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Charles can tell Crystal's clocked it the second she walks into Sickbay, and Niko, only a half-step behind her, realizes it only a few seconds after.
"Charles?" Crystal says to Edwin's body.
"Edwin?" Niko says to Charles's body.
And, yeah, they aren't exactly hiding it. Or being subtle about it at all. Charles is leaning, in Edwin's body, against the bed, barely perched on it, arms crossed over his chest. Edwin, being Edwin, sits Charles's body in better posture than Charles thinks he's ever had, hands folded neatly in his lap. Charles half-expects his ankles to be crossed, but no, they're just lined up side-by-side, neat as a pin.
"Yeah," Charles tells Crystal in Edwin's voice, "it's me."
"We seem to have..." Edwin pauses in thought, giving Charles's nose the tiniest little scrunch as he frowns, thinking through his phrasing.
"Swapped bodies," Charles finishes. "There's not really a better way to say it, is there."
The shock of it's mostly worn off – for the two of them, at least. They'd been the only ones on the away mission subjected to whatever-the-fuck, and after the requisite incredulous repetition of their names at each other, they'd honestly just got on with transporting back to the ship and straight to Sickbay.
"...huh," Niko says, looking from Edwin to Charles and back. Charles figures that's Niko's translation, from Vulcan to Full Range of Emotion, of fascinating.
"I'll make sure you get all the data," Edwin assures her. "As soon as we're released from Sickbay and allowed to go about our business."
He says this part pointedly, aimed at the Night Nurse standing in the corner. The hologram is wearing her usual expression, poised halfway between indifference and exasperation.
"And I," she says, finally deigning to sweep herself back towards them, PADD in hand, "have modified both of your commbadges to report back any changes in your biorhythms, vital signs, or neurotransmitter levels, meaning you are free to go so long as you agree not to leave the ship."
"I hardly think the Captain will allow us back onto the surface until this is figured out," Edwin says tightly.
"I don't think," Charles agrees, "he's letting anyone back onto the surface just yet. Just in case the effect somehow grows and we start playing musical bodies or something."
"Yes, well," the Night Nurse says, and, sourly, disappears.
"Okay," Crystal says slowly, her eyes trailing from Charles to Edwin and back, "but it's legit weird to hear your accent coming out of your mouth."
"Either of us in particular?" Edwin asks her.
"Both." Crystal turns to Charles-in-Edwin's-body and says, quiet enough for plausible deniability and loud enough for Edwin-in-Charles's-body to definitely hear them, "I don't think I've ever heard your voice make consonants that sharp."
"Edwin," Niko says, frowning at, well, Edwin. "How are you feeling? Is your cognition...impaired at all?"
"You mean," Charles breaks in, "aside from suddenly having the quarter of his brain that's a usually a supercomputer replaced with plain old spongy stuff?"
"I thought that would be rude to say, but yes," Niko says, demure.
Edwin rolls his eyes, but Charles can see the way his shoulders – that is, Charles's shoulders, controlled by Edwin, God this is getting complicated – tighten. "My cognition is normal. The Borg subroutines and programming were scrubbed from the hardware a long time ago, anyway."
"And you?" Crystal asks Charles. "Are you...you know?" She gestures vaguely at Edwin's body.
Charles cracks a smile, although it feels weird that he can't see what it looks like on Edwin's face. "You know I'm fine."
And he is, really. He and Edwin are about the same height, so that's fine. Edwin runs a bit hotter, but Charles has always gotten cold easily so he's all right with that too.
The eye is...admittedly taking some adjusting to. Luckily Charles has been plopped into a brain that's used to processing the greater range of data coming from the artificial eye, courtesy of the Borg, so he isn't tripping over things or anything like that; he's just also seeing exciting new colors, like blue-yellow and purple-green and another one that's just sort of if an exclamation mark were a color.
But everything else is honestly pretty okay, and based on Crystal's eventual small smile, her Betazoid empathy is finally telling her that.
"Okay," Crystal says. "I mean, it's frankly bizarre that you're taking it as well as you are, seeing as you're literally in someone else's body."
"Not the weirdest thing the Federation's ever seen," Charles points out. "I mean, have you read any of the reports about polywater intoxication? Now that is bizarre."
"Still," Niko says, looking Edwin over, "this does raise the opportunity to address longstanding philosophical questions. Are you noticing any difference in your perceptions of colors?"
"There are fewer of them," Edwin says, the combination of his matter-of-fact tone and his obvious softening towards Niko making it clear that he's indulging her. "I've obviously lost the extended areas of the visual spectrum that the Borg implanted eye normally would allow me to see."
"And I can see them," Charles agrees. "Which is weird."
"And you are able to process them with relative ease?" Niko prompts, taking a step closer to Charles and staring at his eye – not at Charles, that much is clear, but literally just the implanted Borg eye that Edwin's body, with Charles in it, happens to have.
