Two

-x-

Tasha didn't dream of Data. She hadn't done so for a long, long time. She dreamed instead of the Vonnegan terraformers, watching their home planet burn through a telescope, and of a bearded baby that smelled of mint tea, and of a blue fairy in a music box spinning around and around and…

She became vaguely aware of the ship's computer alerting her. It took a few seconds for her to drag herself out of sleep.

She sat up, blearily, disturbing the cat at her feet. Somebody was trying to transmit an urgent private message. She shifted over to her desk and accessed the computer terminal. The message was coming from the Titan.

She frowned. 'On screen.'

Deanna's face filled the screen – pale, wide-eyed in horror and streaked with tears.

'Tasha,' hissed the Betazoid.

'Deanna. What's wrong?'

Deanna took in a sharp breath. 'Tasha, help. Can't move, can't move, all wrong.'

There was something very, very wrong about the Betazoid's demeanour – something other-worldly about her terror. Almost as if she were in a dream herself. 'Deanna, where's Will? Are you… are you still asleep right now? Where's Will?'

'Madness is the key,' hissed Deanna. 'Madness. Mad… Mad… Me… and my… shadow…'

'Deanna? You're scaring me.'

'He can't move.'

'Will's not moving? OK, I'm alerting your Medical staff…'

'It's Data, Tasha,' Deanna whispered. 'Data.'

Tasha blinked. 'He's alive?'

Deanna let out a sob. 'He's in Hell! He woke up in Hell, Tasha.'

Tasha sat back, her jaw slack. 'What?'

She could hear Will now, in the background of what she supposed had to be the Rikers' bedroom. Captain Riker mumbled sleepily for a second before adding a 'what?' of his own.

'He's in Hell,' continued Deanna, through her tears, 'and he doesn't know why. He's so afraid, Tasha. So afraid…'

'Deanna!' Will called, hurrying towards the computer. 'What are you doing?' He met eyes with Tasha on the other side of the screen. 'Tasha, I'm so sorry. She's having another one of her nightmares.'

Tasha kept her focus on Deanna. 'What do you mean, "Hell"?'

'Not this again,' groaned Will. 'Even if you did believe in all that stuff, Deanna, this is Data you're talking about. How could you ever think he'd deserve to wind up in Hell?'

'He doesn't know why,' Deanna wailed. 'He's so afraid, so alone. Me and my shadow.'

'You're upsetting Tasha,' Riker told his wife, grabbing her trembling shoulders and pulling her away from the computer with a firm, smooth motion. 'Hell – you're upsetting me. This is just a dream – a horrible dream. I need you to wake up.'

Deanna made a last, desperate lurch towards the computer. 'Madness is the key! Madness! Maddox! Orpheus! Orpheus!'

'Deanna, wake…'

Riker must have terminated the communication manually. The screen flicked to the Titan's insignia, and then went blank. Tasha found herself sitting in almost total blackness. Her cat, fully awake now, began to miaow.

'Orpheus,' she breathed.

She rubbed her face. 'Lights!'

She rose to her feet as the lights came on, and padded over to her dresser, where the music box still sat in the spot where she had discovered it. She unclasped the lid and opened it, gently. The tiny figurine span to the clockwork tune as always. She picked up the single card that lay at the bottom of the box and stared at it, turning it over several times. Still no further change.

Her computer chimed again. She walked back over to it and accepted the Titan's latest communication.

Deanna Troi was no longer bewildered and terrified. She was, it seemed, now fully awake and thoroughly embarrassed.

'Tasha, I'm so sorry.'

'Don't apologise,' Tasha replied. 'Is this the dream you mentioned at tea?'

'They think it's just a quirk of my pregnancy,' Deanna replied. 'Very vivid, recurring nightmares – it happens sometimes with Betazoid women.'

'You had recurring nightmares before,' Tasha reminded her, 'and they turned out to be true. Entities really were trying to reach you.'

