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“I carry exile in my heart. I will always be measuring the distance between myself and a person who remained in the heart of the world; between the person I would have been had I stayed and the person I have become under the pressure of the frontier.”
(Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire)
“The grief isn’t a response to just one event but to a continuance of events, a horrible rhythm of events.”
(Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body)
V.
They hail it a victory. A triumph. The ultimate character arc. Seven of Nine, former Borg drone liberated from the Collective and rehabilitated in the Delta Quadrant by the grace of Captain Kathryn Janeway only to turn renegade and join the Fenris Rangers upon her return to civilization, now the first officer on the USS Titan-A.
Reporters pounce. They point out Starfleet’s rejection of her application in the 2380s and publish op-eds on whether they’ve made a mistake accepting her into their ranks. They contact her former crewmates on Voyager; write lengthy diatribes for and against her time as a Ranger; dig up details on her parents and produce an array of opinions about their work. They write profiles, create interactive holos, hound her steps as she works through the accelerated training program the brass boasts has been tailor-made to ensure her success.
The masses, taking their cue, assemble the pieces of her life painstakingly, almost lovingly, from across hundreds of newsnets and millions of chatboards and distribute them across more newsnets and more chatboards where they’re hashed and rehashed and dissected into bits. Over and over, they refuse to call her Seven. Over and over, they insist upon her human name. Such a beautiful name. Such a lovely name. So warm. So welcoming. So much less confusing than a number. And Hansen—so commanding. Why wouldn’t she prefer it? Doesn’t she want to honor her parents’ memory? Or if not honor, then better it? Do what they themselves could never do?
She puts her head down. Follows the path laid out for her. Tries to focus on the reason she said yes: because there are people who need help. People she can help, more than she could as a Ranger, where half the time she worked with weapons so old they threatened to blow up in her face and the rest of the time she relied on the thin skin and bones of her ankles, her elbows, her fists.
Over and over, she swallows her fury, her frustration, her hurts and doubts. Over and over she lets them write whatever shit they please.
It’s only when they dig up the story about Icheb that she opens her mouth. And no one, least of all Starfleet, likes what comes out.
IV.
She’s standing and looking out a viewport on the Stargazer with her arms wrapped around her ribcage when Raffi comes up beside her. “You look pensive,” she hums, brushing her knuckles across her cheek. “Wanna talk?”
Seven turns away from the window and drops her arms to her sides. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“Gonna have to be more specific than that, babe. Weird is part of the job.”
“Picard. How he went from dismissing my concerns to putting me in charge of an entire fleet in less than fifteen minutes.”
Raffi gives her one of those c’mon now looks, loving in its disapproval. “Listen, I know time travel is a mindfuck, but I also know that trip lasted longer than fifteen minutes.”
Seven shakes her head. “You weren’t there. In the conference room. He steamrolled me.”
“Yeah, but that was before he got a front row seat to your experience with the Borg.”
“That’s the thing. He didn’t. Between the splitting up and the coma, he didn’t see any of it, Raffi. He just heard about it. And—”
“And what? You think my word holds no weight?”
Her shoulders sag. “That’s not what I meant. I know he values your opinion. When it suits him,” she can’t help adding. Raffi shrugs in a can’t argue kind of way and Seven turns back to the viewport. “It just feels wrong.”
A noise—amusement; disbelief. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, honey.”
Seven squints.
“It’s an expression. About being suspicious of a good thing? You can tell a horse’s age by the length of its—you know what, never mind.” Raffi waves her hand. “The point is, JL learned his lesson. He trusts you, Seven. And for good reason.” She sidles closer, puts her arms around Seven’s neck and drops her voice into her chest. “You owned that captain’s seat.”
Seven studies Raffi, her shining eyes, her giddy smile, the way she seems lighter and happier than she’s been in weeks. This is her world. Of course she’s excited. From her perspective, she’s fitting in: the final missing piece. And that’s the thing that nags at her, the doubt she can’t brush past. Everything feels like it’s contingent upon something, some promise she didn’t make. The whole point of Raffi’s speech was that Seven didn’t need to change. So why did Picard have to commission her before they let her save the day?
She looks at Raffi and hears them, all the words she’ll say. It’s protocol. Best practice. Formality. You owned that seat.
And in the chateau—
Listen to you. You sound like a captain. You should have joined Starfleet.
She hadn’t said anything then (it wasn’t the right time) (they were bloodstained, battered) (they were both about to die), but she felt it: that same, rising wild in her cheeks. What if she didn’t want what they wanted? And what if that never changed?
