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There’s a visitor identification system outside his apartment building, a tall, skinny tower with a street-level screen where she has to state whom she’s there to see — “Captain Liam Shaw” — her name — “Seven of Nine” — and the purpose of her visit — “Damned if I know.”
But the door to the lobby opens, light spilling into the cool, Chicago night, and why does a pang slice through her chest, surprise that he’s letting her in instead of no response or his voice growling at her through the screen to go away?
Just once, it would be nice for him to do what she expects.
Because then she wouldn’t be stepping into the lobby, warmer air, globes of light overhead and a hard floor that clicks against her boots. Not Starfleet boots. Her old Fenris Ranger boots. Plain trousers and a high-collared sweater. She’s not here to represent any organization, especially the one that presented her with a fourth pip and the starship he used to command.
She taps for the lift and, while she waits, there’s a mirrored wall and it’s true what they say about the wind in Chicago. She smooths flyaway hairs back into place. Not for him. For herself. It’s important to feel put together. In control of her life and her choices. No Picard or Janeway telling her to come here. Just her own split-second decision to swing by Chicago while she had some time on Earth.
The lift arrives and she steps in. The doors slide closed and she’s soaring, vertical takeoff — watch me fly, Papa — with a chime for each floor.
Chime.
Chime.
Chime.
Chime.
Ding.
The lift doors open to a hallway that’s carpeted, softer lighting than in the lobby, and she finds his apartment, lets her knuckles ratatat for entry — “Captain, it’s me.” — an unnecessary announcement of her presence because he knew she was on her way up, he’s the one who let her into the building.
The door swings open.
“Hey, Hansen.” His hair sticks up in tufts. He’s wearing sweatpants and a Starfleet Academy t-shirt with his graduation year. And he reeks of cannabis. “Long time, no see.”
The last time she saw him, he was horizontal, bloody, the deck plating of the Titan-A hard against her knees. She had cradled his head in her hand — her xB hand — and his eyes had gone glassy in what turned out to be shock, not death, and Starfleet Medical had him back on his feet a few hours after the ship limped into port at Starbase One. It took days for her to be alerted — Starfleet had bigger concerns — then weeks to finish debriefings and the promotion he had ensured with his log entry, his ability to speak her name proven twice, recorded for posterity and as part of what had seemed to be his dying breaths.
So why the fuck is he calling her “Hansen” again?
“You stink.” She means the cannabis odor. Probably. “Why didn’t you return my comms?”
He steps aside, sweeps his arm wide to allow her entry into his apartment, a foyer, then a small living room and, okay, wow, this is impressive. Shelves of vertically aligned books, his collection organized by genre and author last name. Starship models in order of year commissioned. Most of a wall dominated by an oversized schematic of the Phoenix, the vessel Zefram Cochrane and Lily Sloane built, including notations for component details and the warp equations used at the time. A glass door is open to a balcony with a view of Chicago skyscrapers, but the room’s moderate temperature suggests the door hasn’t been open for very long. On a balcony table, a cannabis cigarette burns on an ashtray with the remnants of what appears to be an evening’s worth of smoked cannabis.
“Do you imbibe?” He motions toward the thin line of smoke rising from his ashtray.
“No. It makes me feel,” damn, but a Borg-like word best describes the unpleasant sensation, “disconnected.”
He nods, bows slightly with his hands pressed together, then steps outside and stubs out his cannabis. He closes the glass door and sits in an armchair facing her, his back to the balcony, his legs splayed out long. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“Like I said, you didn’t return my comms.” She could keep standing or she could sit in the armchair across from his or she could sit on the sofa that runs perpendicular. Her weight shifts, but her boots stay where they are. “I wanted to talk about what happened, find out how you’re doing. But you’ve just been smoking your days away?”
His chortle is hard-edged. “A few joints and watching the city lights isn’t a bad thing, Hansen. What makes you feel disconnected might make someone else feel connected. Every lit window is another person out there, another messy, fucked up, forgot-to-put-the-clothes-in-the-refresher-again member of the society we all hold so dear.”
It’s like a sincere sarcasm, the way he speaks, as if he wants to share his thoughts and feelings but also be apart from them.
It shouldn’t work. His faux flippancy shouldn’t tickle her curiosity, every question he answers sprouting more questions to try to understand him, get to know him.
Especially because he’s never shown her the same courtesy.
