AN: Here we are, another piece to this one.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Elnor took Seven ahead to their quarters, with the doctor, who was anxious to take his mobile emitter on a trip around the ship, and Naomi Wildman to help make sure that Seven was settled and comfortable. Raffi stayed behind with Crusher so that they could finish up the final examination of the baby. Once all the information had been entered, the Musiker family would be free to rest and bond in their quarters with only minimal interference, at least until they were ready to start allowing their loved ones to trickle in for their first peeks at Aurora.
Raffi finally held their daughter for the first time. The baby girl was light in her arms, and Raffi realized how very long it had actually been since she had last cradled a newborn. Aurora's eyes were the dark bluish and indistinct color of many newborns—a color that would settle into its actual color as the days progressed. What hair she had was already tightly coiled, though very light. Her complexion was still the slightly angry-red color of being freshly arrived into the world.
"You are perfect," Raffi informed the baby girl when she was left alone with her for a moment to simply admire her.
She was surprised when, examining her daughter's face, she felt a sharp sting.
"Ouch!" Raffi declared, looking around for what type of insect or other being had offended her with a bite.
As soon as she realized what it was, her heart nearly stopped. The glimmering silver tubules were like long, thin wires linking them together.
"Doctor…" Raffi said, her voice shaking slightly. She tried to remain calm, and she tried to remain still. She didn't want to upset the baby, and she didn't want to alarm anyone who was working elsewhere in sickbay. "Doctor Crusher…could you come here, please?"
Crusher had stepped away a moment to finish up with everything she needed to do to enter Aurora's birth information into the Federation databases. She appeared, walking casually, looking halfway at a PADD, and clearly assuming there was nothing that required her to rush. As soon as her eyes made contact with Raffi's, though, she jumped and picked up her pace to a half-jog.
Crusher pulled a tricorder immediately out of her pocket and scanned Raffi. The offending tubules had disappeared, retracted by the little had that had sent them out in the first place, but Raffi's chest still stung where they'd punctured her. Raffi tried to ignore the slightest hint of panic that Crusher, despite her years of medical practice, couldn't quite keep out of her eyes.
The Borg, no matter how open-minded a person might be—frightened everyone, at least a little.
Raffi saw the relief, too, as it entered Crusher's face. Crusher sighed and smiled.
"The good news is that there's no transfer of nonoprobes," she said. "Rori's nanoprobe count appears to be very low, and it appears that there was no attempt to transfer them."
"So—what does that mean?" Raffi asked.
"It means that there's no risk of assimilation," Crusher said, keeping her voice low. "At least, not at this time. Rori's just—reaching out. It's possible that it's some kind of bonding for her, something soothing, even, and that she's seeking connection."
"You're saying—this is nothing to worry about," Raffi said.
"At least at this moment, no," Crusher said.
Raffi saw the look of shock on Crusher's features, and she saw her jump, a second before she realized what had happened.
"Ow!" Crusher barked in surprise.
The thin wiry little tubules had made contact near the base of her throat.
"Stings, doesn't it?" Raffi asked, a little amused, simply because her own still-stinging "love-bite" from the baby had been so thoroughly dismissed.
As Crusher scanned herself with the tricorder, checking for the presence of nanoprobes, Aurora's tiny tubules slipped back into place.
"This can't be a thing," Raffi said, her voice low. "It appears that these…these love bites…are a thing, but they can't be a thing. Besides the fact that…that Seven is going to be horrified at the thought that our baby is going around trying to assimilate anyone she's around, it's going to get the attention of those…those damned anthropologists."
Crusher's face was close to Raffi's so that the words they exchanged didn't need to be loud enough to cover more than a minor distance. Crusher had wrapped her hand around Aurora's tiny hand, and she jumped again, this time barely squeaking out a noise of shock.
"Again?" Raffi asked. Crusher hadn't moved her hand, accepting her fate, as a show of her resolve. She blanched only slightly as she adjusted to the sting. "What do we do?" Raffi asked.
