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Seven didn’t know anything about warmth.
She knew about heat. She knew about burn. She knew about damage and the reduction of it, but she had never been hurt. She had never cried.
Except in her memories.
And the memories were so far away. The memories brought nothing but pain.
“That’s humanity,” Janeway told her with a strange look in her eye. (But to Seven all looks in eyes were strange. Eyes roamed and bulged and narrowed. Eyes were grotesque windows to swirling, turbulent souls. She often touched the metal of her ocular implant when she thought of eyes or when one of hers, the one that hadn’t been destroyed, burned.)
“Humanity is pain? And yet you subject me to it.” Seven half-asked-half-accused.
Janeway’s lips stretched tight over her teeth. A smile. When Voyager’s crew smiled Seven remembered alien predator animals that growled and barked and snarled. She remembered pets fighting for their frightened owners. She did not remember people - people had never smiled at her before.
Except in her memories. And the memories were so far away.
“To be human is to feel!” Janeway exclaimed in a quiet-loud way. What was the word? What was the word? To be…awe filled? Wist filled? What was the difference? They were both soft, incorporeal things. Thinking-words for lesser beings who thought themselves big because they imagined a world that was more than the actual world. The actual world was the body - not thoughts about the body.
The body was: efficient, damaged, slow, unusable, useful, doing a task.
The body was not: sexy, beautiful, ugly, uncomfortable, comfortable, yours.
Seven blinked. Her chest felt uncomfortably full. She knew that this was some feeling. Her hand trembled very slightly but anything out of her control was something she took sharp notice of.
“You are the first individual I have ever hated.” Seven told Janeway, because it was true.
The Captain’s eyes widened then she expelled a sharp burst of air. Laughter. Then she touched Seven’s shoulder, still smiling.
“I’m honored to hold that title.” Janeway said and Seven knew she meant it.
Seven did not understand Janeway. She did not like not understanding. (She had once understood and been part of everything that mattered in the universe - The captain had taken that away from her) She wished they shared a consciousness, then she would understand and be understood. She hated this semi-knowing that unjoined species savored. To know one had to ask and even if one was asked, one could lie or be incorrect or refuse to answer. It was inefficient.
When did this drone begin referring to itself as she?
When did this drone begin referring to itself as property of one?
The voice in her head that asked such questions was not the collective. She had once hoped it was, that perhaps some part of her remained connected to the Borg but it had quickly become clear that that was not the case. She did not know what the voice was now. When she described it to the doctor he said it was just ‘thoughts’.
“An internal monologue if you will. Everyone has them,” he assured her.
Seven blinked. She didn’t care if everyone had them. She had not had them before. “It is not useful. It distracts me from my tasks.”
“You could use a little distraction. I hear you work at all hours of the day.” The doctor said in a curved tone. Suspicious. She knew ‘suspicious’ well.
“I work at all hours I am able to. If I am able to work, why would I not be doing so?” Seven asked.
The doctor had then told her about ‘fun’ (useless) and ‘leisure activities’ (useless) and finally ‘learning new things’ which she became interested in. Information gathering was useful and as she no longer had other drones to assist her in that task she would have to gather all information herself.
She decided she would do this whenever Voyager’s crew stopped her from working, which was at a semi-reliable time within each twenty four hour cycle they operated on.
She worked to gather a myriad of information, cataloging it all in her personal log as she no longer had the collective brain to store things and that made her…uncomfortable. She did not like that information could be lost due to error. Her error.
Seven did not care for interpersonal relationships. She did not remember a time when she’d had them. When she was Borg she was everyone or limb - she was indistinguishable except in task. Now, singular, though she found company (the presence of others) to be familiar she found her detachment from them uncomfortable. She did not understand why they moved and behaved the ways they did. She often upset others and others were inefficient. It was friction. She desired something smooth and silent.
“Humans work best through friction,” Janeway had told her. She’d been moving her hands to demonstrate the concepts of ‘friction’ and ‘through’ which Seven already understood. “Once you get to know people better you’ll find you bump up against them a lot less.”
“I have no time to get to know others.” Seven informed her.
Janeway hummed. “Do you not have time or are you scared to?”
“I fear nothing.” Seven said, the heavy feeling returning to her chest. She did not enjoy speaking with Janeway (it brought the feeling) and yet she did so often. Why was this? She did not know. She did not know anything anymore. She was a solitary bug. An insect against the machine she’d once been part of. She was being burned on its exterior. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Alone. Useless. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Seven blinked. She had been experiencing such internal nonsense since she had begun referring to the body as herself: Strange images that swirled and changed. She described them in her personal logs. She informed the doctor but he merely said it was ‘thoughts’ again. She wondered if everyone’s ‘thoughts’ elicited such strong responses.