“Did you think you were going to die? Back on the Titan?” Her arms fold, hug tightly to her body. The memory of his bloody face, of life seeming to ebb from him even as she cradled his head, of his seeming sincerity in talking to her, in saying her name, the trust he repeatedly showed her despite her own actions culminating in giving her the ship he prized — it’s a mess in her mind, a mess that needs to be dumped into his pristine living room because this is why she came here. She needs to know if he was delusional or stubbornly sticking to his earlier assessment of her or … something else. Who knows what else? The last person she held before he died was Icheb and for the same damn reason, the reason that’s both smothered and breathed air into her entire life, the Borg, the Borg, the unstoppable Borg … unstoppable Borg … un stop able … un … stop …
“Yeah, well, from the moment you commandeered the ship to help your pain-in-the-ass friends, death became a distinct possibility.” The captain’s legs cross at the ankles, bare feet crinkling … crink ling … crin … crinkle … crink … “But if you mean the last time I gave you the conn, yeah, I thought I was dying. Figured I would find out what lies in the great beyond. ‘Lies’ in the sense of ‘relative place of position’ but also in the sense of the mistruths associated with the afterlife, which I don’t think exists. But keep in mind, I’m a little buzzed right now so if you want to debate the merits of the Divine Treasury versus Heaven versus Sto-vo-kor, you’ll probably get an earful because all the connections, as previously discussed, are alight in the night of the ol’ noggin.”
The cannabis smell rolling off of him. It’s … it’s … everything is fragmenting. The curves of his lips moving up and down as he speaks. Every eyelash framing his eyes. She could count his eyelashes, discern the angles of the points at the ends. Her visual acuity … visual … acute … visu al a cu ity … seems sharp … shar p … sharper than usual, even though her non-synthetic eye has gone scratchy, grainy. His pupils telescope — “Oh shit.” — and he moves so quickly that the chair cushion holds the impression of his ass for what seems like a few seconds before slowly billowing out again. He’s tapping … tap ping … ta pp ing … a control panel on the wall, environmental systems kicking in to clean the air, and he’s gone, footsteps and his back disappearing down a small hallway into a room, the sound of a water shower starting as the lingering cannabis odor dissipates.
She blinks, the scratchiness in her eye easing. Fragmentation … frag ment … fragmen tation … persists, his book titles seeming to be made up of letters instead of words, but it’s getting better … better.
Much better.
Damn. Why did it have to be an inhaled substance? Her alcohol tolerance is pretty good, injectables and drops are easily avoided, and edible intoxicants are fine. It might be her Borg components, it might just be who she is, but direct absorption through her lungs means there’s no barrier, no metabolic process to balance out the effects on her cortical node and the rest of her brain. Besides, most inhalants she’s encountered — cannabis, snakeleaf, pipes of various combustibles — aren’t appealing, anyway. Cris’ cigars were all right. Just a mild headache.
But even though the letters of the book titles are knitting back into words, it’s probably best to sit, the armchair across from where the captain sat as good a place as any to wait for him.
Her backside sinks into the cushions and it makes sense now why the other chair held the impression of his ass for those few seconds. Surprising softness, added comfort in a place that’s already strangely comfortable with his books and his ship models and his oversized schematic.
In another room, the water stops.
He must have taken a shower to remove the cannabis odor that he could tell was bothering her. No, more than bothering her — affecting her, harming her ability to converse even as he was more at ease conversing than usual.
Her elbows find her knees, her head hammocked in her hands.
Even in kindness, he’s confounded her expectations, confused her by protecting her at the expense of himself the way he would if she were still a member of his crew, which, of course, she isn’t anymore.
It’s nice to be surprised by someone in a good way.
Not like Chakotay’s paternalism or Raffi’s inability to be satisfied with anything at face value or Bjayzl’s deceitful, abject cruelty.
Whoa. That escalated quickly.
And why did she just consider Captain Shaw along the spectrum of the more notable partners in her romantic history?
A door opens and closes and his footsteps approach.
“Anyway,” he steps back into the room, a different pair of sweatpants, a black t-shirt that’s wrinkled as if it was pulled from a pile of laundry, and hair that’s damp and uncombed, “if I had to choose, the Divine Treasury seems pretty good, mostly because of the ‘bidding on a new life’ part, which sounds like reincarnation to me, which makes a lot of sense considering energy — and we can include biological energy in that — can’t be created or destroyed under normal chemical means. But assuming the First Law of Thermodynamics doesn’t pertain, and also given that the Blessed Exchequer might not accept Federation credits as opposed to latinum, I’d have to say —”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Annoyance stiffens her spine against the soft cushions. “You went through the trouble of cleaning the air and taking a shower, and you’re going to act like nothing just happened?”
He sits heavily in the chair across from her, all clean scents of soap and shampoo. “Look, Hansen, my buzz is nearly gone and I’m not exactly in the habit of entertaining mesmerizing company as yourself, so —”
Mesmerizing? The captain is a lot of things, but he’s not a liar or a flatterer.
Her cheeks go warm, both from the unexpected compliment and from the frustration that balls her fists and hardens her voice.