"There is no exchange of nanoprobes for the time being," Crusher said. "We don't know, yet, if that'll change or not. Therefore, it seems our greatest concern is simply keeping Rori from…"
"Biting," Raffi said. "Our baby is a biter."
"I have an idea," Crusher said.
She didn't move her hand from where she held it over Aurora's implant, and Raffi wasn't sure if she was trapped there because of the tubules likely embedded in her palm, or if she was holding her hand there to keep the already retracted tubules from coming out again in search of a new thing to probe.
Crusher touched her combadge.
"Crusher to Torres-Paris," Crusher said.
"What do you need, Doctor?" B'Elanna asked.
"Do you have any—tape—that is puncture proof?" Crusher asked.
There was a silence on the other end of the combadge. Raffi felt a little fidgety as she waited for B'Elanna to respond, but she didn't say anything. She figured that, since she wasn't the one with tubules currently exploring at least some part of her body, she couldn't be the more impatient of the two of them. She glanced at Aurora's face. Her eyes were open, but she looked calm, like she might very well consider sleeping soon. Raffi gently swayed her, hoping to lull her to sleep and hoping, also, that she would stop seeking whatever she might be seeking in her sleep.
"Seven to Musiker."
Raffi tensed when her combadge beeped. She looked at Crusher wide-eyed. Crusher's expression wasn't as serene as it normally was—or even as it had been. She made a slight head-shaking motion. Raffi thought she understood. She tapped her combadge.
"What do you need, Baby?" Raffi asked. She thought her voice came out a little unnaturally high-pitched, but she hoped that wasn't the case.
"Is everything OK?" Seven asked.
"Everything's fine," Raffi said. "Just fine, Seven. We're just—wrapping up a few things here."
"It's taking a while," Seven said.
"Doctor Crusher—has to deal with a few things," Raffi said. She made a face at Crusher, seeking approval. She got a half-shrug and a nod. "A few—small things, really." Raffi added, recalling that Crusher hadn't moved away from her because they could only go as far as Crusher's arm could reach, her hand remaining over top of Aurora's hand as a guard against the wandering tubules.
"Is Rori OK?" Seven asked.
Raffi swallowed back her amusement.
"Rori is fine," she said. "We'll be there soon. Rest, Seven. Musiker out."
Raffi barely heard Seven close their communication before Crusher's combadge beeped.
"The best I've got is Klingo pirian tape," B'Elanna said. "We use it when we're repairing and covering certain kinds of wires that have sharp edges. It's not indestructible, but it's tough enough that it's not being cut without absolute intention."
"Could it stop the penetration of a…I'd say…roughly a sixteen to eighteen gauge needle?" Crusher asked, musing over something—likely the size of the tubules currently embedded in her palm.
There was silence again.
"I think so…" B'Elanna responded with obvious hesitation. "Is—something wrong?"
"Just bring that to sickbay," Crusher said. "Immediately, please."
"I'm on my way," B'Elanna assured her.
When B'Elanna reached them at a half-trot, both appearing to run, but also clearly trying not to draw far too much attention, Aurora had already drifted off into a nap, and had retracted her tubules from Crusher's palm. Crusher showed the small wounds to B'Elanna before healing them with a dermal regenerator, just as she had the other little puncture wounds that Aurora had inflicted on the two of them. They had all retreated to the doctor's private office and closed the door as soon as B'Elanna arrived, giving them as much privacy as possible.
"Is she trying to assimilate?" B'Elanna asked, her voice low. "Is it that ingrained in her nature?"
"It's possible," Crusher said. "The truth of the matter is that I don't know. We've never dealt with this before. You had a baby for a period of time, aboard Voyager, that had been removed from the Collective. What can you tell me about that baby?"
"Not much," B'Elanna admitted. "We had to fashion a sort of maturation chamber for it. The baby never showed any signs of what we might have called typical Borg behavior, but she didn't show signs of typical infant behavior, either. I always assumed that she might have been more of a Borg experiment than a Borg norm. Even when we left her with a family, I think some of us were concerned about her future."
