Work Text:
There’s a nook about fifty feet up the side of the Artifact where Soji likes to stargaze, a corner patch of banged-up metal that holds the heat of the sun’s last rays just enough to keep her cozy on Coppelius’s colder nights. She found it after Starfleet arrived to renegotiate the synth ban and she started scaling the walls as a form of stress relief, once it became clear she was going to be stuck here longer than she’d bargained for.
To be honest, this whole adventure has been more than Soji bargained for. That’s why she comes up here most nights. The sky, its vastness, the exertion of the climb—they lend a clarity she can’t find on the ground.
Soji’s seen a lot of stars in her life. At least, she remembers seeing lots of stars. But turns out memories aren’t the best way to judge reality, especially when you’ve got twenty years of false ones. The stars on this planet aren’t much different from the stars she’s seen on any other planet (or at least on Nepenthe—those stars she can say she’s seen for sure), but she’s been here so long they’ve started to feel distinctly hers. She’s even started to create a mental catalogue of constellations, names she tells herself and no one else.
On Coppelius, everyone expects her to spend all her time with the synths, which is probably why she spends most of it with the xBs. It’s not like Soji doesn’t want to know the others. It’s just that she kind of speedran this whole identity thing.
It’s left her craving space.
xBs, contrary to what the rest of the galaxy believes, are really fucking good at holding space. Maybe that’s why when Soji pulls herself over the ledge of the nook one night and finds Seven there, she doesn’t mind. “You found my secret,” she says as she sits down beside her, shoulders relaxing to fit her favorite sun-warmed curve.
“Kind of hard to call it a secret when you’re free climbing the side of a Borg cube every night.”
Soji folds her arms. “I’m experimenting with this synth thing.”
“Inventing new ways to break your neck?”
“No,” she says a little defensively. “I’m scoping my limits. And to be fair, you’re up here too.”
“I used the door.” Moonlight glints off Seven’s implants as she gestures to a blown-in, bent-edged hole in the bulkhead a couple meters above their heads—remnants of an access hatch that Soji’s never noticed before.
“Oh.” She flushes. “I didn’t know that was there. But I probably won’t use it anyway. No offense.” She tugs her knees up to her chest and curls deeper into the beat-up bulkhead. She really isn’t trying to be reckless. She’s just curious. There’s so much she never knew she could do.
Beside her, Seven rests her elbow on one bent knee and gazes out at the stars. No one’s really talked about why she’s still on Coppelius, but Soji saw the bodies, the debris, the glassy eyes of the survivors, the tightness of the lines etched deep in Seven’s face. At the time she chalked it up to shock, but after hearing Elnor’s side of things, she understands.
Her memories of the crash are so blurred as to be illegible, but every time she climbs up here she gets a little closer to comprehending just how lucky they were to have survived. Seven strikes her as someone who doesn’t believe in luck. Seven also strikes her as someone who’s pretty tired of surviving.
“Raffi’s looking for you,” she ventures.
Seven makes a small, unintelligible noise. “I know.”
Above them, the sky like a bolt of black velvet, the stars tiny diamonds sewn into its folds. “You heard they’re leaving tomorrow, right?”
“Yep.”
“That why you’re up here? To think?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Door’s right there, if you want to leave.”
In the dark, a gentle laugh. Soji hugs her knees against her chest in a rush of embarrassment, wondering why the hell Maddox and Jurati had to be so accurate when creating synthetic emotions. At the very least, they could have included a way to turn them off.
She offers to leave.
“Plenty of room for the both of us,” Seven says in a gruff sort of murmur, as if she’s unaccustomed to keeping company or not scaring others off.
Soji hides a smile and stays.