“So why don’t you call me by my damn name?”
The captain blinks, her question seeming to hang in the air between them.
And the chairs don’t have a swivel mechanism but he must want to swivel because he stands, picks up his chair, and turns it to face away from her, toward the glass door and the city lights. He sits again, the damp back of his head visible above the top of his chair.
Is he going to say anything?
Anything at all?
The city lights shimmer.
He sighs, a barely audible exhalation.
“Starfleet had brought in a bunch of us that needed new first officers. Not my first time to that cattle call. A good XO should be in the job just long enough to train for captaincy. Give ’em responsibility. Enough autonomy to take some damn pride in their work, and enough leeway to make a mistake or two and learn from the process. Anyway, us captains sat around a Starfleet Command conference room table and passed around files of prospective first officers. ‘Oh, I want him, I served with him before. Easygoing guy.’ ‘Oh, I want her, I heard she’s good with personnel and my ship could use some help there.’ Typical stuff. Until we got to you. ‘I don’t want a Borg on my ship.’ ‘Hell, I’ll take her. I could use some efficiency on the bridge.’ ‘Hey, what do you want to bet her briefings are perfection?’ You picking up the trend here, Hansen?”
Her throat stings, but she won’t cry even though he can’t see her. “They weren’t assessing me as an officer. They only saw me as an xB.”
“Yeah, so that’s how it was going down. Until I said, ‘She aced all the command simulations. Her scores suggest she’s brave as hell and loyal to the core. I want her next in line for my chair.’ I had seniority, everybody at that table knew I was considering just a few more missions before settling down for some ship design work. So they let it go, passed me your file. But then damn Admiral Shelby took me aside. ‘You sure you’re up to this, Liam?’ Of course I was. Not all Klingons care about honor and not all Bajorans believe in the Prophets — so not all xBs need to remind me of my continued status as Ten of Ten, a survivor of Wolf 359, my friends who weren’t lucky enough to be awarded one of the ten seats in the life pod all killed or assimilated. And, for the most part, you don’t remind me of something that I know you weren’t part of. But Seven of Nine, Ten of Ten, Three-Five-Nine, ship’s registry number One-Zero-Three-Six-Seven, forty dead, eleven thousand dead, stardate four-four-zero-zero-two-point-three. I like math, honest, I do. But when those numbers … when they get into my head … the screaming … that day … I …”
And he’s disconnecting. Just as surely as the cannabis made her feel disconnected, his memories are fragmenting his senses, his ability to function, to keep his composure.
Just like — it’s obvious now — his fragmented composure the two times she heard him speak her name before today.
He helped her when she was fragmented. Of course he did. He values loyalty because he’s loyal, values bravery because he’s brave.
So she stands, picks up her chair, and — damn, this thing is heavier than it looks — shuffles toward him, her arms and back aching from the weight of the chair that she eases down flush on the right side of his chair.
She sits.
Lets her hand — her xB hand, the one that cradled his head — rest palm up on her armrest. He can hold her hand or ignore it, accept the connection she’s offering or keep staring straight ahead as if she’s not there.
His choice.
His eyes stay fixed on the city lights, but his hand lifts, finds hers and holds on tight, his skin soft from his shower, a vein along the back of his hand throbbing once … twice … before settling.
“I know you’re a by-the-book kind of guy.” She doesn’t bother to keep the fondness out of her voice, appreciation for the good things he’s done, even if he’s far from perfect — which is fair because she’s not interested in perfection anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. “But, as I think you know, my friends call me Seven. You don’t have to say the whole thing every time.”
“Seven.” He says it gently, as if her name is delicate, easily broken or perhaps it’s him that’s been broken and trying to mend. “I’m Liam, and I’ve been called an asshole or a dipshit enough times — okay, mostly by me talking to myself — that I believe it’s in both my and your best interests to insist upon a little clarity here. So are you holding my hand due to some bullshit sense of pity or obligation because half the contents of my psych file just spilled out of my mouth, or is this some kind of affection?”
She should be nervous — stomach-twistingly, face flushingly nervous to answer his question.
But she’s not.
“It’s some kind of affection, Liam.”
“That’s good — good to hear,” his small smile is rough at the corners, as if he isn’t used to smiling in actual happiness, “Seven.”
Her own smile is more broad than his, and her gaze drifts to the glow of the view in front of them, the lights that bring him comfort. He probably wouldn’t explain his affinity for the skyline as enjoyment at being part of a collective of individuals. She would, though, with the inherent complexities of uniqueness and imperfect belonging. “You know, you were right. These city lights are pretty good for finding connection.”
There’s a chance he’ll say something sarcastic or self-debasing or just plain weird.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he looks to the city lights and nods, his hand in hers.