BEST TNG STORY ~~ BEST VOY STORY ~~ BEST OVERALL STORY
ROUND XI

Title: THE FLAX SEED

Author: R Schultz ( cousindream@aol.com )

Fandom: Star Trek

Series: TNG/VOY: both many years later

Code: F/m and F/f mentioned

Pairing: Deanna Troi/Seven of Nine

Rating: NC-17 for some language and situations

Summary: When VOYAGER burst back into Federation space, it brought with it the lovely and unique Seven of Nine, once Teritary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero. It is now a quarter of a century later. Seven of Nine is still beautiful and still appears to be in her mid-twenties. She has freedom and wealth, lovers and beauty, an analytical mind and a super luminal grace when she walks. She lacks nothing except a reason to live.

Warning! Fictional people talk about sex in this fic. It also gets a little edgy. This is not a story for hypocrites with their turpitude screwed on tighter than their conscience. For adults only. No under-aged people, those languishing in locales with blue laws or foreigners with anti-smut laws may enter here. Shmoo!. Go listen to the lies of Scowcroft or one of the other Talking Heads. Or try Fairy Tales.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Trek. I'm borrowing a few characters. Story mine under Berne Laws. 21,500 words long, July, 2003.

Written for the Femme Fuh-Q Fest and other people. Will be archived at the ASCEML.

For more FFF stories, visit http://www.oocities.org/femme_fuhq_fest/

Comments to: cousindream@aol.com



THE FLAX SEED

by R Schultz





She was suspicious, wary, bold as brass and not entirely sure of herself. About normal for a first counseling session. I already knew she was here under a form of sugar-coated duress.



If she wanted all her permits back without a five-year waiting period, she had to come to me. Or someone like me. A certain red-headed Dancing Doctor had asked me polite, so it was me.



Mister Zhao waved vaguely at the patio tableaux, and made as if to get back to work. Elsewhere. But she was determined to make a playlet out of our first meeting.



A quick flick of her eyes told me she had already taken in the setting, and ignored it. Almost. What happened next was for my benefit.



She moved slightly, and without quite touching him, she halted my Factorum and put their encounter into a second or two of pause.



Her body moved slightly. Gauging what I could actually see from where me and little Roon were parked, she did something with the back of her hand, the one away from me. Then leaned a few centimeters closer to Mister Zhao's slender face. A few words came from her mouth, she gained the hint of a smile, and my Secretary hastily took himself away.



Having established her aggressiveness amongst other things, she sauntered across the flagstones to the railing nearest me. She was in no hurry, she was saying. She looked out over San Francisco Bay and let me admire her tight young body and the strong feminine rear end she had. I was supposed to feel defensive after she'd flaunted her perfect shape in her tight cream pants. She wasn't wearing any perceptible panties.



She did indeed have a nice shapely ass. The breasts were still astonishing, the hateur cool and the large amount of skin showing without flaw. Excepting her continuing Borg implants. They emphasized her form, rather than detracted from it. I am a superior man-catching machine than you are, she was shouting.



As I was nursing Roon at this moment, I obviously wasn't giving much of a damn if she was indeed more seductive than I was. Hers was a valiant effort, but I think she was quickly aware that it wasn't quite working. She'd obviously thought the theater wouldn't have quite so many actresses and actors on it when we reached the state of it being just her and me.



Roon didn't give a hoot, of course. He was already drifting off to contented belly-full sleep. He felt cocooning and loved and that was sufficient. Betazoid babies didn't need quite so much burping as human ones did, but he'd accept a little pummeling in a minute and then empty himself. After the placid acceptance of his wipe and change, he'd enjoy the warmth in his bassinet.



Now my -- guest -- was on the wrong foot. She was geared up for confrontation and instead she'd have to wait while all this results-of-procreation stuff was taken care of first.



I did love all that blond hair on her. Short hair was in fashion again, so she had let hers grow long. She still flaunted her brow implant, and more Borg implants glittered on her exposed cheek, stomach, arm, and inner thigh. Quite dramatic appearing. Exotic. Inticing. Sexy. She obviously had some of her clothes special made, just so she could show off her differentness.



As she was female and human-derivative she might have thought I'd expect her to come over and do the 'Coo-coo-pretty-baby' thing with Roon. Not this gal. She was already contemplating the next target. What she'd wear, what she'd smell like, how she'd move.



Twenty-six years ago this very blond woman had moved efficiently, not seductively. She'd deliberately renounced open sexuality and provocation, and irrelevant mating rituals. Twenty-six years ago.



I recalled her unsure persona, surrounded by the menagerie of Federation life. I'd thought her beautiful then, and still did.



Her very apparent youth in itself was a matter of intense study in some ivory-tower circles. In non-ivory-tower circles some still hoped to find the secret of her extended youthfulness. The Borg nanoite technology had medical applications, yes, but they had been unable to adapt this woman's youth to save their own aging flesh. Even at my age I had a trace of envy when gazing sideways at this sculpted female. Still apparently twenty-six.



"Do I meet with your approval?" she casually asked.



"Most certainly," I softly returned. "When you came here from the Delta Quadrant your fashion sense was close to zero, you had involuntary personal presence, and you had a body displayed in that biosuit that knocked the socks off most male viewers. Do you still get mail from strangers offering their eternal love?"



"A little," she admitted with a smile.



"Do you ever reply?" I innocently asked. She glared for a second, then forced relaxation. She shook her head no.



"Can you really read minds?" she asked in return.



Not whether or not you are reading mine, which was the real question.



"My Mother can do so, but the ability is strong in her. Like most Betazoids, I am simply extremely good at feeling emotions and understanding unspoken subtext. Can you still call up the memories of millions of assimilated beings?"



I instantly regretted the barb. The pain made me wince. I swam for a moment in a flurry of ten, fifty, spasms of waking memories and fears. In nanosecond increments I felt a residue of terror as hundreds descended into the maelstrom of forced assimilation.



She remembered even yet.



Seven of Nine remembered.



I now knew the task I had set myself.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -







There had been no real relaxation. It was still our first session, and the dynamics were still being thrashed out. With any luck they never would be. Betazoids believe in luck, yes. Just like humans do.



It had been a few hours, and diddly for results. My throat was tired, my spirits were tired, and Annika was still trying for me to have a revelation and reveal massive understanding to her, for her. Solve everything at one fell swoop. Even as she cogently, logically, and perceptively analyzed and realized she had no problem. None to speak of.



After all, the males she used were all so dull and blah, so goal-oriented. Her body the goal. In point of fact no one understood her.



Annika had a hundred stories to tell of VOYAGER, but Annika had carefully stayed away from any sort of self-revelation. Seven of Nine emerged full-bore, eager to talk about her past. Annika carefully avoided revealing her emotions concerning HER Captain Janeway. Even so Annika's neutrality re Janeway was a shout of emotions hidden.



Annika was the predator, Seven was her other side. Either aspect of herself was unconsciously determined not to inadvertently allow me revelation. From me or discovered by herself.



As the day wore on, she became extremely disappointed, thought me a boring quack, and blamed me for her apparent lack of progress thus far. Typical first encounter. Annika knew better but was feverishly trying for a miracle. Not very likely.



Annika was a stunning creature. She moved like a river flowing, and her body begged you to hold it. I could imagine her sighs of anticipation if I reached out for that soft sunlight-revealed blond-fuzzy skin. Her cries of lust as I nursed her.



Instead I helfted Roon on a hip and we wandered back to the Kitchen area. Annika unbent enough that Seven and I began to lightly banter. Talking irrelevances, letting the Counseling Session seemingly devolve into girl-to-girl time.



We discovered a similar taste for chocolate milk and buttered raisin toast. She took a part of my slice and we drew closer. Twice Seven accepted Roon while I put together our little snack. I put on a pot of tea, and like clockwork Mister Zhao came in to get it, precisely at one o'clock.



I had computer lock all the doors and drawers and let my busy child crawl on the floor of the kitchen. Almost instantly I had a tall Nordic Princess at my side, letting me feel her presence. Letting me feel her availability. To make it obvious she kissed the back of my neck, gently brushing my hair to the side.



Right now Annika was trying to seduce me. I'd decided to refer to the predator as Annika and the rest of her plus Annika as Seven. No disassociation of personalities, certainly not. Simply differing manifestatopns of the same persona. The differentiation was for my own use only.



For a space Annika tried the friendly-us-females-together approach, but I was working to draw her out, of course. We buzzed, and Seven asked about my marriage. She asked for little chatty stories of the renowned ENTERPRISE and my many mythic affairs with Jean-Luc, Riker, Yar, Worf, Beverly and whoever else gossip had tossed in my bed.



Eventually we moved back to the patio, despite the afternoon cool. When I left Roon in Mrs. Zhao's fine care, she'd become Annika once more. When she wasn't acting out an unconscious role, she was Seven. She never noticed the change.



From the patio I could see Tiae, Mrs. Zhao, in the cockpit with Roon. That's what I termed the main living area. A step-down cavity existed there, and one could sit on a couch and enjoy a HoloDrama on the big platform that rose out of the central floor. Tiae was watching an old 3D 'Itchy and Scratchy' with the sound directed only at her. Toae loved Martian slapstick comedies.



Now Annika moved alongside me, on the flower terrace edge. She came closer to me in order to smell the Melange flowers, then stayed, our thighs touching. I could feel her warmth and smell her cleanliness.



She accidentally let her hand linger on my arm as she explained the troubles she had. Inviting me to turn and kiss her. She told me of small troubles. None of the major ones. Certainly not the ones that made her drink 17 cc of liquid radioactive cesium. She was ignoring her suicide attempt.



Annika was warm, Annika smelled delicious, Annika was letting me know she was available for me. Her looks riveted me, her words were low and confidential, she smelled of something lime-ish, her flesh moved easily in her minimalist covering. Nothing showed, not really. She was dressed most decorously. But she kept moving so that I might admire her feline grace.



Once upon a time I had talked extensively with Seven of Nine, when she was being newly buffeted by the universe of the Federation. Once upon a time her grace was very enchanting. Natural, and with more than just a hint of ungracefulness and insecurity. Once upon a time she commanded her body to show no fear, and she had flowed across a room like a flood of Jem'Hadar Commandos. Implacable and awe-inspiring.



Now she fluently spoke the language of seductiveness. I regretted not deeply knowing the simpler and less-secure Seven. I hoped to find the steely-visaged innocent again.



It was time to let loose this session. I had hoped for little more. It would take some time to find the frightened ex-drone again.



Even as I rose I had to admire her implacability. With her nanoites to protect her, ordinary suicide would never work. With liquid radioactive cesium, it had been a close-run thing. She'd been given transplants from stock, of virtually everything between tongue and colon. Even so it had been only her sub-microscopic symbiots that saved her. This had not been a cry for help. This had been the real thing,



Seven had known also the degree of pain that would be inflicted in the corrosive process. I carefully did not mentally dwell on that pain. I also tried not to flinch in the face of such determination, such resolve. Such pain and self-loathing.



We stood by my Joshua tree, in the shadows, and she moved closer. She smelled enticing and delicious, ginger and honey and dry limed hair. Her flesh was warmer in the twilight, her breath stirred the short hairs by my ear, the hints of hairs on my skin. Her breasts touched me, her body spake of fulfillment.



She kissed my neck, and I did not resist. She kissed my ear and I did not jerk away. She touched my chin with her tongue and I did not turn my head. Her hand caressed the back of my head, her fingers journeyed through my wavy hair, browning with age, and it thrilled me. She was so completely a sexual being at that moment, that I had to marvel at her aura of promise. She was trying to dominate and she realized I was having none of it.



Yet even now she cupped one breast, our bodies hidden from view. She licked the line of my collar bone through the thin material of my top. Her hand traveled down my belly.



"I'd like to see you again the end of this week. Would that be acceptable to you?" I asked. Ignoring her open invitation of sex, more or less.



She continued to caress, looking for my response. I bent and picked up a small crystal pyramid on a side table.



"This is for you," I smiled. I began walking into my living room, not seeing if she would follow.



"What is it?" she began, looking intently at the tiny thing inside the crystal.



"It is a flax seed," I returned. "Something for you to think on." With that I strode towards my doorway. The indoor warmth felt good after the cooling air of the Bay as it rolled uphill.



"There is a small plaza in Richmond, west of the Peaks, they call it Cedars Place. Quite near your home. It's very charming, but I'd recommend you wear something warm. There's Replicators there, but there's also a retired Bajoran you might remember, a vendor, who sells good Raktajino out of a real genuine Rakka machine at a kiosk."



"Ro Laren?" she guessed.



"Dead on," I replied. "About elevenish? I'll bring lunch for both of us."



"An odd choice of sites for a counseling session, isn't it?"



