"Drive safely." (C/7)

(Author's Note: This story takes place after "Endgame" and includes references to Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Prodigy.)

/

"I need to tell you something," said Seven. "I'm leaving."

She held her breath as she waited for Chakotay's reaction. Even after a year together, she found him difficult to read sometimes. As they sat together on the balcony of her San Francisco apartment, drinking tea, his face half in shadow under the night sky, he looked more remote than ever.

It hurt just as much to say the words as she had expected. She knew there was nothing he could say to change her mind, but was he even going to try?

"What do you mean?" he asked, in a voice as quiet and even as hers.

"I'm resigning my position at the Academy. I received a distress call, and I need to answer it."

She handed him her padd, with the screen still open to the message from Director Hugh of the Borg Reclamation Project, which had been haunting her for days. He and his community of xB's had reached out to her with offers of support soon after Voyager's arrival became public; she corresponded with him regularly and had met him in person once or twice. He was a thoughtful, compassionate man - amazingly so, considering what he'd been through - and she had nothing but respect for the work he was doing. The idea of anyone threatening that work was unacceptable.

"I hate to ask this, Ms. Seven, considering the potential danger," he had written, "But I fear for the lives of my patients and colleagues, and I do not know where else to turn. If we xB's do not stand by each other, who will?"

As Chakotay read the message, his tattooed forehead creased into lines of revulsion.

"You think it's true?" he asked. "That someone's out there … harvesting Borg implants?"

"The Director couldn't confirm it, but he knows that ex-Borg have gone missing and their implants turned up on the black market. Someone is hunting us. He needs help."

"Does Starfleet Command know about this?"

"Keep reading."

Chakotay did. When he shook his head in disbelief and disappointment, Seven knew he'd reached the part where Hugh described Starfleet's refusal to help. They'd told him they couldn't spare the resources away from the Romulan evacuation effort. "I cannot blame them," Hugh had written. "The needs of the many, as Ambassador Spock would say." Seven suspected that the people in charge simply didn't care. Helping one enemy was already a lot to ask; helping another one, with an even worse record than the Romulans, was too much.

"You're right, they do need help … but it doesn't have to be you, Seven," said Chakotay gently, giving the padd back to her and covering her cybernetic hand with his. "You're not responsible for saving everyone in the galaxy, you know."

She raised an eyebrow at him. This from the man who had once resigned his commission and become an outlaw to avenge the destruction of his homeworld?

"Besides, you know Admiral Janeway wouldn't approve of you flying off into the Neutral Zone like this."

This was the wrong course to take with Seven, and he ought to know that by now. "If she doesn't, she should. She herself taught me never to ignore a call for help."

"You really are so much like her," said Chakotay, his dimples showing in an affectionate smile.

Seven, who had extremely mixed feelings about such a compliment, looked away. She hadn't found out about his past feelings for their former captain until they were already a couple. She trusted him when he'd assured her those feelings were in the past, but she hadn't forgotten it all the same.

"On second thought," her partner added with a quiet sigh, "Maybe it's for the best, after all. I've been meaning to tell you something too. I've been promoted to Captain. They're giving me command of the Protostar."

"Congratulations," said Seven automatically, and part of her really meant it. The transwarp prototype, though many of the details were classified, was a symbol of much needed hope. B'Elanna was on the design team and proud of it. If the prototype proved successful, Starfleet was hoping to build bigger transwarp ships that would carry the Romulan refugees faster than warp-drive vessels could.

"Its first mission will be going to the Delta Quadrant."

"What?"

Seven clung to the arms of her seat, feeling as if the floor had suddenly dropped from under her. It was hypocritical, she knew, but when she had anticipated leaving for the Neutral Zone to help Hugh track down his missing colleagues, she had always imagined Chakotay somewhere safe, either here on Earth or with his family on Dorvan V. It might be foolish, but she had still hoped that perhaps, once the mystery had been solved, she could come back to him.

But not if he was seventy thousand lightyears away, facing Hirogen and Vidiians and whatever remained of the Borg.

"I know it's a risk," he said, in that deliberately soothing voice he used to debate with Janeway in the briefing room, "But you know as well as I do how much unfinished business Voyager left out there. Besides, we're better prepared this time. The slipstream drive passed every test with flying colors. There's even a shuttle replicator," he added with a wry grin. "That was B'Elanna's idea."

Not even their old Voyager inside joke about Chakotay's habit of crashing shuttles could make her feel better. "It is too dangerous."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"You have served enough. You deserve a life of your own."