"Probably because I'm piggybacking off whatever neural architecture stayed with this brain, but – yeah. Honestly, the thing that keeps tripping me up – literally – is that Edwin's just a tiny bit shorter."
"I am not," Edwin says immediately, glaring at him.
"Want to go back-to-back and test that empirically?"
"I think," Crystal says, continuing to survey both boys, "it depends on if you count the hair."
"No, I swear, my eyeline's different," Charles insists.
"Perhaps it merely feels that way because of the additional colors," Edwin says.
Charles makes a face at him. "Colors is colors, and depth perception's depth perception. Come on, mate, give me a little credit."
Edwin just turns to Niko and informs her, "My mind is also reintegrating the ability to process all the sensations that the Borg modifications to my own body had curtailed."
"Sensations? Curtailed?" Charles says, frowning at him. "What are you talking about?"
The look Edwin gives him is impatient, borderline exasperated. "You have reduced sensation due to the bioplast skin. Did you not notice?"
Blinking, Charles raises his hand. It doesn't feel any different. He tries waving it around a bit, and, yeah, all right, maybe he can't feel the air moving around it the way he normally would, but it feels more like he's wearing a thin glove or something. "Oh yeah." He frowns over at Edwin again. "That's gotta be weird for you, right?"
"I," Edwin says tightly, "am handling it."
Oh, so it's super weird for him.
"On that note – Charles, may I have a word?" Edwin's gaze skitters over Crystal and Niko and he adds, "Privately?"
"Of course." Charles pushes himself off the bed – there's a quick moment of disorientation when, at Edwin's full height, the floor isn't quite where Edwin expects it to be, and also there are all the extra colors messing with what he expects his depth perception to do. "Maybe back in the lab? There's that experiment you wanted to check on – "
"Excellent memory, Charles," Edwin says, and the compliment feels bizarrely natural, so much so that Charles doesn't understand at first what's surprised him. Then he plays it back in his head and realizes.
It's not surprising, per se, although it's a bit gratifying that it's happening while they're in their swapped bodies. Charles knows he has a natural charm, which he likes to think is mostly his outgoing and affable nature, but he genuinely doesn't know enough about the Orion side of his family to know if pheromones have a hand in it, too. Starfleet is judicious enough to always be clear that not all Orions have pheromones, and that Orion pheromones are a highly culturally sensitive topic, but Charles has honestly never met any of his Orion family aside from his mum, and she's only half and apparently that story is, well, the reason Charles has never met any of his Orion family.
So yeah, sometimes Charles wonders a bit if the reason someone's smiling back at him is because of his winning smile or because some gland he doesn't even know he's got has suddenly turned on like a faucet. And although he hasn't got the first clue whether Orion pheromones would even affect someone as assimilated as Edwin, it's still a bit nice that this first time Edwin's complimented him outside of a combat scenario is while Charles knows for sure that it's nothing to do with pheromones.
"Yeah," Charles says again, blinking his way out of his thoughts. "Yeah, let's get to the lab, then."
Crystal and Niko beg off anyway, to go over the data the away team is sending up to try to put Charles and Edwin back in their own bodies. As they walk through the hallways of the Tisiphone, Edwin and Charles get more looks than Charles would've expected – he's been on this ship a while, but he didn't think it was long enough to establish a vibe that anyone else would then find to be off.
But then again, he realizes as they approach the lab door, right now people are seeing Charles's body with Edwin's rigid posture and thoughtful frown, the one that isn't quite deep enough to put any wrinkles in his brow but definitely enough to be foreboding and a bit judgey. And onlookers are also seeing Edwin saunter out of the turbolift, noticeably slouching, and also giving everyone cheerful grins.
Edwin barely waits until the lab doors have slid shut behind them before speaking.
"Charles," Edwin says, and it still gives Charles a bit of a start to hear it in his voice. Or, at least, something close enough to it to be confusing; the way hearing himself on a recording sounds, rather than how he hears himself.
"Yeah, mate?" Charles says, and raises his hands invitingly. "Do you need an artificial hand for something? A hot dish to take out of an oven without a mitt or something?"
Edwin's lips press together in the way that means he's charmed by Charles's humor but trying not to show it. Charles has gotten a lot better at decoding Edwin's various expressions, and he's extremely familiar with this one. "No. I should be perfectly capable of carrying out my duties in..." He hesitates for a bare second before finishing blandly: "In this body. But I wanted to – to talk."
Charles frowns. "Okay?" he says, leaning his elbows on the lab table. "Is everything all right? I know this is weird, but – "
"It isn't that," Edwin interrupts. Charles is fascinated to watch what hesitation looks like on his own face. He never realized how long his lashes are, or that a little hollow appears in his cheeks when he grits his teeth and makes his jaw flex. "It's – more for your benefit, honestly."
"Are you sure? Because you look really uncomfortable right now."
Edwin takes a breath. "I believe you may have access to the information stored in my cortical implant" he says.
