Author's Note: This fic ignores the ending of "Descent," or at least ignores the fact that Lore is considered dead after his deactivation at the end of the episode. This could be seen as an AU to "Nemesis" as well, but that's up to the interpretation of the reader. Feedback would be most appreciated.

Warnings: Mild self-harm.

Lore thinks about death.

He thinks about it more than most, he's sure, and sometimes he wonders why that is. Sometimes, as his ship makes the slow passage between star systems, he wonders whether his father purposefully made him like this, this machine obsessed with the one thing in the entire universe that he cannot have. Other times, he thinks about ships or where his next job will come from, and once he even found his mind straying to a peculiar but attractive barmaid he met on the edge of Federation space.

But mostly, he thinks of death.

He wonders how it feels for them, those insignificant organics, when he slits their throats, and, alone in his ship, drags the blade of his knife slowly across the palm of his hand. The liquid that spills forth is yellow and clear; it flows smoothly between his fingers and drips droplets onto the floor in perfect orbs that catch the faint light as they fall, twinkling merrily. It is too perfect; too calm.

It feels all wrong.

A small alert goes off in his brain, a gentle, pulsing reminder, calmly informing him of the tear and requesting repair at his earliest possible convenience. Or at least, it seems to say that. No need to rush; it is only superficial damage.

Lore grabs a towel and hastily swipes at the fluid before picking up his knife again, which he twirls idly through his fingers, letting the light play off the blade. There is still dried liquid on it from his last kill, dark and cracked, red like humans' but from a creature completely unlike them. The blade had split the blundering fool's throat and his last words had been no more than gurgles as, with each forceful heartbeat, blood poured from his body and washed over his murderer's boots like a stream lapping at the shore. Lore had left the bar with a spray of blood droplets across his face and the knife, still dripping, secured in his belt.

Filthy organics and their disgusting fluids, he thinks, all the while reveling in how right it feels. Their deaths are hot and messy, no two alike, and their ends come in jerks and flails with every fiber, every synapse, fighting back against the magnetic pull of death. Yet how can the organics function, knowing that there will be nothing after their inevitable deaths? Their lives are but brief specks of light book-ended by unending nothingness. Darkness for an eternity before life, and darkness after. Their lives are brief and without purpose, yet the universe is shaped around them. It is shaped around the cycle of birth and life and death; even the stars and planets follow such a pattern.

He cleans the knife after each use, though not thoroughly, and sometimes he wonders whether this is also a programmed behavioral pattern or an idiosyncrasy that is all his own. The carvings on the hilt capture the blood and hold it there for months, sometimes even years, so that he may gaze upon it and remember the deaths, their deaths, each one of them brought by his hand.

Insignificant, so insignificant, all of them. Insects.

If there is one constant in the universe, Lore knows it is death. Everyone – and everything – dies.

Except him. He does not die. He gets deactivated, to be sure, but he does not die. There is always something after the deactivation; awareness after the darkness. He never knows how long it will be – years, days, hours – but inevitably someone's curiosity gets the better of them and he is reactivated, Brought back to life. Resurrected.

Perhaps there are two constants – curiosity and death.

And now there is a third – the android. Him. Lore. He will not die. He cannot die. He is an anomaly, something the universe did not account for, something it cannot compute. He is wrong. He feels it, too, every moment of his existence. It's a mantra that beats in the back of his mind, burning, pulsing, growing louder all the time so that he can no longer drown it out with the screams of dying organics.

…wrongiamwrongiamwrongiamwrong…

He has come to appreciate the weapons of centuries past: the knives and swords; daggers and guns. They allow him a certain thrill; he can hold the bullets, rolling them between his fingers, knowing that they will pierce some poor creatures' skin, rupture his heart or split his head. He can feel the instrument of death, note the cool metal, and know that this will be the thing that kills. Not some energy discharge, but this. Or he can walk through a crowd and split his knife into a man's side, casually, and feel his victim's blood, his life, pour hot and angry over his hand. He can touch him, watch him, as his last breath escapes his lungs and consciousness fades from his eyes.

Wrongwrongwrongwrong, the voice sings in his ear, and Lore runs his hands through his hair. He cannot think; he cannot focus. It's loud, too loud, all the time, and the ship is too silent, it's practically reverberating with the song – wrongwrongIamwrongIamwrong– and the voice is making him feel insane but he can't be insane, only humans go mad and he isn't human because IAMWRONG and humans are not wrong in that way, they are right and flawed just like all the organics and –

The small hairs at the nape of his neck prickle and stand on end; his skin ripples and tingles, reacting to something he can neither see nor hear. He leaps to his feet and paces the ship, ill at ease, fighting the impulse to drag his nails across his face -IAMWRONGIAMWRONGIAMWRONG - and, when he can bear it no longer, sinks his fingers into his forearm. The synthetic skin gives way beneath the brute force of his fingers, which are long and slender like a human's and deceptively strong. They are fingers that can snap bone with a single squeeze and have done so on numerous occasions, and now they have turned on their owner's body, peeling away the skin in great swaths. The yellow liquid gushes now from the gaping wounds and alarms begin to sound tirelessly in Lore's brain. Only then does he stop, with his arm's circuitry exposed to the cool air up to his elbow, as the incessant alarms clamor to be noticed and shove the mantra to the back of his brain, where it stews; lying in wait.

…IamwrongIamwrongIamwrong…

If there is one constant in the universe, Lore knows it is death. And the universe corrects things that are wrong – iamwrongiamwrongiamwrong – and it has been trying to correct Lore for a very long time. He can feel it, always just out of sight, out of reach; a presence that flits in the corner of his eye but is gone once he tries to focus on it. It tugs at him, whispers in his ear, but he resists.

There is a balance in the universe, a state of equilibrium, and he has upset it, he and his brother both. Only Data had been corrected, he'd discovered the last time he came into contact with a Federation database. Data, Commander – finally got that promotion, took those damned organics long enough – 2338-2380. He'd stopped the download then, severed the link and left the bar without paying his tab, an action the bartender had clearly not approved of but the gun that was swiftly put to his head convinced him that he hadn't really needed the money after all.

We are immortal.

He has had a headache for days as the newly acquired information bounces around a brain that cannot make sense of the contradiction. He rubs his temples in the manner he has seen countless humans do, knowing that it will not help but he has to keep moving, keep functioning. The feedback loop threatens to freeze his mind and limbs and body until he becomes nothing more than a vacant machine, repeating the same senseless information for eternity.

Data is dead; he is not immortal.

Data is an android; androids are immortal.

Data died.

Lore is immortal, he cannot die, but the constant universe says that this must not be so. This cannot be, and at the same time it is. I am wrong yet I am here. I can't exist, and yet I do. Wrongwrongwrongwrong

The ragged ship pushes steadily on through the calm vacuum of space. Lore cradles his injured arm as the alarms become a pulsing wail such that he can no longer hear the voice. He can focus now; he can think in peace.

Lore settles into his chair once more, and thinks of death.