Future's Present, Chapter 9
Aboard the USS Enterprise, Will Riker's cabin
After several days recovering from wounds sustained in an explosion on Sora, Will Riker finally was back in his cool, quiet cabin, away from people who were handling him, poking and prodding, telling him to squeeze his abdominal muscles so he'd be able to stand up straight.
Finally, he'd hobbled down the hall without a hoverbar. Beverly Crusher let him go back to his cabin for another day of rest with regular nurse visits. If he did well during the cabin rest day, she'd clear him for light duty at first, then for full duty probably a day after that. Now that he was over the physical therapy hump, Will imagined further exercises would come more easily.
Tasha Yar had shown up in sickbay with Captain Picard's blessing to harangue Will out of bed earlier that afternoon. He emerged tired and sore, but nonetheless bore grudging gratitude toward her. She knew all his buttons, and pushed most of them. She motivated him by making him mad, and before he knew it, he was shuffling across the sickbay deck. He'd finally been allowed to have a shower that afternoon, in sickbay, where there were plenty of handles and assistance devices should he need them. Despite having had regular, bed baths while he was bed-bound, Will never really felt clean until he'd had a good shower.
Now he was exhausted. It was only 1830 hours, but it felt like he'd just pulled a 24-hour shift.
I'm going to sleep until noon, he'd proclaimed to Suravi Bhat, who accompanied him to his cabin to make sure he was settled in with no issues.
You're a morning person, Bhat had replied. I can't imagine you'd make it past 0800.
Oh, I'll be very comfortable in my bed at 0800, he said. Trust me.
She shrugged, forcing her own poker face across what she knew about plans for tomorrow. She made small talk for another minute or two, mostly about the chilly temperature Will Riker preferred in his cabin. She didn't know any other human who deliberately kept cabin temperature controls at 13 degrees Celsius. Will had just smiled in response.
Will's circadian rhythm didn't take long to reset, once he was in his comfortably cool cabin. He replicated his favorite meal, salmon with grilled vegetables and a potato, took his time eating it while listening to a snippet of jazz. He went to bed early, by 1945 hours, splayed naked across his bed with only a thin sheet covering him.
He slept soundly until 0700 hours, when he was jolted awake by screaming.
USS Enterprise, bridge, 0930 hours
At around 0900 hours, Will Riker donned an off-duty outfit and walked throughout the ship, getting the exercise he'd promised Dr. Crusher he would be getting, today. He even stopped by sickbay, where his vital signs were scanned and he was pronounced as doing "very well". Smiling, he walked out of sickbay, hopped on a lift, and visited the bridge.
"Welcome back aboard the bridge, Number One," Picard said, standing up from his chair. "I see that even on medical leave, you just can't stay away."
"Oh, I was awakened by screaming, sir," Will explained, his eyes darting sideways at Lt. Yar, who was pretending to pay attention to her tactical screen. "Hideous, shrill noise from the 21st century, which somehow wound up piping through my cabin at 0800 hours. Only, I couldn't shut it off with a voice command."
"So you had to get out of bed and walk across the room to manually shut off your alarm," Picard said. "That sounds perfectly acceptable to me."
"It was a rude awakening, sir," Riker said.
"I'd say it helped get you back on track for your usual, 0500 wake-up time," Picard replied.
"You were in on this one, too?"
"Actually, I wasn't aware of this one, until Lt. Yar filled me on that you complied with sickbay's wishes to get your exercise. Sounds as if you did that from the start of your day with your wake-up music."
"It certainly wasn't mine," Will replied, turning toward Tasha. "What in the hell was that?"
"Pantera, sir," she replied. "From their last album."
"Thankfully their last," he said. "My ears are still ringing. You are now REQUIRED to play poker with the senior staff when the game convenes, tonight."
Her mouth fell open. Although she'd grown to enjoy the time she spent with the senior staff, there were some activities that never made her feel comfortable. Poker was one of them. She knew it was good practice to play bluffing games, but she'd never had much use for them, mostly because she wasn't very good a bluffing anyone.
