ROLLERCOASTER

-x-

Something Changed

-x-

Five

-x-

'So.' He laid a hand on hers. 'You're back.'

'I am.' Tasha managed a smile.

'It's such a relief. We all thought we'd never see you again.'

'So everyone keeps telling me.' She cocked an eyebrow. 'You're not mad at me too, are you, Will?'

'Right now, I'm too happy to see you alive and too busy being mad at certain other members of your party to be pissed off at you as well.' Riker paused. 'But Data was frantic with worry, you know. The impact you make on him is capable of bringing a mean side out in that android, you know.'

'I know,' sighed Tasha.

'And although Nik hid it well, everyone could tell he was beside himself too.'

Tasha sighed again, and slid her head into her free hand. 'Am I a terrible mother? A terrible wife?'

'What would I know about parenting,' Riker muttered, 'or about marriage? Hell – what do I even know about being a good partner? You're asking the wrong person.' He paused. 'I do know a thing or two about what makes a good Starfleet Officer, though. How many people do you think you managed to help escape the Pakir Project, again?'

Tasha shrugged. 'Hard to say. Couple of hundred. Maybe more. All of a sudden, I don't feel like that makes a difference any more.'

'That'll be the change of pain meds kicking in,' Riker told her. 'You'll be able to focus much better than you did under the other ones, but apparently they can leave you feeling a little depressed.'

'Not depressed,' Tasha replied, 'sober. The real world's finally caught up with me, and it hates me.'

Will looked up from the table. 'Speaking of being hated…'

Tasha followed his gaze to see Worf, Beverly, Geordi and Data at the door of Ten Forward. She nodded, resignedly. 'Speaking of the real world.'

Beverly had already spotted them, and started making her way over, followed by Geordi. Worf and Data remained close to the door, sidling over to the bar as though both hoped not to have been seen.

Riker smiled bitterly to himself. 'Looks like our old friend still doesn't want to speak with me…'

'…and my husband still doesn't want to speak with me,' completed Tasha.

'It's your husband I was talking about,' replied Riker. 'I just take it as read that Worf has nothing to say to me. Have done for many years now.' He looked up at Geordi and Beverly with a forced cheer as they approached. 'So. How do you like the old girl? I keep her in pretty good shape, huh?'

'When is this going to stop?' Beverly snapped. 'This ridiculous grudge?'

'Which grudge?' Will asked, innocently.

'We've accumulated quite a few, between us,' Tasha added.

'All of them,' replied Geordi, with exasperation. 'Worf's just clinging to a memory of anger right now – I bet it would only take a few honest words to dissipate that. And Data… well, Data's angry at everybody and everything at the moment; you two are no exception.'

'But I am,' Tasha interrupted, 'because I'm his wife. And he's not angry at everyone, he's angry at me. It's just that his anger has a particularly wide, unfocussed range, and it happens to hit passers-by from time to time.'

There was a moment's silence, as if everybody was waiting for somebody else to speak.

'You're all wondering whether I even care any more,' Tasha added, 'aren't you?'

Another pause.

'Of course, I do,' Tasha continued. 'Of course, I care. Of course, I'm sorry for having left him and having let him find out I'm still alive the way he did. Just…' she trailed off, spotting a new figure in Ten Forward's doorway. 'Oh, God.'

Jean-Luc Picard, still in his pyjamas, made a hasty hobble towards the table.

'You drugged me,' he croaked.

'You were raving,' Beverly murmured, 'delirious. It was for your own protection.'

'It doesn't matter right now,' replied Picard, frantically. 'I've been to the past… present… past again. It isn't the Pasteur exploding that causes it – it's the tachyon pulses. And I know what it is that we have to do, only we have to do it in all three time zones…'

Worf and Data had also witnessed the shambolic entrance of their former Captain, and had made their way over to the table in concern.

'Do what in all three time zones?' Worf asked.

'Save humanity,' Picard cried, feverishly, 'we have to save humanity!'

-x-

They had to save humanity.

