new b7 fic dropped! Avon and Dayna have my heart

Restyle - thespianwordnerd - Blake’s 7 [Archive of Our Own]

Title: Love’s Inferno
Author: Hollie47
Fandom: Star Trek Voyager
Pairing: Seven of Nine/B'Elanna Torres
Word Count: 1,231
Summary: Together, Seven and B'Elanna try to find a way to retrieve dilithium crystals from a volcanic planet.

Read Here on AO3

If they ever do make a remake of Blake’s 7, I urge you all to watch the original, especially for the incomparably evil and sexy Servalan - fashion icon, drama queen, evil empress - as perfidious as a snake, ruthless, murderous, and supremely ambitious.

“Where there’s life, there’s threat.”

B7

all i’m saying is they should wrestle and make out

meme ref:

Blake’s 7 fancast

Heard they might be rebooting Blake’s 7 (!!) and wanted to share my fancast!

This is just for fun obviously! Do share your thoughts :D

Blake - Luke Evans

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Avon - Dev Patel

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Servalan - Michelle Dockery

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Vila - Ncuti Gatwa

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Jenna - Jodie Comer

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(Hit the image limit - see reblog for more lol)

Every butch/femme B’Elanna/Seven in which Seven is the butch gives an angel its wings

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Mirror images of the same scene no I will not elaborate

(ID in alt text)

CHAKOTAY: I’m getting tired of playing referee every time you two have a disagreement. If you have a problem, talk to her yourself.

Seven and B'Elanna imagine a ship.

Tuvok had once said to her, as she swallowed around her swollen soft-palette in an attempt to keep a snarl out of her voice, that the school of logic she was relying on was too adherent to the quality of natural reasoning inherent to a sapient idiom. When she asked, What school are you using, then? he had replied, The most popular one among my people—the school of resonance, of harmony. This surprised her enough that she was able to set aside her human feeling and find in her mind the sort of peace offered by memories of her mother’s stonedrip-chants. How can a logic relying purely on mathematical relationships, on things like ratios, be anything but allegorical? she asked. Tuvok had said, We do not hold things as separate as you, and had been decidedly unable to offer more. 

B’Elanna maintained this was an inadequate response to her question. But she wasn’t one to interrogate culture or cultural differences—she hadn’t the history of schooling or the interest necessary to even approach a status of ‘capable’ in this area. Diplomacy had been a series of exhausting pretenses to her, most of which were not worth the relative peace. What productive compromises could be achieved in the tension-set-to-eventually-break between people who “agree to disagree”? 

“The idealism of youth,” Seven accused. 

“Idealism?” B’Elanna responded, brushing aside her initial instinct to let out a high-pitched laugh. Seven was, they were all coming to realize, a cantankerous old woman. She moved around with aching joints and a body abused by unnatural years and unnatural change and she had a proclivity to bitter drinks and not listening. 

“To think that domination will ever be replaced,” said Seven. 

“You’re trying to make me sound naive,” said B’Elanna. 

“You are naive.”

“Ad hominem,” said Chakotay, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Again.”

Seven looked at him for a single dismissive moment before turning back to B’Elanna. “Retracted.”

The crowd was tense, waiting for B’Elanna’s next argument, gathered around in the open-air store. It was somewhat reminiscent of an earth-culture cafe and a kronos-culture weaving-room (though it was possible B’Elanna was making comparisons she was best positioned to and the alien store resembled neither, particularly). The stone walls were carved in patterns looping in on themselves, the vegetation startling bright oranges, reds, and yellows, and the breeze, this high in the thick atmosphere was constant, guided by the other stone masses that made up this distinctly avian-ish civilization of light-bodied scholars living whole lives atop the curve of convection currents in the air. 

The bright store was chilled, filled with the strange objects most related to books or scrolls, as well as the day’s hydration portion, compressed from the mist surrounding the tall peaks of this world for the use of aliens come to visit who were evolved from the sea and needed the densest version of the universal solvent for their heavy bodies. The floaty beings of this world darted in and out from the various entrances, browsing the new selection of data and tasting the specialty air infused with lower-world herbs and other pungencies. 

B’Elanna had volunteered to assist in the repair of some intricate elevators made for the disabled amongst the beings and the non-winged off-worlders for ease of movement amongst this vertical civilization and was thus granted access, in compensation for her industriousness, to the data-objects hanging from the sturdy glittering chains of the store. On a platform looking out upon the peaks of the city, at a repurposed glass table for B’Elanna (and her crew of humanoids) to comfortably sit, amongst the autumn-color limbs of the foliage, Seven had found her. 

Chakotay had been the one to formalize their interactions, initially, before this moment. He’d been claiming to anyone he felt was an appropriate peer to whine to that he really did not want to spend the rest of his life standing between Seven and B’Elanna while they sniped at each other but he’d also been the one to shove them both into a seat in the mess hall and produce a Socratic feather from god-knows-where and, with grinding teeth and will, forced their sniping into something resembling a true back-and-forth. 

At first B’Elanna had only agreed to Chakotay’s teacher-ly shoving because she had always been good at a “dialogue” and watching Chakotay slam accusations of logical fallacies into the scrum of one of Seven’s self-important diatribes was immensely satisfying. Seven, B’Elanna assumed, allowed for the debates to happen because she was simply unaware of how bad she was at them. 

