Story: AU starting directly after the destruction of Unimatrix Zero. I don't seem to do many AU's so have pity on me as I venture out of my comfort zone.

Thank you's are due to those authors who have been writing ahead of me. You'll probably recognise some of your themes as you come across them. I have also taken dialogue from the original show since a lot of this is meant to fit into their world. The more I wrote, the more I realized Voyager is so subject to outside influences that many (almost all) events likely would have happened regardless of small changes in Seven and Chakotay's characters. Besides, the original writers/actors know the characters better than I do.

As usual, we all know I don't own Chakotay, or Seven or Star Trek Voyager. I make no money off this and don't expect to. The creative rights all belong to the creators and legal owners of Star Trek. I'm just grateful to have this creative outlet.

The Green-Eyed Monster

"I honestly believe she wants to do right by us."

"Well," Chakotay sighed, "that's good enough for me."

The truth was, Captain Janeway's assurance wasn't good enough for Commander Chakotay. Though he was not yet unhappy that Seven of Nine survived his attempt to eject her out of the airlock, he'd yet to be proven wrong about her basic nature.

His suspicions didn't make him hate Seven, just wary of her.

He even forgave or overlooked the mistakes and problems that were obviously due to growing pains and deprogramming of Borg habits, the tragic death of the salesman Kovin and her disobeying orders in order to send a member of Species 8472. No, he didn't trust Seven or even Janeway's assessment, but he swallowed his concerns and hoped for the best.

The crew had no choice but to go through the nebula, which meant they had to go into stasis, leaving the Doctor and Seven of Nine to run the ship for a month. The potential for disaster was beyond disturbing.

He was proven wrong, a surprise he was secure enough to admit to and learn from. It by no means meant he believed her Borg nature was gone. He just had to wait for his fears to be proven right.

His suspicious ego had purred a little when Seven bit B'Elanna while in the thralls of the debilitating effects of the vinculum, courtesy of Species 6339. However, it took no time for the truth of the incident to be discovered.

A trip to sickbay during an 'episode' as she experienced a child's personality and then that of a Vulcan officer left him reeling with confused emotions over the former drone. In the end, Chakotay's pity took over any other emotions he had.

Awhile later when she abandoned them for the Collective, he was saddened to think he had been right, that though the woman could be redeemed like Janeway said, the Borg part of her was too consuming and too persuasive to be ignored. A small part of him had come to hope – perhaps as much as Janeway did – that the woman could be redeemed.

He was proven wrong again, Seven's loyalty to Voyager and its crew surpassing the expectations of anyone. Deny it as much as she did, even Janeway had her moment of doubt during that incident.

Self-sacrifice was clearly within Seven's nature from almost the start, if it assisted her collective. However, it took that sacrifice on Voyager's behalf in order for Chakotay to realize Seven considered a return to the Borg equal to the ultimate sacrifice. Death, he suspected, would have been easier for Seven to give in to than the Collective. It was a humbling realization.

After awhile, it wasn't that Chakotay doubted or disliked Seven, just that he knew how hard old habits died. He'd hated carrots his entire conscious life, but he only remembered thinking he disliked them because he remembered his mother saying she hated them first. It wasn't the same as the brainwashing drones endured, but it was enough for him to understand and believe with a strong conviction that mental programming was almost impossible to ignore.

Despite his initially prejudiced feelings, he very gradually grew used to her sometimes frustrating presence. It was awhile before he could really look past her abrasive walls and, like he did with B'Elanna, see something of the vulnerable woman behind her protective shell.

And yet, unlike many, he remained untouched by her physical beauty.

In those earlier days, Seven was too wrapped up in healing and learning from her previous life to see herself clearly and Chakotay was still too damaged by his previous relationships to see just what Seven could become.

Chakotay had never been ignorant of her attractiveness. He'd listened with amusement to Harry's stuttering, seen more than a few people blush in her presence, and even heard a few bawdy comments from a handful of men after a few too many drinks at Sandrine's. And yet, this was one instance he wholeheartedly agreed with Seven of Nine: beauty was irrelevant.

He saw and heard all these things, but had no personal interest in Seven until he began to really understand her, and this happened so gradually that he could never pinpoint an exact moment when he believed her to be more human than Borg, saw her more as an equal than a subordinate crewmember, or felt her to be more woman than she saw herself to be.

If he examined his feelings very closely, he might have thought his moment of attraction sparked when he discovered the Doctor was teaching her how to date and had to deal with the fallout when she discovered the Doctor and Tom placed a bet on her ability to perform. He'd been amused and impressed with her threat to the ambassador, and nothing but sympathetic at her hurt at being the brunt of a cruel bet. His anger at the two men was justified, but beneath the surface had been something else, something he'd been unable to identify at the time. Then, later, she admitted she'd wanted to be a ballerina when she was a child. Even if he'd not felt romantic towards her, the confession had certainly made him soften a little more. His sister had wanted to be a ballerina. The unexpected comparison had a stronger impact on him than anything else.

All revelations aside, Chakotay knew better than to ever speak about his growing interest, to ever let on that he saw Seven as anything other than an insubordinate and often stubborn crewmember.

In fact, he managed so well at hiding his budding admiration that he soon ceased to understand himself.

