Anamnesia, part 2
by  ragpants
 

Seven turned her head one way and then the other, checking in the bathroom mirror that her hair was neat and tightly rolled. While there was no need now to conform to Starfleet regs, as Chakotay frequently reminded her, she couldn't bear the idea of messy hair. Some habits were too ingrained to change easily. And hers had been burnt in deep with ruthless Borg efficiency.

She smoothed her hair one last time, then ran her hand down her severely tailored gray skirt, checking for wrinkles before she stepped out into the main room of her home on Denobus Trey.

"Oat porridge with 150 milliliters of unflavored soy milk," she told the replicator.

"What? No brown sugar with that?" Chakotay's voice rose up in a rote, half-hearted challenge from the breakfast table.

She gave him a stiff smile and a tiny headshake. "This is fine."

Chakotay licked his thumb and pressed it on his plate, picking up crumbs from his muffin. He noted her suit with his eyes. "Going somewhere?"

Seven was sure she'd mentioned the appointment three weeks ago when Dr. Tennahenny had first contacted her. Of course she had; Chakotay had simply forgotten. Seven took her bowl  to the table. She unfurled her napkin and smoothed it across her lap. "I'm  consulting with Dr. Tennahenny today at the capital," she said, dipping her spoon into her porridge. " He wants me to examine the city's energy distribution  grid. There have been  some power fluctuation problems." The spoon moved methodically, efficiently, between her mouth and her bowl. "The shuttle will be here in ten minutes to pick me up." She hesitated a beat too long. "Did you want to come?"

Chakotay licked the crumbs off his thumb and didn't look at her. "No. I promised Frank I'd help him with the new pump today."

Their nearest neighbors, the Trujillos, had had their irrigation pump fail three days ago.  Frank's attempts at repairs had caused the system to backsiphon mud.  Installing the new pump wouldn't take long, but testing and purging the pipes would be a long, messy, tedious business.

"In that case, you better'd go. I'd imagine that after three days of hauling water Nadine has had quite enough."

 Dismissed, Chakotay gulped the last of his juice and popped to his feet with the enthusiasm if a schoolboy hearing the recess bell. He came around the table. Leaning down, his hands on the back of her chair, he pecked her obediently on the cheek, careful not to smudge her makeup. "I probably won't be home for dinner," he called back over his shoulder to her as he headed out to retrieve his work gloves and tools from the shed.
 
 

It was late when Seven returned. Later than she had planned. Dr. Tennahenny had proved a most difficult client.  It had quickly become clear that he wasn't really interested in solving the power distribution problems, only in finding a scapegoat to blame for those problems. He had resolutely rejected any suggestion that the  structure of the system, which he had designed himself, might be at fault. It had been like arguing with the ocean, hours upon hours of futility, eating away at Seven's calm, at her  emotional reserves. He had only allowed her to go home, finally, reluctantly, because she had threatened to call the Governor with her findings of his incompetence.

Seven paused in the unlighted entry.  Pale moonlight spilled in through the unshuttered windows--Chakotay had likely forgotten to set them for privacy again. The faint light illuminated the rooms beyond the foyer.  One step to the right were the stairs that led to the second floor. To the left, through the living room and past the small dining nook with its cooking area and replicator, was her regeneration chamber. She hesitated.  No message light blinked from the comm unit which meant that Chakotay was likely upstairs, comfortably asleep in his own bed. If she chose to join him, he would welcome her; he always did. But she was tired and emotionally worn. She stepped forward and turned left. She could always see Chakotay in the morning.
 

Seven came to consciousness instantly without the groggy transition between sleep and wakefulness. It was precisely 0625, the time she always roused from her regenerative cycle. She felt refreshed and able to face the day ahead. There would be time for a sonic shower and a cup of coffee before she could reasonably expect Chakotay to come downstairs for breakfast.

