Work Text:
When Ensign Kim asks her to come to Lieutenant Torres’s quarters, Seven is so grateful to have something to do that she doesn’t stop to consider the oddity of the request. It’s been twenty-six hours since the destruction of Unimatrix Zero and she hasn’t been able to focus on anything else. A whole life, an entire community she had only barely begun to remember. Gone. Just like that.
Harry doesn’t immediately answer the door when she arrives, and for a moment Seven wonders if she’s made a mistake. But then she hears clattering and muffled curses from inside and a few seconds later a very disheveled Ensign Kim slides into view.
“Seven. Thank god.”
He steps back to allow her inside.
“You require my assistance.”
“Yeah. Um, so, B’Elanna’s sick and Tom and I are supposed to be trading off shifts to sit with her but he got stuck pulling a double because Mendez is out and Chakotay just called to tell me he needs me on the bridge because Tuvok’s still in sickbay, and Chakotay can’t sit with her because he’s filling in for the—”
“Stop.”
Harry takes a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m a little frazzled.”
“You said B’Elanna is sick.”
“Yeah, she’s like—dizzy? And has a fever and is kind of, um, throwing up. A lot.” That would explain the faint sour tang commingling with the strong chemical odor. “It started a couple hours ago.” Seven glances over Harry’s shoulder to where B’Elanna lies huddled on her couch. She has her back turned and appears to be asleep or too exhausted to roll over.
“If B’Elanna is sick, she should be in sickbay. There may be something wrong with the de-assimilation process. The Doctor will want to monitor her condition.”
“I already tried that. He had me send some tricorder readings, but he’s got his hands full with Tuvok and said not to bring her in unless she gets worse.”
Seven raises an eyebrow. “Define ‘worse’.”
“I’ve got what he said on a padd somewhere.” Harry grips a fistful of hair and looks around. “There, on the table. Anyway, I’m really sorry. Normally I would call Tom or Chakotay or even Neelix to sit with her, but they’re all busy, and she’ll absolutely kill me if I rope any of her staff into this.”
“So you called me.”
Harry’s eyes widen as his face takes on a distinctly panicked look.
“Relax, Ensign. It was a joke.” She steps over a tangle of clothing on the floor and looks around the room. “This lighting is insufficient.”
“It’s going to have to stay that way. She’s super light sensitive. Keeps saying everything sparkles?” Harry starts to put on his boots. “The Doctor thinks it’s a side effect of the de-assimilation. I don’t know. Everything is weird.”
Seven resists the urge to point out the inaccuracy of his language (weird is not the word she would use to describe the horrors of assimilation, not to mention de-assimilation) (then again, Harry has never experienced either nightmare, though he does seem shaken) (perhaps weird is his way of distancing himself from his emotions regarding his friend’s brush with the Borg). Fortunately, the dim lighting does not affect her vision the same as Harry’s. She locates the jacket he’s looking for and hands it over. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“She’s kind of clingy. Keeps asking to be held but then pushes you away when you touch her. I wouldn’t get offended.” Harry hesitates, then turns away from the door. “Thank you. I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry for adding sick duty to your list of things to deal with.”
Seven moves to the edge of the couch and looks down at B’Elanna and something curls and snakes inside her chest. “It is not a bother, Ensign,” she says, unable to look away from that curled and fetal form. “Report for your shift. I will watch over her.”
When she wakes, it’s in pieces, a patchwork of sound and sensation and half-delirious realizations, none of which make sense. First there’s Seven bending over her, placing a cool and metaled hand against her cheek. Then there’s a blanket, which she cocoons herself in. Then a voice she recognizes as her own, though she can’t make out what she’s saying, answered by another voice, which, again, is Seven’s. Then a surface so warm and yielding that she buries her face in it and sleeps. And sleeps. And sleeps.
Then she’s awake again and wincing, rolling over, and Seven is peering down at her because B’Elanna’s head is…on her lap?
What the fuck?
She closes her eyes and reopens them, but Seven is still there, looking calm and cool and collected and…faintly amused?
“Good morning, lieutenant. How do you feel?”
How does she feel? “Confused. Why are you in my quarters?”
“Ensign Kim had to report to the bridge. He asked me to sit with you. You were quite ill.”
Heat creeps into B’Elanna’s cheeks as she begins to remember. “Oh god,” she moans, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Please tell me I didn’t throw up on you.”
