A/n: I do not own Star Trek: Voyager.

Waking from sleep was a gradual process. Awareness returned to her in unhurried stages. A sense of warmth and comfort first; her body wallowed in that before introducing the others. There was a fuzzy sense of balance to it, the world around her didn't overwhelm. Regenerating was efficient, and ending a cycle was not an exception to this rule. Alertness was instantaneous and absolute. An adjustment period should be unnecessary. The Collective's logic proved practical on Voyager too, where one of the most overused phrases was 'to hit the ground running'…

A sigh escaped her, and in answer she was gently pulled closer to the warmth. The muscles in her back and shoulders instantly relaxed, melting into the chest behind, but she also tensed, her awareness sharpening to a pinpoint for a few seconds as her breathing quickened. Irrational. But her hand slid over his anyway on her stomach. The pads of her fingers traced a lazy pattern on his skin for a few moments before she first half turned, collecting herself with a quick glance up to the ceiling. Then, gently repositioning his hold, she rolled, gripping the edge of the couch with her free hand to stop herself falling, until they lay stomach to stomach. Her vision was still split, half still acute, green tinted and piercing the dark, but it had been almost as simple to adjust her optical array as her own outward appearance. Right now she saw him as she wanted to, without much interference.

It was a surprise…how relaxed he looked. With her. She took in every smoothed-out line on his face, but her eyes always returned to the smile that curved his full lips. And he said her smile was wonderful, hardly. She lifted her hand from his, and could feel the slight warmth that had diffused into the exoskeleton that intersected that palm. Her hand flexed, the simple result of touch felt odd now. Tentatively, she started to raise it to his face, but her fingers hovered millimetres from his skin, marking his tattoo out in the air as her heart thudded heavily through her ears. Her stomach twisted, fearfully now. Touching him now would be like catching a bubble in her hand. It would burst.

His eyes fluttered, her hand shot back. A sleepy sigh of his own blew past his lips as the smile became certain, and directed unmistakably at her. "Hey." The simple greeting sent a shiver down her spine. "What were you thinking about so hard?"

"You were awake?" She averted her gaze, her chin curling towards her chest as her cheek pressed tighter into the couch cushion. "Nothing."

"Are you sure you weren't thinking how unchivalrous it is for me to be filling…" He glanced down, "…oh, at least 75% of your new couch?"

"62%." Seven corrected, meeting his gaze as he chuckled. "And no, I wasn't thinking about that."

"You'd have had a right to though." He answered ruefully, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "But I think I have a way to counter the imbalance."

"Oh?" Her eyebrow arched.

"Yeah." His arms slipped around her, urging as much as pulling her closer while he leaned back into the couch. "Acceptable?"

His knee had edged between hers and she parted them further. "Acceptable." She confirmed in a shy murmur, but smiling at him. "What were you thinking about?"

"Oh…about dinner." He replied softly, "Mostly dessert."

Seven's eyes zeroed in on his lips even as she blushed. "I'm glad you enjoyed it, although that wasn't what I had planned…"

"Unplanned surprises often work out the best." He whispered, "That's what life is full of after all." He swallowed, gazing at her thoughtfully. The thigh on which his hand cautiously lay wasn't really bare, but the weight of his touch was still reassuring with the invisible layer of biosuit between them.

"Yes." She agreed quietly, pressing her face against the inside of his arm, tempted to kiss the silken skin there, but both too nervous and too rational to do so. This wasn't planned, she hadn't intended this. Perhaps that would redeem her later, but it wasn't stopping her from throwing herself in right now. She'd altered herself, cast her situation in the best light possible, humanised her appearance, but the programme itself remained within the Doctor's original 'freestyle' parameters. The crew were to interact with her, but how they responded wasn't set… She'd asked him. He would've brought the dreamcatcher, she could've chosen to thank him with appropriate warmth, and he would've left. There would've been no dinner without her instigation. Was that comforting though, that she hadn't pushed a command on the console? If any other member of the crew had appeared at her door, would she have chosen the same path? It could've been Ayala, or Baytart, or anyone else she found attractive in passing… Or was it familiarity? Rank? She grimaced slightly at that thought. Or even unattainability, nothing was a safer experiment in fantasy…

"What's bothering you?" Chakotay now murmured. His fingers brushed her chin, an unchanged part of her face, tilting it gently up towards him. "You know you can tell me anything, don't you? It won't leave this room."

