Chapter Text
For a brief moment everything was controlled chaos as they moved quickly to release Voyager’s crew from the pods before the charge ran out. They had made it under the wire.
At least the crew had no awareness of all that had transpired. Tom Paris had a small inkling but everything was hazy.Though he seemed to have a stronger aversion to the pods than when they all went into stasis. He hoped he would never have to do that again.
In the midst of everything Seven dashed up to Astrometrics to confirm their exit from the nebula and to take one last set of readings. Once everyone was back to their regular duties she would download the data they’d collected as they journeyed and try to draw some conclusions. They had never encountered a nebula like this before.
Meanwhile once the Doctor had revived his share of the crew, roughly one cargo bay’s amount, he dashed over to the TARDIS and opened it with a snap. Amy and Rory were lounging in the upper part of the console room and spotted him once he stepped inside. They came down half a flight of stairs to the console.
“Any problems?” the Doctor asked as he hugged Amy and Rory together.
“Boredom!” Amy shouted close to the Time Lord’s ear. “We watched so many movies, feels like we exhausted the library! Got bored of the food…both the library and the pool…” she shook her head.
“I liked the Cornetto Trilogy.” Rory offered. “Enjoyed them more once I saw the last one.”
“Trilogy?” the Doctor was confused for a minute. “I thought there were five films…” but he shook it off. “It’s safe to come out! Sorry I didn’t visit you. Turns out it was a lot harder to maintain a starship, especially when the hologram went offline. And don’t tell Seven this but I think she had started to hallucinate near the end… We got a weird visitor near the middle of the trip who wanted to trade and I think Seven imagined him returning and by the sound of it tormenting her. I didn’t see anything, just heard the wails of the crew. I felt really bad for her. Course she hardly told me anything…” The Doctor was back to his babbling now that the crisis had blown over.
"How long did it actually take? Cuz it was kind of hard to keep track after a while." Amy asked once he had wound himself down.
"47 days, eleven hours and nine minutes," the Doctor replied. "You could have always asked the TARDIS," he patted the console.
Amy shrugged. “Can we go out now?”
The Doctor nodded and with a wave of his arms he lead them out of the TARDIS.
~~~
Elsewhere in the ship, Seven of Nine was in search of answers. She had already set up data collection routines from Astrometrics. And prepped a probe as well. Voyager wasn’t leaving just yet as they repaired gel packs and other things that Seven and the Doctor hadn’t had a chance to get to.
But the experience of being the only crew member aboard the ship with an alien as her only companion had unnerved her. Seeing Trajis invade her space made it even worse. In the beginning she was efficient, but as the days wore on she felt worse. She never felt comfortable telling the Time Lord, even after the EMH had gone offline. He was agreeable company but she felt she could not get close. She knew very little about Time Lords, as the Borg had only encountered them in an aborted timeline. Collective’s knowledge was fragmentary.
So she visited sickbay and asked the Doctor to do a full workup. She finally told him about hearing the wails of the crew as they littered the halls and how the senior staff would harass her as she tried to save the ship. It took a little cajoling but she let him know about Trajis as well. She needed to know if it was the nebula or one of her implants that caused the hallucinations.
The EMH had Seven sit on the biobed as he scanned her. He agreed that Seven experiencing hallucinations for much of the journey through the nebula was alarming. As a hologram he could not witness what she saw, and he had gone offline when it was the most extreme. But there was nothing physically wrong with her, or her implants. He grabbed a sample of blood and brought it over to his lab bench.
Thankfully the results came in quickly. The Doctor had a hunch of what to search for, just needed data to back up his hypothesis. Seven had jumped off the biobed and followed him.
“Ah there it is. We’ve been out of the nebula for a few hours, but your norepinephrine is still three times what it should be and your GABA is elevated significantly as well.” The Doctor looked at Seven. “So this entire time, you’ve been experiencing high levels of anxiety. Equal to a severe attack. But I don’t think they ever returned to their normal levels… 47 days of anxiety. That much adrenaline. You should have said something!”
“I was...able to ignore it. I used the adrenaline… in productive ways.” In truth Seven was embarrassed and had not felt comfortable speaking up. Anxiety was not Borg.
“Do you want a beta blocker? Or some other treatment?”
“Can I decide at a later time?” The concept of anxiety was relatively new, and Seven could not get her head around the idea of treatment. Instead she said goodbye and headed to the Mess Hall. It was time for some socialization.
~~~
Already at the Mess Hall were Harry, B’Elanna and Tom. “Is this seat taken?” Seven asked as she approached the trio.
“Sure, go ahead,” Harry said. Then the Doctor showed up with his companions. The group moved to one of the larger tables.
“This soup is great!” Tom called out to Neelix in the kitchen. They had all awakened from stasis hungry. “What’s in it?”
“It's my secret recipe. I'll never tell anyone what's in it.”
“Why does that make me nervous?” Still, Tom kept eating.
B’Elanna poked him in the ribs. “Where’s your spirit of adventure?”
Tom shook his head. “Not with food.”
Harry turned to the others, “Do you want some?”
“I’m not due for nourishment now. I just felt like some companionship,” Seven explained. Amy and Rory went to the counter to fetch some.
“After a month and a half you’ve had, I can totally understand that. What was it like?”
Seven looked at the Time Lord. “It was a lot easier with the Doctors. I do not think I could have completed everything on my own.” The Doctor nodded his thanks.
“We owe you, thanks.” B’Elanna looked up from her soup. “For keeping up with the gel packs alone.”
“I swear, we could have died in those.” Tom made a face.
The Doctor chuckled. “I think you would have escaped before your demise, Tom.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tom refused to say confined, escaping at least 4 times. We had to rig a sensor alarm to alert us. Then we had to get him back into the unit.”
For a moment Tom stared into his empty bowl. “Were you trapped somewhere as a kid?” Harry asked.
“I’ve just never liked closed off spaces. I don’t know why.”
“Perhaps you simply dislike being alone.” Seven gave a small smile.
~Fin~