Hankie-alert: Spoilers for "Skin of Evil" ahead . . .

Future's Present, Chapter 14

USS Enterprise, Stardate 41697.9

Someone had left Natasha Yar's uniform boots on the small table inside her cabin's door. Probably one of her own security officers, Will Riker mused, stepping inside. Normally, items that had been worn by a deceased crewmember were left on that person's bunk. The uniform would have been recycled, but things like boots and jewelry would have been brought to the cabin for commanding officers to pack up and return to the officer's family.

Will didn't blame the uniform bearer for barely stepping into Tasha's cabin. He wasn't sure he wanted to be here, either. The cabin seemed haunted, and for all he knew, it was. Will was still too numb from everything that had happened to feel much beyond a heartsick ache in his chest. His arms and legs felt disconnected, just making the motions.

As the Enterprise's first officer, it was Commander Riker's duty to clean out the belongings of departmental supervisors and return them to their families. But Tasha's family was here on the Enterprise. And she didn't have many possessions.

Her cat, KC, emerged briefly from her bedroom. Having seen that his beloved caretaker wasn't there, he darted back into the bedroom.

But for Will, the unbearable must be borne.

This wasn't supposed to happen, he thought, sinking absent-mindedly to sit on the couch. He had no idea what to do next, if anything. It didn't feel right for him to be in her cabin without her being there too, teasing him about something or just talking for hours. She'd left a cup of half-full coffee on the table, which wasn't at all surprising to Will. Her computer notepad also lay haphazardly on the coffee table, as if Tasha would be darting inside any second to retrieve it.

This was so pointless! Will's mind practically screamed, his head throbbing, his heart constricted. There were so many things she didn't get to finish, that WE didn't get to finish.

On Vagra, earlier that day, 0930 hours

Will had spent those first, staggering hours trying NOT to flash back to the image of Natasha Yar lying motionless on Vagra's sand. But of course, that was all he thought about. He had sprinted toward her, had followed his training and knelt beside her, held her head still in case she had a neck fracture. She'd been thrown a long way and he figured that since she'd rolled hard she was bound to have injured herself.

His first hope was that she hadn't broken her neck when she rolled across the ground. He'd seen her arm reaching out—weakly— in that last-ditch, protective maneuver she'd reinforced in Aikido training aboard the ship, before any of this off-ship reality struck. Shoulder rolls will save any hard fall that you need to roll out of, she'd said. Get your arm out, duck your heads, roll out of it, get right back up to your feet. But she hadn't gotten back up. She'd skidded to a stop on her back and didn't move.

Will held her head still, believing that she'd begin to stir, that he'd need to remind her to lie still. But she didn't move. She's knocked out, he thought, and noticed the dark blotch on the left side of her face. It looked . . . burned.

Then he felt something invade his action-juiced mind . . . a sense of peaceful resignation, unquestionably present for several seconds, then suddenly gone, replaced by Will's own, conscious feeling of doom.

In Sickbay, 0952 hours

After Tasha was brought to Sickbay, Will's first recollection was that cruel, 'there's hope' trick played by the computers, which began beeping that her heart and lungs were functioning again. Then Beverly Crusher told everyone that Tasha had no independent brain function.

Will already knew that. He had backed away until his shoulder touched the bulkhead behind him. The cold chill of inevitability washed over him as Picard turned away from the resuscitation team, now facing in Will's direction but looking past him, already calculating (as any captain would) his next, tactical move. Picard's expression was stoic. He'd seen death too many times before to not know how this was likely to end, even before Beverly's voice began shaking as she made the official pronouncement of Tasha's death, then gently rested her hand on Tasha's forehead.

Will numbly walked to the biobed where Tasha lay motionless. Life support had been shut off, and a bluish gray pallor overtook her face within 30 seconds. An icy horror overtook him as he visualized what his numb mind had just confronted, that Tasha's face was blue because her heart wasn't pumping blood to it, that she really was dead. He was suddenly glad that Beverly Crusher had swept her hand over Tasha's eyes to make sure they were closed. The sight of his friend's glassy, unfocused eyes would have been more than Will could have taken, even then.

