ok- my first fanfic ever. a little stream of consciousness ficlet, really. like it? spike it? let me know!
[The coffee promise rang hollow. She could smell it’s aroma rising to her nostrils, traveling straight to her pleasure receptors, reminding her of times past. She could taste it’s bitter-sweet nectar, feel the hot liquid pouring down her borrowed throat, soothing and energizing it. But it was a borrowed body – fabricated with the ease of thought by Q. It looked like hers, felt like hers, even gave her occasional twinges of the indignities of age like hers. Was that only to remind her that she owed Q? That she was beholden to their largesse? But she knew it wasn’t the one gifted her by her parents. Why should that make any difference? It shouldn’t; but it did.
Q had assured her it was a gift from him and she need never return it. But she knew that promise too was conditional; his promises to a human did not hold the same weight in his reasoning as to a fellow Q. It was the reassurances one offered a frightened child that nothing outside the door threatened to do harm, to snatch them away from their home; that the cosmos only wished for happy endings; that one’s mere existence guaranteed safe passage through life
Such wonders she’d seen and smelled and tasted and felt with the borrowed body. She’d been allowed to even try on other bodies – more efficient, prettier, stronger, faster bodies. Fur, scales, gills, generalized organs; she had her pick and yet she returned time and again to this one. Tiny, occasional freckles, porcelain skin, apples in the cheeks which colored unbidden still at the thought of resting them against the weathered, lined, tanned face of Chakotay. Oh, Chakotay. Was it fair to think of him? She’d necessarily left him behind. But why was it necessary? She’d been told by all the Q she could not return to her old life.
The condition seemed ridiculous and disengenuous for people who could create, destroy or move constellations like chess pieces on a board, the shovels and pails in their sandbox. Their playground. She privately thought Q liked having her around like a pet. Lady Q ignored her upon bringing her to the collective, she left Kathryn on Q’s doorstep as it were, a puppy in a basket. A puppy, oh a puppy. So warm and furry; a squirming ball of unconditional love. Q had wooed her before with puppies. It hadn’t worked then. Sometimes she almost wished she were weak enough for it to work now
Q fussed over her like his new toy truck. “Kathryn, such wonders to see. They’re all here! Come see! You’ll love this! It’s a chloroform-based bacteria which will give rise to plankton which will lead to multi-celled organisms and begin the seemingly instantaneous process toward sentient life! They grow up so fast! Only yesterday you were just spores floating on the ocean waiting for a lighting strike or ray of UV radiation to animate! Don’t you want to see? This is your thing.
She realized she was his project. His minor bi-pedal species project to mold and shape and dazzle. Sometimes she almost felt sorry for him. He was so contrary to his people and she sometimes thought he did mean well. But he was so used to being so far above his “subjects.” He would never care about her as a person who had the right to think her own thoughts and live her own life.
Sometimes she could feel him peeking over her shoulder, looking at her thoughts, trying to steer her like the instructor of a ground-car teaching an adolescent to drive – but not with too much interference. She appreciated that and knew it her only way out.
He was a busy Q after all, Q treaties and arrangements to hammer out, a son to keep a surreptious eye on. His lady Q who went to such great lengths not to be his lady She spent as much time away from him as possible, leaving Kathryn to Q, waiting for him to tire of her. And he would. Both lady Q and Kathryn knew that and Kathryn hoped it would be sooner than later. But such a fine line to walk. If they parted with less than felicitous feelings it could go badly, and all on her part. Care and patience must be used
Although Kathryn now understood the Borg to be neutralized, to be metamorphosed into the sentient techno-organic beings the Caeliar Inyx perfected after his first heartrending failure on a member of the Columbia, she knew displeasing Q might result in a return to the time and place she’d been taken from. That her consciousness which had been lifted away – screaming and scratching at the Borg Queen and rescued from certain oblivion like her fellow drones might be lost forever. Or to a time further in the past where no hope of rescue from the Federation of the Caeliar existed. Only the scathing, freezing, living hell of union with the Queen.
She’d felt the Queen’s malice and had known in her heart for some time that the Borg were not a true collective, no. There was malice and hate there, boiling under the zombified surface like a tar pit threatening to swallow and consume the unwary sauropod that wandered too closely.
