Disclaimer: *makes face* Paramount owns it.
Chapter Nine
She had wandered into his office earlier that day for what seemed like no apparent purpose, unlike her, to say the very least. Of course, ultimately, he had found out why, and was glad he had excised the algorithm that allowed him to cry. He was sure to have been collapsed in tears, otherwise. Had she, on purpose, hidden such a thing from everyone? Or was it just that she had not known until now, when it was entirely too late?
The Doctor sat at his little desk in Starfleet Medical, gazing intently at nothing. He was the only Mach 1 EMH that was doing its intended job anymore, but that was only because what he had learned in seven years of run-time was useful. His continued existence was almost a token gesture . . . but the people from Voyager who lived in San Francisco often came for his help, the Captain, Seven and Chakotay in particular when any one of them would finally admit they needed it. As long as they were around, Starfleet wouldn't decompile him for fear of the ruckus it would cause. It was nice to have allies, even if they were so unwittingly.
He replayed the meeting and subsequent checkup with perfect recall, and could not find any indication that she hadn't been fully composed the whole time. Resigned to death. It wasn't like he could have done anything if he had been told sooner, anyhow.
He looked down, gazing at the tricorder stupidly for what had to be the hundredth time.
Therein lay the physical scan that he wished desperately not to be true.
Was it some sort of backwards sadism that made her choose him to find it? He was certain she had already known what the result would be. Then again, would he had forgiven her if she had gone to someone else? She may as well have just come out and said, "Good day, Doctor, I'm suffering from jecoral and renal failure . . . How are you?"
Hadn't anyone noticed the slight jaundiced colour in her eyes and skin? Then again, it was very slight, and he had better eyesight than many people. His eidetic memory system also had something to do with that, he could always compare past images with perfect clarity.
The fact remained the Seven of Nine was dying, and there was nothing he or anyone could do about it. The only people who could help her would do so at a terrible cost . . . and the Borg were licking their wounds back in the Delta Quadrant.
The problem lay with the Borg systems that even now regulated almost every function in her body. Overtaxed by illness and poor maintenance -and therefore too much effort put into regenerating themselves- many of her implants had begun to fail over what looked like the course of the year and a half since she had given up alcoves. The faulty systems could not be removed, and even if that was possible, her health was so poor that the organs could never take up function on their own. There was no way to repair it. It was not as simple as a cortical node this time.
Somehow, he had expected this the day she had told him that she was no longer going to use the alcove she had installed in her home, and that she wished him to remove as many of her
Borg components as possible.
It pained him to admit it, but all the medical treatment he had ever given her had only been delaying the inevitable -from the day he had removed her exoplating to the day he had unintentionally bereft her of the use of her right hand. The Borg had done too perfect a job of making every part of her dependant on them . . . except her mind, of course.
The mind he had fallen in love with, simply because he had decided to spend some time helping her learn what it was to live with human beings. Unlike him, she was one herself, but the thought was the same. They were both just learning how to deal with a different sort of people.
And he had told her that he loved her, that day on the holodeck, and what? She had lifted that ubiquitous eyebrow of hers and looked at him expressionlessly, dismissing the irrelevant hologram. She hadn't cared, she'd been too interested in other things . . . other people.
He was the only one that knew, beyond her, that she was dying. Even the much-vaunted Commander Chakotay did not know, and he lived with her! Seven insisted that he say nothing to anyone, and that all the focus should remain on the Captain and the twins she carried. There was nothing wrong at all with the Captain. She could do what she had set out to do with little or no help from anyone.
The question remained, would Seven live to see it?
She was not far gone yet, but total crash loomed. The structures that reinforced her heart were weak, her liver and kidneys were pretty much shut down and with one more twitch of the implants, her metabolism would go down the drain as well. From there, she could die with no advance warning in the space of about an hour . . . and yet she refused to be monitored, refused to be hospitalized and through that perversity he had observed in her decided it was best that he neither do anything nor say anything.
Seven was hiding her illness once again, like it was her fault that she was dying, weakness on her part.
It was his fault. His weakness for giving in to her when she had demanded that he give her medical clearance to cease using the alcove, since without it Starfleet would not let her. How would they feel now that their Borg trophy was dying?
And it was his fault, because he allowed himself to be coerced by her.
He was the weak one.