"So maybe we won't counsel at each other. Just come. And I warn you, I love far too much chocolate in my Raktajino. I know, I know, it's barbaric to bastardize Rak by adding chocolate, but I like it that way. Ro Laren sighs but adds it for my cup."



"Are you going to grill her about what sort of a cold arrogant fish I was on VOYAGER?"



"Of course. Everyone knows how devious Betazoid counselors are. We're born sneaky.



"Or perhaps Ro Laren might just like to complain about Bajoran politicos and Federation politicos and Vulcan politicos." Seven -- and it was Seven and not Annika -- looked askance at me.



"She's married to a Vulcan, you know. Do say you'll come, won't you? Good. I'll be expecting you."





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





Swathed in a huge black and white fuzzy something, Annika, Seven caught my eye as soon as she got off the BART RoboBus. The jacket was composed of immense checks, and a black and a white bulls-eye Tammy sat on her head, Her men's pants were one leg white and one leg black, and she strode about in full black shiny boots. Her fashion sense was impeccable, and I had to repress an unkind thought of my own.



With Roon ensconced in traditional clumsy Betazoid layers of clothes instead of a simple TempSuit, I knew I had an unavoidable air of 'frumpy' to myself. Forget the tasteful understated cobalt blue with yellow trim of my own suit. I looked like a Mother and little else.



This also was deliberate. I must not get into a Fashion Contest with Annika. Not least because I think the tall blond would win it. Fashion is being enticing, when you come right down to it. And Annika had honed her enticing for over a quarter century.



I also had to repress any sense of superiority or satisfaction. For Annika must have gotten less enjoyment from some of her males than I did from one of my well-worn dildos. Simple statistics said that. But between us it mustn't be about sex.



Instead I admired the look of impeccable and implacable superiority she imparted to a simple walk up a 15% slope. Jem'Hadar Commandos as a fashion statement. To see her stride was to desire her. Roon noticed her and obsessed on her movements three hundred meters before she reached us. I fleetingly told myself he was becoming very male at an early age.



I patted the bench next to myself, and let her stand or sit as she wished. She ignored Roon, as I'd thought she would. She wasn't allowing herself to be ordinary and female around a baby. Not this tough cookie.



Finally she sat and promptly gave me a light peck on the cheek. Just to see how I'd react. I smiled and used ninety words of welcome where ten would have sufficed. Sneaky Betazoids.



I spun around on the bench and pulled a wicker hamper to us. I shoved it partially in her direction and waved a welcome at it with one casual hand. I waited for reaction.



"What is that?" she reluctantly asked, already knowing she was expected to ask the question.



"A picnic basket. Old western culture sociability adjunct," I explained. "You put things to eat and drink and tools to do it with in the basket. Then you take it with you when you go somewhere wild or park-like. You eat from it's contents, and traditionally you're supposed to enjoy the convenience of bringing a dinner along, beforehand." I pulled out a StasisBox and gave Annika half of a sandwich. I took the other half.



"It's Evasberry Jam and TollNut Butter on Sourdough bread." Waving at it, and taking a nibble myself. "Try it."



She declined, but then she really didn't need much food even now, a quarter of a century after VOYAGER. I'd made a mental wager with myself that she'd take none of it.



"An unusual device," Annika noted, a hint of Seven in her voice. Indicating the wicker hamper the sandwich emerged from.



"I was given it when I visited Admiral Janeway and Samantha on their farm in Indiana."



Annika got up with nary a word, and walked away. Ignoring the greetings from Ro Laren as my Bajoran friend came our way with her three cups of Raktajino for us. Laren stared at Annika's back as the ex-drone removed herself from my area. Then she came over to me and sat down. For the next half hour I Counseled the ex-Maquis ex-StarFleet instead of Annika. Then I fed her half a sandwich. She thought Evassberry too sweet by far, but she finished the other half of the sandwich.



Her kiosk was a hobby, not a livelihood. She was always politically active and politically unwelcome on Bajor. She'd served three sentences for Sedition on Bajor to underscore the mutual alienation of herself and Bajor's government. Now Ro Laren bustled about the metropolis where her husband usually lived and worked. Today, as she calmed, she scooped up Roon and held the child close.



Her own teenaged daughters were on Vulcan at the moment. Meeting ancestors. Learning about their roots. Making Ro feel just a tad lonely.



This was Vulcan in play here, and she must let her daughters weave into that part of their lives as they must. On Vulcan Laren would be a hindrance, and Laren had long ago learned to bow to Vulcan necessity. As for Vorik, he evidently had turned out to be a good mate and father, if a bit stiff. Considering the male Vulcan cycles, one wondered how Laren coped.



Actually I knew how she coped. She had girlfriends. I knew for a fact she had been on romantic short rations when hiding on VOYAGER. Vorik had been a very welcome port in a storm.



Laren enjoyed being here. In the park, where she could meet people, including other Bajoran exiles. And in the Bay area. She'd become very social since VOYAGER. One might almost say she'd mellowed into her braided gray hair.



When living on Bajor she was irritated and galled. She showed up at the Grand Council meetings more often than most of the Councilors. Their faults infuriated her, their mistakes broke her heart. Here on Terra it didn't much matter. With humans she merely thought us a little strange, but basically nice. Much like a strange dog that's friendly. But not yours.



As for myself, I had a blistering headache. From the way Annika reacted to a mention of the happy couple in Indiana, I pretty much knew what some of the dynamics post-Delta Quadrant had been.



Of course her sudden departure also allowed Annika to be ever so dramatic, not to mention dismissive of myself. But the hurt had been all too real. Annika hated her ex-mentor with a bitter bile that even I found astonishing.



She'd been in love with Janeway and Janeway turned away from her. Never mind her own disastrous marriage to Chakotay, she'd been in love with a petite Captain with auburn hair and a truly Butch persona.



It was little wonder she was so filled with contempt for her lovers. She likely had nothing but contempt for herself. After all, she had lost her dream lover. Since then she'd been on a quest impossible to finish. A female Hercules with the weight of the world on her shoulders. She indeed needed the flax seed.







- - - - - - - - - - - - - -







She had hardly expected me to show up on her doorstep. I stood there in my next-to-best Tri-dress, real cobalt and light ultramarine Chinese silk. I was dripping with scent and make-up and wearing opera net and strapless heels.



"I have two fourteenth row right center for the Pushkin Opera and Ballet of Centauri rendition of "La Boheme" and you haven't put a single thing on yet, have you?" I flashed two entrets at her, then waited with an air of innocent expectancy. Presenting an air of patience and an iron resolve not to scold her for forgetting our date. Counselors need lots of sang froid.



"What?" she asked. This was the first she'd heard of it, but I maintained my aplomb.



"Well," I asked. "Aren't you going to change into something awe-inspiring and breath-taking? I just KNOW you have something deadly and ravishing in your closet for a night at the Center. Do you have an evening dress to go with that big fuzzy jacket you wore at the Park? Basic black and off a shoulder?" She stood there in confusion.



"Well?" I shooed with both hands, waving frantically. "Get on with it. Dress, dress, dress, move along, we haven't all night, if we're to be there for the curtain."



It's amazing what can be accomplished with sufficiently large brass balls and bravado.



"Counselor..." she began.



"Deanna. And the second Baritone is an old friend of yours."



For once something anticipatory and warm flickered across her face and her mind. "The EMH!" she exclaimed. "Emil!"



"And we've been invited backstage after the performance," I added. "He's looking forward to showing you off to all the other members of the cast. He's told them all many times that he served with the famous Seven of Nine."



She took about twenty seconds to pick out a dress for the Opera. Ten seconds to dispose of it. Two minutes to find another. As she rummaged and shed clothes I got to inspect the perfect body. Large liquid breasts without a tenth-millimeter of sag, flat taut belly you could probably bounce a fifty-Credit gold-filled bar of Latinum off of, smooth creamy thighs, and a tight backside that could turn a Redwood into kindling. All of it topped off with those damned Borg implants. Metallic beauty marks. In one corner of her bedroom stood her Regeneration unit, hidden inside an upright cabinet.



The perfect body and she swallowed liquid radioactive cesium in an effort to destroy it. I must save this woman. I must.



As we swept up the Opera stairs, I was an unnoticed bauble on the arm of the most supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and stunning creature in San Francisco. Annika wore a long black gown, one shoulder off, the other a swirl of white rippling down to a diamond of mid-torso nudity. A delicious concoction that caught every eye at the Center. I felt insanely pleased that she was my date for the night. Maybe she hadn't planned for this evening to flow in this particular direction, but it was a flood of flaunt and flair thrown in all directions nonetheless.



She rocked their socks off. Showing up with another woman in tow also edged the whisper-and-murmur quotient up a notch or two. The other woman might have been a frumpy old Betazoid, but I took what reflected glory I could get.



In my hearing, once we were backstage and she was gamely trying to decline forty or fifty offers of sex and non-synthehol beverages, she was offered roles in "Aieda", two Wagner operas, "K-2", "Orpheus", "The Squire of Gothos", "Carmen", "Iphignie" and "Tom Sawyer".



Even I was offered a minor role in "Antigone" and "Surak Undone". More to get closer to Seven, unfortunately.



It was interesting observing the flutter of personas as she reacted to the usual round of sexual propositions mixed with a genuine stirring of interest once Doctor Emil bragged up her ability to sing. It had been a while since anyone had wanted anything beyond her luscious body.



I'd had a spasm of dismay when someone lugged out a table organ, because I didn't know whether Seven's new vocal apparatus was in the superior chanteuse range.



It was near it at least. Someone stuck a few real paper pages in front of her and she segued immediately into the role of Cleopatra in "Faustus". Every person there stopped to listen to her sing. "...hier ist dort in der Wahrheit keine Schonheit?" rang through the gathering, and I was awed.



Her German was flawless, I think. Certainly the applause was genuine, and two of the Centaurians immediately began conversing with her in good Hochdeutsche. She glowed under the attention. Everyone wanted to use her body, but it was all with an air of a dessert being offered after a pleasing solid meal. A fillip, not a main dish. She as an entire person was the main course. Sex with her would be the dessert.



She was upset by three producers saying her voice was NOT of sufficient calibre to fit their requirements. Then she realized they hadn't lied to her in order to get close to that heaving bosom. They wanted the bosom but they gauged her voice first.



Seven eventually fled, clutching my arm desperately. Fleeing Annika as much as she was the joy of approval and the confusions of an other-than-normal social gathering. Normal for her.



They'd liked her for herself, her voice and only incidentally for her rampant femininity. It had been a while since any male (or female) wanted anything from her except access to her vagina.



On the way back in my skimmer, she talked not of herself but of the OTHER people there. She was happily excited. There was such an air of immediacy and novelty to Seven that night.



Annika practically dragged me inside and immediately began kissing and caressing. She wanted to convert that excitement and happiness into another orgasm, a truly superior and Galaxy-class orgasm; but she was utterly confused by me.



I nudged my hard sore nipples back into my memory bra and made a joke out of her sudden near-terminal onrush of hornies. Not her, no. She was not funny. She was hurt by my reluctance to participate in her customary answer to every event in her life.



On the couch she made another try at turning my presence into a sexual encounter, but I laughed and giggled and slapped her hands away from my crotch and eventually she calmed down.



As per custom, she was sans panties, and she looked a delicious mixture of innocence and depravity sprawled half-naked on her own couch. In time she rolled over on me and we giggled rather hysterically together. Neither one of us really felt like giggling, but it was a way out of the situation.



I convinced her to feed me and wine me and I tried without much success to teach her how to make a puff cheese omelet. We dumped the experiments and settled for a half of Argentine Chardonnay.



Over a part-glass of wine she looked directly at me and asked; "Why the flax seed? I presume you don't want me to find the data available in any database. Why, then?"



"There's a truth there, in that tiny seed. I know it and I dare you to find out what it is."



"And when I do find out?"



"I hope you'll have something in return for me."





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





The next night I invited her to my office in the anachronistic tower of the StarFleet building. She'd never been there at night before. It was a different world from the day.



In daylight the node of the Fleet was efficient chaos, a flood of humanity pushed hither and yon by importance and necessity. At night the murmur was less public and sedate. Annika wore a lime cream pants suit with a vaguely transparent top. Fortunately she heeded my advice about comfortable shoes and a jacket for warmth.



The large spaces necessary for flows of tunnel-visioned staff left an air of chill in many of its vistas. We did an art tour.



There were little benches and uncomfortable chairs about the walls and we had the luxury of stopping if we wished and admiring the works of art thrown about its lobbies like toys after a careless child had tired.



The deliberately prosaic demeanor of its life-sized monuments to its own heroes was beautiful in its own right. No busts of hard-lipped valiants, no hands raised to the stars, no three times scale inspiring tableaux and stirring inscriptions. None of that claptrap.



