Work Text:
For a moment, Seven of Nine stops breathing.
She waits and she waits and she waits.
Her panels say three life forms beamed back onto the ship but they’d been told four were coming and one had been lost and -
“Bridge, we have the Away Team,” Jack says suddenly (and Seven is struck by the strangeness of assignments which occur when you’re operating on a skeleton crew). “All but Riker.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, allowing what wasn’t said to wash over her, her heartbeat quickening.
But including Raffi.
Another moment of indulging in the security of that understanding and then she refocuses her brain and her attention, glancing up when Shaw moves so that he’s standing just over her shoulder. “What happened to Captain Riker?” Shaw demands.
“He drew fire so we could get out,” Raffi says, her tone short and charged. With anger and frustration and several new layers of guilt and regret that she didn’t ask for. Seven thinks she sounds pained as well, but it's hard to tell through the other emotions Raffi is pumping out.
“We will get him back,” Worf says, his much calmed booming voice echoing over the comms.
“Captain,” Commodore LaForge says. “We have what the Away Team brought back from Daystrom; it’d be best if we brought it to Sick Bay immediately for full analysis.”
“Do it. Don’t let it blow up my ship.”
“We will do our best,” Worf says, his tone as deadpan as it gets.
“Excellent,” Shaw drawls. The comms click off a moment later and then Shaw is turning to look at Seven. “I assume you will want to be in on the rescue mission for Captain Riker?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Naturally. Then you should try to go get some sleep now. While we have a minute or two. I get the feeling that we’re not going to have much time to rest very soon.”
“I don’t -“
“It’s been over two days since the last time you slept, right?”
“I don’t need as much sleep as you do,” she reminds him, skirting around the exact Borg related nature of why, an omnipresent and sensitive issue between the two of them.
“But you still do need some,” he replies. “And I need my first officer not dead on her feet. Go.”
Grudgingly, she stands up. Then, partially because it’s her job to care and partially because there is some kind of a caretaker deep within her, she says to him “You should rest as well.”
“I will,” he agrees. “But I’m rather enjoying having my Bridge to myself. Absent hijackers and mutineers.” He grins almost impishly up at her. She rolls her eyes and leaves.
Reminding herself that that’s why they don’t get along.
Stepping into the Turbolift, she waits for the door to close and then exhales.
Letting the exhaustion and the emotion of the last few days and hours wash over her.
Running from Starfleet. Losing Captain Riker. Seeing Raffi again.
Raffi.
Raffi.
“Deck 9,” she says aloud and then the Turbolift is moving.
Not towards her own quarters and the silent restless sleep it might offer, but towards a conversation long overdue.
She stands outside the door for almost five minutes, feeling more and more uncertain about even trying to bridge this gap between them. A gap which suddenly feels enormous.
Ten months ago, calling a time out on them had seemed…logical.
Okay, Raffi hadn’t seen it that way, but there had been at least some degree of sound logic to the idea of focusing on career over relationship for a little while and then circling back to them when there’d been more time.
“There’s never more time, Seven.”
No, Seven thinks grimly as she reaches for the keypad to buzz for entry, there never is and even she knows that her logic had come with a different word attached.
Fear.
Because things had been going well for them in their on-Earth closeness and she suddenly was terrified of them crumbling due to stark the distance of their new assignments.
So she'd run away first. As always.
And then they'd crumbled, anyway.
She hears the soft beep and then a few seconds later, Raffi’s voice saying, “Come in.”
She takes a deep breath and then steps forward, the doors separating to permit her entrance into Raffi’s guest quarters.
“I wondered if you’d come to see me,” Raffi says, the moment she’s in the doors. No longer in tac pants and her Starfleet issue leather jacket, she’s instead dressed in loose charcoal colored pajama bottoms and a USS Titan emblazoned heather blue zip up hoodie.
“I wanted to check in on you,” Seven explains, and if her tone is overly professional and slightly distanced, it’s because of decades of the self protective shields that she’s learned to put up before almost every conversation. Even with loved ones. Perhaps especially with loved ones.
