Raffi stirs her tea.
With one elbow on the table and chin resting in her palm the intelligence operative watches as the liquid in the glass cup swirls in time with the teaspoon.
Her thoughts are both elsewhere and nowhere, thinking of both everything and nothing as she sits in this cafeteria staring absentmindedly up at the menu board.
It’s a nice little cafe, not too many minutes walk from Starfleet but far enough to get away from the thoughts of the mission brief and of... of her.
Both of these appear to be the only topics on her mind lately, both all consuming and both...
“Mind if I join you?”.
Yanked from her thoughts Raffi jerks slightly, startled.
The cafe is half empty in the after lunch lull of the mid afternoon so Raffi’s thoughts jump to why this man would ask to sit with her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to startle you”, he apologises in a soft voice and points to the seat opposite to await her response.
“Oh uhmm yes, I mean feel free”, she garbled.
“Commander Musiker isn’t it?”, the man enquired as if he already knew.
He pulled the chair out and sat with his own tea and she observed him as he sat.
A tall man, older than she, square shouldered, and that tattoo above his eye.
It was at that moment that she made the connection and although she had never met him, she knew exactly who this man was.
“Chakotay”, he introduced himself with a polite dip of his head.
“I see…”, Raffi processed the significance, “and ummm, yes, Commander Musiker or uh, just Raffi”.
He seemed to observe her for some moments, almost as if considering wether to speak while he stirred his own tea.
“Look I don’t make a habit of invading the space of others but I recognised you from a friends description and well… I know that look”.
Raffi moved to hold the cup with both hands and her thumb repeatedly brushed against the glass in curiosity.
“I believe you and I have something in common”, the man spoke still gently but clearly with a message he intended to get across.
“We do, do we?”. Raffi was used to cryptic messages, subtle hints and puzzles that intelligence officers so often had to piece together for themselves.
“Or rather I should say… someone”.
Raffi sat back and leant against the back of her seat and held his gaze.
A feeling within her was pointing her in the direction of where this might be going.
Of course SHE had told her about HIM.
It may have been long ago but the topic of her past romantic encounters had come up just as her own mentions of Jae.
“And this is relevant why?”. Raffi was not one for small talk, certainly not about past relationship issues and certainly not with someone she had only met mere minutes ago.
“Because I know that look and I thought I ought to welcome you to the Scorpion club”.
Raffi frowned. She had things to do, a mission to begin the initial planning for and a pit of loneliness just waiting for her to wallow in. She didn’t need this.
“We’ve both been stung by the same scorpion”.
Raffi stopped.
He really was talking about… about… she could barely even think her name without feeling the hole left in her world. He was talking about HER.
“Seven…”, she offered quietly and with reluctance.
The man gave a simple and single nod upon recognising the understanding.
“Once she’s lured you into believing that you’ve broken through those barriers of hers, lulled you into believing that you yourself are the only who has made her finally feel safe… That’s when the scorpion stings. And once her desires are gratified she flees to some distant part of the quadrant and leaves you to drown. Sound familiar?”.
Raffi said nothing as thoughts and memories brought to the surface by the words swirled in her mind.
It all sounded so familiar, it rang reluctantly true. It shouldn’t but it did.
So many memories rose to the surface within Raffi’s mind as she listened.
The feeling of initial admiration for the Ranger when they first met.
That slow but cautious initial hand hold onboard La Sirena… it had at that time felt like witnessing Seven slowly beginning to emerge from her closed, scared and scarred shell…
2024 and watching as Seven finally seemed to hear her words and began to bravely inch beyond the trauma and scars of her Borg past.
All those nights with Seven, holding her, touching her, hearing her…
And what of all the times Seven had held her, had touched her, heard her?
It had been intense, emotional to witness and real.
It had been real? Hadn’t it?
Raffi saw the man sigh. It seemed such a sad sigh as he watched her consider so many intimate and personal memories, words and images.
“It’s what she does… she reels people in by their emotions, their empathy… to be honest, I don’t even think she knows she does it. It’s simply her nature”.
No. Raffi shook her head. No.
She had never met this man and yet… yet… everything he had said, every word he had just spoken had an unsettling possible ring of truth.
She was about to dismiss his words, about to gather her thoughts and get up, dismiss him with a polite goodbye and leave when…
“I know she’s on the Titan, has been for some months yes?”.
Raffi stopped before she could even move.
“How many messages has she sent you? How many times has she called?”.
Raffi wanted to speak, wanted to give an answer, make excuses, wanted to suggest that Seven has obviously been busy, anything to nonchalantly brush off or justify the silence to this man but…
“Why, why would she do this?”, Raffi wasn’t even aware she had asked the question until the moment she recognised her own voice verbalise her thoughts.
The broken emotion within her own voice took even Raffi by surprise.
She didn’t know this man and yet his uninvited words had inflamed a raw Seven shaped wound she had been trying so hard to ignore.
The man took a sip of his tea, watching her with a mix of sadness and sympathy as he did so.
“Because to sting is the nature of the scorpion”.
His voice was flat and so very matter-of-fact.
She knew of his past association with Seven, but this similarity…
“But why?”.
The man leant back, his expression now becoming almost apologetic, is if breaking unpleasant to news to someone who perhaps wasn’t yet ready to hear it.
“The scorpion stings from an innate desire to poison its prey…
Seven stings out of loneliness, and once she is satisfied she then returns to that loneliness.
We’ve both been foxes for the scorpion…
And like the scorpion, it’s just her nature”.