That gets Charles to stand up straight in alarm. "I – shit. You know I'm not gonna go looking in there, right? I mean, if I can help it. Do you know how I can help it? Should we get Niko? Maybe with a mind-meld or something she can – "
"Charles," Edwin says, and actually reaches out to put his hand over Charles's hand, which he's raised to hook his thumb in Niko's general direction. "I don't think this will be a problem while you're conscious, and I'm not worried about you seeing anything in those memories. Or at least – hmm." He pauses for a moment to get his thoughts in order. "My objection isn't related to privacy or anything of the sort. My concern is that you might be...unprepared."
Charles nods slowly. Edwin doesn't have to spell it out for him. Charles doesn't know everything about Edwin's assimilation or time as a Borg drone – Edwin doesn't talk about it much, and Charles isn't going to push, not when he's already on this ship by the grace of Hob. Besides, it's probably pretty traumatic and whatnot. Edwin hasn't asked Charles about his time in Federation prison, or about the entire ship of colleagues that died to save him, so Charles figures he can at least return the favor.
"Then – maybe Niko really can help," Charles says. "Build a psychic wall or whatever."
But Edwin's already shaking his head. "If that were how the interface between human neural tissue and the Borg implant work, I daresay the contents of the implant would have transferred consciousnesses with me."
So there's something in the implant's data banks that Edwin's tried to access, or has at least noticed is missing. "Okay. So..." He gestures vaguely between them, in something approaching a 'bring it on.' "Prepare me then. Whatever you've got to say, just say it."
Edwin takes a deep breath, then lets it out. "I thought perhaps...if you had any questions about my time being assimilated?"
Okay. Whatever it is, he's trying to back into it. The problem with that, though, is... "Can you just give me some kind of idea about what you're worried about before I start asking invasive questions?"
Edwin's lips - Charles's lips, but it's an expression so Edwin that Charles can't see the face as belonging to anyone else at the moment – purse so severely that the corners nearly disappear. When he talks, it's slowly, like someone's pulling out his fingernails – which might be part of assimilation, now that Charles thinks of it. "For the most part, the data remaining on the implant is simply backup. However, there are certain circumstances in which it..." He pauses, searching for words again. Then he seems to give up and says: "I have dreams sometimes. I don't want you to be taken by surprise by anything in them, since I doubt this entire affair will be resolved before our next sleep-cycle."
"Oh," Charles says, because he doesn't know what else to say to that. Charles may not be the sharpest phaser in the shuttlebay, but it's pretty bloody obvious that when Edwin says dreams he actually means nightmares, and when he says sometimes he means with enough frequency that it's worth bringing it up even for just one sleep-cycle.
And yeah, okay, it makes sense that Edwin doesn't know where to begin, because now Charles doesn't either.
After a long moment, Charles says, "So you want me to ask..."
"Anything," Edwin says immediately. "There's no point in me holding anything back if you might very well experience it tonight anyway. And privacy is hardly a concern when you are, quite literally, inside my body."
"Well, you don't have to put it like that," Charles mutters. "And I've been careful about your privacy, okay? I've been putting off going to the toilet and everything."
"Do you need to?" Edwin says, suddenly frowning with concern. "If you feel any waste you need to eliminate, something has gone terribly wrong with the Borg alterations to my digestive system."
"No, I meant more – y'know. Metaphorically." Charles sighs. "Okay, so – so maybe start at the beginning, yeah?"
Edwin doesn't wait for an actual question. "I was sixteen when I was assimilated."
Charles mutters, "Bloody hell," but quietly enough that Edwin doesn't take it as an interruption.
"I was in Starfleet Academy as an accelerated cadet," Edwin continues, and Charles fights not to snort because of course Edwin was an accelerated cadet. "I participated in a training mission in space that – there were no records of the Borg in that sector. My fellow cadets..." Now Edwin starts to hesitate, shifting uncomfortably. "There was a...hazing ritual, of sorts. They took me from my bed and put me in a shuttle."
Oh, fuck. Charles knows exactly what Edwin's talking about.
It comes, apparently, from some stupid Earth tradition involving ponds. But instead of dunking the unsuspecting into water, the Starfleet cadet equivalent – if you're a giant asshole – is taking someone out into a shuttle and pretending you're going to dump them. Usually it happens during spacewalks, where the shuttle pilot "pretends" to forget the unfortunate soul before coming back and, theoretically, having a laugh about it. But there's another version, a crueler version, that involves – well. Taking them from their bed and putting them a shuttle.
"That's...awful," Charles says. His hesitation comes solely from the fact that it's really fucking awful, and he doesn't quite understand how a single word can encompass how completely terrible it is, but he can tell from the stiffness of Edwin's body language, even in Charles's body, that he wants to get this over with as soon as possible so he doesn't say anything more.
"The Borg took the shuttle and everyone in it," Edwin continues. "Assimilated all of us. The other cadets were still among the Borg when I escaped and, as far as I know, they are still there today."
