Work Text:
homestead
The sun is low over the fields when Seven begins her walk up the dirt path, like the sky is a glowing lantern guiding her way.
Just a few years ago, she wouldn’t have noticed that. Beauty was less than irrelevant; it was invisible to her.
Now, when she looks down over the warm light and the golden blanket of wheat and rapeseed towards the village she just caught a shuttle to, she feels the familiar anger rising up again, at all the time she has lost; all the things she’s rushing to catch up to feeling.
We all have our own pace , so many of her friends have told her. But twenty is a lot of years to lose.
Still, despite her best efforts to stay gloomy, she feels the tug of calmness, of anticipation, as the farmhouse comes into view. During her time on Voyager , she asked a lot of people to describe home to her. But she doesn’t think she quite understood it until that morning a few years ago now, hours before her last implant removal surgery. A small hand had touched her back and a low, soft voice had said “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Before then, Seven had spent so much time trying to recapture something like the feeling of the collective: of belonging without trying; belonging no matter what you tried to do to stop it. But that morning, she realised she had stumbled upon something else, something maybe better. A place to come back to because she chose it. A place worth fighting for.
A place to return to when the world, and the worlds beyond it, seem too stormy to weather.
She sees Seven coming, of course. She may live off the grid when she’s in Indiana and not in her apartment in San Francisco overlooking the bay, but underneath the warm dirt and flourishing crops, there are carefully controlled security measures.
Seven should know; she installed and upgraded at least half of them.
“I didn’t call,” she tells Kathryn when she reaches the door, like this is news to her.
“You never have to,” Kathryn replies, and it feels good to hear even if she already knew.
It is strange now, to remember a time when they existed only as Captain and Seven, the red uniform a shield and a forcefield all at once.
How many Janeways did she miss, back then? How many versions of herself did Kathryn keep hidden for all those years, never showing them to anyone?
Take this one, now, in her wide, comfy cotton blend shirt, eyes crinkled as she smiles like it’s easy. She’s grown her hair out, swept it to the side in a braid. Seven likes the way it feels, when she brushes out the waves at night. When she wraps her hands in it and rolls beneath her, on top of her.
There were so many hidden things between them once, and even so, even then, Kathryn was the first person Seven ever learned to trust.
“Do you have company?” she queries, as she takes the glass of water offered to her with a tilt of the head. Behind Kathryn, out of the kitchen window, the golden glow begins to burn, like a watery pink paintbrush has dripped onto the sky.
“No.” Kathryn smiles, that smile that says she knows what Seven is asking, at once pleased that she cares and like the answer is obvious.
Seven feels heat rise in her cheeks. That’s still new enough of a feeling to make her break eye contact and clutch her glass more firmly. There are so many layers to the way humans speak to each other. Once she found that inefficient; now, after years of study, it’s something she appreciates and feels inadequate at all at once.
She scrambles to ask the questions she should: about the refugees she has housed in Kathryn’s converted barn; about the Federation address Kathryn gave yesterday; about Phoebe’s son’s first term at the Academy.
But when she looks up, there’s a softness; unfiltered, unchained by duty and the burden of two hundred lives depending on her looking back. It is a gift, that she is allowed here. Allowed inside this sanctuary. A gift she will never take for granted, not after the first year they came home and Kathryn let her go . Not now, when they’ve found their way back to each other.
“Come here,” she says, instead of the things she thinks she should say, letting the corners of her mouth curl up the way they want to.
Kathryn quirks her eyebrow, in that way she has. A Captain, then an Admiral, she doesn’t follow many orders. Yet she comes closer, so their bodies almost touch. This is a familiar dance, but now Seven is allowed to reach out and touch her.
Kathryn’s mouth is soft and firm and as they kiss, the day, the stares at the shuttle station that made her aware of every single asshole who couldn’t stop looking at her ochular implant, melt from her shoulders onto the cool tiles below.
“Seven,” Kathryn whispers, like she’s reassuring herself she’s here, and her open palm comes to rest over her heart beat.
Love is hope, Kathryn said to her once, in an unguarded moment on the holodeck, many years ago now. Even then, even when she’d not understood, Seven had felt instinctively there was a truth to it.
She covers the small, slender fingers with her own. Feels Kathryn turn her hand and take hers, skin and metal, and lets her lead her to the bedroom.
***
In the after, Kathryn watches her like someone solving a puzzle. Seven sighs, a human trait she’s embraced with enthusiasm. That’s the thing about home. The people there know you enough to know when there’s something wrong.
“I won’t push unless you want me to,” Kathryn tells her, fingers drawing invisible lines over Seven’s arm.
Seven twists her fingers around the implants on her other hand, at once strangely pleased at being known so well, and annoyed that she can’t have this moment of mindless peace before her brooding restarts. “It’s nothing,” she tries, but it’s so half hearted Kathryn doesn’t even blink.