Raffi’s expression wavers and Seven feels a stab of guilt. She smiles—forced at first, then warmed to something real. “We’re alive,” she says, and wills herself to believe it as she scales her palms up Raffi’s ribs.
“We are.” Raffi brushes her thumb across Seven’s cheek, and the waver is gone. Only warmth now, and tenderness, and the steady pleasing pressure of her hips. She cards her fingers through Seven’s hair and drops her gaze down to her lips. “I think we should celebrate.”
Seven breathes in. Sways forward. Shoves her doubts down deep.
III.
After Icheb, after the phaser, after she staggers sobbing out of the Seven Domes and boards her ship, after she finds the nearest nebula and drifts inside it for an unremembered stretch of days, Seven thinks of all the things she could have done that would have delivered him from Jay.
If she’d paid attention.
If she’d kept in contact with the Voyagers.
If she’d listened when they tried to warn her.
If she’d sent Icheb home instead of welcoming him when he showed up at base camp proud to prove that not all of Starfleet had turned its face away.
If she had trained him better.
If she had pushed him harder.
If she’d gone with him on that recon mission.
If she hadn’t let herself get so fucking dazzled by Jay.
The possibilities stretch before her, a dizzying, interconnected array, and because she has the brain she has—because she’s enhanced, xB—she sees them, every one of them, each decision that slit his days. But the choice she keeps coming back to, the thought she just can’t shake, is that none of this would have happened if she had followed the path laid out for her and let the Voyagers talk Starfleet into accepting her into their ranks.
II.
They talk about Starfleet a lot that first year. How much they miss it. Whether they’ll go back. What it might cost to walk away. Most of them are on mandatory leave, so the conversations strike Seven as pointless at first. But as the months pass and the decision looms larger, their group begins to strain.
Seven watches B’Elanna and Harry go round after round as Harry tries to convince B’Elanna to join the SCE. As their leave gets shorter, their fights grow louder, brighter, more explosive. Old wounds open. Dormant loyalties awake.
Seven asks Harry about it one night, why he keeps trying to change B’Elanna’s mind. Harry says it’s because he believes in Starfleet and wants what’s best for his friend. B’Elanna says Harry needs to get the fuck off her back and let her make her own decisions. Then she softens and says something about compromise and expectations and being tired of trying to fit into the Federation’s utopic mold. Seven considers their comments and comes to understand them, but only dimly—the way she might comprehend the shape of a thing in the dark with just her hands.
Tom finds Seven on the porch a few days later when Harry and B’Elanna are going at it once again (but this time quietly, in earnest conversation, with lists of pros and cons spread between them on Harry’s bed) and explains that the heart of the matter isn’t Starfleet but the fact that Harry and B’Elanna are afraid of losing each other if they go their separate ways. “We became friends because we had to,” he says. “Without Voyager, it’s hard to hold onto things, even if they really matter.”
Seven thinks of Icheb, a twinge across her chest. They hadn’t fought over her refusal to apply to the Academy, but they hadn’t been civil, either. Seven had returned from lunch so agitated that B’Elanna looked at her, impressed. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’re fucking pissed, she said with a sly little twist of her lips. Seven returned her gaze, startled, before collapsing on the couch as all the heat blew out of her head. Since then—almost a year now—she and Icheb have spoken less and less.
“I guess,” Tom says, lifting his chin as he looks out over the craggy cliffs, “we’re still having a hard time discerning what we need.”
“You spent seven years with severely limited options. In the face of abundance, overwhelm…makes sense.”
Tom turns his gaze on her, a faint smile tipping his lips. “What about you, Seven? What do you want?”
“To help people,” she replies, realizing as she says it that it’s true.
“Starfleet helps a lot of people.”
“They do. But I suspect joining Starfleet would prove an inefficient use of everyone’s time.”
“Oh?”
Seven smooths her palms along her thighs and grips her knees. “Icheb’s time at the Academy has not been easy.” It’s part of why they haven’t talked.
“Icheb doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who needs things to be easy.”
“He enjoys a challenge.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
Seven presses her lips together and allows a tiny nod.
“Then again, easy can be nice.”
“I do not think my life will ever be easy no matter where I go.”
“Probably not.”
“Then you agree with Harry and Icheb. I should join.”
“I think you should do what you want to do, Seven.”
“I want to help people.”
“Then help them.” He looks at her. “You already are.”
I.
“You are not like the others,” Seven tells Hugh one morning several months after Voyager’s return, after they’ve loosened the strictures of her quarantine but before her application for Federation citizenship has been approved.
