=A=

Janeway was left numb for several minutes, alone, with nothing to do but absorb the impact of the ex-Borg's words and the terseness of her actions. She watched the water, unable to move.

After some indeterminate time, she felt pliable enough to lower herself to her haunches and rub her temples. Her joints ached slightly with stress as she did so—her mind sagged with a different kind of stress.

What just happened?

Hadn't she been directing the conversation toward safer waters? Hadn't she been conciliatory, hadn't she sincerely extended an olive branch? She just wanted to talk—Seven's reaction was completely unreasonable. She'd followed Chakotay's recommendation, had come as humbly as possible...no? She'd sure as hell tried. Now the dialogue was utterly obliterated and she was crouching in its ashes.

Again: what the hell had happened?

The answer came back much quicker and shorter than she expected.

Seven called you out.

No.

Yes.

Frustrated, Janeway rose to her feet once more and began walking. The sun had started to set, its colors washing over the flowers and faces of people she passed on her way. Birds that had gone unseen for months reappeared, and even chirped a few notes for her.

Beauty was much easier to appreciate when she wasn't involved in stewing over personal matters, she decided. Unfortunately, this needed attention.

She thought back to the Seven she knew aboard Voyager: the stubborn, rough, nearly antisocial person she had begun as. The awkward implants on her body, her less-than-human monotone and technical vocabulary…she was a piece of work. Important trials and tribulations smoothed her edges and gave her more experience, of course. And then there was the Velocity matches, their conversations, their arguments, her eventual status as a vital crewmember—one who even learned to be pleasantly social, one who made her proud. A crewmember Voyager could not have survived long without.

Janeway faltered and turned downcast, Seven's image carved deeply into her memory.

She could not un-carve it.

The bitter shards of regret remained stuck.

"Do you reciprocate or not, Captain?"

"I don't."

But now that Seven was gone. It was someone else she'd just spoken to, a different Seven. A Seven who could see through her pretense, who knew when she was pulling the mentor card. One who definitely could call her out. She was dealing with a more human, more refined Seven of Nine.

Could that Seven still feel the same way?

Ask.