Author's note: I wrote this long, long ago (maybe 2005?). It was, I think, the very first fanfic I ever wrote, and I never completed it. I had all but forgotten it when I came across the story "If Only" by wildfire1980, which uses the character "Daystrom Soong" from this story. I was so thrilled to find out someone remembered this story after all this time that I thought I'd pull it out, dust it off, post it, and hopefully figure out how to finish it.

-x-x-x

Brace for impact.

As it did every evening, the thought flashed through Commander Daystrom Soong's mind as he approached the door to his quarters. The door slid open and two small, self-guided photon torpedoes hurled themselves at him at warp speed.

"Daddy!"

Despite the fact that he was braced for the onslaught, he was nearly bowled over by his four-year-old twin daughters. He knelt on the floor and put his arms around them. "Hello, guys," he said, pressing his lips against their tousled blonde heads. "Where's Mom?"

"Still at work," Ishara volunteered.

"But Uncle Geordi said she'd be home soon," Juliana added.

Daystrom looked up and saw "Uncle Geordi" lounging on the sofa, with Daystrom's orange tabby, Spot, purring contentedly on his lap. Geordi La Forge was one of his best friends, and one of the very few people outside of the family Spot tolerated. Most other people were lucky to get out of his quarters alive if the cat was awake.

"Hi, Geordi," he said, untangling himself from the twins and standing up. "Did Tasha talk you into babysitting again?"

"Just for an hour," Geordi said. Beneath the silvery VISOR he wore, his teeth flashed in a grin. "That's about all I can take."

Daystrom knew perfectly well Geordi loved kids, his in particular. Unfortunately, he and his wife Leah had been unable to have children, despite Dr. Crusher's efforts on their behalf. Which was one reason "Uncle Geordi" spent so much time with his kids.

That was just fine with Daystrom. As the second-in-command of the Federation's flagship, he didn't get to spend as much time with his kids as he would like, and Tasha's post as Security Chief didn't allow her to be here as much as she wanted either. Fortunately their friends spoiled the girls rotten in their absence. Even Captain Picard, who was notorious for his dislike of children, had been known to sneak the girls a cookie or two.

Starving after his long shift, Daystrom headed for the food dispenser. "Want to have dinner with us?" he asked over his shoulder.

Geordi shoved Spot off his lap, causing the cat to stalk away in a huff, and stood up, stretching luxuriously. "Thanks for asking, Day, but I guess I better get on home to Leah."

Geordi had been the first one to call him "Day," and the name had caught on among his friends. Here on the Enterprise, no one called him anything else. Daystrom didn't mind. As the child of two scientists, he'd naturally wound up being named after one of the greatest scientists in the Federation's history. It could have been worse, like Einstein or Hawking, but his name did sound mildly pretentious. He liked Day better.

"Tasha said to tell you she'd be back by eighteen hundred," Geordi added as he headed for the door. "Some kind of security problem."

Day frowned. He had just come off the bridge, and hadn't been notified of any sort of problem. Things had been perfectly normal. Even boring. The section of space they were currently passing through was mind-numbingly dull. "What kind of security problem?"

Geordi shrugged. "I don't have a clue. I'm just the babysitter."

Despite his self-deprecating comment, Geordi was chief of Engineering, and any technological security problem would likely involve the ship's systems. Which meant Geordi would have been hunkered down in Engineering, not hanging out with twin four-year-old disaster areas. This, therefore, was not a technological problem but a personnel one.

Probably the damned Klingon delegation, Day thought with a scowl. There had been Klingons on board all week, causing no end of trouble. They were being transported to a minor planet, Darbeii, where they were supposed to hammer out a peace treaty with the help of Captain Picard, who was serving as an ambassador in this instance. How the hell they were going to make peace with the Darbeiians when they couldn't keep the peace among themselves was beyond Day's comprehension.

"Maybe I ought to go check it out," he said.

Geordi shook his head. "Day," he reproved. "Haven't you learned anything in all the years you've been the second-in-command? Or for that matter, in all the years you've been married? Don't micromanage Tasha. She can handle it."

Day scowled. There was still something damned odd about the situation, he thought. Maybe it was just the constant outbreaks of violence among the Klingons that had his nerves on edge, but his instincts, honed over the six years he'd served on the Enterprise, told him that something wasn't quite right.

At that moment his combadge chirped. "Commander Soong," said his wife's voice.

Day hit his combadge. "Soong here," he responded.

