"Damn you."
Seven stood in the doorway of Voyager's VIP guest quarters, glowering at their sole occupant who had just been in the process of replicating herself another cup of coffee.
The elder Janeway glanced over her shoulder at the clearly livid former drone, her mouth quirking to a sardonic half-smile, "Hello, Seven. I was wondering when I'd see you again… although my Seven took at least another couple of years to start swearing at me."
Thoroughly annoyed by the Admiral's flippant response, Seven strode authoritatively into the room and intercepted Janeway en route back to her chair. She thrust the chip out stiffly, "Take this back. Do whatever you will with it, destroy it, I do not care, but do not show it to anyone else on this ship or attempt to give it back to Captain Janeway!"
The Admiral took in the sight of Seven at full froth with a long, measuring look and then, to the younger woman's dismay, burst out laughing, "Good heavens, you've worked up quite a head of steam over this." Obligingly, she plucked the isolinear chip from Seven's grasp and tucked it into a pants pocket, settling back into her chair and putting her feet up on the adjacent footrest. Inhaling the fragrant steam from her coffee, she slanted her gaze upward again with undisguised fondness, plainly amused with her own reactions, "It's probably all wrong on multiple levels that I've missed the sound of you ordering me around."
Seven's hands fisted in aggravation at her sides, "Do not be facetious!" she stormed. "You are attempting to manipulate Captain Janeway, and you are attempting to manipulate me!"
The Admiral let her head fall against the chair back, looking up at Seven now with a pained expression, all teasing gone from her tone, "I'm attempting to save a slew of lives, Seven, yours and Tuvok's among them, and trying to prevent a matched pair of mistakes that have ruined the lives of everyone involved." Righting her silvery head, she added before sipping her coffee, "Well, except for yours. You ended up dead. Lucky you."
This threw cold water all over Seven's ire, her impressive and enhanced mind racing to reconcile this new fact with the contents of the chip and her earlier encounters with the Admiral in Sickbay and Cargo Bay 2. She was just on the verge of understanding what drove this woman, she was sure. There was something missing though, some bit of information, "You keep mentioning mistakes. Explain."
"Oh, Seven, where to start," she sighed, waving a hand toward the sofa. "Sit. Please." For once, Seven promptly did so without protesting that she preferred to stand, arranging herself at attentive right angles on the cushions.
Taking another scorching swallow of coffee, the Admiral settled deeper into her chair and took a steadying breath, "Mistakes. Let's see." She addressed her comments to the mug cradled in her hands, "My mistake, among many that I've made, is sort of a complicated, multi-part blunder. It takes talent to screw up like this, believe me." Another breath, another sip of coffee, "I was not honest with you the one time you desperately needed me to be. I remained silent when I should have spoken up. Hell, Seven, I just didn't try hard enough with you. I've spent all the days of my life after getting Voyager home thinking about what I wanted to say to you, all the while trying like hell not to think of you at all." Sad, lost eyes turned then to search Seven's face, no attempt made to hide the truth of her long-buried feelings for this woman whom she had once rescued and who could have rescued her had she possessed the sense to have allowed it.
"Can you imagine," the Admiral continued, dropping her head against the chair back once more and regarding Seven from the corners of her eyes, "Grief as fresh twenty-three years later as it was on the day it was born? I got very practiced at shoving it down." This was it, she realized. Her last chance to say what she hadn't had the courage to put into words so long ago. Her next breath was downright unsteady as she put her mug down on the table beside her chair and stood. She'd always thought better on her feet. Three steps out and she stopped, turned around to find the younger woman's uncertain gaze. She'd already spent too many years unable to sate her eyes on the sight of this woman. Looking at Seven, from that first moment in Sickbay, had been like a balm to her parched soul. Again, the hiss of sands slipping through the glass of time urged her on. There weren't many grains left to her.