And while she would always trust Jean-Luc Picard's word, it was Data's faith in the proposed solution that really sold to her that what they were doing could work. There weren't too many aspects of life in which Tasha would instinctively understand that her husband always knew best – matters of science was one of those rare exceptions.

Heading straight into the centre of where the anomaly was going to end up could work… it was the best chance that they had, certainly – it could also break the ship apart. She smiled a little to herself. First the Pakir Project, then the Pasteur, now this… she'd gone looking for adventure, and she'd certainly found it. Certain death seemed to be awaiting her at every turn. The constant sense of peril was terrible and wonderful at the same time. She brushed her wedding ring with her thumb. But what was greater, she asked herself, the fear of dying or the fear of loving – of being loved – of being needed? Was it really just the tedium of domesticity that she'd been trying to escape?

With the help of her crutches, she hobbled over to the helm and, with difficulty, took a seat. Already seated at his old Ops post, her husband turned to her.

'Does Admiral Riker not require "the best damn Tactical Officer he ever served with"?'

'No chair,' Tasha explained, 'and no handy Vulcan to lean on this time. Guess Will doesn't want to send a monoped to do a biped's job. Anyway, I can be pretty handy at the helm too. I know all the buttons to press. And this post has a chair. Nice comfy one, too.'

'Is it comfortable? I never noticed.'

Data turned back to his console, but after a couple of half-hearted prods at it, faced her again.

'If I were to ask you why you did this – why you ran away – should I expect to receive a genuine, comprehensible answer from you?'

'No,' Tasha admitted, 'but only because I don't have a genuine, comprehensible answer even for myself. Not a satisfactory one, anyway. Maybe I'll never know for certain why I did it.'

'If I may offer a suggestion?' Data asked.

'Sure.'

'I believe that you did it because you are impulsive, contrary and wilful.'

Tasha stared at her husband, and let out a small laugh. 'Maybe. I know you hate that.'

'Not so. All of those traits are important aspects of your personality. Without them, you would not be the woman that I love.'

'So, you do still love me…'

'Of course. Whether I can trust you any more, however, is a different matter.'

Tasha fell silent for a moment, looking down at the wedding ring that she had never removed once since she had been away. 'Do you want a divorce?'

'No,' Data replied, plainly. 'Do you?'

Tasha shook her head. 'But we can't go back to the way things were before either, can we?'

'No,' Data murmured. 'I believe you have made your position on that matter quite plain.'

'My position?' Tasha protested. 'You're the one who said you can't trust me any more!'

'I did not state that. I merely called your trustworthiness and reliability into question.'

'But I've always been unreliable, Data. You know me…'

'Yes, I do.' Data paused. 'Your son and I miss you very much.'

'I miss you both, too.'

Data nodded down at her injured leg. 'I can create a prosthetic lower leg and foot for you,' he told her. 'I have successfully attached such prosthetics to the nerve endings of amputated limbs on several occasions – you would have no physical sensation in it, but you would have autonomy over the movements of the foot. You would be able to walk and run as well as ever… turn cartwheels, if you pleased. You would not, however, be able to dance. You have never been capable of that.'

'Let me guess,' Tasha sighed. 'You can make me a new foot as long as I go back to Cambridge.'

'That is where all of my equipment is,' Data told her. 'Besides, both Nikolai and myself would dearly like for you to return home.'

'I knew you'd do this,' Tasha replied. 'I knew you'd try to bring me back, and I knew you'd try to fix me. But didn't I just say, things can't go back to how they were.'

'I am asking you to come home,' clarified Data. 'At present, that is in Cambridge, but if that continues not to suit you, we shall simply have to change the location to which we allocate the term "home".'

Tasha blinked. 'You'd leave Cambridge, for me?'

'Perhaps I should have done it some time ago – perhaps that would have kept you from feeling the need to escape.'

'But Cambridge is your life!'

Data gave her a small smile. 'You are my life. You and Nikolai.'

