Usual Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek Voyager or anything associated with it, Paramount does!
Author's Note: I found these stored away, handwritten in a notebook from when I had just finished re-watching Voyager. They are a few of my favorite scenes from the show between the Captain and members of her crew, written from the character's perspectives. No plagiarism is intended; I just wanted to share my snippets and let you enjoy them if you want to! I'll post whenever I get time to type one up. Thank you, and please review!
A Captain's Heart
From: "The Voyager Conspiracy"
Seven
Seven heard the transporter beam, and without turning, she stated, "Captain." Janeway walked toward the helm and ran abruptly against a forcefield instead. Seven continued defiantly, "You came here hoping to stop me. You will fail."
She breathed deeply. It pierced her somewhere inside to say that to her captain…no, not her captain anymore. The person who betrayed her. She had to remember. She had to hold on to what she had figured out. She had to stop the conspiracy. But how…how could the captain do something that terrible? It didn't make sense, but it had to…it had to be right…
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Janeway settle against a nearby console. "Turn this ship around," the captain said steadily. "That's an order."
Despite her conflicted thoughts, Seven retorted, "Your orders are irrelevant! I'm no longer under your command. You deceived me."
"There is no conspiracy. There is no Maquis rebellion. The Federation isn't planning to invade the Delta Quadrant," the captain insisted firmly.
"I realize that because I have finally uncovered your true objective!" Seven shouted sharply. She didn't want to be arguing. She didn't want to say anything to the older woman, but some unknown force was pushing her troubled thoughts to the tip of her tongue, shooting them at Janeway like phaser fire. Something painful in her chest was clawing to find release.
Janeway blinked in surprise, and Seven felt a measure of satisfaction mixed with grief. "And what is that?" the captain questioned.
Seven replied flatly, "Me."
She turned to face Janeway, and her voice began to rise unbidden in accusation as she presented her new proof, saying, "Stardate 32611. The Federation sendsmy parents to study the Borg Collective. They know my family will be assimilated; that was their intention. Stardate 48317. Voyager is sent to the Delta Quadrant with orders to retrieve me. When they reach Borg space, Captain Janeway negotiates an alliance with the Collective. In exchange for information regarding Species 8472, they agree to give her Seven of Nine. Stardate 51030. Janeway extracts the implants from my body to remove any knowledge I may have about her agreement with the Borg. Stardate 53329. Captain Janeway finalizes plans to use the catapult to deliver Seven of Nine to the Alpha Quadrant, where Starfleet will dissectand analyze the drone to gather tactical data to fight the Borg." At this point, she noticed Janeway struggling to catch her breath. Seven glared and finished, "I won't allow you to complete your mission. If necessary, I will destroy the catapult – and myself." She whirled back around to the flight controls.
Now that she had spent all her tumultuous rage, she began to tremble all over, the loss of emotional energy being almost too much to bear. She wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but instead, she kept her back to the captain and tried not to think about how much the truth might have hurt Janeway. After all, she had conflicting memories buried beneath the oceans of data, memories that told her the captain cared, at least a little. Didn't she?
Besides, Seven didn't want to die. As a drone, death had been irrelevant, but as an individual, life mattered. It seemed like there was no escape. Her mind could find no way out of the tangled loops of others' nets.
Maybe the captain wanted to save her, but could they fight the evils of Starfleet and its bloody agendas?
Seven shook herself internally. She couldn't allow these thoughts to deter her from her goal. That was what her enemies wanted. She couldn't let them stop her.
Kathryn
The captain stood frozen for a moment as she tried to force oxygen into her lungs. Seven was confused, but most of all, she was afraid. She was afraid of being Borg, but she was also afraid of being human. She was afraid of being who she was now and how others might see her. She was afraid of what lay ahead if they used to catapult to go a few more lightyears closer to the unknown.
She had to be strong and pull Seven out of her fear. Quietly, she said, "You're right, Seven. There is a conspiracy here. But I believe it's a conspiracy of one. I've got a theory of my own." Seven, as she had hoped, turned to face her as she continued, "Your modified alcove threw your synaptic patterns into chaos, and your mind can't make sense of all the information. So, you're generating theory after theory in an attempt to bring order to that chaos."
She gazed intently at Seven, feeling the immense gap that was between them and willing the young woman to understand, but Seven rebuffed the assumption. "Your reasoning is flawed," she said. "My alcove is functioning perfectly."
Something twisted deep in the captain's stomach. "What about you?" she countered. "You're not a drone anymore. You can't always predict how Borg technology will affect you. You should be in Sickbay, not behind that forcefield. Let me help you," she pleaded.
She longed to reach out and place a hand on Seven's shoulder. The young woman looked so conflicted, but her fear was still controlling her. "No!" Seven huffed. "I don't believe you."
The dagger went straight to her heart. "Of course you don't," Janeway said sarcastically. "Anything I say gets woven into your paranoid conspiracy."
Seven's chest heaved in and out.
Janeway's pulled her tone back down dramatically as a fresh wave of emotion washed over her. She said quietly, "But you should believe me because I've never lied to you, and I'm not lying to you now. You have to put your doubts aside and trust me."
The captain fought tears as Seven still refused to respond. In a last, straining effort, she began to recount: "Stardate 51030. Seven of Nine is severed from the hive mind. The Captain tells her not to resist, that she'll learn to accept her humanity. Seven complies, and slowly begins to embrace her individuality. Does she regret that decision?"
The captain watched as Seven continued to breathe deeply, hands stilled over the Flyer's controls. She swallowed hard, ignored the growing pain in her chest, and continued, "Stardate 51652. The captain encourages Seven to develop her social skills. Seven…insists it's a waste of time, but after further requests, she pursues it and begins to develop her first human friendships. Did Janeway lead her astray?"
She wasn't sure how long she could continue this before breaking down herself, but she took a silent, shaky gasp of air and said, "Stardate 52840. The captain orders Seven to study her parents' journals. Seven claims they're irrelevant, but eventually she reads them and rediscovers part of her own past."
Seven's expression had softened a bit, and so the captain plunged onward, desperate to get through the opening in Seven's wall before it closed. She could feel her lungs begging to simply cave to the pressure building in them, to either cry or collapse. She could hear her voice threatening to crack at every phrase as she finished, "Stardate 52841. For the first time, Seven tells the captain, 'Thank you.'"
There was a long, weighty silence before the captain heard Seven's broken voice speaking quietly. "It was Stardate 52842. 0600 in the mess hall," she corrected. "We had just finished breakfast."
The pressure in her chest finally released its vice grip, and the captain sighed internally. She gave the young woman a teary smile and whispered, "My mistake." With a small burst of renewed energy, she said, "Stardate today, Janeway beams aboard the Delta Flyer. She reminds Seven of the bond that's grown between them. Seven lowers the forcefield, and she decides to come home." Never taking her eyes off Seven, the captain pleaded, "All I'm asking is that you trust me again."
At last, she closed her eyes for a brief moment. Please, Seven; can't you see that I love you? I can't lose you. I could never hurt you. When she opened them, Seven was deftly tapping in a command to the computer, and there was an electric blue flash when the forcefield fell.
The captain walked slowly to the helm and knelt in front of Seven. She held Seven's ice-blue gaze with her own gray-blue one before activating her combadge.
"Delta Flyer to Voyager," she said. She saw a thin sheen of tears in Seven's eyes and paused to give her another slight, reassuring smile. Then she finished, "Two to beam out."
This was another beautiful scene between Seven and the captain. (There were a lot of them in Voyager, weren't there?) I think this was probably the inspiration for "Trust Me," and I know I used a couple lines from it in that story. Thank you again for reading and reviewing!