Disclaimer: All characters belong to Paramount, the order of the words belongs to me.
Rated NC-17
Post Unimatrix Zero/Endgame AU.
J/C, J/Borg Queen, 7/Borg Queen. Some people may want warnings for this, but I'm not saying anything specific, except that I'm playing a little darker than usual here. Consider yourself generally warned and read on, or else return to the erotica index to find something more to your taste. Thanks a million, Mary S., for betaing.
She comes to him in the night, stealing into his quarters like a wraith, shedding her clothes, and squeezing naked into his bed. Chakotay comes awake to small hands skating over his chest, down to scratch at his groin, and wrap around his tumescence. She has never come to him before on Voyager. Kathryn's rules are the binding ones, and their passion is only ever set free off the ship. On shore leave. On New Earth.
He doesn't waste time with questions, simply rolls her underneath him, and bites her breasts as he knows she likes, squeezing them roughly with his large palms. His penis prods insistently at her inner thighs, until she spreads out for him and he pushes inside, a hard sharp thrust, not stopping until he meets the blind end of the tunnel. The first time is rough, almost violent, until the urgency is gone. It always is. It seems both of them need the reassurance that only climax can bring. She contracts fiercely around him, milks his cock with clenching muscles, as he fucks her hard, fast, until he comes in a soundless spill, leaving his seed inside her. Now they can love. Now they can caress, now the whispered words of love can be spoken, now they will merge in a gentle rustle of bedclothes, the sigh of skin on skin, the sweet clench of climax. First the need, then the love. Every time the same.
Chakotay knows why she has come to him tonight. There might not be another chance for a long time, if ever. Tomorrow, Kathryn, B'Elanna, and Tuvok will be Borg, and the spirits only know if they will return.
"I love you, Chakotay," she whispers into his neck, so that he feels the words vibrate against his skin.
He tightens his grip. Tomorrow there will be the marks of his hands underneath the implants. Underneath the armor. Underneath the cybernetic attachments and devices. The Borg Queen can never take his mark away.
***
The bruises from his hands are the first things the Borg Queen notices when she removes Kathryn's clothes. Kathryn feels the caress of breath on her neck. Serpent-like, the Queen's neck tilts, the better to study the mark.
"Did my sweet Harry do this?" she whispers. "I hope not. He will be mine, and I would hate for you to have had him first."
Kathryn is silent. Raw fear pulsates in this place, the echoes of assimilations past. The Queen's chamber, the center of the collective. She will not sully Chakotay's name by speaking it here. She keeps his strength for herself.
A hand drifts down her neck, fingers her breast, feathers over her stomach, touches wiry curls.
"Hair," muses the Queen. "A vestigial remnant. It serves no purpose." A Borg drone activates in the corner, summoned by a mental flicker. A knife-sharp beam of laser light flickers over Kathryn's pubic area, and the hair curls and withers like parchment in flame.
The Queen carefully brushes away the ashen remains, leaving Kathryn as smooth as an egg. The cold air sits uneasily on the newly exposed skin. In spite of herself, the touch of the Queen's fingers--curved, impersonal, cool pads--coaxes a wave of liquid arousal from her.
Chakotay. Kathryn summons his image from her mind. Chakotay lying golden and limpid in the tangled nest of sheets. Was it only this morning? The sonic shower has taken the scent of him from her body, but she will let nothing erase him from her mind
She forces herself to remain still as the Queen's fingers caress her labia. Her nipples tingle; the cool air, she tells herself, nothing more. The Queen curves closer, leaning in, so close that Kathryn can see the mottling on her skin, the join of flesh and cybernetics on her torso. The thought flickers through her mind before she can suppress it - are there breasts under that molded covering, is there a humanoid torso, remnants of the race she once was? Or is it only an exoskeleton, a veneer covering the machine?
"I was humanoid once, Kathryn. Like you. Like your pet, Seven of Nine. We are very alike, the three of us."
The cybernetic implant in her brain burns, as if the Queen's words are scorching into her mind. And they are. She knows it won't be long before assimilation is complete. Already, the raised welts that precede the eruption of spidery skin implants are forming.