Deanna sighed. 'I was worried this might be your reaction if you found out about the dream. I put Will under orders to slap me awake if he caught me sleepwalking anywhere near any Comms devices, but no…'

'I'm not going to slap you,' grumbled Will, next to his wife. 'Listen, Tasha – it's not as if from the outset we just wrote off the idea that these dreams might actually mean something. In the three weeks since she started getting them, we've seen every kind of specialist on Betazed and Earth, we had Lwaxana with us for five nights exploring every area of Deanna's psyche, and you know what everybody concluded – even her mother…? They're just dreams. Data isn't calling out to us to help spring him from Hell. He's not in Hell. He's just gone. He's at peace, and he's gone, and this is all just a dream. End of story.'

'Three weeks, you say?' Tasha asked. 'That's how long they've been going on?'

Deanna nodded.

'Do you always cry out the name "Orpheus"?'

'That part at least we can make sense of,' added Will. 'It's just the name of one of the Titan's shuttlecraft.'

Tasha shook her head, licking her lips, dryly. 'No. It's not just that.'

'What do you mean?'

'I think you'd better come over,' replied Tasha. 'There's something you need to see.'

-x-

Deanna and Will dressed quickly and beamed over to the Enterprise. It wasn't even 0500 by the time they got to Tasha's quarters, but the dream had left Deanna with no desire to sleep any more that night. And she could tell even before Tasha opened the door that Yar too had forgotten her tiredness. There was an anxious energy emanating from her that Deanna could sense the moment she was aboard.

Deanna knew that Tasha felt nervous about inviting them in, but that it was imperative that she did – there was something that Tasha felt was very important in that room, and she needed to share it with them. As Deanna looked around the quarters, her heart sank. No wonder Tasha had been apprehensive about her old friends seeing this place – and no wonder she was having such trouble moving on from Data. This place wasn't a bedroom – it was a shrine.

'Oh, Tasha,' she sighed.

'Please don't, Deanna,' Tasha mumbled in reply. 'I know what you're going to say.'

'You still have all his things,' Will noted, sadly, brushing his fingers over the deerstalker hat resting on the shelf where Data would have last left it. 'There's more of him here than you.'

'I like having his things… I need his things. They're all I have left.'

'You have your memories,' Will replied, adjusting the bow of Data's violin so that it lay parallel to the instrument. 'We all do. All this – it's just… stuff.'

Tasha reached past him and shifted the bow back to its original angle. 'It's his stuff. His craft, his creativity. His art. What would you have me do – smash his sculptures and burn his paintings?'

Deanna cocked a head at a haphazard pile of the paintings in question, lying in a corner of the living area. 'Like those?' she asked. 'What good are they just sitting there? Why don't you hang some up, or give them to his friends?'

'He was keeping those ones there,' Tasha explained, 'because he didn't know what to do with them – who to give them to, where to put them – or because he felt they were unfinished.'

Deanna nodded, remembering. 'That used to drive you to distraction.'

'Yeah. It was making a mess.'

'Then, why don't you get rid of them?'

Tasha stared at her, nonplussed. 'Because he was keeping them there. You know what a perfectionist he was – I wouldn't want to ruin them by putting them in the wrong place.'

'Tasha, he's dead.'

There it was again – the same feeling that Deanna had sensed from Tasha as they'd talked over tea – the sensation that Tasha had been given some sort of tangible hope that Data might be coming back to her – a message, or an object… some clue or other… and it was in this room.

'What did you want us to see?' Deanna asked.

Tasha led the pair over to her dresser. On the top of it rested a hairbrush, a small Holo of Data and a plain, white box – like the kind Deanna would keep her jewellery inside. It was the box that Tasha's fingers rested gently on.

'A treasure box?' Deanna asked.

'It was left here the day of Data's funeral,' Tasha told them.

'Who by?'

'That was what I wanted to know,' replied Tasha. 'Whoever it was didn't leave a name, and furthermore, managed to get in and out of my locked quarters without anybody noticing. I even went through the security footage for the corridor outside for the whole time I was gone – not one person carrying a white box. I've had tests run on it – there's no fingerprints on it – no residual DNA whatsoever except my own, from touching it.'

Riker frowned. 'Just a box – nothing inside – no message or anything?'

'Oh, there was a message.'

Tasha opened up the box. A twinkling tune began to play as she did, and a small figurine of a fairy in a blue dress sprang up next to the hinge on the lid, twirling in time to the music. There was something odd about the figurine, but before Deanna was able to mention it, Tasha picked up the sole white card lying in the bottom of the box and showed it to them. Deanna's eyes widened. There was one word written on the card, in neat block print. The word was 'ORPHEUS'.

