Imperfection
by Myu
Disclaimer: Star Trek: Voyager
and everything
associated with it is owned by CBS/Paramount.
Notes: Set during Human Error, but it isn't necessary to have viewed the
episode. Seven's story set in parallel to Janeway's.
Rating: Universal/G
---
Seven of Nine had always asserted that one of her goals was to attain perfection
and, when she considered how her life as an individual had been going so far,
she was making adequate progress. Her self-discipline was second perhaps only to
Lieutenant Tuvok's, she performed any task she was given on Voyager efficiently
to the highest standard and she had adopted a routine that allowed her to make
the most of her time within the confines of a duty shift and pursue her other
interests as well. The only area where she was slightly lacking was that of
interpersonal skills, but up until now Seven had been willing to overlook this
weakness, especially given that socialising proved hazardous to her routine and
the time wasted didn't fit in with her desire to make the most efficient use of
the day.
Up to a point.
She had observed the other crewmembers in passing during her time on Voyager, but over the past few months she had gradually become more interested in the way they acted towards one another and the nature of the relationships between a select few individuals. After a series of social lessons with the Doctor Seven had stated her disinclination to proceed with further exploration of this part of her humanity, but that wasn't entirely true – there was still an underlying curiosity that, for some reason, she felt she wanted to fulfil in private.
The solution was simple, and one that she should have spotted much earlier: the Holodeck. How many times had she had to endure crew gatherings with a cast of holographic characters programmed to Tom Paris' liking? If he could do it, so could she, and to a much better standard besides.
In the interests of relevancy she had chosen to begin interacting with a member
of the crew. She had called up the database of male crewmembers and an entry
near the top of the chart caught her eye immediately, probably because the name
was the shortest: Chakotay.
He fit the criteria she had mapped out in her head: intelligent (interested in
archaeology), successful (the highest-ranking male crewmember), favourable
features (at least according to her research), not especially well-known to her
(an opportunity to practise the social skills she had learnt) and mature. They
seemed to be a reasonably good match, Seven reflected, the facts clicking
together in her mind like the components of an equation. This image pleasing her
all the more, she added the character to her program database and set about
arranging a first meeting.
Then the program began and the equation began to unravel slightly. Not everything added up the way she expected, things began to gradually slide out of control and the feeling was both unnerving and deliciously exciting at the same time.
Kathryn Janeway, on the other hand, felt like her life was more on the road to being perfect than ever these days. Even though her standards were somewhat lower than Seven's and based on entirely different principles, her optimism and careful appreciation of the positive aspects of her life gave her a satisfaction with her circumstances that certainly rivalled that of the former Borg's, even if neither was aware of it.
While Seven was losing track of time during a long night on the Holodeck, Kathryn was checking her chronometer as she got ready for a long day on the Bridge. Two smiles already and it wasn't even eight o'clock yet, she marvelled as she stood in front of the mirror. 'Must be love', her mother would have said of a mood like this. Maybe it was true, Kathryn thought, her eyes drifting to where her bed was reflected in the glass. The sight of the rumpled sheets and the sleeping body stretched across the mattress underneath them brought another smile to her lips.
She approached the bed quietly and leaned over to where the edge of a pillow was
sticking out.
"You're going to be late..." Kathryn murmured, her fingertips rubbing the edge
of an exposed shoulder.
"You're going to be late," A muffled voice shot back and she was pulled
under the covers. Her cry of surprise was smothered by laughter and protests
died before they reached her lips as she returned his kisses with a fervour that
echoed the heady darkness of the previous night rather than the greyish morning
that a starship captain was usually faced with.
Seven wasn't one for making mistakes and certainly wasn't for tolerating them, but she wished that that trait would somehow bypass the rest of the staff on Voyager when she found herself making careless slips of the kind she would have expected from an Academy cadet. She realised she hadn't experienced any degree of humiliation before on Voyager and sorely wished that she was still ignorant of the burning shame and clumsy second-guessing that accompanied the sensation. Captain Janeway confronted her about it, and she felt the heat rise in her again when the Commander entered the ready room. Seven made a hasty excuse and fled as soon as she was dismissed, hoping that a return to Astrometrics would be enough to nudge her back to the coolness that her usual level of composure added to her demeanour.
"She's beginning to worry me," Kathryn said softly, even though the doors had
shut firmly behind Seven's retreating back. "These mistakes, this dip in her
concentration...if it were anyone else I'd say they were having a bad day,
but..."
Chakotay murmured his agreement.
