Title: Sentience
Characters: Riker, Data
Word Count: 200
Rating: K+
Warnings: mentions of death
Summary: Double drabble, during The Measure of a Man. Riker's POV.
A/N: Something random I found in my documents folder. Knowledge of this episode is necessary.
As always, I do not own Star Trek or its characters; I just play in their universe.
It was the hologram that convinced him, fully, so that he no longer believed an ounce of his own argument. He saw Tasha standing there, smiling her small quirk of a smile, and with an agonizing twist of some hidden knife his mind was drawn back to that tragically sunny day on the holodeck. He thought of his pain, and Deanna's pain. All he knew from that day was his own suffering. It had never occurred to him that Data had suffered, too. But now he saw it, as memories flooded back – the quiet, pensive posture, the slightly down-turned mouth, the look of emptiness that he had interpreted as blankness in the yellow eyes.
He dared to look up and saw the same look now, nearly a year later. He could practically see the memory files being pulled up inside that positronic brain. The android's eyes flickered downward at his intent expression, the admission made in a near-whisper. He hadn't known, but the idea didn't strike him now. Now, it didn't matter. What mattered was that blank, guarded expression. Machine or not, emotions or not, this person had suffered. He understood without knowing why that that fact proved Data sentient.