The door chimed. Kathryn wearily raised her head and opened her eyes. She had no idea how long she had been sitting there. It could have been five minutes or five hours. One part of her brain urged her to get up. There was one more important issue she had to resolve, after all. Another part of her brain taunted her for being weak. She ignored both and her body readily agreed.
After Tuvok's rather emotional gift, she had debated whether she should go back to the bridge at least for another hour or so. The beginnings of another pain flare had made her decision for her. It was a miracle, really, that she had made it to her quarters, the pain worse than ever before. She didn't remember much, only that she had collapsed onto the floor as soon as the doors had closed behind her. She must have blacked out for a time and had woken up shivering, having been soaked in cold sweat. At some point she had tried to get up only to realize that the dizziness and nausea couldn't be all due to the other pain meds. She had made it to the bathroom in time, but it seemed as if she had thrown up all of her remaining strength along with the contents of her stomach. Since then she had been sitting there, leaning against the bathroom wall and trying to find the willpower to get up again.
It chimed a second time. Instead of getting up, Kathryn closed her eyes again. Whoever that was would probably go away after a while. Or call her, if they really needed to talk to her. She knew that her listlessness should alarm her, that she should have called the Doctor by now. But then, there was no strength left to lift her hand or even her voice. She wondered who was at the door. It could be the Doctor or Chakotay checking up on her. Both had override codes and wouldn't hesitate to use them if they thought something was amiss. Good. She wouldn't have to move. Darkness settled on her like a warm, heavy blanket, and she felt her thoughts fade…
Another chime, the third, the fourth? It felt like the proverbial wet washcloth parents love to threaten their teenagers with. It worked perfectly to rouse her and her temper. Couldn't they leave her alone already?! They should go to the Commander, Chakotay was always willing to help…
Chakotay! Kathryn straightened up from her slumped posture. Oh, how she had taken his friendship for granted! And in some warped combination of guilt and martyr complex she had thrown this friendship away and opened a chasm so wide she wasn't sure they could ever close again. The whole magnitude of what she had done had come crashing down on her as he had lashed out at her in anger yesterday, and again today when he had extended his hand in kindness. A kindness she didn't think she deserved, but had so painfully missed. Yet, she didn't want his kindness out of pity or out of duty. She wanted his friendship. As if his friendship was hers to reject or claim out of whim. She scoffed at her selfishness. No, she could only ask for his forgiveness. And she couldn't wait any longer!
By the next chime, she was standing on her feet, even though a bit shakily. And she was thirsty! She drank the water straight out of the faucet and splashed some on her face, catching her reflection in the mirror when she toweled off. She looked dreadful; eyes too big in a pale face that had gotten too thin, her hair hung limply to her shoulders. It was a wonder that nobody had noticed it. Of course, the change had happened gradually, and carefully applied make-up had helped to keep up the appearance. Kathryn had no energy left for that, tonight. She had to get rid of that patient, yet tenacious person at her door and speak to Chakotay before the Doctor sent out a search party for her.
Kathryn made her way through her dark living room, trying to reach the door before it chimed again only to bump into a barrier that shouldn't have been there. The other person had the presence of mind to catch her before she took a tumble. As Kathryn held onto the arm of her rescuer she felt the cloth underneath her fingers. This particular material was a dead giveaway.
"Seven?" she asked and called for light.
"Indeed. I am sorry to disturb your privacy but I was worried. I waited 9 minutes and 36 seconds before I entered." Seven scrutinized her closely. "I was right, you are unwell. I shall accompany you to sickbay."
"What? No, I can't!" Kathryn protested.
"Then it is prudent to call for a transport."
Kathryn held up a trembling hand to stop the overenthusiastic ex-Borg. "No, I can walk. But I am f-" Well, no, she wasn't fine. "I will go see the doctor in a bit," she amended. "There are still some pressing matters I need to attend to."
Seven skeptically surveyed the living room, scanning for any unfinished work, then turned back to appraise her mentor carefully. "Are you certain that it can't be postponed or delegated? You are running a fever of 38,4C, your heart rate is at 146 beats per minute and your breathing is irregular. I also doubt your ability to stay upright without my help. We should proceed to sickbay."
Kathryn shook her head. "I am certain. And you just startled me. Everybody's heart rate would go up if they ran into someone in the dark."
Seven tilted her head in consideration. "I see your point and I apologize for alarming you. You should rest until you have recovered from your fright." And before Kathryn knew what was happening she had been, albeit surprisingly gently, tucked into a corner of her couch with a pillow in her back and covered with her favorite afghan.