"Commander, I have a problem here," Tasha said. She was a consummate professional while on duty, and never referred to him by anything other than his rank. No one listening to their exchange would have guessed they'd been married almost six years. "There's been an altercation in Ten-Forward. Do you have a minute?"

"Uh-" Day queried Geordi by lifting his eyebrows, and his friend nodded. It was a mark of how close they were that no words needed to be exchanged. "Certainly. I'll be right there."

He ruffled the twins' already wild hair and headed out the door toward Ten-Fore at a half-run. Damn Klingons, he thought sourly, certain they were the cause of the problem. Fights had been breaking out all over the ship all week. Most had been relatively minor, by Klingon standards, requiring nothing more than a few broken bones set, knife wounds sutured, and a hasty cleaning of the ship's carpet to remove lavender blood stains. One had involved a broken neck, but Dr. Crusher's quick intervention had saved the Klingon's life.

Not that the damned Klingon had been appreciative, Day thought sourly. He'd totally trashed sickbay when he woke up, smashing quite a lot of delicate medical equipment. Tasha had had to physically restrain the irate Dr. Crusher to prevent her from killing him a second time.

The heavy wooden doors of Ten-Forward slid open, and Day bounded through them, expecting to see tables thrown on their sides, pools of blood on the carpets, or bodies littering the floor.

Instead he saw his wife.

Her short blonde hair was slicked back, and she wearing much more makeup than usual. Her body, which as the head of security she kept honed and fit, had been poured into a sexy, form-fitting outfit that exposed her muscular midriff. A faint smile curved her lips.

She looked exactly as she had the night she'd first seduced him.

"Oh, hell," he said. "I forgot our anniversary again, didn't I?"

-x-x-x

In his darkened quarters Lieutenant Commander Data awoke with a start.

It was, of course, more accurate to say that his dream program terminated abruptly, causing the unplanned cessation of his dream state and restoring him suddenly to consciousness. But it was certainly as close as he'd ever come to a start.

He had set his dream program to wake him after six hours. Yet, according to his internal chronometer, which was never wrong, only three point eight hours had passed.

"Computer," he said. "Lights."

The lights came on, and Data sat up and looked around his quarters. All was as it should have been. His orange tabby cat, Spot, was curled at the foot of his bed, blinking sleepily in the sudden brightness. His quarters were as spartan and organized as ever.

Yet something must have awakened him.

Puzzled, he stood up and crossed his quarters. He was fully clad, since he "slept" in his uniform. There was really no point to an android wearing pajamas, as far as he could see. He opened one of the cubbies where he kept his personal effects, pulled out a small clear plastic object, and pushed a button.

The image of Tasha Yar appeared.

He stared at the hologram for a long moment. Tasha had died young, her skin very nearly as smooth as his own artificial dermis was. But in his dream she had aged. Not significantly, to be sure, but there had been decided lines at the corners of her eyes that had not been there when he knew her, and a few gray hairs mixed in among the gold. It was odd, he thought, that he should have dreamed of her as she might have been had she lived. It was odd that he had dreamed of her at all.

Turning off the hologram, he hit his combadge and spoke. "Geordi."

There was a pause, then Geordi's voice answered. He sounded like he'd been awakened from a sound sleep, which, given that he and Data were both on the night shift this week, was very probably the case.

"Yeah, Data. What's up?"

"I just had an extremely peculiar dream."

Geordi groaned. Data's dream program had only been activated three months before, and he had developed a habit of discussing his dreams with his friend, a habit that he knew Geordi sometimes found a trifle irritating. Considering that his dreams were usually, as his creator Dr. Soong had put it, "grounded in the mundane," he found it difficult to blame Geordi. A dream about working on relays in the Jeffries Tube seemed rather dull compared to the oddly random dreams humans seemed prone to.

But this particular dream had been very strange indeed.

"Do we have to talk about it right now, Data?" Geordi's exasperated voice said.

"It is not merely the dream," Data said. Still curled at the foot of his bed, Spot lifted her head and yawned widely, looking as reproachful as Geordi sounded. "I had an unexpected anomaly in my dream program. I woke up several hours before I should have."

"That's weird." Faced with an engineering problem, Geordi immediately sounded much more awake. "Maybe we should take you down to Engineering, run some tests on your neural net."

"It might simply be a normal side effect of my dream program," Data suggested. "We do not yet know all the details of how it may affect me, after all."

"Yeah, it might be. But I don't think we should take any chances. Meet me in Engineering, okay?"

"Very well."

Spot jumped off the bed and rubbed against Data's legs, purring. He bent and rubbed his hand down her back briefly, then straightened up and headed for Engineering.