USS Enterprise, 1015 hours
After Will's brief meeting with Picard in the captain's ready room, Tasha caught up to him as he walked through the corridors enroute back to his cabin.
"You going to stay mad at me?" she asked.
"I hope so," Will said, forcing himself to frown at her. "That was a rude awakening."
"You said it yourself, that it was going to be difficult for you to return to 0500 wake-ups," she said. "And I sure could have programmed an 0500 wake-up."
"Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?"
"You did."
"You know I would never have dropped you, either."
"Yeah, I know," he replied. "You just let the hoverbar drop me."
"You dropped yourself," she reminded him. "But I'll be nice, from now on. I'll even bring you lunch, so you won't need to stagger to the replicator, again. "
"Absolutely not. You tried feeding me cow balls."
She stared at him, amused. "In my experience, cows don't have balls. Bulls have balls. I thought you knew that."
His face flushed. Of course cows don't have balls, he thought, humiliated. "Cattle balls. Bull balls. I don't worry about balls that don't belong to me."
"Actually, I believe the correct term is 'steer'," Tasha said. "The patriarch at St. Mary's grew up on a farm and he told me all about this. Before their balls are cut off, they're bulls. Once they're castrated, they're steers."
"You're just a fountain of information, today. Why the hell would anyone emasculate anything?"
"They only emasculated the weaker ones, so the stronger ones would pass on stronger genes."
"Great," Will muttered. "So, you were an unwitting participant in the bovine Eugenics Wars. You're eating a slow-learner's would-be progeny."
She shrugged. "That's one way to look at it."
"I didn't want to look at it."
"Well, we were both the unwitting products of a temporary, 21st century education, which in my case, included some verbal lessons about animal husbandry."
"So, what did I study while I was there?"
"The art of wooing women, and talking anyone into buying the most expensive bottles of wine that Nichols Jazz offered."
He finally cracked a smile. "I did do that rather well," he said. "You want to come in for a bit?"
"Sure, thanks," she replied, walking into his cabin behind him, and trying not to be shocked at the 10-degree centigrade temperature difference between his frigid cabin and the corridor air, which was tolerable to Tasha, though she still preferred it warmer. "I've been meaning to chat with you about something, anyway, before you got blown up on Sora."
"This isn't about Deanna, is it?" he asked, wary.
"No," she replied, smiling. "But, I will say, you have left quite a few wooed women in your wake, Will."
"You think you're being funny with the alliteration," he said, looking at her right in the eye, and almost instantly, she got it. One of those women had given birth to a baby girl nine months after Will's wooing had occurred. She'd listed his alias, William Riggs, on the birth certificate, barely three months after
She looked him in the eye. "Sorry," she said, almost whispering. "I didn't mean to include Stephanie and your daughter in that group."
"You want to see a picture of her?"
"Of your daughter?"
"Yeah," he said. "Deanna found three of images."
Will tossed her a small blanket that he kept tossed over his couch for visitors, and accessed the photo on his desktop viewscreen while she sat beside him on the couch. "Here, that's Stephanie, and this is Sarah," he said. "Here's another one just of Sarah. I think it's a school photo."
Those piercing, blue eyes smiling from Sarah's school picture, taken in 2019, were unmistakable. "She looks a lot like her mom, but she definitely has your eyes," Tasha remarked.
"Probably my height, too," Will remarked. "Look at this, she's only 10, and already she's shoulder-height on her mom."
"How tall was Stephanie?"
"Shorter than you, taller than Deanna."
Tasha nodded. She was about to ask, but he beat her to it.
"I still don't know how Sarah died," he said. "Sometime in 2020, so she would have been 11. She died the same day as her mother. Don't know the cause, whether it was an accident or the first riots that broke out around then, or what. Oh, speaking of the past, I chatted with Gary Tobin, today on subspace."
Tasha ignored the abrupt subject change. "Really? What's he up to?"
