Title: Compromise
Author: Celievamp
Feedback address: jo.raine@ntlworld.com
Date in Calendar: 20 December 2005
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Pairing: Seven / B'Elanna
Rating: G/PG
Summary: The ladies consider the paths that led them to this day.
Advertisement: Part of the FSAC:DW05

Disclaimer: The story, and characters and anything and everything else concerning Star Trek belong to Paramount and Gene Roddenberry

COMPROMISE

She is Klingon. She does not compromise not unless her honour is at stake. I am Borg. I do not compromise. Unless logic dictates that is the better course. And yet… Only a few short weeks ago our arguments, our dislike of each other was almost legendary on this ship. So how is it possible that we stand here before our friends and colleagues preparing to take the Great Oath?

Though she was antagonistic to me from the first, Lieutenant Torres – B’Elanna - was always honest. She called me to my face and did not whisper behind my back. Borg. Ice Princess. Drone. The expression on her face the day I retaliated was one of delight. Without declaring it her intention B’Elanna Torres did more than anyone on this ship to help me discover what it was to be human.

And then she married him. Tom Paris. A man singularly unsuited to her. A man without honour or even the concept of it. Unlike B’Elanna he was pleasant to my face even sought to be my friend but he whispered when he thought I could not hear of how he would ‘have’ me one day, see what my body was like under my biosuit. He was and is – irrelevant. But for a time he made her happy. And he gave her Miral.

I was glad that I could not fully experience emotion at that time or my heart would surely have broken. I understood that I was in love with her. I had no comprehension what that meant. I was taken by the Borg at an age and from a situation where I had little experience of love. My parents were not overt in their show of affection towards me though I have no doubt that they loved me in their way. The Borg had no use for it. And my attempts to learn about it since joining Voyager had… mixed results.

She can be so gentle. She is a wonderful mother to Miral. A good friend to me. A passionate yet tender lover. I have long warmed myself in the fire of her passion. Even when it was turned against me in the form of anger or of scorn. At least it meant that she noticed me, that she considered me a worthy opponent. She was too afraid at the beginning of our relationship that her Klingon self would come to the fore, would hurt me, forgetting for the moment what I was. With her previous lovers she has always compromised never given herself fully out of fear that they would be harmed.

I told her that I wanted all of her, everything she has to give. I demanded it. I was the one to match her as she was the one to match me. I did not want her to tame her responses I wanted her wildness her passion. For the first time I knew greed. I wanted her. I wanted everything she had to give. I wanted it all.

And she gave it freely.

Omega, she is perfection. And she is mine.

x-x-x-x-x

She is Borg. She demands perfection. It is the most efficient response. I am Klingon. I strive for perfection, for pure honour’s sake.

I am her perfection. Or so she tells me. As for my Seven. She has become my world.

I am always surprised by the warmth of Seven's hand. The softness of her skin. She is frost to my fire. There is also a fragility to her, deceptive but entrancing. She is Borg, I know she could break me in two if she wanted to, and she is equally as stubborn and arrogant as I can be. And yet she does not see how amazing she is. For too long she believed herself at fault, some essential intrinsic failing within her because she had not experienced all that there was to be human. Physically she had the body of a mature woman but emotionally she was a six year old child. She could mimic an adult response but she had no comprehension of what it meant. And in common with many others on Voyager, I willfully misread her attempts to engage with us. It shames me that it took me so long to understand.

The Borg are emotionless, grey. By engineered design. But not my Seven, my Annika. She is like the prism, that pure bright light that hides within so many colours. The frozen gold of sunlight trapped in her hair. The way my darker skin contrasts against her pale flesh. The bright burning blue flame of her eyes that coolly regard me, the rich red of her full soft lips, just begging to be kissed. The rich colours, the blues and purples she prefers to wear.

I fought against it, against her for so long. I had a child, a failed marriage, my hybrid Klingon birth, my unresolved Maquis status. What the hell did I want with an additional complication like a lover, a partner, who was once of the Borg, our darkest enemy. Not to mention someone so arrogant and superior and willfully ignorant of protocol who had a problem recognizing personal and professional boundaries with her cry of ‘irrelevant’ and her demands to ‘comply’.

And when I got through my own pigheadedness to really ‘see’ her, to take a moment to understand what drove her, what inspired her (and to find to my utter astonishment that it was me), I panicked. I was Klingon. I would only hurt her. And then she assured me that I should not be afraid, I should not hold back. She wanted to experience all that I had to give and she would match me in every respect. And I believed her. Kah’less, she is perfection. And she is mine.

END