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Operation Homestead: Part Four
—Stardate 56535.9—
It was the fifteenth of July, in the year 2379.
Seven months had passed since Voyager’s triumphant return to the Alpha quadrant.
Miral still made it a habit to wiggle her way to freedom from between the skinny slats of her crib each night. The low boom of an Indiana summer storm would jolt her awake, and then she would cry, only to either soothe herself back to sleep or to clamber upon her knees and elbows all the way up into the greenhouse loft.
With one eye open, B’Elanna held the covers aloft so that Miral could climb into bed. She came up every night now for weeks, it seemed. Bruised-purple clouds roiled and rumbled their discontent over an inky black sky, and Miral buried her damp cheeks into the warm crook of her mother’s neck, murmuring a sad “a-maaa” for her other mother who was not there. Again.
“…ghanHa’, baby.” B’Elanna cooed, “Settle.”
Miral cried out for Seven again, restless.
“Shh. Soon.”
The amount of trouble that Kathryn had gone to in order to retrofit the farmhouse with natural gas lines was astonishing. Obtaining permits and scheduling inspections, not to mention the additional installations for noxious gas detection devices —which were hard enough to come by these days, as such devices had not been manufactured in nearly three hundred years— were amongst some of the pains of renovating. But the Captain was still the same old captain, and where there was a will, there was most definitely a way. All of that effort just to strike a tiny wooden stick tipped with phosphorous and potassium chlorate and to hear the sounds of pork rump sizzling in a cast iron pan… B’Elanna did have to admit, though, a pound of freshly cooked bacon was worth all the trouble.
It was too bad that Kathryn was still away on Starbase 214. Her tour-de-admiralty kept her far from the creature comforts of the homestead for three out of every four weeks, but this much was to be expected, because no vice admiral’s strip or set of pips would see to her flying a desk at Starfleet Headquarters. No, the woman needed space. Outer, specifically, and lots of it.
B’Elanna smiled at the tugging of her pant leg. Miral was bouncing eagerly onto the tips of her toes and reaching for the plate of bacon just as soon as she could raise her hands.
“Alright, alright.” B’Elanna nodded towards the table, “Can you get into your chair, please?”
A small, affirmative grunt spun the almost-two-year-old around with a vapor. She liked doing things for herself, often just to prove that she could. Miral clambered her way onto the cushioned booster of her dining chair and then clapped joyously as the plate came down in front of her. No need for a tray table or cloth. Bacon was more reward than it was mess.
B’Elanna was just about ready to sit when the communicator panel nearest to the dining room door blipped to life with a warm note. An incoming communication from Seven, no doubt. She was due back this morning, except much earlier. Seven’s long hours spent working at the Daystrom Institute usually left her with just enough time to greet B’Elanna just as everyone was ready to wake for the day. No matter, B’Elanna decided as she rounded the back of Miral’s chair, she would postpone her disappointment. It wasn’t every morning that Seven was late getting home. Just… most of them. That giddy feeling beset in B’Elanna’s cheeks finally gave way to a smile, and several quick taps of her fingertips across the screen opened the interface.
“There you are—”
“Allow me to begin with an apology.”
“No need.” B’Elanna shook her head, tucking some of her wavy, brown tresses behind an ear.
Seven smiled back at her. She was walking a brisk pace beneath the bright glow of streetlamps. The nighttime sounds of city traffic and passing hovercraft were all around. “Then, perhaps a compliment instead?”
B’Elanna felt a warmth race outward to her cheekbones.
Always the charmer.
“If you insist.”
“You look beautiful this morning.”
“Mama- bacon!” Miral waved a fistful of breakfast protein over her head, twisting around in her chair towards the interface.
Seven laughed and craned her head as if to speak over B’Elanna’s shoulder, “Wonderful! Be sure to save some for me, my love.”
Miral sat forward again, shaking her head. “No. Mm-mm.”
“I’m guessing you’re finally on your way home?” B’Elanna asked.
There went a disappointed sigh, a simultaneous action with the averting of Seven’s eyes. “Not quite.”
…Not again.
“I know that look.” B’Elanna huffed, her defenses up. “What’s wrong?”