When Will had approached the bed, Beverly had disappeared into her darkened office, standing with her back to everyone, her shoulders slumped and shaking in defeat while she summoned every bit of strength she could, mostly because there were other crew members still stranded-and injured-on Vagra. Losing a patient never got easier, and became agonizing when that patient was a friend. Later, Will wondered why Jean-Luc Picard didn't offer some gesture of comfort to Dr. Crusher. But he knew Picard well enough by then to understand that the captain wasn't thinking on those terms. He was triaging the situation, sorting the salvageable from those who couldn't be saved.

"Commander," Picard said.

"Yes, sir," Will had replied, looking again at Tasha, feeling as if his own face were as pale as hers now was.

"Have the remaining senior staff report to my ready room in five minutes," Picard said, then added, "Walk with me."

Will nodded, then leaned forward and gently kissed Tasha's forehead. She's still warm, he thought.

A figure moved to stand on the other side of the biobed, and as Will looked up, he expected to see Picard's scowling face. But the figure was smaller, petite. Suravi Bhat stood quietly with a stasis cover draped over her arms. Her dark eyes were brimming with tears.

"Commander Riker," Picard said, then softened his usual, abrupt tone. "Natasha would not want us to mourn when there are people we must save."

Deanna and the shuttle's injured pilot were the only motivating factors behind his return to the planet where Will's best friend had been killed. Otherwise, he'd have wanted to blow the entire planet out of the universe.

In Sickbay, 1130 hours

So Will returned to Vagra to bargain for the shuttle's survivors. Just as suddenly as Armus had attacked Tasha, the entity seized Will Riker's foot and dragged him through the sand. The reactionary surge of adrenalin sliced through his fresh grief and he yelled, clawed, tried to wiggle his foot out of his boot, but to no avail. He could feel thickened liquid seeping through his uniform pants, then his entire body was swallowed.

He remembered nothing of his captivity within Armus, only that he felt as if he were smothering, then nothing. He felt the same way he had when he'd been beamed up from Sora, only that time, his lungs were filled with blood and he was dying in Tasha's arms. He still remembered her arms holding him up, her eyes looking down at him. After Armus spat Will back onto the sand minutes later, he tried to open his eyes, hoping it had all been an awful dream and that he'd look up to see Tasha beside him again.

But his eyes were glazed with goo from Armus, and the transporter yanked him away before he had the chance to try taking a breath. Even before the beam deposited him in Sickbay's decontamination room, he was choking on viscous, thick fluid that had also gooped his eyes shut. He heard Diego Martinez shouting something, felt hands on his back as he rolled over onto the deck and he promptly vomited every evil, seeping molecule he'd ingested while he was enveloped by Armus. It was rotten and foul, tasting as bad coming up as it had when he was choking it into his lungs.

He needs pulmonary bypass! Martinez shouted. Since he had a decon suit on, he was the only one allowed into the decon unit, and what he said sent everyone in sickbay into a flurry of activity. Though Will could breathe and the air was reaching the deepest recesses of his lungs, he was suffocating because the oil was blocking oxygen transfer to his blood. Within 30 seconds, Martinez was readying the bypass unit, and one after that, Beverly Crusher had donned her own decon suit and had stepped in to initiate the bypass.

Will still was conscious - barely, sitting up in the decon shower with oil still smeared all over him, taking deep breaths that went nowhere. Beverly didn't waste time waving a machine at him to detect he was in worsening shape: The insides of his lips were turning blue and his respiratory rate was increasing. She administered a quick hypospray of local anesthetic, then unzipped his oily uniform and slid her hands along the middle of his chest, looking for landmarks for the infuser.