Seven had not been able to identify what it was, that dissonance; she’d had no point of reference to make the leap from. But Kathryn knew that Seven had been oddly passionate about so many things. Returning to her collective. The omega molecule. Perfection. Disdain for the ineffiencies of humanity.
But she’d been seduced by Unimatrix Zero like so many other drones had. The chance to live free where even dying free was no option. The despair that birthed Unimatrix made Kathryn ache. To be trapped forever in a body and even a mind that would not do your bidding. Forever. The brochures for Borgdom were so shiny. Collectivism appealed to many, strangely enough. She’d heard reports of people who had purposely placed themselves in the path of the Borg to assure their own assimilation. Who hated their lives that much? People who truly wanted to lose themselves to the perfection of a true collective
But a true collective that existed for the mutual benefit of all would not indulge in passion, hate, revenge. Such emotions were illogical and a waste of the collective consciousness. Kathryn had seen and felt and known all those living as a drone. If that could be called living. Drones who had endured such agony could hardly be called among the living. And to grow up in that environment? Amidst those constraints all the time, every waking and every regenerating moment? Like Seven?
Seven. Who would watch over Seven? So fragile and strong at the same time. Her Aunt Irene wouldn’t live forever, and didn’t have the long arms of Starfleet to guide Seven’s journey like Kathryn had, once. The doctor? He had taken Seven under his wing, but he would hopefully be in demand for his own prodigious talents and he had his own passion, Sentient Holographic Rights
Chakotay? It would have to be Chakotay. Her heart rebelled. It couldn’t be Chakotay. She’d waited so long to tell him how she felt. She’d waited so long to LET herself acknowledge how she’d felt herself. To finally let him in. To give him back to the one who’d rejected him? She was a child. She would surely mistake his solicitude for love. What did she know of love? Kathryn knew of love and she loved them both. Did that require giving him up? How true was that ridiculously hokey adage about giving up what you love to really love it?
Would he even wait? Mark hadn’t. Mark had thought her lost forever. She bore him no ill will. She loved him, too. She loved him like the ex-flame he was, now cooled to a warm feeling of care.
Chakotay had no idea of her true fate. He thought her irrevocably lost. He would probably try to move on, to be strong for his sister and his family and his crew – HIS crew on Voyager. Tuvok, Tom and B’Elanna, Harry, all the family she missed so acutely sometimes it felt like daggers in her heart. Her borrowed heart, in her borrowed body, in her borrowed reprive from her own life and death
Would he, could he understand how long , how hard, how cunningly she was crafting her return? To be with him and her children on Voyager, her sister, her little apartment with the geraniums struggling in the window?
He would because she would tell him. Tell him and Seven and Tuvok and Tom and B’Elanna and Harry and Naomi. What had Count Vlad of Dracul told his reincarnated love Mina? “I have crossed oceans of time to be with you again.” She would cross oceans of time and space and matter to be with them again. She had crossed time before. She had no doubt she would find a way to do so again. She was a highly motivated woman. Love that Seven; she still wasn’t going to leave Chakotay to her. Let Seven find love with some other wonderful person. Anyone else but Chakotay.
She would find each and every one of them and tell them of her desire to see them and assure them of her safety and her effort to be with them again. She would hug them and kiss the face of little Miral again. Vulcan control be damned. She would hug Tuvok. And even T'Pel. For taking care of him and his heart.
She was no Q but she’d picked up a couple tricks and was busily filing them away in a place in her head she hoped Q would never think to look into. Where was the best way to hide something? Out in the wide open. In the middle of her head which she was filling up with the wonderful, satisfying, exhilarating knowledge Q gave her access to. Was he holding back? He could be, but she doubted it. He thought, he hoped she would be so overwhelmed with gratitude she’d never think of using it to leave him. He would not hold back believing his generosity would inspire loyalty. The loyalty of a dog that doesn’t know better. The loyalty of a beautiful fragile bird taught to sing and whistle and speak on command, tethered to a golden cage. Golden, but a cage nevertheless. Time and Tide, but she was leaving.
Hey, it occurred to me - I don't even know Chakotay's given name. Anyone here know it? It would be much appreciated. Hope you liked my firstborn! Kim.