Queen of Hearts, swift beheadings.
Explanations. You probably want to know who I am, plastering my face on your home viewscreen, waking your early morning slumber. Oh, I'm aware of your habits. By the time you wake up enough to realize this isn't a dream, I'll be quite finished, ma'am. Then you can mull over my identity and my words, with him. If either of you still have the humanity to give a damn.
Doubtful.
But back to the issue. Seven has become accustomed to her incompletion...admits that she has never felt as secure or as satisfied with her existence as she felt during those years as a drone. And why should she? The Borg were family, no emotional ties, no inherent tendencies to betray and no souls to shatter with the betrayal. You, voyager, taught her the colder facets of living, and she never escaped them afterward.
I see her through jaded eyes myself, you need not fear a rant of blind defense here. Seven of Nine is selfish, and willful, and thoroughly insensitive. She's also young at heart, and vulnerable, and ancient in soul. And so very confused.
I suppose I inherited some of it, or I wouldn't be breaking open old scabs to confront you with this.
I want to walk you through Seven's life, ma'am. Bitter step by bitter step.
Picture yourself, six years old, hiding underneath a flimsy console, watching your entire existence explode into hell. Easy to see, isn't it? Easy to tsk about and move on. You've witnessed the slaughter of innocents before. You've even instigated it. It's really very bland to you.
So move back a few weeks, a few months. Witness the arguments, the image of a small girl with golden hair and a crooked smile hiding under a kitchen table, in a closet. Listen to her parents. Father wants adventure. Mother wants safety. Annika simply wants peace. No such luck. Picture the same time, same place, another golden-hair, this one older, mechanically driven, in a tight suit of the finest red and with metal for jewels. Picture this Annika, the one you thought you knew so well. She went back in time. Did you know that? Did she report it? Seven went back in time, and attempted to convince her parents not to take that fateful flight. She pleaded with them, verging on hysteria. Mother almost believed her, did want to stay. Father said no, Father brushed her off. She left in dejection and with the weight of three lives in her heart, but not before befriending herself.
Can you begin to comprehend the pain I saw in her eyes, sensed in her voice, as she told me of herself, of the child who trusted her implicitly but in the end met the fate her father decreed with his foolish audacity and childish spirit?
No, you won't comprehend it. But I did, and rested my head on her lap like a child, and felt the spasms in her fingers as she stroked my dark hair. She apologized, over and over, for my childhood, for my difficulties, for my anger, for my existence. "I should have spared you." She said, firmly and painfully. "But how could I have, when I could not spare myself?"
Move along.
A drone, cut off from her hive, left adrift on a ship of inferiors with delusions of superiority, and no fear of acting on those delusions. Picture yourself alone, terribly alone, hearing only your own thoughts after processing the thoughts of trillions, condensing them, making them one. Picture yourself considered an outcast, antisocial, unfriendly. How do you understand the concepts of sociality and friendship when you haven't had either? You don't. You simply move through existence on a tide of confusion. You retreat into yourself, and shy away from asking the help and attention you desperately crave. You condense your thoughts, until they don't matter, and cannot hurt. Nor can the insults and distance. Eventually, you become adept at survival, and pretension. You are a good sport. You smile, nod, pretend grudging amusement. You allow the others the privilege of never knowing how much you hurt, and how they cause the hurt. You hide behind your garish, cracked clowns mask, and scream inside, when Annika isn't softly weeping.
You learn that to love is to hurt, and recognize the same realization in the eyes of a few others, the ones who know almost as much of hell as you. It is easy to call these few friend, Tom Paris, Samantha Wildman, Neelix. You empathize with them, but there remains a veil of fog between you. There is another, who rips apart the veil, who attracts you not with his bids for attention, his unbending perseverance, or his bright mask. He comes to you with no pretenses, no promises, nothing but a smile and sad brown eyes.
Seven and the Chakotay. Scandal behind that pairing, and pain. They survived the return home, and took a cabin on the lake, in a remote area of Earth. That was her dream...no alien landscapes, no more star travel, just the rich warmth of the human homeworld and the promise of a happy future. Just as the child Annika and her mother always wanted.
