Acclimation

Two weeks passed and Annika found herself, if not exactly remembering, falling into a routine that felt comfortable and somewhat familiar. She awoke each morning from her bed, requesting clothes from the replicator. On the first morning, she had been surprised at the jumpsuit, a soft blue. She requested red instead but did not like the skintight feel, her implants too visible and making her uncomfortable as she studied herself in the mirror, deciding if she should have her hair up or down. She felt her look severe with it up, but down, she felt would get in the way. She had a moment of recalling her hair in high clips along her temples as a little girl, both pleased and saddened by the isolated memory. Finally, she pulled her hair back in a clip against her neck, and asked for gray pants and a pale top.

The combination was complimented by Icheb when she arrived in Astrometrics, guided there by the ship's computer. "You chose something different today."

"I am more comfortable," she told him. And they worked together in companionable silence for several hours until he announced their shift was over.

This pattern went along until the sixth day. At the end of their shift, Icheb presented her with a PADD. "What is this?" she asked

"The weekly department report. It is due to the captain."

"Oh." Annika's stomach felt odd at the thought of Captain Janeway, immediately picturing the compact woman in her uniform, whom she had seen headed for the bridge turbolift several mornings as she took the aft one to Astrometrics. They said nothing, but occasionally she would notice the auburn-haired woman glance toward her. Each time left a pleasant tingle in Annika's stomach.

"You should deliver it," Annika said after a cursory scan. "The information is accurate."

"No. That's your job. You're head of Astrometrics."

"I am?" Annika frowned. "But I have been following your lead."

"And I learned it from you," the young man said with a smile.

"So I should take this to the captain?"

"Yeah, conference room. On the bridge."

So Annika had made her way to the turbolift. "Bridge." Once on the bridge, she nodded at Tuvok. "I have a report for the captain."

"You will find the captain in her Ready Room."

"Thank you." He dipped his head and returned to monitoring his station.

Annika looked around the bridge recognizing the young officer Harry Kim at the science station, and Tom Paris at the helm and Commander Chakotay, Voyager's first officer, in the central chair. Finally, she located a door on the far side of the bridge and walked through to it, pressing the chime under the identification panel.

"Come in." The captain's voice sent a shiver down Annika's spine. She gripped the PADD with the Astrometrics report more firmly and stepped into the sensor, causing the doors to open.

"Captain Janeway." She looked around the space, until she found Voyager's commanding officer on a couch on the lower portion of the deck, surrounded by PADDs on the couch, table, and a nearby chair. "I have the Astrometrics report."

Janeway's eyes were very blue, Annika noted as they settled upon her. "Thank you, Annika." She held out her hand and Annika placed the PADD in it.

Unconsciously she stepped back and tucked her hands together behind her back. "I am not certain it has everything you require, but Icheb did state that he prepared it for me to bring."

Janeway smiled and Annika felt comforted by her warm gaze. The woman set the PADD among others and motioned to Annika to sit so she did. "How are you feeling?"

"I am both unsettled and pleased by how much I remember about my tasks," Annika said. "If I do not think too much, it comes easily. But if I try to remember, it eludes me."

"I'm sorry," Janeway said. Her hand bridged the space between them, briefly touching Annika's knee.

Annika resisted looking down, but her body was keenly aware of the contact and her heart raced. She glanced up to find a surprising mix of gray and blue in the captain's eyes. "It is the end of my duty shift," she said, though she had no idea why the captain should find that remarkable. In any case the captain said nothing. Quickly, to cover her unease, Annika said, "I should be going."

"Have a good evening…Annika." She noticed the way the captain paused before her name.

She decided it was an indicator she should reply in kind. First names meant that people were close. "I will…Kathryn."

The woman's pupils widened briefly then she blinked and a blush appeared on her cheeks. "Right."

Annika dissected the entire interaction over her meal in the mess hall that evening, unsettled by the cacophony of the crew, before retiring to her quarters to rest before her shift the next day.

On the end of her seventh day working with Icheb, Annika decided she was not interested in facing the mess hall alone. "Dinner?" she asked Icheb.

"I am having dinner with Naomi tonight," he said, his demeanor and tone apologetic.

"Then I shall not intrude," she replied, assuming the female name meant that the young man had a date.

"Naomi might like you joining us, but she doesn't know about your memory loss."

"You believe I could do or say something to hurt her."

"No," Icheb said, with a shake of his head. "I'm more concerned she might say something that would hurt you."

The kindness in his eyes made Annika smile. She and Icheb parted at a junction in the corridor and she proceeded on her own to the mess hall.

