More Than a Lifetime #1: Delta Wild

Chapter 9

When Dani walked into the mess hall, she saw that Icheb was sitting at a table by the window waiting for her. As Dani approached the table, the Borg-human looked up at her. His face seemed to brighten a little at the sight of her.

Dani walked over to the table and sat down across from Icheb.

"Hi," Dani said.

"Hello," Icheb said.

Chakotay and Kathryn walked into the mess hall. They stopped short when they saw Icheb and Dani at a table together.

"They sure have been spending a lot of time together lately," Kathryn observed.

"Yes," Chakotay agreed. "At least she's not on the holodeck." He and Kathryn looked at each other.

"True," Kathryn said. She watched Dani and thought back to a time when she would never have allowed her daughter to socialize with a Borg drone. They seemed to be getting along so well. "Maybe we should join them," Kathryn suggested, already starting to walk over to Icheb and Dani's table. Chakotay reached out and touched her arm.

"No," Chakotay said. Kathryn looked at him. "She just turned 18 a few days ago. Don't you remember when you were her age? You didn't want your parents hanging around your friends, did you?"

Kathryn felt as if she'd just been insulted. She squared her shoulders. "But I'm-"

"-her mother," Chakotay said, finishing her sentence for her. His ending differed from what hers would have been, however. "Come on."

Giving one last look to Dani and her companion, Kathryn abandoned her mission and followed Chakotay to a table on the other side of the room.

Xxx

Icheb and Dani walked through the doors into her quarters. They sat down on the couch in the living room and looked at each other.

'The things he must know,' Dani thought, her eyes tracing over Icheb's face, from his dark hair to the cortical implant near his left eye to his nose ridges.

"What's it like?" she asked him.

"What is 'what' like?" Icheb asked.

"Being you," Dani asked. Then she realized how absurd this must've sounded to Icheb. "I mean, you used to be part of the Borg collective. What was it like?"

Icheb looked at the table in front of them for a moment, while he gathered his reply.

"It was...comforting," he finally said, looking back at Dani.

Dani was a little surprised. Comforting wasn't exactly the term she would use to describe the collective. Then again, she had never actually been apart of the collective.

"Comforting?" Dani asked.

"Yes." Icheb went on. "Every thought circulated throughout the collective. One was never alone. That is how it was comforting."

"Do you ever miss it?" Dani asked him.

Icheb thought for a few more moments before answering, "No. I do not."

"Were you happy there?"

"Emotion was irrelevant."

"It's not irrelevant now," Dani said. Both she and Icheb thought about this for a moment. "Are you happy on Voyager?"

Icheb looked at Dani. There was an expression of revelation on his face. "Yes," he said.

Dani smiled. Icheb smiled also.