"This just isn't like her," She concluded grimly, and looked to Chakotay for the
opinion she knew he was about to give.
"Well...she is only human," He offered, shrugging his shoulders.
"'To err is human,'" Kathryn agreed, "Maybe I'm being too hard on her."
"I see where you're coming from. Maybe we should just wait before jumping to
conclusions; give her a chance to work things out by herself."
She looked at him and nodded.
"Our shift's over," She pronounced absently, catching sight of the time on her
computer display.
"Thank the stars for that." Chakotay's reply came swiftly. Kathryn glanced at
him quizzically.
"You keep pouting across the Bridge at me," He explained slyly, "It's
distracting."
"I do not," She replied, curling her lip, "You just want me to wipe that smirk
off your face."
"I thought you'd never ask."
Kathryn kissed him lightly, caressing his face with a thumb and drew back before
he'd barely had a chance to respond.
"I have to transfer command to the Beta shift," She said carelessly, turning
away towards the door. She had taken perhaps three steps when she felt Chakotay
catch her about the waist. He pulled her back and kissed her in the way that
made her knees feel slightly weak, and she couldn't help smiling underneath his
lips. He let her go and she made her way to the Bridge feeling pleasantly dizzy,
hoping her cheeks wouldn't look too flushed.
Seven had arrived back on the Bridge to deliver an Astrometrics report not a
second before it was due – normally she made a point of handing in her reports
early, but on this occasion it hadn't been high on her list of priorities for
the day. As she was handing the padd over the Captain came out of her ready room
to hand over command to the next shift. Seven looked at her curiously – there
was something different about the Captain lately. There wasn't any obvious
change in her appearance, but there was something in her expression that made
her look much happier. Much prettier, too, Seven observed dryly – she had spent
a fair amount of time trying to arrange her own facial features into a nice
smile, but hers always seemed to look rather forced and certainly didn't add
anything positive to her appearance. Captain Janeway's cheeks were lightly
touched with pink, but Seven had already found out with one experiment that any
colour she tried to add to her cheeks either made her look cold or like she was
suffering from some kind of medical complaint, so there wasn't much she could do
on that front. It was something to do with her eyes, Seven decided - they looked
brighter, somehow. More lively. It wasn't any new make-up or grooming; it seemed
to be entirely natural.
Natural. The word plucked at something within her and she eyed the
spidery Borg implants straining against her skin as she suddenly clenched her
fist tightly.
That night Kathryn thought over the events of the day and bit her lip to keep
from laughing out loud when her thoughts went back to the morning in her
quarters. She rolled over and was confronted with the sight of Chakotay's back,
the contours of which stood out under the thin fabric of his T-shirt. Too
prominently.
"You're so tense..." She murmured, trailing a finger over the stiffened shoulder
blades softly. One twitched. She shifted and leaned over him.
"Are you okay?" Almost as soon as her breath touched his ear he gave a start.
"It's nothing," Chakotay asserted after a slight pause. Kathryn knew him well
enough to realise that he wasn't ready to discuss whatever was bothering him,
and so she chose instead to squeeze his arm and arrange herself around his
curled form, a silent reminder that she was there if he needed to talk.
Seven was eager to return to the Holodeck, too flush with anticipation to notice the startled look Commander Chakotay had given her as he was studying a padd on the Bridge at the end of the shift the previous day. The scenario she was running on the Holodeck had rapidly overtaken her interest in anything else and she was channelling all her energies into it.
It had taken more than a few attempts to perfect the holographic projections for
her own appearance, but Seven had ample amounts of determination and capability
to work at it until she was satisfied. Programming the finer aspects – such as
the part to disguise her ocular implant without making that part of her face
look entirely frozen – took so much time that the clothing projection was
practically child's play by comparison. It was an apt phrase, she realised, as
she was reminded of when she used to supervise the children during their
recreation time. Naomi and Mezoti shared a keen liking for make-believe and
would often draw pictures to embellish their inane, babbling stories, which
amounted to little further than the girls assuming various fantastic identities
for themselves. They would amuse themselves for hours if she let them,
chattering endlessly about the intricacies of their imagined costumes and living
circumstances.
"I want to be a grown-up!"
"I want to be an explorer!"
"I want to be a princess!"
She found their gleeful shouts echoed in her own, measured voice as she
flipped through the clothing parameters, the perfectly-fitting templates a far
cry from the wobbly lines of the fashions the girls drew for their characters,
the paper dolls that cavorted and danced and kissed and giggled and fell.
I want to be normal. I want to be a woman. I want to be real. I want to be...
