AUTHOR: Kristen Kilar

TITLE: Not Her

RATING: PG for minor language and talk about alcoholism.

PAIRINGS: For this story that depends more on the reader than the writer. Tell me which pairings you see in here.

DISCLAIMER: Please. If I owned Andromeda, do you think "Attempting Screed" would have happened? Anyway, I don't own them, I'm just playin', and I'll send them back (relatively) unharmed when I'm done.

ARCHIVE: I would love to give permission. But please ask, because I like to know where my children are spending the night.

SUMMARY: I'm not her. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.

SPOILERS: S5 up through "Attempting Screed" are possible, although I think "Decay of the Angel" is as far as I actually go in specific references, everything else is pretty vague.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Wow, I'm branching off from HarperAngst, although I'm still writing angsty one-shot introspections. Darn. Well, my story-with-a-plot is still in the works, but my muse is reluctant to help me with it.

Also, this contradicts a few things in "So Burn The Untamed Lands" (or is that "Sacred Lands"? Don't remember, too lazy to look it up) but somebody (Norville) told me to post this anyway.

I'm not sure, but I think this might be the first DoyleAngst written. I could be wrong. Bad memory. Anyway, it's amazing what you learn about a character when you just start freewriting from their POV. For instance, I had no idea Doyle was having such a huge identity crisis until I wrote this story. Hunh. Maybe it's just me who learns things by writing them, instead of learning them and then writing them? I don't know. I'm babbling now.

Dedicated to my fellow Doylies, for whom this was written. Because Doyle deserves some angst written about her. Also dedicated to the Rommie fans…er…whose faction name I can't remember (hides face in shame. Sorry!), because we're all grieving for the loss of the awe and wonder that is Rommie, and apparently Doyle agrees with us. Also dedicated to everybody who reviewed "Shattered". You know who you are, and trying to track down all your names on the different sites I posted the story on would probably cause me to have a total meltdown.

And finally, dedicated to Myna, a.k.a. niki blue, a.k.a. girl from the rockshow, a.k.a. whatever other aliases she's picked up recently for being my beta. :love: ya, girl!

Please please please review? Will love ya forever!

shameless plug mode If you haven't already, go read "Hidden", "Shattered", and my romance, "My Kind Of Rain". /shameless plug mode

Now I'm going to stop babbling and let you read the story.

They don't trust me, they don't like me. They try, but I can see it.

They tease me and banter with me like they do with each other, but I hear it, that brief pause as they try to figure out the right way to respond to me.

Harper sees it, too. He tells me to give them time. They'll get used to me and it'll get better, it'll get easier, Doyle, I promise, trust me.

It's not getting any easier, not for them. There's still that hesitation in their voices, that doubt behind their eyes when they try to deal with me.

I trust Harper, he's my friend, I love him dearly, but he's not being objective about this. He's so desperate to fit back into his old life that he's willing to blind himself to the problems their separation has caused, the problems that my presence is causing.

They do try. I have to give them credit for that. They talk to me. They drink with me at the bar and joke about how I don't drink. They bring me along on missions and involve me in conspiring scams and turn to me for information.

But even with all that, the hesitation and the doubt and the discomfort are still there.

It hurts, it does, because that small part of my subconscious that is the Andromeda Ascendant AI remembers them. Remembers trusting them and being trusted by them. Remembers being their friend and their ship.

And now I see the looks in their eyes when they see me and it hurts.

Dylan especially. There is a part of me that still loves him, and Harper knows it, and it hurts him, which is not something I want to do but I can't help it. And it hurts me, too, hurts me because to Dylan I am nothing but an android, less important than Rommie was even. He ignores me, mostly, or speaks sharply to me, or only relates to me through Harper.

Harper warned me about Dylan. Said he was a champion heart breaker. Asked me to stay away from the good captain. Because he was concerned about me.

But I went, because the little bit of me that is Rommie demanded it, felt drawn to him, needed him like a drug.

And I hate her for it.

I am not her, I am not Rommie, I am Doyle, so why won't she shut the hell up and leave me alone, let me be me and only me, instead of gracing me with these subconscious demands to do things that end up breaking my heart?

I am not Rommie.

