Sneak peek of one of my favorite sections from later in this fic.
A hardness overcame Seven then, the alloys in her spine chaining her fractured emotions back together in some grotesque distortion of what Janeway had always insisted they could be. Was this what it meant to be human? This labyrinth of consternation and insecurity and doubt? To feel, from one moment to the next, while drowning under the gravity of her inability to draw any meaningful connections between them? What was the purpose? Janeway found her then, and Seven realized she had dropped into a crouch closer to the habitat floor. The tentative ghost of a palm encapsulated her knee as the Captain crouched before her and Seven carefully deflected its benevolence by righting herself. She feared the touch would melt the metal of the implant concealed beneath the biosuit and burn them both. “Must...you always…touch me?”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/62063797/chapters/158729248