Here was the life-size Rachel Garrett by Vvallabnbai. A mosaic of hues of marble, giving an immediacy of life to the act of her lighting her poisonous tobacco cigarette. You half-expected her to turn to you and say "And?" in that base voice of hers.



Chenashax was a soft black texture of fifty thousand dark shards of lacquered iron. Close up as prickly looking as he was wont to be in life. By design or accident his dark eyes followed you throughout most of the hallway. Waxing his improbable mustache from a little jar and trying not to smile at the puzzled Klingon Ambassadors you could see offstage with your mind's eye.



Roon played about the stark bronze planes of Phoebe Janeway's Desperate Kirk At A Desk, before getting irritable and tired. At my prompting Seven finally held my baby, carrying him until we came to the stone mosaic statue of Soong in his workshop. She was entranced by the devilishly clever smile on the roboticist's face as he looked up at you. Upon my advice she let Roon cry his frustration out. For approximately six minutes. Until she retreated from the noise and returned me my little grouch.



She was not pleased by my trying to burden her with the babe, but I wasn't trying to curry her favor. She was accustomed to everyone sucking up to her at some point in a relationship. She was expecting Counseling. Not a guided tour complete with an unwished obstreperous child.



On the way back to the lifts, we used Kirk's desk as a platform to change him on. It was an immense desk, after all. His burial alive in the vaults of StarFleet had at least merited a very large desk and a glorious panoramic window view of Oakland.



Up on the seventieth floor we sat down to a little herb tea in the restaurant there, let Roon sleep, post-griping, and admired the Blaskovics Efrem Cochrane. The sealed plastics one showing him sitting surrounded by empty bottles and surplus electronics. Not staring at the stars like one of those heroic and uplifting things they had in front of some local Efram Cochrane High School. This one had him scratching under his cap and staring at a primitive circuit board. They kept a large supply of replicated circuit boards under the maitre'd's podium to replace the ones souvenired by tourists.



Like a man patiently waiting for an available table, opposite him sat Matsuko in his black-belted Go suit. Painted red sandstone and with the appearance of centuries of neglect in a desert, with it's abraded colors. Itigie had succeeded in creating an image of a Pharonic Egyptian statue of antiquity. This Matsuko had a band about his head showing a large red ball, and another wider girdle of a thousand stitches about his waist. He grasped his sheathed Samurai sword as he sat in his Command Chair. A warrior about to engage the Borg enemy at Wolf 359. It had been a good day to die.



In the far corner Lillenday and Lovsky sat at a little table. That they were ceramic and brass did not lessen their startling reality as they pondered Federation non-intervention in that nasty generations-long "pleasant little war".



For the first time Seven talked of one of her men without scorn in her voice. Disappointment, yes. But not scorn. She talked of her wedding to Chakotay. We sat and stared at the B'Elanna Torres mosaic composed of toned wood segments. This Chief Engineer lay in a Jeffries tube, with a crouching wooden Tom Paris alongside. Seven talked of her bridesmaid with a low pained catch in her voice.



She'd loved Torres more than Chakotay, but Torres was already married by the time she warmed to the half-Klingon.



She refused to visit the stubborn Borg Seven Of Nine and the equally stubborn and angry Janeway tableux that stood on the Mezzanine.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





Spring was sprung, I'd finally had my lower belly and breasts worked on (which Annika noticed with a sly smile), and we went down to the beach. All of us. Mister and Misses Zhao, Roon, me and Annika. Oh yes, and Annika's correct presumption that she would be the nectared flower around whom most of the local bees would buzz.



It was amazing how many people assumed Annika and I were married. Such a presumption did not deter very many suitors. Annika enjoyed the attention, not least because I made no motion to limit either her teasing or her reaction to some few of the proposals offered.



One was novel enough to create a pleased excitement in her. A tall crag-faced gray-haired blond invited Annika to join her side in a volleyball game. Fortunately Annika's bra was of fantabulous aspects, a true modern marvel of engineering. Seven could take part without TOO much fear of de-cupping for the viewers.



The problem was that she was far too good. Her nanoite enhanced body was still faster and stronger than any of the other gals, so they eventually removed one of the women on her side to make it four versus two and an ex-Borg. Then another. Annika and the older blond won the sets. By that time all had realized it was Seven of Nine they played with.



Eventually Seven joined me and Roon in the salty waves, once the game had ended. She kept looking at the original older blond and a smaller olive-skinned young woman with a shaved head and multiple earrings. The two lingered in the nearby surf, glaring at each other and keeping an avid eye on Seven.



Seven eventually ran out of chitty chat and asked me if I had noticed the two suitors waiting for her. Of course I had, and I stted I thought both looked charming.



"Do you mind if I hitch a ride home with one of them?" Seven asked. I told her of course I didn't. She was really asking if I objected to her picking up a new woman while we were all being almost-family and friendly-nice together at the beach.



I asked her which one she thought was the cutest? Seven said Glad was, but she didn't usually pick up older ladies. Annika perhaps would have called her a girl or babe. I said it was her choice and made an appointment to go fresh fruit shopping with her in the Nob Market Tuesday.



The last I saw of the trio they were a trio yet. I wondered if a policy of sharing the wealth would come into play amongst the three, but assumed it was none of my business.



Besides which Seven would probably tell me a few vague details when next we met. Seven was still able to enjoy telling of her dates. Of late she had uncovered some form of resurgent teenaged femininity she'd never had the first time around. She also valued my opinions, including about her dates. She also still bragged inordinately. Seven had never had any best friends before, which was me now.



She'd never had a crush on a teacher or a first date or a first kiss. She'd never discovered men (or women) on the load platform of the family skimmer. She went straight from a state of pseudo-celibate slavery to twenty-five-year-old child to depraved wanton. Which was a normal progression for someone who'd been repeatedly and systematically gang raped as a child. Borg, rape, six of one, half a dozen of the other.



I watched her wander off with her two new suitors. Doing something very innocent. Slapping a wandering hand when it got a little bit too familiar. She was enjoying herself. Maybe she'd even come to realize she'd never really given any of the male suitors a second thought.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -







When I showed up sans Roon, Seven immediately asked; "Fancy or casual?" She was becoming acclimated to the rules of my game.



I asked in return if she slept nude or clothed?



An hour later we swept through the real genuine wooden door in the front of the Ardanan Ambassador's place on Naptha Creek Place. During the day it also served as the Embassy proper.



Celeste greeted us at the stairs, with her hair in a protective bag and giggles falling gently in her wake. Her hubby was off for the night and etc. In the third floor master bedroom we met the others, and a flurry of teenaged giggling ensued. That none of us would ever see a fiftieth birthday again was of little import. Tonight we were all teenagers again.



A little labor by the replicator and bed wear was produced for myself and Seven. As we got au naturale some cattiness emerged, quickly stifled. Even with chems and surgery, we were all long past our prime, and we all knew it. Being a woman in a male universe can be such a bitch sometimes. We still use their criteria to judge each other, even though we shouldn't.



Fortunately for me it was standard to be nekkid on Betazed. I could still flaunt even when my flaunting equipment had seen better and younger days. And I'm a Counselor. Counselors always need big ones. Balls I mean.



Seven was the star, though. She still had the same number of implants as she had when arriving in the Alpha Quadrant. It took some time for Seven to get her baby dolls on because everyone overcame their reluctance and shyness and got physical with Seven. The process took about four seconds from everyone staring at a naked Seven to the point where all these women were cooing and admiring and fondling that interface between metal and human.

Before this Seven hadn't ever been pummeled by this many hands without it developing into an orgy.



Soon she was laughing uproariously with the others as female fingers poked her in her belly and neck and arm and inner thighs. Some sneaky wench, I shan't tell her name, started the tickling, but I think she was Betazoid.



Seven came out the other end of this group intimacy ready to have sex with all or any one of the group, but sex wasn't what this party was about. She was red-faced and a little unsure and we all decided she needed some peach and chocolate pajamas rather than the overt baby doll. She got turbofils, of course.



It was Seven's first pajama party.



Trailing about twenty ribbons, Ro Laren presented Seven with her first teddy bear. I think it was her first. If she had any of her own, I hadn't noticed them the few times I'd been in Seven's regeneration and sleep room.



She still has the teddy bear, I believe.



Celeste had to get a little drunk first before she got around to admitting one of her sins. She was much more sober than she appeared, and everyone knew it, but it allowed her to show the near-microscopic lines on her wrists where she'd tried to commit suicide. They'd carefully followed the lines of the veins themselves, not in a cross-cut. Like Seven's, hers had been meant to be terminal and not a cry for help.



We all got drunk serious after that. Seriously inebriated. Except Seven.



For the first time ever she admitted she'd tried to obliterate herself.



It was a long night.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





She'd never been to the Women's House before. Once called the Winchester House, it was an awe-inspiring concoction of chaos and organization. Once more it was moving in it's original direction of perpetual construction.



The wife of a man named Colt thought the eternal building of the structure would assuage the ghosts of those slain by Colt's firearms. Now it was always being built on to because the women needed the enclosed and not-so-enclosed spaces.



As we walked past the lilac bushes we saw five human females building a covered walkway to a large gazebo downslope, and they called over a Bajoran to be our voluntary guide. I'd been here before, in fact the gazebo was partly built by my labor. But it had been a few years.



Once inside most visitors were lost in the seeming maze. Seven looked about her on the stairwell to the third floor and uttered the single word: "Cells."



The Bajoran gave me back Roon and giggled in reply. The house was built in a never-ending pattern of cells, much like some creatures that built their shells larger as they grew larger. Where the cells met was where you found things like doors that opened into walls, and stairs that went up to a solid ceiling.



Some rooms were made into homes, some stood empty, some were tiny nooks or large chambers with eight or twelve walls. There were many balconies, sun decks, air wells and women. Especially women.



Some young, some old, some with children, some obviously lesbian, even a few of the vanishingly few who could not tolerate new cloned parts. Two humans in shorts passed us, and I knew what Seven did. Each had a Cyborg leg. Seven about choked to see the two Cyborged females climb past us on the stairs.



The females of forty interstellar races met here. Some were naked, some were over-dressed, some lean, some fat, some lonely, some with lovers in hand. Battered wives came here, for no males were allowed. House computer also had on file abusive girlfriends and wives. This place was a refuge.



There were cafeterias, snack kiosks, and tiny spaces where some reclusive female might hide from her demons. One gangling youngster in carpenter's kit (and not much else) announced into the cafeteria crowd that they needed four more workers for the inner walls of the new southeast cell.



Paper Bulletins wafted in errant breezes as we passed endless notice boards.



The southwest corner stank of hot summer sun and dust. Here you could see nothing of the ruins of San Jose. That ugliness was being slowly eaten into nothingness by the wrecker-crew metal micro-termites. The Winchester House thrived and grew while the rest of San Jose dwindled down into a few residences, a BART station and scrawny trees more suited to the sometimes dry California coast.



Roon was unhappy with the heat, but after some irritability he settled down into the marvelously dirty dirt of a patchy lawn and some welcome shade. There was little climate control at the Crazy House, as some of the women affectionately termed it.



Seven was invited to help dig holes for a few baby trees, and she acceded enough to their requests to strip down to her VunderBra and what nature and the Borg left her. One of the gals vocally admired her body, but the job to hand came first. A hose of cold water and soap provided the aftermath of a few hours work.



Drying off in the breeze Annika flaunted wondrous naked blond some for me, but gave up the effort with a sigh. She accepted a hard-boiled Bela-bird egg for lunch. Seven was the only person I have ever known who could eat just one of my planet's delicacies. I cut Roon's into quarters to make him think he was getting more, but he was too wise nowadays for such tricks. We eventually settled on another half-egg and he ate his prize with a smile.



The admiring black-skinned woman came back in a fresh culotte, and invited a naked Annika upstairs to a panoramic view. She meant a tree house. They crept up a ladder and disappeared.



Forty or so minutes later a naked and disheveled blond ex-drone leaned over the treehouse railing and asked me if I'd be upset if she came back by other means? I yelled an affirmative and didn't see her again for six days.



Seven moved into the treehouse, quit her job with Mercus AG, had her regeneration cabinet shipped to Winchester House and settled down.



Off and on she was to live there for the next eight years.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -





At first it was a little hard to keep track of who she was with. Not that she had succumbed to her old habits of serial debauchery. It was just that I got down to San Jose only every fourth or fifth day and a girlfriend might last only a month and a half. Very often the girlfriend would be off working. They took their labors quite seriously at Winchester House. And the time would still speed by in a blur.