“Responses like what?” The doctor asked.
Seven paused as she tried to characterize the responses. She thumped her fist against her chest. “My chest…fills and I wish to…take the heavy thing out.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s good, Seven! You’re feeling. Perfectly normal.”
“I do not want to feel.” She protested, hitting her chest again. She wanted to take the feeling out. She wanted to be empty and efficient. She wanted to be the body again, Seven of Nine, and not Seven alone. “I have never felt before.”
“I’m sure you have, before you were Borg.” The doctor gave her a soft look. Sympathy? Pity? What was the difference? She needed neither. Kathryn Janeway had turned her into a small wounded thing. “I know this is frightening but you’re just returning to the way you were before. Your body is slowly…flushing the Borg out, like a virus.”
In the memories she was small and all flesh. She had on a pink cloth that billowed around her and held a warm hand. The owner of that hand was a woman with the same color hair as her. The woman looked down. The woman smiled.
In the memories that same woman looked at her in horror, hand outstretched, the familiar animal-fear dancing in her eyes. The first time Seven had seen it. She screamed a name that Seven didn’t know. Then she was gone.
Seven felt nothing but pain at these memories. It hurt and confused her.
Sometimes she remembered the Borg and though that hurt too, it was a softer hurt. It reminded her of the hurt Ensign Harry Kim used to describe his home.
“It makes me sad to think about but it’s like…I can’t stop, you know? It’s like when you love someone, you know? Or - well, I guess you wouldn’t but trust me, okay? It’s…it hurts to remember them when you can’t see them anymore, but it’s a good hurt.”
Seven did not quite understand ‘good hurt’ until she compared the memories. Then she’d understood. She liked understanding. She often deviated between the two memories: Flesh mother and Borg mind. They had both had a hand in raising her. Or, the flesh mother had merely created her - the Borg mind had raised her. Yes. Far more accurate.
She had barely ever been human. What was she ‘returning’ to?
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
YOU WILL RETURN TO INFANCY. AND. UNNURTURED. YOU WILL DIE.
“I believe it might be an oversimplification to think of yourself as purely Human.” Tuvok told her.
She was accompanying him in the airponics bay because he was in the airponics bay, gardening. When he was not working, eating, in his quarters or with the captain he could frequently be found in this section of the ship.
Seven did not garden but she did watch Tuvok perform the many tasks involved. He had questioned her watching him once at the very beginning of their acquaintanceship but had not seemed to mind after that. This made him a favorable subject of study to Seven. Most other crew members, human or not, found the behavior of observing to be objectionable.
“Are you disagreeing with the Captain?” Seven asked.
“I am offering an alternate perspective.” Tuvok said, squinting at a plant before trimming a dying leaf. “A great majority of your life has been experienced as part of the Borg collective. You yourself have stated many times that you find comfort in that identity. Why then must you reject it completely?”
Seven blinked, thinking about Tuvok’s statement. She found Tuvok to be…(?)
She often found herself gravitating towards Tuvok. He was quiet and often alone. He did not experience emotions and thus did not anticipate them in her. It was almost like the collective. Almost. She still did not ‘know’ him and they still had to speak aloud but she found she did not get into altercations with him. Her chest did not fill up.
While she did not know Tuvok completely (as she had known all other drones) the act of getting to know him was not as complicated as with other members of Voyager’s crew. She simply asked him questions and he either responded or stated that the answer was private. This form of getting to know someone was one Seven wished all those she interacted with were amenable to.
Seven decided she had finished thinking on Tuvok’s question. It was difficult to discern when she had finished thinking about topics now. When she was Borg there was a clear end to thought but now it could go on forever if she did not cut it off.
“The captain believes the Borg to be immoral. By being rid of the borg I am being returned to morality. The doctor believes them to be a corrupting force. When one is sick they do not become the illness, the illness is forced upon them. They must be rid of the illness and restored to health.” Seven answered.
Tuvok nodded, not looking at her. He was absorbed in the task. Seven stared at him.
“Yes. However, the Borg could be described as a separate alien race rather than an illness or a manifestation of evil. By that logic, you would have been a part of both that and the Human race.”
Seven blinked. “Clarify.”
“Under the proposed logic of the Borg being an alien race you belonged, and still in part feel you belong to, you are both Human and Borg. Thus, you have no need to reject either in their entirety.” Tuvok clarified, looking at her now. “It is not necessary to be one or the other.”
