Long after the end of her shift, Seven of Nine was still at her post in Astrometrics running and rerunning calculations on Borg cube telemetry from the nebula. Absolutely no error would be tolerable during tomorrow's mission; there was already too much about it for Seven's tastes that resided in the realm of speculation, too much that relied on the 'hunches' held by a pair of determinedly maverick Janeways. Tomorrow they would either finally reach the Alpha Quadrant or end up drifting as a cloud of dust and debris. She had every intention of minimizing the chances of the latter outcome by any means necessary… and it gave her something else to think about besides her earlier row with Chakotay. It didn't help at all that thinking about Chakotay invariably lead to thinking about Captain Janeway and that, recently, only sent the pit of her stomach into a freefall and lodged a tight lump of misery in her throat.
She had ruined everything between them, she was certain. Where once their relationship had been challengingly and warmly fulfilling, ever since the last incident with the Borg Queen in which Janeway had risked everything including her command and her own life to bring Seven home, an increasing distance now yawned between them. Their weekly Velocity matches had dwindled in frequency to nothing, Seven hadn't been inside the Maestro's studio in months, and she had to reach into the eidetic records of her cortical node to determine when had been the last meal consumed in the Captain's company. It seemed obvious to Seven that Janeway had rescued her as a matter of course, as she surely would have for any of her crew, but had no more time or energy for the problems inherent in shepherding a former Borg drone back to humanity. Not after Seven had caused such trouble. That she had done so to save the crew of Voyager from certain assimilation didn't weigh much into Seven's ruminations. The growing separation had been her fault, and now the chasm seemed too vast to bridge.
Seven caught herself standing idle, hands resting still on the console before her, and let out a slow breath of quiet resignation. Mentally picking at such a sore spot wasn't accomplishing anything, she decided. They would, if all went well, be on Earth very shortly, and that terrified Seven more than she would have ever cared to admit. Well, except to Kathryn Janeway… if they still talked about such things. With a shake of her head, Seven resumed her calculations, allowing the computer inside her skull to check and cross-check the data as her hands moved over various panels with inhuman fluidity and speed. Her nascent relationship with Commander Chakotay was not the arrangement of her dreams, she knew. He was attractive enough and, by her calculations, had enough interests in common with her own to provide for a reasonably varied interaction, but nothing about her holo-simulations or her real world interactions with him had ever caused her heart to flip in her chest and feel as though it were being squeezed by a large, fiery hand the way it did whenever her Captain praised her or turned on her that soft expression of pride and deep affection that Seven had craved. She supposed the silver lining to her bizarre working estrangement from Janeway had to be that she had become accustomed to scant signs of approval from her former mentor. She could admit to missing such pride in a wistful sort of way, but had become aware that she had adapted and grown beyond the need for it. What she had not grown beyond, she had recently discovered with some dismay, was the need for affection. Specifically, the affection of Kathryn Janeway. She had grown used to the small touches, the indulgent smiles, and the tenderness she would catch now and then in her Captain's gaze. She found the absence of those things heartrending and had more than once been grateful to her nanoprobes for erasing the telltale signs of recently shed tears from her face before having to leave the relative privacy of Cargo Bay 2. It had been her intention, upon reaching Earth, to take Captain Janeway up on her offer of bringing Seven home to Indiana. She had planned to stay with the Captain for as long as could be managed, hoping that Janeway would come to want her to stay. She reasoned that once Janeway was no longer her Captain that she could then always be her friend and would perhaps even bestow those fond looks upon her much more openly and often. That offer seemed to have been withdrawn, as far as Seven could discern, and this more than anything else grieved her deeply. Earth had seemed much less a dauntingly unknown terror when it had been Janeway who would be introducing her to the whole of humanity. With that no longer an option, it didn't seem like such a bad idea to position Chakotay as a shield between herself and the disorienting blur of undiluted Human culture. He was good to her, after all, and would protect her. Perhaps she would even feel her heart flip for him someday. She was Borg. She would have one more good cry over the entire thing, she decided, and then she would adapt.
Seven caught herself lost in thought again and pressed her lips together in annoyance as her hands resumed their work. She supposed it was to be lauded that she had recently found herself prone to the very Human activity of 'woolgathering', but it vexed her orderly and efficient soul to waste time in such a manner. It was equally vexing that the focus of her wandering thoughts seemed to be Kathryn Janeway the vast majority of the time. It was pointless and, more irritatingly, inefficient.
Seven had just resolved to put the whole dismal situation out of her head for the time being and focus exclusively on her work when her enhanced hearing detected the rhythm of a familiar, booted tread in the corridor approaching Astrometrics. It had been a while, a good while, since she'd heard those particular footfalls nearing her scientific domain outside duty hours. Where Janeway had formerly turned up in Astrometrics almost daily for one reason or another, in recent months she had only come down there personally when she wanted to use a piece of equipment in the lab. Communications and reports were generally submitted electronically. Seven felt her breath still as she heard the steps outside pause before the doors, just far enough away to avoid activating the sensor that would have opened them. She glanced back at the entrance and waited a full thirty-two seconds before she turned fully around, thinking to go to the doors herself and see what exactly was holding up the Captain. Just then, her ears detected the all but inaudible click and sigh of the door pneumatics preparing to open and turned back to her console quickly, resuming her work as though uninterrupted.