Love had killed her.
The door to the small office chimed once. The Doctor was not in the mood for visitors, to say the very least. It chimed again, and he flipped the fated tricorder shut, and turned the chair around to face the door.
"Come in."
Lo and behold, thence came Chakotay . . . the look in his eyes proclaiming that he was once again looking for Seven. His former Commander had never -at least in the Doctor's eyes- had a good grasp on predicting the comings and goings of Seven of Nine. A pitiful failing in a man who professed to love her let alone her husband. On the other hand, Chakotay in general seemed to know exactly what the Captain was thinking at all times. To him, it was not so curious a thing, given all the facts.
"If you're looking for Seven, I haven't seen her. Is something wrong?" Oh, yes, something is wrong, but you're too blind to see it.
"Not that I know of, but she's not at home. I'll try Kathryn's office."
"That's probably where she is then." Oh, Seven, don't say anything stupid. . . .
***
Seven stood resolutely in the middle of the office, looking slightly sallow, for some reason. Then again, she had never looked well of late, and a run in the rain couldn't have done her any good. One day, she was going to have to learn to listen to people. Did Chakotay know she was here? Like as not, they'd both be in trouble before the day was out.
"Clarify what? You want to clarify something? You want me to clarify something?" Kathryn asked, still slightly incensed by Seven's total disregard for herself. She wasn't invincible, she couldn't "adapt" to everything.
Clarify was now that most dreaded of words . . . mostly because of the unofficial Relentless Starfleet Historian Corps, who plagued her incessantly even still. When Seven wanted to either have something clarified or clarify something herself, you could be relatively sure you were in for it.
This was the coldest, tersest attitude the Captain had witnessed from Seven in a long while. She had something to say, it was obvious, and she was gearing herself for a fight because in some strange paroxysm of prescience she had determined that Kathryn would not like it. She was usually right, so the Captain prepared to face unsavoury news.
It reminded her of the times directly after Seven's holographic exploits had nearly killed her. The Doctor, of course, had kept his mouth shut, but the Captain of a moping EMH must at least feign suspicion -especially when until about that point Seven's medical status had been her business entirely, even if the woman in question hadn't signed a release.
She had done a little research, and had subsequently thrown her small desk console across the ready room in some sort of fit . . . B'Elanna had repaired it, and never asked how it came to be dashed to several pieces on the viewport.
After that, almost ever talk with Seven for a solid two weeks had been something of a silent fight.
Chakotay still did not know . . . nor did he know how close she had come in that moment to considering him as if he were some mere possession and not one of her best friends. Seven's subsequent alliance to the real man had been hard to take, but at least it had not been as underhanded. Well it had. But not to him, at least.
She received a small prescient thought of her own.
Seven was likely here to fight about Chakotay.
"I want to have something clarified," Seven stated in her somewhat slurred voice, shivering slightly.
Damn her, why didn't she take the towel?
"What then? I can't read your mind." If Seven was going to freeze up and act like they were adversaries once again, she was going to get as good as she gave.
"Why did you decide to help me?"
Kathryn paused, frowning. "When? Now? The day you stomped onto Voyager trailing your unimatrix? When the Queen tried to take you back? The time you became a one-woman conspiracy? Unimatrix Zero? What?"
Seven paused in kind. "Now."
"That's very simple. Because you want children and you're too sick to have them yourself. Because it rips Chakotay's heart out to see you in a hospital. Because I can. Very simple."
Seven let out a breath, her antagonistic manner dissipating somewhat. She shook her head, looking out the window on the other side of the room. "Not so simple, Captain."
"Well why the hell not? Why can't something just be simple for once?"
"Because it is not. Do not try to tell me you do not know why. I do not miss the strange irony of you carrying Chakotay's children simply because I was not there for everything. Do you think I don't know the reason why you can't stand to see him upset? And vice versa? He feels guilt for you, even if he won't say it."
She recoiled as if struck, stumbling backwards into her desk.
Seven, Seven . . . what are you saying? What are you doing? Leave it be.
"What do you mean?"
The blond woman looked from the window to her again. Kathryn thought she might have rolled her eyes if she was predisposed to that. "Do you know that he still has nightmares about that shuttle crash where you nearly died?"