Tom and Harry had been the sole audience for the first three—Neelix then began to cater. Soon they were productions the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the drafty-rhetoric echoing in the halls of the Senate in the late Roman Republic. Seven was no orator but she had the demeanor and smug punctiliousness of a man about to dispense with the will of the people, sick of their opinions and more sick of the fact that anyone else but her had them. B’Elanna, committed as always, had cracked open several books on poetics from several of her heritages and was generally enjoying herself except when she was caught off guard by actually caring about not just winning but persuading Seven to admit she was right. 

She expected this very little, as Seven never did or would yield, but sometimes they would stumble into an area thick with B’Elanna’s principles. Sometimes Seven, with a canny insight underneath her layers of obtuseness, would deliberately provoke her. As she had done that day, on one of the autumn-patios of the windy alien world, sipping primly at her extra-grounds coffee—an alien pungency offered to the aliens from the Voyager crew which the aviary beings found diverting and were already planning to scatter in their experiment mist-farms. Extra grounds, Seven had asked for, as if challenging anyone who overheard her order to give her a lecture on normality at which she could promptly perform indifference. 

“Should we return to the initial claim?” asked Chakotay, who was pretending to be weary of them but was sparkling with a thrill B’Elanna had rarely seen on him since they had been shit out on the other side of the galaxy. 

“She had none,” said B’Elanna. “Has none to return to.” She swirled her “tea”—a sampling of the compressed infused-air on offer. It tasted a bit of earth-lavender. 

“B’Elanna,” Chakotay started to warn. 

“She thinks literally all the systems should be more integrated,” said B’Elanna, rolling her eyes. “But she only thinks that because she thinks the allotted power and server space to Astrometrics isn’t enough—and she only thinks that because she prioritizes her own work over everyone else’s. The share of power and data storage being imbalanced is self-evidently false—every station has what it needs—so what even are we doing here?”

“Your focus on the individual is inefficient,” said Seven. 

B’Elanna blinked. 

Chakotay cleared his throat and said, “That sounds like a healthy claim to me.”

B’Elanna shook herself. “Would any society outside the Borg satisfy your idea of efficiency?”

“Yes,” said Seven. 

“Liar.”

“B’Elanna,” said Chakotay. 

“If a society existed such that the individual was not the sole framework,” said Seven. “I would call that efficient.”

The crowd around them began to mutter. Seven rarely went for the overarching argument, happy in an arena of particulars she could pick apart for petty imprecisions. B’Elanna had a stack of philosophy books she’d stolen from several sustainable-paper libraries throughout her life she was suddenly itching to grab and flip through. This was going to be a real conversation. 

Chakotay had found them, having been alerted by an eager Ensign that his presence was needed on the planet, just as Seven’s request and subsequent pushing for a restructuring of the entire deck 4 grid had inspired B’Elanna to snap, “I know diplomacy is mostly pointless, but an insane idea would be easier to respond to if you used just a smidge of it.”

Seven had replied, “Contradicting yourself is not an answer to my question. If diplomacy is pointless, why should I use it?”

“I said it was mostly pointless”—

“Your Starfleet culture relies on its tenets”—

“Not really”—

“Do you think there is an answer that is neither Borg-collecting nor Starfleet-diplomacy?”

“There must be,” B’Elanna had responded too quickly, recklessly yielding to Seven that these two options were somehow on opposite side of a spectrum that actually existed. B’Elanna, in a clearer mind three seconds later, thought this could be easily argued.

But it was at that point Seven had called B’Elanna idealistic, which annoyed her only because it was probably true. 

But now B’Elanna could see that the theatrics of their arguing had actually been swirling around certain questions that Seven truly believed she could answer. B’Elanna’s heart raced, her face flushed—looking at Seven, in her mobility gear for things like walking and standing and her leftover Borg attributes molded as ever into the organic material of her being, catching the warm-toned light of this alien world, framed easily by the red and yellows of the aerial mosses collecting on the carved stone. She took a sip of her tea and let it warm her chest. She felt as calm as she had sweating under the consoles and determined-will of her Dreadnought. 

“And what value is efficiency?” asked B’Elanna, her voice quivering slightly with eagerness.

“Intrinsic value,” said Seven. “Efficiency is a step towards more perfection. It is a tool and aspect of perfection.”

“Perfection towards what end?”

Seven looked at her. The breeze blew. 

“Come on,” said B’Elanna. “Don’t be shy. What sort of perfection are you speaking of? The perfection of the dominant hand?”

Seven’s eyes flashed. She shifted and the brace on her torso shifted. It would need to be examined after this, being out so long in the relative cool and dry. “You do not find efficiency in diplomacy, either. You do not find your own world efficient. Or perfect.”

“I certainly never expected it to be either.”

“Yes,” said Seven, hard. “Yes you did.”

B’Elanna sat back, folding her arms. Chakotay said nothing. His eyes hadn’t drifted to his pocket-list of fallacies once. 

“What use is an individual who doesn’t expect that?” said Seven, which struck too true for B’Elanna in that moment.

