Jim blinked at her. Sev? He'd said that? Right. He had. Jim did that sometimes--nicknamed people. He'd done that with his friends growing up, his cousins, neighbors, Bones and Scotty, and now, her. Never, did he do it consciously. Bones came from something the man had told him on that shuttle ride to the Academy--the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce; all I got left is my bones--and Scotty was just a tweaked version of Scott. And now, Sev was a shortening of Seven.
He blinked again, this time to focus past the nausea and the headache and the fifty-billion different thoughts fighting for dominance in his head space right now.
"It's a nickname," he explained. "A name of..." Christ, it was hard to think and explain things in precise enough terms for her to understand, something he knew by now had to be done and was due to gaps in her grasp on humanity, due to having been a Borg Drone for the vast majority of her life. "...familiarity. Endearment. Friendship. Friends sometimes give each other nicknames."
He reached up and pulled the sunglasses off his face, revealing his red, puffy eyes. He set the shades on his head. "Take me, for example. My first name is James. Jim is just a nickname."