"Oh, God, which crash? If I had a bar of latinum for every time-"
"The one after the first Talent Night when the alien presence impersonated your father in order to make you give in and go with him."
Chakotay must have told her about that. What right had Seven to know what had happened to her that day? She had told Chakotay about the experience in full, even cried about it in front of him, all assuming it was in confidence. What right had he?
Words escaped her, somewhat. "Nightmares?"
"Yes, that you died there, like in the illusion."
"Well so what?" she asked in a dangerous tone. "It's not like I never feared for his life. We're friends, Seven, and we've both seen each other at the edge of death or worse. His propensity for crashing shuttles has long been a standing figure in my anxieties. How about yours?"
Or was it that since you only ever professed to love him for about two months prior to our return that you never had to worry about shuttles, or the Kazon, or the Vidiians or miscellaneous yet-unknown species, diseases, states of consciousness and temporal anomalies? I'll trade you.
"What brought this on?" she continued. "Why bring it up at all? What's past is past, Seven. What's your point?"
This time the facade crumbled, and Seven looked at her desperately. "Promise me that you will stay!" Seven lisped in a dire tone, almost clasping her hands in supplication.
This was unexpected, and Kathryn fought to wind herself down from her pique. Something was worrying Seven, and desperately if it garnered such a look in her eyes. Stay where? Why? She shook her head in incomprehension.
"What do you mean?" How many times had she asked that now?
"You have to stay here, with Chakotay. Please, Captain."
"Seven . . ."
The tall ex-drone shook her head. "No, no, listen to me, Captain. When I am gone, you have to stay, to help him. He'll need help, and he can't be alone. He needs you to stay here so he has a reason. He needs a purpose almost more and I do . . ."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Kathryn demanded, aghast. "What do you mean when you're gone?"
"I am dying, Captain."
For an interminable moment, both were silent. Her mind reeled. Seven dying? Seven was fine, she was healed. The whole of Starfleet Medical had been working on her, and the Doctor . . . No, she couldn't be dying. Not now. If she was going to die, she'd have died on the operating table.
"W-what?" she stammered, grasping at the desk behind her. The babies kicked in answer to her sudden anxiety.
"I am dying. I went to see the Doctor today . . . my liver and kidneys are failing."
"Oh no, Seven, you're not-"
Seven glared at her. "When will you listen to me?!" she almost screamed. "You cannot control everything, and certainly not whether I'm dying or not, as much as you'd like to! You are being selfish once again, because it is not you who has made the determination which makes me this way! It is my fault for giving up the alcove too soon."
Regeneration? A myriad display of images went through her mind. She had been a drone once, and knew. Yes, a drone without an alcove could not survive long. But Seven was not a drone! Seven should not need an alcove at all, if she had determined that she didn't want it.
Her eyes stung. "Oh, how can it be your fault? It was probably my fault, somehow."
Seven almost sneered. "Because you must be responsible for everything? Oh no, Captain. You think I don't realize that some part of you doesn't want me gone, so the way is free again."
The Captain began to cry silently. Seven . . . why was it that Seven was so rarely wrong, but when she was it was so total? Did she believe honestly, that she wanted her to die? Was the asperity they had both felt at one time or another so deep? She has dealt with the prospect of Seven dying before, and they had argued even then.
Was it that she was selfish?
"What about transplants?"
"The fault is with my implants, not the organs themselves. Nothing can be done."
Kathryn sobbed, though she didn't make a sound. "Are you . . . sure?" And what about Chakotay? Hadn't they had enough? Wasn't it time to just have some peace? She would have the babies, and they would live in that house five blocks from her own and just . . . live for once instead of worrying about everything and nothing?
"The Doctor would not lie to me."
"So . . . so what now, Seven? You're leaving your living will, like Chakotay is chattel?" God in heaven, don't do what I did, or you'll end up like me even if you die.
"Hardly. I am just having something clarified," Seven said, looking out the window again calmly, as if the other person in the room was not in evidence at all.
"And . . . and what is that?"
"That you love Chakotay, and that you will stay here."
Kathryn sobbed loudly then. Had she ever planned on leaving?
Seven sighed, and continued. "It did not take this, to realize that though. I just thought I should at least tell you. You will have to keep the children and you should not have to deal with me so suddenly."
She closed her eyes, more tears escaping, and the door chimed.
To be continued
***