She pointed the infusing hypo at a space between Will's ribs, just left of his sternum, and used the infuser's viewscreen to locate Will's pulmonary vein, which led from his lungs to his heart. If his lungs couldn't provide oxygen to his blood, the infuser would bypass them, delivering oxygen directly through the vessel so his heart could supply it to the rest of his body until the oil in his lungs could be dissipated. Within one minute, Will was feeling better physically. His lips were pinking up and his respiratory rate had slowed to a more nominal rate. She thought about the medical tricorder, but her hands and Martinez' hands were full with the O2 infuser, and no one else was in a decon suit to use it, instead.

What kind of a doctor would I be if I couldn't do without a medical tricorder to assess physical reactions, Beverly thought. I'll mess with it later.

"Good, Will," she said, her voice soft, comforting. "I don't want to lose you, too."

Will nodded, looking at her, realizing that this wasn't a nightmare. He'd been enveloped-and released by Armus. Deanna and the shuttle's pilot were still stranded, still injured. Tasha was still dead.

Within 15 minutes, the other medications had taken affect and his lungs were functioning well enough for him to no longer need the infuser. Beverly stopped the O2 infusion, performed a quick, tricorder scan to tell her what she already knew: He was responding well to the treatment and had stabilized. Sensors detected nothing in the viscous fluid that was harmful to the ship or its crew, so Will wouldn't need to remain in decon after his shower. Beverly stepped from the decon unit, noticing her hands were shaking a bit. She'd already lost one co-worker and friend, just came close to losing another and there still were two more officers stranded on Vagra.

Martinez helped Will peel off his oily uniform, then mercifully left him alone for the most part, opting only to ask the required questions of him while setting up the decon shower. Are you lightheaded? No. Do you need help? No. Does the Sonic shower need to be adjusted for viscous removal? Yes. Please. I want everything gone, he'd said, initially not feeling the needles of high-powered water powering across his skin to ferret out any hidden remnant of Armus. Martinez brought several towels into the decon shower suite, and left Will to dress himself.

Will emerged later, trying not to look toward that trauma bed on the edge of sickbay where Tasha had been pronounced dead, earlier. He numbly followed Martinez' post-decon orders and lay down on a bed across the room for follow-up scans and treatment.

But he couldn't help but notice another patient in an adjacent bed.

Lt. Saul Minnerly had been escorted into Sickbay only minutes earlier by two security ensigns. Four bones in his right hand were fractured, broken from the impact of his striking the first solid object in his path—the nearest bulkhead—when he heard of Lt. Yar's death. It had taken Diego Martinez several minutes to get that information out of him.

Minnerly wasn't just hacked off over the death of a mentor. He saw Natasha Yar as an older sister whose temperament was so similar to his own. He sat, stoic, while the knitter worked on his fractured hand. Will suspected that if Minnerly had been the one who died, Tasha would have punched a wall, too.

On the bridge, 1510 hours

Will was released from Sickbay and retreated to the bridge, blithely nodding to two, well-meaning crew members who stopped him in the corridor to tell him how sorry they were about Lt. Yar's death. He fleetingly wondered what the officers believed of the relationship that he and Tasha had shared. Which version had they heard in the grapevine? The supposed romance we resisted because it didn't feel right, or the close friendship we actually had?

He felt as if he was watching another first officer staggering through the Enterprise.

Did this really happen? He snapped his fingers as he continued down the ship's corridors, hoping he'd wake up. His combadge beeped and brought him back to the grim reality that had one happy ending. Worf notified him that Deanna Troi and the shuttle's pilot had been successfully beamed directly to sickbay, and that Picard was waiting for him on the bridge.

Will arrived on the bridge just as the Enterprise warped away from Vagra, and forced himself not to look at the tactical station. He knew Worf wouldn't take that personally. He forced himself to sit—not flop—onto the first officer's chair. Picard took his customary spot in the captain's chair, and a mere three seconds later, he turned to Will, and relieved him of duty.

"Number One," Picard said, simply and quietly. "You are dismissed until briefing at 0800 tomorrow."

He didn't say why, and didn't need to. It was a simple gesture, done normally by captains for crew who just had lost immediate family members. They couldn't be expected to continue functioning normally under that type of strain. Will Riker had already done that.