Seven took a moment to respond, seemingly to combat the bustle of Okinawan foot traffic and whatever it was that preoccupied her mind. “There is a matter with Icheb which I must attend to immediately. I was not notified until our lab broke for the evening, and since then I have been in communication with Starfleet Academy’s Commandant, a Monroe—”
“Icheb…” B’Elanna flustered for a moment, “Seven, what’s happened with Icheb?”
“I will explain later when I am able to return to the homestead—”
“Wait, are you on your way to San Francisco right now?”
A cough came from the kitchen table and B’Elanna turned around instinctively, ready to pat Miral on the back should she have taken too large of a bite, but the darling Klingon hybrid blinked and sat straight again just to fist several more strips of bacon into her remarkably greasy hands.
B’Elanna faced Seven’s concerned expression on the screen again and rubbed idly at the smooth ridges of her forehead, squeezing lightly at her temples. “Have you spoken to Kathryn at all?”
Seven frowned, her face darkened by the overhang of a transporter station. “She is still fleet training with Commodore Clancy in deep space, but I have sent a subspace transmission which should reach her by the week’s end.” The tunneling noise of civilians both materializing and dematerializing began to drown out the sound of Seven’s voice, “Time is of the essence, I’m afraid. I still need to locate Mezoti and to—”
“Just, hold on a second,” B’Elanna calmed the rising of her voice and then folded her arms, “Can you at least tell me if Icheb is alright or not?”
“I would be less worried about Icheb at the moment, B’Elanna, and more worried about the other cadets with whom he had an altercation.”
“…Again?”
The bluish glow of transporter beams came closer, shadowing parts of Seven’s face. “I really must go—”
B’Elanna felt the chambers of her heart flustering for rhythm as it skipped a beat; all eight chugging in time at the thought of Seven growing further away. Again.
“Seven—”
“I will be home soon.”
“Seven—!”
“I promise.”
Just like that, the panel darkened and Seven was gone. B’Elanna sighed most of her discontent through her nose and pinched hard there at its bridge, hoping to ease the amount of dread that fought its way between her ears. Miral scooted down from her chair and wiped her hands upon the front of her violet-colored shirt and then took off into the sitting room with a running gait, none the wiser. She would cry for Seven once she realized.
B’Elanna hung her head, dispirited on this morning just like so many others. “Yeah. Soon.”
The wind on the farm in Bloomington was a constant foe.
Long howls it spent into the gloaming eve, wary of being caught in the grand sycamore crowns that scattered the rolling hills. A wisp-like brume congregated along the wide tree trunks, and a familiar molecular hiss finally broke the silence. Three figures rematerialized at the forest’s edge. Two standing hand-in-hand, and the other breaking off in the opposite direction as if on a mission.
B’Elanna stood up inside the small garden gate just offset from the greenhouse and squinted. Nary a smile there was across the verdant knoll. Stern faces, all. She stepped around the rows of leafy greens and felt her feet begin a brisk pace towards them, and then she realized she was running. Icheb’s sulking expression passed her up quickly. There was a deep purple bruise emanating from his proud, Brunali nasal ridge… It swallowed up his left eye into a painful-looking, swollen mass. B’Elanna ground the heel of her boot into the rich farm soil as she spun around after him.
“Icheb,” He shirked out of her grasp quickly and continued his angry pace, “Icheb- where are you going?”
Over his shoulder he replied with a hurt tone, “According to Starfleet, nowhere!”
B’Elanna stopped. She recognized that anger all too well. It called up memories of her own mistakes with the academy. It still hurt how they had turned her out so easily, like the twist of a daqtahg straight into her back.
Footfalls both large and small approached from behind and B’Elanna turned around with her hands at her hips. The sun was quickly setting and what little light was left made it difficult to read Seven’s expression. At first glance, she looked exhausted. B’Elanna knew that she was.
Mezoti looked up at B’Elanna with small, teary Norcadian eyes. Her voice was but a squeak. “I liked my quarters.”
B’Elanna reached out to pet her lightly at her cheek. “I know, sweetheart.”
