Annika Has Wings
by Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)

RATING: NC-17
CODES: J/7
SUMMARY: Even with Kathryn's help, Seven is not adjusting well to life among millions of humans on Earth. Part of a series I am doing of unrelated stories, exploring the possibilities now the crew are home. Warning: this is an extremely unpleasant story, and reading over it, I think I might be dangerous to know. Exercise extreme caution.


She is wearing white. I remember now as I watch her walk the path to our house. White trousers over her slender legs, and a white jumper, under which you can see her bra. I wonder if the Starfleet humans she was meeting looked.

She hasn't seen me. I am upstairs, a small face at the window, and she's looking to see how much her daisies have grown. Oh, she'll be surprised.

She comes in, I can hear her in our hallway. Cornflower blue, with a richer blue on the carpet. Looking in the mirror at her smooth red hair. Her creamy skin. I am waiting at the top of the stairs.

She doesn't see me. Instead she goes into the dining room, and replicates herself a coffee. Eats some of last night's cherry pie from our dishes, the special ones her mother gave us with the fir-green borders.

She activates the viewscreen. I hear her laugh at something on the newscast. Talking to herself, her mouth full. She sounds delightful. I come downstairs, a step at a time. I am wearing purple velvet.

She turns to me, resting with her bottom on the counter. Her mouth is full. I see the food inside it.

"Hi!" she says. She would never have said "hi" on Voyager. How much she has changed. "Did you see this?" she asks, indicating the news report with a stab of her fork.

"No," I say.

On the back patio, her dog Beauty is panting to be let in. She slides the door open with her foot, one eye still on the newscast.

"Can you come upstairs, Kathryn?" I ask her.

She looks at me over her shoulder. I believe she thinks I am suggesting lovemaking. She often accuses me of not being very romantic when I proposition her.

"Sure," she says, and the wicked grin she has lets me know she is DEFINITELY thinking of sex. She leaves her pie on the counter.

I walk ahead of her, my bare feet on the stair carpet. My toenails are painted baby pink, by her, last week. All the way up, she holds my hand.

She follows me silently into our sunny yellow bedroom. Her hand is on my back now, stroking around the silver lines of one of my implants, under my clothes.

I enjoy making love to Kathryn. Seeing her face dark, hair shine, skin glow, sweat glitter. Eating all those. Her mouth is sticky and loving on mine right now, red and wet like the morello cherries in the pie she was eating.

Then, she sees Tallulah. Her attention has moved across the space of our yellowflower bed to where she rests, blue skin, blonde hair, blue lips. Tiny hands, wrapped in Kathryn's pink towel.

Kathryn has no breath.

"Seven?" she says, without sound.

"Yes, I wanted you to see," I say.

"What ... whose baby is this?"

"Tallulah is mine," I tell her.

"Wha ..." she asks, rather dumbly.

"It seems I am still unaccustomed to my biology, Kathryn. This morning I produced this child."

"What?" she breathes. "How?!"

"I must have been gestating it for the past nine months."

"No ..." she says. "No, Seven ...."

"I must have been," I repeat softly. "This morning, she was born."

"No, that's not true. You haven't been pregnant. I ... we would have noticed!" Her voice is high and shrill on this sentence. She is frightened. Her eyes are grey and wide.

She is reaching towards the baby, maybe wanting to make sure she is real, and not a doll or a hologram. She is very still.

"It is possible that we did not," I tell her. "It has happened to individuals in the past."

"Not THIS century!" she exclaims, turning back to me. Livid spots of fear and anger stand out on her face. "It's not possible. Where did you get this baby from, Seven?"

"She is mine," I say, and even I don't like the obstinate tone of my voice. "Chakotay is her father, and she is mine."

Kathryn's face is dark, because she hates it when I remind her that I made love to Chakotay once. But then I hate it when she reminds me that she did, too.

She calms down, and becomes Captain Janeway as she comes over to me.

"I know you're not telling me the truth, Seven," she says gently. "Now ... where did you get her from?"

I think Kathryn is a little afraid of me. Her face is pale and her voice is not exactly steady. I know what she is thinking. She is thinking about last week, when I put a bundle of paper in the corner of her woodshed and lit it on fire. She is thinking about the time I urinated on the sofa in front of her Starfleet friends. She is thinking about the broken cheekbone she had to lie about at Starfleet medical.

She is thinking about the way I have not adapted to life on Earth, the way that so many individuals has made me small, and scared, and angry.

Nonetheless, she is continuing. "We would have noticed if you had become pregnant, darling," she says gently. "And look at you, you certainly haven't given birth this morning. I know I'm not an expert, but I'm not stupid, either."

Eyes on me, steady, voice like the coffee she has just been drinking. She thinks she has a handle on this. She thinks she's Captain Janeway. She goes over to where Tallulah lies.