Will didn't argue, but forced back a sigh of relief. "Thank you, sir," he said, and left.

In sickbay, 1515 hours

After their rescue, Deanna and the pilot were treated for their injuries in sickbay and would be resting there throughout the night. Both shuttle occupants had been lucky to survive their crash-landing on Vagra and would be all right after receiving treatment for various fractures and internal injuries. The pilot sustained a moderate concussion, but also would completely recover.

Perhaps mercifully—and perhaps not—Deanna's injuries hadn't knocked her unconscious. She sensed Tasha slipping away after Armus's energy pulse, but had hoped that she could be revived after being beamed to the Enterprise. She didn't know until she reached sickbay that Tasha didn't survive, and sensed that bad news from everyone around her.

Deanna spent her first 30 minutes in sickbay having medical staff focused on her hip and leg fractures, while she lay flat on her back, silently crying behind her uninjured hand covering her eyes. She couldn't allow herself the relative luxury of really purging her grief because two of her ribs also were fractured. Painkillers or not, sobbing would have hurt too much.

In an attempt to deal with her own anguish, Deanna Troi had forced herself inward, away from the silently anguished sensations around her. When Will arrived in sickbay to check on her after he'd been relieved of duty, she didn't turn toward him. Normally, she would have felt Will Riker's presence, but not this time. He stood next to her for several seconds, stammering in his mind over what he should say.

"Dee," he said, using his other nickname for her, the one he could use anywhere without drawing attention to their previous relationship. Somehow, the word 'imzadi' just didn't seem appropriate right now. As soon as she heard his voice, her breath caught as she moved her hand so she could look at him, could sense his pushed-back grief.

"They told you?" he said, and she nodded, closing her red-rimmed eyes.

"I'm glad you're all right," he said, smoothing her tousled hair from her face.

Fresh tears welled and spilled over down the side of her face as she looked up at him. "She wouldn't have died if—," Deanna began.

"Don't," he said. He leaned close, kissing her on the cheek, whispering, "Shh . . ."

He felt one of her hands reaching up to grasp his hand, which had unconsciously cradled the side of her face. Her eyes floated shut again as she drew comfort from his gestures, but she still kept her mind shut, lest Will's still-raw grief overwhelm her. Will wasn't outwardly emoting like many others were, at least not yet. But it didn't take an empath to tell how profoundly Will Riker had been impacted by the death of Natasha Yar.

Dr. Selar allowed Will and Deanna's quick conversation, then shooed him out so Deanna and the pilot could complete their treatment.

Will stepped away from the trauma treatment area, and saw Dr. Crusher sitting at her desk. He tried to imagine which would have been worse: Watching his best friend dying from across the room, or being the one to make that call to terminate resuscitation efforts. He'd initially thought it was worse being the bystander, clenching and unclenching his fists, wanting to do something but being powerless to control what was happening.

She was filling out Tasha's death certificate and detailing the futile resuscitation efforts. The paperwork is worse than the actual situation, she thought. Now that I have time to think about what happened. Tasha had become a good friend, one of her students. As much as she enjoyed mentoring people, she wondered if she'd ever want to mentor anyone in the field, again. It was just too difficult, losing someone like this, to something so . . . meaningless.

Tasha did nothing wrong! Beverly had insisted to Picard during that first, horrible staff meeting only minutes after she'd pronounced the death of the Enterprise's security chief. She was trying to help! She was doing her job, and following her instincts!

"Dr. Crusher," Will said, snapping her out of her reverie.

She looked up from her computer. "Hi, Will," she replied, almost whispering. She looked haggard, stressed out, staggering on.

"Thank you for . . . everything, and for doing everything you could for Tasha," he said, stepping into her office as she stood up behind her desk.

"There was nothing I could do for her, except go through the motions," she said, lowering her eyes to the floor as she shoved both her hands into the pockets of her physician's coat.

"Thank you for going through the motions," Will said.

