Chapter Text
“Stop fussing and let me help you!” Raffi pleaded, exasperated.
Seven was sitting, back pressed up against the wrecked bulkhead of the crashed Borg Cube, cradling her hand.
“I can do it myself.” Seven muttered.
She placed the dermal regenerator between her teeth, the metal fingertips of her left hand pressing together the open wound on her right. Blood seeped steadily out of the cut, running down over her wrist.
“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Raffi said warmly, she held her arms up in surrender, “But honey, you don’t have to do it by yourself.”
She plucked the dermal regenerator out of Seven’s mouth and knelt down beside her. Carefully cradling the injured hand she turned it over to get a better look at the damage. Blood dripped onto Raffi’s trouser leg, sinking into the coarse fabric, staining it. Seven tried to pull her hand away, to stop from further ruining the clothing.
“Hold still.” Raffi said, tightening her grip on Seven’s wrist, running the regenerator smoothly, steadily through the air above the open skin. Seven sat, caught, feeling her own pulse flutter under Raffi’s firm grip.
Raffi was kneeling, bent over to inspect her work. Soft curls fell forward, inches from Seven’s face. Both of them held still, as the gentle hum from the dermal regenerator filled the silence between them. The Rangers were more of a ‘patch yourself up on the move’ group, Seven mused. This stillness felt alien.
Seven shifted uncomfortably, it had been a long time since she was this close to anyone, especially someone like Raffi...
The xB’s eyes strayed to the hand around her wrist. Her mind trailing off to being cautiously handcuffed before their Freecloud mission. Such slow, caring hands and soft words from a stranger. Raffi’s warm hand felt good against her wrist but the closeness and intimacy of the gesture was making Seven increasingly self conscious.
Raffi hummed softly, unaware of the conflict she was invoking in the xB. Her look of gentle concentration melted into a smile as she finished. She looked up, eyes meeting Seven’s for a moment.
Seven was sure she saw something flash across Raffi’s face.
The next instant it was gone and Raffi was hauling herself to her feet, before stretching down a hand to help Seven do the same.
“Stop fussing! I don’t have time for this, the club opens in thirty minutes.” Bjazyl hurried around the glitzy venue, tweaking the decorations here and there.
“Can I get a hand here, Jay?” Annika grimaced, kneeling by a crate. Her palm sliced open by a broken bottle of Romulan Ale that had been damaged, unnoticed, at the bottom of the Ferengi’s shipment. A trickle of blood dripped down her hand into the mess of glass and sickly blue liquor on the floor.
“Ani, I would , you know I would, but this dress costs more than it weighs in latinum and I can’t afford to get blood on it. You understand.” It wasn’t a question.
Blood welled up from the deep gash in her palm, it was worse than she’d thought.
“If we’re opening in thirty, then I’m going to need a dermal regenerator.”
Bjayzl didn’t turn from the mirror where she was adjusting the extravagant lapels of her evening-wear “In the medkit behind the bar.”
Jay looked, seductively, at her own reflection, dark half Betazoid eyes expertly framed with smokey kohl. Her gaze followed Ani’s retreating frame in the mirror. She watched hungrily as she bent over the bar... yum. A moment later her eyes caught, distracted, at the reflection of some untidy jumble ruining the sleek lines of her perfect bar.
“What’s this doing here?” She turned and flicked her hand dismissively at the metallic collection of rods.
“I was passing the time,” Annika shrugged, the blue light of the regenerator knitting the skin back together. A small shard of blue glass wormed its way, stinging, out of her flesh ahead of the beam.
“Well move it! Nothing ruins the party atmosphere like Vulcan logic puzzles.” Bjazyl scooped the t’an sticks up in two hands and dumped them unceremoniously in the reclimator behind the bar.
“Hey, I was nearly done with that!”
“You’ll be too busy tonight anyway,” the brunette purred. “I need my little security drone on top form!” she booped the xB’s nose with a long manicured finger. Jay waited till Annika had sealed the last of the cut with the dermal regenerator, before snaking closer.
“And then afterwards,” she raked her hands through Ani’s hair, “We can maybe find some other way of keeping you occupied?”
Seven sat at one of La Sirena’s mess tables, contemplating her next move. She loved the simplicity of Kal-Toh.
The Vulcan game had always calmed Seven. It reminded her of good times with fine crewmen. Jay had never played of course, there was no way of manipulating the game to her favour and so the most tactical move became not to play.
The ocular implant helped. The way her old Borg systems managed visual data was beyond any organic processing. It was like seeing all the games possibilities at once, like an overlay. Each possible step laid out on top of the previous; two mirrors reflecting into infinity.
The harmony of it.
It was peaceful.
It stirred up memories of Voyager. So long ago; another quadrant, another lifetime. She could almost hear Tuvok’s calm voice. “Not about striving for balance but about finding the seeds of order even in the midst of profound chaos."
Balance as the end goal was never the thing, she’d tried that with the Rangers, it hadn’t worked.
The key was finding the seeds of order, little points of goodness or right, with which the chaos could then be navigated. There was certainly no way of making ‘total balance’ out of this current, unlikely situation. The ‘crew’ of La Sirena, from what she’d seen, seemed to be a heady mix of professional competence and personal disarray held together by sheer force of will.
All chaos, not much balance.
But, she mused, placing a t’an, she was more than a little interested in perhaps being the balance for one particular chaotic individual.
“How’s that hand doing?” Raffi said, pulling up a seat, holding a bottle of bourbon. She poured for both of them. They clinked their glasses, before draining their drinks.
Seven watched as the other woman wrinkled her nose at the burn of the liquor. Wild hair flicking out into a halo as she shook her head, before settling to frame her face. Seven’s eyes strayed down the soft skin of Raffi’s neck. She paused and consciously swallowed her drink.
Shit.
How would that skin feel if she brushed her lips across it?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached out and brushed Raffi’s knuckle lightly with her fingertips. Smoothing her fingers over the curve of Raffi’s thumb and across the back of her hand.
As Raffi did nothing to pull away she grew bolder, gently intertwining their fingers.
“Good as new.” Seven smiled. “Thanks to you.”
Raffi watched their hands interlace and met the blonde’s gaze with a warm, pleasantly surprised, smile.
“It’s time.” Picard’s voice rang out above them. A call to action. His tone as authoritative as ever.
As the crew collected on the bridge, Seven followed Raffi up the stairs idly wondering if she’d caught a hint of the other woman’s perfume. Seven’s stomach twisted. She remembered swearing off these kinds of personal entanglements after the mess with Jay.
She watched as Raffi took her place at OPS, her lean figure framed against the view of Coppelius from orbit, those nimble fingers expertly navigating the controls. Pinching her leather jacket closed, Seven took her seat at tactical, readying the systems safely for warp. Once ready she paused and cast another cautious glance across at the OPS officer.
It’s time? Seven thought, maybe the old man was right for once?
Raffi caught her looking, grinned mischievously and winked.
All right then, thought Seven, eyebrows raised. Maybe she could give this sort of thing one more chance...