#@jamesbrophy

By @jamesbrophy for @czterysta and @startreksecretsanta

Sorry it’s somewhere between prose and script format. I hope you enjoy it.

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Deep within the Jeffries Tubes of Voyager, in one of the hundreds of identical junction rooms; The ship's Chief Engineer Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres is hard at work. The junction rooms are Identical to most, but not to Lieutenant Torres. She enjoys testing the way sound echoes back to her through the connected Jeffries tubes. The open vertical access hatch in the bulkhead above echoes back her words “quong vaj Ocht”, a little klingon nursery rhyme her mother taught her. Humming a children's song is something she would likely be too self conscious to do if she knew others were present.

Behind her she hears the bulkhead hatch open. B'Elanna pauses both her work and the song. Through the hatch emerges a hot cup of coffee held in place by an outstretched arm. 

The liquid in the cup does not move as Seven of Nine emerges from the open bulkhead hatch with the baletic grace of a robotic arm at an assembly plant; planting her feet, rotating the cup laterally in space, leaving the drink undisturbed as she moves around it, only lifting it as she stands her full height in a flawless demonstration of the conservation of movement. 

B'Elanna is slouched, leaning against the wall, staring at this display trying to calculate whether Seven does this kind of thing just to show off her much vaunted “perfection” or if the former Borg can help doing the calculations for, what to others would be, an elaborate dance when she has her mind set on not spilling a drink.

They stare at each other for a moment.

Torres: Can I help you, Seven?

Seven: I have noticed that you will forgo nutritional sustenance in order to complete work you have become engrossed in and that others will bring you sustenance in order to improve your emotional state or seek your advice.

Torres looks at the coffee and looks back to Seven not feeling inclined to help her get to the other end of her point.

Seven extends her arm with the beverage, somehow not disturbing the liquid inside.

Seven: I wish to seek your advice.

Seven’s voice wavers a little getting the words out.

Torres brakes, smiles and steps forward taking the cup from seven, blowing on it.

Before taking a sip she asks...

Torres: What brought this on?

Seven: Ensign Kim did not wish to engage in copulation with me.

Torres spits into her drink with surprise, wiping her lip she asks...

Torres: He asked you to?

Seven: When I was assigned to him to create the astrometrics lab, he had been having physiological responses to my presence. He had created a late night pretense for us to spend time working in the mess hall and had suggested we spend time in the holodeck together. I took this to be the initiation of a mating ritual.

Torres: So you..?

Seven:I instructed him to take off his clothes so we could copulate. 

Torres: In the mess hall?!

Torres Laughs uncontrollably in a rare demonstration of the strength of volume that someone with klingon heritage can produce.

Seven is puzzled. Possibly a little hurt by the reaction and how it echoes around her.

Torres collects herself, noticing Seven's reaction.

Torres: Em.. ok. I can guess what happened from there.

Seven tilts her head: You can? 

Torres: He shut it down and never wanted to discuss it again. Am I right?

Seven: Yes. I had understood him, by his physiological response, to be attracted to me. His subsequent reaction was difficult to predict. It makes the variables for my current model for relationships difficult to quantify. Ensign Kim no longer factors into that model but I wish to not encounter similar unexpected results.

Torres: For someone who talks about collectives so much, you seem to have a hard time grasping that there is more than just you present in a conversation. 

Seven looks confused.

Nursing her drink, B'Elanna leans back against the Bulkhead, feeling a little guilty for the barb that has apparently gone over Seven’s head.

Torres: In relationships there are two people present and the more in sync you can get with each other the smoother things will get, even if they look bumpy to those outside. 

Seven (Interrupting): But that is inefficient. Why does this crew insist on increasing their use of metaphor as they approach the topic of relationships, when they should be more precise?

B'Elanna sips her drink as she searches for the words...

Torres: Back at the academy I had a lecturer who said that understanding the human equation is like trying to repair an engine from the inside, while it’s on. For all of our experiences, we have never had the perspective of not being people. The kind of perspective that only comes from observing from the outside. We counter that by giving advice that adapts to the situation. If it’s too specific, it’s useless. So you're going to have to accept a certain amount of inefficiency in how I put this, ok?

A relationship is an interplay of elements from both of the people involved. A kind of harmonic resonance back and forth. It’s not binary, you can't just turn it on, you can't simply set the frequency because you won't know the final frequency or even if a resonance will build.  You have to let it happen naturally. Eventually you can't even tell where it started. The elements that are resonating become one.

