#borgs

manifestations of my familiar or knotty nicked muddle

Yay thank you!!!! :D

🧨 what’s the quickest way to set them off, even if they hide it well ?

Agh I was low-key hoping for this one tbh!

Ceicive HATES being called by his Borg designation number (49 of 74). He responds to it faster than he does to his own name because he spent so long within the collective and more connected to the relay of information throughout it because of the particular type of drone he was, but he HATES it. He hates the way hearing it rushes him back into that relay station, he hates the way it sends a spike of fear through his body that he can't surpress, and he hates that it became him more of his personality than his very own name.

🫀who taught them what love is ? did it hurt ?

I'm taking this more in the sense of love in general versus one specific type of love.

I think his biggest lessons about love come from his family, more specifically his father and how it can often take the form of sacrifice Basically J'hren is continually forced into agonizing decisions regarding Ceicive; Putting people at risk for his return, choosing whether or not to put him through a horrific surgery when his survival was far from guaranteed, and how to possibly keep him safe from the fallout of these choices, particularly in still-recovering postwar Cardassia. He's forced to gamble with his own father's safety for the safety of his two sons because he knows he can handle himself more than either of them can, he forces himself to watch as Ceicive undergoes a horrifically painful deassimilation surgery because he owes him if nothing else that most precious gift of honesty, and he all but loses the very thing he longed for the return of then fought so hard for because he knows it's the best way to ensure his safety.

So yes.

But I also think he'd see love in the form of the captain his father is friends with. That their friendship began with Ceicive's birth because a Cardassian science vessel took damage and the ship she was serving on was passing and they took the few researchers aboard despite the risk. That when the translators were broken she still took the risk to try and ascertain why a pair of them were so specifically distressed. That Ceicive was born into her hands and cared for in part by her until communications were restored.

His name means, in the Cardassian language roughly translated, "Under a clear sky" because his parents hoped that this perhaps he was born in a time where relations were about to improve between Cardassia and the Federation (it was pre Dominion war, so they were sadly not correct). She did her best to console him after he lost his wife and one of his sons when the Borg attacked a small survey vessel.

His father never forgot her kindness and the two did their best to remain friends despite the risk, with him occasionally helping her smuggle goods across checkpoints when things were dire on either side, once even fully risking his life outright to discreetly board her ship and administer desperately needed medicinal plants to her first officer.

Now once more holds Ceicive's very life in her hands all of these many years later, accepting him onto her ship and placing him in amongst her crew. He's an asset to be sure, with his skills and enhancements, but it wasn't a choice she made lightly given the way many crew members may feel about a former member of the Borg.

But he loves his father, and loves the choice of kindness that the captain makes about him each and every day so he accepts the strange place and sense of isolation

Yes, it does.

🌒 do they have a dream or goal they have given up on ?

I don't know that he'd be able to specifically remember most of the childhood goals he may have had prior to assimilation since he was only around 12 at the time, but I do think he'd have a lot of internal struggle with wondering how much of some things he does or wants that are different that what he does remember would have always been a choice he would have come to make or if he's only making it now because of his time assimilated.

For example he likely used to take far more after his mother in interest and temperament, hence him accompanying her to her engineering jobs (despite it being considered an uncommon interest for young men by Cardassian standards), but post assimilation, while he does do some work in Engineering because of the skills his implants provide, he finds himself more drawn to sickbay duties in terms of preference despite a lack of a strong interest in it in his youth, when his father would work cultivating medicinal plants in his botany lab.