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Jake wasn’t allowed to come see Mom the first time. Dad went on his own, over to the Starfleet medical center she spent her first weeks in after she’d been found. The one that had one of the few, fledgeling specialty programs in de-assimilating Borg drones.
He still remembered when Dad had first gotten the call. The way he’d gone quiet. Weirdly quiet. Then asked the person on the other end to repeat themselves, a look of disbelief on his face. How even when the call had ended, he’d still seemed like he wasn’t quite letting himself be happy.
But in the following couple of days, between getting the call and finally being able to go see her, Dad’s mood had changed. Jake wasn’t sure how much of it was real and how much was for Jake’s benefit and how much was just Dad needing something to hope for after the past four years, but he seemed more optimistic. Making plans for her homecoming. Talking about what he’d cook for her, the flowers he’d replicate for the table when the time came.
When he’d come back to their quarters that night after he’d gone to the medical center, he’d looked exhausted. Sad. It worried Jake. He’d spent so long wishing for his mother back, and he knew Dad had too. It had only been recently that they’d really started to move on with their lives. Now that she might be back, though--he was almost starting to feel bad that they had, even though he knew that was silly.
“How is she?” Jake had asked.
A ghost of a smile crossed Dad’s face. “She’s doing very well.”
Then why don’t you look happier? “Do you think I can come see her soon?”
“The doctors think so, yes.” There was a pause, then Dad said, “Come sit down with me for a minute, son.”
They sat down in two of the chairs by the kitchen table. After a few moments, Dad spoke. “Jake, your mother has been through a terrible ordeal these past four years. Something neither of us can ever truly imagine.”
Jake nodded. He knew, on an intellectual level, what the Borg did to people. He’d always tried never to think of it in terms of his mother, though--better to assume she’d simply died, as so many had at the Battle of Wolf 359.
“She might not be… quite the same as you remember her,” Dad said.
Two days later, it was time for Jake to see for himself.
She lay on a biobed, staring up at the ceiling. A metal implant glared from above her left eyebrow, and another across her right cheek. Her hair was shorter than Jake had ever seen it, and patchy in places. But she looked… human, Jake thought. Not like the pictures of Borg drones he’d seen. Maybe Dad had been wrong? Or maybe things had changed since that first day?
He took a step closer. She didn’t move. Her eyes looked dull, empty, he realized. He wondered what she was seeing, if it was really just the white ceiling of the hospital room.
“Mom?” he whispered.
There was silence. “Jake,” his mother said finally, her voice hoarse. “My baby.” A small smile crossed her face.
Jake broke into a grin. “Mom,” he said. “Welcome home.”
As she walked across the station’s promenade with Ben, Jennifer felt everyone’s eyes on her.
This station was home to all kinds of people, and a waystation for countless more. All different cultures, species, and other variations. But even though nearly all of her implants had been removed, Jennifer suspected she was still a new sight for many--and not an entirely welcome one.
The Borg didn’t really have a concept of home--how could they ever have become what they were if all such ties to places were not wiped out on assimilation? Jennifer had, before, but it had never been here. She had never set foot here, on Deep Space Nine, or in the quarters that had been assigned to the family. Her family.
The first thing she’d been conscious of in the medical center was panic. Not knowing where--who--she was. Lights and sounds and people everywhere. The world had spun. They’d had to sedate her, she assumed, since she didn’t know what happened next.
When she woke up, she started to remember things. Her name was Jennifer Sisko. She used to live by the ocean. She now lived among the stars. The last time she remembered being aware of it, she’d been thirty-four years old. She hadn’t known how old that made her now. Later, she’d learned it had been four years, two months and six days since then.
She’d had a husband. She’d had a son.
The whereabouts and well-being of individuals were unimportant to the Borg. For four years, she didn’t think she’d given a thought to either Ben or Jake. It shouldn't have made sense, and yet she knew what she knew, and it did.
But she knew, as the assimilation tubules had plunged into her neck--a memory that had haunted her dreams ever since she’d been disconnected--her last thoughts as herself had been of them.
Her last thoughts as herself. After that…
Who had she been for four years?
The Borg didn’t feel. They certainly didn’t love, didn’t have families, didn’t care about anything but their relentless quest for perfection and domination. And for four years, that had been her, to the extent that there was a her. And now, whatever was left of her was supposed to just--what? Go back to her family, and try to fill the space left empty by a beloved wife and mother?
What if I don’t remember how to love them?
It was what she was perhaps most afraid of. Not the Borg somehow coming back for her. Not returning to life in space, knowing how that had once ended. No, it was the possibility that there was nothing she could truly return to.