Seven grimaces ever so slightly; in the way a child would when they taste something bad.

Torres: That makes you uncomfortable?

Seven: Not the concept, merely the term. When Captain Janeway freed me from the Borg I was greatly preoccupied with my status as a single drone.

B'Elanna thinks back to when Seven was not yet part of the crew but rather the sole Borg drone left alive out of a set of Borg, hastily beamed aboard Voyager. Tuvok wanted the force field redundancies in the sickbay checked by engineering as the Doctor was performing countless procedures on her to undo what the Borg had done to Seven as a child.

A mess of dangerous machinery occasionally interrupted by flesh in the shape of a woman. There was a moment between recovery and sedation when B'Elanna heard the sole Borg muttering to herself. “Quiet... One voice… where are they? One voice. Alone...” and then the Doctor ushered the engineer out of the sickbay, moving on to the next removal.

Torres: You brought me this drink because you wanted to talk right? You probably calculated that this would make me more likely to talk to you about your problem? Well, that’s what Harry was doing by suggesting the holodeck…

Torres thinks again for a moment hunting for a better metaphor.

Torres: Inertial dampeners.

Seven looks more confused.

Torres: If your at conn and the Inertial dampeners arent engaged, what happens if you take a ship to impulse?

Seven: In my Borg form I would initiate a localised decrease in my mass density with a personal force field while simultaneously securing myself to the deck plate and station bulkheads. As I am now, I would likely be radically dislocated from my station.

Torres: Thrown against the back wall.

Seven: It is likely.

Torres: So by going to ‘copulation’ straight after noticing Harry had an interest...

Seven: I had failed to engage ‘Inertial dampeners’.

Torres: Exactly. 

As seven considers this, B'Elanna takes a long sip and taps her glass for a moment with her finger in the silence.

Torres: Seven..  Why did you suggest that to harry? 

Seven: I did not suggest it, I recognised the mating ritual Ensign Kim was engaging in and decided to.. 

Torres (interrupting): ...Skip past it. I get that, but why agree to have sex with Harry at all?

Seven: I did not see sufficient reason to say no.

Torres: Seven... that’s not a good reason to say yes.

B'Elanna puts her drink down on the edge of a hatch and looks away for a moment to properly form her thought.

Torres: Seven, you can ‘copulate’ with whoever you want for whatever reason but this relationship model of yours, what’s the goal?

Seven: Companionship is a prized element of human culture.

Torres: You don’t want to be alone.

Seven: In essence..

Seven thinks for a moment, uncomfortable with the  Lieutenants phrasing, but she can't find a better alternative.

Seven: ...Yes. To that end I have accumulated thirty eight thousand…

Torres (interrupting): This is about me and Tom, this is why you were spying on us before.

Seven: Your romantic interactions seem to have given you a greater integration than other crew members. Instead of two crew members you have become…

Torres (interrupting): One.

B'Elanna winces a little, instantly regretting her choice of words. She wipes her hands on her uniform and places them on Seven’s shoulders as if to reassure her.

Seven merely looks a little confused by the gesture and how close the Lieutenant is.

If you go right to ‘blasting the frequency’ then you will miss the build and may never get your ‘resonance’. You need to start slow and let it build. You have to begin with comfort around being vulnerable and trust.

Seven feels the warmth of B'Elanna’s hands. She looks at the half empty coffee she had brought her, calculating the least amount of disruption to the liquid so it would stay warm and be a suitable token of.. The word illuded her. She realised she was for the first time in her life comfortable with not having the precise word. She looked from the cup to B'Elanna’s lips.

Seven looked down and softly asks: May... I kiss you?

Torres: If you're asking if I consent, sure, but only if you would want to. Your first kiss should be with someone you trust.

Before B'Elanna can finish her sentence Seven's arms are wrapped around the engineer as Seven pulls her close and lifts her a little, perfectly supporting her weight as she kisses the surprised engineer deeply.

B'Elanna melts a little and wraps her arms around seven in return. Seven begins to release her but B'Elanna pulls herself close to Seven. On recognising this, Seven reaffirms her grasp. A little bubble of joy breaks through all the Borg conditioning and results in an upwards tilt to the corner of her mouth.