But B’Elanna wasn’t who she was, had been: challenging professors, leaving Starfleet behind, going to war, building unyielding machines damned to be disoriented at the first sign of something unlikely, something outside its (her) paradigm. With the sickening swoop of realizing at some point in the last several years she had changed her mind, she turned over Seven’s words in her head and found her footing. 

“Why should an individual be of use?” she said. 

“Utility is broader than you are implying”—

“Broader still than you want it to be, too.”

Seven tilted her head, examining her. The audience around them was as hushed as the wind. 

“I understand why the Captain will not rebuild a Starfleet vessel to be anything other than what it was originally designed to be,” said Seven. “I do not understand why you would not.”

Chakotay shifted at the hint of impropriety and B’Elanna, sensitive as always to her position and duty, said, “It is not within my purview”—

“It is within your purview,” said Seven. “However you decide to honor your individual obligations to this…inefficient culture.”

B’Elanna considered this and almost laughed. She considered this some more and then actually did—the bright, cool breeze carried it easily. 

“Sorry,” she said, though Seven didn’t seem offended. “I just—it’s ironic. That I’m on the side of structure, and you’re not.”

At that Seven did seem offended. “Everything has structure. Why would I be against it?”

“No,” said B’Elanna. “Social structure.”

“Hierarchies.”

The disdain with which Seven managed to infuse in the word, while not sounding as if she had opinion on the matter at all, stuck under B’Elanna’s skin. 

“You’re familiar with them, aren’t you?” she asked, as mildly as she was able. “They’re a bit like a fundamental property for the Borg: hierarchies.”

This wasn’t something the crowd necessarily agreed with, B’Elanna could tell. But B’Elanna, if she’s trained herself to do anything, has trained herself to despise empire, no matter how egalitarian a place or people looks from the outside. Domineering, people accuse the Borg of being. Violent, colonizing, oppressive. Yet still, she hears it and sees it in their strange fascination with the Borg collectivity, the dismantling of the person to be part of a mass of one, the sense among all those outside the Borg, opposed to the Borg, that there’s something there, in the anti-plural, worth learning from. B’Elanna has dug in before and she’s prepared to do so now. 

“Hierarchies are irrational in a collective,” said Seven. “Hierarchies are irrational in any sense.”

“Do the Borg believe that?”

“It is a truism of Borg society.”

“So what drives Borg to dominate other people, other societies? If not a belief that their way is better, that it should be placed above the way of others?”

“Is this not what Starfleet does?” asked Seven. “Decide for others that their way is better?”

(Chakotay muttered whataboutism, but they both ignored him.)

B’Elanna, in Seven, could hear the echo of her own young bitter voice in this. But Seven was not young and B’Elanna had yet to figure out if she was bitter or angry or neither. 

“The voluntary aspect of joining the Federation is the crucial difference.”

“It doesn’t seem very material—when different cultures are made more alike. In the end, collecting. As the Borg.”

“A choice doesn’t seem very material to those blessed with the freedom of it.” B’Elanna leaned forward in her seat, resting her weight on her folded arms on the glass table-top. “Those denied it feel it.”

For some reason, a tension, that B’Elanna hadn’t noticed before, left Seven’s face, drifting off her forehead into the sunlight. Had she been nervous of B'Elanna’s answer? Had she been digging for B'Elanna, for someone, to give her this assurance? 

Whatever it was, she continued. 

“That is another irony,” said Seven. “How can a people better themselves without taking? If one respects the individual, then the individual has the power to deny themselves towards efforts of progress.”

“Yes,” said B’Elanna, slowly. “I suppose that’s true. For a given definition of ‘betterment’.“

“Well, is there no progress you place above individual liberty? Above individual choice?”

“What do you even mean by progress”—

“You want to dodge the question by getting me to say something particular you can easily judge as less important than choice.” Seven had clearly learned something of argument, of rhetoric, B’Elanna noticed with a small leap of her heart. She has said something very similar to Seven a couple weeks ago, when Neelix had begged B'Elanna to champion something artistic to Seven’s instinctual pragmatism. Everyone had lost that day, as neither Seven nor B'Elanna were very good at the artistic to begin with and Harry kept interrupting them to say something he considered respectively profound about 'Jazz’ which no one else cared enough to parse, but the snacks had been good.

Seven leaned forward onto the table, mirroring B’Elanna. “I’m asking you if there’s anything you would say is worth the sacrifice.”

B’Elanna glanced at Chakotay who seemed to have abandoned his referee position entirely and was watching her with interest. The sunlight was at his back, lining his form with an amber penstroke, over his shoulders and the fluff of his hair. He met her gaze and raised an eyebrow. They looked at each other, in their way.

What B’Elanna and Chakotay were was not something either had managed to qualify. ‘Outsiders’ was too easy and essentially wrong, for both had left Starfleet but both had started within it as well, used it for their purposes and walked away when its limitations broke against their persons. And both, now, were among the first in the crew to set any iconoclast straight. Because she’s the Captain, they had both invoked in many a conversation with many a subordinate.

