Author: BellaDonna
Story Title: No choice
Gen or Slash: Gen
Rating: G
Category: snippet
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan-fiction. All here fore used characters belong rightfully to Paramount and I just borrowed them. The only profit I hope to achieve with this is the pure pleasure of the reader, so no copyright infringement intended. Please do not sue me, I don’t have money and I won’t be getting some from this story.

No choice
by Belladonna

There are decisions in life, that are able to change it forever. But it is not always us who are allowed to make these choices for ourselves.

Annika Hansen was just a normal girl like all the other girls of her age. She was blond and had huge blue eyes, that were looking towards the future with so much delight and innocence. For her, she had all the possibilities open and big dreams. It were the dreams of each small girl, of a career as a dancer, a famous doctor or maybe even of a career as captain of a spaceship, that would go boldly where no other had gone before. She was pretty smart and cheerful, a child like any other at her age. She was so young and innocent, but all her dreams, all these possibilities that had been given for her life or some day would be, she would never reach or accomplish, she would never live up to live her dreams, for the choice for this was never in her own hands.

Annika Hansen never had a choice, for her parents decided and chose for her.

They decided for a study of the Borg, an new and strange species that was unknown at that time and nobody had ever heard of. Because of their scientific urge for research they decided for a mission during which they could study and examine this new species. In their urge for science and research they made this choice for Annika, too. They chose to take their little daughter with them into the unknown, on a journey for which there would be no return, for none of them. Annikas future, all her plans and dreams, all her childlike fantasies and dreams were shattered, destroyed in the very same moment as the ship of her parents got caught in the wake of the transwarp corridor of a Borg cube and was drawn with them into the Delta Quadrant.

She never had a choice, never had a chance for a normal future or life, for the Borg decided and chose now for her.

They decided for her that moment they assimilated her parents and with them the little girl Annika Hansen. From that moment on, Annika Hansen disappeared, for ever and would never return, and with her disappeared all her dreams, all what Annika Hansen had been and wanted to be.
Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One was Borg, she was part of the Collective and the plans of the Collective mind had become hers, it were now hers. All that was relevant or of any meaning, what was relevant or of meaning for Seven of Nine, were only the interests of the Collective, all else was meaningless. All the personal wishes and dreams of the single individual were irrelevant, for only the will of the Collective mind was of means for every single drone, like Seven of Nine was. There were no other wishes or goals beside those of the Collective, there were no dreams of a single being, for there were none, they were all one, a Collective, one voice and one mind. Dreams of wishes were irrelevant, the single one was irrelevant, for they all together were the Collective that was built from countless drones and Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One was one of them. All the choices, all the decision that were to make, were made by the Collective, for every single drone. The Collective was her life now and she never had the choice to be anything else but a drone, one of many that served the will of the Collective and she would never have the choice to be anything else. She didn’t want to.

Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One never had a choice for Captain Katherine Janeway decided and chose for her.

Captain Janeway decided for her the moment she interrupted the link to the Collective and by doing that severed her for ever from the Borg and the Collective. Captain Janeway made the choice for her and took the Collective from her to make her an individual, to give her a live back that others had taken from her, that others had chosen for her to live. But it wasn’t her who was allowed to make this choice for herself, for the Captain decided for her. She made the decision for her, a decision that would change her life forever again, and again it wasn’t in her own hands to decide for her own future.

~/~

Seven of Nine stood in the Captain’s ready room and waited for what she might have to say to her. Seven had put her arms behind her back and watched the woman behind the desk. Captain Janeway on the other hand sat behind her huge desk and studied the woman in front of her.
It wasn’t the first time that they had been in a similar situation, that they had had a similar talk and still the Captain had the same friendly smile and look for Seven she’d had on the first of these talks. And Seven still simply watched her, listened to her and thought about her words, but said nothing.
“It is up to you, Seven, only up to you”, Janeway said, like she’d said so often before. “It is your own decision, your choice, Seven.”
A flicker of shadow ran over the face of the former Borg and in her eyes there was a slight shade of sorrow.
“As you wish, Captain”, she said and simply nodded. Then she turned around to leave the room. As the doors closed behind her, she turned her glance down slightly.

‘It is your own decision, your own choice.’

The words of the Captain still echoed in her mind and thoughts.
“No, Captain, you are wrong”, she said silently and in her voice there was a shade of unbearable pain and sadness. “Because it was never my own decision or my own choice.”

~fin~