"That," she murmured breathlessly, as she spotted the red dress.
Full-length, low-cut, high colour...fit for a first kiss, high pride and a long
fall.
That evening Kathryn had booked two hours on the Holodeck, determined to play a few rounds of Velocity with a computer opponent to work off some energy and give Chakotay some breathing space. She found the Holodeck doors sealed and waited outside for ten minutes before she checked whose program was running. She didn't recognise the filename and overrode the entrance lock.
"Hello? Seven? You've gone over into my holodeck time..." Captain Janeway called
cautiously as she made her way through the doors to the Holodeck.
She looked around the room and couldn't see Seven anywhere. The environment was
confusing at first glance – it was a completely ordinary set of Voyager
quarters. Her eyes passed over an astrometric chart, a kitchenette with an array
of neatly-stacked pots and pans, a shelf with a pile of sheet music and a
metronome on it...and then all thoughts of looking for Seven flew out of her
head when she caught sight of the bed – or, rather, the object hanging from the
viewport above it.
It was an elaborate-looking object with wooden rings on a kind of hanging mobile with string crossed inside them like a spiderweb. Feathers and beads trailed from the rings. Kathryn didn't need to look at it too carefully, as she had an identical one hanging in her own room. Chakotay had given it to her after that first night...she put the thought from her mind and turned around with the aim of leaving, but then she was confronted with another sight that shook her to the core. There, draped over the edge of a chair, was a jumper she immediately recognised as one of Chakotay's. She stretched her hand out to turn it over and see if it was really his, but her hand began to shake uncontrollably and she clenched her fist. The veins stood out on the back of her hand, the carriers of the pulse that had made her heart sing in his presence suddenly looking ugly, the way they snaked under her skin. Her whole arm began to tense up and she left the Holodeck quickly, stumbling over her feet in her haste to get back to her own quarters and try and make sense of everything she had just seen.
You're so tense...
Her own words came back to her as she was on her way to the turbolift and she
blanched.
The room had been Seven's, no doubt about that. It had her personality written
all over it. There seemed something odd about that very fact – as though the
concept of Seven having a recognisable personality was foreign in itself, she
thought with some coldness, and was then a little disgusted that such a spiteful
thought had occurred to her so readily.
Kathryn stopped in the middle of the empty corridor suddenly. It was madness to think that Chakotay would ever conduct an affair behind her back. She knew him too well to believe he'd do something like that. But why would he have been there in the first place? She continued on her way to the turbolift and called for the deck where Chakotay's quarters were located, determined to get some answers.
When Kathryn burst into Chakotay's quarters he was sitting in his armchair
looking grave, his chin resting on his clasped hands.
"Chakotay?" She asked tentatively, suddenly unsure as to whether she should stay
or not.
He looked up and the muscles in his forehead relaxed visibly.
"What's wrong?" Her voice sounded too detached, but at that particular moment
she didn't care.
"It's Seven," He mumbled. Kathryn felt her heart sink, and said nothing.
"She's been having a relationship with a holographic version of me." Chakotay
said flatly.
His expression was so mixed and the words so completely unlike those she had
expected that it took a moment for her to process them.
"She – what?" Kathryn breathed, a note of confusion in her voice.
"All that time she was spending on the Holodeck – she made up a boyfriend for
herself using my image." His tone sounded hollow, as though he could hardly
believe what he was saying. Kathryn took in this new information and approached
the chair. She wanted to be near him.
"I went to the Holodeck after Seven fell ill. I thought –" She broke off
uneasily. Chakotay looked up and she saw the realisation dawn on his face. He
pulled her into his lap wordlessly.
"I don't know why she would do something like this," He murmured into her
shoulder, "We hardly even speak to each other."
"You can't blame her for her choice of boyfriend," Kathryn answered softly,
stroking his hair, "I think we forget that, for all the advanced knowledge she
acquired with the collective, she's still relatively immature about things like
emotions."
"She's acting like a child," Chakotay agreed bitterly, "She can't have my
heart."
She frowned at him.
"She wants something that belongs to you," He continued, holding her gaze. She
blinked and swallowed hard.
"She doesn't know it's not hers to have," Kathryn answered thickly, "Seven
probably never intended for you to find out about that program."
"I suppose. I still don’t like it, though. I’ll ask the Doctor to remind her of
the protocol regarding Holodeck characters, but he doesn’t have to say it was on
my orders."
Kathryn nodded her agreement.
"Chakotay, I don't think we should tell her about us," She said after a pause,
"Not yet. It would only upset her."