Seemingly lost amidst the rolling fog, Seven stared with glazed eyes towards the greenhouse and began to make her way there without a word.
It took longer to find Icheb venting his frustrations amongst the trees that skirted the homestead than it did getting Mezoti settled down to sleep. He was still too consumed with beating himself up for the time being, so B’Elanna resigned to a promised curfew and chose to leave him to it. He was so much like herself in that way. He just needed time to quell whatever storm raged inside of him, that way room could be made for a more logical line of thinking. Apologies would come the next day. Of that much, B’Elanna was certain.
By the time she found herself taking the last few steps up and onto the greenhouse loft’s landing, she realized just how tired she was. So much energy had been spent inside all that waiting… The day was so much longer that way. B’Elanna hated the long days. More so, she hated how the ones spent with Seven and Kathryn together seemed to be so much shorter, almost unfairly so.
Her tired eyes blinked heavily towards the wide bed, and then the world fell still again. All the weight was gone from her shoulders in a single breath.
Miral had an arm and leg each wrapped tightly around Seven’s torso. Dressed in just her slip, Seven seemed to have fallen straight to sleep in the exact same position in which she had laid down. Their daughter, clung to Seven’s stomach steadfastly and as close as their bodies could possibly take them, snored lightly from where her cheek was smushed flat.
All was well. Being upset would only steal what little time she had with them.
Her family. Nearly whole again.
The skittering across the greenhouse’s tall, translucent ceiling woke her up. A blush of robins, vying for ledge space across each long window.
B’Elanna felt her hand reach across the cold sheets of the bed to find it empty, but the strong smell of her favorite coffee yet again washed the disappointment free from her mind. Seven was thoughtful, even in her absence. B’Elanna sat up and reached for the still steaming cup of Landras blend. Miral was usually Seven’s responsibility on mornings where she wasn’t priorly engaged with work, so if Miral was up and dressed and gone from the greenhouse, that meant that Seven was waiting for B’Elanna in the farmhouse’s kitchen. She would have breakfast prepared, as well as her prim stack of padds consisting of advanced stellar analyses alongside her Scandinavian black tea. B’Elanna made herself up quickly in an effort to catch up on what conversation had been lost in all of the franticness the evening before. The newly affixed door at the front of the house gave its pneumatic -whoosh- and she stepped inside, happy to start the day.
The kitchen was empty.
Voices came from the sitting room just beyond, and B’Elanna supposed that Seven was enthralling Miral with yet another newly fashioned holographic puzzle. The nearly-two-year-old swept through them in a matter of hours, these days. Miral couldn’t get enough of each challenge.
There sat Miral, yes, and also Mezoti who was folded lopsidedly on her legs with a row padds laid out upon the couch before her.
“Hm,” B’Elanna placed a hand at the denim waist of her jeans, “Where’s Seven?”
Mezoti didn’t so much as look up from her entomologic manuscripts when she replied, “She left shortly after 0400. Said to remind you that the captain’s pinning ceremony is—”
“Wait- she’s gone?”
“Mhm.”
“But,” B’Elanna’s head turned on a swivel back towards the greenhouse, “…my drink?”
“I remembered your fondness for Talaxian coffee.” Mezoti finally looked up with a smile, “How was the temperature?”
B’Elanna shrugged, “Surprisingly accurate, considering I had to pretty much sneak these refurbished replicators in under Kathryn’s nose.” She shook her head then to right the train of her concentration back on track, “Seven’s already gone?”
“Yes…” Mezoti puzzled her brow, “…at approximately 0400.”
A growl was tempered deep within B’Elanna’s chest, and Mezoti’s eyes grew wide— the sound acting as a sudden reminder to withdraw from the conversation.
“Icheb?”
Mezoti’s eyes gave a slow tilt towards the guestroom upstairs, and then they went back to her textbooks and manuscripts.
Cool were the tips of B’Elanna’s ears once she made her way up the old farmhouse staircase.
Be calm.
Be patient.
The back of her knuckles rapped lightly against the door, and she waited, earning no response from inside. “Can I come in?” She asked.
A grunt was heard from the other side of the door, and then Icheb’s sullen voice rang out with a pitiable tone, “Enter.”
