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Home.
For years she’s heard the word. Heard it used so many times, in so many ways, that she hardly thinks of it at a word at all. Home is a concept, a goal; a verb. It had puzzled her, at first. She’d asked the Doctor about it more than once, but in the end it was the captain, of course, who’d helped her build a bridge from meaning to understanding.
Home — for Annika, for Seven of Nine — had never been a place.
Home, for Seven, was beginning to be her crew, her people, until with very little warning the people who comprise her home are returned to their own homes and Seven is left adrift.
The nearest analog that she can find is the feeling that enveloped her in the first days and weeks after she was severed from the Borg collective. No order, no orders, only echoing silence and a sense of purposelessness so profound that it is difficult to believe she will continue to function. This time, however, she has words to put to the experience, an understanding of her own emotions and psychological processes. In some ways, this makes the experience more painful.
Voyager has been in space dock above the planet Earth for twenty-seven days. The last of the essential crew are due to transfer out later today. Soon strangers will be flooding her decks and halls, strangers who will make a decision with merciless detachment: refit, or decommission. Seven knows she should approve of the clinical impartiality of these strangers, but finds that she cannot.
She has been haunting Astrometrics. She and Ensign — now Lieutenant — Kim spent five days with a crew from Starbase One, instructing them on the inner workings of the lab, explaining the functionality of the Borg technology and its integration into the systems. But that was seventeen days ago; Harry Kim has long since returned home to his family. With the ship powered down, she can access only the most rudimentary functions of her lab, of the place that the captain had once jokingly referred to as her ‘kingdom.’ There is a star chart on the screen in front of her, the one she had finished only three days ago. The final map showing every minute detail, annotated and collated with log entries, of Voyager’s journey from the Delta quadrant back to…back home. She finds herself staring at the point on that line denoting the time and place where one more soul had joined in that chaotic journey.
Behind her, the door slides softly open. Seven stiffens, gripping her hands tightly behind her back.
A quiet step, a pause. Then: “Seven.”
Seven blinks. Does not turn. She is fighting every impulse within her body, but she does not turn. “Captain.”
Captain Janeway sighs softly, almost a laugh. She sounds tired. Her footfalls approach, mount the steps until she is standing beside Seven, gazing at the viewscreen. “One could almost imagine we’re still out there, and this is just another day.”
Seven feels herself frown and gives a slight shake of her head, but only says, “Almost.”
“Yes,” the captain concedes, and in her peripheral vision Seven can see her tilt her head from side to side, rubbing the back of her neck, seeking relief. “If this were any other day the replicators would still be working and I’d have a cup of coffee in my hands.”
Finally Seven turns to face the captain, just as the captain is turning to face her and at their sudden eye contact Seven feels a sort of…jolt. A sensation that should not be physical but the ache that she feels has a definite locus within her body, behind her breastbone, accompanied by a twisting sensation in her stomach. The captain was smiling when she turned, but the smile fades quickly and is replaced by an expression of concern as her eyes dart around Seven’s face.
“Seven,” she says, gentle and so familiar. “I hear you haven’t left Voyager yet. Why?”
Seven blinks. “My presence on board has been beneficial. There is much to do and I am the only member of the crew without… No one is waiting for me on Earth. It was logical that I remain here to liaise with the relief crew so that the others may return to their families.”
The captain turns to lean back against the console, folding her arms across her chest and looking up at Seven. She is wearing black slacks and a loose gray blouse. Seven takes her in, the drape of unfamiliar fabric on her familiar body. Her hair has changed as well, cut shorter and styled differently, tinted a slightly darker shade. External changes that ought to be inconsequential but, taken together, are jarring to Seven, suggesting that the captain has been attempting to distance herself in body and mind from her time on Voyager.
“Captain—” Seven begins, but she is interrupted.
“Seven.” A hand on her arm, the familiar quirk of an eyebrow. “I’m off-duty.”
Kathryn. She tries the name in the privacy of her mind, but can’t bring it to her lips. She hesitates, then asks, “So you are no longer my captain?”
Kathryn hasn’t moved her hand from Seven’s arm, and now she closes her fingers around her wrist, holding her firmly. “I am what I have always been, Seven. Your friend. And as your friend I have to say, I’m a little hurt.”
“Captain?” Seven says, pure reflex, confusion bleeding into her tone.
Kathryn shakes her head in good-natured exasperation, but when she looks up at her again, her gaze is clear and focused. “You say that no one’s waiting for you on Earth. Well, I’ve been on Earth all this time. I have been waiting.”
“I—” Seven stops, considers, tilting her head as another feeling begins to displace the confusion, one that takes a moment for her to name. When she does, she cannot hold eye contact and looks away from Kathryn’s earnest face, emotion translating into a physiological response that brings heat to her cheeks. “I apologize, Captain, I am afraid that I did not take your invitation to be…”
“Genuine?” Kathryn asks when she trails off, and when Seven nods once, she releases her wrist and lifts her hand instead to Seven’s face, her palm cool and soft against her warm cheek. “Seven,” she murmurs, and Seven’s eyes are drawn back to her captain’s face, to her warm, expressive eyes, and without knowing what it is she intends she tips her head, pressing into her steady touch. “Seven. It’s more than an invitation, it’s a request. Come home with me.”
Seven’s eyes flutter closed and she lifts her hand to cover Kathryn’s against her cheek, distantly aware of the accelerated rise and fall of her own chest. A quiet sound emanates from within Kathryn’s throat, an unvoiced sound of…of longing, Seven thinks. An echo to the sound that Seven has kept locked within her own body for years.
Kathryn’s other hand is on Seven’s face now, cradling her like something precious, like something cherished, and if this is the end result of the way Kathryn has chosen to distance herself from her life on Voyager, her role as captain, then Seven understands at last.
“Come home with me, Seven. Let me help you. Let me take care of you. Come home with me.”
Seven turns her face into Kathryn’s hand, lips lingering in the center of her palm, breathing in the familiar and unfamiliar scent of her, and nods. Nods and keeps nodding her assent, her willing acceptance of these new terms, and going readily into the arms that are folded around her, face pressed to Kathryn’s neck, her own hands finding new homes on Kathryn’s body. The curve of her hip, the dip of her back, and the heartbeat that drums against her own, steady and known and loved beyond all measure or reason.