Chapter Text
Today, Seven is assisting in Engineering.
It’s a duty she enjoys, despite the fact that she and Lieutenant Torres mix, according to Ensign Kim, “like oil and water.” Keeping all of Voyager’s systems operating is important work, and work she is well-suited for. Warp mechanics and electrical engineering make sense, which is more than Seven can say for quite a lot of her post-Borg life.
She passes two ensigns as she returns some diagnostic equipment to the upper level, and sees one of them, Timmens, elbow the other. “Dude, Seven at six o’clock,” he says, in a tone likely not meant to be overheard, but Seven’s implants give her improved auditory perception.
In her peripheral vision she watches Darnell turn his head to stare at her. She has never understood when other humans spoke of being able to “feel” someone looking at them, but she thinks she does now. The hair on the back of her neck prickles.
She is being illogical. So are Timmens and Darnell - there is no reason for them to be distracted by her presence; she frequently works in Engineering - but she doesn’t need to mimic them. She bends down to unlatch the cabinet the diagnostic equipment is stored in.
“God, what a view,” she hears Darnell say. “Don’t you wish all the female crew wore her outfit?”
“Even Golwat?”
“Okay, maybe not all of them,” Darnell amends. “But a lot of them. The Delaney sisters?”
Timmens laughs in agreement as Seven closes the cabinet door. She uses more force than she intended and the metal clangs loudly, but it has the unplanned benefit of interrupting the ensigns’ conversation, and they appear to be refocused on their work as Seven walks back past them.
She feels that prickling sensation at the back of her neck again, anyway.
The rest of her shift passes uneventfully. Seven makes several minor adjustments to the EPS interface that improve reliability while also reducing energy consumption by 0.087%, and Torres finds aspects of her work to critique anyway. But the overheard conversation remains in her mind, resistant to her attempts to understand it.
It’s hardly the first time Seven has found herself missing an obvious-to-everyone-else social cue or unspoken shared understanding, but practice has not made her any more comfortable with it. She wants to know things, especially when they concern her, which this apparently had.
Voyager has extensive databases, and they include a sizable section on social norms in different species. Seven has consulted them on numerous occasions and learned valuable information from them, but has had mixed success in using them to illuminate specific social interactions, largely because she lacks the context to even know which question to ask or concepts to search for.
Therefore, it is more efficient at the end of her shift - she could easily keep working for several more hours, but the crew is strangely insistent on everyone taking regular, excessive rest periods when at all possible - to approach Torres and see if she can provide an explanation.
“I would like to ask you a question, Lieutenant.”
Torres looks up from placing various specialized tricorders back in their appropriate containers. “Of course you do. Look, if it’s about why you have to explain your work in a way that’s comprehensible to those of us who don’t have Borg technology in our head, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow, I’m too tired to go through it again.”
“It is not about that,” Seven corrects, choosing not to reiterate at this time her position that if others find her reports difficult to understand, their time would be more productively spent brushing up on advanced warp mechanics than complaining. “I overheard a conversation that I do not understand.”
“You know, most people consider eavesdropping to be rude.”
“Ensigns Timmens and Darnell conducted this conversation while on shift, and I made no attempt to conceal my presence. In fact, their awareness of my presence was what prompted their exchange.”
“Fine, fine,” Torres says, though she continues to focus on her work rather than Seven. “What’d they say?”
“Darnell indicated that he would find it preferable if all female crewmembers wore my outfit, rather than the standard Starfleet uniform. Timmens suggested that this change in apparel be limited to only certain women.”
“Ugh,” Torres says, grimacing in distaste as she puts away the last tricorder. “I’ll remind them about what constitutes workplace-appropriate conversation, and reassign them to two weeks on waste reclamation, to make sure the lesson really sinks in. Unless you think it should be a month?” she asks, finally looking up.
“You believe their conversation was inappropriate?” Seven confirms, confused. “Enough to merit punishment?”
“Obviously, Seven. You don’t have that low an opinion of my management skills, do you?”
“I meant no judgment of your ability to manage your staff,” Seven says. “Only that I did not realize their words were considered inappropriate; I do not understand the context of their conversation. That is why I asked you about it.”
Now Torres stares at her like she’s a particularly complicated circuit diagram. “The context is that they find you attractive.”
Seven attempts to reanalyze the overheard words in light of this new information, with minimal success. “I do not understand what bearing that has on their preference for my outfit.”
Torres snorts. “Well, it doesn’t exactly leave a lot to the imagination.”
“Leave a lot of what to the imagination?” Seven asks, growing impatient with not receiving a straightforward answer to any of her questions.
“Shit, you really don’t understand what they were talking about, do you?” Torres says, her expression switching to what Seven thinks is sympathy, or possibly even pity. It does not improve her mood.