Her and a Martian named Justine decided to build a walkway across from their treehouse to the second floor balcony of the main house. Actually their objective was only an off-shoot of the original Winchester House. Even then there were five satellite houses circling the progenitor. Virtually a community all by itself. My help was volunteered in revenge by Seven, so I made a vacation of it and moved in.



Third floor, down a half flight and up through a redwood-walled corridor and Roon and me had a kidney-shaped loft to ourselves. I rebuilt the railing around the big air shaft for Roon's sake, with Seven's help. She was a marvelous carpenter. She didn't need a level or even an adze. She took a knife, her analytical mind and her artificial eye and made anything of wood fit.



She didn't need a nail gun either. One blow with the claw hammer hanging from her tool belt and the nail was in. Always straight and true. Every work crew quickly wanted Seven to be in on their project. She learned to hand mix and pour concrete, pump industrial phasers, mix ceramic PernGel and freeze it in place, plant flowers, trees, vegetables, and could make a good hot hot hot Texas chili, Viennese Torte cake in eight layers, chicken soup, meat pies and gefilte fish. VOYAGER missed a bet by never having her supplant Neelix.



She still didn't have calluses. The nanoites wouldn't allow it. But then she never got blisters either.



Roon was fascinated by Winchester House. And the ofttimes naked women within its walls. Mommy got naked a lot also.



One time, while we were all getting an eventide hose-water shower after work, Seven laid a few caresses and kisses on me. Just to see what I'd do. I did the usual. I ducked and dodged and verbally admired Seven's persistence.



The walkway wasn't finished in the two weeks I helped, but that was okay. Necessary work was done when needful. One project might have priority, another project little. Women's choice. If no one helped you, it got done slowly.



Seven learned to do a little brown-nosing herself, in order to get the walkway done before the fall rains.



If she needed little solid food herself, they brow-beat her into doing regular kitchen work nonetheless. Her cute and vivacious body got her just so far in the Crazy House. After that they wanted her sweat more than her smile.



I never knew the real details, but thrice I found Seven in the midst of a form of Coventry from not a few of the other gals. Her new girlfriend Marlena's version was that ex-perfectionist drone Annika had transgressed. One transgression involved Annika being a little too sexual re another gal, and she got a valuable reminder from the resultant anger that not everyone was either bi or as patient as aging Betazoids.



Marlena lasted for some months, but they broke up at Christmas time. I think Seven learned that commitment was not just another word, but I couldn't tell from Annika's words.



It must have been cold in that tree house during that winter. She was alone for two months. Seven was eager to see me and sad to see me go during my peripatetic visits. She stayed over at my place five times, but never laid a hand on me.



Seven surprised me by asking to sleep with me. Not anything else. Of course she admired with her fingers the naked Betazoid who was in bed with her, but it was sort of perfunctory. If she didn't do it I'd think she was an Alien spy in diguise.



I awoke to find Seven already sitting up in that gorgeous transparent taupe and yellow nightie of hers. Holding her knee to her face. Her dismay, almost misery, was what woke me.



"I've been hearing them again," she said. "Ever since the Vinuculum, I can recall the others. As if from far away, sometimes. Then I can dismiss them and go on. Sometimes they're quite vibrantly alive.



"These two were sisters, holding each other in fear, not knowing what to tell their children. There had been terrible reports in the news programs and it told of something awful happening.



"The Borg teleported into the other two rooms where the children were, first. The screams brought the sisters, and they almost died of sheer terror as the tubules entered their own necks.



"The worst is alwys when they realize their bodies are quieting and the voices of the Collective are submerging themselves. They can no longer scream then."



I sat alongside her, trying to hug Seven. The ex-drone allowed it, though she seemed unfazed. In a little while Seven arose and prepared for the day. She came into my bedroom later and persuaded me to change to a casual Burgundy tri-suit, and asked if we might drop by Cedars Park to see Ro Laren?



It was just another day.



Next week Annika started staying at the Embassy, with Celeste. This unlikely pairing was most definitely not sexual, but somehow inevitable. Celeste was selfish, arrogant and petty sometimes. But she could also enwrap Seven with her erratic regard and without skipping a beat forgive and forget Annika's sins. Seven could let herself be mothered by the human-appearing alien woman.



As Spring sprung Seven took to spending weeks at a time as her houseguest, and Goddess alone knows how Celeste's husband handled the situation. But then he was a Cloud-Minder and a noble, and I guess they had training in aplomb and detachment most humanoids lacked.



Vorik returned with Ro Laren's daughters and suddenly the Embassy was full of stiff-lipped young half-Vulcan, Ardanan, Bajoran and other women and the smell of fresh-brewed Raktajino. The Patio in back was where the girls practiced learning about humans and men and sex again. Talk only. Celeste taught them how to be graceful and demure in High Society and Annika taught them fashion and clothes sense.



For the first time Seven was thrust into a teenaged world and she adjusted to it erratically. Gamely, but often at a loss. I could feel the satisfaction in Annika.



When the Ambassador was posted to Tellaria Seven caved in.



Counselors may have brass balls, but a tall blond ex-Borg on a crying jag was hard for even me to juggle comfortably. So a few times I commiserated with her and let some of my own pains out. Little Roon would always come over when we were locked in each others arms and snuffling wetly in each other's hair and pat us both equally and say; "There, there."



She made a few pro forma passes at me, but we hardly paused as she fondled and I slapped and we continued as before. Ex-drones must be partly telepathic. How else explain her surety that if she patted my rear often enough the next time I sauntered by I'd succumb to her femmebutch charms? Not that I ever admitted any attraction.



Justine called my place to reach her and the pair tried it again for a while. Several months this time.



Sometime the next year Roon was chewing some TollNuts underneath her tree house at the Winchester place, when Seven turned to gaze at me.



Justine was nowhere to be seen now, it was drizzling and there were usable benches under the tree house overhang. Seven was single again, but she didn't get too frantic or introspective this time with plaints of her inadequate self.



"The waste of it," she said. I said nothing, just looked. "All those men and I'm a lesbian." I remained non-committal.



"He was charming, he was handsome, he was not young anymore, and he was married to one of the women who moved in here. She wouldn't have him, so he tried me. I said yes.



"We used the load deck on his skimmer at first , then he took us a few klicks down the coast, to a lovely cut in the cliffs overlooking the ocean and a tremendously large family of seals.



"We did it five times, but over the entire afternoon and evening. He was a good fuck, all in all. He was adventurous, it was lovely, the sex was pleasing and I just couldn't get involved. He was more skilled at pleasing a woman than most men, but I just couldn't get involved in him.



"With other women I have to make compromises, and she has to adjust to me. I've known female Alpha Dominants that made my first female love, Captain Janeway, look like a giggling wriggling femme bottom. And I've been Top most of my life with women, so far as that goes.



"The problem wasn't adjusting to an Alpha. It was boredom.



"It was boring being with a male. I cannot think of any other comparable way of phrasing it. Males, he at least, bore me.



"Is it customary to feel you're interacting with a totally alien extraterrestrial species when you're with a man? This last time I felt as if I was doing something disgusting and perverse, going down on a stiff penis. I've done a thousand males with my mouth, and felt bored and perverted this time."



She made a joke of it. "Seven of Nine, Perverted Teritary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero. She's Borg and she sucks cock.



"Or did." She had a note of finality to her voice.



"Maybe because it's so easy to pretend with them. Not the sex, the sex wasn't half bad. But you have to PRETEND so damned much if you want to live with them. Everything. Anything. You have to hold your tongue and keep a neutral face and nod like whatever he is into is worth a damn so far as you are concerned.



"I try to pretend with Kikkalla and she'd verbally cut my throat for me. She's on to all the pretends and wants none of it."



New name. Kikkalla. Hadn't met her yet. I idly wondered what the hell happened to Justine this last time?



The big surprise was her open mention of her loving Janeway. Seven was admitting to herself that she'd had a very large flaming torch for the petite redhead. Finally. At last.



Seven glanced at me, most of her face hidden in her knees. Hard to tell if she was smiling except I had learned to read the little eye wrinkles.



"I still have the flax seed, you know," she offered. "And I think I know the reference. Welsh, right? Legend of the labors of Hercules retold as local parable, right?"



I remained neutral, wanting to see if she'd made the connection.

She hadn't.



"So what am I supposed to give you?"



"You'll know," I offered in return. Meaning she hadn't gotten the message yet.



Silence, with Seven staring off towards San Jose's ruins. She was just a hair ticked.



"It's a wonder no one's assassinated you yet."



Seven lowered a hand and I clasped it in some regard. I took that observation about being assassinated as high praise. If Counselors are just lovey dovey and nice in the view of others, they aren't really doing their job.



Seven leaned a little closer and let our shoulders touch as our fingers intertwined. Ex-Borgs don't sweat much and her skin smelled of a curious mixture of dry no-smell and wood dust. I felt like kneading the very human muscles she had these days.



Carpentry takes effort. Nanoites might keep her fit, but lately I'd seen her near naked often enough to know I wanted to run my fingers over the texture and musculature of her. Not have sex with her, not really. Just rub all of me all over that sixty-year old young woman and feel her hard flesh flex and move. She still had the butt that looked like it'd easily turn blocks of hardwood into matchsticks.



Maybe yes, Borg might have some telepathic ability. Annika turned to me and kissed me, and backed off with a big smile on her face and her eyes glinting. "Glad to see you're finally admitting you like the body," Seven teased. Was I that transparent?



Naturally Roon had to join in, be held, cooed over by Mommy, and such. My small male was a real love hog. We decided to continue this in her tree house. Seven eased Roon into my back pack for the climb up the ladder, then suddenly took him out.



"Wanna take the scenic route, Tiger?" Seven asked Roon. It was the first time she'd use ANY nickname to him. He knew a good thing when he saw it and Mama's hairs stood up on the back of her neck. I almost knew what Seven had in mind.



Back pack on in the front carry mode, Roon strapped in good in the pack and all buckled in, and Seven took a quick grasp of the nearest girder holding up the walkway. She damaged the grapevines there, on her way up, but they'll get over it. All the supporting pillars had grapevines looping around their base. And now one of them had a muscular blond scurrying up the two stories to the walkway above. A quick hand on the walkway floor, another on the railing, and the two of them were safely above me. Roon was excited. He was even more excited when she climbed over the railing and slid down to rejoin an outwardly calm but fuming Betazoid.



She's got a body that can withstand liquid radioactive Cesium and she hasn't even worked up a sweat. She can do this without risking my Roon. That's what I told myself.



But never again without my permission first. Annika's choice. Death by Klingon Disruptor or ask Mommy first and don't pout when Mommy says no, ah-uh, ixnay, negatory, no way Benji. Ben Gay? Historical slang was never my strong suit. Seven would know who Ben-Gay was but I'm never going to speak to her again.



Roon asked me on the way home if we could come out tomorrow to slide up the big posts again? Annika debauched my innocent child. Next she'll offer to take him sky diving with her or shark wrestling or something. Gator wrestling? Roon's nappy had to be changed after THAT little jaunt.



Mom's did too, but I could fake it after a quick visit to the San facilities.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





It was a good thing I had Seven's new girlfriend to talk to on my next visit. I was pointedly putting Seven in a Coventry of my own devising. Kikkalla tried to fill in the silences, at first. The petite woman must have had some things to say to Annika that were pointed, for a certain blond kept her gaze down to the table a lot during the meal. The new girlfriend was a petite little Finn with a burr cut and bare feet.



Apres food, Kikkalla and myself leaned out of the railing of the treehouse and shared silence for a while. For the remainder of the evening Annika was stuck with Roon whether or not she wished it.



"I know," she said. "She's asked me just once if I'd considered making my hair auburn in color and growing it just a little longer and I stated no way in Hell."



She stared up at me, daring me to disagree with her. But yes, she looked REMARKABLY like Captain Kathryn Janeway did when she broke back into the Alpha Quadrant. This one's older looking than either Seven or myself, her hair is salt-and-pepper and she sported an archaic tattoo of a Phoenix on her right shoulder. But otherwise much like the feisty Dominant Top who led VOYAGER for so long. She even had the uncharacteristly large breasts for a woman her petite size.



She leered at me for a few seconds, appreciating the fact I could and did feel her own frankly sexually aligned appraisal. Her nipples spiked when looking hard at me. She knew I was Betazoid, and my alleged mind-reading abilities excited, not bothered her. She was casually considering me in the context of a possible lover, and wanted me to know it. She liked what she saw. Being a lover of women was still new and exciting to her, and she couldn't stop looking at all women as potential sex partners.



"I was married thirty-nine year," she supplied. "Did Seven tell you that? Raised two boys, one is on the Martian Millennium Project and the other has a farm out past the Friendlie's Worlds. Always wished I'd had a girl to hold in my arms and now I guess I know why."



"Seven and I aren't on speaking terms right now," I said.