"I want you to retain your human beauty for a little time longer, Kathryn." A slim finger slips inside her sex. It sears, like the words in her head. "It's not often I have a lover as beautiful as you."
She feels its probing, an impersonal touch, a medical touch.
"Quite the active one, aren't you, Kathryn." The Queen's voice slides over her ear like the underbelly of a serpent. "Who was inside you last night?" The insidious finger curls around, pressing her inner walls. "Someone was. If it wasn't my little Harry, then who was it? Was it Tom Paris? Is this his semen I'm feeling?"
The fingers coax a rush of moisture. Kathryn closes her eyes. The warm feeling spreads out from her sex, waves of pleasure. She doesn't want this, she loves Chakotay.
Chakotay. The word is picked out of her head like a ripe apple. A burst of pain, like a phaser hit, and an implant blooms on the skin of her breast.
The Queen bends, puts her lips to it, lapping it with a gentle tongue. "Touch me, Kathryn. Touch me as if I were Chakotay."
Without volition, Kathryn's hands rise and run lightly over the mottled skin, over the fusion of armor, over the smooth, bald head.
And closes her eyes in shuddering arousal as the Queen drops to her knees and pushes her tongue against her newly exposed slit. She feels the bloom of an implant on her sex, knows that the silver threads are spreading on her skin like desert flowers. The Queen's tongue traces the newly erupted implant, tickling the sensitive flesh and Kathryn explodes into orgasm.
***
The destruction of Unimatrix Zero includes Seven of Nine. As the mental paradise disintegrates, her dream of Axum crumbles with it and Seven's precarious grip on reality slips another step toward the precipice of madness. With Janeway still confined to sickbay, while the EMH works on restoring the away team's humanity, Chakotay is forced to restrain Seven in the brig, worried that she will harm herself, or someone else. Even so, she somehow manages to short circuit the force field and the resulting discharge arcs through her implants, a shuddering surge of power that kills the ensign on brig duty as he works frantically to stop her.
The acrid smell of burning flesh hangs in the brig, but Seven ignores it, stepping over Ensign O'Connor's crumpled body and shambling out into the corridor, a disoriented shell of her former self. Her steps are hesitant, the voices in her head compelling her to move, a cacophony of demands that she can barely comprehend, much less carry out their orders.
"Axum," she moans, her child-like voice falling unnoticed in the hung tension of the corridors. "Axum, I can't find you..." Blindly, she stumbles into the wall, rights herself, and continues toward the shuttle bay with an instinct she no longer has the capacity to analyze.
Tuvok's security team surrounds her on Deck 4, setting phasers to stun, and then watching in horror as they are rendered ineffective.
"She's adapted... She's Borg,"
Cocooned in her invulnerable insanity, Seven staggers through them all, driven by the voices in her head.
Chakotay sees the unauthorized shuttle launch from the bridge.
"Tractor beam, Harry! Now!"
The tractor beam dissipates, and the shuttle sails away unhindered.
"Can you follow her course?" Chakotay is on his feet, staring at the view screen.
"I'm trying, Commander. She's masking her warp trail somehow." Harry's fingers tap the screen frantically, trying decryption codes, recalibrating sensors. "It's no good. She's gone." His face is bleak.
Chakotay nods once, and returns to the command chair. Right now, his main concern is the away team, fighting to regain their individuality in sick bay. For once, Seven's needs will have to take a back seat.
"Try and trace her, Harry. Set sensors to scan for her bio sign, or Borg signature. I'll be in sickbay."
It is the best he can do.
***
Driven by instincts that transcend her human individuality, Seven launches a beacon. A Borg cube fifteen light years immediately picks it up. They beam her onto the cube, leaving the shuttle to drift as space flotsam. Seven closes her eyes and longs for the sweet pierce of assimilation tubules. She yearns for this feeling of joining, of being a part of the one, which was only suppressed, not erased, when she was originally severed from the hive mind.