Smoothing her tunic unnecessarily, a deep, shaky breath passed audibly from her lips as she forced down her natural reticence, the thick-built walls from decades of hiding such scars now cracking under the weight of the inevitable and her own determination. Another breath and she plunged ahead, afraid that the words might evaporate to nothingness if she did not speak them immediately, did not divulge this most vulnerable of her buried secrets, "I somehow managed to resist the impulse to flush myself out an airlock in the weeks after you died, but it was a near thing a couple of times." The cracks became fissures, her eyes becoming glossy with the unshed tears of a lifetime.
Seven's eyes grew round at that, vague suspicions and wonderings solidifying finally into tentative certainty. This thing with them, with the Captain… The evidence suggested that it did not run all one way. Before she could speak, the Admiral forged ahead, hands clutched tightly together before her, "It was months before I stopped crying myself to sleep on the nights I didn't work myself to exhaustion to keep from thinking. After that, I saved my tears for your birthday, the anniversary of severing you from the Collective, and the anniversary of your death." Her voice caught on her last words, broke, throat and eyes betraying her, choking her speech and failing to hold back the dammed torrent of tears as fissures gave way and fell completely. Her head dropped, eyes squeezing shut and mouth crumpling as she fought for control.
Seven stood abruptly, dismayed that this break in the Admiral's composure was causing her own throat to tighten and her eyes to prickle with the gathering of moisture. Unbidden, she found herself imagining what the Admiral's life must have been like. What she herself would feel if she were suddenly looking forward at a future devoid of Kathryn Janeway… especially knowing what she now knew. This was compassion… empathy… sharing the pain of another human being. That this particular human being wore the face, voice and manner of the most important person in her life made it impossible for her to remain where she was, impossible not to offer the comfort of touch that had been offered to her so many times in the past. Now she understood.
Seven hadn't taken more than a step forward when the Admiral halted her with a raised hand. Struggling to regain her composure, a long, shaking breath filled her lungs and then left her in a slow exhalation, eyes still closed, "No… I need to say this. All of it." Her arms folded together over her midriff in a posture of unconscious defense as she raised her head, meeting Seven's stricken regard. After a painful silence, she summoned a rough whisper, "I finally shut down and dismantled your alcove three years later… when Tuvok caught me standing in it for the umpteenth time and threatened to tell the Doctor. I was a single psyche eval away from being relieved of duty."
She shook her head, more at herself than anything else, looking down and dropping her head again, this time to run her hands over her face, dashing the wetness from her cheeks and chin with her palms. "I never recycled your things, you know," she related, sucking in another breath and wiping damp hands on her pants. "I sealed them in a stasis crate and took them off Voyager with me when we reached home again. In another timeline, they're still in the back of my bedroom closet."
Another glance down, another blink, another fresh pair of tears undoing her effort at drying her face, and she looked back up at Seven, "I take them out on the crying days because… your scent still clings to your biosuits and your hairbrush." A heartbreakingly self-deprecating half-smile raised one corner of her mouth in a brief quirk, "I guess one last unscheduled crying day was in order. Fitting, really."
Unable to hold her place for one more moment, Seven was grasping the Admiral's thin upper arms in two determined strides. This close, every line, every mark of time and of grief and of gravity lay exposed beneath Seven's intense scrutiny. Reddened lids and cheeks made the older woman's eyes blaze cobalt in contrast as they rose to meet her own, small hands rising to grasp her elbows. Touch was definitely not irrelevant.
The Admiral searched Seven's eyes, looking for she didn't know what. Whatever she might have expected, she had not counted on finding sympathy and the beginnings of tears there, and it shook her. She had been so stupid back then, as stupid as her younger self still was now, but had Seven really understood the nuances of how things were between them this far back? She opted for point-blank honesty to cut out any chance of ambiguity. They were all out of time for misunderstanding. She found herself suddenly exhausted, nearly out of words and almost drained of her vaunted fortitude. Time to cut to the chase, "Does it shock you that you meant so much to me? That I became an obsessed, broken old woman who's had twenty-six years to enumerate the ways I failed you by isolating myself from you?" Fresh tears fell, but her eyes held Seven's unwaveringly now. This was too important, this was what she had upended the order of the Universe to say. She whispered, finding her courage at last, "That I waited until your body was cold before saying out loud that I… that I loved you?" There. It was said. Retreating to safe ground was no longer on the table as an option.
