Set post-Nemesis. The theme behind the story, particularly the theme of the Exocomps was originally put into my head by lj user lookingforwater in an LJ convo and that's pretty much where this idea came from. Many thanks to her. Also thanks to babsbunny for letting me use the title of her website as the title of my fic.

Through Artificial Eyes.

It was dark here. Actually no –dark wasn't the right word for it. The artificial nature of his optics meant that Geordi didn't see darkness in the same way most other people did. This was complete, total blackness. Blacker than it became back when he used to have to take off the VISOR at night. Blacker than the gaps in his memory after the Romulan brainwashing incident. Blacker than a few seconds spent on the inside of a temporal wormhole.

'Why did you associate with me?'

Geordi whirled round to face the voice, hardly daring to believe it real.

'What the—'

An aura stepped out of the darkness, and now Geordi could make out the shape of his addresser. The breath caught in his throat. 'Humans are usually drawn towards members of their own social grouping, or even species. It is their nature, as it is the nature of many species. I wondered, then, why it was that we ever became associated with one another.'

'...Data?' Geordi whispered.

'That is my name.'

It was the same, to the point, familiar tone with which the android had first greeted Geordi when they met on board the Enterprise-D fifteen years earlier. There was no hint of sarcasm or regret. Data had never really mastered the former and was probably tired of the latter.

Geordi frowned in genuine confusion. 'What kind of a question is that?'

'I would presume a logical one.'

'No, a logical question would be "where I am?" and "what the hell is going on right now?" Data. "Why did you associate with me?" is not a logical question.' Silence. A shuffling footstep. '…Data, are you serious?'

No answer.

'You're serious. I… you're my friend, right? Wasn't that reason enough?'

'I was your friend,' Data corrected.

'No. Are.' Geordi reinforced, angrily. Why was he angry? The blackness around him didn't provide any answers. The only thing he could make out was a distinctive, aura-like outline, white-gold against the black. A quick glance to either side told Geordi that they were alone. Or maybe just that he was alone and this was his subconscious talking to him through Data's voice and body.

Maybe he should've taken the captain up on that offer of a month's extra Sympathy Leave. 'It's always going to be Are, Data. Don't you dare tell me you don't understand that, because I know you do.'

'I do not,' Data replied, with emotionless clarity reminiscent of his pre-emotion-chip days. 'That assumption would require a physical presence which I can no longer provide. I was destroyed when the Scimitar exploded.'

Geordi sat down heavily. He wasn't sure exactly what he was sitting on, but it held his weight well enough, so what did it matter? 'Yeah,' he managed to whisper. 'They keep saying that.'

Data's head gave a characteristic tilt, and only now did Geordi think to question how he could actually see the android, when all around was nothing but darkness. 'How can you doubt it? You observed it happening from the main deck of the Enterprise.'

'I don't mean it like that. I mean that they won't say it. They say… they say you were "lost in the line of duty" or "destroyed", but they won't say that you died. I say it. The captain says it. Deanna…' Geordi trailed off into silennce under a familiar and painful yellow gaze. 'Why won't they say you died?'

'I cannot provide an answer to that theory. Though it suggests there was some level of futility in the Captain's attempts to defend my sentience.' He frowned slightly. 'I hope this has not been the cause of any undue stress for him, given the circumstances.'

Geordi sighed, and shook his head. When he looked up, something had changed. It wasn't the aura he saw now. It was Data's face. It was skin. Pale yellow in colour, the same as the third wavelength on the gamma radiation spectrum, with maybe a touch of delta wave, catching the non-existent light. His eyes were bright, though, and didn't quite fit in with any colour that Geordi's equally artificial ones could simulate.

In another time and place, this internal comparison might have made Geordi laugh. It might even have made Data laugh. They had bad senses of humour like that, it seemed.

'You have seen me this way before, have you not?' Data asked, although it wasn't really a question. It took Geordi several seconds to find his tongue, and a few seconds longer to come up with an answer.

'Yeah. When Q gave me sight. I mean, it wasn't for long, but I…' he frowned.

'You were looking at Tasha, most specifically,' Data continue. 'You said…' he paused for some reason Geordi couldn't work out. '…You said that she was beautiful. I understand that now. '

'I didn't see you that clearly then, did I?' Geordi swallowed, wondering why he felt the need to apologise for that. 'I wasn't looking. I… figure it was a couple of seconds.'

'For an android, that is nearly an eternity,' Data said, calmly.