"Computer, terminate the newsfeed," Seven ordered with a more than a trace of annoyance as the local news began its third repeat of the morning's coverage. Chakotay still hadn't appeared and Seven was growing more irritated by the moment. She set aside her coffee cup and with a few keystrokes searched again for any messages left on their communication terminal. There weren't any. In the past, Chakotay had always been conscientious about leaving her a note when he chose to absent himself from their house, though lately, she had to admit,  he had been much less mindful.  Seven checked the chronometer. Oh-nine hundred.  It was late enough that she might call her neighbors without risking social embarrassment and ask if they had seen her wayward husband.
 

"No...no, Annika. He left yesterday as soon as he and Frank got the pump installed. He said he had a bit of a headache and wanted a lie down. Didn't even stay for supper. And I'd made those green enchiladas for him too. You know how much he likes those."

She did, all too well. Chakotay had often been annoyingly effusive in his praise of Nadine's cooking.

"...Poor man. Out in the sun all day working. I hope he's OK."

 Seven agreed and managed to end the rest of the  conversation quickly.

 As soon as she had closed the communications link, Seven headed for the stairs. She took the first two step slowly, irritated by Chakotay's childish behavior, then as her mind conjured images of what she might find there in his bedroom-- missing luggage and emptied closets-- she took the stairs two at time, flying upward.. "Chakotay...Chakotay..." Her voice rose with her distress.

Inside, Chakotay lay sprawled on his bed, still half dressed in yesterday's grimy clothes as if  he hadn't had the energy to pull them off. His face was flushed. Seven touched his arm and then his forehead. His skin was clammy with sweat and burning feverishly hot. He groaned under the weight of her hand and tossed his head restlessly from side to side, mumbling meaningless sounds.

Seven snatched her hand back, staring in shock. He couldn't be ill. It wasn't possible. She had taken steps to insure against this possibility.  It just wasn't conceivable.... For a long stunned moment entrenched Borg sensibilities warred with common sense, then Seven bolted down the stairs for the comm unit.

The paramedic team arrived in less than ten minutes.  Her Borg timesense told her so, but to Seven it felt like it was years instead of minutes. Chakotay was examined and evaluated, then efficiently strapped onto a gurney and prepared for transport.

One of the paramedics hung back from the group as Chakotay and the medical support team dissolved in the swirling mist of transport.

"Are you the one who called it in?" she asked Seven.

 "I am."

 The medic questioned her, skillfully eliciting the details of how she had found her husband and any symptoms she might have noticed earlier.  When she was finished,  the EMT gnawed at her lip thoughtfully. "You'd better come to the ER with us. The docs are gonna want to check you out too."
 
 

Seven could smell the hospital even before she had materialized enough to see it. The sharp scents of alcohol and disinfectants warred for dominance, but couldn't completely hide the underlying acrid tang of hot electronics. Seven found the smell oddly comforting. It  was the smell of Voyager's Sickbay, and before that, of the Borg crèche.

They had materialized inside a small exam room. There was single biobed in the center of the room and a two walls were paneled with diagnostic and life support equipment.

"Where's Chakotay?" Seven demanded, walking toward the exit when she had determined that  he wasn't in this room. She slapped at the door's power button.

"Wait here. I'll go find out." The paramedic put her hand over Seven's to stop her. Seven threw it off and proceeded through the door. The medtech loudly complained that it was against procedure and protocols to go wandering about the halls, but Seven ignored her.

Chakotay was behind the fourth door she tried. A small bevy of blue smocked medical personnel surrounded him, poking and prodding, attaching diagnostic devices and an infuser.

"Don't start any palliatives yet."  The order came from a stout older man who stood at the back of the room.  He had just turned away from the bustle at the bedside to study the medical displays at the rear of the tiny cubicle.  He'd folded his arms across his chest over what appeared to be a pair of black rimmed old fashioned spectacles hung from a chain around his neck . Tele-presence viewers. Only a few specialists planet-wide carried those. Seven's alarm and her relief notched upward. "We need to know what we're up against first."  The diagnostic screen along the back wall came to life. "What the hell are those things!"  The physician's finger stabbed at a nanocyte that floated blithely among the red corpuscles glowing on the screen.