Charles stares. He never quite put together that Starfleet's general rule of thumb with the Borg – that the individual has, functionally, died as soon as they've been assimilated – means that actual people, people he might've known, would just...disappear like that. He never quite put together that every Borg drone was once an individual, like – like Edwin.
"How did you..." Charles begins, but how does a question like that even end?
Edwin clears his throat. "Luck, in no small measure. You know, of course, that there are certain tasks that computer systems are fundamentally ill-equipped to handle?"
"I can tell you're setting me up for something, but you're really gonna have to be more specific."
"Randomness," Edwin says. "Computer programs and processors are terrible at generating randomness. Even Starfleet has to sample of random data sources for its own software."
Charles scratches his chin. "Right. The Tisiphone uses the subspace signal interference caused by the warp coils, yeah?"
Edwin's brows raise in surprise.
"I do pay attention sometimes," Charles reminds him. "Besides, you mentioned using that data as the root of the phase variance project, remember?"
"Right," Edwin says after a moment, although he does still sound off-balance. "Yes. And – I knew you were paying attention, for the record. I suppose I simply didn't realize you were paying that much attention."
Charles smirks. "You had some pretty choice things to say about Mick's sampling rate."
"Well it would hardly kill him to implement a finer time resolution," Edwin mutters testily.
"So," Charles prompts, "randomness?"
He watches his own face go ashy as all the blood apparently drains from it with dread. "Yes," Edwin says, and clears his throat. "Well. With the processing power available to the Borg, it is not uncommon for the Collective to simply brute-force most calculations. For more complex modeling, however – particularly for the behavior of non-Collective beings – the simulations need randomness injected into the initial conditions. That is where..." He pauses again, rethinking his approach. "You're aware that drones are typically placed into adjuncts with specific specializations?"
"Yes, Edwin," Charles says, trying not to roll his eyes. "That's literally covered in the basic instruction about the Borg in the Academy."
"Ah," Edwin says lightly. "Well. I wouldn't know, seeing as I never graduated."
"You never – " As soon as Charles says it, he knows he's being ridiculous. Edwin already said he was sixteen when he was assimilated, and Starfleet put him on this random experimental classified ship rather than risk subjecting a regular crew to him – of course they wouldn't allow him back in the Academy. "Right. Of course not."
"At any rate," Edwin says dismissively, "the specialization that I was used for was external processing. Using my human neural tissue to engage in the kind of reasoning that would never occur to the Collective. And that meant that I was...not entirely assimilated. Mostly. It's complex."
"Because they needed your human neural tissue," Charles says. He feels queasy, but only on something approaching a metaphysical level; his body – this not-entirely-assimilated body that he happens to be inhabiting at the moment – is made of sterner stuff. "That's how you mapped it. How you escaped."
Edwin hesitates, then nods. "Those are the broad strokes of it, yes."
Charles swallows heavily. There's nothing he can say to that that wouldn't be trite, or condescending, or pitying, or any of the other hundred things he knows Edwin would, at best, bristle at. What comes out is: "That sounds...hard." And then, because he never met a hole he didn't dig himself deeper into, he adds, "I'm glad you got out of there."
"Yes, well." Edwin's voice takes on a brittle briskness. "I'm telling you all this because one of the strategies I used was backing up important data to my implant and creating programs to keep that data close to hand when the Collective would be least likely to notice."
And now they're back at the beginning. "Sleep cycles," Charles says.
"Precisely. The price of my persistence, however, is that the programs will occasionally reassert themselves even though I'm no longer directly faced with the threat of the Collective."
"So these programs, and this data. Are they like – nightmares? What should I expect?"
"Hopefully nothing," Edwin says, his tone the opposite of hopeful. "But the particulars vary. The advantage of storing the data so it could only be accessed as dreams is that the Collective was unable to recognize it due to the abstract and frequently allegorical means of processing information. The downside is..."
"It's unpredictable." Charles sighs. "Well – thanks for warning me. I appreciate it. And, uh, has everything been – y'know, all right? With my body?"
Edwin immediately puts on his most long-suffering expression. "It is...an interesting reminder," he admits begrudgingly, "of the ways that my own body is still not entirely human anymore. Although I must ask – are you getting enough to eat? I've noticed that the proportion of body fat is entirely lacking for the standard climatic controls of the ship."
Charles cracks a rueful smile. "Nah, mate. I just get cold easily. Always have done. But speaking of eating – we should probably get you some food, yeah? Unless you already ate?"
Closing his eyes as if the thought causes him actual pain, Edwin says, "Must we?"
"You're not in a mostly-Borg body now," Charles reminds him. "You can't get away with tiny bowls of soup. That body runs on spaghetti, a lot of it, and it won't be denied."
When they get to the mess hall, Charles takes it upon himself, since it's been far too long since Edwin has experienced anything Charles would consider actual food, to load up Edwin's tray.
"You've got my taste buds now, yeah?" he says, adding naan and raita to the tray just for the hell of it. "Trust me, you're gonna love all this stuff. Although that does beg the question..."