There he was, hugging his knees to his chest in the small bay window overlooking the farm’s nearby paddock. Seven’s horse Frodhi grazed there inside the tall fencing, craning his long neck as far as it would reach to nibble at the greener grass.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” B’Elanna asked as she sat at the end of the still-made bed. She wasn’t at all surprised that he’d not been to sleep yet.
“There’s not much to tell.”
“How so?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“Alright,” B’Elanna folded her hands into her lap, “Then when?”
Icheb finally turned his gaze across the room, realizing then that he would not be able to escape her so easily. Not like the first time.
“What do you want me to say?” He asked with a frown.
“I don’t know, maybe you could explain how you let things go too far again? You were suspended this time. That’s two strikes, Icheb.”
Icheb turned away from her again. The reflection of his dark eyes in the windowpane spoke of a familiar regret. “They won’t let me forget it.”
“Forget what?”
“That I’m… Borg.”
B’Elanna dropped her brow into her palm. “We’ve talked about this—”
“It doesn’t matter. I am what I am. They hate me.” Icheb stiffened against the window, “When they’re not too busy pulling me away from my studies to screen me for information about the Delta quadrant, they avoid me at all costs. The other cadets, even some of my instructors.”
B’Elanna quickly scooted away from the bed and went to kneel beside Icheb. For having suffered such a singular, yet overwhelmingly crowded existence for most of his life, he was still so averse to physical touch— but B’Elanna wished to touch him. To hug him around his shoulders. To squeeze him and tell him that everything would turn out alright. “You’re Icheb, do you hear me? Borg or not, you’re more than just the sum of your parts.”
He refused to look at her still. “How did you do it?”
“…What?”
“How did you get through it?”
“You mean my time in the academy?”
Icheb nodded.
B’Elanna turned around to place her back against the wall near the window and then crossed her legs. “Well, we both know that I didn’t. There’s a meaning behind the term ‘Starfleet Types’. I didn’t fit.”
There was a short pause. “I don’t fit either.”
B’Elanna twisted her head to look up at Icheb’s still sullen expression through the glass and finally reached out to take him by the hand. He gave a gentle flinch and then closed his other hand over hers. Acknowledging it straight out would have been too painful for them both; it only meant the world to B’Elanna that he was content just to hold her hand.
“What I meant to say was that I didn’t fit at the time.” B’Elanna corrected.
Icheb eventually strained another glance down at her. “What do you mean?”
“Meaning, I was the second Klingon to ever brave Starfleet Academy, even as a half-blood. Worf was a good decade older than me once he graduated and was wholly uninterested in returning any of my messages asking for advice.” She admitted with a subtle roll of her eyes. “I didn’t have anyone in my corner offering me the strength or the wisdom that I needed to see it through…” B’Elanna gave Icheb’s hand a slight squeeze, “But you do.”
“I- I don’t think I can do it.”
“Icheb… if you can’t do it for yourself, then at least do it for Mezoti. She’ll need you in her corner sooner or later. I promise you that.”
Icheb’s eyes went away from the window in an instant. They filled with tears, and then he bowed his head forward, choking back a single, heart wrenched sob. He let himself lean the rest of the way forward and onto B’Elanna’s shoulder after that, nodding his sad affirmations.
He had never cried in front of her before.
Those damned Borg-tritanium walls… They were beginning to collapse, just as Seven’s had.
“She ate it!”
“Mezoti, lower the volume of your voice—”
“I traded a Ferengi freighter captain my favorite Talaxian furfly for it!”
Icheb squared his stance where he stood between the young Klingon hybrid and the devastated Norcadian adolescent, “She is an infant. She did not mean to—”
“It came all the way from Rhymus Major!”
“Mezoti.”
“No! I hate it here!”
Miral’s lower lip began to protrude with a quiver, revealing the velvet-soft wingtip of one Mordian Butterfly betwixt her semi-sharp canines. Seven of Nine leaned down to scoop the child into her arms once she began to wail. The decibels of Miral’s crying soon overpowered any of the previous yelling. “Take a breath, Mezoti, and please,” Seven instructed as she bounced Miral on her hip, “…go upstairs until I can speak with you.”