Because it was unlikely any one else knew and because it gave her something useful to do, Seven stepped forward.  "It's a Borg nanite."

The doctor's face blanched to chalk under his short gray beard. "The Borg are here?" he asked, horrified.

"Of course not," Seven said dismissively.  She shouldered past the doctor to manipulate the screen's controls. Her eyes glittered with impatience; she didn't have time for this man's foolish fears. "Voyager destroyed the Borg's subspace wormhole nexus six years ago in the Delta Quadrant. The Borg are  thousands of light years from here, I assure you. "  At the physician's unbelieving gape, she added, "You may check with the local Starfleet authorities if you do not believe me."

A broader view appeared of the medical screen. Chakotay's blood was swarming with nanocytes.

The doctor's eyes narrowed suspiciously while he studied the image. "Aren't these the same things that initiate assimilation?"

"Only in the presence of an activation signal from a plexing module from a ship of class Epsilon three or larger.  There is no such signal at present.....The current  function of these nanocytes is benign. One might  even say  beneficial."

"Benign, you say....If these are benign, how did they get into his bloodstream?" the doctor challenged her.

"I put them there."  Seven extended her injection tubules from between the knuckles of her right hand and darkly enjoyed the brief look of utter horror that bloomed on the doctor's face before he erased it and replaced it with a mask of calm professionalism.

"And you are....?"

Seven absently rubbed her knuckles where the tubules had retracted. "This man's spouse. Annika Hansen. I can assure you that I would not harm this man in any way. I injected the nanocytes to provide support for his biologic systems. Besides identifying and destroying abnormal and foreign cells, the nanocytes provide superior artificial immunities against most pathogens. Have you reached a diagnosis yet?"

The doctor blinked several times, then caught up with Seven's question. He stepped between her and the  medical diagnostic panel, adjusting the controls. A rotating wire image of Chakotay's brain  appeared in the air.   Several angry red fuzzy blotches marred the holographic representation. "Not yet, although I suspect a viral infection. Possibly meningitis. If you'll notice here..." The doctor gestured toward one of the  blobby patches and drew breath to explain.

"Impossible, " Seven interrupted, shoving the doctor aside. "The nanocytes would have identified and destroyed any viral agent before an infection could have produced symptoms."  Seven manipulated the controls. The holographic image enlarged, shifted and then shrank back to manageable size. "There appears to be significant cellular damage in the cerebral vascular membranes. Exposure to tetryon emissions or other highly energetic subspace radiation could cause such damage, as would a Klingon disruptor blast. And there are several known cytotoxins which would also produce identical injury.  I would suggest you begin your diagnostic inquiry by investigating these more probable avenues, Doctor."

The physician had shoved his fists in the pockets of his lab coat and frowned during Seven's lecture, pushing out his lower lip stubbornly. "I will pursue all possible causes, I assure you. Now, please...." The doctor waved toward the door, indicating Seven should leave through it.  "

Seven walked toward the door, pausing just long enough to touch her husband's arm in passing. "You will recover," she told him.

 Chakotay moaned in pain.

Outside in the corridor, effectively banned from the examination room, Seven leaned against the wall. She felt strangely light-headed. Fatigue, she told herself, undoubtedly brought on the stresses of this and the previous day. She simply needed some rest. She allowed herself to slide down against the wall until she was sitting on the floor.
 

Seven. Seven. Chakotay's breath whispered against her ear, fondling, teasing. Fingers drew beneath her jaw, smoothing seductive, ticklish pathways on her skin. One fingertip balanced her chin while a thumb  brushed over her lips, not quite touching but close enough she could feel the heat of his blood against her skin. Warm exhalations caressed and tantalized. His fingers sketched the taut tendons of her throat, found the hollow at the base, returned up the back of her neck, stroked behind her ears . Seven, do you love me? She opened her mouth to answer, but her voice was stuck. Her throat closed, froze over, turned to metal. She could taste the cold, bitter tang as steel replaced flesh, as machine subsumed humanity. Do you love me? the voice demanded. It wasn't Chakotay's voice. It was different. Distorted, discordant.  Borg. Hands that had cradled her head, now pressed inward with crushing force, squeezing her skull relentlessly, implacably like a grape mashed between a giant's fingers. Do you...? Eight shining stilettos unsheathed themselves, splaying free from each knuckle. They pierced her skull, severed her spine, then began to ravage her brainstem.  Seven screamed.
 