Without words, for none were needed, Seven pulled the surprised and trembling Admiral to her and wrapped long arms around her back. The older woman stiffened momentarily in habitual resistance to intimacy and then all the starch went out of her as her shoulders shook and she buried her face in Seven's shoulder, wetting the fabric of her biosuit with silent sobs and clinging to her for dear life. This was no shame, she knew. She had earned this moment of redemption in this woman's arms, paid for it with every shed tear and drop of blood it had cost her to get back to this place. She cried for the goodbye she'd never gotten to say, for the bartering of the love of a lifetime and her own humanity to get her ship home, for every second of every day of every year that she'd had to live with aching cold emptiness where Seven of Nine should have been.
Long minutes passed, Seven stroking her back and hair as though comforting a child, before the Admiral managed to draw the tatters of her shattered composure back around herself. She hiccupped softly and sniffed, her head still on Seven's shoulder as she wiped at her nose with the back of one hand, the other still clutching the younger woman to her tightly. Another sniff, another wipe at her eyes and she whispered roughly, tears still in her voice but the oppressive weight seemingly lifted from her shoulders, "That was my mistake, Seven. I've spent the last twenty-three years paying for it with every breath I've drawn that you were denied. So, yes… you have every right to damn me. What I'm doing now, here; there was no choice I could make other than this."
When the Admiral finally collected herself after a longer-than-proper stay in Seven's arms and pulled back, she let go without protest and stood still as Janeway walked around her to take up her mug again for a long swallow of cooled coffee. Half-turning to look at the Admiral's back, she asked, "What was my mistake? I presume the other of the 'pair of matched mistakes' was mine."
Not turning around, Janeway replied softly, the echo of decades of self-recrimination audible in her voice, "Your only mistake was in settling for what started out as an experiment and ended up being a comfortable arrangement."
"You speak of my relationship with Commander Chakotay," Seven stated, not a question. Being a brighter woman than her Captain when presented with the facts of a complex situation, she already knew at this point where the conversation was headed and found herself, somewhat to her own surprise, now eager to get to the conclusion.
The Admiral's sharp ears pricked up at the tone of Seven's statement, and she made her own half-turn to eye the former drone speculatively. She hadn't directly addressed the earlier declaration of love, and yet that had sounded suspiciously like comprehension of emotional nuance just now. Another slow sip of coffee went by before she replied. "Yes."
Because it was the thing to say and happened to be true, Seven eyed the Admiral right back and offered, "The Commander is an adequate romantic partner and will ease my assimilation into Human culture on Earth."
At this, Admiral Janeway turned to fully face Seven of Nine, arms folding over her chest with her mug resting on one forearm. Now Seven was just playing devil's advocate, she was sure. A sudden rush of memory assailed her in that moment, this one more sweet than bitter. It had been one of the few times she had outright flirted with Seven and the inadvertent catalyst that had begun Seven's interest in participating in Human mating rituals, "I thought you didn't require a romantic relationship."
Seven did not quite smile in response, but her blue eyes softened in shared memory. Ducking her head briefly in acknowledgement of both the past moment and the question inherent in the present statement, she replied, "After having had the inhibitor removed from my cerebral cortex, I have found that I have… 'emotional needs' of which I was previously unaware. "
"You used to bring things like that to me," the Admiral nodded, beginning to trust Seven's grasp of the situation at hand, trusting Seven not to hear recrimination in that loaded statement of fact where there was none.
Seven did not disappoint, blending her own history with Captain Janeway seamlessly in her mind with the Admiral's past, "You have been… perpetually unavailable." A statement of fact in kind with no attendant accusation. This was a clearing of the air not an assignment of blame. "I had no choice but to resort to experimenting with holographic simulations. Commander Chakotay was willing to participate in my experimentations off the holodeck. I find that I enjoy 'dating'."