'Exactly,' countered Tasha, wondering to herself why exactly she was arguing against the dream scenario of getting out of Cambridge with her marriage intact, 'there's Nik to think about, too…'

'If we left, Nikolai would be free to stay on and study in Cambridge with whatever support from us he would require,' Data replied, thoughtfully. 'However, it has been persuaded to me recently that we should pay more attention to what Nikolai actually wants to do, rather than what we feel will be best for him. He may surprise us both. He has a fragile life, but he should be free to live it however he wishes – free from your expectations as well as my protectiveness.'

Tasha stared at him. 'I think you're right about Nik. But abandoning the university…? all this came about because I was living a life that I didn't want to for your sake. If you gave up Cambridge and all your work there, you'd be doing the same thing. We'd end up right back where we started.'

'I am more adaptable than you give me credit for,' Data told her. 'As is the university.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'The Holo Technology Department have been sending out memos to all academic staff,' Data explained, 'appealing for one of us to assist them in their trial run of Remote Lecturing. Were I to accept, I would be able to go anywhere that had access to a holographic imaging chamber. Holo Tech believe that they would be able to allow me to continue to conduct fully interactive lectures to students still in Cambridge through simultaneous live holo feeds. They would send the programme to the computers controlling whichever holographic chamber I was in, which would project a live hologram of the lecture theatre in Cambridge around me, while at the same time projecting a live hologram of myself into the lecture theatre. As for the rest of my studies; my theses and so on… I can perform them anywhere that I wished. I do not even particularly need my books; electronically, they would all fit onto a single isolinear chip, although I do prefer the smell of paper…'

'But where would we go? You'd still need a pretty powerful holo chamber…'

'Around as powerful as a standard Starfleet vessel's holodeck,' replied Data, with a false innocence. 'And with you still being an active Starfleet officer… wherever should we live? It is a puzzle...'

Tasha tried to mask her smile, and pointed a finger at her husband in what she hoped came across as a peevish manner. 'You hate Starfleet.'

'Hate is a very strong word,' Data replied. 'It had been a very long time since I'd set foot aboard a Starship before the recent events that brought us here. Since I left Earth I have been reunited with many of my fellow officers, found you, invaded enemy territory, been shot at, been pulled at the last moment from a breaching vessel… and now I am on the Bridge of the Enterprise D, about to send the ship into an anti-time anomaly which may destroy us all, in the hope of rectifying the damage our own tachyon pulses caused to the fabric of timespace, thus saving humanity.'

Tasha let down her guard and offered him a wide grin. 'Just like old times, right?'

Data nodded. 'And you were correct earlier, Tasha. This seat is comfortable.'

And there it was – that old spark, that old adventure in her husband's eyes. It hadn't been extinguished after all; just buried under a mountain of fear. Love had brought him to fear losing those he cherished, and personal misfortune had caused that fear to take control of him. But something now had changed. Perhaps it had been Tasha's return from apparent death; perhaps now they had found one another again he had been able to reflect on their relationship just before she had left, and how much his fears stifled those he held dear; perhaps it was simply being up in the stars again. Whatever it was, it seemed that she was beginning to get her old Data back. After all she'd done to him, she actually had a chance of getting him back.

'You know,' Tasha added, 'it was no picnic getting up to the Bridge of the Pasteur on one leg while we were being shot at.'

'I can imagine.'

'And I never thought with a ship of such limited weaponry I'd be able to do more than gain us a few extra seconds, once I got there.'

'It would have been uncharacteristically unrealistic for you to have assumed otherwise.'

'Well?' She asked, 'aren't you gonna ask why I went to the trouble of getting out of bed in the first place?'

'I am not,' replied Data, 'because I know your reasoning behind that act already. You did what I would have done were I alone and injured with moments left to live, with you a few floors above, furious with me due to some unresolved issue. Were I in that position, I would be compelled to locate you, to say that I was sorry and that I still loved you, and so that I would be able to die in your presence. Was that not why you came to the Pasteur's Bridge?'

'Yes,' smiled Tasha, softly. She gazed at the anomaly on the screen in front of her as the ship approached it. 'Looks like we may be given the opportunity to die together again sooner than we'd thought.'