Seven's eyes slid closed, the inside of her lids preferable to the tender sincerity in his face in that moment. Behind them, her eyes burned. "I know." That was the crux of the appeal of this place. And, she was realising now, likely its curse. "You are very…tolerant of me."

"Seven…" He started, then cleared his throat as he looked as her, changing tact. "Well, I expect the same back. You haven't seen my temper yet after all. Maybe once this honeymoon period is over, you'll need some tolerance…"

"Temper?" She wasn't as disbelieving as she could've been, the memory of his rage after his father's death seared in her brain as her childhood innocence was likely imprinted on his. No. Not his.

He chuckled, the spark returning to his eyes. "How do you think I kept my crew in line when I needed to? They may bark a hell of a lot, but I bite occasionally."

Seven's lips quirked up, a soft laugh leaving her chest, relieving the pressure building there. Her hands went to his chest. "That does make sense." She admitted, "Yet I am not overly concerned."

"I'm glad." His breath billowed over her hands as he kissed one, then the other. He wouldn't taste metal.

He seemed content to let the comfortable silence lengthen, and she gripped every bit of it for courage before she finally whispered, "I have not had a personal life before."

"Everyone has a personal life." Chakotay answered simply, his face darkening when Seven seemed surprised by it. "Who said you didn't?!"

Seven was started by the thunderous clouds that had descended on his face in an instant, here was a flash of that temper, but also by his perception. She hadn't said. "It was…before." Her hand flicked up towards her unblemished face, then down to her unbroken creamy skin displayed by the red dress.

"That's irrelevant." Chakotay replied firmly, then added more gently when she looked confused, "Even if you're not as socially active as convention dictates, everyone has a personal life. Activities they enjoy doing, their own private joys. And their own personal fears and anxieties too. No one else can dictate that." He gave her a soft smile, his tone lightening. "Take it from someone who has often worked until the gossip they hear is as much of a personal life as they have."

Seven wanted to counter that self-deprecating comment, but there was enough honesty in it that it pulled at her own. "It has been an…adjustment." She swallowed hard. A holodeck adjustment. A self-adjustment. "A highly enjoyable adjustment." She assured him anxiously, tensing in his arms again.

"That's good to hear." He replied with another gentle chuckle. "But Seven…" His eyes locked on hers, releasing one of her hands to cup her face. "Of course, this has been hard. Even though the change is a good one, it's still be a big change. New quarters, new uniform, and that's just this week! You had major surgery and your body has changed…"

Seven shook her head, shrinking herself smaller on the couch. "I…I am not vain. I didn't do this just to improve my appearance!" Her own words grated. Wasn't she vain? 'Deleting' components her body was dependent on, that make her more efficient, to be more visually appealing to her peers? Wasn't this whole experience an exercise in vanity? Even the idea that she could recapture Unimatrix Zero, that she deserved to be complete, was something of a fallacy…

"No, you did it because those cybernetic systems were ultimately dangerous, what if your cortical node had failed again? Even if that wasn't a risk, it was possible to get rid of it all and so you did. No one would blame you for that." He sighed, reaching out for her again. His touch was feather light now, as if he feared she would bolt, but was ready let her go if she did. "And, corazón, everything you have to be vain over, you've always had. You were just as beautiful before…"

Seven gave a single, violent shudder, but didn't pull back from him. "I'm still Borg…" She croaked out.

"I know." Chakotay murmured, biting his lip as she turned wide eyes on him. "All that trauma you went through, it's not going to go away in one fell swoop. I wish it would…" He swallowed thickly, and tried to smile for her. "Like the Captain said, you've been on a journey, maybe you're not at the end of it, but you've come such a long way." When she shuddered once more, and curled in on herself, he wrapped his arms around her to form a cocoon. "I think we all underestimated just how big the adjustment would be for you, and that's made things harder…"

"You did not underestimate it." That Commander Chakotay had not agreed with the Captain's rehabilitation plan for her after her marooning on Voyager was known. As clear as their dissention over the alliance had been to her. They were more transparent than they knew.

