[And it isn't his best friend stubbornly telling him to fight for himself that makes him want to fight harder. It's Mariner, curled up like a small child and crying. When she's always a total badass. Mariner, who probably needs him to stay on-balance as much as he needs her to - especially here, in some awful situation in another universe.]
[Where his face looks past her as he hugs her, his expression changes. Eyebrows furrowing, lips pressing together.]
[No. No, it's not going down like this.]
No. No, you know what? No.
[He draws back to face her. He'd assumed this meant death. A death of a sort. Probably a physical death when someone inevitably mercy kills him. But he won't be dead-dead unless someone decides to make him that way and people have gotten disconnected from the collective before.]
The Borg aren't actually here. They were just some kind of...construct, right? Even if they made real Borg nanites. There won't be a - a vinculum. A central plexus. No hivemind, no Collective to connect to.
[Less infrastructure that would utterly subsume him.]
I'd need something to act as a regeneration alcove if I wasn't attached to the Collective, but the lieutenant is an engineer. Maybe he can figure something out, even with this era's technology. Or figure out a way to put me in some kind of long-term stasis.
[Hope. He digs for it, digs deep. It can be found, though. It's there. Perhaps not in that he'll somehow not be changed. Maybe it can be found in being changed back.]
Even if he can't set up some kind of stasis, you could just do something to restrain my hands so I keep my little tubules to myself and chain me up in a room somewhere. [The Borg implants that arise from the nanites would nourish his body, especially if they could find an alternate energy source for regeneration.] Until there's a way home. Then back in our universe everything can be removed.
And - and disconnected drones have regained individuality more than once, right? Even before we get home, the process would probably start because I wouldn't be connected to the Collective. Because there'll never be any other voices. So maybe it'll be easier to try to find my own again.
I've been myself a lot longer than I'll be a drone, even if we're stuck here for a while. That usually means a faster recovery, a - a more complete regain of someone's old personality.
[So what if it'll be awful. So what if he'll suffer (in a way he's already had an unpleasant taste of.) There is still an actual future to be had. There's still a chance he can dig his real self up again. There's a chance he might get to see the people he cares about as himself. Even if it it shatters him at the start, he at least knows there will be people there hovering around with adhesive, ready to help him pick up the pieces and put himself back together again.]
[He knows if Tendi and Rutherford were here, they'd be saying the same thing, they'd be insisting there's hope just like Mariner just had. He can imagine Rutherford talking about success rates in removal of most implants and how any left can be safely integrated into daily existence. He can imagine Tendi telling him that his friends will be there.]
[Just like Mariner is here right now. Just like he knows she'll be there until she can kick his butt right through some kind of dimensional door back to their universe someday.]
[He shrugs haplessly, tears in his eyes, but it isn't empty platitudes. This is real and he just dug it up for her. Just for her; she's the only one he probably could've managed it for.]
I can just...Picard it up.
[It's bad enough she's had so many friends leave her behind. He's not forcing her into leaving him behind.]
2/2
[And it isn't his best friend stubbornly telling him to fight for himself that makes him want to fight harder. It's Mariner, curled up like a small child and crying. When she's always a total badass. Mariner, who probably needs him to stay on-balance as much as he needs her to - especially here, in some awful situation in another universe.]
[Where his face looks past her as he hugs her, his expression changes. Eyebrows furrowing, lips pressing together.]
[No. No, it's not going down like this.]
No. No, you know what? No.
[He draws back to face her. He'd assumed this meant death. A death of a sort. Probably a physical death when someone inevitably mercy kills him. But he won't be dead-dead unless someone decides to make him that way and people have gotten disconnected from the collective before.]
The Borg aren't actually here. They were just some kind of...construct, right? Even if they made real Borg nanites. There won't be a - a vinculum. A central plexus. No hivemind, no Collective to connect to.
[Less infrastructure that would utterly subsume him.]
I'd need something to act as a regeneration alcove if I wasn't attached to the Collective, but the lieutenant is an engineer. Maybe he can figure something out, even with this era's technology. Or figure out a way to put me in some kind of long-term stasis.
[Hope. He digs for it, digs deep. It can be found, though. It's there. Perhaps not in that he'll somehow not be changed. Maybe it can be found in being changed back.]
Even if he can't set up some kind of stasis, you could just do something to restrain my hands so I keep my little tubules to myself and chain me up in a room somewhere. [The Borg implants that arise from the nanites would nourish his body, especially if they could find an alternate energy source for regeneration.] Until there's a way home. Then back in our universe everything can be removed.
And - and disconnected drones have regained individuality more than once, right? Even before we get home, the process would probably start because I wouldn't be connected to the Collective. Because there'll never be any other voices. So maybe it'll be easier to try to find my own again.
I've been myself a lot longer than I'll be a drone, even if we're stuck here for a while. That usually means a faster recovery, a - a more complete regain of someone's old personality.
[So what if it'll be awful. So what if he'll suffer (in a way he's already had an unpleasant taste of.) There is still an actual future to be had. There's still a chance he can dig his real self up again. There's a chance he might get to see the people he cares about as himself. Even if it it shatters him at the start, he at least knows there will be people there hovering around with adhesive, ready to help him pick up the pieces and put himself back together again.]
[He knows if Tendi and Rutherford were here, they'd be saying the same thing, they'd be insisting there's hope just like Mariner just had. He can imagine Rutherford talking about success rates in removal of most implants and how any left can be safely integrated into daily existence. He can imagine Tendi telling him that his friends will be there.]
[Just like Mariner is here right now. Just like he knows she'll be there until she can kick his butt right through some kind of dimensional door back to their universe someday.]
[He shrugs haplessly, tears in his eyes, but it isn't empty platitudes. This is real and he just dug it up for her. Just for her; she's the only one he probably could've managed it for.]
I can just...Picard it up.
[It's bad enough she's had so many friends leave her behind. He's not forcing her into leaving him behind.]