"How are you doing?" Beverly asked.

He shrugged, not knowing where to begin. I watched my best friend being murdered over nothing, and then I vomited black stuff all over your decon bay, he thought. Now, I'm just dandy. She walked around the side of her desk to stand in front of him.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I wish I'd died with her," he admitted, lowering his eyes. "I'd have traded places with her in a heartbeat."

He felt Beverly's hand touching the side of his face, and looked up again to see her blue eyes glistening with tears. Her arms reached around his broad shoulders, wordlessly pulling him close for a casual embrace, and found himself hugging her back, allowing his forehead to tip forward—albeit briefly—onto her shoulder.

It occurred to Will that Beverly Crusher did understand—more than most—what it meant to lose someone close to her, and understood also that he didn't want to hear any comforting platitudes, right now. So she said nothing, just held him for about a minute, until he broke the embrace because Captain Picard was calling Dr. Crusher to the bridge.

Natasha Yar's cabin, 1640 hours

So Will went to Tasha's cabin, where someone had left her boots on that side table that Tasha had sworn several times she wanted to move. It was convenient to have it near the door so she could grab things quickly if he had to leave quickly. Now the table offered the reverse benefit for the boot bearer, who could drop and leave as quickly as possible.

Will allowed the cabin door to shut behind him, then he instructed the computer to lock that door behind him.

It's too quiet in here.

"Computer, play whatever music was playing in here, earlier," Will said, then had a second thought. "Only, not as loud as it probably was played, earlier."

Not surprisingly, what belted out of the volume-lowered speakers still was loud and gritty, one of thousands of songs she'd brought back from their time warp. She'd grown to enjoy the biting music that Shaun Conaghan listened to, and her "friend with benefits" had acquired plenty of it for her - probably illegally downloaded - while they were stranded in the 21st century.

Will propped his elbows on his knees and let his head fall into his hands. He wondered why he was doing this to himself, willingly listening to this Nickelback garbage he'd hated whenever she was listening to it in their apartment. It was tearing him apart hearing it again, choking him up, and he'd barely been in her cabin for two minutes. He dictated his keycode into the computer so he could access jazz recordings he'd brought back for his own collection. If I'm going to listen to anything from the 21st century, I'm at least going to leave this cabin without my ears ringing.

All officers were required to make disposition instructions in the event of their death, detailing who aboard their ship was allowed access to personal belongings and logs. Tasha had granted access to only one person: Will Riker. He'd suspected she would have done that, but felt his heart breaking a bit more when he read it officially. The computer requested a retinal scan for Will to view a note Tasha had attached in the event of her death, for his eyes only:

"Will, if you're reading this, I've either died or been declared dead. And if I'm not dead but you're reading it anyway, I probably won't be able to look you in the face for a long time. But after two years squeezed into 10 months of "official time" and so many memories, it's time for words to go with that pile of snapshots we brought back.

Thank you for your friendship and your honesty, for your shoulder, for letting me be myself while encouraging me to grow, for listening to me, for helping me, for making me feel safe. I wouldn't trade those months in Kansas City for anything, nor would I trade what we went through when we came back and suddenly had to carry on as if our time warp never happened.

I figured we were drifting apart again but it was just the opposite. It just solidified what I already knew. You've become my best friend, my big brother, and I care about you a lot more than I'm probably supposed to.

I owe you more than I could have repaid, even if I'd lived to be 100. You deserve to be happy, and fulfilled—not just career-wise, but also in your life. Thank you for showing me how to do that.

Love, Tasha.

Oh, and if you're the one cleaning out my cabin, sorry about all the balled-up, dirty socks that are under the couch . . . I was aiming for the refuse and they bounced off the edges. Anyway, KC likes playing with them, so I left them . . . not that you'd be surprised by that. But I thought you'd be proud to know that I WAS wearing socks . . . well, most of the time."

Despite himself, Will smiled a bit.