"The family's still in Seattle, doing all right, looking to be posted to the Midwest someplace but the orders haven't come through. They'd love to be closer to his parents in Missouri. I guess they visited so the girls got to meet their grandparents, finally. He's bartending on the base and they've both been filling in as a guest lecturers at a secondary school."
"How're the girls doing through all this?"
"So far, so good," Will said. "Chaney had some issues catching up at school, but she's with her age-group so I guess she's doing all right. Piper's young enough that she didn't seem to have any issues, but she misses her old school."
Tasha smiled. "At least they both could read and knew about basic math before they came back," she said. "That makes it easier. And they're young enough they'll be fine."
"Their parents came back," Will reminded her. "The girls were born in the 21st century."
"So how will they handle birthdates, and all that?"
"The same way they've handled ours," he replied. "Age-wise, we're two years older than our actual dates of birth would have
"So, you couldn't read when you first came to Earth?"
She shook her head. "Nope," she said. "My brother could read. He was in school when the revolt happened. and everything on Turkana was in Ukrainian so it's a different alphabet. But I was so little that I hadn't learned to read, yet, and by the time Turkana was nuked, it didn't matter, anymore. Where I'm from, people didn't read books. They ate them."
"Didn't you say you had pictures of your family?" Will said. "That your foster parents had given you some pictures?"
"Yeah, I have them in my cabin. Next time you're over I'll show them to you," she replied. "Thanks for showing me Sarah's pictures."
"Thanks for kicking my ass, yesterday."
"Anytime."
"So, is that what little sisters are supposed to do? Give their older brothers a hard time?" Will asked, referencing something he'd said the day they came back to the 21st century. They'd been standing at a bus stop in Kansas City, waiting for their ride to Gary and Kim Tobin's house, where the rest of the Away Team was beaming up to return to the 24th century. Will and Tasha had spent the past 20 months living through a rollercoaster of human relations, evolving into the close friends they ultimately became. As they waited for their bus, he'd told her she'd become "like the little sister I never had until we wound up here". He meant it, and she'd felt the same about him.
She nodded. "Most of the time, yes," she said, allowing herself to smile, finally. "Little sisters are supposed to bug their big brothers, and big brothers are supposed to protect their little sisters."
"Speaking of that, just so you know, Logan's going to be at this poker game, so be prepared to wear another scant uniform if you make any bad bids. He likes you, you know."
"He can keep on dreaming."
"He is dreaming," Will said.
"I lost a bet to him, once," she said after a few seconds, struggling to segue into something vaguely related without deviating too far. "I haven't played poker since.
He nodded. "I remember that," he replied. She'd worn a minidress for an entire shift on the bridge, just after their Farpoint Station mission. "I take it that was Logan's idea."
"I should have folded," she remarked, remembering a late-night poker game that she'd been too stubborn to give up, even when it was evident that the chief engineer had every good card in the deck. He remembered seeing her dash from the lift at 0655 that morning, and practically hide behind the tactical console. "He should have known better."
"He thought he was being funny," she replied. "Everyone in Engineering calls him Chuckles because he cracks himself up. I think he's just arrogant. But . . . whatever."
"I'm surprised Deanna didn't catch on and say something to you," he remarked.
Tasha looked away at the far wall again, then back at him. "Oh, she did," Tasha replied. "She pulled me aside so we could chat about it. I think you were in Picard's ready room. And I told her that I was embarrassed about losing this bet, and that I would never play poker against Logan again, and that I wasn't looking forward to spending the entire shift in a breezy uniform. I'm just glad I didn't drop anything. I did my time and then laughed it off."
"And she didn't say anything else?"
"We came across the Tsiolkovsky the next day," Tasha remarked. "And that turned into a gigantic, charlie foxtrot. . ."
"A what?"
"United States militaryese for clusterfuck," she continued. "And that was the least of what it was. The whole ship behaving like that. . .and I knew better, but I did it, anyway. . ."