"Kathryn?" Chakotay tenderly wiped away a tear that had escaped down her cheek.
"She'd be heartbroken. I don't want to do that to her," Kathryn dabbed at her
eyes hastily, "I'm not ashamed to be with you. You make me so, so happy." She
planted light kisses on his cheek until she reached the edge of his face.
"Don't hold it against her," Kathryn breathed into his ear. He shivered
slightly, but said nothing.
"Remember how we got together...?"
Chakotay looked her straight in the eye, recalling the day months ago when he'd
followed her into the Holodeck.
"I remember," He said, fingering a lock of her hair.
* * *
Earlier that year Chakotay and Kathryn had been growing closer. It had probably started to happen after she confided in him about her letter from Mark; unexpectedly that seemed to have relaxed some unwritten rule between then and blurred the boundaries of their friendship. For some period of time they skirted around the issue and neither of them acted upon their feelings, but as a result they began to have increasingly heated arguments as a command team. There was so much tension between them that any minor disagreement was blown out of all proportion and they could end up locked in the ready room for an hour at the end of a shift snapping at each other. Kathryn was like a coiled spring and it even seemed to manifest itself physically, wherein she appeared drawn and her features at times seemed severe. Chakotay imagined it wasn't much different in his case – sometimes his skin felt as though it was stretched so tightly over his skull that he was sure he would see bone straining against it. He found it difficult to sleep for thinking about Kathryn and the constant conflict was wearing his patience thin.
At the end of one evening shift they had argued again and he regretted speaking sharply to Kathryn as soon as the words were out of his mouth. They were travelling through an area of space with little in the way of astronomical phenomena and he was well aware of how difficult she had found it when they passed through a similar region about a year and a half previously. But he had been feeling the strain as well and was so frustrated about the way their relationship had stalled before it had begun to gain momentum that he had directed his annoyance at her. Her gaze lingered on him for a moment and then she pushed past him abruptly and left the room.
He stormed off to the Holodeck to let off some steam, but was growing increasingly irritated with the twee characters of Fair Haven and was about to leave when he saw Kathryn marching across the village square. He moved out of sight behind a pillar and watched her back with some interest. She was dressed in period costume, which was a dress closely fitted at the waist that tied up the back. Her hair was up in a style that reminded him of uptight old schoolmistresses from books he had read, and it almost made him laugh to consider the whole situation. They were both packing away their true feelings under arguments and starched fabric, and at some point a seam was going to burst.
He stole after her into the pub and took a seat at the back on a bench with a high back so that he could avoid being seen. He sat and thought about what to do, and periodically looked up to find Kathryn's reflection in the large mirror that was at the back of the bar. There she was playing Rings and looking exceedingly uncomfortable, then later she was talking to the bartender – who, unless Chakotay was mistaken, looked distinctly taller and more clean-cut than the last time he had visited the program. He caught Kathryn looking up at the character with an expression that forced him to hide a smile, and he could see traces of the way she acted around him apparent in her manner around the hologram.
Later the music was getting a little too much for Chakotay and he wasn't sure
what he should do, but then everything became clear when a dance came to a
natural end and he could see Kathryn a short distance away. She had stopped
suddenly in the middle of the room.
"Computer, delete all characters except Michael Sullivan," She ordered
breathlessly. The crowds in the pub vanished.
"Computer, delete Michael Sullivan," Chakotay said quietly, striding across the
empty floor.
Kathryn whirled around and gazed at him in horror. Her cheeks felt warm under
his fingers as he took hold of her and kissed her firmly. He drew back, but she
grabbed him by the front of his shirt and returned the kiss hungrily, not giving
him the chance to pull away again. When they finally did disentangle themselves
from each other Kathryn's tight bun had come undone and her hair fell around her
face in tousled waves. Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe deeply under
the tight bodice of her dress and she turned smouldering eyes on him.
"Help me get out of this damned thing," She had whispered to him urgently, and
from the moment those dress lacings were untied they had released each other
from inhibitions and protocol and broken free from all that had been repressing
their feelings for each other beforehand...
* * *
Down in Sickbay, Seven lay on her side on a biobed with her elbows bent and arms drawn tight together, looking at her hands resting near to her face. There was no one around and there were no other patients in the Sickbay besides her. The Doctor was offline and wasn't due to be reactivated for another hour or two, but whatever sedative he had given her had worn off. Until her nap on the Holodeck a few days ago she had never tried to sleep outside her alcove. There was no point – her implants wouldn't regenerate and it was a complete waste of time. She didn't even have a bed, she contemplated with a hint of bitterness, nor any other furniture for that matter. There wasn't a place for her on Voyager at all.