"One might say the same about you."

She disagreed, but that argument was futile. "They could have chosen anyone. Why you?"

"I'm the logical choice, you know that. Besides … Kathryn asked me to."

"Did she?"

"You remember the ETH project?"

"Yes." She remembered the Doctor's enthusiastic messages about helping Lewis Zimmerman with his latest project, a hologram based on Kathryn Janeway designed to train Starfleet cadets. It sounded peculiar, like many of Zimmerman's ideas, but promising. If the Admiral's gift of mentorship was indeed transferable, the cadets would be fortunate. "The Protostar will have one, correct?"

"That's right. It's another prototype system they want me and my crew to test. Kathryn suggested me as captain to her fellow admirals because she wants to make sure Instructor Janeway will be treated as a member of the crew."

Seven could understand that. After their experiences with the Doctor and his struggle to be recognized as a person, it made sense to give the next generation a better start. She could imagine Chakotay being kind to the Janeway hologram, combining the respect he had for the Admiral with the care he used to show the junior crew. He would debate philosophy with her, lend her books and tell her stories. She would be safe with him, or as safe as anyone in the Delta Quadrant could be.

Only why, Seven wondered, did that idea hurt so much?

"When will you be leaving?"

"The details aren't final yet, but soon."

"Will I ever see you again?"

Her voice cracked and her eyes stung, but Chakotay was dry-eyed even as he stood up and gathered her into his arms. He stroked her back so gently, it only made her feel like crying even more.

"Seven, love, you know I can't promise that," he murmured into her ear. "But whatever happens, I want you to know that I will always cherish our time together. If this isn't where we need to be, we shouldn't hold each other back."

She agreed with him, of course she did. It was the right thing for him to say, so why did it feel so wrong?

In that moment, their twenty-year age gap felt like a distance as vast as the one between the quadrants. He had so much more experience when it came to relationships, including how to end them, but if Axum had been her first love in Unimatrix Zero, Chakotay was her first in the real world. All her firsts were with him: her first kiss with an armful of flowers crushed between them. Her first time sharing a bed with all its intimacies, from making love to learning how to share a blanket. The first time she said I love you and he answered, holding her cybernetic hand as if everything about her was beautiful to him.

And now her first breakup. She'd found the idiom overdramatic the first time she'd heard it, but now she understood. Something inside her had just smashed like a broken sculpture in her foster-children's pottery lessons. She could glue it back together, but it would never be the same.

Come with me. The words were on the tip of her tongue. But she couldn't ask him to turn down the captaincy of the Protostar even if he'd accept.

Take me with you. But could she live with herself if she turned her back on the xB's, her Collective? Even if Chakotay were to ask?

A year ago, when she had been the one having doubts about their relationship, he'd fought for her, caught her by the arm and assured her it was worth it, promised her they'd stay within transporter range. Today, he wiped her tears away with his thumbs and let her go.

"Shall I stay the night," he asked, "Or would you rather … ?"

"Go." It came out more harshly than she meant it, so she added: "Please."

She would have to get used to being alone in her bed when she wasn't regenerating. The sooner she started, the better.

He nodded, slid the balcony door open and headed back into the apartment. Following behind him to recycle their empty teacups, she saw him disappear into the 'fresher and come back with his hygiene kit. The small black bag with its Starfleet logo, she realized, was the only thing he kept at her apartment. They'd never spoken of moving in together. She'd always assumed it was just too early, but had he known all along it would never happen?

Catching sight of the Ventu blanket draped over her sofa, she gathered it up and began folding it into a square.

"Seven, no. Please keep it." He held up his free hand to refuse, and for the first time, something like hurt showed in his face. "It was a gift."

She replaced the folded blanket on its cushion, already knowing that she was going to clean it - and everything else in this place - until it stopped smelling like him.

"Drive safely."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Once again, it wasn't funny anymore.

"Let me know when you ship out, and … " If you come back. "When you come back."

"I will, and you do the same."

He kissed her one last time, and knowing it was their last one gave it a passion she hadn't felt since their earliest days. He all but crushed her against him; his lips tasted of salt. Perhaps she wasn't the only one who had shed tears tonight after all.

She watched him walk out the door, then drifted to the window that faced the street. Her internal chronometer ticked off the seconds until she watched him step outside, unlock the hoverbike he had parked across the street, put on his helmet, and drive away.