Edwin rolls his eyes. "Despite its typical usage, 'begging the question' actually refers to the fallacy of - Charles!"
Charles pops his finger out of his mouth, now bereft of the chickpea he'd stolen from Edwin's channa masala. He's about to make some quip about the fingers of Edwin's body probably being cleaner than the inside of the replicator, but he's immediately distracted by the way his entire tongue is suddenly aflame.
"Well, I think we've learned an important lesson about capsaicin tolerance," Edwin says, watching Charles suffer. "Specifically, how it resides in the tongue and not the mind."
Charles doesn't deign to answer that. Instead, he reaches back over to Edwin's tray, plucks the small condiment dish of raita off it, and places his tongue directly on it.
"I will, however, point out that you wanted me to have that," Edwin says mildly. If Charles didn't know better, he'd think Edwin was enjoying this.
"Commander Payne...?"
Charles looks over to see Commander Jenny Green, the ship's head of security, staring at him with something that's less alarm and more judgment.
"Here," Edwin says in Charles's body, and Charles suddenly remembers that, to anyone who doesn't know about the swapped bodies, it looks like Edwin suddenly dunked his tongue in raita. Inexplicable behavior from the previously-assimilated Borg is, in retrospect, probably not the best thing to be throwing around.
So Charles extricates his tongue from the yogurt, swallows enough to be able to speak, and says, "Yeah, sorry, meant to tell you – Edwin and I got swapped somehow on the away mission. I'm Charles," he adds quickly.
"Ensign Rowland," Edwin drawls, "was just providing a practical demonstration of the effects of chili on taste buds that have not become accustomed to them."
"I love channa masala," Charles explains to Jenny ruefully. The raita has, thankfully, cooled him down enough that he's starting to regain feeling in his tongue. "Got a bit carried away."
Edwin wordlessly shifts the tray to one hand, uses the other to pick up his fork, and scoops himself a bite of the aforementioned curry. His eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, that's quite nice."
"I know, right?" Charles says, putting his hands on Edwin's shoulders to start maneuvering him towards a table. "Just wait until you try the spaghetti."
Jenny calls after them: "You realize there's paperwork you have to fill out for this sort of thing, right?"
"Ah," Edwin says, although he lets himself be maneuvered. "We did forget to complete the post-incident report, in all the confusion."
"It can wait," Charles tells him, "until after spaghetti."
Honestly, Charles is a bit afraid that Edwin will forget his hands aren't bioplast anymore, so he cajoles Edwin into spending the time after dinner playing Cluedo with him instead. There's another away team down on the planet trying to figure things out, although Charles privately thinks there are just going to be some swaps in that team, too, and they'll end up playing musical bodies. But in the meantime, neither Charles nor Edwin are supposed to do any work since they're technically relieved of duty, what with being in the wrong bodies.
"Should we swap uniforms, do you think?" Charles says. "Just to help remind people. Also, I think technically our divisions transferred with our minds."
"That depends. Do you happen to have a stash of spare Science uniforms in your size?"
Charles scoffs. "You know as well as I do that the Tisiphone has backup uniforms for all the divisions. At the very least, it'll give people like Jenny pause when they see us acting weird, or hear us talking weird, or, y'know, whatever."
Edwin raises an eyebrow. "Need I remind you that you were the one who decided to dive face-first into the yogurt?"
"Yeah, but it was your body people saw doing the diving," Charles points out. "Don't want to give you a bad reputation, now do I?"
"Because yogurt is what will give me a bad reputation," Edwin grumbles, but he picks up his PADD and requisitions the right uniforms.
"And – okay, I don't want to pry." Charles reconsiders. "Pry any more than I have to, at any rate. Have you got a – cubicle, I think it's called? No, sorry, alcove, that's it."
"A what?" asks Edwin, baffled.
"Seven of Nine had one on Voyager," Charles tells him. "That was in the Academy class, too. She went into it instead of sleeping."
Now Edwin looks intrigued. "She used Borg technology to avoid sleep?"
Oh, that's the wrong direction for this conversation to be going. "I'm guessing no alcove, then. Should we – I mean, is there anything in your quarters that your...body needs?" Charles winces. "I know that sounds weird, but you know what I mean."
Edwin considers this for a moment. "There are certain tools that would be useful in you ran into any issues with my implants, or had to make any minor repairs – bioplast patches, phase modulators, that sort of thing. But for a normal sleep cycle I think it should be fine." He glances at Charles. "A bed will be fine, although you may find you require less sleep than a human."
Require or get? Based on what Edwin's said about the nightmares, Charles suspects it's the latter.
Edwin continues, "Just because we are in each other's bodies doesn't mean we have to sleep in each other's quarters."
"Oh, good," Charles says, because, honestly, it's been a little bit since he's done any real tidying up. After the austerity of prison, he's grown to love clutter. He has things, and he can put the things down somewhere and they won't go anywhere until he moves them! It's amazing.