"I know," she smiled. "More and more I think she's finally going through her stolen childhood in segments.



"That was a damned stupid stunt and I've had a few words with her myself. Maybe that's good that some of the child is showing itself now. Pain in the ass to live with, though. Did you know she takes a raggedy assed fucking teddy bear to bed with us? The first few times we made love, I felt funny as hell with those beady black plas eyes of his staring at me. One time..." she began, but suddenly shut up.



"I don't know if I can stand it for the long haul," she suddenly blurted. "That big arrogant blond can be such a teddy bear herself, and she'd do damned near anything for me. But in the middle of the night I sometimes suspect that if it wasn't for the resemblance the two of us wouldn't be together."



A pause. She reached for my hand and I took it. Tears suddenly welled down her cheeks. "God but I hope that isn't true! What do you think? You're a mind reader, right? Please lie to me and tell me she wants me for myself?"



They broke up a month later. They got together again almost immediately, but this reconciliation only lasted three months. The last one lasted half a year.



I Counseled Kikkalla for a year after that. She went down to Crazy House and had a loud and very physical shoot-out with Annika in front of oodles of the other women. Amongst other things she tore off the cerise silk men's shirt Annika had given her and threw it in her face. Angry words were exchanged.



After that Kikkalla went back to Stockholm and eventually married a young female German economics professor in the University there. Very Nordic. Face a composite of planes and angles and blond hair falling fifty meters down to her butt. Very femme, very Seven looking. A nudist and an exhibitionist. Intersting pairing those two. I like to feel happy, if one of my charges seem to get along well. As for how I knew all this, us sneaky Betazoids like to keep track of those we've counseled.



Seven showed up on my doorstep the next morning after the verbal clash of the titans. Shivering, rain drenched and looking for sympathy. She got fresh clothes, a place to sleep overnight and damned little sympathy. My feelings were she'd brought this round of pain on herself by trying -- once more -- to use other people as a solution.



Counselors might be suckers for a sob story, but we're not unable to tell a truth from a fairy tale. And I'm a Counselor, not a towel.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -







The next week Annika re-applied for all her licenses, before her five years of probation was up. Mentally rolling a seven on my first roll of the dice and crossing my fingers, I okayed them all, giving Seven of Nine a carte blanche.



She used some of the credits she had stashed in Hammarnsnoten AG and bought a new skimmer. She dropped by my offices to let me admire the craftsmanship of her fire-engine red, rounded front Ukulele with Johanneson Rhad power-package and 56 K K in-board computer, then returned to San Jose. She took up wood carving and threw herself into her carpentry and construction.



Finally letting some of the demons out, two months later she returned for a Post-Stress night with me. It came to last four days, during which Mister Zhao finally smiled at Seven about something. I don't know what, but it was enough that he forgave her many and apparent sins.



We returned to the park in Richmond, she drove. Seven made a bee-line to the Kiosk, intent on surprising Ro Laren there.



That she did. Very much a surprise. We were nearly the only people in Cedars Park when we had arrived. Seven retreated at high speed, her face actually showing the signs of a deep roseate blush.



In approximately ten minutes a calm and confident Laren slowly brought us our Raktajino's. Plenty of chocolate in mine. She informed Seven there were enhanced nutrients in her cup. She knew Seven took supplements in her drinks.



Since the Pajama Party Seven and her had spent some time together. Nothing sexual, just gals chitty-chatting. Or maybe reviewing Old Times back on VOYAGER.



Laren sat on the bench, making it a foursome, with Roon and us. Everyone pretended they didn't notice the female innocently walk away from the kiosk after a few minutes more. Ro Laren collapsed her tray into a pocket and sipped at her own brew.



Out of nowhere she made a comment.



"She asked so very nice, how could I possibly resist?"



Indeed, when a loving request is phrased nicely enough, who could resist? Obviously, however, Laren needed some more work on her ridiculous and aberrant love for taking risks. Maybe husband Vorik could send her off to a nice little war somewhere. That'd be a very labor-intensive hobby.



The next day I swung by Ro Laren's home in the afternoon when her girls were off to City College. Annika's new shiny Ukulele was parked next door. I sat and pondered showing up as I had planned, All very sudden and bubbly and perky and a pest. Then I decided to go ahead, and see if the improbable had occurred.



Ro Laren answered the door in a wrap and her hair looked rumpled and she begged off inviting me in or going somewhere with me. So it was probable that the odd coupling had indeed taken place. For some reason it struck me as bizarre for those two to link up, even if only for some sex. The sex had waited through a trip across half the galaxy and thirty-five years for its consummation.



C'est la vie.



At least that was better than Annika feeling sorry for herself.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





Annika never mentioned the married Mrs. Vorik so I never asked. It must not have been too exciting, because I don't think the mismatch ever took place again. More likely Annika wanted her customary little passionate love affair of indefinite duration, and Ro Laren had no use for anything but the one-night stand.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





A watershed was reached the next year. Not an intentional thing, it just happened. Seven got a pet and a child.



Li Lia Niikata was a typical refugee at Crazy House. She had felt pain, and to her it had been intense and long-lasting. Sometimes the youngsters had been hurt by parents, or by sexual problems, or both. But the pain was the only constant. Li Lia was within a week or three of her fifteenth birthday and badly needed a place to stop and regroup. But like all runaways she had to adjust to the rules and styles of the Winchester House. Immediately, though, she had to get through the night, and the next night, and the night after that.



They took the sixteen-year-old (she said) to a nook on the second floor, gave her an extremely good used air mattress and sheets, and directions to the Sanitation place. The next day she was drafted into a kitchen work crew. Disliking imperfection even now, Seven of Nine took it upon herself to instruct the latest foundling in her duties.



Li Lia was smart, quick, tall, lean to the point of gawky, long straight hair of blackest hue, scared inside (weren't they all?), and no longer physically a virgin. She was in awe of the ex-Borg, whose exploits had once figured large in her childish daydreams. She made herself highly unpopular with Seven by asking her endless questions about VOYAGER. And in particular questions about Captain Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway.



Janeway was a Demon that Annika was still unwilling to confront. She didn't get much chance to put thoughts of VOYAGER aside, though. Li Lia made a pest of herself.



One bright crisp Autumn day, Seven was sitting under her tree house. The ex-Borg was carefully hand carving a Biblical shepherd from fresh pine. Seven had agreed to replace two of the figures lost from a Christian-sect Christmas Manger tableaux. She'd thrown away her first attempt as imperfect. Whilst thus occupied Annika found herself confronted by a bevy (is three a bevy?) of young admiring females. Led by Li Lia Niikata.



Over the decades Annika had suffered (or enjoyed) the adoration and questions of a citizenry which still occasionally saw something about VOYAGER on the Holos. Some of her Credits were due to use of her image therein. She'd endured the attentions and occasionally seduced the adoring fan.



As to VOYAGER's popularity, it is this: the Dominion War was successful, but scary. VOYAGER was all the more eagerly embraced as a Federation high point of the time. It was only natural that a young unsure Japanese-ethnic female should look on Seven as a paradigm.



Annika tried to rebuff the girls (one could hardly call them women, not yet), then allowed herself to be grilled and verbally pried at. She'd learned to tell stories of the OTHER crew, both as revenge of a sorts, and a distraction to the fan. She'd developed into a decent storyteller over the decades.



Seven once admitted to me it sometimes pleased her to get a little mindless adulation. Wonderful thing for a bruised ego, adulation. Sometimes. When not used as a narcotic.



Along the way Annika told a story about ex-Continental Governor Kim. Then one girl brought out a HoloCube of Harry and Annika when on the ship. Images from Computer Memory still circulated. Harry Kim had already signed it, and Annika carefully signed near her own image. Then another girl produced two more such HoloCubes. One of Annika and Chakotay, which Annika also signed. And an image of Neelix, B'Elanna, Tom Paris and herself. Annika lingered over that one, telling stories of Neelix and Tom.



Then Li Lia produced a Janeway and Seven of Nine signed by the Captain. Seven said she remembered that moment when their heads had been together, and she had felt close to Kathryn Janeway. She held it for some time, then abruptly gathered her carving and tools and retreated up the ladder to her treehouse.



Seven had acquired a rocking chair and was curled in it when Li Lia knocked on a doorway post on the walkway. It was evening and Annika hadn't done much more than rock and stare off over the hills of California. Seven recalled that she was mentally reminding herself she was on clean-up in the northeast kitchen soon.



She let the girl inside, wrapped herself in a sort of inner peace and waited for her to say something.



It was an apology for upsetting Annika. The girl explained that she had heard that the two women had loved one another, and thought to hear some wondrous story of their mutual regard from Seven's own lips.



Mind you, lesbianism was hardly a secret in the Women's House, and most knew by now that Seven of Nine was one. Annika was ready to explode at that second, but Seven realized the young woman meant a more general love and regard.



Remembering the conversation to me later, Seven said she told Li Lia that she had indeed loved Captain Kathryn Janeway, and wanted to love her in a physical way as well. She loved Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway as completely as one woman could love another, and it broke her heart when Janeway turned to another woman.



Seven explained The Great Folly, as she termed it, of her marriage to Chakotay. Annika admitted she should have courted the slight redhead who ran the ship. Janeway ran VOYAGER the same way a drummer beat music from his tight-skinned instruments. This error in love was her Great Folly.



The most enduring romances are often the ones which are never consummated.



Li Lia stood up, went over to Seven of Nine, one time Tertiary Adjunct to UniMatrix Zero, and held her very close. Seven marveled to know the tall awkward child-woman cried for her.



I wished I'd been there for Annika's tears for her failed love affair with Janeway. Annika Hansen finally shed warm low-salt tears for her past and the failures in it. She began forgiving herself that night in the arms of a person who cared.



Annika missed her appointment with the kitchens, but accepted extra duties thereafter to apologize. Seven could apologize. Seven also could not bear to send Niikata away, and so let her spend the night on her extra mattress. Li Lia wanted to see Annika regenerate in the slimed-down model cubicle which hid in a cabinet, but Seven refused. For that night.



Later on Li Lia admitted to me that it reminded her of a Vampire HoloDrama to see Seven lean back into regenerative mode. She absolutely loved the vision, she loved Seven, and wanted all her friends to see Seven do it.



Girl had a death wish.



Annika said she never laid a hand on her. It was never about that, in her own mind.



Seven adopted the girl, sorta. Things like that happened in Winchester House. The Crazy House. The place with staircases leading nowhere and doors opening into walls and corridors that became air vents leading to the roof.



The place where you could get lost. Or get found.



Li Lia gave her new home a name plaque. Grasshopper Place.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





Annika didn't renounce sex, mind you. She just didn't bring it home. She did bring home three more rocking chairs. One small one for Roon and two more for Lia and me. Goddess knows where she acquired this fondness for rocking chairs. At one point in her life she even refused to sit, much less rock.



Roon could never stay in his more than forty seconds and then he'd dragoon Lia and show her Crazy House, and incidentally acquire a new playmate. He always tried to talk her into letting him slide down the girders holding up the walkway. Unsuccessfully.



To me Li Lia admitted she'd shinnied up one of the girders once, just to prove to herself she could do it. Like Seven had. Gawky girl had the biggest case of adulation I ever saw. She was also infatuated with Seven, which spelled trouble down the road in my book.



Asking my advice I told her to never, never, never, not ever, to wear a gaudy catsuit like Seven had once worn.



Lotta heroine worship here, even if hidden behind a great deal of ethnic reserve. Right. Girl was reserved and shy like a Klingon Tarq. She was a curious mixture of submissiveness and absolute roaring stubbornness. In the first two months they lived together, Li Lia gained ten kilos (but she was still skinny), half a cup size and a hell of a lot of peace. She was in a family again, and so was Seven, for the very first time since VOYAGER.



That first winter together Annika got a tremendous surprise, one not entirely pleasant to her, but a surprise nonetheless.



Li Lia had been corresponding with a few of the VOYAGER crew, and in passing she'd told them where Seven of Nine was these days.



ExPre delivered a big square Stasis box, which had been teleported to the local Station all the way from Muncie, Indiana.



Inside was a Belated Birthday Cake.



Three layers, chocolate, with white cream filling and fancy trim around the edges, and a bas-relief VOYAGER on the top in wonderfully tasty Evasberry, Blueberry and Strawberry creme.



During the voyage, Captain Janeway had discovered the Terran record birthdate of Annika Hansen, and they'd held a very small ceremony aboard to celebrate. It had mixed results, predictable considering the limited humanity Seven of Nine had at the time.



Captain, really ex-Admiral Janeway now, had taken the opportunity to try again. She and Sam Wildman had baked the cake themselves. Which explained the imperfect construction of the item itself. That is what Seven said.