Not that the shields have ever done much to protect her from Raffi or the overwhelming enormity of her feelings for her.
“As you can see, I’m fine,” Raffi responds, her tone just as cool. It’s an unusual state for her; she usually wears her emotions so painfully close to the surface so when she’s holding back, it tends to say as much as about her headspace as her having an emotional response might.
“I understand you were in a firefight,” Seven presses, all the while knowing that this cool as ice stand-off they’re doing is less than productive and useful and yet they both persist.
Stubbornness, wounded pride, deep hurt and the need to self-protect can do that to a person.
“Captain Riker drew all the fire,” Raffi says morosely, turning her back on Seven and moving deeper into the quarters. She approaches the replicator and says, “Water with lemon.” After it materializes on the pad, she takes several gulps of it and then looks back up. “So, why are you really here, Seven? You made it pretty clear earlier you wished I wasn’t.”
“That - that wasn’t…” Seven tilts her head slightly, echoes of old ticks that come out when she's feeling uncomfortable or trapped within her own inability to express herself. “I was just surprised to see you.”
“You knew by then that I’d be coming aboard with Worf.”
“Knowing isn’t the same as seeing, Raffi, and the last time I saw you -“
“Was the last time you left me. I remember," Raffi answers, her tone cool.
“This was a mistake,” Seven announces. “I should go.”
“Oh, well, hey, don’t let me be in the way of your great escape,” Raffi retorts and then she’s stepping back and out of the way. Almost on instinct, Seven finds herself reaching for Raffi - desperately trying to hold on in spite of everything - but the moment her fingers circle around Raffi’s right bicep, she’s greeted with a sharp hiss of pain from her former lover.
In an instant, the conversation - every part of this interaction - shifts and alters for Seven. Brow furrowing, jaw setting and her blue eyes almost uncomfortably intense, she demands, “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Raffi replies once again, pulling away from her, arms circling herself protectively.
“Raffi -“
“No! No. I’m fine and you don’t get to come flying back into my life to give a shit only on your terms. That’s not how relationships work, Seven.”
“I…I’ve never stopped giving a shit,” Seven insists. “Now, will you please let me see where you’re hurt?”
“No.”
“Raffi.” Her name said again, worry and exasperation nearly drowning the single word.
“Why? What’s the point? So you can touch me and I can remember how good it felt to have your hands on me and how horrible the last ten months of not touching you has felt? Why bother when nothing has changed. We both still have our careers that matter most, right?”
“You agreed,” Seven says quietly.
“I agreed because what else could I do? I didn’t want to stand in the way of your dream,” Raffi tells her, her dark eyes suddenly very wet. “You were already making it clear to me that you wanted to get away from me as fast as you could; the last thing I wanted to do was hold you back and make you resent me.”
“I could never resent you.”
“Jae said that, too. You know I saw him a few days ago.” Raffi chuckles darkly to herself before one of her hands reaches down and scratches at her skin, a painful of the drug that is still making its way through her system, the jagged chemical edges of it still cutting like shards of electrified glass into her nervous system. “He still resents me. Pretty sure he always will.”
“I’m not him,” Seven says quietly, taking a step closer.
“No,” Raffi agrees, taking a step back. “Because at least with him, I knew what I did wrong. With you…” she shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter, anymore. We have a job to do.”
“It does matter,” Seven insists.
“It doesn’t,” Raffi says once more and then flips her hand dismissively in the air. It’s this motion which causes her to grit her teeth in pain. Which, of course, Seven notices.
“Let me see,” Seven orders.
“No.”
“You either let me see the injury or I pull rank -“
“We’re the same rank,” Raffi reminds her.
“Not on this ship we’re not, Commander. Here, I’m the First Officer and I outrank you and I am happy to pull that rank if you make me. So either you let me see where you're hurt or I get a doctor down here to look at you and I know how much you enjoy that,” Seven promises. There’s the very slightest bit of humor to her tone - neither she nor Raffi are particularly good patients, but Raffi really is a terrible one with a long and very well known record of having made chief medical officers throw up their hands in frustration.