“Clearly,” she grits out. “I do not waste time asking for information I already have.”
“And I’ll do my best to explain, I promise,” Torres says, putting her hands up as if in surrender. “But this isn’t really the best place for it,” she adds, looking around at the members of beta shift who are arriving. “C’mon.”
Seven follows her into one of the empty testing labs off of main engineering. “Okay,” Torres says once they’re inside, leaning against one of the lab benches. “You know what sex is, right?”
“I am not an idiot, Lieutenant,” Seven says, her voice coming out clipped.
“I didn’t say you were!” Torres replies, sounding exasperated. “But I don’t know what kind of information the Borg bother keeping from species they assimilate, and I didn’t want to assume. So tell me what you know about sex. I swear it’s relevant,” she adds, like she can sense Seven’s coming objection.
“Biologically speaking, sex refers to activity between two organisms that can lead to reproduction. In most humanoid cultures, the term also encompasses related but non-procreative activities.”
“Right, and you know that a lot of people - most people, really - have sex because it feels good, not because they necessarily want to make a kid every time?”
Seven nods in confirmation, though this seems strange to her; the descriptions of sex always make it sound wet and rather awkward. But lacking in any first-hand experience she supposes she’ll have to take Torres - and everyone else - at their word.
“So, when I said that the context was Timmens and Darnell finding you attractive, I specifically meant sexually attractive,” B’Elanna continues.
“If that is the case, the logical behavior would be to try to initiate a sexual relationship, which neither of them have done so far.”
“Being sexually attracted to someone and actually wanting to have sex with them aren’t necessarily the same thing,” B’Elanna says, and Seven spends a few confused seconds trying and failing to reconcile the logic. “For some people, sometimes, finding the other person hot is all they need, sure. But sex is pretty intimate, and some people prefer to do it with people they know and trust. Sometimes the person you think is hot is someone it would be a bad idea to sleep with - they’re your friend’s partner or your boss or whatever. And sometimes people just don’t want to take the risk of being shot down.”
Seven absorbs this explanation and decides it makes sense, at least by the relative standards of human behavior. “But what does my outfit have to do with this?” she asks.
“Seven, I really thought you knew,” B’Elanna says, and Seven refrains from objecting to the lack of an actual answer only because of the distress in her voice. “To humans, and most other humanoid species, your outfit is sexually suggestive, if not provocative.”
Seven looks down at herself, but all she sees is her familiar biosuit. “Why? My clothing is functional.”
“I’m sure it is, but it also draws attention to - well, all of your body, really, but especially the parts that tend to be sexualized.” Seven continues to look at herself, trying to figure out which parts Torres means, and hears her sigh. “Your breasts, hips, and buttocks,” she specifies.
“Why?” Seven asks again.
“Why are those parts considered to be more sexual than, say, elbows, you mean?” B’Elanna asks rhetorically with a shrug. “Some people think that hips and breasts are indicators of the ability to bear children, and men were evolutionarily selected to find them attractive. Some people think it’s learned behavior. I don’t think anyone really knows for certain, but either way, most humanoid men are going to notice your figure, especially in that outfit.”
Seven considers her clothing through this new lens, comparing it to the Starfleet uniform the others wear. The biosuit clings to her skin, revealing a perfect silhouette. The understructure pulls in her waist, making her hips look comparatively larger, and is molded to her breasts. Even the heels alter her posture, causing her to curve her spine, pushing out her buttocks and breasts to balance.
Why had her outfit been created like this? True, the biosuit and understructure also serve practical purposes, protecting her skin and providing support while she adjusts to the removal of most of her Borg implants. But much of that adjustment has occurred, yet no corresponding alteration to her clothing has been made. Besides, what about the heels? Why had she not been provided with an outer, looser layer? It seems unlikely to have been an oversight, given how obvious the implications of her outfit seem to Torres.
Maybe they assumed she would want to appear like this? Should she want to appear like this?
“Why do you intend to punish Timmens and Darnell?” Seven asks. “By your explanation, their behavior was to be expected.”
“What? That’s not what I said at all -”
“You said, and I quote, ‘most humanoid men are going to notice your figure, especially in that outfit.’” Seven reminds her; Torres scowls at her.
“I know what I said,” she insists, “which is that a lot of men are going to find you attractive. Whether or how they act on that attraction is still very much their responsibility. Nothing entitles them to be offensive.”
“What about their conversation was offensive?” Seven asks; Torres blinks at her in confusion, like the question doesn’t make sense. “Is not being found attractive desirable?” she attempts to rephrase.
Torres looks sad at that, though Seven doesn’t understand why. “There’s a difference between being found attractive and being objectified,” she says quietly.
“I do not understand the distinction.”
