"What happened?" The Doctor demanded urgently as soon as he saw Tom materialise in Sickbay, standing by the biobed Seven's limp form was now prostrate on.
"I'm not sure…" Tom admitted honestly, breathless with anxious adrenaline as he helped the Doctor manoeuvre Seven's leaden limbs into position to allow the biobed's in built scanner to do its work. "B'Elanna and I found her delirious and convulsing in the hallway." The Doctor seemed to be barely listening, seizing his tricorder with speed probably beyond a human and running over Seven in one swift, practised motion. Tom remembered with a pang as he saw the Doctor's features constrict, his programmed mask of professionalism visibly slipping, that that particular tricorder was the one Seven had modified and given the punctilious hologram in the interests of efficiency, a gift he treasured. "Is she…" He couldn't quite finish the question as he stared down at Seven, the spasms jerks of pain racking her long, slender frame from the still angrily sparking implants now looked eerily robotic. It reminded him for an instant, although he resisted the image, of the jolts of a prolonged resuscitation attempt, fighting a useless battle against death.
"No." The Doctor cut in sharply, the word had been forming on his lips before Tom had even begun the question, as if he were afraid leaving time for the unspoken word to hover would make it true. "But her cortical node is failing." His hand smoothly found a particular hypospray on his equipment cart and moved to inject it into Seven's throat in a surprisingly steady mood. "A paralytic." He answered Tom's unvoiced question as Seven's body slumped into motionlessness, although the threatening blue slashes of rampant power continued to surge through her implants. "She needs to be completely still if I'm going to have a chance of saving her and…" He trailed off, a breath that was only necessary to his emotional release escaping him as a sigh as his hands clenched around the metal edge of the biobed. He gripped so hard that his fingers, projections of lights photons that they were, faded slightly as they strained to hold together. "I told her to be careful, just for a few days for Go's sake, so that she'd have a chance of this never happening again…"
"This has happened to her before?" Tom asked, staring at the EMH in shock. Surely he would have learned at least some hint of a previous crisis, the Doctor and the Captain weren't exactly known for hiding Seven's issues, probably in the pursuit of justifying their shared protectiveness of their mutual protégé.
The Doctor winced as the question hit home, the guilt that rushed through him almost burning out his emotional subroutines. "Yes, once." He admitted softly, through the words were ragged as he gulped, "I should have forced her let me do something before she went this far…" He murmured thickly as took in her relaxed, human appearance with a mixture of pride and painful regret. Slowly, as he commanded the Computer to activate a ventilator, Seven's body had to be completely regulated while he did this; he let his fingertips brush against her chilled face. A flinch of rage managed to reverberate through his stimulated body as he felt the grainy stains of wetness sticking to her ashen cheeks. "She's been crying, who…"
Tom's reasoned blue eyes fixing on his brought him back to the situation at hand. "You can investigate that later if you need to Doctor." He told him, his strict tone making it evident that he didn't approve of such prying, "But right now you need to help her by sorting out this cortical node."
The Doctor nodded stiltedly, pushing concern about whatever extreme emotional event had triggered the failsafe to one side as he began an expert assessment of Seven's condition, his calm gradually returning. "Yes I do and I will need your help Mr Paris."
Tom gave Seven's frozen hand a cautious but brotherly pat as he sent the Doctor a sympathetic look. "Gladly."
The Doctor turned away to carefully gather the specialised tools he'd designed to deal with Seven's implants while Tom, on his order, injected another drug into their patient's veins. "Well then, let's get started while we still…"
He was abruptly interrupted by the loudly reluctant swoosh of Sickbay's doors, the Computer shrilly complaining that the lock had been overridden. Commander Chakotay, who was normally a paragon of composure, tact and natural reserve next to the more volatile woman he served, ran in before the resistant doors had even fully opened, his dark, emotive eyes as confused and distraught as his appearance. He was out of uniform, as, Tom noted silently, Seven had been, and in his own way he looked as bad as the unconscious young woman, as tormented with pain on some level as she had been on the brink of her collapse. He almost collided with the biobed nearest the door in his rush to get in, but froze in place as if he'd hit a forcefield as soon as his eyes fell on Seven's corpse like position laid out on the biobed. Gulping convulsively, gaze still locked on her, he choked out, "What…what happened to her?"
Pity moved Tom to speak as he saw B'Elanna enter the room at a slower pace and put a soothing hand on her old friend's shaking arm. "Her cortical node started to shut down somehow, the Doctor's going to have to do emergency surgery…"
Chakotay finally blinked, his gaze flickering to the Doctor as he spoke before loyally returning to Seven, "She said she had surgery this morning, but it went fine didn't it? She said it was minor, what made this happen?" he demanded, unable to stop the accusatory note from his distressed voice as Seven captured his entire attention.
The Doctor bristled and Tom saw his former frustrated expression return with a vengeance, darkening his face like a gathering storm. "I intend to find out exactly what happened." He informed Chakotay coldly, looking through him rather than at him as he shifted closer to Seven protectively, "Now Commander, I have surgery to perform and being interrupted like this certainly doesn't expedite the process." His eyes narrowed as he indicated the door with a jerk of his head, "Now, take your leave and I'll contact you when Seven has stabilised."