When she entered, she was yet again bombarded by noise and activity that made her heart race. Making a quick decision, she left quickly. Her quarters were suddenly more appealing than consuming her evening meal with all those eyes upon her.

Just as Annika activated the door to her quarters, the turbolift nearby opened and Captain Janeway stepped out. Annika's gaze swept the woman head to foot and she felt her heartbeat pick up. Her cheeks were warm and her fingers tingled as though she wanted to reach out, recalling the gentleness of Janeway's touch. She wanted it again.
"Captain Janeway," she called.

The woman stopped walking. "Annika?"

"Are you…would you like to join me for dinner?"


The blonde's blue eyes captivated Kathryn, freezing her in the act of turning to leave.

She hesitated, not sure how to answer.

Annika took a step inside her quarters, but not far enough for the doors to close. "I am correct in that it is customary for humans who are friends to share a meal and drinks?"

"Yes, that is something friends do."

"Then please"—Annika gestured—"come inside. I will replicate something for us. We can talk as the friends we are."

Kathryn wanted to say they weren't friends, remembering all too clearly telling the other woman that being captain meant she couldn't always be a friend. But the gaze that searched hers was so captivatingly open, she loathed the idea of upsetting her.

"Annika." Kathryn was surprised how easy it was becoming to use the young woman's given name. She really didn't look or act like Seven, though she still had the same incisive and sharp mind. "All right," she conceded. "One drink."

Annika's lips turned up in a smile the likes Kathryn had never seen on the other woman's face. My god, she is beautiful.

"Thank you." Annika strode ahead of Kathryn into the space and quickly moved to the replicator. "Two glasses of white wine, Loire Valley," she directed the replicator.

Kathryn found a white wine pressed into her hands, then Annika directed her to a pair of deep red upholstered chairs set in the corner with a small shared table between them. These had not been present when Janeway had left the quarters several days ago. She's personalized, Kathryn thought. Her mind cast back to an innocuous statement from their shared past: "Red. The girl you spoke of. Her favorite color is red."

"Cozy," she complimented now, feeling a surprising level of relaxation potential in the space. The chairs had a delightful view of the starfield through the transparencies, and there were abstract sculptures on several tabletops. "You've decorated a bit, I see."

"Do you like it?" Annika asked. She tipped her glass toward Kathryn's, causing the rims to clink. "It was instinctive to create a space for intimate conversation."

Annika fell silent then and lifted her gaze from her glass. Her expression, Kathryn noted, was soft and earnest. She swallowed a sip of wine, mostly to wait and watch Annika, her stomach pleasantly warm.

"You are the first I wanted to have such a conversation with."

Eyes widening, Kathryn carefully swallowed the sip she had already taken into her mouth. "Intimate conversation?" she repeated, hearing the surprise in her own tone. She pursed her lips and forced herself to say nothing more.

Annika had apparently been galvanized into speech, however, once her request was aired. "Yes," she said. "It has become clear over the course of our interactions that I have romantic feelings toward you." Annika hesitated. "And I am 84 percent certain you return them." She cocked her head and Kathryn bit her lip at the endearing picture the younger woman unknowingly presented, puzzling through her quandary. "We obviously had some sort of relationship before my accident. Though I have forgotten the exact details of how it began or how it is at the moment, I do still feel strong emotion toward you."

Kathryn felt more and more like she was suffering decompression sickness, lightheaded as her stomach twisted and somersaulted. "You...emotion...relationship." She stumbled over the words and then seized on the oddly specific detail. "You are 84 percent certain?"

Annika sipped on her wine, tilted her head and Kathryn was studied again for a long silent moment; long enough to feel self-conscious and drop her eyes. She looked instead at her fingers slipping through the precipitation on the side of her glass. She forced herself to lift the glass to her lips to take a fortifying sip.

"Yes, I am now 89 percent certain. You are reluctant to continue as we were, but there is no denying you are experiencing arousal at this moment. Your body temperature has elevated zero-point-seven degrees."

Annika reached out and Kathryn was shocked when the woman's hand clasped hers, lifting it from her knee. "I am also experiencing arousal in your presence. As the words are clamoring in my head right now, I must have told you many times how striking I find your appearance… Kathryn."

"Annika, I-"

Annika interrupted Kathryn's uncertainty. "That is strange." Annika tilted her head as if accessing her ocular implant to examine something, but instead she shook her head, clearly not getting any input from it. "At the same time I felt compelled to call you by your first name, it felt awkward. However, lovers are supposed to be on a first-name basis."

Lovers? She thinks we're lovers. Fingers flexing as hopefully her only indicator of surprise, Kathryn set her wine glass aside for fear she would drop it. "We–you and I–agree we are friends. But, it's..."