Picture yourself a bride, draped in old lace and soft silks, your hair loose and bud-strewn, your feet dancing to tunes you had never thought yourself capable of tolerating, much less enjoying. Picture a strong native arm around your waist, warm breath on your neck, the drunkenness of pure, unhampered joy.
No, don't look beyond the wedding dance, ma'am...you wouldn't want to see. We have the vids, still, and it's very odd how well electronic impulses can capture the soul. You were a proper guest, all smiles and champagne, patting hands and commanding toasts, but there was a coldness, a lunging hunger in your gaze that few besides Seven or myself would fully recognize. That was the last time you would see Seven of Nine for years. You simply ignored her existence.
And she moved on. Try on her shoes again.
The third home in as many years, a modest little shack with no modern amenities like replicators and sonic showers. This time, you aren't wearing the kid slippers of a blushing bride. You happen to be barefoot, your makeup smudged, your eyes threatening to overflow with tears, and frustration. This is the third time his reunion meeting with Admiral Janeway has turned into an overnight coffee and roast at Kathryn's gleaming apartment. You aren't jealous, yet, but you are tired, and ill, and you have a messy house and a bawling two year old at your knee.
You recognize that you are not complete.
I was the bawling two year old. The next day, Chakotay came home to find his bride on the kitchen floor, with slashed wrists. She survived, but the child who was hiding under the kitchen table will never forget the pain, or the realization that she was not valuable enough to make Mother want to stay alive.
Ill, now?
Have your companion get you a cloth. He probably hasn't spoken yet, for he believes when in a pit, words only put you deeper. He's scratching for resistance, in a most reserved way. He was silent that day as well, and even after Seven recovered from her self-inflicted injuries it was never discussed. His silent blame got the point across well enough.
One more shoe fitting. A year later, Seven and child returning early from a vacation with the Paris family. Seven is calm, unplagued by nightmares or fears, almost fully happy. She walks into her home prepared for a new start, a brighter future. She walks into tangled sheets and sex, and so does her daughter.
At times I believe the image still haunts her, one of those stark, unforgettable moments amongst a thousand.
She walks onto the porch, and sits on the rough planking, rocking the small child calmly, eyes cold and pained. Husband and Father doesn't make excuses, doesn't offer apologies.
He left with his bed partner, moved his things out days later, didn't fight custody requests or plead another chance. He just walked away, and ended up where he is right now, in your home, in your bed. At times I hate him for it.
There are no confrontations, but there really needn't have been. Her expression had to say it all, she could bite back words, but Seven's eyes were her soul, and utterly without restraint. At times I hate her for the weakness of giving in, giving you...her captain...the satisfaction.
Her captain.
Only way Kathryn Janeway has ever been addressed in the household of Annika Hansen. The words are a sort of honorable litany put together, a grotesque prayer to a demigod. I don't understand the reverence. You took everything from us, and had no part in the rebuilding.
Yet my mother still labels you 'my captain'.
Love.
Fuck, what do you know of it?
You don't remember the night the way I do, I suppose. Moonlight and roses, a neck rub, gentle teasing...my father was very good with gentle teasing. Those are your memories. You've conveniently blocked the fact that the roses were picked from my mother's little garden and that the sheets you crushed them on during your lovemaking were her marriage sheets.
I wonder what he remembers? I've thought of asking, to be sure, I've received his dutiful requests for communication, my mother has never told me to not contact him. I've thought about it, just to ask what he remembers of the night. Does he recall seeing his wife and little girl framed in the bedroom doorway, watching his adultery? Does he recall the naked shock and pain on her face? I do.
I thought of asking her as well, how she lives her solitary life so calmly, how she accepts your arrogance and inferiority without outward emotion. I did, asked her how she could tolerate being so incomplete, so utterly abandoned and cast upon jagged rocks.
"Katrine." My mother turned to me then, the dying sunlight framing her face in amber, the still blond hair falling loosely against the absurdly innocent face. "You must understand. She was my captain. She could not always be my friend."
FIN
