The BLTS Archive - Time of Your Life
by Ananke (aeteananke@gmail.com)

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Published: 10-20-01 - Updated: 10-20-01

Disclaimer: All characters herin owned by Paramount Studios and other
entities. No copyright infringement intended.

Note: This is the direct result of coffee at 3 a.m., song lyrics, and 
fan fiction challenges. One: Write a story in which Seven's death
brings Paris and Janeway closer. Two: Write a story in which...nah,
that would be giving it away.

---
Personal Log, Tom Paris
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She took her human breath within a cocoon of lonely, cold mud. Those
are her words, no exaggerations, no dramatizing. Seven of Nine didn't
dramatize. Little Annika Hansen might have been tempted to, but then,
Annika Hansen was little more than a scratching, wailing memory, a
separate entity from the adult woman we came to know, hate, and
admire. Just how separate... we might never have figured out, if not
for the Doctor's prying and Seven's counseling.

Annika Hansen died at six years of age.

Seven of Nine never stopped living with her loss.

I knew from the beginning, had the pieces to the puzzle under my
fingers. I was the medical assistant, had first hand knowledge of the
status of Seven of Nine at any given time... her DNA readings, her
genetic makeup. Nowhere, in any of the scans, was Annika Hansen.
Nowhere but in the mind of one frightened, disoriented, mutated human
being. She had the memories, you see... memories of the Raven, of the
Hansens, of one terrifying end to a little girl's entire world.
Problem is, her  DNA didn't match that of Annika Hansen's that we have
on record here in  the Alpha Quadrant... the memories, well, they
weren't her memories.

The Doc now racks it up to Borg technology, brain-washing, a complete
reprogramming... the creation of a perfect spy. Annika was a front, a
shield, to keep Voyager's ambassador drone from getting too entangled
in her human roots, unless those roots became a necessary lure. It
would've worked, I can tell the hive mind that.

Seven of Nine was my daughter. The Captain's daughter. That even
rounds out to *our* daughter, when I'm brave enough to think it. I
usually don't try, this is one of those exceptions, a spill-your-guts
for posterity matter.

You see, Miral is asleep in her crib beside my chair as I write this.
I've been watching her, absorbing the tiny, puffy little breaths, the
twisting fingers, the twitching toes. I can touch her, kiss her, and
*know* that she's mine. I can reach her.

Seven wasn't like that. She was sub-human, on some levels, and
trans-human on others. Human life as we know it began for her on a
muddy, swampy alien planet surrounded by fear and inhuman siblings.
Her salvation from certain death, in her evolved, fragile human form,
was her destruction, the Borg. I failed her. Never leave your own
behind, even if your own happen to be a pack of lizards. Lizards are
living, and living has a funny way of equating to lingering. She
evolved, became more than we gave her credit for being capable of
becoming. I failed her, and I kept on failing her. We never could
talk, we couldn't communicate, no better than we ever did on Voyager,
maybe a little worse.

I have to leave something, some way of letting someone know how I
feel, and this is about as far as I can go. I'd begun to love her, you
see. It had gotten to the point where I actually looked for her in a
room, worried about her on those damned Starfleet missions she still
went on, thought up fatherly lectures, even if they were only warped
recreations of my own mother's. I never actually gave the lectures, of
course, or walked across a room to single her out, or asked her to
belay a mission. There was a fine, thin line we had set up, Seven,
Janeway, and I.

Janeway, my other sticking point. Her attitude towards Seven never
changed notably... understandable, she was the mother figure from the
beginning. Her attitude towards others, on the other hand, did and
still is twisting at an alarming rate. We already knew she was upset,
even depressed, over Chakotay... and Seven. The connotations of
Seven's  birth are taking that round of jealousy to outright funny
levels. You can't reasonably hold a grudge against your own
offspring's happiness, can  you? And after all that's happened
since...

And Chakotay. He did try to flush Seven out into space when we first
picked her up... while I think the relationship said that they 
recovered from that auspicious greeting, its clear that he's having to
rethink  the whole matter. Trying to flush the Captain's daughter into
space is no small problem, and having been in love with the Captain's
daughter, when you really haven't totally gotten over the captain
herself, is an even bigger one. He's doing a good bit of meditation,
B'Elanna says.