Harper should have left her core fragments out of my program entirely. He should have built me to be me and only me. Then I wouldn't have to deal with being two people. Then they would be able to relate to me easier, because they wouldn't have to keep figuring out whether I'm Doyle or Rommie.

But that's not what he wanted. He wanted Rommie back. But he couldn't bring her back, not successfully, so he mixed the two of us together, and I can't even hate him for it because I know he was lonely and desperate and afraid and a little bit crazy.

What I hate him for is lying to me.

For a year and a half he let me think…no, he led me to think that I was a human woman. Amnesiac, so that he didn't have to come up with any false memories for me. I thought that I had chosen to take a job with Marika as his bodyguard and protector. I never questioned why I didn't eat or drink, why I was never out of breath or in pain or cold. I comforted him when he had nightmares and he did the same for me. He told me about his life on the Andromeda and I theorized about who I might be to him.

And that whole time, he knew who I was. He knew the reason for my nightmares. He knew everything about me that I didn't know.

When I found out—when Argent told me—I hated him. He'd lied to me. He'd deliberately kept me in ignorance. He'd tricked me.

I wanted nothing more to do with him.

But when Argent turned on me and hurt Harper, all thoughts of hating him flew from my head.

Harper was my friend. Harper was there for me when I needed him. Harper needed me.

How dare this son of a bitch hurt him?

He may have suppressed my memories. He may have tried to turn me into someone I wasn't. He may have lied to me and programmed me to stay with him and be his friend and protector.

But that didn't change that he was my friend, and he had always given me free reign to make my own choices, and I loved him, and Argent had no right to do what he did.

I'm not Rommie. I'm not. I refuse her identity. I am Doyle, damn you!

I'm not Rommie. I'm not…

Telemachus Rhade is probably having the easiest time dealing with me. He may be a depressed drunkard, but he is still a Nietzschean warrior, and he respects my skills as a fighter. We…banter. It's almost…nice.

That, and he spends the most time at this bar Harper inherited, so we've had the most time to get to know each other. He's really not that bad when you get to know him, even if he is a miserable alcoholic with too many girlfriends and too little money.

Andromeda—I suppose I should call her my mainframe, but I refuse. I'm not her. I'm not. Anyway, she's barely functional and I spend far more time in Harper's bar than on the Andromeda. Aside from those brief encounters and a year and a half of Harper's stories, I have no idea about her. I don't know what she's like, what she thinks of me, if she hates being in Seefra or is fine with it or couldn't care either way.

I don't know if she wants me to be Rommie, too, or if she's resentful of Harper for putting Rommie's core fragments in me.

Not her. Not. Not. I'm Doyle. I'm Doyle.

Trance Gemini I've barely spoken to. She's unsure of herself, unsure of me, unsure of everyone.

Except Dylan.

Is it horrible that I hate her for that?

She has a special bond with him, and I'm so damn jealous. Or more accurately, the part of my subconscious that is Rommie is jealous. She loved him and it makes her furious to see him suddenly so much closer to Trance.

So part of me hates Trance. Because she has a special closeness to Dylan that I will never ever have. I'm just an android to him, one of Harper's toys, useful but disposable. A machine. And she's everything, she appeals to him on every level—she's powerful, his guide, but she has no memory, which makes her a damsel in distress, and he has a history with her, but at the same time it's all new, and…

Ugh.

I'm making myself sick just thinking of this.

I'm not her, I'm not Rommie, I have no reason to be upset about Dylan being close to Trance, he isn't my captain, I don't have a crush on him, I'm not in love with him, I'm objective, I'm not her—

Okay.

And then there's Beka Valentine, hotshot pilot.

Harper was emotionally ripped to shreds because of her.

I'm the objective one, but I side with him too.

She's distancing herself from him. Being cooler toward him. Treating him like an ex-crewman or a pain in her neck or her bartender, and from a year and a half of listening to Harper's stories I know that's not what he wants from her.

He loves her fiercely and counts her as his closest family member and she acts like she can barely stand to be in the same room with him for too long.

She's the reason why he's started to drink so heavily. He's always been an alcoholic, ever since I've known him, and inheriting the bar from Sembler just enables him, but he drinks himself to sleep every night now because Beka is breaking his heart.

He only sees her the occasional instances when Dylan asks us to come up to the Andromeda to try and find a way to get the hell out of Dodge, or when she comes by the bar to drink with the rest of the gang.