Will gave the card a curious glare. 'It's not just the name of one of our shuttles,' he announced at length. 'Orpheus is one of Earth's best known Katabasis stories – the hero who descends to the underworld to retrieve a dead lover.'

Deanna realised what her husband was trying, as diplomatically as possible, to say, and ran with his train of thought.

'You must know that story, Tasha. And if, as you say, yours is the only residual DNA on the box…'

'I know what you're suggesting,' replied Tasha, 'and I don't blame you for doing so. Don't you think I considered it too – that maybe I snapped after his funeral; maybe I went temporarily, quietly insane and replicated this thing out of a desperate need to have something, anything to keep the hope alive that he might be out there somewhere, that I could bring him back somehow, and then forced myself to forget that I'd made it and put it on the dresser myself? You wouldn't be the first of my friends to bring up that possibility – not by a long stretch. But the tests showed that neither the box nor the card were made in any replicator on this ship. As a matter of fact, I don't think they were made in this universe whatsoever.'

'Not from this universe?' Will's frown deepened. 'What makes you say that?'

'We tried to analyse the ink on the card,' Tasha said. 'Turns out there isn't any. We shouldn't be able to read this message. Technically, there's no writing here. Besides, there's another message on the other side.'

'Nothing particularly otherworldly about that.'

'It used to say; "wait",' Tasha added.

'"Used to"…?'

Tasha nodded. 'The message changed. Three weeks ago. She turned the card over. On the other side, in the same tidy print, was the message 'FOLLOW THE DREAM'.

Will shook his head, slowly. 'Somebody must have switched the card.'

'It's the same card, Will.'

Deanna searched Tasha's emotions. 'You're just looking for answers, for closure. But ever since Data's funeral, when you were supposed to be able to let go, this note just threw up more questions. You don't know whether somebody's trying to help, or is mocking your grief… or a little of both.'

'If whoever left it wanted to help, why be so oblique about it?' Will scowled at the card in distaste. 'Somebody's toying with you. Somebody with a sick sense of humour.'

'I've no doubt about it,' Tasha replied. 'The sickest sense of humour in the cosmos.'

'Q,' Deanna construed. 'You think this is from Q.'

'It just zapped into my bedroom out of nowhere at the worst possible moment,' said Tasha with a slight shrug, 'it doesn't seem to obey the laws of physics, it suggests a knowledge of the hereafter, and it's left a bereaved woman hanging on for five years in a most unkind fashion. Makes sense it'd be from him.'

'If it's from Q, then ignore it,' Will told her. 'Atomise it. Blow it out of an airlock. He just left you that thing to hurt you, to see how long he could eke out your grief, as if you were some experiment. He's a selfish, vindictive creature. Even if he could bring Data back, why would he? Why would he ever decide to help any of us?'

'What if it's not us he's helping?' Tasha replied. 'What if it's Data? Data saved his mortal life, and he didn't let Q reward him at the time. Maybe Q still feels he owes Data. Maybe this is the payback – a life for a life.'

'Then why not just bring him back to us? Why these little clues on a piece of card?'

'Nothing's ever simple with Q. It's his style to make us work for his little miracles.'

'You've really thought this through,' Deanna said, 'haven't you?'

'I've had plenty of time to,' Tasha told her. 'Deanna, I want you to write down every detail you can about this dream of yours. Let's see if there's some sort of sense we can piece out of it, at least.'

Deanna shook her head. 'I've tried. I thought if I could describe the dream properly and make sense of it I might stop having it, but the images and the words disappear from my mind as soon as I wake up – the memory of the emotions of the dream just drowns them all out. Even watching footage of my sleep talking… nothing comes back – just the fear and the horror and the confusion.'

'So, you're saying that if you could filter out the emotions from the memory of the dream, you might be able to get a clearer picture of it?'

'Perhaps,' replied Deanna. 'I don't know.'

'But it's worth a try, right?' Tasha sprung to her feet and started to head towards the door.

'What are you doing?' asked Will.

'Well, this sounds like a job for a Vulcan,' Tasha told them, 'wouldn't you say?'