To be Human is to reject the Borg.
To be Borg is to reject humanity.
Seven blinked. “Then what is the goal?”
Tuvok continued to look at her but his gaze was level. It did not make her chest hurt. When he looked his eyes were always the same. He raised an eyebrow which she understood to mean she should clarify.
“If my goal is neither to reject nor return to humanity - then what is my goal?”
Tuvok looked away, brushing his fingers against the petals of a blooming flower. The last time Seven had been in the airponics bay it had been dying.
“You would have to determine that yourself,” Tuvok said. “Personhood varies from one to the next.”
Seven continued looking at Tuvok. For some reason her eye was beginning to burn. She blinked rapidly, attempting to clear it.
“Vulcans also have a collective consciousness.” She said, half asking.
“Something similar. We do not have a singular will, as the Borg do.” Tuvok replied. “However, we do share in a series of collective and intertwined identities.”
“You have also lost this due to the Captain’s actions.” Seven said.
“Yes.” Tuvok agreed, walking over to the wall of seed packs and selecting one of the newer additions.
“How do you not resent her?” Seven asked. She did not know why she was asking. What was the goal?
“I resent no one or I would resent everyone,” Tuvok said, possibly quoting a text she was unfamiliar with.
Seven did not respond for a time. She knew Vulcan emotions were strong. When Vulcans were first added to a collective they had been so volatile that they had, in large groups, nearly disrupted several cubes with their fear, their hatred, their violence. In the end nothing had come of it, of course. Nothing ever did. The Borg was perfection.
She wondered if Tuvok’s eyes ever burned. She wondered if he ever desired to split his chest open and remove whatever filled it. She wondered if he remembered his own collective with good hurt or plain pain. She wished she could voice this wondering but her tongue was dormant in her mouth. She had no language for it because perfection had no use for it.
Tuvok did not encourage her to speak. He never had. Instead he frowned at an insect and moved it from the row of growing plants to a bin containing plants which had already died and were in the process of decomposing. Apparently the refuse could be used for the growth of new plants.
“I know it was not her intention to hurt me, but I am hurt.” Seven finally said. “I do not know…how to…”
Tuvok turned to look at Seven, hearing her breath hitch. The burn had traveled from merely her eye to her entire face. Her hands trembled. She hit her chest which was full again and struggled to speak.
“Seven of Nine. You must breathe.”
Seven looked at Tuvok. One side of her vision was blurred. This was distressing. The other side was fine.
“Seven, do as I do.” Tuvok instructed before he closed his eyes and arranged his fingers in a particular manner, breathing deeply in and out.
Seven watched him for a moment before doing the same. As she continued to do so he began to quietly and passionlessly take her through a fictional scenario which she understood to be metaphor. She listened. Her emotions were waves that threatened to pull her under. She was being tossed about by them but if she held strong to logic it would anchor her in place. No matter how strong the wave she would remain standing, unmovable. She desired this.
For a moment Seven imagined herself solitary and didn’t feel afraid because of it.
She felt strong.
When she opened her eyes she found Tuvok’s were still closed. She waited quietly for him to regain his own control, turning to the seeds he’d just planted.
The seeds were for edible plants. She turned her attention to something else, a pot which Tuvok favored containing a light blue flower. The flower had no use, its only notable characteristic being that it emitted a soft glow when in low light.
She heard Tuvok place the newly seeded pot on one of the racks, switching a heat lamp on.
“Why do you favor the growth of useless flowers?” Seven asked, widening and narrowing her eyes in an attempt to see the flower in a different manner. Perhaps if she could find the flower special as well she would understand Tuvok more. “It is a mistake not to fill any available space in the airponics bay with plants that could be of use to the crew. Surely it isn't logical.”
Tuvok moved to recycle the empty seed pack. “Logic is an anchor, not a cage.” he responded. “It is a hobby of mine to grow and care for flowers. You are mistaking logic for pure productivity. It is not logical to work at all hours one is awake, though it would theoretically be more productive.”
Seven continued looking at the flower but she could not make it interest her. “Then do you find joy in it?”
“I find comfort in it. It relaxes me,” Tuvok corrected, impressing the word substitution on her. “I derive satisfaction in seeing something that was once on the brink of death live again. I am motivated to do better if I fail.”
Seven closed her eyes and tried to imagine such things for herself. Comfort. Relaxation. Joy. These things seemed frivolous and impossible to achieve.
“Commander Tuvok?”
Tuvok didn’t respond for an extended period of time, likely waiting for her to simply ask the question. “Yes?”