The first time she came by the bar, he laughed about it to me afterwards, in that bitter, mirthless way he has when he's close to a breakdown and trying not to show it.

"Straight-laced Beka a casual drinker," he'd said bitterly, taking a swig from his bottle of beer. "She didn't drink, didja know that, Doyle?"

I had known that, but didn't bother to mention it. When he was in this kind of mood, it was counterproductive to interrupt his monologue.

"Didn't drink, didn't squirt, didn't snort, didn't inhale, didn't shoot up. Her daddy was a junkie and she didn't wanna be like her daddy, she avoid anything even mildly addictive like the plague." He'd taken another swig from the bottle. "And now she's downin' shots with everybody else like it's no big deal, Beka Valentine and alcohol no big deal—"

Ironic, isn't it? My relationship with Dylan, Trance, Rhade, Andromeda, they're all tainted by the fragments of Rommie hidden in my subconscious. Rommie hasn't affected my relationship with Beka—instead it's colored by my relationship with Harper, and how much it's killing him to see her like this.

Everything's all screwed up. It made a lot more sense when it was just Harper and I working for Marika. It was still screwed up and everything was based on a lie, of course, but it made more sense.

I didn't have to deal with Rommie in my head, pushing and suggesting and tainting and making me feel ways that I have no reason to feel. She was still there, sure, but I didn't know she was and she was silent, she didn't interfere in who I am.

He loves her, you know? Loved her. Whatever. He wanted her back. So he tried to rebuild her, only he screwed up.

He loved her. I was just an afterthought. A lame attempt to get a little bit of her back. And it hurts, it hurts to know that I'm just a poor replacement for him, it hurts to know that he'll never…feel for me like he feels for her.

I want her out.

Now that he's got the Andromeda's resources to draw on, Harper thinks he might be able to fix her. Rebuild her. Bring her back.

Then maybe he'll take her out of my head then.

And then she can be Rommie and I can be Doyle and all will be right in my universe, because maybe then I can earn their respect as an individual.

Maybe then I can stop yearning for Dylan's attention, and seeing how much that hurts Harper, and being hurt by the way the dear captain looks at Trance.

Maybe then I can earn Harper's love and attention, and he'll stop being reminded of his 'inadequacy' in fixing Rommie when he looks at me.

Maybe then I can get along with Beka and Trance without being so stupidly jealous of them.

Maybe then I can be me and not her because I'm not her, I'm not.

This isn't working.

I see them look at me and I see what they're thinking, how much they wish Rommie was here instead of me, and I want to scream at them, I know! I know I'm not good enough, I know she's everything I'm not, I know you want her back, I know I know Iknow Iknowiknowiknowiknowi

But I am Doyle, and I have self control, and I don't tell them, I don't tell them that I know they wish I was Rommie, I don't tell them that I wish she was here too, I don't tell them that I hate them for their hesitancy and doubt and resentment.

I just. Don't. Tell them.

I don't tell them anything.

I don't tell them about me, and I don't tell them about Harper.

I don't tell them that he drinks all the time and that the only reason they don't notice is because a lifetime of alcoholism has given him a higher tolerance than Rhade's. I don't tell them that he cries in the middle of the night when he thinks no one can hear him. I don't tell them that he longed for them, that he told me thousands of stories about the Andromeda, and now he has them back but everything's all screwed up and they don't give a damn about him and it's tearing him up inside. I don't tell them that his desperate pretense and his so-called Boston pride are the only things keeping him going, keeping him getting up in the morning and working and interacting 'normally'.

I don't tell them that sometimes, he goes and stares at the box where Rommie's head still rests until he can repair her. I don't tell them that always, always, he turns and leaves without opening it and then goes and drowns his pain in another bottle of beer.

It's all screwed-up. I'm trying. I'm trying to be Doyle, trying to stay strong for his sake, trying to make everything work for him, trying to protect him like I'm supposed to, trying to block out those little subconscious urges Rommie puts in my head, like go see Dylan. But it's not working.

I'm not her. I'm not her. I'm me. I'm Doyle, not Rommie. Doyle, not Rommie.

I'm Doyle.

I'm Doyle.

I'm…

Damn.