The drone falters before the tubules can pierce her neck, and Seven whimpers. "Please..."
The tubules stab her neck, but it is not the longed-for unification.
She wakes minutes or a lifetime later in the arms of the Borg Queen.
Seven's vision returns, her hand instinctively feeling for the ocular implant she knows must be sprouting. But her fingers only find the vestigial remnant of her previous Borg existence above her left eye. She closes her eyes, searching among the wasteland that is her mind for the voice of the collective. Nothing. Her fingers trace along her face, along her shoulders, breast, and stomach. No implants, only the smooth carapace of her humanity.
The Borg Queen watches knowingly, and strokes Seven's face with a gentle curved hand. It looks like a claw. "You worry too much," she says, and her voice soothes Seven's turbulent mind. "You always were my favorite. Soon, you will rejoin me. Soon we will be united once more. Do you want that, Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One?"
Seven nods. She wants to curl up on her lap, press her face to the Queen's crotch, and smell the acrid mix of woman and machine. Janeway would never let her do that, even when she begged, even when she pleaded. Janeway smells like her mother, like the sea, like fjords, like kelp. Seven can only remember her childhood in the scent of her captain's cunt.
Unblinking, the Queen bends, presses a cold kiss to Seven's forehead. "Soon, my love. But first, you have to do something for me."
Seven acquiesces, even before she knows what it is, even when she realizes it means remaining in her human imperfection a while longer.
***
Chakotay dreams that Kathryn comes to him from sickbay, trailing her discarded implants behind her, like a chain of horror. He wakes, to find her standing in his doorway. The Doctor's released her to his care, and she didn't want to wake him to collect her. Silently, she slips into his bed, turns into his arms, presses her face into his chest, burrowing in like a small, hurt animal. Her tears slide over his skin.
He comforts in the way he knows best, with his body, with his kisses, with his hands. Kathryn pushes his mouth down to her sex.
He dives in, delighted to be there, loving her taste. He doesn't understand her urgency to have him do this, but he laps, pushing a stiffened tongue up inside her, gentling her with lips and fingers. She's dry, so different from her normal slick-oil heat, but he persists and is rewarded. She softens, dampens under his ministrations, then tugs him up along her body, so that his cock is poised between her thighs.
"Now," she whispers, and pulls him into her, so that he sinks down into the clinging heat, into the clasping dampness.
She seems to want him to come, wants him to lose himself in her body, wants his seed to spill inside her. Urging him on with sharp staccato movements of her pelvis, she encourages him to thrust harder, faster, until their bellies are slapping together with the fierceness of their fucking. He obliges. She cries, and they come together in a mingling of fluid, sweat, tears, semen, and female moisture. They are salty together, salty like the sea.
***
Seven pillows her head on the Borg Queen's thighs and presses her face into their apex. There is no smell; there is nothing, but the smooth metallic exoskeleton, nothing but coolness underneath her cheek.
The Queen runs her hands lovingly over Seven's rounded belly, hard like a drum, ovoid and tight. Then, she dips her fingers between Seven's thighs, fingering the fleshy folds, rubbing with care over the tight nub of nerves. Seven doesn't come; she never comes. The concept of orgasm is as strange as living with humans.
***
Janeway and Chakotay live openly together. She's thrown away her binding protocols; he never agreed with them in the first place. They share quarters, they share command, they share their lives. He loves her and he never cared who knew it. She loves him, and is only now seeing the joy in allowing herself to do so.
The Doctor calls her for a physical. It's only a month since she was assimilated, and he wants to be sure.
"Hmmm," he says, in his officious manner. "You should have told me you and the commander were trying for a child."
She raises an eyebrow in surprise. "We're not," she says. "It's simply not possible in our positions. Neither of us really want children anyway."
"Well, you're not pregnant now, Captain," he says smugly. "But you were. The trauma of assimilation obviously caused the embryo to spontaneously abort."
She's surprised. Calculates the times she and Chakotay were together. There were no others. "That's not possible," she says. "My cycle is regular. The only time would have been the night before the away mission. The embryo would have been less than twenty-four hours old."