“Fine.” Mezoti replied with a stomp.
Once the door slammed and rattled the picture frames down below, Seven turned to Icheb with a swiftness that stunned him and B’Elanna both. “You will not allow her to raise her voice like that again.”
Icheb’s slowly healing face pinched together with a defensive look, “Is that a request or an order?”
“It is a condition of your role as caretaker, to—”
“Now hang on a second,” B’Elanna interjected, “Don’t you think you’re laying it on a little thick, Seven?”
Seven blinked back towards B’Elanna, confused. Miral’s crying had subsided to large boo-hoos now, but it was still difficult to speak over her. “I am…” She nodded in search of the words, “Attempting to make clear the underlying rules of parant—”
“But Icheb’s not a parent. He’s eighteen, for crying out loud.”
At least Seven’s manner of speaking to those just shy of the age of adulthood had improved. Lessons in compassion and understanding, as well as patience had served useful when facing the every-once-in-a-while pushback of a curious, yet headstrong thirteen-year-old.
“Icheb is Mezoti’s legal guardian. He is responsible for her act—”
“Shall I remind you both that I am standing right here?” Icheb cut in.
“Just a second.” Seven and B’Elanna replied in unison back at him, staring daggers at one another now in the front room of the farmhouse.
Miral was still pleased to continue her wailing, her tears soaking the front of Seven’s Institute tunic. Seven had only arrived home just an hour or so before. Three days they had all spent floating around one another, just missing each other in either their comings or goings. Times like these when they found themselves gathered still felt somewhat clumsy… It was as if they were needing to reacclimate themselves to a confined space once again, almost like they had forgotten what it was like to live aboard an Intrepid-Class starship.
“I am to understand that Earth’s attitude towards legal guardianship holds little to no room for error—”
“He’s still just a kid himself, Seven. I think you’re forgetting that.”
“But his current responsibilities do not allow for—”
“I am aware of my responsibilities!” Icheb shouted along with them now.
“You’re still saying the same damn things- just wording them differently, just like you always do! You’re not listening.” B’Elanna walked across the rug and reached for Miral, who shrugged away from her immediately with all of her continued crying. It made B’Elanna angry… that Miral would choose Seven over her. At least, that’s what the knee-jerk reaction that kicked like an unruly targ inside of her chest said. B’Elanna grit her teeth and stepped back, “I’m amazed you’ve had so much time to brush up on Earth policies regarding children and homecare, since you’re hardly ever present around your own.”
There it was. Tom’s face, twisted around in that unbelieving gurn as if he couldn’t understand what it was she had just said.
B’Elanna gave rapid blinks of her eyes to do away with the awful memory, and stood there staring at Seven’s understandably hurt expression instead.
“Seven…”
“It’s… alright.”
Icheb was looking at the tops of his polished shoes, too afraid to look back up. Or to move.
“No, it’s not—”
The door at the front of the house thudded in its frame all of a sudden, and when it came sliding open, a Starfleet gray duffel fell inside. Kathryn braced herself with her forearm against the doorframe and exhaled a satisfied breath. She seemed glad to be home, if the ear-to-ear smile upon her face was any indication. She wasn’t wearing her typical uniform but was instead donned from head-to-toe in summer wear: a pair of trousers beneath a flowery, flowing top, and a floppy straw sunhat to match.
Upon seeing her, Miral turned her now quiet boo-hooing towards the door and began to wriggle herself free of Seven’s arms.
“Khaki—” She cried once she was placed onto her feet, “No, no, Khaki. No, no, mommy…” Her bottom lip curled again as soon as she was clinging to the captain’s leg. “No, no, Mama.”
“How…” B’Elanna began to bluster, seemingly at a loss for those pesky things shaped like the English language.
Words, right.
“…When?” Was all she could come up with.
“Shh, shh, my darling.” Kathryn cooed sweetly down at her goddaughter and then looked straight ahead into the front room of the house again, that familiar deadpan of unsurprise smacked squarely upon her face. “Alright,” She said, “Tell me what I missed.”