Seska had called her brainwashed after the first few weeks, after B’Elanna had been Chief Engineer for long enough to grate on Seska—grate on what B’Elanna could now recognize was not Seska’s anarchic principles but her fascist sensibilities about what was owed to her, what was owed to propriety, what was owed to the pure bred, traditionalist, un-sullied, high-minded Cardassian spy over the mixed girl from mixed parents of mixed "inferior” races of mixed training in her chosen field. Seska did not want the promotion—but Chakotay had gone to the source of power in their new society on Voyager, unhesitating, and said to that power, the Captain, that B’Elanna was the bit of brilliance he and his people could claim, that B’Elanna should be trusted, indeed, because that brilliance was not contained, could not be contained, to simple mechanical systems. Chakotay had, ultimately, thought of B’Elanna as the best of them and gotten the Captain to agree. It must have been such an eloquent summation of the society Seska had accidentally found herself trapped in. 

Chakotay and B’Elanna were thus mysteries who understood each other, even if they were unlikely to be able to explain what they understood out loud. And perhaps this was part of it—what Seven had pieced off of their philosophy in praxis to attack. 

“I would say that many things are worth the sacrifice of individual liberty,” said B’Elanna. “I would say the things we’ve already sacrificed for—no more starvation, un-housing, denial of the basic needs of life.”

“But that is simple,” said Seven. “Technology has made that no sacrifice at all.”

“It was a fight to make that technology a tool for all, that tech and the energy required to run it, and the intellectual property of those who built it,” said B’Elanna. “Traditions were cut at the altar of that progress. Many traditions. So many—things we wouldn’t think now were a big enough deal but were entrenched. Religious frameworks.”

Seven frowned. The said abruptly, “Religion is merely the existential answer of those who fear death.”

B’Elanna snorted. “Okay, I don’t disagree with that really, but I think we could probably say that for most humanoid endeavors. We’ve decided this all means something already—I don’t want to argue about: what if it all means nothing, when you really think about it. It matters, we’ve decided.“

"I agree.”

B'Elanna had to catch her breath, somewhat startled. She was realizing in that moment that she and Seven had never dug into Existentialism, in any argument they had. They were both somehow operating post-crisis. The steely glint of survivalism made lingering in those questions untenable.

“Religion, and the things you say it is meant to address, was never considered a thing worthy of collection by the Borg,” observed Seven, frowning again. 

“But its power was, right? Its power to frame a life’s purpose, whether or not it, like, materially did? But maybe the Borg didn’t need to collect that given that it was their modus operandi—their tradition. No need to seek out anything like it, especially if something similar to it as a thing contradicted Borg tradition.“

Seven leaned back and did something highly unusual: she shook herself, as if reorienting her thoughts. Her fingers tapped. She was thinking about what B'Elanna was saying which B'Elanna was struggling not to be mildly charmed by.

“So,” Seven said, in her careful voice. “You are saying religion, and thinking like it, things that claimed life-purpose, these things had to be sacrificed to progress beyond the phenomenon of poverty.” She tapped her fingers again. “But that it wasn’t really sacrificed because people default to religious thinking—frameworks— anyway.” She met B'Elanna eyes, heavy. ”We’ve decided, you said.“

B'Elanna nodded. She offered, not as argument but just to voice her own thoughts, “Yes. As in, certain entrenched traditions had to be given up in the name of equality.”

“But people make more traditions.”

“And old traditions morph. Some things couldn’t be completely excised, especially when progress is forced on people.”

“Such as?”

“Sexism. Xenophobia.”

“Hierarchies.”

“Things people use to define their place in the world.”

“So this is what you are happy to sacrifice in the name of progress? These specific hierarchies? But if they were sacrificed, to solve the problems we already solved, as you said, how are they not excised, as you say they aren’t?”

B’Elanna frowned. “They morphed.”

“So not really sacrificed.”

“Some things were sacrificed. They had to be in order for any change to be made at all. People had to be forced to give up something of the comfort of their lives and their, like, identity and their feeling of who they were, as well as their access to, well, resources, in order to change things on Earth. Yes, things were definitely sacrificed.”

“But not perfectly.”

B'Elanna frowned deeper. “Society is ongoing. So no. Not perfectly. Communities. And people. Well, it’s complex.”

“If people define themselves as a collective will, complete,” said Seven. “It’s less complex.”

B’Elanna sat back. 

She had overheard many disagreements between Seven and the Captain, since Seven had joined their crew. B’Elanna didn’t think she had the capacity to know who was more right than the other—having gone through a transformation herself on her position with the Captain in the years she’d served under her. The Captain had a desperately unique set of circumstances to react to and B’Elanna herself couldn’t imagine being in that seat, being so singularized that all threads of actual person began to disappear into the representative. The surreality of the Captain’s frequent disagreements with Seven was that, while Seven began to descend from the abstract, the Captain continued to be pulled from the security of the ground where anyone could hope to know her. The Captain who had first sat next to B’Elanna in a shuttlecraft to solve the strangest bending of their reality, who had spoken with B’Elanna on temporal mechanics and her respect for a person who will talk back, that Captain was like a distant friend to her now, left behind. That person was subsumed by a project. And thereby Seven was able to attack her in the same way she attacked the power systems in the ship that was their city. 

Seven wanted to rebuild the Captain in a way she wanted to build her ideal society. The Captain couldn’t do this without dismantling herself entirely—the prospect of which Seven, naturally, had both too much and too little sympathy for. 

What were they even arguing about? Was B’Elanna’s position really what she’s thus far claimed?