Seven tried to keep all of her human emotions under strict control, but there was something that nudged the cold exterior when that particular thought crossed her mind. There was space – plenty of space...space in the vacant chairs that surrounded her when she sat in the Messhall, ample room to move around the empty cargo bay, strained space when her colleagues approached her and stood at a distance, gaping enough for her to know she was not wanted and that her exit route was unhindered...and yet there was nowhere to escape to; no place where she belonged or that she could truly call her own.
She thought back to the night with the Chakotay hologram and resolved to feel
nothing.
His arm was draped across her waist, pleasantly heavy with sleep...
She let her own arm drift across her torso, trying to mimic the way it had felt.
It was a poor substitute.
The warmth spread through her and she was weighed down
with it, content to doze in this soft, comfortable world with blurred, liquid
edges...
The biobed was too firm to offer any real comfort and the thin sheet rustled with her every move. The Sickbay was cool and there was no swimming drowsiness or mound of soft cushions, just the jagged outline of her arm – the one with the visible dull silver cybernetic implants that were too complex to remove and too prominent to disguise. She twitched her wrist and activated the defunct assimilation tubules, which waved uselessly in the air without a target or purpose. They were ugly, but not really in any pure aesthetic sense – they stood for the Borg and their objectives stained with murder, ruthlessness and brutality, expelled from a piece of metal under the skin of a girl who wore a skintight bodysuit and didn’t understand allure, who had been connected to millions and felt awkward in the presence of one other person, who had taken countless lives and then struggled to create one for herself. Learning about the safety device to suppress her emotions had brought on an incredible feeling of numbness, in stark contrast to the dizzying spirals of hot emotion she had experienced in the past few days. Seven lay frozen, gazing at her empty hands with all the unfeeling that the mechanical implement represented – half-human, half-machine, and yet fully imperfect.
* * *
They didn't speak again until a little later when they were ready to go to bed.
"Do you think that was why Seven's been acting differently lately?" Kathryn
said, regarding Chakotay as he slipped under the covers next to her. She
smoothed the pads of her fingers over his temples, where he tended to get
tension headaches in times of stress.
"Maybe," Chakotay mused, "It would explain why she's been preoccupied." He
relaxed into the pillows, comforted by her presence.
"I worry about what it will mean for her," Kathryn said sadly, " I don't want
her to believe that to feel something for someone interferes with her work."
"Did you worry about that with us?"
"Maybe at the beginning," She said honestly, looking away, "But I think we found
it was harder to stay apart."
Kathryn shifted closer to him, drawn to the security that his warmth and
encircling arm afforded her. She lowered her voice.
"When I saw that Holodeck program I felt...like she'd done something to hurt me
personally, and I was just about ready to renounce all the good I saw in her."
Chakotay gave her a sympathetic smile.
"But I've had enough experience to realise more or less straight away that I was
being stupid, that I trust you and that she doesn't have a personal vendetta
against either of us. She doesn't have that history of relationships to guide
her judgement. She doesn't know that this probably isn't the last time she'll
ever have feelings for someone, or that she'll find someone who can return them.
We emphasise that we’re not perfect, but she’s so hellbent on attaining
that Borg concept that I think we stopped trying to make her believe it as well.
She hasn't really ever gotten anything wrong. Not like this. Maybe that was our
flaw, to overlook that." Chakotay nodded, but nevertheless held her to him
tightly.
"Thanks," He murmured sleepily.
"Why?"
"For being imperfect. For being you."
He felt a whispering kiss touch him as he drifted off, eyelids too heavy to give a response. Kathryn began to doze, warmed by his arms and his love and fell asleep with her fingers curled next to his chest, as though she were protecting the fullness of the warmth within.
- End -
Additional notes: This was the fifteenth Voyager fic I've completed and was
written for the VAMB Secret Santa Exchange 2012. Many thanks to my match elem,
whose request only specified a 'happy J/C ending'.
I think I'm slightly more sympathetic to Human Error as it is entirely
Seven's fantasy, and I have virtually no objections to C/7 in the context of
this episode because I find something desperately sad about the whole scenario.
Setting Seven's narrative in parallel with my own rather twee J/C imagining is
really just an extension of this concept, so I really owe the original
screenwriters (Braga and Bormanis; story credited to Bormanis and Biller) for
this. Thank you for reading!
---
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