"Old enough, Captain." The Doctor's scrolling through readings on the screen. He turns, holds up a hypospray. "Do you wish me to renew your contraceptive booster?"
"Sounds like you better. Obviously they're not as effective as we think."
He gives her the hypospray, studies the readings for a further minute. Something's not entirely right.
***
Seven is uncomfortable. Her fecund belly swells too fast. She will come to term, ready to drop it, in only six weeks. But she's a compliant brood mare and she doesn't complain. The Queen strokes her cheek, her breast, her turgid swollen stomach. Seven's cortical implant is activated now; the Queen allowed her a small link to the collective. Enough to satisfy the cravings, a trickle here, a mental reassurance there.
Seven regenerates in the Queen's alcove and tries to sense the baby growing in her. With the nanoprobes in her blood stream, the fetus is already adapting. Seven is a Borg maturation chamber.
The Queen watches, smiles a secret smile. Not everything is shared through the neural link.
***
Harry searches for Seven. It's as if she's been vaporized from the Delta Quadrant. Tom jokes that maybe she took a Borg shuttle back to the Alpha Quadrant, but Harry's pining, and he doesn't find that very funny. He succeeds in tracing her to a small system in Sector 8959, where the trail vanishes again.
Sensors pick up multiple Borg signatures, and something else. Janeway calls a meeting of the senior staff. They discuss the Borg activity and the possibility that this is one of the transwarp hubs that Seven had mentioned existed. Harry takes scans - it is a transwarp hub. Tom plots a course through the nebula to the entrance to the conduit.
Harry thinks of fantastic, impossible rescues of Seven of Nine, which end with him presenting her to his adoring parents as his future bride.
Tom dreams of the exhilaration of the ride to come, how he will dance his way through the transwarp corridor, steering Voyager on a sure and true path.
Chakotay allows himself to dream of a life on Earth with Kathryn. Of sand paintings and deserts, and sand underneath his bare feet.
Janeway dreams of Indiana, the family she has long forgotten, an admiral's pips, and long nights of love with Chakotay.
Janeway decides to go for it. The crew approves, and Starfleet doesn't know. Voyager eases into the nebula at yellow alert. In the center of the bridge, the command team grips hands.
This is their time, thinks Janeway. This is the culmination of it all.
***
The Queen watches from her chamber. She sees Voyager nosing her way carefully through the nebula. Sweet-faced Harry will be at the Ops console. She thinks about keeping him as a pet for Seven, once she's finished with him. But that can wait as Voyager is here and it's time. She summons Seven. Seven is so gravid and ungainly that she can hardly stumble out of her alcove. It's time.
***
Voyager is proceeding at one quarter impulse. Systems are running on bare minimum, and the tension is so thick on the bridge that Janeway is sure she can taste it. She grips Chakotay's hand tighter, and thinks of how they will consume each other in love when this is all over. They enter the transwarp corridor, daring to believe that this may work.
None of Voyager's crew is aware that they've been discovered, until the captain and commander are abruptly transported from the bridge. Tuvok draws his phaser, assumes command, organizes the sensor sweeps. There is no sign of them, and they are caught in the thundering funnel of transwarp and can't escape. They have to continue.
***
They materialize in the Queen's chamber, still clasping hands.
"Welcome back, Kathryn. It's always good to see an old friend again. Welcome, Chakotay. We haven't had the pleasure before, but I know your lover... intimately." The Queen smiles, inspecting him from head to toe. "I don't know what Kathryn sees in you. My Harry is so much more appealing."
"Why have you brought us here?" Kathryn circles, phaser in hand. There's no forcefield to stop her prowl, the Queen knows there is nowhere to go.
"We're friends, Kathryn. Surely, you remember the last time you were here? How much you enjoyed it. How you came apart under my fingers."
"Do you intend to force yourself on me again?" Janeway inquires in level tones.
Chakotay can't stop the indrawn hiss of breath. Not this time. Not while he's got breath in his body to prevent it.