He's started collecting things, too. Just little things, bartering or trading with locals when they go on away missions to warp-capable planets. Sometimes he'll see a cool rock and, after checking to make sure it isn't about to explode or anything, bring it back to put on a shelf. He even managed to find a football to play keepy-uppies with, and it turns out that the only thing better than giving it a place of honor in his quarters is putting it wherever he damn well pleases.
"I'm glad we don't have to pretend to be each other," Charles admits, watching Edwin in his body. There are a million tiny disorientations about this entire experience, from the way his voice sounds just a bit off without resonating in his skull to being able to see what his body looks like in motion, but all of it seems so obviously Edwin to Charles that it honestly boggles his mind that they have to keep explaining what happened to people.
Edwin moves Charles's body with a grace that Charles definitely hasn't got. Each gesture, each sweep of his hand or tilt of his head, is calculated and thought-out. Charles had honestly thought that Edwin's whole bearing was down to the Borg implants; no random muscle twitches for the Borg! But no, it turns out it's Edwin all the way down.
"I cannot imagine it would go well," Edwin agrees. "It turns out all your charm and charisma transferred bodies with you."
Charles frowns. "That's not what I meant."
"Well, at any rate," Edwin says, clearly dismissive.
Charles takes the hint. "Okay, look, I'm just gonna say it. I know you're used to not sleeping and letting your Borg implants make up for it. But if you're in my body, at least make an effort, yeah?"
The look Edwin gives him is distinctly flat. "Need I remind you that I outrank you and you cannot, in fact, give me orders?"
Charles just grins. "Well, first of all, we're on a ship where the captain introduces himself by telling everyone to call him by his first name, so what does that say about rank, exactly? And second of all, you just told me that you technically didn't even graduate from the Academy, so technically your rank is honorary, so technically you don't outrank me after all. Oh, and also – " he adds, pointing to the red on Edwin's – well, Charles's, but belonging to the body that Edwin is currently in – uniform, "we're in different divisions so you're not directly in my chain of command anyway."
Even Edwin can't argue with that.
The drone is One of One, external processing for Unimatrix 62. The drone is external processing. The drone is –
The drone is Edwin Payne. The drone knows this, sometimes, when it is allowed to. It – he - Edwin exists like a buoy in ocean waves, drawn under into the Collective and occasionally allowed to surface to gather useful intelligence.
The universe is random. The Collective is not. The Collective is pure purpose, honed to an atom's edge, and it has no room within itself to create uncontrolled variables
Edwin remembers learning about mathematical randomness. He remembers the classroom in the Academy, the professor giving a horrendously dull lecture; his attention catching on the dark-haired cadet two rows ahead of him, who will never look at him. He remembers thinking about that cadet, who is always so aloof, and remembers deciding that he and his friends should teach that cadet a lesson –
Oh. This isn't Edwin Payne's memory. He's slipped again, slid into someone else's.
It gets harder each time to return to individuality. There's a part of him that yearns for the oblivion of full assimilation. Being a part of a mind so vast is functionally no different than being nothing at all, becoming a hand for another brain to direct. Each time he is shunted back into his own body, cut off from the rest of what that moment tells him he is, there is less of him that comes with him. He is dying, over and over again, and eroding each time.
So he begins to write his memories to his implant.
It's surprisingly easy. The times when he is Collective leaves him with the traces of how to do it – how to arrange the neurons to do what he wants. With a single organic brain, it's simple enough to mimic the ways the Collective partitions its functions.
He writes his name to storage. He writes everything he can remember about himself, from his parents and his childhood to the searingly vivid moments on the shuttle as he and his fellow cadets realized they weren't alone.
It makes it easier the next time he is once again subsumed and spat out. His identity is laid out before him like a waiting meal, and Edwin finds, to his shock, that it worked. He feels like himself.
It occurs to him that he can put more than just his memories in that storage.
He begins mapping.
Corridor after corridor filled with technological viscera: wires and access points like sinew and veins, a part of him that is not him overlaying the information of what it really is with the ease of a doctor diagnosing an obvious illness. The Collective is still in him, even now, even when he is himself again, individual, one. It seeps through his thoughts with the inevitability of a river flood after thaw, and even that analogy comes from outside the boundaries of what should be him. Edwin was born and raised on Luna and, until he stepped off the shuttle in San Francisco to begin at Starfleet Academy, part of him genuinely didn't believe it was possible for bodies of water bigger than an ornamental pond to occur naturally. The ocean staggered him.
Yet other beings' memories intermingle with his own: the sharp sting of his toes pressing on hot synthecrete in the hot days of high Second Summer, the relaxing abandon of the breeze through the features of his wings, standing in a medical facility and looking down to see striations of brown-green sinew and flesh laid out before his laser scalpel like a map.
He knows that none of these memories belong to Edwin Payne. Not the way this body does. They are his now only to the extent that his mind, too, is now a fluid that has been poured into the same mixer as countless others, creating homogeneity.