"You were infected," he said, remitting 'charlie foxtrot' and 'clusterfuck' to memory. She got one hell of a linguistic education in addition to acquiring the WORST music in the history of the universe, he thought. "We all were. When are you going to ease up on yourself?"
"Why didn't you become a counselor?"
He laughed. "Being a first officer is a lot like being a counselor and a babysitter," he said. "I dated a counselor."
"Bridge to Lt. Yar," Worf rang through on her combadge.
"Go ahead, Worf," she replied.
"Commander T'Pil requests your assistance in his cabin," Worf radioed across her combadge. "His young son has locked himself into a closet, changed the security code, and now refuses to emerge."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, duty calls," she said. "Enjoy your downtime."
"What were you needing to tell me, again?"
Her brow furrowed, then she remembered: The advanced field medical training, and she was still undecided. "Oh, it's . . . not important. We can chat about it, later."
"All right," he nodded. he knew he could keep pressing her, but she'd still be evasive until she was ready to discuss whatever it was. "You know where I'll be."
USS Enterprise, Ten Forward, 1240 hours
Deanna had asked Tasha to have lunch with her in Ten Forward, that day. Getting the child out of the closet had taken longer than expected: He hadn't just overridden the computer codes, but had also jammed a small toy into the slot at the base of the door. It was designed for power failures or malfunctions when doors might need to be propped open. But this kid figured out that the opposite also was possible, and he effectively barricaded himself inside by waiting to insert that toy into the slot until the door was completely shut. He'd wigged it around and blocked the door from sliding open.
"You need to tell Will about this," Deanna pressed. She could sense that Tasha wanted to just sit down with Will and chat, like they always did. She'd started to do that, but was called away to deal with the kid in the closet. Since she'd left his cabin, she'd been thinking about the topic she'd meant to discuss, but hadn't.
"I'd always believed that cracking heads was the only thing I was good at," she said. "And now I'm interested in learning how to fix those cracked heads."
"You mean, learning more about counseling?"
"No," she said, smiling. "No, learning about medicine."
"Well, you had me going there," Deanna replied. "Counselors fix cracked heads, too."
"I wanted to say something to him, but he's got so much going on with his recovery, I just didn't want to burden him with this."
"He'd welcome it," Deanna said. "You are friends, after all."
Counselor Troi was correct about Tasha and Will being close friends, but something wasn't right. "You're keeping something from me, too," Tasha said. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"You and Will went through something uniquely bonding," she replied. "When the rescue party first arrived on Earth and I sensed a closeness between you two. It's the type of emotional bond that is similar between a married couple, or close siblings, or members of a small, military regiment on special assignment for several years. And at first, I thought you were romantically involved. There were flashes of affection between you during our time there. But the emotions I sensed predominately were excitement about returning, and nervousness about how this would impact your friendship."
Tasha nodded. "There was that, yes," she remarked, then her expression softened as she realized what Deanna was getting at. "You were envious."
"Yes, I was," Deanna replied. "And I still am, to some degree. I admit there have been times since, when I wish it had been me stranded with him, instead."
Tasha sighed. "Why didn't you say something? On Earth, or here?"
"Wishful thinking," she said, and Tasha smiled.
"That pleases you?"
"I'm smiling because if it had been you stranded in Earth's past with Will Riker, you both would have still been there," Tasha said. "You'd have settled down, somewhere. He wouldn't have had a reason to come back. He still loves you. He's never stopped."
"He has an interesting way of showing that, with all the women he's been with," Deanna remarked.
"They're stand-ins," she replied.
"He had a child with one of them and apparently didn't know about it until he returned," Deanna added.
Tasha nodded. "Yeah, he told me about it."
Deanna looked straight into Tasha's eyes, and nodded in response. "I know."
"You know, what? What's wrong?"
