Connection
"What is the purpose of our being here?" Annika asked. Her gaze followed Kathryn walking past a disarrayed table, covered with cloths and clay, and half-unrolled parchments. Occasionally she noticed the woman's fingers would drift across a half-finished figure, or a drawing and smile.
"I've always seen this studio as a place that enables discovery," Kathryn replied, turning the smile on her.
Moving forward toward that smile, caught by the warm blue in Kathryn's gaze, Annika now looked around more eagerly. Easels stood amid blank canvases and held half-finished works of art, the pallets of paints, uniquely blended for each, sat on small stools in front.
"I usually work from models, but I thought, perhaps, you might enjoy something different. I noticed many of the art you replicated for your quarters is abstract."
"I see things in my dreams," Annika said.
The expression that crossed Kathryn's face at her words set off a flutter in Annika's stomach.
"You are surprised."
"I...didn't...I suppose I didn't...Of course you dream." Kathryn shook her head. "I'm sorry."
"Did you not know me to dream before?"
"You...had visions," Kathryn admitted. "Sometimes we could trace them to something that had happened to you. Other times…"
She looked away from Annika and, compelled by the connection she felt they had been building, Annika followed her gaze to a boxy structure of dark wood–Black Oak, her brain quantified–that had fabric spread across panels that stretched two meters out from the center. "I had visions of a flying machine?"
"Rather what it resembled," Kathryn explained. Annika looked away from the primitive machine to see Kathryn had turned and now stood beside her, as if they were to step forward together, shoulder to shoulder. It felt...supportive. Then her right hand touched Annika's arm just above the elbow and gave a slight squeeze. "You thought it looked like a raven. It was one of the first times you remembered your parents' ship."
When Kathryn turned her face away from the machine, meeting Annika's eyes once more, her eyes were shining slightly. "You are upset," Annika observed.
"I was scared for you."
Annika cupped her hand over Kathryn's on her arm. "I'm fine now."
"You don't seem to be having a bad reaction to the revelation now," Kathryn said.
Shrugging, Annika said, "I remember my parents and the ship." She looked at the drawings scattered nearby. "Not schematics. I remember the red blanket on my bed and the stuffed doll that sat on my pillow. I remember learning to read using a PADD my mother programmed with my academic lessons. I built models of different ships, played with them…" She trailed off with an embarrassed laugh, recalling a particular moment suddenly very vividly. "One time I played with Daddy's model of a Borg cube, flying it around the room. He took it away and told me to go to bed."
Kathryn's eyes sparkled. A tear slipped off her lashes, but she didn't separate their hands to wipe it away, so it rolled down her cheek. As if she was not directing it, Annika watched her free left hand, the one with Borg mesh down the fingers, rise and brush it from the soft skin near Kathryn's mouth.
The corners of Kathryn's mouth tipped higher. "I like models too," she said. "I built one of Master Leonardo's flying machines with him and we flew it together."
Annika's heart swelled. "What should we build today?"
Kathryn could not remember another time spent in the holodeck having quite as much fun as that three hours with Annika. They decided to build the bird-like plane, working with only what they could find in the studio, from cannibalizing the furniture for the frame to gluing and laying parchments together over the wingspan.
They worked from Leonardo's drawings with Annika and Kathryn both bringing their knowledge of mathematics and physics to bear on developing out the model to a scale large enough and yet still sturdy enough to carry them both.
Each scaled up element was first tested on a model they put together first.
They had argued over small things, whether the angle seemingly off too many degrees would be a benefit or a hazard to their ultimate goal. But the arguments were comfortable, without acrimony. The kind of intellectual exercise that stimulated the scientist inside Kathryn, the experimenter, the wonderer, the investigator, and the explorer. Before she'd been a captain, she'd been all those things. She'd had moments since accepting the captaincy of Voyager: a theoretical discussion with B'Elanna, even wandering the laboratories or listening to the xenobiologists and cultural historians postulate planetary evolutionary models for places they'd gotten to study for a mere handful of days. When the model flew in the wind tunnel Annika constructed to test it, Kathryn turned to Annika feeling the same joy.
"You did it!" She smiled and hugged Annika spontaneously. And then it was as if time slowed, perhaps even stopped. In the taller woman's arms, feeling her heartbeat and hearing it under her ear, Kathryn squeezed lightly.
Annika squeezed her back. "We did it," she replied, voice so expressively joyous and light that Kathryn leaned back to look up, intending to commit the expression to memory.
She had only a moment to register the pure blue of Annika's eyes before the younger woman closed the gap between their faces, closed her eyes and pressed her lips to Kathryn's. The contact was so soft, so gentle, so warm that Kathryn could only yield. Her arms lifted under Annika's and she bent her elbows to press higher against Annika's back in a bid to hold her closer. Annika's arms lifted until her fingers slipped into Kathryn's hair, cradling the back of her head and keeping their mouths aligned as the kiss continued.
Heart hammering in her chest, Kathryn was breathless quickly even as her body clamored to stay right where she was. She felt a sharp disappointment when she had to pull away. She put a hand to her chest to focus and draw breath only to feel Annika's right hand cupping her chin. "I-I can't," she said.
The fingers dropped away and Kathryn silently lamented the lost touch. "I only wish to say the program has closed down."
The yellow lined black grid of the bare holodeck surrounded them. "Oh. Our time is up," she said unnecessarily, but the words were the only ones that she was able to form. Annika's eyes, still the purest blue, held her in the memory of the woman's arms around her, warm and happy.
"Will we be able to return?" Annika asked.
Kathryn looked down, trying to gather herself before answering. When she looked up, she could only find one other word. "Yes."
"I look forward to our next off-duty shift."
She couldn't have agreed more.