“What do you mean?”
“In our interactions. You do not have an agenda. You seem…content to let me be myself.”
“And the others don’t?”
Seven shakes her head. It’s late summer and the sky is clear and high and blue, the sun’s beams warming her implants as they walk a predetermined loop around the complex where she and many of the Voyagers are housed. “They fear me. And their fear informs their actions. They claim they have my best interests in mind, but they are manipulating me. Trying to get me to adopt their goals as my own.”
“I think it’s a little more well-intentioned than that, but you’re right—they are afraid.”
“But you are not.”
“Why would I be?” Hugh smiles. (It’s his smile that Seven will remember long after they have parted—how soft it is, how genuine, how it lingers even after it’s faded from view.) “You’re not scary. You’re an xB.”
“xB?”
He nods, a gentle incline of head and neck. “It’s what we call ourselves. It’s a little more forgiving than ‘former drone.’ ”
“There are others?”
“Not many. But more than you would think.”
“And you…help them? Like you’ve helped Icheb? And me?”
“As much as I can.”
“But you do so outside the bounds of a Starfleet commission.”
Hugh takes on a contemplative expression and tips his chin to the sky. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet—”
“Act one, scene five. I am familiar. But I do not understand its relevance to this conversation.”
Hugh trails his hand through a fragrant bush of rosemary and seems to weigh his words. “When you’re raised by people with a strong ideology, it’s easy to believe that there’s one right way of doing things. And if you do those things differently, either because you want to or because you have to, sometimes you start to feel like you’re a problem that needs to be solved. But you’re not.”
“You’re saying there is more to life than Starfleet.”
“Much, much more. Which is not to discourage you from applying, if that’s what you want. It’s just to say that if it isn’t, or if you aren’t sure, or if you try it and decide it’s not for you, you have options.”
It doesn’t feel like she has options. It feels like she’s a pawn in a game whose rules she doesn’t know, or only dimly knows—rules that keep changing just when she thinks she’s grasped them whole. She says as much, and Hugh nods. “That’s part of why I’ve chosen to work with Starfleet instead of inside it. It lets me direct my energy where it needs to go, which these days, thanks to the Dominion War, is usually pushing back against some of Starfleet’s more…draconian security measures.”
“Like the quarantine.”
“And their opposition to Icheb’s application.”
Seven studies his peaceful expression. “Do you enjoy it? Your work?”
Hugh laughs. He actually laughs, a warm rolling chuckle that loosens his shoulders and tips his gaze toward the tops of the trees.
“Did I say something funny?”
“Not at all. It’s just—I was talking to a friend last night about how pointless and exhausting it can be.”
Seven pulls up short. “If it is so hopeless, then why do you persist?”
“Because,” he says (and here he smiles a smile so tender that Seven feels it like an ache), “there can be such joy. And because the only thing worse would be giving up.”
V. (redux)
On a sunny October morning in a room at the heart of Starfleet Headquarters, Seven of Nine sits across from five vice admirals beaming at her in self-congratulatory glee. They’ve just offered her an official commission: a uniform—three pips, command red—and a bunk on board the Stargazer. After that, assuming she performs as expected in the Borg-Federation negotiations in which they’re so graciously petitioning her to participate, a permanent assignment on board the Titan under Captain Liam Shaw.
They lay out their terms like a chef lays out a feast, enormously certain and focused and pleased. It does not occur to them that Seven of Nine, former Borg drone liberated from the Collective and rehabilitated in the Delta Quadrant, rejected by Starfleet nearly two decades ago and turned Fenris Ranger renegade, might refuse the food they have prepared. It is outside the realm of possibility that she would survey such riches only to fold her napkin, scoot back her chair, stand up, and walk away.
But that’s exactly what Seven does. She looks at them, these people who once upon a time would have made her life a living hell, and lets the silence stretch between them until their smiles break. Only then does she offer a smile of her own, one that falls short of her eyes and freezes somewhere between her teeth and her cheeks.
“No thanks,” she says, standing and placing her hands on the table, leaning forward just far enough that their eyes drop as they try to decide if she’s a threat. “I’m not interested.” And then she turns and leaves.
She doesn’t stop to watch the smiles fall off their faces, doesn’t linger to see if they’ll try to sway her—backpedal on restrictions, maybe, or otherwise sweeten the deal. She doesn’t need to. She simply walks out the door into the October sunshine and keeps walking until she reaches the transport station where the rest of her life, a life she has bent and hammered and soldered and shaped with and without the help of those around her into something that protects and shelters and sustains—where that life—awaits.