The Admiral gave a regretful little twist of a smile and stepped forward, squeezing Seven's upper arm gently with her free hand, thumb grazing an affectionate reacquaintance over the starburst implant under her biosuit there, "I know, Seven. I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you; so is she, for that matter. Actually, you really ought to be having this discussion with her instead of wasting your time with a bitter old fossil." This last was delivered with a wry twist of self-deprecation that Seven recognized as characteristic of this woman and let it go.
The rest of the Admiral's remark raised Seven's brow and implant at once, "You do not wish to continue this conversation?" Things had been progressing so well, she thought, and Seven wasn't certain at all that she was ready to face the Captain just yet.
Janeway shook her silvery head with a gentle chuckle. This woman was a treasure. How in the world she'd managed not to see that for so long… "On the contrary, this has actually been fairly cathartic for me. It's just that you're not going to find any resolution to those 'emotional needs' here." Her eyes sobered as she recommended to Seven with all seriousness, "You and your Captain have a lot to talk about."
Seven tilted her head, brows lowering with relief that she was not, in fact, being booted out that very moment to go and have such a talk with the Captain. That conversation was going to require what the Captain called 'a running start'. "Very well. I will 'think on it'," she capitulated graciously.
That seemed to satisfy the Admiral. She nodded, giving Seven's arm one more little squeeze and an affectionate rub before releasing it, "That's all I can ask."
Admiral Janeway went to move past Seven then, aimed generally toward the replicator beyond her and probably in search of a fresh cup of coffee. The Admiral, however, wasn't the only one who had things she needed to say in this conversation. Reaching out as the older woman drew level with her shoulder, Seven caught Janeway's hand with her own, causing her progress to halt and curious slate blue eyes to swing back around in search of her own. It was Seven's turn now to take a steadying breath, reassured by the flip of her heart in her chest and the fluttering sensation in her belly that this was right, "Admiral, I wanted to tell you… that it seems obvious to me from what 'your Seven' said in that recording that she would also have ceased to function with grief had it been you who had died in her place." Pulling gently on the Admiral's captured hand, she faced the smaller woman squarely, reaching up with a hand that some detached part of her brain recognized was trembling to cup the Admiral's face, "I feel I can safely say on her behalf that had she known the extent of your feelings, Chakotay would never have held any attraction for her."
Janeway froze at Seven's touch, eyes rounding in startlement as she realized what the younger woman wanted. She didn't deserve this. In spite of herself though, she leaned her face into Seven's palm, after all this time lacking the will to pull away. There didn't seem to be much meaning to perpetuating self-denial at this point. Still, she had to say the right thing for Seven's sake, even if it came out a husky whisper, "Seven, please don't.'
Undeterred, Seven took in her own feelings, the look on the soft, upturned face before her, and the physical responses being reported to her through her sensor-laden fingertips. The Admiral loved her, and she was now reasonably certain that what she had felt for most of the time she had known either version of this woman was love as well. Sliding her fingers into silky silver hair, she took another half-step forward, bringing her into grazing contact with the Admiral's body. "You are still Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway, and you have upended time itself to give the Captain and myself a second chance," she murmured, close enough to smell soap and shampoo, coffee and a tinge of whisky. The round blue eyes staring up at her went warm and dilated all at once. It was all Seven needed to see. "Allow me this," she coaxed, trying out tenderness in her voice for the first time, "I have no words to adequately express gratitude for such a sacrifice."
Unable to do or say anything else, Admiral Janeway gave herself over to the moment, lived and loved and anticipated a lifetime in the space of heartbeats. "Oh, Seven," she whispered. Her eyes slid shut as Seven's lips brushed and then claimed her own, any doubts she might have ever had about her purpose here evaporating like morning mist, and Seven of Nine was her sunrise.