'And yet,' replied Data, 'you have still not apologised.'

'When you two have quite finished,' interjected Riker, taking up the gap between their two posts, 'this is the Bridge of the Enterprise, not a marriage counselling session.'

Data opened his mouth to give the Admiral a peevish retort, but Tasha noticed the friendly smile playing around Will's lips before her husband had chance to speak.

'Sir, yes Sir,' she replied, playfully. 'We just felt it would be apt to put our affairs in order, since the human race is in danger of being obliterated, taking us with it. Wouldn't you say?'

Riker turned and feigned outrage at the rest of the Bridge. Tasha saw Picard shake his head in mock disapproval and, more heartening still, saw Worf give a brief, wry smile – silently, discreetly sharing in the moment of togetherness. It seemed that Will had made his peace with his old crewmates as well.

'Well, now that the Yar marriage has been saved,' Riker announced, 'perhaps we could turn our attentions to the less pressing issue of the destruction of all life on Earth.'

'Take us into the anomaly, Commander Yar,' ordered Picard.

Tasha glanced across at her husband again as the ship entered the anomaly.

'In case we don't make it out,' she murmured, 'I am sorry for what I did. And I do want to come home. And I love you.'

Data just smiled down at his console. 'I know.'

-x-

It felt good to be back in just the one timeline, Picard mused. It felt good to be rid of the anomaly, with humanity intact… although, he didn't believe he could ever be sure whether humanity was ever really in peril, or whether it was all just part of Q's games.

That was another thing to be pleased about. He seemed to be rid – in the short term, anyway – of that immortal menace's attention. And all he'd had to do had been to lead his crew into simultaneous destruction in three different times to have Q put everything back to the way it was.

Only, he didn't quite feel back the way he was. He'd revisited his first day as Captain of the Enterprise, as well as seeing a hypothetical future, full of fractured, but ultimately fixable relationships. That was the sort of thing that was bound to make a man contemplative about the friendships he had forged, and those that had forged around him.

It had made him suddenly determined to do a certain thing that he had never done before. Not only that, but he was aware that he needed to bring a particular young woman along with him.

He stopped outside Tasha Yar's quarters and signalled her to his presence. There was a moment's pause before the door was opened to reveal Tasha in the doorway, brushing her teeth. Tasha blinked in surprise, her toothbrush frozen for a moment between her jaws.

'Gabdin?' She enquired, her mouth full of foam. 'Wud… Schoo-bee…' She darted to her sink and spat out the mouthful of toothpaste. 'What brings you here?'

'I intend to join in Will Riker's poker game tonight,' Picard announced.

'That's great,' replied Tasha, 'they'll be thrilled. But if you've come to me looking for hints on the game, I'm afraid I don't play either.'

'I know. That's why I really think you should come too.'

Tasha looked at him, then shook her head with a faint laugh. 'I don't think...'

'Why not?' Picard asked. 'I'm sure you'd enjoy it if you went.'

Tasha narrowed her eyes at him. 'This is about the future you saw, isn't it?'

'In a way,' Picard replied. 'Although what I saw is just a possibility – it's not certain to happen. If that one specific outcome was a definite, I wouldn't have told you all what I saw. But I got the feeling that it still unnerved you.'

'Well, it certainly unnerved Deanna,' retorted Tasha. 'She's pretty good at hiding it, but who wouldn't be upset to learn that in the future you visited she'd died an early, unnecessary death?'

'I'm not talking about Deanna Troi, I'm talking about you. You've been particularly reclusive ever since I told you the possible future I saw for you and Data.'

Tasha leaned against a wall, with her arms folded and a serious expression. 'I'm in love with him, Jean-Luc. You know that. I'm in love with him, and he can't love me back. So the concept of the two of us being in a torrid, passionate relationship of furious break-ups and make-ups makes my palms go kinda sweaty. But then you told me that I'd abandoned him… that I'd hurt him, and made him worry about me so much that it had turned him into something he's not…'

'I imagine it's hard for you to imagine being unkind to someone you love…'

'No, you see, that's just it. I can imagine it all too well. I am unkind to the people I love, and I can be very unkind to him.' She sighed. 'What you told me troubled me because I can picture myself doing it. And now he's got that stupid emotion chip just sitting in that box, waiting to give him the capacity to be hurt. And it's bound to be me that hurts him.'