It was imperfect. Then Annika cried.



Kathryn and Sam included a Holo which had them singing a Happy Birthday to Annika. In it were one of their daughters, a grandchild, and Naomi Wildman, delivering an off-key backup.



Seven cried over that too. I heard her whisper to herself that drones don't cry. Seven let me hold her.



When Seven showed me the remains of the ornate cake (Lia had a piece, as did Seven and several friends), she cried again. Then she showed me the Holo and she cried again.



What I found remarkable was that the friends were mostly Seven's.



Seven said she hadn't been that happy in a long time. Eating a morsel of the ship as the icing on top, surrounded by about thirty women, most of whom she'd never slept with.



The ship VOYAGER was luscious. I had some of the cake itself, you know me and Chocolate, but the ship WAS delicious.



In that deliberate accidental softly-spoken off-hand way she had, Li Lia not-so-casually mentioned her Birthday had been a week before Seven's.



We promptly marched down to the kitchen, appropriated the mixings and tools and baked a nice big chocolate Birthday pan cake for her from scratch. Nothing else would do. It was a labor of love. Seven did most of it, with my aid, and with Roon there to encourage speed of construction and immensity of size. He got to lick the bowl I made the icing in. Double dark chocolate icing with white coconut snow on top.



They did things like cooking from scratch at the Crazy House. The women didn't waste Credits on Replicator food when they could make their own food in quantity for a fraction of the cost.



Nearly sixty women helped sing the Birthday song as Li Lia tried to blow out all the candles. Some residual and very human but fey instinct prompted Seven to load the cake with three boxes of candles. I think really she didn't want to admit she was living with a fifteen-year-old, even if she never laid a glove on her.



Watching Li Lia (and Seven) blow out candles I looked around and realized I was the only one there who realized Seven had become a Mother.



The next acquisition was fore ordained. Li Lia adopted a stray puppy. Which meant Seven adopted a puppy as well.



The problem lay in the fact that I recognized from the feet the cute little puppy not only looked vaguely Boxer-like ugly-lovely, it was Great Dane in part. The most part. Seven checked the DNA. The bad news was that the creature would weigh in at over fifty kilos fully grown. Captain Janeway didn't weigh much more than that on VOYAGER.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





A little work with the House Computer was sufficient to prove that a winding ramp curling around the tree would solve the take-Tsunami-for-a-walk problem inadequately. Altogether, the ramp would need to be an actual seven hundred meters long. twenty meters of air underneath the Tree House, remember? Time was also at a premium. For carrying Tsunami up and down the ladders in a pack quickly became something only Seven could handle. And Tsunami kept growing. Seven needed a new home. She needed the House Committee to build her one.



To sweeten the deal Annika bought a good used segmented PernGel converter of 100/kg/hr for the house. Then they agreed to begin a new nucleus off to the north. Beginning with a structure which could double as a single stand-alone house. For just a while. This was all without being bribed by Seven's gift. Certainly.



Also, I'm not sure what sort of chits Seven called in, but the new home for her and Li Lia was finished and livable in six days. In the Winchester House tradition it was eight-sided, and long on one axis. Odd, in other words.



Two converging covered (lovely cherry wood paneled) corridors were built in the back, which led nowhere but to open brush land. A door was mounted on one corridor terminus, which opened out on California air. The other also ended a meter above ground.



The plan was that more Crazy House would be added. Eventually. For the moment Seven of Nine had a home to herself. Complete with daughter and pet dog.



With characteristic energy Seven threw herself into training Tsunami. She used spray instead of fence sticks, and Tsunami learned never to cross the boundaries Seven set her. Seven insisted on getting her neutering shots, and then proceeded to put Tsunami through her paces for at least an hour each and every day. Seven also undertook to clean up after her pet.



Roon was in love with Tsunami from the first nano-second. For my part I was amazed at the complete obedience the dog gave Seven.



One sunny summer morning we were enjoying the birds and bees and faint salt tang the sea gave us that day. Tsunami anxiously watched two squirrels fearlessly busy and nastily taunting the dog. The squirrels always stayed on the other side of Seven's fence of scent, and Tsunami dared not cross it. She whined a little bit until Seven told her to quiet.



This went on for several minutes until Seven focused her sun-glassed gaze on me. "Would you like to see her run?"



She shouted; "GO!" The dog was instantly in motion, all fifty kilos of her, bearing down on the uppity squirrels. Juggernaut. Tsunami caught one of the rascals and brought it to Seven in her mouth. The squirrel was obviously in cardiac arrest, contemplating its many sins and preparing to go to that great walnut tree in the sky. First time I ever saw a pale colorless squirrel. Certainly not one with eyes that big.



"Good girl," Seven said, petting it on its head. "Smile," she then commanded. The squirrel lay quivering on the ground approximately eight seconds before it realized it would live to steal someone else's seeds another day. After that it teleported to the nearest TALL tree.



All in all, Seven's possession of a large pet at Winchester House was an exception to the rule. The House was not geared to the retention of pets, not to mention there was no way to easily regulate animals, nor clean up after them. Seven and Li Lia and Tsunami living in their own place just on the edge of the community was tolerable.



I was at Crazy House when they got the PernGel automaton first working. Very impressive. Built a terrace wall to keep back an eroding slope, in just a few hours. Back home I consulted Computer and decided the price tag was a little high for a gardening toy. Annika had made a LOT of Credits over the years.





- - - - - - - - - - - - -





What happened next had an air of inevitability to it, one which I mentally predicted and hoped would never happen. My visits to Seven and her visits to me were rigorously maintained, as well as increased. I was trying to monitor things.



Afterwards, most of it I had to surmise, because I got incoherent slices from either of the participants apres disaster.



As I said, Annika carefully neither flaunted her sexuality or felt other than parental towards Li Lia. Well, truthfully there is no such thing as complete sexual neutrality. But in Seven's mind she had acquired a stable family. Period.



The explosion came when a scented and partially nude teenager entered Seven's space one night with amorous intentions.



Seven was appalled, rejected Li Lia out of hand, and the poor girl retreated with her life ended and in chaos, according to her. Her transparent nightie in tatters, much like her mind.



It appears that Li Lia had entered into a few ("three" she admitted to) lesbian experiences with the firm intention of becoming experienced in female-to-female love and then becoming Seven's lover, wife, soulmate. The moment when she oozed all over a mortified Seven who had illusions about being a Mother the easy way (no babies to take care of for a dozen years), was the moment when both their lives took a quick turn for the worst.



Li Lia herself was of mixed opinions about lesbian sex, but her adoration of Seven of Nine was total and limitless. She would have had sex with a Olympic team of Nausican athletes if it would have gotten her into Annika's bed. Unfortunately for all involved, Li Lia WAS too young and Seven of Nine had already decided in her own mind and emotions that Li Lia was her daughter. This was Incest and a no-no, in Seven's view. Seven had scruples.



In years past Annika had indeed bedded not a few very young and willing ladies, but these were females who had already realized their own sexual nature. Not her own daughter.



Seven commed me frantically, her speech and psyche in a state of mental termination, unable to deal with a distraught Li Lia contemplating her own failure and Seven's rejection. I rushed down to San Jose and Seven, all the way being informed of the developing crises via the skimmer comm. Back at Crazy House I found Niikata trudging north on the old paved road. This incoherent (but fully dressed) teenager wore her backpack and an Everest of guilt and regret. She had the vague goal of reaching somewhere else and disappearing into the woodwork. A less acute form of suicide than the one I feared, but a form of it nonetheless.



With much coaxing and a little reasoning argument from me, Seven and her almost-daughter patched things up between them. For the moment. Correcting a lot of errors in the process. But it was never the same for either of them. The emotional repairs were patchwork at best, and we all knew it. Now Seven was constantly afraid. Of herself, of Li Lia taking off again. Of the future.



Seven was honest enough to admit later that Li Lia was, to her, an attractive woman, or would be. In the old days Annika would have had sex with Li Lia with neither pause or thought.



However, Seven now knew her family was dying. Their reconciliation was no more than an engineered pause, during which each could reassess themselves and contemplate futures apart. Therefore it was no surprise when Li Lia told Seven she had found an aunt in Tacoma who would be glad to have her. Seven was already mentally expecting it. Seven had a first-class mind, after all. She could determine the probabilities once her emotions weren't blatantly in the way. Li Lia would leave, grow up, something. Subconsciously Seven was already cutting her losses. It had come to that, now, at the end. Nothing so overt and cold, but still...



The two were very civilized about it, at the last. I drove them both to Gea S-O spaceport, where Li Lia was transported to the Sao Paolo-Seattle going by overhead.



Lots of holding, tears, pats on the back, promises to write, and kisses. Their last kiss was not paternal or neutral. It was passionate. Then the embarrassment kept them from looking into each others eyes. At the last Roon and Seven were saying farewell to Tsunami. The large dog went into the cargo compartment and was decanted in Seattle. Seven paid for everything, including the transport of the hound's blankets, bowls, and toys.



Once back in San Jose Annika began preparations for going to Indiana. She realized she no longer belonged at Winchester House.



Seven of Nine, ex-drone, was going back in time and space to confront the Demon she had never conquered while on VOYAGER. Her love for Kathryn Janeway.





- - - - - - - - - - - - -





Annika Hansen ditched the red Ukuele and bought a big Steyr four-blower. Something big enough to hold her regeneration cabinet and her rocking chairs. At one time I'd seen over two hundred pants suit, a hundred-fifty fashionable dresses and four dressers full of blouses, dresses, and sweaters. She passed what now remained to the other women at Winchester House, as well as most of her furniture, and said good-bye to not a few ex-lovers. It was a measure of her life at this point that she was still friends with most of the women she had once welcomed to her bed. And more than a few who were not.



Winchester House was a half-way house, and now Seven was moving on. She let the computer do most of the driving across the big trucker routes, her air-effect van placidly taking her on a voyage much shorter and less adventurous than the epic one across the Delta Quadrant. But a voyage irregardless.



By one measure of time it took almost forty hours to get from California to Indiana.



From another measure, it took close to forty years.



A still auburn-haired Demon was waiting for her when Seven pulled her Steyr to a stop in an Indiana prairie farmyard. Demons were what she had come three-quarters across a continent to confront.



Samantha Wildman and I were standing back in the shadows of the porch when Seven stepped out of her driving cab. Janeway was already in the yard, hurrying to greet the tall ex-drone who was sixty years old and still young.



Janeway made a flying leap into Seven's arms, and any possibility of awkwardness and dismay and hesitancy was blown away by the old Admiral's deliberate exuberance. The rest of us waited for the two to adjust to each other first.





- - - - - - - - - - - - -





Sam hurried up to lend her support, and I trailed behind. Kathryn waited for Samantha to be present before turning this collage of pleasantries and evasions into a search for truths.



She was no longer even in spitting distance of young, and a lot of the politeness of Captain Janeway had melted away under the fire of time. To be frank, she was damned blunt.



She brought Annika Hansen down for a real kiss, not an aunt's cheek peck. You could see the sudden flash of old embers still afire in an old campfire when they broke their long clinch and promptly held it again. Sam was placid under the hammer of their kiss, so I suspect the couple had rehearsed this moment.



"Seven," Kathryn asked, "why the hell didn't we ever get married?"



Annika tried to make a joke, but a Captain that traveled across the Delta Quadrant was not about to let her off the hook. She knew damned well that Seven's hesitancy and fear coupled with her own hard-nosed need to maintain a firmly governed ship were the villains. It was what kept them from being lovers in the Quadrant. And Seven's Great Folly of her marriage to Chakotay was what kept them apart afterward.



As Seven had said; "What a waste."



As afternoon lengthened into evening, Sam and Kathryn always made sure the other was nearby. They making the point that they were a couple, and there was no breaking the union.



This was about understanding, not passion.



We walked around the house and barn, histories falling down like chestnut twirls from the trees. We had a little Sangria in the heat and drank up the changes.



Seven was appalled by the irrevocability of the couples life together. I did not need to be a Betzoid to read the tells of Seven's face as she gazed on her other life. The one she lost. The life with Janeway.



There was an old gray fieldstone fireplace in the living room in the front room of the ancient dwelling, and on its mantel were dozens of Holos. Recording the life the two had led and Seven might have enjoyed.



Sam and Kathryn and their daughters, and now their grandchildren. Sports awards, school awards, remembrances of a life sealed off forever from Seven's touch. Champion milk cows, a pie-making prize from a Fair, their first bottle of home-made distilled bourbon, deceased favorite horses, a bridle nailed to the wall. The driftwood of a life spent together.



Seven caressed some of that backwash and I expected her to shed tears at any second. Sam and Kathryn knew, but kept their voices neutral, their banter light. You could see the bond grow stronger under Seven's errant envy.