“Ah,” she says instead, the all knowing Kathryn Janeway once again. Infuriating. “So it’s about Raffi.”
Seven lets herself drop backwards onto her pillow. Resisting Kathryn’s probing is ultimately futile, she knows from experience. Still, she gives it one last shot. “You told me once that being a know-it-all was not an endearing human quality.”
Kathryn laughs, propping herself up on her elbow. “Well, when you spend a lot of time together, you tend to rub off on each other.”
“Tom would have made a joke here,” Seven says, allowing her mouth to quirk in line with Kathryn’s. It’s nice to be able to joke with Kathryn about those days on Voyager without the cloud in her eyes. Seven wasn’t the only one that came out of the Delta Quadrant with deep wounds.
Now, she’s able to to laugh about some of it, or give in to reminiscing about the good times, without collapsing into a special kind of guilt Seven sometimes thinks only Kathryn Janeway is capable of.
She is reminded, in this room she has visited so often over these past years, that she knows Kathryn too. Maybe better than anyone else ever has.
For example, Seven knows that she often tries to please those she cares for, even at her own expense. A kind of preemptive atonement for sins Kathryn perceives she might commit. It’s a tendency that Seven now worries she has exploited with this arrangement.
“I am certain you don’t want to hear about this,” she says softly, testing the waters. This is something she’s still practicing; learning to lead in softly rather than just blurting things out. She’s not always good at it but it’s easier with Kathryn. Years and years of caring for each other has given her at least some idea of how to dig behind that stoical exterior.
Almost subconsciously, Seven brushes her hand over Kathryn’s temple. Her hair is tinged white there, a hint of the Admiral that saved them all those years ago. Seven’s chest feels tight suddenly, like all the things inside her are pushing at her bones and skin and the metal embedded between them.
Kathryn’s eyebrows draw together. “I’ve spent twenty five years telling you I want to hear what you’re thinking.” Her voice has that steel in it that Seven at once finds infuriating and irresistible.
Kathryn is calling her bluff, she knows. Or maybe , her inner voice says, maybe she really doesn’t mind. Seven turns her face up to the ceiling; to the skylight right above the bed that looks out at the stars. She imagines a younger Kathryn, lying her, looking up at the worlds she longs to visit, no idea that she will take a crew the furthest any has ever gone.
Now, Kathryn says she finds the stars comforting. A reminder that no matter how big things seem on Earth, the universe is infinite and they’re mere specks in it, existing for the briefest blink of an eye.
Seven sometimes jokes that that point of view is very Borg, so that she keeps the things she really wants to say inside. Kathryn hates it when people give her credit for what she did with Voyager . For every soul she brought home she feels doubly those she didn’t. For every species they made first contact with, she aches for the years she cost her crew.
The stars might be infinite but in her world, her universe, Kathryn has always been at the centre. The one who pulled her out and trusted her; the one who always came back for her. Even on Earth, in the end.
And after all these years, and maybe because of them, Kathryn is still her sounding board of preference. And over that time, it’s become more of a give and take, as Kathryn has opened up too. Equals, finally.
But this topic is one Seven rarely mentions with Kathryn, despite her saying she’s fine with it. She may be twenty years behind on her humanity but even she knows that discussing one lover with the other is bad form.
Still, they both know it’s why she came, and as always, it bursts out of her in the end. “She just,” Seven starts, trying to find the words as succinctly as possible. “She is just so stubborn .” Beside her, Kathryn lets out a breath that might be a laugh, but Seven isn’t finished. “She takes on responsibility for everyone she cares about and burdens herself with every perceived mistake she’s ever made. She won’t talk about it, but she tells me that I’m afraid of commitment, and she-“ Seven breaks off, and turns to her side. “I’ve just realised, she’s not unlike you.”
It surprises her, because in many ways, Raffi is the opposite of Kathryn. Quicker to anger. Less reclusive with her emotions.
But the higher standard they hold themselves to, as some kind of agonising self-flagellation, that is a common theme. She can’t believe she never saw it before.
Kathryn’s eyebrows shoot up. “Funny,” she says, forced lightness in her tone, “I was just thinking she sounds like you.” She prods Seven playfully. “Stubborn. Taking burdens on herself she doesn’t have to…”
“It’s not the same,” Seven denies, even if she knows there’s some truth to the observation. She rolls her shoulders, suddenly very uncomfortable. “It’s not fair to talk to you about this.”.
“I told you I was fine with our agreement.”
Kathryn’s eyes soften, and her fingers trace Seven’s jaw; something Seven always enjoyed the feeling of. Once again, she’s overcome by a strong wave of fury at herself, that she can’t just be content with this. With this wonderful woman she’s loved for half her life, who knows her better than anyone else ever has. Who has gone to bat for her time and time again; who trusts her when she trusts next to no one else with the person behind the Admiral.