'Tasha,' sighed Picard, 'what I saw in the future was not one person deliberately distressing the other. There was no victim, no perpetrator… what I saw was a breakdown of communication between two people who loved one another, but had emotional flaws – just like all of us. The future Data responded to emotional hurdles by keeping those he cared for in as safe as environment as he could, to such an extent that he stifled them. You, conversely, responded to emotional problems by fleeing your family, and hiding away from them.'

'And that's what you see me doing already, right?' Tasha replied. 'Trying to deal with my feelings for Data by avoiding him – hiding away from social events?'

'Perhaps,' Picard admitted. 'Perhaps that reclusiveness and denial is a character trait that I've noted you exhibiting for some time now. Believe me, I'm the last person who would want to drag someone who's content with being solitary out to a social gathering, only… Only, it never seems to actually make you happy. It didn't in the future, and I don't think it does now.'

Picard paused. Tasha had no reply to his observation, or at least none that she was willing to give voice to.

'And certainly don't allow yourself to be consumed with worry over the emotional wellbeing of Mr Data,' continued Picard. 'I can see how one could view Data's emotion chip as something of a Pandora's Box - a physical object potentially capable of releasing terrible things, as we both witnessed when he was under Lore's control. But we don't know that he'll ever want to use it again. Even if he does, you may well be surprised at his fortitude. The Data that I saw in the future was one who had suffered terrible personal misfortunes – far worse than romantic unkindness – and, although I wouldn't describe him as being completely well balanced, he was still able to cope, far better than I imagine I would, under the same circumstances. I witnessed his anger towards you…'

'Who could blame him for that, given what had happened?' Interjected Tasha.

'Certainly not you,' Picard replied. 'And I think it might hearten you to know that, despite everything, your marriage remained intact. The last conversation I heard between your future selves was one of hope – you were planning the next step in your lives together, working to overcome the problems that had led you to the situation you had found yourselves in.'

Tasha paused, mulling this over. 'But you said that future would never happen…'

'It does not have to happen,' Picard replied. 'Whether it does or not depends on the decisions we make between now and then – whether we allow our friendships to fall apart, or protect them against anger, jealousy and bitterness – whether we repeat our mistakes, or learn from them…'

'…Whether I let myself be the sort of person who'll hide away from things I find socially or emotionally difficult, or learn to face them and overcome them like a rational person,' added Tasha.

'I didn't say that.'

Tasha grinned down at the floor. 'No. You just implied it. Heavily.'

'So, how about it?' asked Picard. 'The two hermits finally joining in this damned card game they've all been itching for us to play for all those years?'

Tasha continued to smile down at the floor. Although she was shaking her head, he knew that she only needed one more nudge.

'Come on. It'll be worth it just to see the expressions on their faces when we gatecrash.'

Tasha laughed a little. 'That's true.' She pushed herself away from the wall. 'Watch out for Deanna Troi. I hear she Hustles.'

Tasha allowed Picard out first. He waited for her in the corridor and presented his arm to her, which she took, cheerfully. As they walked, he saw her smiling strangely to herself.

'What is it?'

'In that room there's gonna be you and Beverly; me and Data; Will and Deanna and Worf… that's an awful lot of sexual tension for one Poker table.'

'Well,' replied Picard with a slight shrug, 'at least Geordi's not in love, or out of love, or thinking about being in love with anyone there.'

'Please.' Tasha cocked an eyebrow. 'Geordi might actually be more in love with Data than I am – he just doesn't want to sleep with him.' She paused. 'At least, I don't think he does. We really are a strange, incestuous little family, aren't we?'

'A little family,' repeated Picard. 'Yes. Yes, I think we are.'