'But it wasn't long enough,' Geordi said, without pausing to wonder where that came from. They hardly felt like his own words at all. Then again, subconscious's were strange like that.

'Long enough, for the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise. You comprehend machines, perhaps even better than people.' Data glanced at Geordi sideways; Geordi imagined you might still feel the android's gaze even after turning away from him, not that Geordi quite dared to fully avert his gaze. If he did, he was afraid that Data would vanish again. 'You know the Enterprise. That is where you are now. Deck Twenty Four, engineering. Or at least, that is where you are located in real time. We are beyond that now, functioning in a purely android perspective.'

Geordi's mouth opened and closed. 'Then… is this what it was like for you? How you perceive things, I mean?' Why not? They said that human thoughts didn't really look like anything in particular unless magnified to a ridiculous level. Why should an android's deepest programming be anything human eyes could see?

'I doubt what we are seeing is the same thing.' Data paused for a second and Geordi made another attempt to convince himself this wasn't real. He didn't want to believe that, though. He didn't want to think that way, so the attempt failed. 'Do you recall our first time onboard the Enterprise-E? You attempted to access Deck Thirty Six to engineering.'

'And the E didn't even have that many decks,' Geordi forced a laugh. Why forced, though? 'I remember. So this is like that. We're going more levels down than we think are there, right out into space. Or something. But… if we're working on an android level of consciousness right now—'

'I did not say "we".'

Geordi took a deep breath. Of course. That wouldn't be consistent now, would it? 'If I'm working on an android level, then it's too damn dark for me to tell. Data, please, explain what's going on here.'

'I am not certain I can. I cannot precisely comprehend the ways in which you perceived me in life. How should I recognize them in death?'

Well, at least he was calling it death

This was worrying, though. In the past, nothing had ever really troubled Geordi as much as a claim from Data that he didn't understand what was happening. Because Data understood –at least on the most basic, material level– anything and everything which happened to them.

It the Enterprise was ever for example, sucked into some kind of anomalous wormhole. Fine –they were being sucked into a temporal wormhole. Stresses on the hull would be increasing beyond tolerance levels. The floor would be growing unbearably hot, reaching temperatures of one-thousand-and-ninety-degrees. Data would usually be able to work out the logical reasoning behind each of these occurrences, but occasionally, they'd encounter a phenomenon which even Data could not break down into such singular, literal descriptions. It was in those moments that even Data would be forced to concede that he "didn't know" what was happening.

And when Data didn't understand, it meant that that they were getting in over their heads in something and had no chance of even a glimpse into the inevitable. The lack of such a logical, direct interface with reality had been as obvious as the lack of a Counsellor who could sense someone's deception, after the death of the Scimitar.

Wait…

Geordi realised with a start what he had just thought, and what he had heard said by so many people since the Scimitar had exploded in deep space. Official forms all stated "destruction" and "disabled", of course, but Geordi had heard the word "death" and "demise", uttered on board by people who hadn't ever really known Data and now never would.

The death of an insentient Starship. The destruction of the future first officer of The Enterprise. Yeah. Something was really messed up with the logic there.

'I. I'm not sure. I just wish I could see where we are, that's all. It's too dark to see anything here.'

'Yet you see me,' Data said.

'I know, but I can't explain why that is. Maybe because your electromagnetic resonance is creating energy waves that the VISOR can only interpret as light.'

Data's frown grew, and Geordi suddenly realised that he'd never seen Data frown like that before. 'But you are not wearing a VISOR.'

Oh.

Oh. Yeah. He wasn't. He hadn't for a long time. His eyes were implants, now. No less complex than the VISOR, but infinitely more convenient. Data's aura had never vanished, though. If anything, it had brightened since he received the visual implants.

'I don't understand.'

'Do you remember the Exocomps?' Data interrupted. Geordi shivered a little. He remembered. He remembered the way Data had looked at him, as if he'd missed something totally obvious. And he had. The words Geordi had spoken were coming back to him now, penetrating the darkness all around them, like an echo from their past.

"Nothing but basic elements. No carbon, sandy texture. But the flashes are almost... musical. I see colour variations and rhythms, like a melody."

'Yes,' Geordi whispered.

'They were more than merely a melody and series of programmed rhythms. Yet you doubted their sentience. You doubted their life. Because they were inorganic.'

'Data, you don't think…' Geordi paused. 'I said something… unwarranted, back then. I'm sorry.'