Until he saw her fight.

With the crowds chanting "Tsunkatse!" and Seven squared off against an alien male who clearly had no qualms about killing her, there'd been no way for Chakotay to deny his feelings anymore. He liked her, more than he thought wise. The fear of her dying in a fighting ring for nothing more than the pleasure of the crowds was horrifying to him on moral and personal grounds. He would have jumped in himself to help, but it turned out the fight was merely being projected from another site.

He'd convinced himself he would tell her how he felt after that, but when the dust settled and he had time to fall back into old fears and habits, everything went on just as it had before. Besides, it was silly to feel any attraction to Seven of Nine… utterly ridiculous. It was just a crush like most of the males on Voyager had felt. Nonsense. He'd forget about it. It was nothing… Wasn't it?

His tender admiration was pushed aside so that he believed himself indifferent or at least nothing more than a friend.

Not even very deep down, he knew he was lying to himself.

[Sickbay]

"If I ever imply he was nothing more than a friend, remind me of today." Seven tried to smile, to make it a joking echo of Captain Janeway's own words from a moment before, but it fell flat to her ears. Her heart, which had been growing full of hope only a day before, felt cold and physically heavier, though she told herself that was impossible.

Janeway smiled anyway, pleased that Seven at least could move past her Borg programming to admit such a thing, small as it was. The smile was sad and pitying, and all too understanding. Seven was not the only one with a loved one beyond her reach. Mark seemed a lifetime ago, but she still found herself thinking of him almost every day. He was the love of her life, much as she suspected Axum could be Seven's.

"I will leave you to rest."

She doesn't have to be like you, said a small voice in Janeway's mind. She's still relatively young. If she just socialized more…

Seven tilted her head in a farewell and turned to go, but the Captain's voice stopped her.

"You know, Tuvok goes hiking on the holodeck a few times a week. He opens the doors to anyone who wants to join him for the exercise."

Seven raised a brow. "I am aware."

"Maybe you should take him up on it when he's feeling better. I think it's a sizeable group most days."

"Perhaps."

"Or Tom has a game night organized every week. I think tomorrow's game is poker."

Seven had been on Voyager long enough to know what the social opportunities were and knew Janeway well enough to know this pressure to participate in socialization would not dissipate without a token appearance. She could go to one event and Janeway would be satisfied and then everything would return to normal. She nodded. "I will ask him about it."

"Good." Janeway smiled again. "And, Seven, Annika really did suit you."

That was not yet something Seven could answer so she settled for a short smile and nod before leaving.

She felt a little too tired and beaten for the Captain's well-meaning suggestions, but tried to hide her feelings.

Indeed, though her heart felt like it was literally broken, she spoke of it to no one and would do her best to hide it even from those who had been her first and closest supporters.

Alone in the cargo bay, Seven looked up at her alcove. She was tired and in need of regeneration, but the thought of giving in to the Borg oblivion was repulsive. It felt like an admittance of defeat to have liberated so many drones and yet still be restricted by the scars the Borg left her with.

Seven held out her left hand, examining the metal of the exoskeleton with a fascinated disgust. She flexed the fingers, feeling how much stronger it was than her right hand. The hidden tubules within moved a little as she thought about them, how they could tap into every known computer and grant her access to entire ships in the blink of an eye. Her weight shifted on reinforced legs, her lungs breathed easier and more efficiently than the average human. These things were all benefits to her, but only in that she was a hardy crewmember and useful like a toolkit.

By far the Borg enhancements felt more like a wall between her and everyone else, even if those walls were all her own, the result of clinging desperately to the highest ideal the Borg held: perfection.

While inside the program, Unimatrix Zero had wiped the signs of Borg atrocities both from her flesh and her mind for the few hours she spent regenerating. It had been enough that she could even start to believe herself to be within reach of her individuality, within grasp of being accepted as a human woman in her own right. The immediate and unquestioning acceptance by her former friends there and the admiring gaze of Axum had been like a bridge she didn't know she needed to escape an island she didn't realize she was on.

And now it was gone, all gone.

Returning to the waking world, to Voyager, where people could see the evidence of her time in the Collective erased all the hope she had begun to build in the dream world. Like any other dream, the details and nuances, the possibilities that had seemed so real hours before faded into nothing. She felt the unescapable shift from Annika to Seven of Nine carry her away like a roller coaster she had no control over. It saddened her, this break which must ultimately lead to her separation from the rest of Voyager's crew. It wasn't that she was mistreated, but she knew now just how different things would be if she didn't have the metal implants. She was in a cycle she couldn't see a way to break. She acted like a drone because she saw herself as one, which made people on Voyager see her as a drone, which made her see the same.

Shaking her head as though to clear it of her wayward thoughts, Seven forced herself to step into the alcove.

Irrelevant, she told herself. I am Borg.

No, I'm human.

Her sight was caught by her own reflection in the metal of her alcove. The green glow off her facial implant made her think of the full ocular enhancement she used to wear. There was no ignoring the truth.

I am Borg.

She winced slightly as her head gave a twinge. Clearly, she'd gone too long since a proper regeneration cycle.

The click and whirl as the alcove began its cycle put an end to her internal struggles at least for awhile.