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Janeway is not Seven of Nine's enemy.
The concept of an enemy as individuals understand it is, at first, foreign to her. Before, there was only the Collective and those not yet a part of it. The Collective was a circle of order drawn around everything known and safe, and beyond that circle was a fragmentary and chaotic margin of resistance which would soon be subsumed into the harmonious whole.
But since being severed from the Collective, Seven of Nine has learned that individuals identify those they resist, or who resist them, as enemies. An enemy stands in the way of one's objectives. Assimilation may be impossible or even undesired.
When she walks the corridors of Voyager, barely tolerating the vast, hollow silence in her consciousness where the Collective once was, many individuals that Seven of Nine passes look at her as an enemy. Their faces contort in hostility, like territorial nonsentient animals. They alter their trajectories, taking more inefficient paths to avoid traveling too close to her. They avert their gazes. Their objective is to evade assimilation; perhaps her presence reminds them of the futility of this.
But Janeway does not look at Seven of Nine as an enemy. When Janeway speaks to her, she looks into her eyes squarely and calmly, without hatred or avoidance. She is neither naive to the possibility of assimilation nor indifferent to the threat it represents to her objectives. Her face instead conveys something that Seven of Nine struggles to process, no matter how many times she makes the attempt. It is as though she sees Seven of Nine as she truly is, rather than through a distortion field generated by fear.
Janeway is not Seven of Nine's Queen.
At first it is difficult not to imagine Janeway as Voyager's Queen, and the crew as a terribly dysfunctional collective. Janeway is Voyager's representative to outsiders and the mechanism by which internal uncertainties are resolved. She aborts inefficient analysis loops, preventing Voyager's actions from being delayed by indecision. These functions are similar to those of the Queen, and such a metaphor fits comfortably into Seven of Nine's neural pathways.
In this metaphor, Seven of Nine would be a drone in Voyager's Collective, and Janeway would be her Queen. There would be harmony between them, as their wills would be one. When Seven of Nine's isolation feels overwhelming, sometimes she closes her eyes and dwells on this hypothetical: Janeway the Queen, the invisible hand of her will placed securely and permanently at the nape of Seven of Nine's neck. No conflict, no confusion, no resistance. Only the unseverable service of drone to Queen and Queen to drone, like blood vessels to the heart, a rhythm of symbiosis.
"Hey. Are you okay?"
Seven of Nine's eyes open. One of the individuals of Voyager has noticed her inattention and spoken to her. She assures him that she is functional and resumes her assigned duty.
Uncomfortable emotions ensue. She will never be connected to Janeway as she once was to the Queen. It is irrational to think of it, irrational to find it soothing. Her skin feels hot when she imagines Janeway's reaction to knowing Seven of Nine thinks of it. And then a cruel shock of icy cold when she remembers again that Janeway does not know Seven of Nine's thoughts as her own, and she never will.
Janeway is not Seven of Nine's mother.
Humans have mothers. In the absence of collective knowledge, they patiently teach their children how to function within their society, one by one. It is time-consuming and inefficient. Seven of Nine is aware that Janeway is teaching her how to function within Voyager. This is also time-consuming and inefficient.
Seven of Nine is Borg, so she has never had a mother. But Annika had one.
She has begun to remember the mother. The memories come in frightening flashes and flickers. They attack at random, when Seven of Nine is unprepared. She remembers the texture of the fabric of the mother's clothing, pressed against Annika's cheek as she rested her head in the mother's lap. Soft, loosely woven, inefficient.
Seven of Nine gasps and grips the engineering section railing hard, causing pain to her hand. The pain is good, bringing her back to reality. She does not want to have those memories. As a drone she was conscious of the information contained in the memories of all who had ever been assimilated, so it is strange that now she cannot tolerate sensory data from one insignificant child. She fights her own mind not to think of it.
It occurs to her that she now understands the individuals who look away from her in fear. They seek to avoid their own intolerable thoughts.
Janeway is not Seven of Nine's lover.
Humans reproduce sexually. It is a chaotic and primitive process, connecting mismatched halves of DNA without planning or intention, producing genetic sequences that are inevitably suboptimal and subject to random mutations. Sexual matches are determined by illogical emotional factors, and may even exclude reproductive purpose entirely.
The language of sexual bonding uses metaphors that resonate with Seven of Nine deeply. Coupling. Union. Two become one. She knows they are only metaphors. She wishes they were more.
It is rare for drones to touch one another. Upgrades and minor repairs can typically be carried out by the drone on its own body. But individuals touch each other frequently as part of their communication strategy, perhaps attempting to compensate for their disconnected, lonely existence.
When Janeway touches Seven of Nine's hand, it may be to convey alliance and to emphasize the sincerity of her words. But the touch makes Seven of Nine stop hearing the words. A shiver undulates through her body at the sensation of Janeway's warm fingers against her so rarely touched skin. She feels an echo of that shiver each time she remembers that moment when she is alone in her alcove, and she trembles in the presence of the vast, foggy idea of Janeway touching her again.
Janeway is not Seven of Nine's friend.
Friends are peers, and Janeway is not Seven of Nine's peer. She is the captain of Voyager, and Seven of Nine is reminded of that again and again. She often feels a spark of indignance at the injustice of being told she must cultivate her individuality, but must also obey authority. This is the paradox of individualist society. She has begun to understand that it is a society functioning on the basis of counterbalanced contrasts: Rather than moving in one straight, unified direction as the Borg do, it proceeds along a wavering path, leaning one way and then jerking back to the other, requiring constant correction, like traveling between gravitational sources in motion. It is exhausting.
Seven of Nine often yearns for the clarity of the absolute, the firm resting state that was stolen from her. And yet, she also often feels a strange excitement, an eagerness to travel that unstraight path. She imagines herself walking along a narrow beam on which she cannot easily balance, nearly falling—and in her thoughts, it is always Janeway's hand that catches her, that she is allowed to lean on. In the deepest, least analyzable recesses of her un-Borg uncertainties, Seven of Nine knows she wants that, even if the wanting has no name.
As time has passed, some of the individuals of Voyager have adapted to her presence. They no longer look at her with hatred. They nod their heads as they pass in the corridor. She knows Janeway has attempted to influence them in her favor. She is unsure if she truly knows all the reasons why. But in the absence of shared cognition, interpretation of outward behavior must be the clue to understanding.