"No, darling, she's very pretty, but she isn't yours."

She reaches out her finger and slowly strokes Tallulah's meadowsweet cheek. She's been lying there for hours. She must be cold by now.

Kathryn's eyes go black with terror. Maybe she only just saw how blue Tallulah is. Maybe she didn't understand.

"Seven ..." she says. Her voice is vespertine.

I close my eyes so I don't see anything. I am in the darkest pit of me.

Her white hands on me, shaking my shoulders. Asking me what I have done. She doesn't understand.

Today, we are Borg. Today, Annika has perfection. I could feel them, almost the whole collective under my skin as I was walking. Striking out. All my weapons coming out, and brimming out, and knowing that they know me well enough to make me love them

one

more time. All their beauty screaming horror, unfolding all my pain and hatred like a rage.

And how quick it all came back. Not quite forgotten. It was all there underneath, like crying birds and crying mothers. Hordes and hordes of hatreds like a holocaust.

And all my shields and all my weapons whispered remembrances to me. And when they tried to hurt me

>how I glow ... and go ... and go<

"I got her from the hospital," I say.

I open my eyes and Kathryn is in front of me. She smells of nausea, and she is grey. "You ... took this child from a hospital?" she asks, voice and body trembling the way she does when close to coming. I am reminded of our sex life.

"Yes, I reactivated my Borg systems, and it was easy," I tell her. "I got in there and chose her, and took her home with me."

"Was she alive when you took her, Seven?" she asks. Whispering. She is afraid of the answer.

"Yes," I think of Tallulah, her rose skin and blue eyes. I thought how they looked already like Kathryn's eyes, watching me calmly in the dark metal of night. Tallulah was definitely our child. "I was in danger of being captured by Security, and had no choice but to use my Borg relocation device to return here. It was assimilated from Species 536, and like most transportation devices, it is not recommended for use by newborn subunits. Tallulah suffered from a haemocythemic imbalance, and she died at 0952."

Kathryn looks ill. She is very pale, and for a moment I am reminded of how my own Borg-infested green skin once looked. "I have to call somebody," she says at last.

"No," I say. "They'll want to take Tallulah away."

She looks at me. She's going to do it anyway. "We need them, Seven," she says. "You .. need help, and that baby ..."

"Let her sleep!" I shriek. She doesn't understand.

"She's DEAD!" she yells back. I am reminded of her voice, unselfconscious in orgasm. "You killed her, Seven! Took some poor woman's baby, and KILLED her!"

"No, I didn't ..." She doesn't understand. "Tallulah died of a haemocythemic imbalance at 0952 this morning. I didn't kill her!"

"Stay here," she says. "I'm going to call security."

"No!" I shout. I grab hold of Kathryn's white lamb jumper. Pull her back to me. She is so small, I am reminded of Tallulah and her delicate features. She really was our daughter.

"Ahhh!" she says. My Borg hand is holding her too hard.

"No ..." I plead. "You can't. They'll take her away. And me as well."

"Let go," she cautions.

"Why do you want them to take me?"

"Seven, I don't know what's happened to you. I know it's been difficult for you on Earth, that it's been traumatic ... I've done my best to try and help you through it. But this ... this is too big. I can't help you with this even if I wanted to."

"Tallulah was meant to be our child, Kathryn!" I tell her, and my voice sounds weak and strained. "I picked her because she's fair like me, and small like you...."

"Seven, listen to me ..." she whispers, very gently now, cupping my face in her palms. "You need help."

"No!" I shriek right in her bossy face. "I don't need help! Why don't you understand me, Kathryn?"

"Understand you?! There's a dead baby on my bed, Seven! A little girl YOU killed, who had a mother and a father, and a family who loved her ..."

"They will adapt!"

She says nothing to this for a long moment. Her mouth is an open pool of black mud. "Even you have to see that is not the attitude of a sane person," she says gravely.

But I am not letting her go to call Security. The hand that is on her arm tightens. She will have to rip it out of its socket and spray this room with her blood if she wants to go now. Our yellowflower bedroom, where just two nights ago, she made the same noises she is making now, when she was coming. The last time we made love together.

"Seven, let me go," she says, bringing Captain Janeway into play. Then Kathryn once again. Trying to order me, then reason with me. "Please."

"No," I say. Petulant, I think she calls this. "Tallulah is our baby, Kathryn, she died for this, I think the least you could do is to sit with us for ten minutes and hold her."

"Oh, you've lost it, Seven ..."

So she is annoyed. Angry. Mean. Won't hold our Tallulah, won't look at her and her lovely white-horse skin. The soft downy hair on our daughter's cheek. She thinks I'm crazy and she doesn't love me like this, I'm scaring her. I did all of this for nothing.