"No." The Queen steps into Janeway's space, inclines her head regally. "And it wasn't force, last time. Be honest with yourself, Kathryn."
"I call it force." She's short in her answer.
Chakotay closes the gap, protecting his woman. "The captain asked you a question. Why have you brought us here?"
The Queen makes a moue of disappointment. "I thought you'd like to see an old friend. And find out what you're leaving behind when you return to the Alpha Quadrant. You see, I know all about your plan to use the transwarp conduits."
"You're going to let us go?" Janeway's voice is tempered steel and she shrugs away Chakotay's hand on her arm. "Why?"
"Do I need a reason? We had an agreement once."
"That was once. One thing I've learned about the Borg," Janeway's mouth twists up in wry fashion, "is that they always want something for their deeds. You most of all. I prefer to be open in my dealings. Tell me what you want."
"But dear, I already have it. Seven, my pet, your friends will see you now."
Seven shuffles into view, following the imperious command. Her once slender figure is grossly distorted, the advanced pregnancy pushing out her belly like an uncontrolled tumor. The blonde hair, no longer immaculately coiffured, hangs lank and snarled around her face. The ocular implant is back in one eye socket, but she still retains her humanity.
"Seven!" Janeway gasps, and crosses to her side. "Are you all right? What have they done to you?"
Seven stares blankly, she appears not to notice her former captain.
"She doesn't recognize you." The Queen crosses to her pet, encircles her with her arms. "What a shame."
Chakotay turns to the Queen. "This isn't possible," he snaps. "Seven wasn't pregnant on Voyager. She's been gone for less than two months."
"It's obviously very possible. A human maturation chamber for a human baby. We use the same techniques to speed up the growth. Unfortunately, it's hard on the host body."
"Why not use your existing maturation chambers?" Chakotay has a tricorder in hand, and he's scanning Seven's swollen abdomen.
"I want this baby born human. Maybe I'll even raise it a little, before I assimilate it. I want my successor to have the best possible chance for development."
A light dawns in Seven's hazy eye and a beam springs out of the ocular implant. She swivels it, directs it to her belly. Scans herself. She likes what she sees. Pushing her lank hair out of her eyes, she rests her hands on her engorged belly and croons. "Rockaby baby, on the tree top."
"Kathryn." Chakotay's hand is shaking so badly he can hardly pass her the tricorder. "Seven's baby... Take a look at the genetic material."
Kathryn takes the tricorder, glances at the reading. She gasps. Recalibrates it. Scans again.
"When the wind blows, the cradle will rock."
The Queen rests a hand on Kathryn's shoulder. "It's a girl. She has red hair like her mother, sallow skin like her father. And the strength of her captain in her genes. She will make a fine Queen."
"It's our child." Chakotay's hands fist at his side. The pain in his head is immense. His child, his and Kathryn's. Destined for the Borg. Destined to grow up without them. Destined to destroy them.
"When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall."
"Of course it is." The Queen glances at Seven, rocking catatonically in a corner. "She will be my new pet. I'll have no use for Seven once she's finished maturing the fetus."
"But how...?" Kathryn holds onto her control with a fine silver thread. This is not happening, she thinks, not real.
"Down will come baby, cradle and all."
"Remember the last time you paid me a visit, Kathryn dear?"
Such limpid eyes the Queen has, Kathryn thinks, slate gray-green, so calm, so sure in what she's doing.
"It was Chakotay's semen that lay inside you. Fresh semen, newly spilled. It was a simple matter to collect it, harvest one of your ovum when I pushed my fingers up inside you. And surprise, there was one already fertilized. Nanoprobes are such useful things. I was going to grow the embryo in a maturation chamber -- it would have been a simple matter to adapt one--but then Seven came. Sweet, biddable Seven." She crosses to the corner, strokes Seven's hair. "Do you want to see your baby born before you go? For you can go, Kathryn, if that is your desire." She strokes Seven's breast, lingering on the nipple. It peaks underneath the dirty catsuit. "You are free to go, whenever you want, and take your little ship back home. I won't try to stop you." She rips the cloth over Seven's breast, bares it to the air. Bending, Seven suckles her own nipple.