She studied Seven: sat stiffly across from her; her proportionate face was obscured by the leftover Borg mechanisms; her infuriating denseness about her own opinions, unaware that her opinions were coming from somewhere, that her opinions were opinions to begin with. 

“I don’t think it is less complex,” said B’Elanna, thinking out loud instead of waiting for some answer to come to her. “It’s just a—a pretense of progress.”

Seven frowned. “Pretense?”

B’Elanna scratched the back of her neck, still thinking out loud. “There’s no—there’s no reckoning. There’s no confrontation. There’s no conflict.”

“Yes.” 

“There’s—there’s certainty—no, there’s the pretense of certainty,” said B’Elanna. That’s your opinion, she’d said so many times to an unhearing Seven. “You don’t know—the collective doesn’t know what is best or what is actually perfect. It has faith—but that is not certainty. It feels like certainty. But it isn’t.”

Seven stared at her, thinking. Her light eyes were catching flecks of bronze in the shifting sun. Wispy blooms from the autumn-colored aerial moss fell around them. 

“People think that plurality is unsustainable,” said B’Elanna. She glanced around this beautiful breezy city—the black-winged beings who drifted on a current, listening in to their spontaneous colloquy, curious—and then to Chakotay, who was frowning at his hands, lost in his own thoughts. She felt a bitterness well. “That something like me is unsustainable.”

Seven was still staring at her, wide-eyed. Her attention was severe.

“That I’m either and or,” continued B’Elanna, her tongue tasting of burnt. “Or neither—fully melded into something—I don’t know—something that isn’t plural at all.” She shrugged, trying for un-offended as a lifetime of words hurled at her in her hazy memory that yet founded her person. “That some things about me just can’t jive with the other and have to, like, compromise? Have to change.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Seven. “You do not have a high opinion of diplomacy. As you’ve said.”

So many months B’Elanna has been wanting Seven to just listen to her—the fact of it happening was a bit of an inconvenience to her now. But she met Seven’s gaze and found something that wasn’t judgment and it snapped some piece of ember within her, cracked open bright to the oxygen: Seven was curious, curious about her. She’d know that face, that particular narrow-eyed attentive gaze, anywhere and on anyone. 

“In my ideal world, I suppose the only thing I’d want people to sacrifice is dominating someone else against their will.”

Seven absorbed this still with that hard attention. Her eyes traced B’Elanna’s face, her shoulders, her arms. A small tingle went up B’Elanna’s spine at being so carefully looked at, regarded. Despite not caring a whit before this moment what Seven thought of anything, she suddenly wanted to ask her, What do you think I am? and demand a coherent answer. 

“In my ideal world,” said Seven eventually. “You would allot more power to Astrometrics.”

It surprised B’Elanna enough into a sincere laugh. A few chuckles behind her reminded her of the audience listening to them and she violently slammed down on the shame at having exposed herself is such a way. Should anyone bring anything of what she said to her, to any degree of ridicule, she’d throw so many demerits down their throat they’d choke. 

“Fine,” she said, throwing her hands up. “Fine, fine—tell me, then. Tell me why it is so important that Astrometrics get more power and data storage. Harry hasn’t asked me about it, so tell me why you think you need it.”

Harry, somewhere in the crowd, made a noise that clearly translated to, Don’t bring me into this.

“Orientation and navigation are the most important systems on the ship.”

“No,” said B’Elanna, raising her eyebrows. “That’s life support.”

“The purpose of this ship is to return to the Alpha quadrant”—

“Alive, return us all alive.”

“You’re unlikely to be alive by the time of your return if you do not return efficiently.”

It was, of course, something they all knew. But it was also something they rarely spoke, outside of quiet tender moments amongst those they were closest to. No one truly acknowledged their reality—the depth of their strandedness—in the open air. 

“You have hope of finding a way to get us back before most of us are on our death-beds?” prompted B’Elanna, who’s never been afraid of confronting something dire. 

“Our purpose should be getting back to both time and place,” said Seven, dismissing B’Elanna’s question.

“Well,” said B’Elanna, tapping her fingernails against the glass cup of her tea. “That’s the thing. Should it?”

“What other purpose”—

“What real hope is there, beyond tripping over a stable wormhole”—

“You are lost. You are all lost. You do not exist until you return.”

“Seven, what?”

“I have seen it. You think I do not understand?”

“I don’t understand how lost leads to not existing.” Perhaps they were not post-existential-crisis after all. Perhaps Seven was not as adjusted to herself as even B'Elanna, who’s state of existence was stormy, to say the least.

Seven scoffed. “You wear your Starfleet uniforms, use your Starfleet titles, your training. Yet, where are you?”

“Starfleet vessels are built to travel far”—

“They are built to explore. Not to return. You are returning.”

B’Elanna forced herself not to roll her eyes. “You think we can’t be both? You think, what, that our existence is directional? Or—based on which direction we’re traveling? Also, why are ‘explore’ and ‘return’ mutually exclusive? Doesn’t one follow the other?”

“All existence is based on direction,” said Seven. “That is temporality.”

Jesus Christ, thought B'Elanna, her mind transporting her back to the stuffy-voiced lecturers of the Academy trying to be clever.