I felt Annika's pains and kept reminding myself of radioactive liquid cesium and sisters screaming as they became Borg. I knew this pain was at least surmountable.



Sam and Kate insisted on our using the spare bedrooms, and Annika raised no objections. Annika was in shock.



Deep somewhere inside her the ex-drone had tried to hope that some day, somehow, her and Janeway could start anew with each other. That unadmitted secret hope perished on that farm.



Janeway set a bottle of the house's own brand before us. The special twelve-year stuff. Annika drank two 'Gretchen's Gold' neat, no ice, and let herself get just a teeny bit anesthetized. Homemade Indiana bourbon was not my forte, but I noted it's kick. Still, all in all, Annika used the booze as an excuse for a headlong retreat into an early bedtime.



Perforce I stayed with Seven, partially undressing her and tugging her into a pair of gray Replicator pajamas. Somewhere along the way she realized we were being very intimate and she slowly went into seduction mode. Like I said, not drunk at all.



She proceeded to undress me, knowing this Betazoid didn't mind going nude come bedtime. It took all my will to keep slapping her hands away. Eventually it became a giggling game, complete with me tickling.



I learned she wasn't ticklish at all. Not if she didn't want to be.



For the Pajama Party at the Ardanan Ambassador's residence she'd allowed it in an effort to be one with the group.



So I asked her nice to be ticklish. It was absolutely lovely and totally comical as her facial expression changed. An evil grin slid onto her young blond face, waiting for me to re-tickle, which I did.



We were both spent by the time I maneuvered us into bed. Sam and Kate had meant for us to sleep in separate bedrooms, but I adjudged it prudent to sleep with her during this night. So we slept together. Period. One aging Betazoid still valiantly fighting a trend towards plump (and still succeeding), and an ex-Borg lesbian with a enticingly athletic young woman's body.



She fondled a breast and for just this once I allowed it, but I told her no. Inwardly I was amazed at the speed of Seven's emotional bounce-back. She had always had a logical mind. For years her inner clockwork must have been telling her any fantasies about her and Janeway were just that. Fantasies.



Now her nasty little inner voice was sing-saying; "Told you so! Told you so! Nyah, nyah, nyah!" Annika Hansen already knew deep in her heart of hearts that she had irrevocably missed her chance to live a life with Kathryn Janeway. Long before she sat in her new skimmer in San Jose.



Meanwhile, a reviving Teritary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero was conscious of all that enticing female flesh wriggling its backside against her.



"Deanna Troi, sweet black-eyed beauty," Seven purred, "we both know you're not adverse to having sex with women. All of StarFleet has heard of some of your romances. So what's wrong? I'm not your type?"



For the first time she openly asked. Finally.



"I'm your counselor," I replied.



"Aaah," she said. "In that case you're fired. I don't want you as my Counselor any more. Your Counseling stinks. Our Counseling sessions have now ended. For good. The Counselor may leave now, and good riddance."



A pause. "Now that you're not my Counselor any more, can I go ahead and lick every millimeter of your body? When's the last time anyone stuck her tongue into that belly button of yours? And then after that we can..."



"Doesn't work out quite that way," I said. "Contract is eternal. Not even death will release you from being Counseled. I shall follow you even as Charon rows you across the Lethe river, swimming it if necessary. There is no place where you can hide. I shall Counsel you come Hell or high water."



Seven smiled with all her teeth showing and kissed the end of my nose. "How dull. How boring."



"Night," I murmured, spooning into her very human flesh. Seven snuggled back, and I forced myself to relax.



"Night," Seven returned. gingerly letting her curves adapt to mine. I sensed her lids close.



Suddenly she jerked her head, alarming me.



"Teddy's in the skimmer. I GOTTA have my Teddy. Excuse me, Deanna, I have to go get my teddy bear. You just lie there and I'll introduce you nice to Teddy when I get back. Don't get dressed. Mister Teddy LOVES naked females."







- - - - - - - - - - - - - -







Annika woke me up with an obligatory fondle or two, and I half-heartedly raised a hand to slap. She desisted, but had her own revenge. She informed me the wives were awake, and she could smell bacon and griddlecakes. I lay there telling myself it was all a dream and I was really still asleep. I never was happy being a morning person. Not even on the ENTERPRISE.



I always hated to get up. Natasha Yar used to literally roll me out of bed and paddle my butt until a fully awake Betazoid with a sore backside was able to go forth into the unwelcoming universe.



Then the Captain would comment on the lovingly soft female movement of my graceful body. The one with the sore buns which made me walk funny.



I could smell the bacon now. Disgusting. Terrible. Salt-laden animal tissue cooked until it was crisp and brimming with many nasty saturated fats.



I will go back to sleep. I will. I will.



"Some little fairy told them how much you like chocolate, and the wives have made some chocolate muffins just for you."



It wasn't until I was coming down the stairs, Annika in front of me, that I recalled one of the terms once used to describe homosexual men and women was 'fairy'.



"Where's your little gossamer wings?" I asked Annika's back.



Then we were amongst the gathering of the Clans.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





Both of Sam and Janeway's girls were there, complete with their own children. Fortunately for us the three boys quickly finished breakfast, and then hurried off to do male child things. They were totally fascinated by the two female visitors from California. Of course. Yes.



They barely noticed us, once their faces had been filled. One daughter sitting at the table couldn't keep her eyes off Seven of Nine. It took some minutes for Seven to focus on her, and then she was totally taken up in observing her.



It was little Naomi Wildman Greskrendtregk. Not so little now.



She was taller than me, with hair still honey and rust. A long straight nose adorned a smooth oval face, with her eyebrows still light and almost disappearing. But the years had not been kind to her. A tapestry of life was engraved in her face, and it had been carved with a dull blade. A Tudor long-faced beauty still burned, but it had been faintly riven by the past.



She had suffered two marriages and a child, and thus two journeys to her own Golgothas. Her own father had ultimately rejected her because he was unable to separate himself from his new wife and his new life and his new child. In addition, when Sam had returned to him from the Delta Quadrant with a request for a divorce, it had been the final cut. Sam had brought a female lover home with her, and it hastened his renunciation of all connected to Sam Wildman. Naomi included.



On VOYAGER she had been the adored apple of all eyes. On Earth to outsiders she was an unwanted child. And an alien to boot, what with her tell-tale forehead horns. Her peers, as most children are wont to be, were judgmental and prone to casual cruelties. On Terra her only sanctuary had been in her two mothers arms. But she had to leave those two pairs of arms far too often. Schooling, adjusting, attempting to socialize with others. Eventually, in Earth's byways she had discovered the solace of sex. On Earth she had mistaken others insincere words of love for the real thing.



Now an older Naomi Greskrendtregk sat half-defeated between her two mothers, hesitant about drawing to herself the attention of her beau ideal, the remembered and perfect Seven of Nine.



Annika rose up and went to Naomi, pulling her to herself with many gladsome cries and pettings of regard. We all moved our chairs, and Seven sat down to take the measure and the pains of Naomi. Janeway eventually took the girl Bionca from Naomi, holding her with as much care as if it had been her own.



Naomi and Seven were oblivious to the rest of us. Sam got up first, and began to clear the table, keeping a wary eye out for Naomi's shy dark-haired girl and the profound re-bonding occurring before our eyes.



Kathryn and I chatted and stared, eventually rising to help clear the table. We sat back, and I took the oldest girl, Bionca. She still had Naomi's muted forehead horns, though more vestigial. We all paused while Janeway had a second or third or fourth cup of her evil dark coffee and I stirred myself another hot chocolate. My third or etc. The two adult daughters of Sam and Kathryn left to do housewifely things at home, leaving Sam and Janeway to look over the three boys, as per previous agreement. Bionca left to force her way into the boys games, and Sam and I exchanged looks.



Turning to Kathryn I began a new conversation; "So," I loudly said, "StarFleet Security tells me you and Sam have been shipping Klingon weapons to both sides in the Friendlies latest little war. Just hand disruptors so far, or heavy weapons as well?"



"Just hand weapons," Kathryn replied, also loudly. "The big weapons are such a bitch to package and gift wrap, and the local BrPre is always asking what we're shipping."



"I'm thinking we ought to get back into the White Slavery business, myself," Sam piped in with. "The Cardassians were always so appreciative when we shipped them a bunch of schoolgirls. They have a real taste for virgins, they do."



Keeping an eye on Seven and Naomi I added to the conversation again. "I hear that a twenty-kilometer long Asteroid is going to strike Texas a little after eleven-thirty tonight. Are you going to stay up to watch the end of life on Earth?"



"Wouldn't miss it for all the tea in China," Janeway declared. "A pity, though, that Texas gets all the glory. I was sort of hoping it would be Rhode Island. That'd be harder to hit right on the nose. It'd be a real case of cosmic accuracy."



Not a pause in the mutual admiration society of Naomi and Seven.



We gave it up as a lost cause and went outside to keep an eye on the non-adult population of the farm. Bionca immediately ran up to Sam and told her Lucas had hit her. Self-defense he cried.



I wished I'd decided to bring Roon with me after all.



The heat got worse after midday and Janeway issued a command that must be obeyed by all. We went down to a river that ran through the north part of her farm, where the younglings dived in with all their clothes on. I was beginning to think I was in the midst of a Samuel Clemens tale. I spared a second to look around for a fence that needed white-washing. I was stripping out of my pants suit when Janeway offered me a bathing suit. I observed the skin being promptly revealed by the children and smiled at the adults.



"Unless you object I was going to go nude. Any objections?" From the tan marks, or lack of them, I'd already decided nudity wasn't a taboo here. It wasn't. However badly or how well the kids grew up, they weren't going to be in any doubt how girls were built different from boys.



I vaguely wondered how Seven and Naomi were getting along, but my abilities told me they were doing just fine. Tapping into the emotions of Sam and Kathryn, I discreetly placed myself close to the rollicking children and kept them from disturbing their grandmothers. Grandmothers need the occasional moment together also. Even pudgy over-the-hump (hill?) grandmothers.



Dominic once escaped me and went looking for Granny (without specifying which one), but found they had disappeared. I am Counselor, I am strong, I can re-direct the attentions of Borg, Jem' Hadar, Q, and children, not to mention stop the Sun from going Nova.



Eventually, after nearly twenty minutes, Dominic swam in place next to me and looked pointedly downstream.



"They're at it again, ain't they?" he confided. Pre-pubescent boys. I could tell Sam and Kathryn weren't, but they were indeed enjoying a few moments by themselves. The farm work was laid aside for visitors, and suddenly they were in a fondly remembered spot, with no distractions. For a few minutes. Having adult daughters who were within walking and skimmer distance meant a lot of baby sitting got done.



Now mind you, children are loving creatures. Partly telepathic, full of vim and curiosity. I love my Roon. But some insist they should be ruthlessly exterminated. It's all according to your point of view.







- - - - - - - - - - - - - -







It rained that evening, breaking the dry spell. It was also the end of a long dry spell for Annika Hansen. The ex-Borg was suddenly full of tales regarding VOYAGER. For the first time the stories lacked regret and recriminations of herself. They were about Naomi.



Naomi had accepted Seven of Nine when few others did. That counted for a lot. Now an older Naomi was burrowing into Seven, looking for refuge. Naomi needed salvation as much as Seven did, and Seven of Nine needed something, someone, to be strong for.



There was one problem: Seven did not know if it would be fair to Naomi to enfold her. Seven had already become a parent once, and was in no hurry to repeat the trauma and failure. Naomi had two mothers, but another parent was not what Naomi wanted.



She wanted a friend most of all. She wanted the tall gorgeous assured autocratic invincible omnipotent Seven of Nine. Not Annika Hansen, the skilled lover of women's bodies, but the heroic Seven of Nine, the incredible blond Parsifal looking for the Grail of meaning and life.



Almost as an aside, Annika mentioned that Naomi had briefly noted her own few past female lovers. To my own marvel I could tell that Seven had not identified that first admission for what it was. A tentative move by Naomi regarding sex. Innocent little Naomi had already unconsciously realized part of her present idealization of Seven included the physical element.



Naomi liked the idea of Seven as a partner, a girlfriend. As someone to be a friend and a lover. Naomi just didn't realize that yet. Neither did Seven.



It's called love. Everything blends together into something larger than the sum of its parts. But it isn't always observed for what it is.



Annika Hansen was insistent this night, Annika Hansen badly needed flesh to hold. Annika Hansn wanted the sighs and attentions of another woman, and I was right there for her. Annika Hansen had not yet admitted to herself that what she craved was the flesh of Naomi Wildman. An over-ripe Betazoid was literally to hand, a Betazoid feeling every nuance of love and lust in this house. Annika Hansen had me literally in the cup of her hand, but I twisted away to face my pursuer. I almost succumbed this time because Annika Hansen was being subsumed by the one-time drone already enraptured by a friend of generations ago.