"I was wrong." He answered tightly, pulling back just enough to look her in the eye. "And never happier to be so." His head dropped until it nestled in the crook of her neck. "You're being too hard on yourself. None of this was…ever going to be perfect…"

"No." Seven choked out in a small voice. She gulped, but the tightness in her throat remained. "Of course not." She kept her gaze off his face, watching his chest move with those cosmetic breaths. "It has been easier here. I do not feel so…flawed." She could blend in. It had been a shock when the Relativity had given her the means, but one swallowed by all the other oddities of that situation, moving through Voyager's past the central one. That seed of an idea had taken root after Unimatrix Zero, and here it had flowered into a revelation.

"Not flawed." Chakotay cut in, "Different, but then we weren't particularly inclusive, were we?"

"I…didn't wish to be included." Seven admitted guiltily. It could be argued she still didn't. She hadn't attended the baby shower, despite being invited.

"Not at first." He conceded, "But you do now, so that doesn't matter. You've come a long way, you should be proud of that."

"Proud?" Or relieved that she wasn't deluded any longer? Or regretful that it would never be far enough? "I've changed." She agreed softly, "But many things are still challenging, I don't know if I will ever…" The statement hung in the air before she could pick it back up. "…if I will ever feel comfortable talking to others…" A large part of her still hated that it was necessary.

"You're talking to me." He murmured against her hair. She could feel him smiling.

She inhaled sharply. "You're…you."

He kissed her then. Her cheeks instantly warmed, her lips tingling. Not an effect of the photons. "As happy as I am to be special, you've been doing fine talking to everyone. No one is seeing a problem in you but you."

Here, in here she was functional. He hadn't been in Engineering. She'd tried to extend what she'd learned here to Voyager, that was meant to be the point of these programmes, and she'd failed. She'd been hopeful initially. It had not been easy, but her interaction with B'Elanna had been far from their most awkward. Her attempt to make amends for missing the baby shower had been accepted, her personal question about hair had been answered pleasantly, though with the incredulity factor she was willing to tolerate as inevitable. But then, as she'd been leaving, Harry had insinuated she'd been overtaken by an alien entity. It would actually explain a great deal. Seven of Nine didn't set up holographic fantasies. Seven of Nine wouldn't delay regenerating to hide in said fantasies and assuage hurt feelings. If she couldn't wean herself off, she had to cut them off. She was making her life on Voyager worse, since it seemed she could hardly tolerate an hour there without two here in exchange…

Chakotay looked down at her white face. "Your confidence will grow Seven." He tried to assure her, "But just remember to cut yourself some slack, please? You'll wear down whatever happiness you find if you don't…"

Panic surged through her. "You make me happy." Shame flooded the anxiety as she forced her white knuckled fingers to release his shirt. "I apologise, I…"

"Don't." He interrupted quickly, "You make me happy too, Seven." He beamed genuinely at the thought. "We'll never need to apologise for that."

"Still, I should not have been talking like that, not when we are supposed to be having fun…"

"We did have a lot of fun." His thumb rubbed over her lips. "And we've been talking, because we can talk to each other, which we agreed was only a good thing, right?"

"Right." Seven agreed in a whisper.

"Well then, we're fine." He said softly, studying his face.

Seven took a deep breath and smiled at him. "Yes. We are." She shivered. He immediately pulled a blanket that Neelix had earlier suggested she keep by the couch and draped it over her, tucking it around her as he sat up. Seven's eyes flicked to his dark ones. "Stay. Please?"

A laugh escaped her lips as he tugged at the blanket he'd just tucked around her. She freed it and tossed it over them both as he settled, kissing him impulsively as she did so. "More practice?" he teased.

"A little." She breathed. One, two, three kisses flowing into a fourth and then a fifth before the throbbing tearful headache eased, then suddenly sharpened to a hot spike that whistled through her ears.

He spotted the wince. "You okay?"