Will didn't get much packed away. He wasn't supposed to be going through her things, yet, anyway. He was supposed to be off-duty, captain's orders, resting in his own cabin. But he spent the night in Tasha's cabin, instead, looking through a container of mementos she'd kept: An "enforcer" t-shirt she'd worn when she was working at the 43rd, the handwritten, spiral notebook full of linguistic and cultural tips that they'd gathered during their months there. They had purchased and processed several disposable cameras, and now had a stack of paper photos that had been taken in various places: At Will's work and Tasha's work, from intramural ball games, from Reconciliation, from the Tobins.

Will's favorite was the photo snapped at the St. Patrick's Day parade in Kansas City. A woman sitting on the curb next to them had asked if he would take a picture of her family with her camera, and she offered to do the same for him, and did. It was by far his favorite photo of the two of them together, and he wanted a copy: Just Will and Tasha, mugging for a camera, friends watching a parade on a nice day. I should convert all these to digital, he thought.

The cat jumped up into the coffee table, startling him.

Will had never cared for Tasha's cat—or any cat, for that manner—and generally KC felt the same about Will. But tonight, he scratched the cat's head and chin, then he picked up KC and embraced him. For once, KC didn't claw at Will, nor struggle to get away. He allowed a 15-second embrace from the man before scrambling away to wait by the door for Tasha to return.

Tasha's bedroom was spartan and nondescript, but cluttered, which was no surprise. She had what she needed, and that was all she wanted: Someplace safe to sleep. Exhausted and now overwhelmed by tears, Will fell asleep there, curled up on his side and embracing the pillows Tasha had slept on only the night before.

The cat lay nearby on the floor, familiar with Will but not as attached to him as he'd been to Tasha. So KC hunkered down beside the bed, instead, guarding the man's relative solitude, sensing somehow that the friendly woman who'd brought him to this strange place wasn't coming back.

From Will Riker's personal log

I remember your premonition. I outwardly blew it off and inwardly hoped you were wrong. But as I watched you walk around Armus, I had a sudden, awful feeling I can't describe. I'd opened my mouth to say something, to stop you. And then you were flying through the air.

I knew you'd be injured, but I never thought you were mortally wounded. I remember touching your head, seeing that mark was on the side of your face. Dr. Crusher told me later that you were burned, that it was an exit mark, that you were hit with more energy than it's possible to survive.

I could feel the faint pulse at your temple, and then it slipped away. I'm convinced that I felt you die. You were tense, hurting, pissed off, and then suddenly you accepted your fate. I swear I heard you saying, "Oh, okay, okay," as if you were at peace for the first time.

That scared me. I knew this was bad, bad, bad.

But I pushed my hunch aside—again, and hoped Dr. Crusher would do what she's done before, fix you up so I could tease you about it later. She told us you were dead only a few seconds after we arrived at your side and no one believed it. I didn't want to believe it, even though I'd just felt it happen. I knew you were already gone, even before you were beamed up.

I have so many regrets, and a big one was that I didn't stay right beside you in Sickbay. You'd been slapped into a set of machines. Picard and I were trying to stay out of the medical team's way. But she didn't quit, even did cortical stimulation after it obviously was not going to work. By then, your body didn't even twitch when you shocked with the highest possible charge, over and over.

Horrible as this was, I'm glad we were with you, that you weren't alone. I know that was your biggest fear. . .not dying, but dying alone. I'm glad I didn't move my hands from your head while Beverly Crusher was assessing you, even if you probably never knew I was there. I'd like to believe that you knew that. I'd like to believe lots of things, right now.

You were the one who paid the ultimate price, but I feel like I've been ripped into pieces. How selfish is that? I'm supposed to be packing your things up. It's my job as First Officer. It usually takes 20 minutes, max, to pack up an officer's belongings. I typically don't spend the night in someone's cabin, flooded with memories and crying like a little kid.

I miss you, Tash.

I know you wanted to go quickly, that you didn't want to suffer. I suppose you went as quickly as you wanted to go. But this was too quick for the rest of us.

And much too soon for me.