"This is pure selfishness on my part, having nothing to do with you," Deanna remarked, then shook her head again. "Well, it does have to do with you. I'd always imagined that the relationship Will and I had would have strengthened again, to the point where we could tell each other anything. If something was troubling one of us, we could always come to each other. And when I learned that he'd told you, first, about having a daughter he never knew, I was troubled by that."
"He drug his feet for days," Tasha said. "He didn't want to hurt you. He knew you'd be disappointed and sad and hurt."
"So, he told you, first,"
"Yes, he did," Tasha said. "He'd just learned about it. I got the feeling that he didn't want to hear anything from anyone else. He just wanted someone who would understand to listen. and I think that was the first night back aboard the Enterprise, too. We were used to chatting on Earth. We'd talk every evening."
"Pillow talk," Deanna quipped.
"Well, from different beds with different pillows," Tasha replied.
"With the exception of one night when I was aboard the shuttle," Deanna remarked. "I beamed down, you beamed up, and when I went into the bathroom to have a shower, I found that one bed had been slept in, and the other one had not. . ."
Tasha's brow furrowed, and Deanna could sense that she initially didn't recall that night, but then recognition flashed across her face.
"Oh, yeah," she said after a few seconds. "What did Will say about it?"
"Not much at all," Deanna said. "And I only sensed it had more to do with comfort than with passion."
Tasha looked down. "It did,"
"How so?"
You really want to know all the details, Tasha thought. You already know about my nightmares.
"You had a nightmare," Deanna sensed the thought, but erroneously connected it to what had happened that night.
"I have nightmares all the time," Tasha said. "This wasn't a nightmare. It was something that happened that reminded me of when I was younger, and Will came home earlier than I thought he would, and he saw how upset I was. And I tried getting him to back off my saying I didn't want to discuss it. I figured he'd leave me alone to calm down on my own."
"But he didn't," Deanna said.
Tasha shook her head. "I had crawled into my bed. I was so tired, and I just wanted to sleep and for that day to just end. Will brought me a blanket, then he lay down next to me, pulled me back against him and just held me, just listened. And we fell asleep like that, and I actually slept. He learned about his daughter just after we came back aboard the Enterprise, and he called to tell me. He just wanted someone to listen."
"You both lost friends when you returned to this century," Deanna said, visibly moved. "It's a different type of loss, and you understood that."
Tasha nodded. "It is very different," she said. "He didn't want to tell you, at first, and I told him he needed to. I don't think it had anything to do with honesty or not wanting you to know. I think he was just hoping you'd get back together and that this news would threaten that."
"He was afraid I'd push him away," Deanna said, sighing. "But we've talked about this, before, and I don't think I'm ready for a commitment like that."
"Now that I think about it, he's probably not ready, either," Tasha said, shaking her head. "You know who he's eyeing as stand-in material these days?"
Deanna stared at her, genuinely interested—and not from a competition standpoint, but from the venue of an amused player who's taken a pit-stop from the action, and now is observing the cutthroat competition with some degree of relief to be out of it. "Who is it?"
"She's a lieutenant commander in the bioengineering lab," Tasha paused, struggling to recall the name, though her physical attributes were hard to forget. "Tall, witty, waist-length, reddish-blonde hair, big boobs. . . you know, the worst nightmare for all the mortal women on this ship."
Despite herself, a smile broke through Deanna's pensive expression, and then across Tasha's as they looked at each other, and began laughing.
"Some things just don't change," Deanna said.
Will Riker's cabin, 2115 hours
It didn't take long for Tasha to be reminded of why she didn't like poker. Despite every attempt, others at the table could read her like a book. She had nothing she could play.
She didn't worry about Data's "human reading" abilities as much as she knew he'd whip her with his strategy. Will, she knew, probably could tell exactly which cards she was holding—and his poker face was well-practiced enough that no one really knew what he was looking at. Will was superlative at playing poker, even refusing to reorganize the cards he held to throw people off. Geordi LaForge had the distinct advantage of being able to hide his eyes from everyone, even his expressions told everyone that he'd been dealt a lousy hand. Logan had a great hand. He announced it as soon as he finished rearranging his cards. That was his game plan, to psych people out, even if he wound up having nothing.