“No,” said B’Elanna palms flat on the table. “Temporality is temporality. You cannot directly translate truisms of physics to—to humanoid ethics. And, like, ontology”—

“Knowing where we are and how to get back to both where and when is the sole point of this vessel and crew,” insisted Seven. “You are always pointed in one direction. Even while your Captain pretends as if you are still pointed in many possible directions.”

“You’re not convincing me of this”—

“If the sole purpose of this vessel is to return, to both where and when, then finding the most efficient navigation to that where and when is the most important job on this vessel.”

“Stop speaking in extremes,” said B’Elanna, fully aware how ironic that sounded coming from her. “‘Sole purpose’ and ‘most important.’”

“You have to decide, correct?” said Seven. “You said, we’ve already decided this matters.”

“Why would you have us choose one and not the other? Why are you so convinced we have to decide to return home as efficiently as possible and decide not to explore, at the same time?”

“Because otherwise you would not truly commit to it.” 

“I don’t agree.”

“Yes,” said Seven. “I am aware.” She looked down at the Borg tech on the back of her hand. “You would not be dominated. Not even by your best interests.”

“That’s not what I said at all,” said B’Elanna. “I said some things do have to be sacrificed.”

“Yes, traditions, entrenched religiosity. Is not this a tradition you are not yielding?”

“Yielding to what? To what exactly?”

“To returning,” said Seven. “To returning to your selves.”

There was some point, underneath it all, that Seven was not articulating that B’Elanna was struggling to respond to. 

“We’re right here,” said B’Elanna. 

Seven fixed her eyes on B’Elanna’s hands, folded together now on the glass-top, some delicate posture that B’Elanna had long ago forced herself into the habit of. The crowd in the past few minutes had began to splinter into smaller groups, muttering to themselves, not waiting to see if any victory would actually occur in this meandering debate on an alien world’s cold, sunny day. Still, B’Elanna felt as if she was being paid attention to in a strange way—a way she couldn’t quite name. 

“Okay, then,” said B’Elanna, not sure what the argument was anymore. “Ideally, you need more power for the Astrometrics lab. Is that it? Is that your ideal ship?”

Seven blinked at her. “My ideal ship?”

“Yeah.” 

Seven breathed out in what would be called a ‘huff’ in a normal person. She scooted her chair back a few inches and put her weight on her forearms, resting on her thighs, head rolling to stretch out some persistent ache in her back. Then she met B’Elanna’s gaze again, now more on B’Elanna’s eye level. She appeared the most unsure B’Elanna had ever seen her—a minimal expression but present. 

“What purpose does this ship have?”

B’Elanna had thought she was asking Seven how Seven would prefer B’Elanna to do her job. She was somewhat startled to realize Seven had heard something entirely different. 

Chakotay had asked her once, what she would wish, when she had first left Starfleet, and she had said the only thing she regretted was missing out on finishing her advanced civil engineering course. I’ll never get feedback on my city project, she had laughed, trying to make it sound like she regretted this very little instead of the truth. What sort of city would you build? he had asked, adroitly. 

She swallowed down the memory. “Whatever purpose,” she said. “It’s your ship.” They could talk about Voyager later.

Seven looked to the ground. B’Elanna waited, feeling warm with anticipation. 

A minute of cool sun passed. The buzz of those around them splintering further and further away as the debate that was promised splintered as well. Seven began to speak. 

“Defensive,” said Seven. “Defensible.”

She paused, licked her lips. B’Elanna gestured for her continue. 

“Impenetrable,” said Seven, more resolute.

B’Elanna moved forward in her seat, more curious than she thought she would be. “What’s your design?”

Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Seven of Nine/B'Elanna Torres
Characters: Kathryn Janeway
Additional Tags: Hirogen Species (Star Trek), AU: Seven Raised By The Hirogen, Electrocution, Knifeplay, Nipple Clamps
Summary:

Twenty-five years ago, a family of Human scientists embarked on a mission to study the Hirogen species, and was never heard from again.

Deep in the Delta Quadrant, Kathryn Janeway and B'Elanna Torres encounter an unusual member of a Hirogen hunting party.

(AU: What would happen if Seven, instead of being assimilated into the Borg, was raised among the Hirogen? Nothing good, probably!)

if i had a nickel for every time i watched a show where there was a revolutionary freedom fighter pirate (who was also kind of a control freak with delusions of grandeur) who escaped after being slandered and discredited by his political opponents and began to lead a crew of generally self-interested criminals (though his own aims remained revolution-oriented), and his second-in-command was a dark-haired fan-favorite thief who initially joined up solely for the sake of self-preservation and financial gain but eventually became a leader in his own right (albeit a bad one who got all his men killed), and they totally had a weird homoerotic thing going on, and in the heart-wrenching finale the second (maybe-probably) shot the leader because he felt he’d betrayed him–

i’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

Seven coming from a violent civilization violently claiming the minds and skills and thoughts of everyone they deem a useful unit in their striving construction of completing-and-already-complete ‘perfection’–and being removed from that civilization but still retaining some idea of wanting to claim and absorb the units of perfection she encounters around her, as she deconstructs the cultural construction of perfection she’d been assimilated into, reworks the value–and encountering B'Elanna who thinks she is not claimable in the most essential sense, not want-able, not value-able, has no part of completeness–who also thinks and will fight for the idea that 'claiming’ is not actionable in a just world: this is where Seven and B'Elanna make for a rich and romantic dynamic.