“Fine,” Raffi grunts and then she’s roughly unzipping her hoodie and shrugging out of the left arm of it (that she isn’t removing the whole of it makes Seven wonder if she’s hiding more, but that’s a thought for a little later). Dressed only in a regulation white tank beneath the hoodie top, Seven is provided full visual access to Raffi’s left arm, from her elbow to shoulder.
What she sees is bruising - a lot of it. Mottled colors, dark and ugly and swirling together like a painter gone crazy.
“May I?” Seven asks.
Raffi doesn’t think, just nods. If she had thought, she’d have asked what Seven planned to do and then asked why.
Instead, Raffi just feels Seven’s cool metal-capped fingers lightly sliding across the bruised area, too gentle to cause much more than a flushing, perhaps tingling response from her skin.
“How did this happen?”
“Had a near fight-to-the-death with a Klingon warrior,” Raffi explains, wincing at how breathless she sounds. Apparently she’d been right and Seven’s touch - even as mild as this - is a drug to her. As potent and dangerous as splinter, in so many, many way.
“That all?” Seven asks and then her hands are lifting to the collar of the hoodie and she’s urging it down the rest of the way, pushing it so that it’s not hiding Raffi from her. And sure enough, what she sees are many more bruises littering Raffi’s arms and she’s guessing chest.
“We've had some action,” Raffi admits, watching Seven’s hands, knowing she needs to tell her to stop because this sure as hell doesn’t feel like a medical examination. “Found a few fights.”
“And you didn’t think to use a dermal regenerator?” Seven asks as she ghosts a hand over the front of Raffi’s tank, fingers grazing past her abdomen, feeling the way Raffi winces in pain.
‘We’ve kind of been on the move; not a lot of time to fix up the cosmetics.” She chooses not to tell Seven about stabbing Worf in the gut and how they very much had stopped long enough to fix up his potentially critical injury; she figures Seven won’t see the stark difference in situations as she does.
“What about the broken bones?” Seven queries, fingers gliding around the bruising around Raffi’s middle.
Their eyes meet, sparks igniting between them, equal parts anger and deep affection.
Equal parts frustration and longing.
Seven asks again, “Why haven’t you fixed the broken bones, Raffi?”
“It’s fine,” Raffi tells her, her voice small, because despite the fact that it’s been the only answer she’s been willing to offer, she honestly doesn’t have a better answer.
Not one that won’t rip open everything else for them.
So self-protection it is.
Well, at least it would be if not for the way Seven is looking at her.
So intensely and soft all at once in a way only she can manage.
“It’s not fine,” Seven says. She presses in gently with her palm, flinching when she sees the way Raffi tenses in pain but doesn’t bend to it, Raffi’s many years of Starfleet tactical training and her stubbornness and pride keeping her upright. “I know the La Sirena has the means to fix broken bones. Why haven’t you gotten it taken care of?”
“There hasn’t been time. In case you didn’t notice, we’re all trying to chase down a galactic threat…while running from that same threat.”
“Bullshit, Raffi. You’ve fixed up enough of my bones…we both know it doesn’t take that long to get the healing process going. But you haven’t done anything - not even wrap them. Why?”
“Don’t push," Raffi warns.
“Why? Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“I’m not doing anything to myself and you’re not going to turn you breaking up with me and then treating me like I’m some kind of pathetic simpering fool into some kind of judgment of me just so you can run and hide like you always do," Raffi shoots back, so much hurt bubbling up.
“You're changing the subject,” Seven tells her, forcing herself to stay focused instead of allowing the need she has to just make this better win. “Why didn’t you fix your injuries up?”
“Because I need to feel them,” Raffi snaps and then she’s walking away from Seven. She grabs for her hoodie and just does miss it, instead stumbling and wincing, her teeth gritting in pain.