The hostility in his tone was such that it penetrated even Chakotay's emotional fog as B'Elanna and Tom exchanged bemused and anxious glances between the two men. "Will you?" Chakotay questioned harshly, his voice hoarse. "I'm not going anywhere until I know she's going to be okay." He stated unequivocably, his whole body stiffening in an unconscious expression of his intimidating physical presence, mentally broken as he felt.
"That isn't an option…" The Doctor began to spit out angrily but was interrupted by a warning beep from Seven's biobed and hurriedly twisted away, ignoring after that point not only Chakotay's stricken gasp but also the fact that Voyager's First Officer was there at all as he settled all of his concentration on Seven.
Time seemed to lag for Chakotay after B'Elanna guided him to sit down, she seemed to be worried he'd let himself fall to the floor otherwise, and then left him with an empathic squeeze of his shoulder and a loving, questioning glance at her husband. He sat where she'd deposited him, his body soon protesting against the narrow metal stool that passed for a chair on Sickbay, but his mind was too lost in the maze of his own thoughts as he watched the Doctor and Tom work on Seven to be able to care. Again, he raked over the events of that evening, now wondering if Seven had shown signs of her debilitating condition approaching and whether he'd been so set on wrecking their relationship with honesty that he'd been woefully ignorant of her in more ways than in an emotional sense. For most of that terrible time though, he couldn't think of anything beyond his worst nightmare, what if Seven…died tonight and he never had a chance to explain? To tell her how he really felt right now with the past discounted, irrelevant?
It was Tom's heavy, exhausted sigh of relief, echoed by a shallower, more uptight one on the Doctor's part, which broke him out of that near catatonic state. He was instantly alert as they stepped back from Seven. "How is she?" he croaked out, his own voice cracked with grief and exhaustion he only now let himself begin to feel.
Tom smiled, it was strained and wan but his eyes were alight with relief and hope. "Okay, I think." He answered after a long wait for the Doctor to speak first, who remained stubbornly silent.
"She's stable now." The Doctor agreed quietly, but as he saw Chakotay automatically move to go to his frail, still unconscious patient, something inside him snapped and the wrath he'd been trying to restrain burst out, "It's no thanks to you Commander so stay away from her."
Chakotay, despite the internal beating he'd been giving himself, still started in shock and stepped back as if he'd been struck. "What?" he asked uncomprehendingly.
Seeing the Doctor's utterly unrepentant expression, Tom did his best to intervene, "Come on Doc, we've all been through the wringer tonight, calm down…"
The Doctor frowned imperiously back at him, "I won't be needing your assistance any longer tonight Mr Paris."
Chakotay, whose full wits were beginning to return as he was so blatantly denied access to Seven once again, gave Tom a grateful look but spoke firmly, "It's okay Tom, I think the Doctor wants to talk to me alone."
The Doctor's stony, unyielding expression told Tom that the hologram did very much not want to speak with his First Officer but the pilot decided it was now time to just his losses. He wasn't a counsellor for the jealous and possessive after all, he'd been that man himself before. "Right, okay, see the two of you in the morning." He conceded warily, not taking his time about leaving the room.
The doors hadn't fully closed behind him before Chakotay reached Seven's biobed, her surroundings now disturbingly quiet after the alarms and activity of earlier. Only the steady rhythmical blips of her heart and breathing rate monitors broke through the silence as he looked down at her, his rib cage seeming to enclose his chest tighter as a lump rose up to and then hung at the back of his throat. Her features, somehow taking on a new, haunting, beauty in their pale stillness, may have appeared comfortingly peaceful if not for the frown that encroached on her brow, destroying any illusion of serenity which her luxuriant hair framing her head like a halo might have offered. Chakotay couldn't help but wonder if it were thoughts of this evening, prowling around her dreams, which made that troubled expression linger even under deep sedation. His hand found her motionless one, a shiver travelling up his arm to his heart when he realised that her skin felt colder that the implants encasing it. I'm sorry… He mentally pleaded, longing to whisper the words out loud but with the Doctor's eyes boring into his bent head he didn't feel able to, it was too private, even as she slept unhearing.
Something clicked inside his mind as he reluctantly met the Doctor's burning gaze. "You blame me." He murmured, a statement rather than a question.
The Doctor gulped, and Chakotay saw a flicker of his own guilt reflected in the Doctor's eyes for a moment, but his answer was still stark. "Yes." He paused, as if waiting for him to ask why, but Chakotay left it unsaid. "You…" He began again distantly, his tone accusatory, "She cried over you."
Chakotay's head lowered despite himself and he guiltily lifted his hand away from Seven's as he noticed the tear tracks scarring her face, which only hours ago had been flushed with good humour and pleasure. "Yes." He admitted heavily, "She did, I know that, but I don't know why that would put her at death's door like this." He gave the Doctor a cold, frank stare, "She told me she had a small operation this morning, that is was for headaches for God's sake…" His voice broke, "Did that bring this on Doctor?" His gaze hardened further as the Doctor's unreadable expression wavered, "Tell me!"