"Ms. Hansen. Ms. Hansen...."

Seven lifted her fist  chest high and swung left, slamming away the hand that rested lightly her shoulder.

"Ms. Hansen, are you all right?"

Seven gulped a single breath. It was a dream. She was dreaming. Unreality faded, leaving behind a only  a sense of exhaustion and a pounding headache. "I was asleep. You startled me," Seven told the nurse who had leaned in alarmingly close.

A pair of amber eyes studied Seven's face carefully for a long moment before the chin dipped in cautious acquiesce. The nurse was going to accept her story though it was clear she didn't believe it.

"Dr. Simoni wants to talk with you."

The nursed reached down to help Seven to her feet. Seven ducked the hand, stood quickly and marched purposefully down the hall.
 

Dr. Simoni was talking with a someone on the viewer when Seven entered the small conference room.

"Yeah, Sdani, I understand, and I appreciate your efforts."

The doctor close the commlink.

"You're reached a diagnosis then?" Seven demanded when she had the doctor's attention.

"Yes, Your husband has contracted to Vegan  coreomeningitis ."

"For which there is a treatment," Seven supplied.

"There is a treatment, " Simoni confirmed. "We've already initiated the procedure. However, there have been some complications."

Seven arched a suspicious eyebrow. "What kind of complications?" Her voice was flat and unbelieving.

The  doctor wrapped a hand around his tele-presence spectacles. "It appears that the nanocytes in your husband's blood are actively interfering with treatment. They are destroying the artificial antibodies as quickly as we can introduce them. They are attacking his naturally occurring leukocytes as well. In fact, the nanocytes appear to be protecting the meningitis virus, enabling it to reproduce freely and causing massive cellular damage."

"That's not possible," Seven insisted mulishly, crossing her arms in front of her. "That's contrary to their programming."

Simoni gestured her toward the viewscreen and toggled up some data. While Seven studied it, he continued, "I've made some inquiries, requests for assistance from people who are experienced in treating Borg assimilated individuals." He glanced down at the padd in his hand. "I've sent out a call to a Dr. Beverly Crusher, of Starfleet.  Her ship is currently deployed to the Simlat Sector. It will be 3 days and 11 hours before the message reaches her."

And a like amount of time before her response, Seven knew. Days too late, although the doctor hadn't said that.

"I've also contacted a Dr. Joe Black at Starfleet Medical. He's a hologram, and a rude one.  He did a brief review of the data and  told me: quote, I'm a doctor, not an engineer, unquote. Then he referred to me to a bio-cybernetic engineering group on Callisto Station. The engineer I spoke to said they didn't have sufficient information to form an opinion about the cause of the problem and requested additional information.  Specifically they want  some diagnostic codes and firmware downloads from the nanocytes." Simoni  scrubbed a hand over his beard in a gesture of frustration. "And we've been trying, but we're not having any success. We don't have the equipment to do the scans they want. We're a hospital. We're here to treat people, not repair machines. Every nanocyte the technicians have tried to probe has destroyed itself before we can access it memory. "

Seven clicked off the viewscreen.  Of course, They're programmed to do so. It is a defensive mechanism. One easily surmounted with the use of the proper technique. If that is your only difficulty, I'm sure I could devise the requisite probe, provided you have minimally competent facilities available." She headed for the exit.

"Wait. Before you go, there's more you ought to know."

Seven halted and turned to face the doctor impatiently.