“You say that,” she replies softly, “but you never seem to act on it yourself.” Not once, that Seven knows of, in all the years they’ve had this arrangement.
Something crosses Kathryn’s face then, something Seven recognises. Something thoughtful and intimate, like a secret is fighting it’s way out of her subconscious. Seven intertwines their hands, shifting onto her shoulder so they can make eye contact properly.
“I’m not sure I can love more than one person at once.” Kathryn speaks slowly, thoughtfully, and even though Seven’s stomach twists at the words, she doesn’t interrupt. This is a conversation they’ve been putting off too long. “But I know you can, Seven. And you’ve missed the chance for so much love in your life already. I won’t limit you to me.”
Seven opens her mouth, but Kathryn shakes her head.
“No,” she says, “I’m not quite done.” She pauses. “You don’t share me with others the way I share you,” she acknowledges, “but you share me with something harder to compete with.”
“If this is about your duty , I-“
Kathryn silences her with a look. “I know you don’t fully understand it, but I’ve given my life to this, because I believe in it. I always have, Seven.”
Seven sighs again. “I know that.”
“But you don’t understand it.” Kathryn sits up, her face earnest but open. An openess Seven had longed for on Voyager but that Kathryn hadn’t been able to allow herself until they had Earth’s soil back under their feet.
“No.” Seven acknowledged that truth with the tilt of her head. “I don’t. The way they treated us when we came home. The way they treated you , after all you did, after all you sacrificed-“
“The Federation is more than Starfleet. More than the people in it.” They’ve had this discussion before, but it still makes Seven smile. That someone who has seen so much still has a core of such idealism attracts her like the opposite pole of a magnet. What must it be like, to have faith in a higher ideal; to trust in that when you can’t trust the people around you? How comforting must that be, on the loneliest of days.
“I have the Rangers,” Seven comments, managing not to laugh at the way Kathryn’s eyebrows twitch.
They’ve agreed to disagree on this particular topic. Don’t ask, don’t tell, except on nights when Seven sends long, rambling holomessages about revenge and grief and wakes up in the morning to a reply of love and comfort and someone sharing her burden.
Kathryn is softness and kindness and idealism, and also the hard choices, the pragmatist. A contradiction she’s never tired of studying.
“I care about her.” Seven hasn’t said that to Raffi yet. She realises now she had to tell Kathryn first, like requesting a blessing.
“I won’t pretend like it doesn’t sting,” Kathryn says with a smile, “but it also makes me happy.”
Seven nods in acknowledgment. She knows that feeling. “I felt the same, when you went on the USS Nomad mission.” Three years in deep space; communications only once or twice a year.
Kathryn nods. “I know.”
There are no apologies for the way they are, not anymore. They are what they are, limitations and all.
But there is something else she needs to say. “I have never felt for anyone the way I feel for you,” Seven tells her honestly. “If you asked me to, I would -“
“I know,” Kathryn replies, her voice a little thick. “I know. That’s why I won’t ask you to.”
***
“Picard asked after you,” Seven tells her later, over a simple dinner of omelette from Phoebe’s hens, and salad from the garden.
Kathryn laughs. “I’m done with Starfleet,” she mimics, in an exaggerated imitation of Seven’s own voice, “and now you’re travelling up and down the galaxy with Jean Luc .”
“Don’t be jealous,” Seven teases, something she’s gotten better at over all these years. “I’ve always preferred your ‘do it’ to ‘make it so’. More efficient.”
Grinning, Kathryn takes a sip of water. “You should bring them here. Your crew.”
Seven freezes, eyes widening. “Really?”
“Yes.” Kathryn nods. “I want to know the people who are important to you.” A pause, but Seven knows more is coming. Then it does. “Have you told her? About us?”
“Bits of it.” About us is over twenty five years of longing and loving and connection. It is also the most precious thing Seven has ever possessed, and she is careful who she gives pieces of it to.
“You can always bring the people you care about here.” She doesn’t say it, but Seven hears it anyway. Knows it in the way her clothes rest in the drawers for weeks, months sometimes, but never move. In the way her preferences are top of the replicator favourites list,.
Her throat feels thick, suddenly, and her eyes sting. “Even Chakotay?” she jokes, trying to stave off the emotions.
Kathryn’s face clouds over before she sees the mischievous look on her face. “No,” she growls anyway, and Seven laughs.
“Alright,” she says then, after a moment of letting the laughter cleanse her. “I’ll bring her here.”
“Yes?” Kathryn’s eyes smile, and it’s as warm as any sun Seven has ever seen.
“Yes,” she replies. “I want her to see my home.”