Jak cukier, uderza do mózgu nocnego życia tętnienie. Oczy niewyraźny kształt zaczynają odbierać, monotonia długich godzin spędzonych w skupieniu daje o sobie znać, znużenie i brak koncentracji przejmują ciało. Blisko do upadku, przeciążenia systemów, zdaje się jakby już sen nadchodził, wdzierał się bez pohamowania w każdą cząstkę organizmu poddającego się bez walki i łaknącego przerwy. Krótki spacer w ramach odcięcia, zmiana płyty i świateł zgaszenie, na rzecz lampek koloru ciepłego. Lampki błyszczą, świecą punkciki pośród mroku. Powykręcane na różne strony, rozrzucone w nieładzie pozornym, acz tworzące harmonię - klimat w zamiarze przyjemny ukazując. Zamykam oczy, nadal je widzę. Przedzierają się przez powieki, nie chcą odejść, towarzyszą mi podczas nocnej podróży do odetchnięcia. To impreza zamknięta, wyzwalająca duszy łaknienie. Przyjemna melodia, rytmiczny bas, relaksacyjna chwila, kiedy do uszu dociera hipnotyczne działanie. Słuchawki na uszach, wyciszenie zewnętrzne, nic do mnie nie dociera, prócz dźwięku wyizolowanego. Czyste brzmienie, podkręcam volume. W kadrze zarysowują się dwa nowe punkciki, to Twoje oczy, skupione na mnie od dłuższego czasu. Obserwujesz mnie nieprzerwanie (odkąd zgasiłem główne światło), siedząc naprzeciwko, na drugim końcu stołu. Materializacja poprzez światów odległość. Lekki dreszcz przebiega mi po plecach, równocześnie czuję ekscytację tymże zjawiskiem i powolnym ruchem sięgam po podgrzewacz tytoniu. Wypuszczam dym powoli, by rozpływał się w mroku pomiędzy nami. Tak blisko, a tak daleko. Odległość stołu. Tak prawdziwa, jak posmak mentolu w papierosie, a nawet bardziej. Ulotnisz się, czy podążysz za mną i popłyniesz w rytm muzyki? Twoja dłoń na mojej klatce wyzwala kolejny dreszcz emocji, w Twoich oczach widzę błysk, taki sam jaki skrywam ja w odmętach pragnień. Czekałem na Ciebie i wiedziałem, że przyjdziesz po raz kolejny. Potrzebuję nakarmić się Twoją obecnością. Słowa nie są tutaj potrzebne, gdy ciało mówi wszystko. Choć gdy zarzucisz mi ręce na ramiona, uwielbiam Twojego szeptu wyrazistość. Powolne ruchy, zsynchronizowane kroki, dopasowane bujanie ciałem. Ciepło bliskości ciała i dotyku każde muśnięcie wyczuwalne do granic. Starannie odgarniam Twe włosy, muskając palcami całą ich długość. Zapach perfum gdy usta zbliżam do szyi, potęgują doznanie rzeczywistości. Doświadczanie na wyższym poziomie, gdy mocniej zaciskasz dłoń na moim ramieniu i głębiej wypuszczasz oddech. Wszystko tak wolne, spowolnione tempo, czas chyba nie istnieje. Moja dłoń idealnie wpasowuje się w Twą talię, gdy odginasz się do tyłu, by następnie powrócić jeszcze bliżej, za blisko by ust zetknięcia ze sobą uniknąć. Ups, co za przypadek, chyba tego nie chcieliśmy, lecz tak samo z siebie to wyszło i teraz czuję Twój język na moim. Rytm przyspiesza, obrazy migają, gdy oczy rozwarte szeroko, przysłaniane są ciała różnymi miejscami. Wszystkie łakną dotyku i proszą się o podkręcenie tempa, by czasem tylko przystopować na chwilę i sprawdzić, co wzrok do powiedzenia ma w tymże tańcu nieprzerwanie trwającym, unoszącym duszy skrawki wysoko do nieba, poszarpane na kawałki myśli lecą w kosmos, zaś wracając wirują wokół. To taniec, jakiego nikt nie zna, o którym nikt się nie dowie, zaś świadkiem tych zdarzeń, szybkie oddechy będą, niezliczone do końca nocy, do świtu nastania. Ekstaza narasta, znużenie odeszło dawno temu, adrenalina krąży w żyłach, robi się gorąco, więc ubrania stają się zbędne, część z nich leży gdzieś na podłodze, Ty w podobny sposób, lecz na stole zachęcasz bym sprawdził jak mocno i głęboko sięga nasze pożądanie.

Alpina BMW B7 Langversion Allrad

G12
4.395 cc
V8 - 90°
608 pk @ 5.500-6.500 rpm
800 Nm @ 2.000-5.000 rpm
Vmax : 330 km/h
0-100 km/h : 3,6 sec
CO₂ : 253 g/km

IAA 2019
Internationale Automobil Ausstellung
Frankfurt
Duitsland - Germany
September 2019

The Alpina (Alpina: An independent German manufacturer not just a tuner that refines BMWs for ultimate performance and luxury.) This B7 is built based on the G12-generation BMW 7 Series.