"Have you eaten?" Seven asked as she walked to the replicator.
Kathryn wanted to protest. Chakotay and even Tom taking care of her was one thing, they were somewhat entitled to, respective to their positions. But Seven? Still, she hesitated. Something in Seven's demeanor was off. To everyone else, she might appear her normal, efficient, and aloof self, yet Kathryn had caught something in the younger woman's eyes. A vulnerability she had hardly ever seen on her. Her eyes conjured up an image of a drowning person in her mind, silently screaming for help. She couldn't dismiss it.
"Does lunch count?" She wasn't about to disclose that she had lost most of that.
Seven raised one eyebrow. "It is 1820 hours, so, no, it does not. What would you like to eat?"
"Just some vegetable broth." Her stomach was hopefully up to it. Bemused, she watched Seven return with a couple of sandwiches on a plate, which she placed on the coffee table, and a mug she pressed into her hands, clearly expecting her to drink. Kathryn obliged just to please her and was surprised at the warmth that spread throughout her body, replenishing some of the energy she had lost.
"Thank you, Seven, that is exactly what I needed," she said sincerely and looked up only to find the other woman staring at her. "Seven, is something wrong?"
"I want to ascertain that you are feeling better."
The corners of Kathryn's mouth twitched. "That is nice of you. But remember, a watched pot never boils."
"I fail to see the relevance. You are not a pot," Seven replied, slightly unsure what she had missed.
"No. But it is hard to relax if someone keeps staring at you."
"It wasn't my intention to make you uncomfortable. I should let you get your rest then. Goodnight, Captain." Seven stood and turned to leave.
"Seven, wait." Kathryn couldn't just let her go. The other woman had been waiting in front of her door for nearly ten minutes and hadn't called her. That meant whatever was troubling her was personal and difficult to talk about, since she didn't come straight to the point as she usually did. "Why don't you join me? Get yourself something to eat, sit down, and talk to me?"
"I am not hungry at this time."
"Some comfort food maybe?"
"Even though the crew has introduced me to the concept of 'comfort food', I don't know what would be of comfort to me."
"There must be something of no nutritional value that you enjoy," Kathryn smiled.
"I am somewhat partial to chocolate," Seven conceded.
"Perhaps some brownies then? Recipe #14 is quite good." She did like them. They didn't come close to the caramel brownies her mother used to make, but they were still quite good.
"That sounds acceptable."
"Good! And a chamomile tea, each, should do the trick, I think." Kathryn wasn't all too fond of chamomile tea, but it had its redeeming qualities.
The next few minutes they shared in comfortable silence. After she had finished her broth Kathryn had started to nibble on a sandwich but found that her appetite had waned.
"Meeting another version of yourself must be weird," Kathryn finally remarked when Seven had finished off her second brownie. Carefully, she tried to draw Seven out.
"It is quite disconcerting." Unknowingly, Seven echoed her older self's earlier assessment.
"Yes," Kathryn agreed.
"You have met another version of yourself?"
"Mhm," Kathryn swallowed a mouthful of tea. "Yes, quite some time ago." She hadn't thought about that incident for a while. To lose Harry and little Naomi, who had just been born and not even officially named yet. The pain she had felt for that injustice and the knowledge that she would have to sacrifice the lives of the rest of her crew to save the other Voyager. In the end, she didn't have to make that call and even got to welcome Harry Kim and Naomi from the other Voyager into her fold. She and the rest of the crew soon forgot that they hadn't really been 'theirs'.
"Captain?"
Kathryn blinked. "Oh, sorry Seven, I was just remembering…"
"What was it like, meeting your other self?"
"Annoying." Kathryn chuckled softly. "It was like we could read each other's minds. We knew what we had to do but neither of us wanted to give an inch."
"What happened to your counterpart?" Seven asked.
Kathryn's eyes darkened momentarily. "She sacrificed herself and her crew to save us."
"She mustn't have been too different from yourself, then."
"No," she said softly, "no, she wasn't."
"Captain Hansen is quite different. I don't think I like her," Seven admitted.
"For what it's worth I like both versions of you."
"Of course you would like her," Seven stressed. "It is apparent that she is emulating you. But I am not her, nor do I ever want to be."
"Seven, I don't care whether you stay in Starfleet or become a street performer. As long as you are happy, I will be satisfied."
"You didn't let me go back to the Borg," the ex-Borg pointed out.
"You couldn't have been happy there, because you would have ceased to exist. And you didn't know yet what it meant to be human. You needed to know both worlds to make an informed choice."
"Now I know both worlds. Would you let me choose?"