The doctor clenched his telepresence spectacles in his fist like another man might clutch a rabbit's foot, then licked his lips nervously. " As I'm sure you know, humans have 'defensive mechanism' too. Only sometimes they act counterproducively.   In your husband's case, this is exactly what's occurring now. His body trying to destroy the infection, but theses defenses have take a toll on your husband's systems.  A heavy toll. Your husband is suffering from multiple organ failure. His kidneys have already shut down. His lungs, liver and spleen are hemorrhaging uncontrollably.  Electro-cardial function is almost completely compromised. "

Seven arched an eyebrow. "Then I suggest you place him on complete life support, perhaps you should even consider placing him in cryo-suspension until a more definitive treatment plan can be emplaced." She turned to leave.

Simoni stopped Seven's retreat by grabbing both her arms. He swung her around to face him.. "No. You don't understand. Your husband is dying and there is nothing I can do to stop it. His brain is bleeding. The damage is extensive and irreversible.  Even if we could find some way to salvage his body, his brain would still be dead."

Seven was silent for a long moment. She felt ill and sweat dew her forehead. A single droplet trickled from hairline to eyebrow.  She didn't react, didn't blink.

"You will release me now."

The doctor let go.

Seven rolled her shoulders in a small figure eight., restoring her posture, reclaiming her dignity. "In that case, I believe I would like to see him now."

The doctor nodded wearily. "He's in Room 2709."
 

Seven entered Room 2709. She stopped, standing quietly in the center of the room. For a long moment she couldn't remember why exactly she had decided to come here.

 A short, squarely built woman whose wide cheekbones and coppery skin announced her Native American ancestry sat in a chair beside the bed, holding Chakotay's hand..

The woman looked up at Seven.  "Are you Kathryn? He's been asking for you."

Seven pursed her lips and gave the woman cool, assessing once over.  "No,"  Seven answered deliberate coolness, " I am his wife."

The woman's mouth opened in a silent "ah" of understanding before she returned her attention to her patient, replacing the coolpack that had slid off Chakotay's forehead when she'd looked up at Seven's entrance.

Seven found the woman's presumption insulting. She wished she could counter the woman's mistaken impression that she was the wronged wife, but in the end deemed the woman's opinion irrelevant and unimportant.

"He's awake, but not lucid," the woman told Seven, making a small adjustment to the infuser that dripped clear fluid into Chakotay's veins."  He is aware of what's going on around him, but he can't always tell what's real from the hallucinations. If you have anything to say to him, it's best you do it now while he's still conscious."

Seven felt lost and vaguely dizzy. She was beset by a strong sense of unreality. As a Borg she had seen plenty of death, had freely inflicted death on others herself, yet her personal experience with the dying was non-existent. Even aboard Voyager, death had always come swiftly:   an exploding power conduit, a bulkhead blown open to space, the blaze of a phaser hit. Death did not linger, but snatched its victims and ran. Now faced  not with death, but dying, she didn't know what was expected from her. She felt helpless and confused and sulkily resentful.  "What should I do?"

The nurse stood and indicated that Seven should take her place in the bedside chair. "Now take his hand. Let him know you're here, " she prompted.

Seven hesitantly curled her palm around Chakotay's. She looked back to the nurse for guidance. "Can he hear me? Will he know who I am?."

 The nurse tilted her head in a shrug. "Isn't it better to believe that he will than otherwise?.....I'll be outside at the nurse's station if you need me for anything."

Chakotay groaned and rolled his head from side to side, murmuring  unintelligibly in a mixture of Standard and a unfamiliar language. His arm flailed and Seven recoiled,  jumping back in startlement, releasing his hand and knocking over the chair in the process.

She stood shaking in the middle of room, unable to move. This lack of muscle control shouldn't be happening, she thought with a peculiar detachment, and made a mental note to run a thorough self-diagnostic later.

The nurse charged back in the room, drawn by either the clatter of the falling chair or one of the alarms winking red and yellow above Chakotay's head. She looked from Seven to the overturned chair and back, but said nothing. She adjusted the sensor display above Chakotay's head, then righted the chair and sat in it. She smoothed her hand along Chakotay's forearm and patted the back of his hand, murmuring a few words in liquid alien language that Seven didn't understand.