Torres leans further back, humming in thought. “It can be a fuzzy line, and different people will probably draw it in different places,” she acknowledges. “After all, there’s usually a physical component to attraction. But that’s usually not all there is to it, either. You might like that person’s sense of humor, their kindness, their enthusiasm, their intelligence, that sort of thing. But with objectification, the physical is the only thing that matters. You’re not really a person, with your own thoughts, feelings, wants. You’re just a sexy object.”
There’s so much she doesn’t understand about this aspect of human behavior, Seven realizes as Torres speaks. What traits does she find attractive? How would she even know if she was attracted to someone? Does she want others to find her attractive?
She must do a poor job of controlling her expression, because Torres says, “Seven?” sounding concerned.
“I believe I understand,” Seven says, leaving her other questions for now, as she suspects Torres - and possibly anyone - would be unable to answer them satisfactorily. “At least in general,” she qualifies. “I am unsure of my ability to distinguish between attraction and objectification in practice.”
“Like I said, it can be a fuzzy line,” Torres reminds her. “Do you disagree that Timmens and Darnell were objectifying you?” she asks, and for once she doesn’t seem to take the prospect of Seven having a different opinion as a personal affront.
“While they commented only on my physical appearance, it is possible that their private thoughts were less one-dimensional,” Seven says, even though it’s not quite an answer.
Nor is it evidently very convincing. “Do you really believe that?” Torres asks, and Seven can’t bring herself to answer. Torres tilts her head, looking thoughtful. “You know, it wasn’t just your appearance they commented on, though you certainly got the brunt of their attention. It was every woman on this ship, including me.”
“Do you… feel objectified by their comments?” Seven asks, uncertain of the proper language.
“I mean, I try not to base my self-image off the opinion of some distracted ensigns,” Torres says. “And it’s not like I haven’t heard worse. But yeah, I do. I’m here to keep the ship running so we can get home instead of dying in the Delta Quadrant, not be a sexy decoration.”
Is that how Timmens and Darnell - and possibly many others on Voyager - view her? Seven wants to have a new collective here, wants her presence to be appreciated, but she had always thought about it in terms of the knowledge and abilities she could contribute. She certainly hadn’t considered this as one of her assets.
She tries to push away her sudden sense of discomfort. “They did not intend for me to overhear their conversation,” she says. “If I had human-normal hearing, I would have remained unaware of their opinion, and no harm would’ve been done.”
“Yeah, but you did hear them,” Torres counters. “Because they were idiots who had this conversation at work, when you were walking by. Maybe they didn’t want you to overhear them, but clearly they weren’t that worried about it, either.”
“Even so, their words were just that - only words, and hardly deeply considered ones at that.”
“That’s always the excuse, you know. It’s always just a joke, until suddenly it isn’t.” Torres frowns to herself, like she’s had a sudden, unpleasant thought. “Seven, no one’s done anything worse, have they? No one’s… touched you in a way you didn’t like?”
Naomi Wildman sometimes clutches Seven’s hand more tightly than is preferable, but Seven is fairly sure that is not the sort of behavior Torres is concerned about. “No,” she says, her answer brief but true, and Torres visibly relaxes. “Is that a serious possibility?”
“I don’t think you need to spend a lot of time worrying about it,” Torres assures her. “That sort of thing is pretty rare these days, thankfully. And I would certainly hope that everyone on this ship would know better. But,” she adds, shrugging, “as the Starfleet saying goes, nothing’s certain but death and transporter accidents. If it does happen, the important thing is that you tell someone, so they can help. It could be the captain, Tuvok, anyone you trust. Hell, it could even be me, if you preferred.”
Possibly Torres would say as much to anyone she works with, but Seven believes the offer is genuine, despite their frequently contentious interactions, and appreciates it. “I will remember your advice in the unlikely event it becomes applicable,” she says. “And I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions,” she adds, a little stiffly. She’s still not used to thanking people, but she’s been repeatedly informed that it’s an important part of non-adversarial social interactions. And it’s true, anyway. “Lieutenant,” she adds in farewell, then turns to leave.
She’s halfway to the door before she hears Torres call “Seven,” and turns back.
“This was a lousy thing to prompt it, but this is stuff you should probably know, since it seems like you’re planning on sticking around. I’m sorry no one explained it to you before. And,” Torres continues, crossing her arms, “if you have more questions that the databases can’t answer - well, I guess I won’t mind if you ask me. As long as it’s not when I’m trying to stop the warp core from going critical or anything.”
Seven is sure she will, though less confident they will be the sorts of questions she wishes to discuss with Torres, this interaction notwithstanding. Still, it’s a generous offer on Torres’s part. “Thank you,” she says with a nod, then finally takes her leave.
She has much to think about.