“Raffi -“
“No,” Raffi tells her, a hand out. “You don’t understand.”
Seven studies her former lover for a long moment, taking in the way she’s hunched over, one arm slung around her busted middle, the other hand scratching at the skin of her wrist.
She’s seen this before, she thinks. Oh, right.
“You used,” she announces. “You used and now you’re punishing yourself for it.”
“This isn’t punishment,” Raffi defends, still scratching at her skin.
“But you did use?”
“Yeah, I used. Is that what you want to hear? Raffi failed again. Just like you and everyone else knew I would. That’s what you want to say, right?”
“Raff, I’m not your parent or your babysitter. It’s not my place to judge you.”
“What if I want you to?”
"Because you're not punishing yourself, right?"
Raffi just stares back at her.
“Okay, fine. Why’d you do it? For shits and giggles or -“
“To get information. I…I got impatient and it seemed like the only way.” She scratches her arm again, frowning when she looks down to note that she’s drawn blood on her forearm.
Seven sighs. Crossing the room, she reaches out and takes Raffi’s hand in hers, squeezing it tight to stop it from another scratching fit. “You did what you felt like you had to do. I get it.”
“And if I had just wanted it for shits and giggles -“
“You wouldn’t have. You never have. There’s always been a reason for you. They may not always have been particularly good reasons or even ones that made sense to most people - including me - but they weren’t just…pointless. And Raffi, I don’t care. I don’t. I never have.”
Raffi blinks. “You don’t care that I’m a failed addict? Again?”
“Why would I?”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense, actually. Why would you since we’re nothing -“
“That’s not why,” Seven cuts in sharply. “That’s never been why. And we’re not nothing.”
Seven steps forward, then, her right hand reaching out to cup the back of Raffi’s neck. The touch causes Raffi's eyes to widen, her mouth opening in a mixture of surprise and desire.
"Seven, what are you doing?" Voice trembling, uncertain, wanting.
"I care what your addictions do to you and how they hurt you; I don't care that you're human. It's what I -" her words grind to a stop and then she's leaning in. There’s the briefest pause as she checks for any sign of rejection and then upon receiving no indicating of such, Seven moves in for a full on kiss.
Passionate, sweet, soft and full.
Raffi falls into her, hands clutching at the fabric of her Starfleet uniform.
This isn’t one kiss or two, it’s a dozen and it’s just the two of them.
Wrapped in each others’ arms, tasting and touching,
Until Seven finally pulls back and rests her forehead against Raffi’s.
“I missed you,” she says. “I missed you so much.”
“Then why do you keep letting me go?”
“You scare me,” Seven admits and their foreheads are still touching. She can feel the way Raffi is breathing hard, panting and gasping around her busted ribs and her aroused excitement.
“You think you don’t scare me?”
“I’m used to scaring people.”
Raffi pulls back and looks up at Seven. With one hand, she reaches up and sweeps her fingers over the implant above Seven’s brow. “This doesn’t scare me, Seven. It never has. You scare me. The power you have over me - over my heart. That I can’t just let you go. I know I’m an addict and maybe you’re just another addiction and I should read the writing on the wall and -“
Her words grind to a halt when she feels Seven’s arms suddenly sweep around her.
Strong, warm, encompassing.
"No, I'm here," Seven tells her.
Raffi's knees give out, then, and they’re on the floor together, her tucked in Seven’s arms.
Shaking, maybe crying.
“I just want to feel real again,” she murmurs, into the coarse fabric of Seven’s uniform.
It’s a strange thing to say, but Seven thinks about the times Raffi had spoken to her about her undercover missions in the past, thinks of how much disassociation they require.
How much loss of self they demand.
It’s clear that this one had taken an intense toll on Raffi.
Not unexpected - she herself had voiced grave concerns about the mission when Raffi had received it, but had backed off when Raffi had informed her that she’d be taking it regardless (admittedly, that had occurred after Seven had suggested they take a break for a few months - but it's unsettling to see all the same. Raffi, so usually bright-eyed even with life having smacked her as many times as it has, for the moment seems so small and dull and defeated.
