, Stardate -
I don't know where to start.
Seven and Cambridge. Seven of Nine and Counsellor Cambridge. I don't know what I expected to happen during this mission, but it certainly wasn't this.
Not that I begrudge her a chance at a happy relationship, heaven knows. But was this really the best she could do? A pompous, arrogant, insubordinate quack who insults his patients in the name of therapy, who –
Oh God, who am I trying to fool here, anyway? The man could be Dr. Z's brother, only British. And I wasn't activated yesterday, I know what that means.
It means Cambridge is like me, and that only makes things worse.
Chakotay, now, I could almost understand. What young woman wouldn't be attracted to him, especially if she didn't know about his history with Kathryn Janeway? But Cambridge – blunt, sarcastic, twice her age and not even good-looking. It defies belief to see him standing next to Seven in all her beauty, and it brings back some very painful emotional subroutines which I could have sworn were no longer active.
Oh, the man's a genius, of course. Saved the Paris-Torres marriage, from what I've been told. The senior officers quite depend upon him and his way of reading people. No doubt he developed a deep connection with Seven during all those counselling sessions. If I find out he took advantage of that –
No, of course not. Seven may have been emotionally fragile when she arrived here, thanks to the Caeliar and that voice, but even then she would not have tolerated such a grave misuse of power. I musn't forget that she did request appointments with a different counsellor as soon as the relationship began. She even came to me for contraceptives. Now there's a moment I'd be happy to erase from my memory buffer.
In short, Seven is Seven. The way she's coping with it all – Admiral Janeway's death, her aunt's death, the Borg, her transformation, the voice – is nothing short of awe-inspiring. She can take care of herself. I've taken care of her so often, I tend to forget that, but she can. It is to be hoped that Mr. Cambridge will not fall into the same trap.
Every time I see them together, I catch him in all the roles in which I used to see myself: cracking jokes to make her smile, seeing through that Borg façade of hers to her true emotions, having his ego let down a peg or two by one of her dry comments, debating with her as an intellectual equal … the resemblance is uncanny. But does he really understand her? For all his talent, can he really and truly relate to both the human and mechanical sides of her the way a hologram can?
He's even got my coloring, confound him. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Except, of course, that his isn't falling out.
Could it be a matter of timing, perhaps? Is it only because I was there from the beginning, because I was the one who extracted her Borg implants and gave her her first social lessons? If she had met me for the first time as she is now, would she have chosen me?
But all these questions are, as she would say, irrelevant. Maybe I'm the one who needs counselling. Or maybe just a thorough diagnostic on my program, whichever works.
End log.