"What do you want to watch?" (Seven & Paris-Torres Family)
Author's Note: This story takes place shortly after "Endgame".
/
"Hey, Seven," said Tom, answering the door with baby Miral in the crook of his arm. "Nice of you to drop by. What's up?"
"Hey, Tom," said Seven, poker-faced. "What's up?"
That was his first clue that something different was going on. The second clue was her outfit. Underneath her coat and boots, she wore a dark blue cable-knit sweater and slacks that managed to look both elegant and cozy. Her hair was down and ruffled by the wind. If not for her ocular implant, he could have sworn he was looking at an alternate-universe Annika Hansen who had never been assimilated in her life.
Behind him in the living room, he heard the click of B'Elanna closing her computer screen, as if she was as curious about this as he was.
"Hit the replicator, huh?" he said to Seven. "Looks nice."
"Thank you. I mean … Cheers? Ta? No, wrong dialect for this city."
"Okay, now you're being weird. Either you're an impostor pretending to be Seven of Nine and doing a really bad job, or something else is going on. What is it?"
Seven surprised him still more by blushing furiously. "This was a mistake," she snapped, turning to leave.
"C'mon, Seven, he's joking." B'Elanna nudged Tom lightly out of the way to catch a retreating Seven by the coat sleeve. "He doesn't mean anything by it, you know that. Now, what's wrong? We won't make fun of you," with a warning look at Tom, who held up his free hand in an apologetic shrug and backed away to let Seven in.
Privately, he thought that if she really was an impostor, they would unmask her more easily if they kept her around, but he was almost positive that only the real Seven would be this skittish.
She sighed, pushed her hair out of her face - evidently she wasn't used to wearing it down yet - and looked at the couple with both gratitude and resignation.
"I require … I need your help," she said. "I want to learn how to speak more colloquially."
That explained the Hey, at least, thought Tom. It still didn't explain why.
"What's wrong with the way you talk now?" asked B'Elanna, echoing his thoughts.
"I sound like a drone."
"That didn't bother you for four years, why now?"
Seven perched awkwardly on the edge of the armchair closest to the door, as if still prepared to bolt. She clasped her hands in front of her and kept her eyes on the fuzzy carpet as she spoke.
"I am finding it … difficult … to adapt to life on Earth. I have been informed on multiple occasions that the way I present myself is offensive. I was walking past a church when someone leaving it told me my biosuit was … indecent." She tugged on the sleeves of her thick sweater until they covered her hands. "And at my debriefing, I overheard one of the officers say to another: "How can we trust that she's really severed from the Collective? Every word out of her mouth sounds like it was programmed by the Borg Queen.""
Tom winced internally as he remembered all the times he and B'Elanna used to refer to Seven as the Borg Queen behind her back. The way she repeated that anonymous officer's words verbatim made it all too clear how much they must have hurt her. An eidetic memory must be a curse sometimes.
"Bunch of petaQs," B'Elanna growled. "You don't need to change one damn thing about yourself, okay? Not for people like that."
"She's right. You really don't have to."
Tom glowed with pride in his wife for saying that, especially since he knew she was speaking from hard-earned experience. Since Miral's birth, she had stopped straightening her hair, so it fell around her shoulders in beautiful wavy curls. She spoke to the baby in Klingon as well as English, kept an altar to Kahless in a corner of the living room, and kept up her bat'leth lessons at the local holosuite. As Tom looked down at their little daughter, who was sleeping on his arm with all four limbs hanging down like a sloth in a tree, he was certain they would teach her the same thing as she grew older.
"What if I want to change for myself?" Seven persisted. "That officer was prejudiced, but also corr- … also right. I have allowed the Borg to define me for much too long."
When she put it that way, Tom understood where she was coming from, even if he still agreed with B'Elanna. Being yourself could get complicated, and sometimes you had to get there by being a few other people first: prodigal son, ex-con, mercenary and Maquis double agent, for example. Maybe Seven was going through a late adolescence, and reinventing her image would be good for her after all.