“Look at me,” Seven requests. When Raffi doesn’t, it becomes a almost a demand. “Look at me.”
Slowly, Raffi’s eyes lift to hers.
Hands on her face, Seven says, “You are real, Raffi. You are. You’re here with me.”
“And who are you? Are you Annika -“
“No. I’m Seven of Nine,” Seven cuts in, her voice strong and unwavering. “I’m Seven and whatever else I am or am not, what I am is someone who...who loves you very much.”
Raffi looks at her in wide-eyed surprise. “You…love me?”
Words she’d long ago given up on ever hearing from her blonde lover. She’d convinced herself she could live without them, insisted that she could read the emotion in Seven’s actions and affection towards her. For awhile, that had even worked.
Almost been enough.
Until, “I think we should take a break.”
And, “This isn’t over; when we both have more time -“
In the space of a single overheated argument - and they’ve had many, the two of both being too strong and bull-headed and passionate not to butt heads with some degree of frequency; typically the make-up has been just as passionate and that had worked for them until now - she’d realized that making up stories and ending her own sentences wasn’t enough.
Worse, she’d realized that Seven was yet one more person that she would never be enough for.
Only Seven wasn’t just “one more person” to her.
Now, eyes wide, staring at Seven, she’s desperately searching for the lies in her words.
The manipulation, the game.
Is it the drugs? Is she hallucinating?
Her hand reaches up to scratch at her arm, but gets stopped by Seven’s augmented one.
“I love you,” Seven assures her, her voice more confident now as she runs her tongue over her own words and accepts them as truth. “And Raffi, that terrifies me - you terrify me.”
“Because I make you vulnerable.”
“Yes. No.”
“Which is it?”
Seven takes a breath, forces herself to concentrate her thoughts, the complexity of her emotions almost overwhelming her. There’s a reason she’d pulled back from emotion for as long and as much as she has - because even now, thirty years removed from being a full Borg, the sensation of too much sensory input still makes her feel like she’s in terrible danger.
And she is now as well, she thinks, but perhaps this is the kind of danger you’re supposed to run towards (and not just the suicidal kind like she and Raffi tend to do far too often).
“You do make me vulnerable, but that’s not the problem. The problem is, I don’t mind it as much as I should. I…want it. With you.”
“Oh, Seven,” Raffi sighs and this time she’s the one dipping her forehead in, seeking contact.
“I don’t -“
“We are two terrible, beautiful hot messes, aren't we? You’re constantly on the run from your own fear of showing too much of your heart, and I’m an addict who can’t figure out if she’s real or just a figment of her own broken mind,” Raffi murmurs and then she’s kissing Seven’s forehead, her cheekbone, her eyelashes, the corner of her mouth and then finally fully her lips.
“I’m sorry,” Seven whispers."For every time -"
“So am I, honey, so am I,” and then Raffi’s kissing her again and again, allowing herself a soft smile when a moan bubbles up out of Seven’s throat.
Seven says, “Will you let me touch you? Prove to you that you’re real?”
“Only if you’ll let me show you how beautiful you are when you show me yourself.”
Slowly, Seven nods, her hand reaching up to gently trace the lines of Raffi’s cheekbones,
Raffi smiles softly, then, “Gently,” she whispers.
Seven’s eyes widen, remembering Raffi’s busted ribs, but before she can pull back, Raffi’s folding their hands together and leading her back towards the bedroom.
Gently, she thinks and lets the doors slide closed behind them.
It’s the obnoxious chirp of her combadge - lying on the floor a few feet from the bed she’s curled deep into the middle of, her arms wrapped around Raffi’s middle - which wakes her.
“Bridge to Commander Hansen,” she hears, the voice tinny.
Raffi, from where her face is buried in the pillows, mutters, “I could kill him for you.”
