Knockout

(Seven of Nine, Rios, Sirena EMH)

In the corridor outside Sickbay, Cristobal Rios paused to smooth back his messy salt-and-pepper hair and shake the wrinkles out of his shirt. He felt oddly excited to meet his new passenger, considering that she'd just sacrificed her own ship on his account. Perhaps it was because she really was a magnificent pilot; lucky she had chosen to defend instead of attack him. Perhaps he merely had a weakness for icy blondes.

He pressed the door button, walked in …

And found himself hovering awkwardly, feeling like an intruder on his own ship.

Seven of Nine had raised the back of the biobed to turn it into a chair and settled there with perfect ease; she'd even kicked her shoes off so she could sit cross-legged. The cut above her eye was gone and she had no other visible injuries, so the EMH should have deactivated himself by now. Instead, to Cris' profound dismay, the hologram was chatting with his new patient as if they were old friends.

" – So much respect for his work," the EMH was saying, waving his hands excitedly. "I downloaded all his papers on the medical applications of Borg technology. As for his Photons, Be Free series, you can't imagine what it meant to me - "

"Even the first volume?" The Borg woman asked, smiling wryly.

"Well … " The EMH wrinkled his nose.

"I agree," said Seven. "The less said about the first volume, the better."

The EMH laughed warmly, a sound that never failed to grate on Cris' nerves. (He found so little to laugh about, these days.) He strode towards them with a decided thump of boots on floor. "Report, Doc," he ordered.

"Ah, Captain!" The hologram spun around and hurried towards him. "I'm pleased to report that our guest is fully recovered. Did you know she used to serve with one of my most illustrious colleagues, the Voyager EMH himself?"

Dear Lord. Cris raised his eyes to the ceiling. He's star-struck. Just when I thought my holograms couldn't get any more obnoxious … (He absolutely refused to think of a certain young Ensign Rios, who had been dizzy with awe on his first day aboard the Ibn Najjid.)

"Deactivate EMH," Cris barked.

The hologram raised a hand and opened his mouth to protest, but vanished in a swirl of golden light before he could say a word.

"You'll have to excuse him, Miss, ah … what should I call you?" Cris added, inclining his head to his passenger in what he hoped was a charming, apologetic way.

"Seven."

"This is an old ship, and I keep forgetting to wipe the memory buffers. These holograms can get a little … " He teetered his hand back and forth to signify instability. This was not quite true; they were unstable only in the sense that they were individuals now, but they had never failed him in their duties. This was why, despite everything, he kept them running.

"Did you program them yourself?" asked Seven, getting up from the biobed and back into the worn but sturdy running shoes on the floor. Standing, she was just his height, and her blue eyes were inscrutable as she looked him up and down. "You bear a striking resemblance."

"Yeah, no." Cris scratched the back of his head, blushing. "They came standard with the ship. I just changed the physical parameters because … "

(Truth be told, sometimes he needed just needed an outlet for his anger, and better his own face than someone else's. A Starfleet counselor would have a field day with that. Thank God he wasn't in Starfleet anymore.)

"Because I felt like it," he improvised with a shrug.

"Ah."

"Welcome aboard, by the way, Seven." He smiled and held out his hands. "And thank you for saving us. My crew and I are in your debt."

"That's all right, Captain." Seven returned the smile as she reached for his shoulder.

His first impulse was to feel absurdly gratified. She didn't seem the type to take physical contact lightly, and if she wanted to cement their new alliance by patting him on the shoulder, that had to be a good sign, didn't it?

He cursed himself for an idiot as he felt her steel-tipped fingers pinch a highly sensitive nerve just before losing consciousness.

When he came to a few minutes later, he was the one lying on the biobed. His head ached a little and his mouth was dry, but otherwise he felt fine. To his infinite embarrassment, he realized she must have caught him before he hit the ground and maneuvered him up here, where he would be more comfortable than on the cold floor. Not exactly, he realized just in time before calling Red Alert, what an enemy would do.

If she had wanted to hijack the ship, she would have done it by now. She wouldn't still be standing there with her hands behind her back, looking down at him as if he were a mildly interesting bacterium in a microscope.

Still, he swung himself off the bed and kept it as a barrier between them as fast as he could. "Now what was that for?" he asked sarcastically. "And here I thought we were getting along."

"Now you know what it feels like." She glanced pointedly at the space where the EMH had been standing earlier. "To be deactivated the way you do to your shipmates."

"You knocked me out on account of my holograms?"

Her eyes narrowed, and she gave him a look of contempt that pinched him every bit as hard as her fingers had done. "I have friends who are holograms."

Too late, Cris remembered the stories that had been on all the newsfeeds after the attack on Mars. Voyager's EMH – such a short, bald, frog-faced man next to the beautiful Seven of Nine; the picture they made was hard to forget – fighting for something as basic as the right to exist … Cris tried to imagine Starfleet confiscating his Sirena and deleting his crew and saw red, although he didn't even like them.

After all, if Seven didn't have such a fierce protective streak, La Sirena would be space debris by now.

"Well, I guess you made your point," he croaked, rubbing the space between shoulder and neck where she had squeezed. "Holy fuck … how do you even know the Vulcan nerve pinch?"

"I was Borg," Seven retorted.

"Right." He sidled past her on his way out the door. "Um … could you follow me, please? Picard would like a word with you."

She didn't bat an eye at the famous name, falling into step beside him without another word.

Damn, he thought, watching her blond hair ripple over her shoulders with every sharp, efficient stride. He'd met a lot of scary women in his time, but this one was something else.

He hoped she'd stay.