Prompt 92: "I want you to be happy." (D/7/C, Zimmerman, Barclay, Haley)

Episode: Post-"Endgame"

/

"Wh-what's wrong?"

Lewis Zimmerman looked up sharply at the note of concern in Reg Barclay's voice. His colleague wasn't speaking to him, however, but to the EMH Mark One, who had just wandered into their living room with a padd in his hand, a white face and unfocused eyes.

"I've had a letter from Seven. She's gone with Chakotay to Dorvan V to … to meet his family. I had no idea it was that serious between them. Wonderful news, isn't it? I should write to congratulate her."

Even if Lewis hadn't been the one to program all the Doctor's facial expressions, he would have known that smile was transparently fake. It trembled at the edges and didn't reach the eyes. It was painful to watch.

When Starfleet had commissioned Lewis and Reg to program a new line of emergency holograms, and the Doctor had insisted on joining them as an ethics consultant, he'd known it would be a challenge, and he'd been correct. Hardly a day went by when their laboratory on Jupiter Station didn't ring with their identical voices shouting at each other. But it was either this, or leave him to the same quacks at Starfleet Medical who'd been so helpless in dealing with Lewis' illness, and who would treat his creation as no more than a glorified tricorder. The Doctor was better off here, and he did help the new project immeasurably.

If only, the old programmer thought, there was some way to help him … but no code in history had ever been able to repair a broken heart.

"Oh, Doc … " Reg powered down his padd. "You were in love with her, weren't you? That's got to hurt. I'm sorry."

"Me too," said Haley, jumping up from her spot next to Reg on the sofa and putting her hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "Shall we go back to the holosuite? I could make you some chocolate ice cream if you like."

Haley, caregiver that she was, had adopted the Doctor as her brother and expanded Program HLA-1, her private quarters in the holosuite, to include a room for him. She liked nothing better than to experiment with holographic recipes for them both, which she would then recreate for Lewis and Reg with real ingredients if they were successful. Evidently she'd remembered Counselor Troi's penchant for comfort food.

"Ice cream?" The Doctor rolled his eyes, saw the hurt look on Haley's face, and patted her hand in apology. "That's kind of you, Haley, but no, thank you. I simply have to accept it, that's all. Face up to the fact that three years of expert medical care, social lessons and friendship have come to nothing. I was the one who taught Seven how to behave on a date, did you know that? I taught her how to dress and how to dance … I was the one taking care of her when our illustrious First Officer still looked at her as a drone. I would have done anything for her, and she cast me aside like a, like an empty hypospray! Can anyone blame me if I need a little time to recover?"

The Doctor threw up his hands and gestured widely as he spoke, pacing around the spaces between sofa, armchairs and coffee table like a performer in an opera. He had definitely played too many opera programs in his formative years, thought Lewis. But that wasn't the real issue. The problem with the Doctor, as always, was the flaws in his personality subroutines, and they were on display right now with a glaring visibility that made Lewis feel sick.

Good grief, Troi was right. He really is a jerk. A pompous, egotistical jerk. Is this what I sound like when it comes to women? Is it any wonder they keep turning me down?

"Well, with that attitude, is it any wonder she turned you down?" he said out loud.

"Lewis!" Reg and Haley exclaimed reproachfully. The Doctor glowered.

"Stop pouting, all of you," Lewis grumbled. "You know I'm right. With all your talk about giving holograms freedom of choice, Junior, did it ever occur to you that this Seven of Nine is free to choose as well?"

"Why, of course she is," the Doctor blustered. "I don't know what you're - "

"So you've helped her. The medical part, fine, that was your job. As for being her friend, good for you. Maintaining a friendship is hard work for the likes of you and me, as I'm sure poor Reg can testify. She obviously cares about you, or she wouldn't have written. That's not what I call "casting you aside"," said Lewis, deploying air quotes for maximum effect and watching the Doctor turn brick red with indignation.

"None of this," he concludes, "Makes you in any way entitled to have her. She's a woman, not a latinum deposit, and you're no Ferengi miner fighting for the first claim."

The Doctor whirled around, ready to storm out of the room and back to the holosuite. The doors were already opening when Reg's quiet voice made him stop in his tracks.

"I … know what it's like, Doc," Lewis' assistant said sadly. "When you're in love with someone who … who will never love you back. When Deanna … when Counselor Troi f-found out how I felt, I … I wanted the d-deckplates to swallow me up."

The Doctor turned back, and it was his turn to offer Reg a sympathetic look. "What happened?"

"I didn't handle it well," said the engineer, curling in on himself on the sofa like a caterpillar, so lost in memory that he didn't even stammer. "I was jealous of other men, and I hated myself …but this was the Enterprise, she was the only counselor on board, and I … ah, let's just say I really needed one. We had no choice but to … w-w-work through it, and so we did. I even see her with … with her partner sometimes, Commander Riker. He's a good man. He makes her smile."

"How in the galaxy did you manage that?" asked the Doctor, in a hushed tone of respect for his eccentric co-creator that possibly no one had ever shown before.

"We became friends," said Reg. "It was … a p-paradox, really. The m-more I cared about her, the less it m-mattered what she thought of me. I … w-want her to be happy, that's all."

Haley, who had lived the most sheltered life out of any of them, said nothing, only sat down beside Reg and touched his arm. But judging from the way her brown Zimmerman eyes turned almost black when she looked at the younger man, Lewis wouldn't be surprised if she knew something about love as well.

The Doctor sat down too, dropping into an armchair with a most uncharacteristic lack of poise. He rubbed his hand over his eyes just as Lewis always did when trying not to cry.

"You're right," he said, all the pomposity draining from his voice until it was reduced to a near-whisper. "Both of you. I didn't mean to sound so … Of course I want Seven to be happy. I always have."

"And is she?" Haley asked, always a woman of few words, but never one to miss the point.

The Doctor looked down at the padd he'd been carrying, which obviously contained her letter, then looked back up with the shadow of a faint, but genuine smile.

"Look."

He handed the padd to her. She passed it to Reg, who held it out to Lewis, who scooted his swivel chair across the room to look at it.

It showed a strikingly beautiful blonde woman running across a muddy field in pursuit of a soccer ball, surrounded by laughing children. It was an amateur holoimage, out of focus and badly framed – Lewis would have scoffed at it any other time – but in spite or because of this, one thing was obvious.

In that moment, Seven of Nine had been happy indeed.