“You did not. Ensign Kim, however, was not so lucky.”
“Fantastic.” She covers her face with both hands and struggles to locate the thread of her next question. Something about her head. Or her eyes. Maybe the lights?
She’s still lying on Seven’s lap.
She should get up.
She should really, really get up.
But she’s so tired and Seven’s lap is so comfortable, and is that— “Are you wearing Tom’s shirt?” She cranes her neck to get a better look but gets distracted when her nose bumps the curve of Seven’s ribs. Why the hell does it feel so good? She has to force herself to keep from burrowing deeper.
“You asked me to put on something softer. This was the only shirt I could find that fit. It seemed to meet with your approval.” A pause. “I can take it off now though, if it’s making you uncomfortable.”
She asked her to change clothes?
“Your hair,” B’Elanna says stupidly (her head is still in Seven’s lap). “You took it down.”
“I assume this means you do not remember asking me to do that either.”
“No. Definitely not.” If her cheeks get any hotter, they’re going to burst into flames.
“How is your vision?”
“My vision? What does my vision have to do with anything? It’s fine.”
“No more sparkles?”
“Sparkles?” B’Elanna heaves herself upright (finally), then sways as all the blood rushes out of her head. Seven stops her from pitching off the couch and steadies her long enough for B’Elanna to swing her feet to the ground. She digs her elbows into her thighs, covers her face, and groans. “This is the last time I am ever volunteering for assimilation.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
B’Elanna jerks upright. “I’m sorry, that was stupid of me—”
“I am not offended.” Their eyes lock and they stay frozen like that for several seconds, long enough that B’Elanna becomes aware of Seven’s hand resting on her spine. It feels so…steadying. Like it belongs there. Or like it should slide up until it reaches her neck, pulls her close and knots in her h— B’Elanna swallows and ducks her chin, drops her eyes to the carpeted deckplates. “Did I really ask you to take down your hair?”
“You said it made the sparkles look like lantern bugs.”
Lantern bugs. She hasn’t thought of those since her Kessik IV days. What did those nanoprobes do to her?
“Lieutenant.” Seven’s voice is soft, as soft as the hand she still hasn’t removed from B’Elanna’s back, each individual finger a ray of warmth radiating through her shirt and across her skin. The touch is so tender it’s nearly unbearable. She’s having to withhold all manner of noises and the sleep-drunk urge to do something dumb.
B’Elanna never really heard the voices—not like Tuvok did. But she felt them. Little whispers of them in the oddest places—across her shoulders, behind her ribs. And then at the end when Voyager grabbed them just before the cube blew up, the voices grew louder. The thing she couldn’t tell Tom in sickbay is that she didn’t want to drown them out.
A fraction of movement in the splay of Seven’s hand. The merest twitch. B’Elanna sucks in a breath and stares hard at the floor, suddenly certain that if she so much as looks at Seven she’ll do something stupid, like caress her cheek or touch her hair.
“B’Elanna. Are you well?”
She thought she’d gotten it two years ago when they’d been forced to form that collective of two. The companionship. The teamwork. The ease of communication. The comfort of having another mind twined through hers. Beneath her annoyance, all those things had felt almost iridescently good. She hadn’t exactly missed Seven’s presence after the Doctor pulled her out of her head, but the loss…had felt like loss.
And she’d thought she understood.
But she hadn’t. Not really. Not like she does now.
Seven’s hand is still on her back, Seven’s posture poised and waiting. Are you well? B’Elanna rubs her forehead hard and scrapes a hand through tangled hair. “Yeah,” she manages, voice a little gruffer than she intended, rimed with emotions she doesn’t want to spill. “I’m okay now. Thanks for sitting with me.”
“You are welcome,” Seven responds. She stands, revealing a pair of Tom’s plaid pajama pants, and picks her suit up off a nearby chair. Somehow that’s the thing that makes B’Elanna’s eyes sting harder than anything else. The baggy pants, the loose-leaf hair, the ratty hem of Tom’s well-worn sleep shirt hitting the tops of her thighs. And that suit so odd and sad and deflated draped across her arm.
B’Elanna blinks and clenches her fists till her nails make half-moons in the heels of her hands. Watches Seven walk to the bathroom, then looks away, something like longing lodged between her ribs.