"Kathryn? Kathryn?" rasped Chakotay plaintively. His eyes tracked back and forth, searching the space above his bed.

 The nurse looked at Seven with disapproval. "Do you care for him so little that you will let him die alone?"

Seven was silent for a long moment. "I am not Kathryn."

"And what was she to him?"

Seven paused in reflection. "His friend," she answered although that was only part of the complex and complicated relationship between Chakotay and Kathryn Janeway. Subordinate and commander. First Officer and Captain.. Rebel and redeemer. Co-workers. Confidants. Partners. Lovers... Yes. they had been lovers, even if they had never shared physical intimacy, even if they had never admitted their relationship to anyone,  not even to themselves. The knowledge was bitter, but unsurprising. On some level, Seven realized that she known it for years.

"And what are you to him? Are you his friend too?" the nurse asked. "If you care at all for this man, you will take his hand and tell him you are here."

Seven replaced the nurse in the bedside chair and tentatively slid her fingers underneath Chakotay's limps ones. "Chakotay, It's...."

His fist gripped hers so suddenly and fiercely that she could feel the small bones of her hand grate together painfully.

"Kathryn," he whispered gratefully. "I knew you'd come. I  knew you would."

Seven started to correct him, but was stopped by the sight of tears leaking between closed eyelids and down his cheeks. Seven couldn't remember ever seeing him cry before. Chakotay had always been  so stoic, so silent.  He had always hidden his pain and private fears well.

"Thank you, Kathryn. Thank you. I need your courage now. Your strength." Chakotay's hand spasmed tighter around her own.  "If you're here with me, I know....I know I can meet death head on. Without fear."

 Chakotay was dying. He'd said so. He was really dying. He was leaving her. Terror clenched Seven's stomach and suddenly the room seemed too close and too warm. Her breathing stuttered again. For so long she'd been afraid that she would lose him--and now she would. "Chakotay, don't...."

"Don't what? Don't say that I'm dying? I am. And we both know it. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

Chakotay chuckled bitterly and the chuckle turned into a coughing fit that left him twisted on his side. Pain etched his face and his breath came in irregular, short wheezing gasps. His face was even paler than before, his lips frighteningly blue. Seven turned to appeal to the nurse who had been there a minute before, but she was gone now. Unsure what to do, Seven  awkwardly patted Chakotay's shoulder.

 He was silent for a long time, so long that Seven thought he had fallen into unconsciousness.  But  suddenly he began speaking again as if he had never left off.

"It hasn't been all bad, Kathryn. Really. Not bad at all. Seven is a beautiful woman. And I have loved her. In a way...in a way, she reminds me of you.  Intelligent. Stubborn. Willful. But selfish.... Selfish enough to take what she wants. Consequences be damned.  I've always wondering if you might have been like that.  I mean before. Before Starfleet got ahold of you. Before all that nonsense about duty and honor and the nobility of sacrifice  got drubbed into your head. I'd always believed... I'd always  thought that if only you had been little more selfish, Kathryn,  you might have chosen me."

Chakotay's handclasp tightened and twisted until her wrist ached from the torsion.  "Would you have chosen me, Kathryn?  Would you?"

Seven tried to pull her fingers loose, but couldn't. Should she humor his delusion? And if she did, what answer was the correct one? Which answer would make him happy?  In the end, she didn't know and so kept silent.

 When she didn't answer, Chakotay released his grip and turned his face away from her.  His breathing was more ragged than it had before. Seven thought he might be crying.

He didn't speak for a long while and when he did, his had regained his control.

"I didn't think so....Not you. Noble to the end. So damned noble." He let out a long stuttering sigh of disappointment, then his voice turned conversational " Did you know I turned to Seven to make you look at me?  Oh, you always knew I was there. Faithful. Dependable. Comfortable. Useful. But you never saw me. Never saw the man I was. Seven did. I thought... I thought if I could make you see. Just once. Make you realize....But you didn't. You never. And I hated you."