“You gave it up?” B’Elanna pushed the black silt back over the large, droopy vegetable fronds. “Just like that?”
“It wasn’t as much of an alarming decision as you’re making it out to be…” Kathryn replied where she sat on her knees in the dirt, “And I’m sure my arugula will thank you just as well to relax a little bit.”
B’Elanna looked down at the soil covered fingers of her borrowed gardening gloves. “Oh—” She bared her teeth apologetically with a wide grin, “Sorry.”
“I merely let the seat pass to Clancy. Fleet Admiral Clancy, now.”
“But… why?”
“Didn’t like it.” Kathryn dug her trowel into the dirt with one hand and wiped the sweat from her brow with her other.
B’Elanna smiled as she passed her another leafy transplant, “Ah, I see, now. Starbase 214 was boring.”
“An admiral’s desk is inherently boring, no matter where its stationed.”
“Then why all the fuss to take one?” B’Elanna shook her head, “I’ll never understand the appeal associated with top brass.”
Kathryn dusted her own gloves and then sat up straight again, squinting delightfully up towards the sun. The tops of her shoulders were the rosiest shade of pink, as were her cheekbones. It was inspiring to see her here still, down in the dirt and covered with all of her hard work, just to think of her in a dress uniform and stuck behind a desk— and happy to be there, to boot.
“I don’t know, I suppose it’s just the ladder of it all.”
“You don’t wanna just… jump off, sometimes?”
“Oh, I’ve considered it. While we were in the Delta quadrant, that is. I considered it a lot more than I’d like to admit.”
“You did?” B’Elanna asked. “I’m curious, when was the first time?”
She was sure that she could count them all, had she had time enough to sit down and think. Too many of them piled on at once, and she couldn’t just pick one, but B’Elanna was certain that Kathryn was telling the truth. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind.
Kathryn took a deep breath. “When I fell in love.”
“Oh.”
They sat comfortably in their shared silence for another little while and worked down the row of hearty arugula until its eventual end. B’Elanna was just glad that she was home, if only for another few days. Everything felt the way it should whenever Kathryn was around. Complete.
B’Elanna shrugged to look over her shoulder back at the farmhouse. “She hasn’t slept this much in a long time…”
“Not since your rescue from Vorare-3.”
Along with Seven of Nine’s surrendered cartography of the deadliest L-Class system in the Delta quadrant, Starfleet had finally given a name to its twin suns, as well as its most inhospitable, carnivorous planet. The Latin term “to devour” apparently seemed to be the most fitting, if not a little on-the-nose.
B’Elanna gave a nod in agreement. “Yeah- that’s right.”
“I’d seen her go a few days without- before I mean- but nothing like that.”
“Wait a minute- you mean not sleeping?”
“Mm.”
“We slept in shifts…” B’Elanna scrambled to think back. Their dry cave, lit by campfire. Seven’s face, relaxed and unafraid. Her eyes, closed.
Kathryn shook her chin firmly, “Her initial report said differently.”
B’Elanna hacked a laugh at that and patted the tops of her thighs. “Of course it did.” She smiled, “So? What did it say?”
Kathryn’s face became serious again and she looked over at B’Elanna, loving her with each slow blink of her eyes. “It said she watched you while you slept.”
“Wha—” B’Elanna blinked, amazed, “What?”
The soon-to-be admiral went back to cleaning her trowels and dusting her apron. “She wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“She… No, Katie, she slept.”
“Ahh,” Kathryn wagged a proud finger, “Or did she merely give off the appearance of sleeping so that you might?”
B’Elanna finally sat all the way back on her haunches. “Well. I’ll be damned.”
The quiet clearing of someone’s throat from near the toolshed turned them both around. Seven leaned against the rusted tin frame and smiled down at her feet, pulling some of her long blonde hair out of her now very-well-rested face. The way her eyes were still half-lidded and brimming with the lithe remnants of her sleep set B’Elanna’s heart on fire. The captain’s too, she noticed. Kathryn had her head tilted in plumb admiration, just like always.
“May we speak?” Seven asked towards B’Elanna.
B’Elanna stood up, though almost a little too fast to be considered graceful. “Sure.” She pulled her gloves from her hands and then placed them into Kathryn’s with a smile, whispering, “See you for dinner?”
