The Void Beyond the Viewscreen
[ colloquial title : never saw the sun ]
I don't even have a piece of him.
They're out there, somewhere. Somewhere, floating through Romulan space, there is a shred of optical cable, the bare bones of a bionic joint, the twisted remains of a sensory node. No sensors would detect them, and no scavenger would want them. They are debris, now -- these scraps of metal that were eyes and hands and feelings. They are worthless to anyone but me. And I know I'll never find them; but I feel like I should try. For seven long years I have worked with him, on him, in him. I have taken him apart. I have put him back together. I have fixed things in him that they said were unfixable. His body was my temple. Now it is nothing but wires and circuits, floating through space, and I have nothing left of my very best friend. Not even one little piece.
There is a hole on the bridge, now; the ops. station is empty, no matter who sits there. I'm glad I don't have to be there, day in and day out like the rest of them. I don't have to sit in the captains chair, and stare at the space he should occupy. His absence from main engineering is not a constant, battering wind; I can pretend that he's up there like always, secure at his post. I can pretend that he'll show up any minute for his rotation. I can pretend that he's sprawled out in his quarters, listening to six pieces of music at once and thinking up new food supplements for his cat. I can pretend that he's anywhere but dead.
Life goes on within this living, breathing beast of a starship. One thousand and thirteen people will wake up tomorrow morning and go to work just like always. We'll have a new mission, a new conundrum, a new second officer. We'll all sit down to poker again, one of these nights; someone will win, and someone will lose. Maybe we'll share a laugh or two in the interim. And I'll feed this monolithic engine, and I'll balance millions of kilojules of power throughout thousands of meters of tritanium and duranium and aluminum crystalfoam, and I'll make this precariously balanced warp-powered creature run like the well oiled machine she's always been. I will do my job as I've always done it, with all the pride and commitment that I've always had. But I will love it just a little bit less.
They want to take B-4 away, and build another Data. They want to replace him like a piece of machinery. One Soong android is as good as the next to Starfleet's powers-that-be, and there is no reason to mourn what cannot be remade. I do not begrudge them their new toy; in fact, I am glad to be rid of him. I cannot bear to look upon that oh-so-familiar countenance, now owned by only a stranger. They look alike, sound alike, move alike -- but they are as different as night and day. The quiet, gentle soul I loved is not behind those yellow eyes; and if I cannot have him back, I do not want to look at him. Not yet. Not when bits and pieces of him are still cooling out there, light-years behind us, barely even touched by time.
Maybe, in time, I will be able to face B-4. Maybe, in time, I will be able to smile. Maybe someday I will tell him all that I have learned about humanity from his older brother, and maybe, in time, he will come to understand. But time is a precarious thing; we forge from it the strongest bonds -- bonds that only time itself can break. And in the end, we lose to it the greatest losses of our lives.
And every time I close my eyes, I'm standing on the bridge again; staring through the jagged hole that used to be our viewscreen at the place where I lost him. The memory is burned into my brain, painted in a mural across the inside of my eyes in such vivid detail that each relived moment is as real as the first. I can hear the great, rumbling burst of the explosion, feel Deanna's slender frame pressed tight against me and the hundred-meter hole open up in my stomach. I shudder with the Enterprise, as the shock waves wrack the bridge. I watch the molten bits of metal rain down through the heavens, wonder which pieces are him. I do not have to turn around - I know the Captain is there behind us -- and yet I always do. Each time, I pray that the answer will be different. I look in his eyes and search for the good news. But memories do not change with each retelling, no matter how much willpower one forces upon them. They remain cold and timeless, steadfast in their refusal to lie for any man's comfort. Over and over again, Captain Picard shakes his head 'no'. Over and over again, my last hopes drop through the hole in my stomach and dissolve into nothing. Over and over again, a little piece of me dies with him, burned to a cinder in the void beyond the viewscreen.
Only in my dreams is he here again, whole again, real again. Only in my dreams does he stand beside Picard on the bridge, singed and dirty, safe and sound. Buried in my subconscious where nothing can harm him, he lives and breathes and laughs with me. No explosion can break the bond that we shared. No single, final memory, however devastating, can wipe away seven long years of friendship. In the end, it didn't matter what he was made of. It didn't matter what made him tick. It didn't matter that his life was one big Almost - almost perfect, almost human, almost immortal; for he was more than almost loved, and I shall never allow him to be almost forgotten. Even if I have to dream him alive each night, I will not let him go.
Not a day will pass when I do not think of him. Whenever I work on the warp core, his hands will be ghosts next to mine on the panel. Whenever I sit at the poker table, he will be sitting there beside me. No matter how far we go, I will not leave him behind me. There is a hole inside of me, now, that will never heal; time will wear it's edges smooth, but nothing shall ever fill it.
Because somewhere, floating through Romulan space, there is a little piece of me, too.