“When you were severed from your own collective, did it hurt?” She asked.
“Tremendously.” He responded.
“Where?” She asked.
Tuvok was quiet, likely thinking. “I am unsure of my ability to accurately describe it.”
“When I was severed from my collective I was afraid,” she said. “The doctor reminds me that I have been singular before - but I do not remember ‘before.’ I was…alone. And I had never been alone.”
And ‘alone’ did not accurately describe it - but she, like Tuvok, had no other words for what it was. She had once been part of everything, sure of everything and now she was ignorant and alone. Collective to singular. Borg to Human. Machine to bug.
“Our experiences sound similar.” Tuvok replied.
Seven opened her eyes and looked at him again. They were close now, their arms nearly touching, but Seven knew neither of them would close the gap. She did not like when others touched her and Tuvok felt the same way. She wished they could form their own collective. She wished she could look at the flower and find it special. Her hand twitched.
“When my wife and children were no longer accessible to me, I became a different person. For sixty seven years I had experienced life and my identity as part of T’Pel. We were, in essence, a shared consciousness. When our children were born they were born into that consciousness, just as I was born into my parents’ consciousness - and so forth.” Tuvok spoke while repotting a plant which had grown too large for its previous container. He appeared to be focused on the task but Seven could hear something in his voice which made it seem…heavier, than usual.
“It was…disorienting, to be…alone.” Tuvok admitted as he covered the plants’ roots with soft soil, patting it down to solidify it. He paused for a moment and breathed. Seven let him do so without interruption. When he opened his eyes again he placed the new pot where the old one had been and brought the old pot over to the corner where it would remain until it could be of use again.
“You said you are hurt. Where and in what manner?” Tuvok asked, pressing a button to mist the newly potted plant with water.
Seven explained to him the feeling in her chest and her desire to be rid of it. Tuvok listened.
“The overwhelm.” He said when she was done. “I am familiar with it.”
Seven perked up, following him as he made his way around the bay, watering all the individual plants which required it. “Explain.”
“The overwhelm is a surplus of emotions which are unidentified and thus lead to distress and disorientation.” He replied. “I have found the best method to combat it is through greater understanding.”
Seven found this…acceptable. More than acceptable. Her heart was beating faster than was normal but she was not panicking. Strange.
Previously she had been afraid of the feeling in her chest. Even the barest hint of it had been a threat to her. Now, she had another lens with which to view it - one she found more agreeable to her: An as of yet unidentified phenomena. Something she could study instead of something she must simply allow to wash over her with no recourse.
Seven stopped walking, slowly bringing her hand up to her chest and pressing it there. She could feel her heart beating. She could count the beats. She knew what the organ was doing, how it worked. It was keeping her alive. It had always kept her alive - before and after. No matter what she called the body - the body desired only that she lived.
For now that would be her goal, she decided. To live.
She looked up and watched Tuvok as he observed a plant which appeared to be wilting slightly. She knew her heart beating was due to their conversation in some way, though she struggled to come up with why. Something about…understanding. Camaraderie.
“Vulcans do not have friends,” she said.
Tuvok tilted his head slightly. “No.”
“Neither do Borg,” she asserted. Then she stuck her hand forward and pressed her palm against the middle of his back.
Tuvok startled slightly at the touch, turning and looking at her hand, still outstretched. Seven moved her hand so it was held passively and slowly Tuvok reached out and held his own hand above it, mimicking the spread-out positioning of her fingers. Their hands hung in the air for a few long seconds, outstretched and untouching, before Seven pulled hers away and clasped it behind her back.
“Thank you,” she said.
Tuvok nodded stiffly, returning to his gardening as she turned on her heel and left the airponics bay.
Seven walked down the corridor with no particular goal in mind. She supposed she would return to the astrometrics lab.
She looked down at the hand that she’d held beneath Tuvok’s, that’d touched his back.
She did not know why she’d done such a thing. She didn’t know why Tuvok had gone along with the strange gesture or what it meant. She did not know, but that did not frighten her.
She curled her fingers into a fist, feeling her strength.
Seven and Tuvok were not a collective. Seven did not have any interest in gardening. Yet, she felt she had grown closer to him. She felt that the two of them…understood one another. They were…not a collective but something else. Something she did not currently have a name for.
Perhaps one day she would have a name for it. However, she honestly found that the name was far less important than the thing itself.
She walked faster, feeling something rising in her chest. It was not the overwhelm, it was the thing that had made her heart race before.
This time she pictured the feeling as an unknown star. In this way she observed it, analyzing, comfortable - and in this way she discovered what it was.
Joy.