"Yes." His face relaxed, but he seemed to take it as a cue, settling behind her. His hands guided her, roaming a bit more than they needed to, until her back was spooned into his chest. His breaths soon deepened into stimulated sleep. She sighed, once more surprised how comfortable she felt. It could've been Axum… But recreating him was impossible. Of course, his face was seared in her memory, their goodbye and all that it meant often echoed through her mind, but she couldn't rebuild Unimatrix Zero. Even in her own mind. Memories had teased her while she was there, but now it was gone it was if that mental door had slammed shut, the memories sucked into a void inside her. It had been a six-year relationship and she could recall only the last confusing, painful hours of it. She'd held out hope that it would all come back, not only those years, but the twelve years before it. A childhood, an adolescence. She'd had those there. Experiences she could relate to life on Voyager. Being rescued from Quarra however, regaining in every agonising detail her existence as a drone then she time on Voyager, had destroyed that hope. Her real memories were all she had and deserved. Of course, it hadn't occurred to the Doctor to infect her with the retention virus, as far as he was concerned she didn't need it… And did she? Did she want to make her grief more intense? A basis to recreate him? No, she'd chosen not to even try with an Axum she barely knew, nor with the face of one of the men who'd flirted with her on Quarra, stubbornly amused with her efficiency monitor role. A man whom, if his memories had been restored, likely could now recall that the Borg had done some crime towards him and his… So not his face, nor one of many handsome blank slates on the Computer. She couldn't even fantasise properly. She needed parameters, just like a drone. Chakotay, whom she was familiar with and whose behaviour she could predict without having to dictate it. He would say such comforting words in reality…to someone else.

The headache was back. She blinked rapidly. His arms puller her closer as she tensed and she was powerless against the need to lean into it. It was easy to imagine a heartbeat, in time with hers.

The metronome ticked. Steady and remorseless. She tried to follow it, the pleasure of playing fading but the ease of routine settling in. Her eyes drifted closed as the warm light in the room ebbed away. She knew the piece by heart, didn't she? No need to see.

The Doctor's face loomed, his mouth set in a matter of fact line. "I wasn't aware you had a personal life." The piano gave a metallic clang. A discordant note fell dead where there should have been harmony.

She was kissing Chakotay again. Spinning. He would press against her, the piano would play out with sudden clarity, then she wouldn't feel him. The music was too fast. Not fast enough. Too loud.

She fell through him, was on the floor without feeling the impact; staring at the fire as it smouldered, then flared violently up, luminous green, before self-extinguishing.

She was standing again. Her hair brushed her shoulders, her fingers skimmed over the red silk of her dress. It was dark without the fire…though now the fireplace itself was gone. She was back in her quarters. The mirror. The mirror was bright. She stepped closer, she had to see. Her reflection stared impassively back at her. One unblinking eye sunk in waxy white skin. Implants intact. Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One.

She continued to play. There was no choice but to continue. To keep up. The metronome ticked, the Borg components glowing a functional green, then…beeped?

"Chakotay to Seven of Nine?"

She jerked awake, eyes flickering around as her breath caught, straining her lungs painfully as her heart thudded. She wasn't upright…this wasn't the Cargo Bay… But she was anchored here, held in place. She turned her head, reflexive swallowing doing nothing for her parched throat. It was a gargantuan effort to sit up. Her heels dug into the couch, her knees curled in closer to her chest…

"Chakotay to Seven of Nine, respond."

Ice had entered her veins, but the comm. badge she reached for still felt cold in her hand. "Go ahead." She breathed, disorientation giving way to nausea.

"Report to Astrometrics. We've found something."

Astrometrics? 0816 hours. She was late. Her breath hitched again. Impossible. Her attention went to the corner of her eye. This was all impossible. "Yes, Commander."

She turned her head away as the familiar clamminess blanketed her and her stuttering heart began to race. No. Not this… But her thoughts were already in a circuit, preying on her. The hand in her lap clenched until she felt her nails drag on threads of the biosuit she couldn't see.

The other was in his, clasped as he began to wake with a content sigh. His other hand joined its pair in cradling hers protectively, pulling it up towards him as he smiled placidly. "Good morning."

She stared down at him. She should answer. She felt she had to answer. But as coloured dots tainted her human vision, her optical array seemed to override her instruction. She could see his energy output, the photon readings…

Neither a sob, a smile or a word for him. Numbly, she stood. "Computer, deactivate programme."

A/n: Please review.