The Doctor seemed startled by the violence of his command, but quickly collected himself. "I can't do that. If Seven wanted you to know she would have told you…"
Chakotay regarded him bitterly, "That's not good enough Doctor. You've made it pretty damn clear that Seven being like this has something to do with me and I want to know how." He sighed when didn't reply, "Doctor, if that is the case that I'll do anything to stop it happening again, I'll help her…"
The Doctor gave a shaky sigh, affected by his latter plea. "It won't happen again, not like this anyway. I managed to remove the failsafe…"
"What 'failsafe'?" Chakotay demanded, hearing the importance of the term in the Doctor's voice but feeling frustratingly clueless about what it meant.
The Doctor began to pace the short loop around Seven's biobed. "Several weeks ago, Seven's cortical node suffered a near catastrophic spontaneous shutdown, just what she suffered tonight on a slightly less severe scale. I discovered, and informed her immediately, that the cause was a failsafe incorporated into her cortical node precisely to deactivate drone when they have certain…experiences."
Chakotay's gaze narrowed impatiently, "What kind of experiences Doctor?" he pressed.
The Doctor bit his lip, his revulsion at even acknowledging whatever it was evident. "When a drone experiences what the Collective categorise as 'excessive' emotion, the failsafe was designed to deactivate that drone. That has been what happened to Seven."
Chakotay stared at him blankly, not willing to believe what he was hearing. As he looked over at Seven however, at the implants the Borg had indiscriminately left her with, and thought of the torment they'd put her through by toying with her even after the crew of Voyager had claimed her as their own, he was hit by the nauseating realisation that in the twisted, sadistic, fundamentally inhumane world of the Collective mind, the scheme made disturbingly perfect sense. The most efficient method of ensuring that separated drones could never lead individual lives in the most essential way… His horror and revulsion overwhelmed him for a moment until he had to put his head between his knees, and in that moment, with tears stinging at his eyes, he made another, almost as distressing, realisation. "Oh God…" He ground out, "That's why she deleted the programme…"
The Doctor was on him in an instant. "Programme?" he snapped, staring at Chakotay in disbelief, "She told you about the holodeck programmes?"
Chakotay's response was something between a groan, a bitter laugh and a sob. "Not exactly." He met the Doctor's questioning frown and saw that he owed the Doctor a level of honesty too. "When Seven was spending so much time on the holodecks, the Captain…she got the idea in her head that Seven was developing a holodeck addiction, or that the programme was dangerous somehow…" He snorted bitterly, Kathryn had no idea. "Anyway, she insisted that I check up on it, ordered me to…"
"You spied on Seven of Nine just because Captain Janeway ordered you too?" The Doctor exclaimed, horrified, respect for either involved in such a plan falling away.
"I was going to lie without ever going into the holodeck, I should have, just to get Kathryn off my back, but in the end I didn't. I watched Seven's programmes. I didn't set out to, but seeing her like that, so relatable and human, I thought that watching would help me to understand, then she could be like that in real life…"
"I presume you didn't peep right up until the point she collapsed with the failsafe, considering you didn't come to her aid?" The Doctor asked acridly.
"No!" Chakotay snapped, "Do you think I would've tried so hard to get close to her if I'd known that by doing so that damned failsafe could trigger? I watched until her first date with…me, with the hologram of me, and then I stopped, I knew I'd gone too far. The next thing I knew she'd deleted the programmes…" He pressed his clawed hands over his skull, "I could've killed her, all these weeks of being with her and this could've happened at any time…" A broken sob left him but then he glared at the Doctor, "How could you have let her live with that for so long? Going to Ledosia with me could've killed her, going to the party, hell anything could've set it off…"
"I know." The Doctor interrupted, "I did try to reason with her Chakotay, but after the shock of the holodecks she insisted she needed the failsafe to keep herself in line. She was ashamed of the programmes, guilty over her preoccupation of them, but I think mostly she was scared. Scared that she wouldn't be able to handle the emotion, that the Borg were right about her."
Chakotay had to take several breaths in as he heard the truth in what the Doctor said. "That would be just like her…" He muttered painfully as his gaze shifted over to her once again, "It's not fair…"
The Doctor swallowed, "No, no it's not." He paused for a while before adding reluctantly, "I'm not sure you deserve to know this, since it was obviously your rejection that set her off tonight, but that operation this morning, it was to start the process of removing the failsafe, I assume she did that because of you. The reason why she so nearly died tonight is because the process was only half-completed and the surgery made her cortical node less stable than usual. I was going to split the operation over a few days to reduce the risk to her, but because it triggered tonight I couldn't take the risk of not operating right away, thankfully she seems to be coping so far." His next sigh was one expressing his own guilt, "I thought she'd been fine for a few more days, the threshold for the trigger should have been higher than before, but I must've been wrong…"
"No…" Chakotay choked out agonisingly, "She should have been safe, but I put her through more than a hologram ever could."
A/n: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! :D I apologise for not having this up yesterday like I said it would be but as you can see it ending up being angsty and long, too much for one day's worth of writing, lol.