"Do you love her?" I innocently asked.



"I..." she began, then paused to reflect. "Yes."



It was that simple.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





We stayed in late that morning, and Seven of Nine talked freely about her ghosts. She described it as if she were in a vist mansion, and she kept discovering uninvited strangers living in her unoccupied rooms.



"I woke up this morning, with the sad but distant memories of three brothers nagging at my waking thoughts," she began.



"They were young foundry workers by day and shepherds by night, lacking any school education, but sure of their place in their world. Their part of their planet lagged far behind the rest of their star-travelling race in many things, but they were proud of their customs, and sure of their family and relations.



"The three shared the favors of second cousin and each other, such things being expected in their society. They did not lead ideal lives, but they could manage.



"Their mother was a slattern and their father a religious zealot, but they could manage. Taxes were a burden and they had no real hope of going out into the stars, but they could manage.



"Then one day their foundry was instantly invaded by hundreds of Borg, and they were assimilated. The far-off twinkling of their agony was what awoke me. Most mornings I come awake with this distant pain in the bones. Like the remembrance of a wound of years ago."



If Annika had laid a hand of caress and lust and need upon me at that moment, I think she could have had me, inner code of ethics or no. I was appalled and showed none of it.



"It's been near to half a century now," this young beautiful creature said. "I guess I can manage."



We were both late for dinner, but Seven was still dry-eyed by then.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





It was a new day, but it was heading down towards evening now, and Annika Hansen had invited Naomi to the Loft Downstairs in Paducah. I was being treated to spectacle. Gladiators fighting sword to trident and net in the front yard, between the Barn and the sunporch, might have drawn me away from this, but little short of that.



At one time a few decades ago, the addition of picts to one's face had been widespread. It was a form of adornment, or statement, or mask. You put on the simple little fillip of make-up and you then could hide behind it. Trellises of flowers covering sides of faces had been especially popular with the females. Fierce animal masks had been pandemic amongst young males. Masks.



I watched amazed as Seven veered into her own living Masquerade. I had never seen her so deep into facade and revelation. She was breath-taking, beautiful and somehow implacable.



First off she used her computer-driven palm shaver to clean her body. Allowing the shaver to trim only to a certain height the dark blond growth of her groin. She openly trimmed herself for her date at least in part to tease me.



"Well?" she asked. "How do I look?"



"Delectable," I managed. Delicious. Perfect. Staring at that vista I chided myself for never kissing it. Seven was going out on her date with every intention of capturing her prey.



I envied Naomi.



Seven and the make-up computer and its helping laser markers turned the Borg implant on her right cheek into a blend of Tiffany jewel and glowing steel sun in the serene heavens of her face. The heavy and glaring Brow implant became a crag on which perched an improbable little greenish-sere fairy. From it flowed a string of enlarging tears past her eye ducts to near her mouth. On her throat were thrown a dusting of ornate stars, casually littered on the curve of her neck, disappearing into her vest.



Her arms were bare, and the arm implant transformed into a Celtic band winding about her biceps. Three brilliants were imbedded into the mesh of her artificial Borg hand, drawing the eye. More stars invited the eye to caress the soft flow of belly and Borg metal between vest and pants.



This was a part of Annika Hansen never before seen by me. Every glaring Borg addition turned into a thing of beauty. She had obviously done this before, many times. Her make-up computer docilely helped guide her artwork until I forced her to stand and pirouette for me.



Her red leather vest bore the embroidered device on the back of the golden chained White Hart. Two large stylized embroidered roses were on each shoulder, and the banner underneath the Hart read: "Rosa mundi".



No brag in our girl. Certainly not. "Rose of the world".



Her teen-ager's strong young breasts swung and flowed freely beneath that ornamental garment.



On the front of it were embroidered sprigs of yellow broom, Planta Genets, as if Annika was proclaiming she were a Plantagenet queen of England. A modern-day Eleanor of Aquaitaine. "Preaux" was proudly bannered on one side, "Chevaliereux" the other. Beautiful knight, woman warrior.



Flaunt and statement.



Her tight rust-colored turbofils pants were decorated on the sides with more embroidered trellises of yellow broom, and terminated in shiny half-boots of shiny Sienna with an engraved sprig of yellow broom on each silver-toed foot.



Though not a present-day mode of make-up, her antique image was awe-inspiring and arrogant enough to be worn by a one-time Teritary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero.



Seven had outdone herself for this night.



When she swept down the staircase no ruling head of a Medieval Kingdom could have had more elegance and arrogant charisma than her. I felt as if I should be strewing flowers before Her Majesty. Suddenly I truly knew what B'Elanna Torres had been harping about when she went on and on about how uppity and impossible to deal with the ex-drone had been.



At the bottom of the stair Seven crooked her arm for Naomi, fitting herself implacably and irrevocably into the role of the male date. Her nose more in the air than it probably should have been, Seven of Nine smiled and complimented Naomi on her blouse-and-bolero pants suit of electric blue. The blouse was transparent and you could see the sway of unrestrained bosom Naomi had decided to go with.



Lot of bosom out there tonight, betwixit the two of them.



Eyes gleaming with the tears she repressed, Naomi fit her hand into the crook of Seven's arm, shyly adoring the tall blond taking her out for the night.



I happily drank in the emotions cascading off the two, letting a few tears flow down my face. Sam noticed and held my hand as we watched the couple climb into Seven's large skimmer.



"Do you think the gals at the Loft will envy our two little lovebirds?" Janeway asked.



"What we should be doing is deciding who it is we want to invite to the Wedding," Sam replied.



I cried some more. I love to cry at weddings, and ornate funerals, and the sight of romance blooming. The old Betazoid with the heart of soft mush.



What the hell is soft mush?





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





The process was not easy. Seven demanded it, though. At least she could have afforded it herself, if StarFleet wasn't still picking up the costs of repairs to the Borg gal.



The Collective had excised the womb and eggs Annika Hansen was heir to, but she now accepted a womb transplant in her body. Unfortunately the nanoite defense system rejected this item. Seven had wanted so to carry the children planed for her union with Naomi, but it developed that Naomi had to do the job.



A few nucleitolic ribbons from Annika, and in due course a daughter was born to the couple. The year previous I had been one of the bridesmaids to the Groom for the wedding. I had cried excessively.



Miranda Kathryn Samantha Deanna Greskrendtregk Hansen had little tiny horns on her forehead, which Naomi insisted on having removed. It was decided to let the girl decide as she got older.



Jacqueline came around two years later.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





Even during Christmas the Janeway House had all the airs I once knew from Winchester House. It had become -- almost -- a place of women. The three boys and a pair of male husbands were very much in evidence, but somehow it was a little place in Indiana that reeked of female outlooks.



Seven pulled me away from the others, and we retreated upstairs to what was once a spare bedroom where a tall Borg had fondled an inordinately pleased Betazoid. She held a packaged box, and my Betazoid abilities told me it was a present. Christmas. Gift wrapped box. Needed to read her mind, right?



Seven presented it to me on the edge of the bed we once had shared. Underneath the gaudy tissue was a small black lacquered teak casket, with gilt knotted ribbons etched into the lid. Within was a small Silver ant on crutches, proudly displaying a single flax seed in its insectoid grip.



"A mighty warrior and hero was given a series of tasks, impossible for an ordinary mortal to fulfill. As each task was surmounted or accomplished, the evil Warlock King grew more weary of the Hero's deeds. He deadly wished him to fail, and he came upon a task impossible to fulfill.



"The Hero was presented a fallow field of nine acres. "In this field", the evil Sorcerer-King proclaimed, "there are nine bushels of flax seeds. Bring me the nine full bushels and you shall have accomplished this arduous task." Knowing full well that a tiny flax seed would be impossible to find in the grassy swale, much less nine full bushels of them.



"What the magician-Ruler did not know was that once the Hero had befriended the King of the Ants, nearly at the cost of his life. The King of Ants came to the Hero as he sat dejected on a log, telling him that he will help him find his flax seeds.



"Thus it was that the armies of the ants scoured the space of idle land, garnering each and every flax seed in it. They journeyed to the bushels with their tiny treasure and filled all nine bushels.



"The Wizard-Lord, unfortunately, discerned that the nine bushels were lacking one single flax seed from being full. He crowed in delight and in anticipation of the dreadful forfeit he would force upon the Hero.



"However, a single tardy Ant crept upon the scene. He was sorely crippled, and hobbled about on crutches, but he had made the (for him) incredible journey in order to bring the last necessary flax seed to the Hero.



"The Hero thereby defeated the evil King yet again." Seven smiled as I caressed the exquisite piece of metal artwork. The base was inscribed 'Pho', and I knew it was an original Phoebe Janeway creation. It had the simple lines so reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish, so much like the Caged Kirk she created for the lobby of StarFleet HQ. I had something truly precious in my hands. My emotions decided I didn't need to cry this time. After all, it was neither a wedding nor a wake.



"It's beautiful," I whispered.



"The tale repeats two truths. The first is that none of us may accomplish the deeds usually relegated to Heroines without aid from others. None of us are alone. None of us can survive without others. We are indeed part of a vast collective.



"The other truth is that the least one of us are of worth, and may give our flax seed to bring ourselves, our civilization, our everything, one step further.



"Those that would not admit the worth of the crippled ant are doomed to never feel kin with anything but their own greeds.



"I freely admit I am the least of Ants, and hope I bring life one small step closer to its eternal goal."



I embraced the busty blond and finally wet her terry shirt with my tears. Seven of Nine had been finally and gloriously assimilated by the human collective.





- - - - - - - - - - - - - -





I came back years later. Annika had asked me to bring the Ant Statue so she could use it to tell the tale of the Valiant Ant.



I was combining StarFleet business with a need to bring Birthday presents for many children, as well as a few late extra Christmas goodies. Cookies are always welcome, even if this sneaky Betazoid got Madame Zhao to cook them.



Chocolate chip with Tol Nut fragments, of course.



I had had quite enough of snow sledding for the afternoon, and was well content to let Roon and the others tempt frostbite and risk languishing in snowdrifts. Even Naomi and her squealing sisters and daughters looked near the satiation point. But Roon and Bionca Greskrandyik continued unabated. Roon had found his first older woman. Only in her teens, Bionca would grow svelte and assured, once she was past the present awkward and bony. So be it. For the present they were children in the snow. Frozen fingers and toes and noses can be replaced.



As for myself I felt all my centuries and whatever. A log looked inviting and the snow was deep only on the other side, so I sat down to rest. From out my jacket I took out the small lacqured wooden chest to admire the workmanship once more of the little ant on crutches. Last night Seven had used it as a prop to repeat the tale of the Flax Seed and the last Ant. The younglings were enwrapped. Those young in years were also.



It came to me again that I held not only a lovely statue, but a timeless creation by Kathryn's sister Phoebe that would be admired for centuries. After all, she was a revered sculptor throughout the Quadrant. Phoebe had known of the old legend, you could feel it in the lines of the piece. Her own twelfth Commandment. Thou shalt persevere.



I looked up as she who was once Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct 0to Unimatrix Zero walked past me. Her thoughts were elsewhere, but she managed a light grin in my direction. Maybe she was checking up on me, seeing if my old woman's body was betraying me. Being thoughtful and protective.



She stood for a second and I had a chance to clearly see the wrinkles in her face, and the sag under her chin, the lines forming behind her jaw.



Seven of Nine was aging.



After all these years Seven of Nine was growing old.



She still didn't look much over a human thirty-four or thirty-seven. Which meant both her and Naomi would probably appear to be of the same age for the rest of their lives. Their daughters would recall them of an age, and perhaps discount in their souls the truth that one Mommy was sixty years older than she looked.



To them both their Mothers would be a matched set. To them they would grow old together, and always be remembered in memories still green.



But mortality had once more taken Seven of Nine into her pitiless grasp. She was no longer the eternally young ex-Borg who defied convention and life itself.



I dearly wished I could I could hold Seven and kiss those wrinkles and walk the path with her. But such was not to be.



Seven was growing old. Another milestone was passed.



I also observed that this woman was no longer ever alone, no matter how far she might be from others.



The snow was crusty here, and Annika Hansen, more commonly known as Seven of Nine, left distinct footprints in the snow. At some time in the past nature or humankind had planted crocuses here. Many, many hundreds of them.



This snow was the last of the season, probably. Before it arrived, the world had been foolishly convinced of the onset of Spring. In response to the commands of their nature the flowers had begun to sprout.



In Seven's footprints it appeared as though flowers miraculously sprang up behind her. Shining primary colors, so bright against the white of the snow.



Seven left flowers where she walked.





END

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