Beverly Crusher folded early, before the bets got too big. Tasha could feel Logan leering at her from across the table, and suspected he wasn't just trying to guess which cards she held. He was looking at her chest, and now she was uncomfortable, not just cold. Out of deference to others playing, Will had increased the temperature of his normally frigid cabin. But as soon as she caught Logan ogling her, Tasha hopped up from the table and raided one of the blankets draped across Will's couch. Already warmer the instant it was draped around her shoulders, she returned to her place at the table.
"Am I turning you on, Lieutenant?" Logan smiled.
She stared at him. "Excuse me?"
"Just saying," he remarked.
Beverly Crusher felt her eyes widening.
"Come on, this isn't the Dating Game," Will interjected, trying to refocus on what he'd bid while wondering what Tasha was going to fire back in Logan's direction. That was really insensitive, even for Logan, he thought.
"Where's Counselor Troi?" Tasha asked, desperate for a subject change and hoping Deanna would be here. She always seemed to know to gently disarm a smarmy fellow like Logan. Tasha was very comfortable with verbal and physical confrontations, but the sticky scene of negotiating small talk was not her thing, and already Logan was making her squirm. Maybe Deanna's just running late, Tasha thought.
"She called about 10 minutes ago, said probably not," Will replied. "A couple of crewmembers requested her assistance. She probably won't be playing."
"Sounds mildly serious," Beverly remarked.
"Uh, well," Will stammered. "Personal personnel issues."
"Yeah, they're getting a divorce," Logan announced.
Everyone stared at him.
"Frykowski and Ellis," he continued—not that anyone was listening. Geordi was especially put-off, because one of those officers worked with him in engineering. Everyone knew the couple was having issues, but Frykowski was loathe to air his personal issues on duty. It wasn't anyone's business, and Geordi had honored those wishes. Logan obviously had not, and seemed to enjoy adding the last bit of salacious gossip.
"Yeah, she's seeing someone else," he said. "Got caught in their cabin together."
"Sorry to hear that," Beverly said, wondering how long it would be until Logan showed up in sickbay with someone's uniform boot imbedded in the back of his throat. It wasn't long until Logan hacked Tasha off so much that she started taking stupid chances and making bad bids in an effort to beat him. He'd known she'd do that, and before she knew it, she'd lost her chips and her pride—and had to agree to wear the scant uniform, again, for one whole shift, tomorrow.
"I don't care if it means I'm a bad loser," she remarked to Will after everyone else had left. "I'm NOT wearing that thing again."
"A bet is a bet, Tash," he reminded her as she was leaving his cabin.
"I didn't make the bet!" she argued. "He made that bet about the scant.. All I could do was put my cards down."
"Look, it's just a shift," he said. "We aren't in combat. You can heat the deck at tactical so your legs won't get too cold."
She shook her head. "Worf gets too hot," she said.
"Do me a favor and just suck it up," Will said. "One day. It's my first shift back and I don't want any drama."
She nodded. "One day," she agreed.
USS Enterprise, the next day on the bridge, 0830 hours
From the start of the shift, Tasha was very uncomfortable wearing the scant uniform, a minidress that she felt impossible to work in. and Will picks up that it's far more than just that "breezy" feeling. WIll glanced back every once in a while, mostly for a tactical update. She was there at her post, just like she was supposed to be.
Every once in a while, a giggle would emerge from some bridge officer, usually after she left the bridge to attend to other security issues on the ship.
"This couldn't have been her idea," Deanna remarked, sitting on her seat at bridge command. She'd just passed Tasha in the corridor enroute to the bridge with her counselor's pad. Tasha had been taking smaller-than-normal steps in the minidress, and had tugged down its hem at least twice in Deanna's presence.