Ben’s first visit hadn’t truly eased her fears. She knew this was the man she loved. The man she’d chosen to marry, to have a child with, the man who was at the center of so many of the memories that were starting to come back to her, many happy ones and some frustrating or sad ones too. And yet she wasn’t quite sure she remembered how any of it was supposed to feel. What that even meant.
She almost dreaded seeing Jake, but she knew she had to. That he must need her--or at least need who he thought she was, who she used to be. That she did want to see him. That it was herself she was afraid of.
He’d grown up so much since she’d last seen him. She’d missed so much. But she was back now. They were all going to be together again. Maybe that could be all that mattered.
“Jake,” she’d said. “My baby.” The words felt strange on her tongue, her own voice the barest whisper in a massive empty hall--but she knew the deep truth of them.
There were days when Mom didn’t leave her and Dad’s room at all.
Jake had to keep going to school--Dad insisted on it--but he felt awful just leaving her like that. Dad took as much time with her as he could, but not everything on the station could be delegated to Major Kira or one of the others, not for weeks at a time. And there was the nurse who came by sometimes to check on her, and he knew Mom was seeing a counselor too, but Dad said it would be a long road ahead.
His first day at school after Mom came home, Mrs. O’Brien had taken Jake aside and asked if there was anything she could do to help them. He hadn’t known what to say, hadn’t known what Dad would want, let alone Mom. He’d just stood there, trying not to cry in front of her, starting to stammer out a thank you when she’d reached out and pulled him into a hug. He stood slightly awkwardly for a moment--she’d never done anything like this before--then returned it.
Weeks later, he went home right after class, turning down Nog’s request to hang out--part of him would have loved the distraction, but he just wasn’t sure he could that day.
He found Mom sitting on the floor of the living room, going through a box of things. Most of what they’d had that had been hers had been lost in the destruction of the Saratoga; what was left had been packed away when he and Dad moved to Deep Space Nine.
She looked up at him, holding up a poster showing a beautiful nebula. “I don’t think I remember this,” she said.
Jake knew what it was. Dad had gotten it for him just before they’d come to Deep Space Nine, for him to hang in his new bedroom. He hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to do it, somehow--and it wasn’t that he thought it was a bit silly to hang a poster of the stars when the real thing was right outside the window, that wouldn’t have mattered considering who had given it to him. “I forgot all about that,” he said. Mom handed it to him. “Thanks.”
“Do you still love living like this?” Mom asked. “You used to love the stars so much.”
Jake smiled slightly. “I wasn’t super excited about coming here, specifically,” he said. “Or living in space again, especially not after--” He stopped, worried he might make her feel worse. “I like it here now,” he said instead. “I go to school. I made a new friend. Dad’s been great. Seeing all the different people who come through the station is pretty cool.” Sometimes, he liked to imagine what their stories might be, maybe use them as ideas for his own writing--he wondered what Mom would think about that, hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell Dad yet even though he thought Dad would probably be cool about it. Probably. Mostly. “Do you like it here?”
Mom looked pensive. “It’s nice,” she said.
“You don’t, do you.”
“I don’t not like it,” she said. “I certainly love some things about it.” She kissed Jake’s forehead. “It’s just new.”
“I know what you mean,” Jake said. He looked down at the poster again. “But sometimes it helps to make it your own.”
“Jennifer, I want to help.”
Ben stood in front of her, a look of deep sadness in his eyes. It made her sad, too, whenever she saw him like that--which was often, ever since she’d been on the station. She felt like she was hurting him. It was the last thing she ever wanted to do.
“I’m not sure you can,” she said. She wasn’t sure anyone could.
“Let me try.” He sat down on the bed next to her. “Please.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why am I here?” Ben looked like he didn’t quite understand the question. “Because this is my family, Jennifer. I love you. I chose you, and I thought I lost you, and now I choose you again.”
“I know you love her,” Jennifer said. “The Jennifer you knew. And I know Jake does too. And I want to be her for both of you, Ben, but I’m not sure I can.”
“I don’t want you to be anyone for me,” Ben said. “I want you to heal. You loved being her, I know you did. I want you to find someone you love being again.”
“And where would I even look?” she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes.
“How about right here?” Ben said, running his thumb over her cheek. “And here,” he said, putting a hand to his own chest. “I love your smile, Jennifer, and your kind heart. I love your passion and your sense of humor, even when you tease me. And yes, you are and always have been an incredible mother to our son, but there is so much more. I want to help you find as much of it as I can, Jennifer, and I will be here for you as you search for the rest, whatever it turns out to be. You have to know that.”
“I don’t even know how much there is,” Jennifer whispered. “How I’ll know when I’ve found it. Ben… I feel like I just don’t know anything anymore.”
“Perhaps not knowing makes you human.” He took one of Jennifer’s hands in his. “Perhaps it does for both of us.”
She laced her fingers through his, squeezing his hand back. “Perhaps it does.”