Annika lay in bed that evening after Kathryn had walked with her to her quarters, hands tucked over her stomach as though that action might calm the fluttering within that surged with each replay of her holodeck time with the auburn-haired woman.
There had been something familiar and yet new about the way that the two of them worked together building the da Vinci machine. Annika could easily believe that she had worked on many projects with Captain Kathryn Janeway during the last two years.
Once they'd gotten down to the problem-solving, and her uncertain reality outside the holodeck disappeared, Annika found her thoughts ordering quickly. Kathryn had told her they had never done this sort of time in the holodeck together before, but it was almost as effortless as her work in Astrometrics, as though she had done this countless times before. She had laid out da Vinci's drawings, assessed angles and dimensions, and run calculations in her head. Beside her, Kathryn had worked on another part of the device and they'd both agreed to shift to test something on the model first. It hadn't been even a question before it was answered. When they had disagreed...
Even their arguing had felt...comfortable, as if they did it often. It was not personal, but intellectual, invigorating, and not diminishing.
Her memory of arguments, she supposed, had been shaped by her parents. She remembered they would argue in sharp voices late at night when they thought Annika was sleeping. But her arguments with Kathryn had been more like the other times, when she'd witness her parents doing research, in disagreement over which method would be better suited to whatever they were currently trying to determine.
This all made her even more certain that she and Kathryn had been intimate prior to her injury. Rolling onto her side, she studied the bulkhead that separated her quarters from the captain's quarters. She touched her lips in memory of the kiss she had initiated. The other woman had not initially stopped it. But the halted "I can't," when they parted to catch their breath still bothered Annika.
"Why can't you, Kathryn?" she whispered into the darkness.
Kathryn pressed the chime outside Tuvok's quarters. When the doors parted, she found him standing there in off-duty clothes, a caftan with Vulcan symbols woven into the edges, which revealed he had been meditating. "I'm sorry to interrupt your meditation," she apologized immediately.
"You do not need to apologize," he said. "Since you did not hail me, I presume you wish your visit to be private." He stepped back and gestured into his cabin. "Please, come in."
Following his lead, Kathryn sat down on a couch. She watched him for a moment as he moved to the transparency where she noted a small lamp cradled a flickering flame. Thinking he would blow it out, she was surprised when he instead brought it over to the couch with him and set it on the low table in front of her before sitting on a small padded bench on the other side. "You think I need your counsel?"
"Is that not why you are here?"
"You are my oldest friend aboard this ship, Tuvok. It's not like I can call my sister."
"I'm honored to be considered your outlet for 'girl talk'."
His dry tone made Kathryn chuckle. "I don't know that it's 'girl talk', but it's certainly not ship's business."
"Hence why you called upon our friendship and are not bringing this matter to the Commander."
"Well," she said, voice filled with frankness she knew he'd understand. "You've been inside her head and he hasn't."
"Inside her head? Ah, you are referring to the mind melds I have performed with Seven." He sat back. "You wish to discuss Annika Hansen."
"I took her to the holodeck after dinner tonight."
"The activity was obviously not upsetting. There was no call to security."
"Annika's fine. Quite happy actually. Unfortunately, I think the one this little activity upset is me." She knew her uncertainty was showing; her fingers were drumming the cushion beside her and she swallowed down the lump in her throat several times.
Tuvok's expression didn't change. He nodded. "Tell me what happened."
So she did. Beginning with the moment she decided to take Seven to the holodeck. "I thought if we went somewhere that had triggered memories before, it would...I'd be better prepared, after all." She shook her head. "But she wasn't hurting in those memories, Tuvok. She remembered toys, and games...and red," she paused. "Red blankets. She used to build models and play with them."
"An idyllic childhood for a human," he said.
"When she was first on the ship, her memories were lost. But now she has these and nothing else. She's so happy not remembering she was assimilated."
"But you can't forget it."
Kathryn put her face in her hands and felt the tears leaking against her palms. She inhaled, hearing herself sniffle. "God." She brushed at her eyes. She fought forward to tell the joy she'd witnessed. "Annika and I started building one of da Vinci's flying machines. She was brilliant. We argued—I don't think it's possible not to with her and I—but it was so...incredible. We would come to an accord, alter the plans, put the adjustments to the test…"
"Was the model a success?" Tuvok asked.
Kathryn realized she had been silent, her eyes closed, remembering Annika's face. She opened them. "Yes." She dropped her gaze. "The...We hugged." She exhaled and sighed, still feeling the lightness that had engulfed her even as she felt the consequences of her actions weighing heavily. "And then...then, we kissed."
Tuvok's expression hadn't change when she looked up once again. Fingers twisting in her lap, Kathryn bit her lip waiting for him to say something.
Finally, he said, "How quickly did you run from the holodeck?"
Kathryn filled with pain and relief and absurdly laughter bubbled up from her chest. "I didn't run. The holodeck program expired and I took her...back to her quarters." The laughter died and she stared at him.
In the long silence that followed her words, Kathryn's gaze fell from Tuvok's unchanging expression to the flickering flame of the meditation lamp. The red and yellow undulated around the wick and she found her breathing slowing.
"Say something," she said.
"I am uncertain what you wish me to say," he said. "You have feelings for her."
"I can't."
Tuvok replied, "You and I removed Annika Hansen from any chain of command."
Kathryn caught the slight emphasis on the name. "Yes, I know she's a civilian now for all intents and purposes. But she's not…" She's not Seven.
"Do you love Annika?" he asked.
Kathryn inhaled and exhaled. Then she whispered, "I think I could."
"What is holding you back?"
"When she gets her memories back, she...she will know we weren't involved. What happens then?"
"What happens then?" he reflected her question right back at her.
Staring at the flickering, unpredictable flame, Kathryn's shoulders sagged. "I don't know."