"Isn't this the Doc's department, though?" he asked, just in case. "I'm sure he could fit it into one of your social lessons."
"We canceled them … for now."
"Oh. Right." Tom remembered a moment too late that the Doctor had declared his love to Seven in front of the entire bridge crew, and the next thing anyone knew, she was in a relationship with Chakotay. No wonder the poor guy needed space. Whatever happened, he hoped their friendship would survive it.
"And what does Chakotay think?"
"He said the same thing you did, B'Elanna." Seven smiled a little for the first time. "If not in the same words. Then he told me to ask you, Tom, since you are this crew's resident expert on popular culture."
"Chakotay said that?" Tom grinned. He valued the Commander's good opinion. "Not to brag, but he's right. I am a pop culture expert … "
B'Elanna smirked.
" … But I'm not a linguistics professor," he hurried to add. "And honestly, I'm not sure this sort of thing could be taught even if I were. Slang doesn't have rules, you know. It changes all the time."
Seven's face fell.
"What you're gonna have to do," Tom went on, "is pay close attention to how people around you talk. If you're not sure how to say something, mimic the person you're talking to. Just … not in too obvious a way," he added, thinking of Seven's Hey, what's up? a few moments ago.
"I can think of one rule, though, if you're looking for one," B'Elanna added. "Contractions. Look at it this way, it's more efficient to get a sentence out faster."
"It's," Seven muttered to herself, as if testing out the sounds. "You're … gonna."
"It's like any other language," said B'Elanna, who, being trilingual - Klingon, Spanish and English - knew what she was talking about. "The only way you'll learn is through exposure. Hey, Tom, I have an idea. Why don't you show her … " She gestured to the bottom row of the bookshelf in the corner, and he immediately knew what she was talking about.
"The movie collection," they chorused, sharing a grin.
Tom handed Miral over to B'Elanna so he could crouch down to fetch the stack of antique DVD's and cassette tapes from the bottom shelf. The television set and VCR B'Elanna had built for him sat on a small table in front of the sofa, still in perfect working order. "Isn't this awesome?"
Seven raised her ocular implant as high as it could go in silent incredulity.
"I think the colloquialism you're looking for, Seven," said B'Elanna, "Is nerd. Or geek. Or maybe fanboy."
"All of the above," said Tom proudly, presenting his films with a flourish. "What do you want to watch?"
"Nothing with explosions," said B'Elanna, settling Miral in her lap. "This one gets all excited. She'll never go down for her nap."
"You choose," said Seven.
While Tom rifled through the stack - My Fair Lady? No way, the galaxy wasn't ready for a Seven of Nine with a Cockney accent; Oklahoma!? The same applied to a Southern drawl - he overheard the women talking behind him. B'Elanna's voice had taken on that low, hushed quality she had when she was speaking to Miral. It was one of the sweetest sounds he knew.
"What do you think, puqbe'? You wanna cuddle with Auntie Seven? Hmm?"
"I am not her … aunt."
A rustle of fabric, a coo from Miral, and a sudden hitch and drop in Seven's voice told Tom that the baby had just been handed over into their guest's lap. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that he was right. Seven was staring down at the soft little bundle with wide-eyed awe.
"Hello, Miral," she whispered, touching the baby's cheek with one cybernetic fingertip and getting a startled squeak in response. "Don't be scared. It's okay. It's only me."
Colloquialisms, Tom realized. She was using them as if they were second nature. Of course. Nothing could shake the formality out of someone like a baby.
He dug out one of his favorite turn-of-the-millennium sci-fi series (making sure to pick an episode without explosions), with a Northern European-American actress whose plainspoken, no-nonsense attitude reminded him of Seven. As the family - including one newly appointed honorary aunt - settled down to watch, Tom wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders.
He could think of few better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.