"It would be very painful…" Kathryn swallowed hard. "But, yes, if you still wished for it, I would let you go."
"I do not want to cause you pain. Nor do I wish to return to the collective." Seven paused. "But, that's what she did. She returned here, because she is unhappy. I have made a grave error, and she is suffering because of it."
Kathryn sat up straight and put her tea on the coffee table. "Hold on. Is there a temporal paradox I have missed? Why should a mistake of yours cause her to be miserable?"
"A bad choice of words, Captain. We both made the same mistake and I can clearly see that it is still affecting her. What I don't understand, she could have come 24 hours earlier and prevented it from happening."
"Okay. What mistake are we talking about?" Kathryn wanted to know.
So Seven commenced to tell her about the removal of her emotional dampener.
"Well, the timing is unfortunate." Kathryn rubbed her brow. "But maybe it really was inevitable, another very important step to regain your humanity," she continued thoughtfully.
"Then you haven't been listening. Since its removal I have only experienced negative emotions. And the Doctor tells me that the procedure is irreversible and I 'have to learn to live with it'."
"Seven, it has only been a little more than a day," Kathryn said gently. "These things take time. Deep emotions can be difficult to deal with and children need until adulthood or even longer to learn to appropriately deal with them. It might sound absurd, but positive and negative emotions are not necessarily opposites, they do coexist."
She gave her student some time to process this and saw herself rewarded when Seven nodded. "I think I am beginning to understand. So you think Captain Hansen hasn't been unhappy all this time?"
Kathryn smiled. "I am sure of it."
"I would like to believe you." Kathryn was astounded to see Seven's eyes fill with tears. "Throughout the day I have been thinking about 'One', the Drone we accidentally created due to a Transporter malfunction."
Kathryn nodded. "I remember. That Borg drone really was unique. You had taught him so well, and I won't forget his sacrifice."
"Yes. Losing him hurt me. I keep imagining how bad grief must be without the emotional dampener." A tear started to trail down her cheek. "I wouldn't know how to deal with it." She looked straight at Kathryn. "Who will guide me, when you are gone? I can't lose you!"
Kathryn's heart broke at the younger woman's distress. She begged her closer with one arm. "Come here." When Seven joined her on the couch she pulled her into her arms.
"Don't placate me and tell me that you won't die. I have seen it in her face when she first contacted us and when she beamed aboard. That's why she wants to change our future. She can't live without you. And she has been miserable!" Seven mumbled into her shoulder.
"Then I won't do that," Kathryn assured her quietly and held her as she soaked her uniform with silent tears. After a while Seven's breathing evened out. "Better?" Kathryn whispered.
"A bit," she admitted. "How does one deal with grief?"
"That's a very difficult question and there's no right answer, I'm afraid."
"But you must have faced loss in your life. How did you deal with it?"
"I have faced as similar grief as you are dealing with right now. When I was a child I loved my grandma very much and loved spending my holidays with her. One day, after a lovely stay at my grandparents house, I cried myself to sleep. I had suddenly understood that my grandma was old and that old people would die. I was so scared that I might have seen her for the very last time. It hadn't been my last time to see her, but soon she contracted a brain disease and slowly the person we knew and loved was erased. After two or three years she didn't know me anymore, and was even scared of me. Still, she lived on. My grandpa refused to send her to a nursing home. Patiently, and with so much love, he took care of her until the very end. When she died, everyone knew that it was a blessing. The funeral was beautiful. We remembered her, the fun and caring and smart person she had been before. Then my grandpa suddenly started to be old. I know that he missed her and had poured all his soul into taking care of her. Now, it was as if he just longed to follow her. He died not a year after her death. And even if I can't explain it scientifically, a part of me knows, or at least hopes, that they are somewhere, still together, bonded through their eternal love."
"This is a sad story. But it is also lovely. " Seven swiped over her eyes to remove the last traces of her tears.
"Isn't it? Since then I have dreamed of a love like theirs."
"Was this your only experience with the death of a family member?"
"Sadly, no." Kathryn stared into the distance and silently debated whether she should continue to talk about this highly sensitive subject, yet she felt that Seven had a right to it in her vulnerability. So she continued haltingly, "When my father and my fiancé died, it was very hard on me, too hard, actually. The three of us were in a shuttle crash. I was the only survivor. Besides the grief, I suffered from survivor guilt and my own trauma from the crash."
"How did you cope?" Seven inquired.
"I didn't. Not in the beginning anyway. I slept my days away. My sister, Phoebe, got me out of bed, but it was a small, sick puppy that made me want to live again."
"How so?"