An imperative overrides his own without warning, and once again the drone is Collective. The drone is the closest to another drone that has reached the end of its utility, and so the drone is tasked with assisting in disassembly. The drone removes implants and augments from the dying appendage, not even paying attention as it collects the breathmask from the dying drone's face. The drone feels the discomfort, as the dying part of the Collective was assimilated from a species that requires a different atmosphere than the rest of the Collective's origins, and so now it suffocates. But the sensation is distant and easily ignored, like a small grit of dirt in one's shoe. Eventually, inevitably, the discomfort stops, and the drone reclaims the last few implants, pulling the oculus out of its coupling and splitting metal from skull.
The deed done, Edwin returns to himself.
There is a humanoid before him with half its skull missing. Edwin's hands are covered in wetness; he can only presume it is this species' equivalent of blood, or perhaps cerebrospinal fluid.
The Collective has just used him to murder part of itself.
He doesn't stumble back; he's been here too long for that level of horror. He stares, instead, as if memorizing the features will accomplish anything.
And then he retraces his steps. He has mapping to do.
Charles wakes up abruptly and manages not to retch. That's probably due to the majority of Edwin's stomach being Borg hardware, but that is a very counterproductive thought at the moment.
Fuck, Edwin wasn't joking.
Charles had expected something a bit more allegorical, honestly. Edwin had made it sound like the levels of abstraction between the data and the representation were part of what kept it safe. There was nothing allegorical about that dream – it had all the hallmarks of being straight memory.
Maybe it's the fact that he's in Edwin's body and not his own, but none of his typical post-nightmare calmdown techniques work: turning the lights on, plunging his face in cold water, draping a warm washcloth over his eyes to try to relax. The unsettled feeling lingers, as does the certainty that he should be trembling, that everything about him is trembling, with the minor exception of the body he's in.
After about half an hour, he gives up and goes to the mess hall.
It looks like Edwin's beaten him there, sitting at one of the tables by the observation windows and staring sightlessly at the stars passing by. The mess isn't completely deserted – it never is, on starships that run on a shift system – but it's empty enough that it feels private anyway.
So Charles doesn't hesitate to join Edwin, dropping himself into the chair across from him.
"I don't suppose your Borgified stomach can handle a cuppa?" Charles says by way of greeting. "Some proper builder's tea, maybe?"
Edwin doesn't startle, which is a bit of a relief. He does stare at Charles for a moment, as if he suddenly doesn't recognize his own face staring back at him, but it gives way to a rueful curve of his lips. There's a mug in front of him, milky and opaque but the brown is a few shades too dark to be the aforementioned cuppa.
"Unfortunately no," Edwin says, resettling himself in his chair. His mouth quirks a little more and he says, "And would you care to join me, Ensign Rowland?"
Charles grins back at him. "I would love to, cheers. Is it the sugar? The milk?"
"The tannins," Edwin says ruefully. "Although sugar and lactose certainly wouldn't help. I have missed it. Perhaps I should have opted for that instead."
Charles leans a bit over the table to catch a whiff of Edwin's drink. "Cocoa?" he says, raising his eyebrows.
Edwin presses his hands around the mug, as though warming them. "Cocoa," he agrees softly. "Both caffeine and theobromine are also on the forbidden list. As well, of course, as the sugar and lactose as mentioned before."
"Anything I can have?" Charles asks. "Something herbal, maybe?"
With a soft frown at his hands around the mug, Edwin makes a thoughtful humming noise. "One thing that might be comforting," he says, although haltingly, "is that the bioplast skin was also installed in my esophageal passage, and it has a higher heat tolerance than human skin. One advantage," he adds wryly, "of the lessened sensation. Meaning if you were to simply make a cup of boiling water, I imagine it would be...quite comforting. And warming."
There's something about the way he says it that gives Charles pause, hesitating to rise from his chair and go to the replicator. "Yeah?"
Edwin sighs, and meets Charles's gaze. "This body," he says delicately, "gets cold quite easily. You can say what you like about the proportions of subcutaneous fat, but if I were you, I would take the opportunity to enjoy some excessively high temperatures."
Charles swallows. He's been following the regimen provided to him by the Night Nurse, all the vitamins and whatnot, but he's pretty sure the only cure would be time travel. "Should I hit the gym? Use the sauna?" he says, trying to keep his voice light.
"Borg temperature tolerances are considerably higher than human," Edwin says. "So that would not be a terrible idea, before we switch back."
"That's – yeah," Charles says, unsettled for reasons he can't quite articulate. "If I get the chance."
"I know," Edwin continues, with all the confidence and assurance of a miserable and dizzy drunkard staggering through snow, i.e. none, "that I have not asked about your time at – "
"You don't have to," Charles says quickly. "Really. I'm here now, and that's what matters."
"I still cannot help but think that it is – unfair, I suppose, that you have been saddled with me."