Kathryn's voice trailed off as Annika looked down, which caused her to look down as well. Unconsciously she has grasped both of the young woman's hands in her own. Her fingers moved over Annika's right hand, the one with the Borg mesh, the motion slowing, lingering, indulgent.

Desire–something she had felt so infrequently during the last seven years she could have easily been classified a eunuch–swamped her stomach. The young woman had not been wrong about Kathryn's arousal.

But Annika sat before her, amnesiac, aware of her history but distantly, clinically, objectively. She and Tuvok had, by unspoken accord, mentioned only the forward steps the young woman had made: becoming less dependent on the alcoves, eating regular food, making friends, being a valued contributor to the crew's mission to return to the Alpha quadrant. They had mentioned none of the incidents which had threatened Seven's mind and body since she had been severed from the Collective. None of the rages. None of the threats. None of the overloads or paranoid episodes.

Kathryn's memory flew back to when the defective Vinculum had tortured Seven with all her past assimilations. She'd been so helpless, having to leave it to Tuvok to use a mind-meld and rescue Seven from the nightmare entrapment. When Seven had sat up in sickbay weakened, but with her mental health restored, her gaze had held strong resolve. Resolution born of growth and recognition of the burden she accepted she would always carry.

But she had also then tried to stand, telling her captain, "I will be where you need me to be."

That was the woman Kathryn had come to so deeply care about. She deeply admired Seven. She admired her inner strength. And how she had called upon it so consistently so that her shoulders did not bow under her pain. She'd seen Seven smile. She'd seen her pleased. She'd seen her grow.

Kathryn drew in a sudden breath in at the moment of her unavoidable realization: I love Seven of Nine.

The blue eyes shining at her across their clasped hands revealed such an unburdened soul. The lack of memory of her experiences had rendered Seven truly innocent. She may be a woman, but she had the unburdened lightness of youth, carrying hopes and dreams untouched by pain. This woman was Annika, not Seven.

I can't harm her, Kathryn lamented. As much as she loved Seven, she could not fill in the entire truth and turn Annika back into Seven. Slowly she withdrew her hands and sat back. Unable to tear her eyes away from Annika's openly curious and soft expression, Kathryn nevertheless grasped the thick arms of the chair and pushed herself to stand.

"I should be going," she said, hearing her own voice flat and weighted with pain.

Annika stood quickly, lithely, her body stopping mere inches from Kathryn's. Warm breaths touched her face. Blue as a spring sky, Annika's gaze held hers. Kathryn lifted her chin to swallow down the lump in her throat.

Fingers caressed her throat, raising tingles. So soft, so tender, that Kathryn's eyes burned with tears she didn't want to shed.

"I don't understand," Annika said, "but I want you to know that I am here. I will always be here. For you."

Warm, soft and full lips covered Kathryn's in the next moment. Annika's fingertips caressed the underside of Kathryn's jaw, lifting her into the kiss.

"I love you, Kathryn Janeway."

The full-lipped smile was too light, the gaze too innocent. Kathryn groaned and lightly grasped Annika's fingers, removing them from her skin. "Let's take it one day at a time, all right?"

Annika tilted her head to the side and studied Kathryn intensely. The way her eyes darted, displaying something very close to the incisive processing so familiar from Seven, made Kathryn sip in a breath and hold it. What would she say?

Kathryn started to open her mouth though she still had no idea exactly what to say.

Squeezing Kathryn's fingers, Annika spoke uncharacteristically quickly. "Have dinner with me. Tomorrow? After our duty shifts."

Annika's fingers caressed Kathryn's and she was torn between watching the motion and watching her face. A dimple slowly formed in Annika's left cheek. Abruptly she said, "That is not a no." Her tone was dry, again, almost reminiscent of Seven.

Again, Kathryn opened her mouth.

Annika added, "As long as there is nothing endangering the ship." She paused. "I recognize duty is important to you."

Kathryn shut her mouth then opened it again. When Annika's head started tilting to the other side, she made a lightly chastising grip of her own on their joined fingers. "No, let me speak."

With some surprise, a chuckle was bubbling to life in Kathryn's chest, tickling her throat. She was far from exasperated. She was mystified and delighted to hear, see, and feel such earnestness from the other woman. At the sound, Annika's smile beamed, but she did release Kathryn's hands and take a step back.

"Thank you. Now." Kathryn tugged at her uniform and straightened her shoulders. "I accept your invitation." She lifted a finger to hold Annika silent. "On the condition that Voyager is not in the middle of any muddles."

"I will be especially precise in my scans," Annika assured.

"I'm sure you will." Kathryn then let the chuckle fully burst free. "I think I will enjoy getting to know you, Annika Hansen."