Kathryn smiled a little wistfully. "It found me during a snowstorm as if asking me for help. So I did. Caring for this little creature gave me a purpose."
"A purpose is all it took?" Seven raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"No." Kathryn shook her head. "But it was the beginning of healing. It took quite some time, months even."
"That sounds… uncomfortable. I do not wish to go through such a time."
"Nobody asks for that. Everyone probably wishes for a magic cure. But this time of grieving had its good sides, too. I've grown closer to my sister. And after a while I truly felt her love and my mother's, my dog's," Kathryn smiled at this, "and that of extended family and friends. We healed together and our bonds were stronger for it."
Seven had shifted positions during their talk. She was now sitting with her knees drawn up, arms encircling her legs, clearly lost in thought. Kathryn put a hand on the young woman's arm. "But we are not there yet, and we shouldn't give up hope. If I'm really going to die, you should know that you have a family here, on Voyager. They will give you all the love and the support and the purpose you need and you will get through the time of mourning together. But who knows, with Annika's presence the timeline is already altered. Things can turn out quite differently."
"Or we could go back to Earth. They may be able to help you there." Seven looked at her with renewed hope.
"Seven, it's too risky. We can't put Earth on the Borg's radar. With using that hub we could take a whole armada of Borg ships with us. It isn't worth it."
"The Queen was always interested in getting me back…"
"Don't even think about it!" Kathryn cut across that thought sharply and using a much quieter tone, she added, "I won't allow you to sacrifice yourself for me. Besides, there is no knowing whether it would work at all. First, I don't trust the Borg or their queen and I don't even want to know what the queen would do with your knowledge, and second, there is no guaranteed cure on Earth. The Doctor has been in contact with Starfleet Medical all this time. Surely, they would have told him if there was a possibility."
"You could at least be with your family again."
"No, Seven, I won't trade your life for this, you hear me?" Kathryn implored her.
"Aye, Captain," Seven conceded.
"Good. Don't scare me like that again!" She squeezed Seven's arm. "But I do appreciate the gesture."
"I am frightened, Captain."
"I know," Kathryn said sympathetically. "But don't be. Most often, the things we fear don't turn out as bad and often quite different as we had imagined they would."
"The support system you spoke of? What if it doesn't exist? The crew only tolerates me."
"That's not true," Kathryn protested. "You have more friends than you realise. Chakotay, especially, and the Doctor, too."
"Commander Chakotay and I are no longer in a relationship," Seven stated calmly. "I am not sure that I can still hope for his support."
"What?" Kathryn gasped. "Oh, Seven, I am so sorry! Should I speak with him?"
"I am not sure what that would accomplish. It was I that ended it. Without the failsafe device I have realised that even though I do admire his personality, I do not love him or desire him. My relationship with him has been … nice. I had hoped that without the dampener we could take it a step further. I hadn't anticipated this outcome. Nevertheless, I am glad. This relationship has been distracting and has caused both of us to neglect our duty."
Kathryn wasn't aware of any delinquency on their part, but she let that slide. "If you think that was the right step?"
"I am sure of it, Captain," she said with conviction.
"Then let me assure you that Chakotay is always concerned about the well-being of others. And he is a loyal friend. He will still support you, you don't have to worry about that."
Seven got up. "I will let you rest now. I am sufficiently satisfied that you are feeling better, even though I still recommend a visit to sickbay. Thank you for your advice, and the brownies, and…"
"A shoulder to cry on?" Kathryn stood as well. When Seven nodded shyly, she enveloped her in another hug. "I will be there for you as long as I can. Don't hesitate to use that shoulder again, alright?"
"I will keep it in mind. Good night, Captain!"
Kathryn continued to gaze after her long after the doors had closed. What a difficult conversation! As a Starfleet officer she was no stranger to the possibility of death in the line of duty. She has had her brushes with death, especially in the Delta Quadrant. She shuddered as one particular incident came to mind. And of course throughout her illness she had understood that things might not go as she hoped. She had put her affairs in order, so to speak, she owed it to her crew and Chakotay as her successor. But it had only been last evening that she first considered death to be a real, maybe even favorable, possibility. Now, she knew that it was very real and suddenly found it hard to accept. She didn't want to leave her crew nor cause them pain. Her mother and sister had gone through enough. Life was unfair! She pressed her lips together. Well, she would show the universe that she still had a fight left in her. Her gaze fell onto the plate of brownies. She had almost forgotten that they were one of Chakotay's favorite desserts. Well, they would make a perfect peace offering. With the plate in her hand she started for the door herself. The universe had to wait just a little longer, first she had a friendship to mend.