"It wasn't," he confirmed, signing with some regret the chain-of-command permission to advance another matter to Captain Picard's attention. He was in his ready room, and this needed his eyes only. Only clergy or a starship captain could perform a marriage ceremony or approve a divorce. In this case, it was the latter. "Sorry they couldn't work this out."
"It's for the best," she remarked.
"Are they nights or days?"
"Nights," she replied. "I recommended one shift off per officer—and not that the same time—so belongings could be cleared out of the cabin."
"Who's moving?"
"Frykowski," she replied.
"Are you still able to come to lunch with us? Senior staff is meeting in Ten Forward at 1215 hours."
"Absolutely," she replied. "I'm being lured further by that Belgian chocolate dessert they just introduced."
USS Enterprise, in the corridor just outside Ten Forward, 1310 hours
Tasha didn't show up at the lunch, choosing instead to retreat to her cabin, where she didn't need to walk through a crowd of people, or figure out how to tactfully sit in a minidress. Her entire day had felt tense and pressured, and she swore at least 400 times throughout the morning that she would NEVER play poker with Logan again.
Will suspected why she wasn't there, and when he confronted Logan about it, Logan accused him of being jealous. She's got great legs, I figured that you, of all people, could appreciate that, Logan said. And as suddenly, Will's transformation into a protective, big brother was complete. Will was being protective of her. He wasn't about to blab her business. But he was not going to allow a fellow officer to embarrass her or remind her of something that wasn't anyone else's business.
"So, what's her hang-up?" Logan asked. "Is she seeing someone else, or seeing you, or gay, or what?"
"What the hell kind of question is that?" Will shot back, not even attempting to hide his irritation. "How is that even relevant?"
"It's relevant to me. I wish she'd give me a chance."
Only in her nightmares, and she has plenty of those, already, Will thought. "I can speak definitively when I tell you that she's NOT interested in you," he said. "She's not interested in any man who would humiliate her in this manner."
"Did she tell you that?"
"Yes, she did. Several times."
Logan didn't believe it. "On what occasions?"
"You backing her into a corner certainly didn't help."
"She made a bad bid!" Logan exclaimed. "She knew what she was getting into when she stacked bets against me. This is her own doing. She asked for it!"
Will flashed back to the stories Tasha had told him about her life on Turkana, where she'd been forced into child prostitution. She hadn't gone into gritty details, and hadn't needed to. Her repeated nightmares told him plenty, even if she refused to describe what specifically made her wake drenched with sweat and involuntary tears. It had taken months for him to pry that information out of her, and he never asked her again. She'd had enough forced on her already, and she didn't need to be forced to discuss something. Will wasn't a counselor, but he'd often wondered about how effective "talk therapy" was with someone who didn't want to discuss something.
In Tasha's case, it wasn't just the horror of it, nor even the shame. She was also concerned about not being understood, and about having her experiences summarized and mislabeled into a collection of happenstances. Will understood enough to know when to back off, and when to simply listen without interrupting her (as counselors often did). Will didn't care for the counseling practice of "coaxing" people to delve further by guessing at what was on their minds. Patients who had relatively simple problems were helped easily with this tactic. Tasha Yar was not one of those people.
Her discomfort today had little to do with how she felt physically. It had everything to do with how she feared others would regard her, dressed in the scant uniform that people wore when they were comfortable showing so much skin. It was a uniform option, certainly not a requirement. She didn't want anyone looking at her that way, leering at her the way men had done on Turkana, where her very life depended on how much 'business' she could attract.
I hated that, she'd told him one night while they were chatting on Earth. On Turkana, they had us wearing really revealing things. He'd teased her that evening about never wearing low-cut shirts. Even the workout clothes she chose were relatively loose-fitting. She'd seemed horrified at the idea of deliberately dressing in a potentially seductive manner for complete strangers. I don't ever want anyone else looking at me like that. I'd rather be invisible, she'd said. I don't want people leering at me. It's humiliating. It makes me think about things I'd rather not think about.