My mouth wrestles with hers. She is all teeth, trying to squirm away, making desperate sounds.

"What ..." she gasps, mocking me as I let her go. "You're going to rape me now, too?!"

Sometimes I forget how beautiful she is, her freckles a soft ginger in the sun of our floor-to-ceiling windows, hair flaming in the surge of light. Her eyes, so close to mine, are so blue. Her mouth tastes like coffee and cherries and something she had for lunch at her conference with the Starfleet people. Her tongue tastes lovely, so I bite it until it bleeds.

Blood is coming out of her mouth when I pull away, and her eyes are pouring tears from the pain. She didn't really think I WAS going to rape her, at first. Now, she really thinks I AM.

Blood all down her soft white jumper. A couple of drips on her trousers, even. She holds the back of her hand against her mouth, making a sobbing noise. I don't let her go.

Instead my human hand goes between her legs and holds her. Hard. She squeaks and tries to speak around her bleeding, swelling tongue. The wildness of her eyes.

"Sev ... An-Annika ... please ..."

I rip her jumper and her bra, squeeze those small firm breasts until I think they are going to burst in my hands. She is mine to mould, just as I was hers. When I let them go, long red finger marks stand out on her ashen flesh.

Her nipples are bright with pain. Exactly the same colour as the cherries of her pie. I bite into one to see how ripe it tastes, how succulent. She squeals and fights my head, but every push just drags her nipple with it.

I could bite it off. I might. Punishment for never having nursed my Tallulah, or my child, or my baby, or me. Kathryn, once my mother, now my lover ... but I'm still her baby.

I bite down and she moans, her agony is lubricated by her blood, a metal spurt between my teeth as I rupture that silky, sweet-smelling flesh. I suckle her like that's her milk. Her blood, all down my chin like sticky jam, like overripe berries. I can almost feel her nipple tearing as she howls.

I see her face, blood on her mouth, tears and make-up around her eyes. A picture of a silent scream, trying to endure, trying to cope. My baby, little soft sweet Kathryn/Tallulah, how I'm hurting you. Hurting you. Fuck you.

I take my teeth away and she falls to her knees looking sick and slack. I'm not touching her, but she's not running. Looking at her breast in disbelief. The blood is shocking, sick, red, her breast is meat. She is looking at me, bleeding mouth open, bleeding breast in hand.

If I let her go, all this is over, isn't it. I can't let her go. If I let her go ... she goes away. Kathryn. It all goes away.

She was the first thing I saw when I was thrown from the Borg. When I couldn't hear the others. When there were no others, only Kathryn

I grin. This isn't over yet, Captain Janeway. her blood on my face, too. On my hands, on my dress.

Her face is like the photos of the small child Kathryn Gretchen showed me. Gretchen's daughter.

"No ... no!" she moans wildly as I move for her again. She dives for the doorway but my fingers on her legs pull her back close, legs apart. I press down on the inner thighs, spreading her and pressing her until I see the shape of her labia through the crotch of her white trousers. She is wild and struggling. She fears I might do to her clitoris what I did to her nipple.

I hold her down across her white belly while I rip her pants. Worm my fingers into that dark-smelling flesh. She's not wet, she's dry with fear. Hisses and writhes when my Borg hand goes into her, two whole fingers when I normally use one.

"Ahhh!" she says again. She's so tight.

Part of me hears Kathryn in passion here.

"Please stop ..." she says to me. "No ... no more ..."

I stop. I can't hear Kathryn in passion here.

I let her go, sitting back and away from her. She almost bursts into tears. Still holding her breast, and blood is still coming from it, mixed with droplets of her tears and mucus from her nose.

"You had better call for Security, Kathryn," I say. "Quickly."

She looks at me for a long moment, and then nods. Silently, but quickly, she pulls her pants back into place, then leaves the room, going downstairs. Her blood drips from her the whole way.

I feel sick, everything I've ever eaten seems to be bubbling up. I lean forward and vomit pours from my throat onto the carpet. It is partly yellow, from the chadre kab I had for lunch, partly red, from ingesting Kathryn's blood. Some of the vomit comes out through my nose. Downstairs I can hear Kathryn crying over the comm.

Poor Kathryn. I'm so sorry. Sitting on the clean sheets of our bed, I take Tallulah in my arms. Pretty baby, like Kathryn said. I try to imagine how this would feel if she had come from my body or Kathryn's. How much I would love her. This is good. I can focus on this.

Her soft pale lips, rose and pursed. Her eyes are closed, but under the delicate lids, they are blue. I kiss each one gently, the way I sometimes kiss Kathryn's eyes when she is sleeping next to me. Her skin is silken.

They are coming. I hear transporters outside the window. I kiss Tallulah's eyes again, and let her go.

THE END


Please write to me, but don't flame. I don't know what came over me.

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