I've got a picture of her, right here on my desk. Its one of those
final new ones, the 'irrelevant' ones the Doc took at the wedding. He
caught her unexpectedly, leaning over to peer at one of the gifts
spread out on the outdoor tables. Her ashy hair was loose, curled
slightly, blowing in the wind, and the faintly curious, childishly
bemused look in the eyes was captured perfectly. By sheer luck, the
Captain and I were both in the background, she on the left, smiling
faintly at something, and me on the right, holding Miral. Its
striking, you know, the similarities I've begun to notice. Seven had
my height, bolstered by Borg maturation technology, and my hair, only
a lot prettier, and even my bone structure, though with more elegance.
She picked up Janeway's determination, a few of her facial
expressions, her arrogance, her discomfort with personal
relationships. Oh, I noticed that, in both of them.

There was a time, at the beginning of the trip, when I would've liked
to have pushed past that discomfort. I didn't like Kathryn Janeway the
first time I saw her, didn't really care to get to know her, but I had
to respect her. There was an energy about her in those days, a sort of
driving passion, a childish exuberance. It drew me, but never enough
to lead to an actual relationship. I knew her protocals, knew asking
would only lead to more disappointment than either of us could have
taken at that time. I was still earning trust, self-respect, and she
was just trying to live. We had a fragile brand of understanding, and
I didn't want to risk breaking it.

So I found B'Elanna. I do love her, in degrees I find almost
terrifying at times, and I think Miral is the embodiment of the best
in both of us. That always leads me to thinking about Seven of Nine.
What did she embody? Betrayal, insecurity? I don't know, but I do know
that I'm grateful for whatever she was. Had the Borg not come, picked
her up from that planet, assimilated her, she would have died before
having a chance, lonely and afraid, an abandoned child. They didn't
take much from her, after all, except immediate death. She said before
that they provided her with family, purpose. I can't blame them for
that. They're cruel, but they did keep my own safe until it was time
to come back to me, for however brief a time.

It was a brief time. She discovered the pregnancy little more than a
year after we got home, a few months after her marriage to Chakotay.
They were overjoyed - it was a gift neither had ever expected to 
receive. It was obvious, though, that it wasn't a typical human-human
pregnancy...Seven's Borg implants were fighting the basic processes,
trying to reject the fetus, draining her own strengths. Reluctantly,
the Doctor recommended a termination. She refused, was determined to
carry the baby to term, to give it every chance possible, since an
artificial womb or surrogacy weren't options. We all pleaded with her,
berated her, argued with her, right down to Chakotay, whom it was
hurting the most. She cried for the first time I remember, but
refused, over and over. It was around that time, during all the
bloodwork, and scans, and background checks, that the doctor found the
discreprency, the astonishing fact that our Seven of Nine wasn't
Annika Hansen, not biologically. Her DNA was totally different, and
out of all the human beings on file within our massive medical
database, matched mine, mine and the Captain's, perfectly. We pieced
it together then, after memory counseling, long nights of arguing,
long nights of no sleep. I knew damn well I had never slept with
Janeway, not in any human form, and she said the same. We narrowed it
down to the lizard farce, and the Borg tied up the maturation details.

I had a daughter. A daughter determined, come hell or high water, to
bear her own safely.

She did, too, carried that pregnancy through, most of it in bed, on
drugs, on machines, meditating, brooding, preparing. Only she knew
what she was preparing for, only she was willing to admit it might be
a losing battle, a costly compromise.

Annika Taya was born on the Earth holiday of Christmas, just as snow
flurries began to fall on San Francisco. She was passed into her 
father's shaking embrace, and he was led out of the room by the
Captain. That  left the Doctor and I. We cleaned up the mess, cleaned
up Seven, washed the sweat and blood from her skin, brushed her hair,
settled the limbs into resting position, took our final looks at her.
He left the room, dimming the lights, but I stayed behind, watching
her, watching for some slight quiver of the lips, a breath, a drowsy
blink. None came, and, after moments of suffocating chill and agony, I
erected the force field around the body, leaving her in peace,
protected.

I had failed her.

It was a bittersweet failure, Janeway told me as much at the funeral.
Seven had had a good life, for all its hell, had fulfilled her wishes,
had found love, acceptance, had created a little life of her own. She
had had the time of her life, and we shouldn't forget that. There were
tears in the Captain's eyes as she gripped my hand, shutting the rest
of the world away. Seven had  found peace.

Somehow, I think we did as well.

---

The End

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Time of Your Life- Greenday

Another turning point, a fork in the road Time grabs you by the wrist,
directs you where to go So make the best of this test and don't ask
why Its not a question, but a lesson learned in time

Its something unpredictable, But in the end is right, I hope you had
the time of your life

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind, Hang it on a
shelf in good health and good time, Tattoos of memories and dead skin
on trial, For what its worth, it was worth all the while

Its something unpredictable, But in the end is right, I hope you had
the time of your life...

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