Disclaimer: Only the story is mine. Everything else belongs to Paramount. As much as I'd like to say Seven and B'Elanna are mine, 'twould be a falsehood. (sigh) This story contains femslash (yup, women love women here, get used to it) so if that offends you, then read something else. Although if you've read Ghosts, the story before this one, then you're probably not offended by it if you're still reading. And if you haven't read Ghosts—go read it!

Author Notes: Sequel to Ghosts.

Code: T7
Rating: R
Genre: Romance/Drama
Original post date: Feb, 2001
PLEASE REVIEW!


Family, Chapter 10


"...and she requires surgery." Seven looked at the Doctor in horror, no time for disbelief. "I must begin immediately if I'm to save her."

"Can you repair the damage?" B'Elanna came running into Sickbay, orders from the captain on the tip of her tongue when she heard the end of the conversation. She froze and walked tentatively up to Seven. The Doctor's eyes shifted to B'Elanna, then returned to Seven's.

"I'll be honest, Seven. It doesn't look good. I saw one injury exactly like this before," the Doctor paused. "She didn't make it. But, this is different. Mezoti has a different physiology." 'And she's not a hologram,' he added mentally. Seven was beginning to shake when B'Elanna touched her arm. The EMH looked at the women and then headed back to the surgical center, not wasting an extra second until he heard Seven's declaration.

"I shouldn't have moved her. I may have killed my daughter." Unable to return to Seven, he called back at her.

"It has nothing to do with that. Moving her was of no consequence this time. The injury is unaffected. Transporting her may have proved the unwise choice as it might have killed her instantly!" Words of comfort given, he stepped up to the child's body and began working.

"I hate to say this, especially now, Seven." B'Elanna began, but was pitched forward as the ship was hit by a blaster cannon. "But, obviously, I don't have a choice. The captain has ordered us to start up the deflector dish so that we can take care of the bug people once and for all."

"I cannot leave Mezoti." Another wave rocked the ship.

"Seven, if you don't, then we're all going to die: Mezoti, you, me, everyone. You can't help the doctor right now."

"He may need my nanoprobes." Seven couldn't leave her daughter. Not now, when she might need her the most… especially if the doctor couldn't help her. She didn't know if she could live with herself if Mezoti died alone.

"So leave some behind and let's go!" Seven had to grab a nearby biobed as the next volley hit and B'Elanna went sprawling. Seven looked down at her and helped her up. She nodded at the look in B'Elanna's eyes, feeling torn and confused, but walked through the doctor's office into the lab and grabbed a hypospray, which she filled with nanoprobes. Then, she walked back into the doctor's office and left him a note, describing what was in the hypo and left with B'Elanna.


The doctor would have been sweating if he hadn't been a hologram. This was too much like Belle, his holo daughter. He had worked for hours trying to save her, but the blood clots just wouldn't quit forming. After losing her, he had never had the heart to return to the program, though he never forgot her. Her head injury had been the one he had spoken of. It was identical to the one that Mezoti had suffered, though for different reasons.

And the scenario was playing out the same. He fixed one thing, another part of the brain started to shut down, hemorrhages starting and clots forming. His hands were moving so fast to correct for the changes that he would have appeared to be blurred or to have four arms if there had been anyone to watch. The ship's rocking didn't disturb his program, as he had aligned his matrix to be unreactive to the pitching deck so that the delicate surgery could be performed.

He wished that Seven had been able to assist, or anybody, for that matter, but she was just too close to Mezoti, it would be traumatic for her. So he worked alone, against the injury and against his own emotional pain.


"Reroute power!" B'Elanna shouted at Seven, desperate to finish repairing the damage to the deflector array, grateful that the dish was still untouched.

"It is not working. Attempting to bypass..." Seven tried to keep her mind on the situation at hand, but felt it keep drifting back to Mezoti in surgery. Despite what the doctor had said, she still considered the matter her fault. She should have called for a anti-grav stretcher, she should have anticipated Mezoti's moves, should have chased her immediately instead of giving her time to 'cool off.'

She almost started crying, but what she was doing was too important and she couldn't allow herself time for tears. That time would be later. For now, she needed to concentrate on repairing the deflector so that Voyager could disable the Ssckerellon ship.

With a click and a whir, it came back on and Seven ran with B'Elanna out of the room to the relative safety of the hall and hit her commbadge. "Go!" she yelled and heard the earsplitting shriek of the new deflector weapon being fired. She clapped her hands over her ears and saw B'Elanna do the same and watched as the half-Klingon gritted her teeth and flinched as the sound grew in intensity. She indicated that they should vacate the vicinity in case the burnout was greater than they had anticipated and B'Elanna nodded.

They were flung to the deck as the ship rocked from the explosion in the deflector room.


On the bridge, a celebratory shout went up as the final shot destroyed their enemies. Tuvok, Chakotay and Janeway were the only ones to not join in, but Chakotay and Kathryn exchanged grim smiles before listening to the damage reports flooding in from all over the ship. The reports weren't half as bad as the captain had expected and she called B'Elanna and Seven to thank them. There was a long silence in response and she asked Ensign Kim to read the damage report from deck twelve.

Another silence followed until he informed the captain that there was a hull breach in the main deflector room and that no force fields had yet to be erected to fix it. Kathryn began shaking, denying what she heard. No, it couldn't be. Not B'Elanna and Seven. She sat in her chair, feeling herself go numb. Harry continued, telling them that the entire area was a vacuum and Janeway buried her head in her hands, not believing it.

She thought for a moment that she was going to throw up, then the captain stood and just froze where she was. Images of the first times she had seen both women floated in her mind, butting heads with them, reveling in their geniuses and loving them both as daughters and friends. The thought that perhaps they had escaped finally occurred to her and she asked Harry to check for their whereabouts.