Length: 5268 mm / 207.4 inches
Width: 1902 mm / 74.9 inches (without mirrors)
Height: 1491 mm / 58.7 inches (unladen)
Wheelbase: 3210 mm / 126.4 inches 

Some B7 for jadedofmara on Pillowfort!

[Image Description: Digital artwork of B'Elanna and Seven, shown from the shoulders up. Seven has her back to a wall, and B'Elanna is leaning in close with a hand on her shoulder. They frown uncertainly at one another as though realizing something mid-argument. /end ID]

Mgła za oknem, długi rękaw, drzewa w oddali, świateł niknący blask. Mglisty dzień rozjaśniasz mi Ty, krótkie myśli przepływają przez neurony. Długa kolejka chwil spędzonych na patrzeniu na Ciebie. To choroba, która atakuje powoli, nie dając możliwości obrony - jest niezauważalna. Po czasie, jest już za późno. Całe ciało zawładnięte przez uczucie i nie ma dokąd uciec, nie ma potrzeby uciekać. Usilne pragnienie przyciąga, wprawia w działanie. Symfonia hipnotyczna. Zdrowy rozsądek przestaje istnieć, miast niego pojawia się żądza. Chcę dostać dla siebie wszystko, nakarmić się tym, karmić się co dnia. Więcej i więcej, bez ustanku. Podwajamy doznania w szybkim tempie, spacerujemy na granicy kosmosu. Uśmiech, radość, smutku brak. Pozostaje tylko uzależnienie o wysokim natężeniu. Na co dzień przykładni ludzie, poza zasięgiem wzroku obcych - Sodoma i Gomora. Stos zapłonął, chcieliby nas spalić, acz dowodów brak. Nigdy już nie powrócimy do przeszłości, do braku doświadczenia. Uciechy proste, przekształcane w nadmiernym pędzie w wybuchowy wulkan. Erupcja za erupcją. Nie ma kiedy zwolnić. Aż ulice pustoszeją, robi się pusto, nadchodzi mgła i wzrok sięga coraz krócej. Długi rękaw nie wystarcza, sroga to zima. Gubimy się pośród zdarzeń, nie panujemy nad biegiem scenariusza pisanego poprzez nas samych. Tempo spowalnia, płatki śniegu spadają powoli targane wiatrem. Złamany człowiek, złamane jego serce, oczekiwania minęły się z rzeczywistością. Światła w oddali, niknące podczas gęstej mgły. Za nami zgliszcza, czekające na słońce, które obleje ciepłem martwe tkanki i wprawi je w ruch po raz kolejny. Niewykorzystane możliwości układają się we wspomnienia. Szum wiatru niesie echo miłej dla ucha legendy. Fortuna czeka na swoją kolej, by zakręcić kołem przy kolejnym spotkaniu.

Eksperyment z samym sobą. Poszukiwanie odpowiedzi dobrze znanej. Pytania retoryczne, skierowane w swoją stronę. Któż jak nie ja, zna mnie samego? Woda ścieka, krople kapią, wydając odgłos niczym zegara tykanie. Noc, ludzie śpią, zaś ja mam włączone światło. Tykanie wody, uderzenie o myśli kłębek. Normalność umiera, śmiech zawodzi salę. Żarty śmieszne głównie dla mnie samego. Uczucie zachowane, wyodrębnione w czterech ścianach, ukryte przed oczyma innych. Ciało podążające za instynktów szlakiem. Późna pora w środku tygodnia. Nieregularna chronologia nastrojów. Wiatr wieje, rozwiewa czas. Ciepła kołdra, w końcu. Jej wzrok. Przygryzienie wargi spowodowane onieśmieleniem ciągłości spojrzenia, jego czasu. Wyczekiwanie i znaki zapytania, tworzące więzi. Brak słów, tylko mowa ciała. Powtarzana w kółko piosenka. Cel zamierzony, chleba smak inny niż zwykle. Materiał miły w dotyku, brak znajomości zasad. Patrz na mnie nieprzerwanie, wciąż tak samo. Bądź zawsze, gdy ja odwiedzę miejsce naszego pierwszego spotkania. Ładnie wyglądasz. Za każdym razem. Chciałbym Cię zapytać, jak to możliwe? Niezależnie od charakteru, przyciągasz mnie swą osobą. Nieznajoma, zapamiętana bez trudu. Ciekaw jestem Twojego świata, opowiedz mi o nim.

God Avon and Servalan really take the classic “mortal enemies with obvious sexual tension” to another level. They kinda hate each other but have undeniable chemistry and similarities in their approach. He envies her status and influence, her protection from consequences….her freedom. Her casual ruthlessness that despite his best efforts his heart will not allow. She can never betray him bc he would never be so naive as to think she’d actually keep her word. So much simpler than his real friends. He has a clear penchant for dangerous women and she is exploiting it for all it’s worth. Nothing is more tantalising to her than someone who understands her schemes and could be an asset to her but refuses. Who is almost tempted whenever they meet but keeps rejecting her for a rebel hero instead. They are toying with each other’s lives and they want to win but they’re also enjoying the game too much to end it too fast. They’re unhinged and obsessive enough individually but put together they are feral. They scare me and I want to study whatever is going on with them under a microscope.

b7 body worship hhhhnnnngggggghhh

@dykebeckett hap birth, birthday twin!