'I do not question whether or not you thought me alive, Geordi. But… it is hard to accept is it not?'

Geordi swallowed, shuffled in his "seat". 'I guess it is. Hardly any human beings have had experience with life that's anything other than flesh and blood. Maybe that's why people had a hard time of accepting a man who wasn't. To us, organics was life.'

'The Borg?' Data asked.

'I… I don't know about them, Data, where exactly are you headed with this?' Geordi tried his hardest not to let anxiety make him impatient. He couldn't help it.

'I simply wondered which it was that you accepted in me the most, Geordi. The machine who happened to be a man or the man who happened to be a machine?'

There was a beat of silence. An android's eternity.

'I... don't know.' Geordi's head dropped. Maybe it was the tiredness of the last three months catching up with him, or maybe it was just the weight of the total absence of anything he could possibly say.

'It is very important to me,' Data said, 'to know the answer to this.'

'Why?' Geordi felt himself scowling. 'You've always been more than just a machine Data. Always.'

'Forgive me. I meant no offence. It is just that I have wondered…'

Data hesitated. Which wasn't like him, but then, this was all in Geordi's subconscious, right? If he could hesitate, then Data could hesitate. He'd been inside of Data's head literally so many times in the past, and even though you never really got used to it, you learned to comprehend it, in some ways. You got to understand how he ticked.

'…I have wondered what it was you saw in me. I have wondered whether I was another of your complex machines. Whether or not you cared for me was never in question, but you also cared for the warp engines we installed in the Enterprise-D ten years ago. And you told me once, that you fell in love with an insentient hologram.' Geordi nodded. Heck, he probably wasn't the only person who had done so. 'Am I so different?'

Geordi opened his mouth, but again, he couldn't think what to say without having to be completely honest, with himself and with his subconscious.

'I. No. That's crazy.' Gold eyes gazed at Geordi firmly for another second. 'I miss you,' Geordi said, forcing the words out with as much meaning as he could muster. He reached out and his hand grasped… nothing at first, and the absence of anything solid was painful. A cold, raw sensation in his chest. 'You can believe that much, right? You're not just a bunch of memory chips and circuit boards. You're not.'

'I know,' Data said, quietly. And this time he really seemed to believe it. 'Nor are you just another biological organism. But nonetheless—'

'—The point still stands,' Geordi finished Data's thought, sadly.

'If I were not a machine,' Data asked. 'If I had been human, would we still have been friends?'

'Data, if you had been human you might not even have been on board the Enterprise,' Geordi said softly. 'I can't give you an answer for a scenario that never happened.'

'Can you not speculate? Extrapolate from a hypothetical database?'

Geordi couldn't think of an answer to that. When he eventually spoke, it was in a voice of resignation, tinged with pain. Funny, that. He'd never heard pain in his own voice before. Not like this. He'd never imagined it would sound that way.

'…Data.'

Data nodded.

All of a sudden the android's aura flickered back into light and the face Geordi had been looking at returned to the dim series of electromagnetic waves and temperature gauges that Geordi had always seem Data as through artificial eyes. Eyes that would never see him again. Not beyond this, anyway.

'I am the personification of everything you had ever understood,' Data said, slowly, seeming to mull over each word. 'And I was constructed from materials of which you have a unique understanding. That is the reason for the connection between us. I was alive. But I was also a machine. My brothers, also.' He looked at Geordi firmly. 'I believe that B4 likes you.'

'B4?' Geordi bit back something that was half laugh, half choke.

'Yes. I believe you understand him. And perhaps, he shall come to understand you also. If you attempt to make it so.' Data seemed to smile at this not-at-all-private joke. Geordi smiled back on impulse.

The silence dragged out through what must've been several eternities for an android. And probably a couple for a human, too. 'You must return to the Enterprise.' Data stood up. This was odd, because Geordi didn't remember him sitting down. He only vaguely remembered sitting down himself, and everything was still as black and daunting and damned well confusing as it ever was. He tried to put everything together in a way that made sense. It had been hard to do that, since the Scimitar. Since the day Data died.

'Data?' Geordi swallowed. 'You do understand me, right? You understand what I meant before?'

'Yes Geordi,' Data said. And his tone wasn't so much of pain or regret; so much as… acceptance and inevitability. 'I believe I do understand.'

And then the space where Data had been standing darkened, too, with not even the afterglow of an aura, fading away into the black.

Fin.