"And—the quickly maturing Borg? The advanced one?"
"One," B'Elanna offered. "No—he also spent his infancy in a maturation chamber."
"Are we going to have to put Rori in a chamber?" Raffi asked, hugging her newborn daughter a little closer to her body.
"No," Crusher said quickly. "Absolutely not. Nothing like that. B'Elanna?" She held her hand out and B'Elanna gave her the roll of tape. Carefully, Crusher cut a small length of it and wrapped it around Aurora's implant enough that the tape would cover the ports for her tubules. For good measure, Crusher wrapped another length of tape around the first. "We have a lot of tests to do, and a lot of learning to do. Rori is likely something like a quarter-Borg—very much like Miral is a quarter-Klingon. Rori is biologically a Borg in a way that, to our knowledge, nobody has ever been before. She will have her own unique experiences and challenges. One thing that we need to do, though, for Seven's sake, for Rori's sake, and for the sake of any other children you may have or children who may be born from other ex-Borgs, is to begin to truly think of the Borg as a species with traits and a culture."
"A culture of violence and assimilation," B'Elanna said.
Raffi felt herself bristle slightly, but she tried to control it, aware that the newborn in her arms would respond to what she felt from her body.
"I don't think we should start throwing stones at glass houses," Raffi offered calmly.
B'Elanna visibly tensed and locked eyes with Raffi. Raffi held her eyes. She sensed a flicker of challenge—a moment of it—and then it dissipated as B'Elanna accepted what she was truly trying to say.
Crusher stood and waited, like she had the ability to read the exchange that had silently taken place between them. She seemed to sense, too, when it had passed.
"Putting aside our negative thoughts of the Borg and trying to see them from a cultural perspective, we can see that the Borg seek unity and togetherness," Crusher said.
"That's sugar-coating it a bit…" B'Elanna offered.
"It's sugar-coating it a great deal," Crusher said. "But—at an instinctive level, for someone who has been born into that culture, it's not impossible to form the working hypothesis that this clearly natural urge that Aurora has is nothing more than seeking unity. She's seeking connection with those around her. She's exploring her surroundings and, more importantly, her relationships. It's something she's driven to do, by instinct, immediately out of the womb."
"She's looking for love and affection?" B'Elanna asked, slightly incredulous.
"It's as good a hypothesis as any," Crusher said. "She's trying to connect with us. Her hearing is likely augmented, as is Seven's. It's entirely possible she recognizes our voices from her time in the womb. She's trying to form a connection with us."
"Through assimilation," B'Elanna said.
"There is no exchange of nanoprobes for the time being," Crusher said.
"Does that come later?" Raffi asked.
"I'm not the leading expert on the Borg culture and biological traits," Crusher said with a laugh.
"Considering we just decided it's an actual thing," B'Elanna said, "I'd say you are."
"Well—I'm certainly willing to become that, for the good of Rori, but…it's going to take time," Crusher said. "For now, we'll understand Rori's little 'love bites' as nothing more than her seeking affection and connection. And we'll try to prevent them as much as possible. The tape should keep her tubules in place for now. B'Elanna…can you come up with something a little more comfortable for Rori and easy to manage for Raffi and Seven?"
B'Elanna leaned over and carefully examined Aurora's little hand.
"I'll start working on a puncture-proof glove," B'Elanna said.
"Good," Crusher said. "I'll help make sure that Seven is settled, and then I'll start working with the samples that I have, and I'll start planning where we go from here."
"What am I supposed to tell Seven?" Raffi asked.
Crusher smiled at her and squeezed her shoulder affectionately.
"We'll both tell her that Rori needs to eat, and we'll help her with that," Crusher said. "Then, you'll tell her that your daughter is perfect, that her Aunt B'Elanna is working on a glove for her and a portable regeneration unit that we can use until we know if she needs a sleeping unit, and that her mémé is figuring out the rest. Come on—let's go get Rori a meal and some quiet time with her mommies before everyone starts coming in to get a look at how beautiful she is."