He didn't speak after that and eventually Seven realized he had fallen asleep.

Seven sat,  studying the far wall of the room, cataloguing the imperfections in the pale blue paint. This was her chance to leave, to leave and come back and announce her real self, but she didn't. She couldn't rise from the chair. She told herself she was staying from loyalty, from duty, from love--that was one thing she had learned during her years among humans. Humans valued companionship and emotional bonds. Where a Borg would walk away from a dying or damaged fellow without a look backwards, a human was expected to remain, to offer aid and comfort.  She told herself that was what she was doing, but the truth was an unfamiliar lassitude bound her in place more tightly than chains.  Partly it was a pervasive fatigue that sapped her will; mostly it was Chakotay's unexpected honesty. She found herself mesmerized by it.  For all he had encouraged her to open herself to her humanity, Chakotay had always been a very closed individual. He'd always held tight rein over his private thoughts and feelings, seldom spoke directly about anything important or deeply felt, preferring to answer in riddles and parables that left Seven wondering if she ever really understood what he meant.  Now there was no fog of words between them.

She had counted 3,817 mars, chips and defects in three of the chamber's four walls, when Chakotay roused abruptly back to consciousness.

"Still here, Kathryn?" he asked, then answered his own question with his next breath. "Of course..  Never shirk. That's your motto, isn't it?."

Seven leaned forward to tentatively touch his hand and his fingers curled around hers.

"Duty. I learned all about duty from you, Kathryn. Remember what you said that last day in San Francisco?  That I was obliged. That Seven was an innocent. That she didn't understand. That she was fragile. Easily hurt. I scoffed that day, Kathryn. I laughed.  Accused you of being jealous. We had a glorious row, didn't we?. Not our first. Our last.  You were right. You're always right. She is a child. A terribly frightened child. Life frightens her, Kathryn. Love frightens her.

I tried, Kathryn. I've tried. To make her happy. At first because I loved her. Because she reminded me of you. Then, because I'd promised you. But I failed. I failed her. Failed you. I'm sorry, Kathryn."

Chakotay finally ran out of words. He lay with his eyes closed, his breath coming in short, erratic pants.

Suddenly Seven was exhausted, too tired to move, too tired to think. She leaned forward and rested her head on the edge of the mattress. Somehow she fell asleep.

The dissonant  whoops of a half dozen medical alarms woke Seven. Chakotay's breathing had grown even more labored and uneven than it had been earlier. More alarming was the pallor and slackness of his face, as if he'd been made of white wax and left outside in the sun too long.

Seven rose to summon the nurse, but Chakotay was struggling to form words around the paralysis on the left side of his face.

"Tell her." Chakotay's voice was so faint that even her enhanced Borg hearing couldn't pick up his words.  Seven had to lean her ear against her lips. "Tell Kathryn..."

The  alarms all shrilled at once as the diagnostics glared red . Numbly, Seven reached up and  switched off the monitors.  Exhausted beyond all reason, she rested her head on Chakotay's chest and wondered what exactly it was she was supposed to tell Kathryn.

Tea poured out of the pot, overflowed the cup and cascaded over her fingers. Seven cursed, shook her scalded hand and set the pot down with a thump.

A separate part of her mind noted clinically the dermal damage was minor and easily repaired. Instinctively, she sent a marshaling call to her nanocytes, only to remember she no longer had any. Her illness had proven as resistant to treatment as Chakotay's. In last desperate effort, the doctors had disabled all her remaining Borg implants with a massive electro-magnetic pulse. That act had nearly killed her. Her cortical function had oscillated wildly between near flatline and erratic, overlapping bursts of  seizure activity; her heart had repeatedly failed. Yet it was that act had allowed the infection to be controlled. Eventually, one by one, the doctors  had restored her Borg systems--all except her nanocytes. Their programming had been hopelessly corrupted.