The Queen stalks away. "Seven's no good to me anymore. I propose a deal. After the child is born, you can take Seven with you. I'll take Harry in exchange."
It's unconscionable. Even now, Kathryn cannot trade one life for another. She shakes her head, no. No.
"NO! Not my child!" Chakotay's shout echoes through the chamber. "NO!" His eyes are wild, he reaches for his phaser, sets it to kill.
The Queen inclines her head with a half smile. "You've nowhere to go," she observes. A dozen Borg drones activate in a corner.
Chakotay aims, fires. The blast of fire is so hot it singes the air. His aim is true. Seven sits slumped in her corner. There is a gaping hole where her abdomen used to be, the phaser has charred it, burned through cloth, flesh, guts, uterus, unerring and true to the child's heart. Blood and urine pool at her feet.
Seven's face is incredulous. It twists, trying to comprehend what has happened, what has happened to her, where this pain is coming from.
Janeway crosses to her, crouches, pulls her head onto her breast. "Rest now, Seven," she croons. "It's all over, nothing can hurt you again." Rhythmically, she strokes the matted hair, and meets Chakotay's eyes over her head.
Chakotay stands frozen, caught in a rictus of pain. The rational part of his mind knows he should leave, should grab Kathryn and start shooting their way out of there, but he's trapped in the horror of what he's done. He's killed his child. He's killed Kathryn's child. He's killed their child.
The Borg Queen stands immobile, a half smile on her face. She watches.
Chakotay points his phaser at her. It wavers, and in his heart, he knows it's a useless gesture. The Queen will be impervious to his phaser; she would have adapted the moment he shot Seven.
In the corner, Seven's breath is shallow. Her chest barely moves.
"Rest now, Seven..."
Seven closes her eyes. At the moment of her death, the Queen activates the full neural link, and finally, Seven is absorbed back into her family.
Janeway stands. Blood and a piece of bowel are plastered on the front of her uniform. She crosses to Chakotay, takes his hand, raises her chin, and faces her nemesis.
"You may go." The Queen inclines her head. "I won't say it's been a pleasure."
***
They rematerialize on Voyager's bridge. Tuvok catches Kathryn as her knees crumple slightly, handing her to Chakotay with a lift of his eyebrow. Harry gasps, strangles a sob. He knows this concerns Seven; with the instinct of one who cares, he knows.
Chakotay closes his eyes for a moment, and holds Kathryn to his chest, uncaring of the mess on her uniform. No tears now, no time to mourn their child and Seven, no time to question the rightness or otherwise of his decision. Now, they have to bring Voyager home.
***
Janeway lifts her chin, and faces the admirals on the view screen proudly. If they notice her bloodstained uniform and weary face, they don't comment in their stiff-necked pleasure at Voyager's homecoming.
"I look forward to the debriefings, Admiral Paris," she lies. She's holding herself together until she and Chakotay can return to their quarters, and she can cry out her sorrow on his chest. Mourn their child, who never was. Mourn Seven who tried so hard, but never hard enough. And cry for Chakotay, with their child's blood on his hands.
***
Kathryn and Chakotay make love that night, their final night on board their ship. Their bodies move slowly, reverently, in the light of the familiar stars, a slow glissade of a dance, a tender merging that shows each of them how much they love, how deep the caring.
As he spills his seed in her once more, he can't help but wonder, can't help but wish. He cries for his child, dampening Kathryn's neck and breasts with his tears. Maybe, he thinks, maybe in the future.
***
The Borg Queen sees Voyager's triumphant exit from the transwarp hub. She moves around her chamber, accidentally knocking Seven's bloody corpse as she paces.
Her dream is not irrevocably shattered. Crossing to a cryptostorage unit, the Queen opens a drawer. Her enhanced Borg vision sees the ovum and sperm, stored in their separate sealed containers.
All she needs is another suitable maturation vessel.
(((FIN)))
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