ugly bag of mostly voyager

eleven | The Borg Queen

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The nanoprobes cloud her bloodstream like the most potent of narcotics, obliterating pain and terror until the act of assimilation seems inconsequential.
 
In that moment she understands everything.
 
So this is what it’s like she thinks, and More, pleaseohmygodmore, and then moments later she can’t form coherent thought at all.
 
She can only feel, and what she feels is joy so sharp she wants to weep.
 
It feels like home, like love. She floats through perfect, innumerable harmonies, a trillion beings oscillating at the same divine frequency. They are, each one of them, unique. They are names faces families fears and desires, each one precious in their individuality. And they are one.
 
As is she. For one crystal moment she is Kathryn Janeway, captain daughter sister friend, and then she is everything and she is insignificant. She has never felt rapture like this.
 
She revels in it. She belongs.
 
Buoyed by countless hands and minds, she could travel to every corner of the universe and learn the entire sum of a billion species’ knowledge in an instant. She would, if she still had an ego, but curiosity is irrelevant. She feels as though she is just learning this and has always known it.
 
If she was still Kathryn she would find it upsetting, but there’s no room here for anything but joy.
 
And then there is her, or rather Her, and if not-Kathryn had a face she’d turn it up to feel Her presence shining on it. The being that was once Kathryn and is now many closes its eyes, hums, basks in the touch of the queen’s benediction and wants for more. She has never wanted anything or anyone more than this.
 
The queen envelops her and strips her away, and once-Kathryn blooms. This is euphoric, panoptic, cataclysmic. It’s a billion tiny tongues and fingers stroking her skin while a billion mouths whisper ardent promises. This is nothing like the sex she experienced as a stuck and dowdy human, nor the pale, shadowed love she’s ever felt before.
 
It’s bliss. And it builds, and shakes, and sings until the speck of what was once Kathryn is sure she cannot stand against it.
 
She gives in.
 
She orgasms in a never-ending wave, dissolving, giving every last part of herself to her lover, the queen, the bringer of ecstasy and belonging.
 
As the fervour recedes, leaving her floating, she cannot imagine it ever being different, nor wanting it to be.
 
You are mine, the queen murmurs, and somewhere very far away, so far it doesn’t matter, someone whispers, Captain.
 
The queen tightens her hold. What was once Kathryn might have gasped for breath, struggled for freedom, but whatever remains of who she was only wants to be consumed.
 
Captain, can you hear me?
 
Black warmth wells along every fibre of her consciousness, and the voice begins to fade again. In the depths of her mind, once-Kathryn hears the queen chuckle.
 
You will always be mine.
 
Captain!
 
The warmth sucks away from her like a vicious tide and light and agony rush in, searing. Every atom of her being hurts, a billion tiny needle-marks in tender flesh. The queen howls endlessly.
 
Kathryn has a body, and a mind, and a soul, and all of them are in agony.
 
She hears the shake in Chakotay’s voice. Thank God, he says. We nearly lost you there.
 
Leaving is like dying.