Charles's eyebrows fly up. "Saddled? Who said that?"
Edwin raises an eyebrow of his own. "I am aware of my own social skills, thank you. I daresay I was not good with people before I was assimilated, and, frankly, during my time in the Collective I became woefully out of practice." He hesitates again. "I would hold no ill-will if you were to transfer, you know. Or even shift your duties."
It takes a moment for Charles to grasp what Edwin is offering. Edwin thinks that – what, Charles is here under duress? Well, in one way of looking at it, maybe he isn't wrong, but that doesn't make him right, either. "I sort of like Starfleet, actually. I'm not done with it – I don't want to go somewhere else yet. And if that means staying with you..." Charles shrugs. "Honestly, it seems like a perk and not a downside."
"You went," Edwin says flatly, "on an away mission and got shoved into a mostly-assimilated body with night terrors and a list of acceptable foods that is approximately three items long. You cannot expect me to believe that – "
Charles interrupts, "Do I wish I were in my own body? Yeah, obviously, just like I bet – " He cuts himself off, because he has no idea of Edwin wishes he were back in his own body, does he? He takes a breath and changes tactics. "If someone else had to be in there, keeping the home fires burning, I'm glad it's you."
Now Edwin is beginning to look outright exasperated. "Charles, you have known me for less than half a year."
"So?"
"So, you cannot simply trust me with your literally physical body after so little time." As Edwin speaks, his frown gets deeper and his tone hotter, as if he can see in Charles's expression that Charles isn't taking him seriously. "You hardly know me!"
"Uh-huh. How many times have we saved each other's lives by now?"
"That is beside the point!"
Charles just shrugs, as casual as he can make it – in part because he can tell that the casualness is part of what's working Edwin up and, since they're off-duty, Charles can admit that it's a little funny. There's something delightful about watching Edwin go full Edwin on someone – prickly and brash and absolutely devastating – even when that someone is Charles himself. "I don't know. Ever since that first day, you struck me as a decent sort."
"You cannot simply look at someone and make a snap decision that they are a decent sort," Edwin insists. "You – where are you going?"
"I," Charles says, standing up from the table, "am going to get myself a nice, comforting mug of boiling water. And then I'm gonna come back here and keep hanging around here with you for a bit."
"Because you decided I was all right after one day?" Edwin stands too, with a scoff to make it clear that the gesture is meant to emphasize his point. "That is not how you make decisions, simply based on whatever you happened to be feeling in one moment."
Charles shrugs. "It's how I've always lived my life."
"You ended up in prison!"
Over him, Charles finishes, "Doesn't seem all that different now."
Edwin takes a breath and opens his mouth to respond, no doubt with something absolutely scathing, but Charles doesn't catch if he actually speaks or not because the world is suddenly quaking, as though reality itself is being shaken out like a sheet. It pitches him to the ground, the world reeling around him –
When Charles gets his bearings again, he's on the floor, looking up in the vague direction of Edwin's knees. Edwin's knees, he realizes, seeing the science blue of the uniform Charles hadn't bothered replacing with his own operations red. And he can feel the slick weave of his uniform pressing against his skin in a way he hadn't even realized he'd missed, and the bizarre extra colors are all gone, and Edwin is Edwin again and Charles is –
On the floor.
Edwin squats next to him, unperturbed now. "It seems," he says, in the voice that Charles remembers and not the one that resonated through his head when he was in Edwin's, "that the away team on the planet has resolved whatever it was that caused that...disturbance."
Charles closes his eyes. "Was it the Borg implants that kept you on your feet?" he asks. "Or is your posture just that good?"
"My posture is irrelevant, as it would be your posture that would have kept this particular body upright." Despite Edwin's unsurprisingly tart tone, there's a softness to the edges – something that, if Charles squints, he might even decide could be fondness. That, combined with the hand that Edwin offers to help him up, blunts the embarrassment of having fallen flat on his face.
"Sorry you didn't manage to finish your cocoa," Charles tells him, reminded by the aftertaste of it in his own mouth.
Edwin's lips twitch slightly. "I suppose," he says, now long-suffering, "that I shall simply have to make do with a mug of boiling water." He looks down at himself, just a brief glance, and clears his throat. "Everything seems to be...in order. Thank you. For taking such good care of – of me, I suppose."
Charles grins outright. "Anytime, although, no offense, but I hope it doesn't happen again. I've been craving spaghetti something wicked ever since I watched you eat it."
"I watched you have spaghetti last night," Edwin says, rolling his eyes.
"So? I really like spaghetti." Charles doesn't let himself hesitate; he throws an arm over Edwin's shoulders, taking it slow and telegraphing the motion just in case. But Edwin doesn't flinch away, for all that he looks utterly baffled and slightly panicked at Charles's impulse.
But he still let Charles do it. That's not nothing.
So he widens his smile at Edwin. "That's just something you're going to have to deal with, seeing as you're stuck with me."