-x-

It was impossible to tell whether Lieutenant Commander Manek had been roused from sleep by the door chime, or whether she'd already been awake for hours. It was her habit never simply to call "come in" when visitors called at her private quarters, but always to meet them at the door and usher them inside. It was also her habit to provide food and drink, no matter the hour or nature of the call. The doors slid open to reveal the half-Vulcan officer without a crease in her clothes, a pillow line on her cheek or a misplaced hair in the long, sleek plait of hair that hung from her head.

'Commander Yar,' she greeted with a serene smile, 'and Captain Riker and Commander Troi as well – how fortunate you should call. I was just about to make a pot of tea.'

Manek was always "just about to make a pot of tea". Since Tasha knew that there was no point in even trying to engage Manek with the nature of their call until she felt that her hostessing duties had been done, she sat at the table and encouraged Deanna and Will to do the same as Manek disappeared into the gloomy bedroom.

She heard a hushed 'Get up – visitors,' from the bedroom, followed by a soft, male groan. There was the rustle of fabric, accompanied by more sotto voce complaints from the man in the bedroom, then the sound of the replicator. After a moment, Manek glided back into the living area, now resplendent in a blue sari and carrying a tray piled with pastries, with a hot teapot forming the centrepiece.

'Sorry for dropping by so early, Priti,' said Tasha as the tea was poured.

'No need to apologise.'

'Course there's need to apologise,' complained Geordi as he stumbled out of the bedroom, pulling his dressing gown about himself. 'What time do you people call this?'

'Breakfast time,' Riker grinned.

Geordi sat down heavily, rubbing his eyes. 'I'm marrying the sort of maniac who happily hosts tea parties at half past five in the morning.'

'I can hear what you're saying, Dear,' replied Manek, smoothly.

'I know you can! That's the point!'

'Well, we didn't just show up to be difficult,' said Tasha, spitting pastry crumbs. 'You remember the card I was left, Geordi?'

Geordi frowned. 'Not this again, Tasha. Please.'

'You remember how the message changed three weeks ago?'

Geordi got to hit feet again, exasperated. 'We've been through this, Tasha! We ran every test we could on it, five years ago, and then just as we were all coming to accept that nothing was going to come of it, it went and changed, and so you made me test it again, and still nothing – no hint of how it could possibly help any of us.' He ran his hands through his short hair. 'I loved Data too, you know. I grieved for him too, and I was left in limbo by that damn card as much as you were. But it's been five years. I want to feel able to let go. We both know that this can only be Q messing with us – some sick experiment on how we cope with death. I'm not gonna let him do it any more. I want to move on with my life. I need to move on with my life. I…'

'The new note said to follow the dream,' interrupted Tasha. 'I think I know what it means. Deanna's been getting messages in her nightmares for the past three weeks.'

'We don't know that they are messages,' Deanna protested, through her second Danish.

'I take it that that's where I come in,' added Manek.

'We hoped that if you could perform a Mind Meld on Deanna, you might be able to make a little more sense of the dream,' Tasha told her.

Manek nodded smoothly and sat down next to Deanna. 'Don't worry,' she said, 'this is perfectly safe – even in pregnancy.'

'I've been a ship's counsellor for decades,' Deanna replied. 'I do know about this sort of thing.'

'Ever had one done before?'

'No,' admitted Deanna.

Manek gave a faint smile. 'Just relax. Not that it affects to me whether you're relaxed or not, but perhaps in your condition…'

'Shut up and do the damn meld.'

Manek locked gazes with Geordi briefly, and cocked a brow. 'Betazoids.'

'Hey!'

Manek pressed her fingertips against Deanna's forehead, and concentrated.

Deanna's eyes closed, as though the meld was commanding her to return to the realm of dreams. There was a moment of tense stillness as all watched the Mind Meld in action.

Manek closed her eyes as well, and frowned.

'Paralysis,' she said after a moment, before falling quiet again.

'She dreams that she is somebody other than herself,' added Manek. 'Somebody that she used to know. A male. There is a numbness about his body, but his mind… his mind is one of innumerable voices – words, numbers, equations – all at once. At odds.' She paused. 'He doesn't know what he is. He doesn't know where he is, or how he got there, but there's a man who's telling him that he died, and the same word keeps coming up again and again – "Hell. Hell. Hell." He doesn't understand.'