And suddenly, Will got it. There was more to her "look" than just convenience. Even aboard the Enterprise, he never saw her wearing anything but Starfleet-issue, unisex clothing. Until they'd been stranded on Earth, he'd only known her to have a short hairstyle that was more butch that tomboyish. She'd let it grow to chin-length on Earth, then had it cut short again after they returned to the 24th century—but this time, it was softer, a little longer, not as severe but still convenient. She was just throwing people off, he thought. She prefers nondescript dressing that doesn't draw attention, so she can be anonymous. She doesn't want to take the chance that people might get the wrong idea.
Logan's borderline sexual harassment wasn't helping, and suddenly Will was right in Logan's face, right there in the corridor. He didn't care who else saw the confrontation, and knew from personnel reports that plenty of other crewmembers—Geordi among them—had sparred with Logan about many issues. This time, Will was so infuriated that he felt his face flushing, knew that arteries were popping out across his temples.
"If I thought you truly understood the magnitude of what you just said, I'd have you brought up on harassment charges," he said. "How dare you regard her or anyone on this ship like that. This bullshit is finished, right now."
USS Enterprise, main corridors on C deck, 1315 hours
"Bridge to Lt. Yar," Worf's voice came over her combadge. She tapped it gently.
"Yes, Worf, go ahead," she replied, pausing in the corridor with her back to the wall. She unconsciously tugged at her skirt's hem again. Officers were passing her in the hallway and she caught at least one lieutenant's eyes moving sideways as he passed.
"Commander Riker requests your presence in Shuttlebay Four for a security update."
"Thanks, Worf," she said. "Heading that way."
She turned around, intending to go to the least occupied of the lifts to the shuttle deck, and ran right into Senior Ensign Saul Minnerly, one of her most trusted security officers. If Will Riker was most like her older brother, he was like her little brother. He took nothing from anyone but listened to everything Tasha said. And independently, he wasn't particularly fond of Chief Engineer Logan, either.
"Hi, Saul," she said, flushing self-consciously. Her bare legs were covered with goosebumps, and not just because she was cold. She hated this.
"Time until your scant sentence is over, lieutenant?" he asked.
"It was a bad bid on my part," she replied. "Six hours to go."
"Bad taste on his," Minnerly replied.
Even walking alongside Minnerly there in the crowded corridors, Tasha felt everyone was staring at her. She was horribly self-conscious. She took leave of Minnerly, ducked into the lift, then gingerly stepped off of it once it arrived at the shuttle deck. She glanced in both directions, tugging downward on her skirt hem as she stepped off the lift.
The shuttlebay appeared to be deserted.
"Commander? Anyone here?" she called out.
"Hey, Tash," Will's voice was nearly a whisper, but she whirled around, immediately recognizing him. He had been standing in the dark, by himself, hiding in the alcove just to the right of the shuttlebay door.
"Hey," she replied, not looking up, tugging again at the hem of the skirt.
"You're off the hook," he said, holding something out toward her. In the darkness, she nearly couldn't tell what he was holding. But as her fingers clasped around it, she knew: It was a standard, security chief's uniform.
"Thank you," she whispered back, looking down at the uniform, her vision suddenly blurred with tears of humiliation she'd been holding back all day. Relieved and moved at the same time that Will understood why she was so uncomfortable, she was unable to keep them from finally springing to her eyes. She had no idea what else to say. He was bailing her out.
"That's what big brothers are supposed to do," he said.
She nodded again.
"Logan was out of line," Will said. "And after I told him that, I realized I was talking to a hard-up brick wall. And it made me wonder how many times he's had his ass kicked over the years. You know he signed up for the martial arts competition, didn't you?"
A smile broke through her face, and she glanced up.
"So, are you going to do something about that?" he pressed.
"Probably," she replied.
"That's great," he said. "Because if you don't, I will."
"Thank you," she replied. "And I really need to learn to play poker."
"That's—yeah, you do," he replied, laughing softly. "Go change, before you freeze."