The doors to Astrometrics slid open and then closed again behind her, the deeply missed cadence of the Captain's stride sounding from the deck as she approached. Seven of Nine did not look up from her panel or pause in the inputting of data as she greeted her visitor, "Captain."
Kathryn Janeway came to a stop behind her Astrometrics officer, just beyond arm's reach. Unnerved by the Captain's silence, the sound of weight shifting from one foot to the other, and the faint tang of adrenaline wafted to Seven's nostrils by proximity, she finally turned around, finding her commanding officer wearing an expression of utterly sprung composure like an ill-fitting coat. She tried again, "Captain? May I be of assistance?"
Janeway stood turning a small plastic chip over and over in her hands, staring at it as if it contained some vital answer yet to be divined. She looked odd, Seven decided, not at all like herself. Her eyes were gunmetal grey, the evidence of recent tears reddening the edges of her lids. Her face was ashen, shell-shocked, as though someone had just died. Before Seven could say anything further, Janeway tapped the chip several times against her other palm, an agitated fidget, and then thrust it out to her without meeting her eyes as if all resolve might be lost if she waited another moment to hand it over, "Here."
Seven hesitated for a moment before reaching out to take the chip, staring in concerned puzzlement at the Captain and her strange comportment before dropping her gaze to the object in her grasp. Finding little by way of identifying marks, she finally asked, "What is it?"
"It's an isolinear chip," Janeway supplied immediately, glancing up for a moment before continuing to pick at one of her thumbnails.
"I can see that," she informed the Captain, her reply coolly clipped from the habit of recent months and accompanied by the haughty arch of her optical implant. She shut her mouth as soon as her own tone hit her ears, instantly regretful of her instinctive chilly response to the Captain. It had been like this for so long, the distance widening with every encounter, every word, that here on the eve of the end of this journey she was at a loss as to how to even begin to mend things between them. She had recently become consciously aware that she easily matched Janeway in the areas of pride and stubbornness, and was just as aware that she wasn't in the least helping matters at the moment. Deliberately schooling her voice to blandness, she finally added, "I presume that you have some purpose in giving it to me."
Janeway managed not to visibly flinch at the icy retort, supposing it deserved and silently kicking herself. Of course Seven knew it was an isolinear chip. How did she always manage to approach this woman in just the wrong way? Firming her jaw, the Captain clasped hands behind her back before she worried her thumbnail down to nothing and finally met Seven's eyes, "There's a recording on it. You need to watch it."
Seven turned to her workstation without further delay, grateful for a reason to put her back to the Captain's difficult regard, and plugged the chip into the appropriate access port. "To what does this recording pertain?"
Janeway stopped just short of yanking the chip out of its slot. Seeing its contents again and in Seven's presence would be an assault on her composure that she was certain she would not survive. Covering her aborted impulse forward by settling into her once customary spot against the side of Seven's console, she managed to get out, "You. It's about you. Your… future death."
Seven clasped her hands behind in her usual posture and turned to fully face the Captain at this, her immaculately coiffed blonde head tilting inquisitively. The workstation processed the contents of the chip and queued up the recording to the primary screen, ready to be played. Seven made no move to activate it. "Would I be correct to surmise that you acquired this chip from Admiral Janeway and that its presence here is a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive?"
Janeway chewed briefly on her lower lip, eyes again downcast to her much abused thumbnail, and then released it with a short nod, "You would be correct on both counts."
Seven yanked the chip from its port without hesitation and held it out to the Captain, "Then please take this back to the Admiral. I will not view it."
The Captain then did something that outright startled the former drone. Pushing off her spot against the console, Janeway stepped right into Seven's personal space and wrapped both hands around the one holding the chip, pushing it back to nearly rest against Seven's chest. The Captain's eyes were round with an emotional intensity that Seven hadn't seen since this woman had informed her over a compression phaser rifle in the middle of a Borg cube that she wasn't leaving without her. "Seven, please."
Had Janeway just begged her to do something? Seven's own eyes widened, and her voice thinned and rose in uncertain pitch, "Captain?"
Janeway recovered herself and released Seven's hand, taking several steps toward the doors before turning back. With one hand propped on a hip for reassurance, her other rubbed her forehead and then smoothed down her face in an effort to calm herself. Finally, quietly, her eyes returned to Seven's, "Please. View the recording and then come see me. We need to talk about this. Decide…" she gestured, spreading her fingers and pressing her hand to her own torso with a drawn and gustily released breath, "…what to do about it."
Now Seven was definitely confused, "About what?"
The Captain shook her head, replying cryptically, "That's what I mean."
Seven straightened, growing frustrated with the obliqueness of this most unusual of conversations, "I do not understand."
Janeway turned and strode for the exit, replying over her shoulder as she paused, framed by the open doorway and the bright light of the corridor, "You will once you've seen it."
Seven stared at the closing doors for a long moment and then turned back to her console. It looked like the only explanation she was going to get was on that chip, and Seven was never one to dither when there was information to be had.