Seven wished she could laugh at the irony of it, but she couldn't. Her losses were too fresh, too painful. Besides, laughter would only further confuse Janeway who was busy mopping tea from the table and glancing anxiously in Seven's direction, concern and guilt clarion her face.

The restaurant suddenly felt small and confining, like a prison, and the urge to confess vanished.

Seven stood abruptly. "I must go," she announced.  "Thank you for the tea,"  she added in afterthought, but already she was threading her way among the tables, toward the exit and escape.
 

Chakotay stood poised with his left hand on the banister and his right foot on top of the riser. He looked back at her over his shoulder. "Coming?"

From the dimness of the stairway, his eyes gleamed with a flux of emotions that Seven couldn't interpret. There was love there, and hope, as well as desire and a kind of misty longing, but they were all tinted by some darker emotion she couldn't identify.... pity, anger, disappointment, resentment?

He wanted something from her, but Seven wasn't sure what.

She replayed the evening in her mind.  The companionable silence. The comfortable motions of two individuals working on their own projects. There had been no invitation for sex, no suggestion that she should behave other than she routinely did, no hint of disapproval, no inkling of unhappiness. And yet....

"No. I want to finish this report for Economic Development Council.....Perhaps...perhaps I'll come up later."

 Too late. Chakotay had already turned away and was climbing the stairs, his head shaking in disappointment as if he had already  known her answer before the words had left her mouth.

Compelled by an emotion she couldn't understand, Seven found herself standing at the bottom of the stairs, her fingers convulsively clutching and releasing the smooth wood of the railing.

"I'm sorry." Her words were whispers drifting upwards like prayer,  barely audible above the night sounds of the house. "I'm so sorry."

Upstairs, the bedroom door closed with a soft snick.
 

"Excuse me."

Seven was staggered by a collision with a moving body.  A hand touched her arm to steady her and was quickly removed.  That did not surprise Seven. In a world of near universal good health, her sallow,  wasted face set her apart.

"I believe you dropped this."

 A slender metal cylinder longer than her hand , but shorter than her forearm was pressed into her grasp.. Seven clasped it tightly until her knuckles stood out like white stones in a Vulcan meditation garden.

No. No, I won't disappoint you again, Chakotay.

 Securing the canister inside her cloak, Seven swallowed on a dry mouth and turned around, directing her path back to the restaurant booth when she'd left Kathryn Janeway.
 
 

The Admiral hadn't moved.

Seven approached her quietly and stood slightly behind Janeway's bench.

"The last time I saw Chakotay, he spoke most favorably about you  He spoke at length about the esteem and respect he felt for you. And of his sincere affection for you. He said that he had many regrets in his life, but that the greatest was that he would never get a chance to speak with you again."

Seven could feel Janeway's gaze orient on her, but she dared not look at her. If she did her courage would fail.

"Chakotay is dead.  Of Vegan Coreomeningitis ... I infected him."

Seven forced herself to continue.

"Chakotay specified in his will that he should be buried in the earth, according to the customs of his people.. However I could not  assent to that.  I had him cremated."

Seven reached inside her cloak, drawing forth the silvery titanium canister. She placed it on the table beside January's fingertips.

"You should have this. I think he was only truly happy when he was with you."

Seven watched as Janeway's fingertips  hesitantly touched the shiny metal surface and slid upward to explore the engraving that was the canister's only decoration: two wild geese flying in an unbounded sky. She wondered if Janeway understood the significance, if Chakotay had ever told her how wild geese mate for life.

Seven eased away.

Out in the concourse, Seven moved swiftly, weaving her way deep into the anonymous crowd.  As she walked, she stripped off her black cloak that marked her out like a crow among songbirds.. She wadded it into a ball, intending to shove it into the nearest waste receptacle when she spied a Hyrellan Mendicant begging alms. Her cloak was soiled, but warm and serviceable. She tossed it him, not waiting to see him crow out loud at his good fortune and wrap the woolen garment around his shoulders.