'But how could he think he's in Hell,' began Tasha.

Manek spoke over her, urgently. 'There's more to it than the paralysis and the man who tells him he's dead. He isn't just afraid of where he is, he's afraid of what he is.'

'And what is he?' asked Will.

Manek's brow furrowed. She began a soft, hesitant chant. 'Me… and my… shadow, walking down the avenue…'

No. It wasn't a chant – it was a song. Will's eyes lit up in recognition.

'Me and my shadow,' chimed in Will, 'no one else to tell our troubles to…'

'You know that song?' asked Tasha.

'It's an old classic. Deanna's been mentioning it over and over in her sleep. God knows why.'

'Memory cannot be overwritten,' added Manek with the same urgency as before. 'Not completely completely completely, something remains, a ghost, a memory of memory, a little voice in the back of his the back of his. Brother. Little. Again. Hello. Hello. Hell.'

Geordi darted a worried glance at the others. 'Maybe you should come out of the Mind Meld now, Priti. I don't think it's working any more.'

'No,' said Will, 'this is how Deanna always gets towards the end of the dreams.'

'But she's just spouting nonsense…'

Tasha hushed the two men, listening closely to Manek's stoccato mutterings. 'Madness. Hell. Madness. The key. Mad… Maddox is the Madness is the key.'

'That's it,' whispered Tasha. 'That's what I missed.'

'What?' asked Geordi.

'Orpheus!' cried both women from within the Mind Meld. 'Orpheus!'

Deanna grasped Manek's wrists and, with concentration on both parts, the two women were uncomfortably released from the Mind Meld.

Manek sat back heavily, massaging her own temples with faintly trembling fingers.

'You OK?' asked Geordi.

Manek gave her fiancé a shaky smile of affirmation. 'I've never done that with an Empath before,' she admitted. 'And that's quite a recurring nightmare you have, Counsellor. My condolences.'

Will rubbed Deanna's shoulders. 'Are you OK?'

Deanna took a moment to refocus on the room about her and smacked her lips, dryly. 'I'm hungry again.'

'I'm sorry,' Manek told Tasha, 'I don't think I was able to make any more sense of it.'

'But you did,' replied Tasha. 'You showed me something that I missed earlier – something very important. The key.'

'Deanna always says "Madness is the key", when she's having the dream,' Will told her, 'and that doesn't make any sense.'

'Maddox is the key,' replied Tasha. 'Deanna said it to me when she was dreaming, and Manek just repeated it.'

Manek nodded. 'There was mention of Maddox in the dream. I take it the reference is to the Daystrom Institute Cyberneticist?'

'Did the name come with any images?' Tasha asked.

Manek shook her head. 'All of the faces and figures in the dream were very confused. It was as though I was viewing them through thick electrostatic interference.'

'I think we should check it out, anyway.'

'So now we're getting Bruce Maddox involved as well?' asked Geordi. 'The guy who tried to get Data dissected? He doesn't exactly have a good track record as far as sympathy for others is concerned – how do you think he'd react if he found out the First Officer of the Enterprise was spending her time trying to wrangle meaning out of the fevered nightmares of a heavily pregnant Betazoid?'

'I'm not that heavy yet…' complained Deanna through a brioche.

'The card says to follow the dream,' Tasha told Geordi.

'Tasha, that card was sent by a sadistic son of a bitch to torment you, and it's working.'

'That card was sent by somebody who sees more than we do and knows more than we do, and who owes Data his life.'

'That doesn't mean he's on our side,' snapped Geordi. 'It doesn't mean he's gonna help anyone but his own sweet self. Think about it, Tasha – why would Q do anything so philanthropic as to get Data back to us? It's not in his nature. It's not gonna happen. Data's gone. Why won't you admit that he's gone? Why are you doing this to yourself… to all of us?'

'I'm doing this because I still believe there's a chance of bringing him back.'

'From where? He was evaporated!'

'From Deanna's dream! From Hell! From wherever that card leads me to!'

'I don't want to know where that card leads you any more,' replied Geordi. 'You want to talk about Hell…? That card is Hell. That card only leads us to longer and longer torment. I'll have no part in this from now on.'