“Raffi,” Seven admonishes, but she’s smiling slightly as she leans out to grab the combadge. She knows Shaw well enough to know if he doesn’t get a reply quickly, he’s likely to send security looking for her. She picks her combadge up and taps it, “I’m here, Captain.”
“Good morning, Commander. Thought you should know that long-range sensors just picked up the Shrike.”
"Doing what?” Seven queries, adjusting her arm as Raffi rolls over in the bed so she’s facing Seven, her eyes now wide open as she listens to the conversation.
“Just hanging out. Idling for us. Waiting.”
Raffi mouths, “It’s a trap.”
Seven says, “So they're waiting to ambush us."
“Most certainly,” Shaw says with fake cheerfulness. “So we’re going to head right into it. As we do now, apparently."
“I’ll be on the Bridge in ten,” Seven tells him.
“Oh take your time, Commander; fairly certainly she’s waiting for us to come to her.”
“Spider and the Fly,” Seven murmurs.
“Indeed, Hansen. I’ll see you shortly. Oh and uh, you should probably have Commander Musiker join you. Shaw out.”
“I really could kill him,” Raffi offers again. “He wouldn’t be the first body I’ve made disappear.”
“You think I haven’t considered it?” Seven chuckles. “Trust me, ignoring him is easier.”
Raffi shifts so she’s leaning on her elbow, her chin settled on her palm. “Even if it means ignoring who you are as well?"
“I know who I am,” Seven assures her. Then grins impishly, “I heard you say my name enough times over the last few hours, how could I possibly forget it?"
Raffi lightly slaps her shoulder before dropping back to the mattress, the sheet fluttering down to settle just under her breasts, her gold-touched curls fanning out over the pillow. Her hand settling lightly across her now-healing ribs (she’d allowed Seven to tend to them after their lovemaking and though they’re still quite sore, they no longer burn) she asks, softly, then, because she can't stop herself from it, even if the answer is one that might hurt (perhaps especially if it will hurt, she needs to know because one night can’t heal all wounds and the habit to self-punish remains strong in her). “Did you mean it?”
She hears the blankets move before she feels Seven roll over her, her weight settled lightly to the side, her augmented hand reaching out to gently stroke Raffi’s cheek. “That I love you?”
“Yeah. Because it’s okay if you -“
“I meant it, Raff; I love you,” Seven says again and then leans in to kiss Raffi, stopping only to say, “Every part of you. Even the hot mess parts. Because you love all of mine.”
“I do,” Raffi tells her and then leans up to complete the kiss. Slow and sensual.
The kind of kiss that gets something started that they absolutely don’t have time for.
But well, if they indulge in it for a moment or two longer, who’s to know?
Pulling back, her fingers still mapping the lines of Raffi’s face, Seven queries, “You ready?”
“To climb out of your arms and this warm, cozy bed and put clothes on? Oh my God, never,” Raffi answers, catching Seven’s hand and dragging it back down to her lips, dropping the softest whisper of a kiss against the cool metallic fingertips. “To go kick some ass like we do? Always.”
“Then let’s go do that,” Seven declares and then she’s standing up, naked as the day she was born, unashamed in this space of the glimmering metal implants which mark her as different.
Raffi holds up a hand.
Accepts help even in the smallest of requests.
Standing side-by-side with her once again lover a few minutes later, the both of them in Starfleet tactical leather, Raffi jokes, “You know we’re getting too old for this, right?”
“Yep,” Seven agrees, then leans across and kisses Raffi once more.
Holding it. Breathing it.
Breathing them in.
When it’s over, Seven zips up her jacket, checks her sidearm, smirks down at the holster Raffi’s wearing and then asks, “You told me once that you had a premonition of how we would end up. Do you still see that for us? Even with all of this Changeling bullshit?”
“Yeah,” Raffi confirms, her tone bright, her hand reaching out to squeeze Seven’s in reassurance. “I see us kicking their creepy asses and then…there’s just us.”
“Yeah,” Seven echoes, squeezing Raffi’s hand in return. “Just us.”
-Fin