Seven covered B'Elanna with her body as debris escaped through the doors that had yet to finish closing behind them. She suddenly felt a pull towards the doors and she got up, pulling B'Elanna to her feet and ignoring the searing pain from a metal fragment buried in her shoulder and several smaller pains throughout from wreckage impacting her body, and began running with her, trying to escape the draw of the hull breach attempting to drag them out into space.

She flung them both into the turbolift and shouted "Deck five." The doors closed and the lift began its ascent.


The doctor was still working when Seven and B'Elanna walked into Sickbay, so B'Elanna sat on a biobed by Seven, who preferred to stand, and waited. B'Elanna looked down at her jacket and noticed that her commbadge was missing. She looked over and noticed that Seven's was still there, but...

"Seven!" B'Elanna walked to her and began examining her, finding the shards of metal sticking out of her body and felt tears burn at the back of her eyes. Seven looked tired and glanced down at her communicator. It was twisted somehow and she tore it off, throwing it at the wall. Crewmembers began coming into Sickbay, helping fallen comrades walk or pushing anti-grav stretchers, on which their friends laid. Some came in alone, disoriented and bleeding and B'Elanna began helping them into beds, explaining that the doctor was in surgery and that they would have to wait.

Finally, Tom Paris came in and began taking care of the more minor injuries, starting with the worst that he could fix and working down to concussions and lacerations. The first thing he did, though, was contact the captain to report that Seven and B'Elanna were safe and in Sickbay. He looked at Seven and offered to remove the smaller pieces, but she indicated that he should work on the other patients first. He stood reluctantly for a moment, then seeing that she wouldn't give, moved to the next patient. He finally came back to her and began treating her wounds as best he could, but had to leave in at least two pieces for fear of starting a hemorrhage.

He took out the biggest piece, much to B'Elanna's relief and ran a dermal regenerator over the skin it had penetrated and let her pull her biosuit back up, over her torso, when he was finished. He told her that the doctor would have to finish what he had started, but that she would be okay for the time being.

Sickbay emptied of lesser casualties and still, the doctor worked on Mezoti. Seven stood outside the surgical area, worry etched into her features as though she could never smile again if he didn't fix Mezoti, and soon. After what seemed like an eternity, the EMH emerged from surgery, looking grim.

"Seven," he began quietly.

"No! Repair her!" Seven cried, her deep voice breaking with pain. The doctor looked up and immediately tried to calm her down while B'Elanna hugged Seven from behind, resting her head between the taller woman's shoulder blades reassuringly and avoiding her injuries.

"Seven! There is no need to get hysterical. I am trying to tell you that I have stopped the bleeding and that, though it's a slim chance, I believe Mezoti just might pull through." Seven was so relieved that she grabbed the hologram in a bear hug and almost didn't hear his request. She let him go.

"What?"

"She's asking for you."

"She is conscious?"

"Yes, but for me to finish repairing the damage, I would like to reprogram some of your nanoprobes."

"I anticipated that and extracted a sizable amount that you can find in your office."

"Excellent. Now go in there, Seven. She needs you. And believe me, if this doesn't work, you'll want this time together." Seven fought tears, nodded and walked to Mezoti's bed. She repressed a cry at the sight of the wound on the child's head. Though mostly covered by a metal band, some of the swollen, red flesh crept down as far as Mezoti's eyelid, visible to Seven's concerned eyes.

"Mother?" Mezoti asked, looking about as though she couldn't see. Seven waved a hand over her eyes and realized that this was the case. Tears streamed down her face as the full horror of the child's situation hit her, but she took Mezoti's reaching hand and forced her voice to be calm.

"I am here."


The doctor took only a brief moment to collect himself before diving into the process of reprogramming the nanoprobes. They would perform the difficult task of repairing the delicate nerve pathways in Mezoti's brain before they shut down permanently and she went forever blind or worse, relapsed and died. He soon found out that his first prognosis had been optimistic, as Mezoti's condition worsened even further than Belle's had. Miraculously, he had been able to stabilize her, seemingly at the last second.

The child didn't have the ever-replenishing supply of nanoprobes that her adoptive mother carried, but rather, a finite, dying set that had never completely formed, most likely due to her premature emergence from the Borg maturation chamber. Only enough remained to maintain the few Borg systems she had, including her assimilation tubules, which didn't work correctly in the first place. He estimated that they would be rejected when she ran out of nanoprobes, though he could not predict what the outcome of that would be.

He glanced up to estimate how many patients he would have to treat next and counted eight. He sighed, then returned to the task at hand, reminding himself that there was only one of him to go around. He finished just as B'Elanna came rushing in, calling "Doctor!"

He grabbed the hypo and ran after her to Mezoti, who was seizing violently. He injected the nanoprobes into her neck, hoping that they would be enough, because he had done all he could and that was more than any humanoid doctor could do in his place. Mezoti slowly stopped jerking and lay still. He monitored the readings on her brain activities and watched helplessly as the probes did their work, seeming too slow to the doctor, who watched Mezoti's life signs begin to fade.

He called Seven for a cortical stimulator and found it in his hand almost before he could finish asking for it. He attached it to the child's temple and waited for the right moment to activate it. The monitor began a whine and he pressed the control that triggered the device. Mezoti jumped from the shock, but instantly stabilized. He wanted to cheer as he watched all her brain levels return to normal, evidence that the nanoprobes had done their job and that Mezoti was going to recover.

He looked, smiling, at Seven and once she realized what that meant, she hugged him again. Then she turned to B'Elanna and grabbed her up, hugging her as tightly as she could without breaking bones. B'Elanna let out a squeak, but hugged back as best she could. They both looked at the unconscious form of Mezoti, then at each other and said in unison:

"We need to talk."

To be continued...