“Can’t wait.”
As soon as they were around the shed and walking the small, two-tracked road leading towards the horse paddock, they fumbled awkwardly to speak around one another at the same time…
“I wanted to—”
“I’m sorry—”
They chuckled half-heartedly together, and then Seven blushed. B’Elanna took the lead.
“I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it.”
“I’m sorry for being away too often.” Seven followed up in kind.
“I know I told you that I wanted to stay on the homestead where it was safe, but I’m afraid the quiet’s a little too loud now, if you know what I mean…”
Seven brushed the back of her hand across B’Elanna’s cheek and displayed that wonderfully dimpled smile of hers. “I do, actually.”
B’Elanna turned Seven’s palm to her cheek and nuzzled there softly, “…Right.”
“I saw how frightened you were of everything after Vorik. It was my hope that the peacefulness here would assuage some of that fear."
“Me too, I’m just all out of things to tinker with. I may be a mother, but I’m also an engineer. I think my hamster wheel’s about ready to fall right off.”
Seven puzzled for a moment, “…Hamster wheel?”
B’Elanna giggled. “But if I go out and find work, then there won’t be any time left for us.”
A frown made its way over the last of B’Elanna’s fading giggles, and she became quiet again… Sad for having flopped once more onto the truth.
Seven took a step closer and lifted B’Elanna’s gaze, “I still believe that you should. Let me worry about everything else.”
“What do you mean?”
“I will be cutting my hours at the Daystrom Institute, starting now.”
“But—” B’Elanna pinched the ridges of her brow together, confused, “Don’t they need you?”
“They do.” Seven nodded with that endearing matter-of-fact tone, “But I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Oh…”
“Here.”
B’Elanna dragged her downcast expression upright again and fought back a smile. A hard thing to do, really, since she was so relieved. B’Elanna batted playfully at Seven’s shoulders, to which Seven grabbed her up and pulled her in close. They stood there like that until Seven rested their foreheads together with a long sigh, unburdening herself as if disembarking from yet another long journey. She was glad to be home. They both were.
“What are we gonna do about Icheb, Seven?”
“I am confident that Starfleet will allow him to return to academy housing… on one condition.”
“Hm?”
“That he should have a mentor on campus, or perhaps an instructor willing to spend extra time with him…”
“In other words, me?”
“I spoke with the Commandant just a little while earlier who claimed to have an open position for a hand-to-hand combat instructor.”
B’Elanna reared back and then folded her arms indecisively, “I don’t know, Seven.”
“Acclimating to so many regulations without any prior knowledge has undoubtedly been the source of his difficulties—”
“Undoubtedly?” B’Elanna balked with a quiet huff.
“…Have I said something wrong?”
“You still don’t know, do you?” B’Elanna leaned upwards onto her toes to place a kiss into the hollow space of Seven’s cheek, “Starfleet has essentially been interrogating Icheb for months. Pulling him out of class, keeping him off campus for long hours… He’s at his wit’s end.”
Seven seemed flabbergasted. Completely knocked off course. Then, it was if it hit her all at once.
“They are getting from him what they have not been able to get from me.” She said resolutely.
“He won’t let them near Mezoti, though.” B’Elanna added, “Watches her like a hawk, he’s even compiled a list of her instructor’s security files—”
“I thought Starfleet Academy personnel files were kept locked under security clearances?”
B’Elanna shrugged, a hint of pride this time in each of her shoulders, “He might have picked up a few bad habits back on Voyager.”
“A few.” Seven agreed.
A cool wind blew in with the sound of cornfield cows, crying ahead of their long mosey back from whence they came.
“How about this,” B’Elanna stepped alongside Seven and tugged at her hand, eager for them to continue their walk, “Let’s have dinner first, all of us, like a family… and then we’ll talk about the future.”
“Alright.”
“But you’re serious about being home more often?”
“Yes.” Seven replied, urging B’Elanna to stop again, “I’ve missed you.” She pulled her close, just like the first time, and kissed her slowly from cheek to cheek, “I’ve missed you so much.”