ROLLERCOASTER
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Mr Data And Miss Yar Send Their Regrets
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Chapter 5 – Favours
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There are long silences, and there are long silences.
This particular long silence lasted around an hour, which would be a very long time for any person confined with another individual. Considering the feelings Tasha had for Data, the extreme circumstances they had just been through and the fact that the escape pod was so small that they had to lie pressed against one another, it felt like an eternity. She could tell, though, that he wasn't ready to talk yet.
He was the one who broke the silence.
'I believe that the effects of the Inhibitor are finally being overridden by my systems.'
'I'm glad.'
'I am still incapable of controlling my emotional responses, however.'
'Geordi'll be able to fix that, won't he?'
'I hope so.'
There was another pause.
'You know,' Tasha added, 'when the Captain was taken by the Cardassians, he found that it had a much lesser effect on him in the long term than everyone was expecting – I think he put it down to the Borg – like what they'd done to him had given him some sort of Torture Resistance…'
'Please, Tasha,' murmured Data, 'I do not need any further reminders of my time in the Borg's custody.'
Another long pause.
'Am I a bad person?'
'Data, you're the best person in the universe…'
'I have killed. I have been deceitful. I have used sex as a weapon. I have been very hurtful towards you…'
'I deserved those things you said about me…'
'No, you did not,' Data replied. 'I have been most unfair to you on many occasions since I activated my emotion chip.'
'Well,' reasoned Tasha, 'I used to be pretty damn unfair to you, too, so I guess that makes us even.'
'I do not understand why I do it,' Data admitted, 'when you seem to have only my best interests at heart. Why do I create problems with you when there are already so many problems in my life at present? Why do I isolate somebody who wishes to make things right when so much has gone wrong…' he trailed off. 'That was what Lore used to do. Our father tried to help him, as did I. He responded to our concern with anger and cruelty.'
'You're nothing like him.'
'Am I not? Recent events have caused me to wonder.' He paused. 'I believe that that is my greatest fear – to become like my brother. Were we cut from the same cloth - so to speak – he and I? Are we the same?'
Tasha laid a hand on the side of his face. 'You're nothing like him,' she reiterated. 'If you were, I wouldn't have fallen in love with you.'
There was yet another, highly charged silence.
'Tasha?'
'Yes?'
'If I ask something of you now, would you promise not to question my motives for doing so?'
'Pinky promise.'
'Then would you kiss me, please?'
She was aware that, given the circumstances, she really should say no.
She pulled his head to hers and kissed him, softly.
He kissed back, gratefully, at first matching her gentleness, but quickly growing in urgency. She found herself reminded of that heady moment in the Turbolift all those years ago. Her heart quickened at the memory. They couldn't be about to finish off what they started there, could they…? Tasha opened one eye and cast it briefly over the close walls of the coffin-like escape pod. There wasn't enough room for them to do anything fancy, certainly, but she'd had sex in smaller spaces. She turned her attention back to him. God, she'd waited and fantasised about this moment for so long - for him to want her again…
Data was starting to manoeuvre them both around in their tiny space – pulling her onto him while he shuffled himself beneath her. Tasha silently celebrated at there being a position that he wanted, at there finally being something that she could do for his enjoyment rather than the other way around all the time. As they continued to kiss with her lying on top of him, he let his arms fall down face-up by his head. She took the signal to grab his wrists and weigh them down as best she could, considering his vastly superior strength. She kissed him harder still, biting at his lips. This was it, wasn't it? The end of all that godammed tension. She was going to get to…
'Stop,' blurted Data.
Tasha pulled away from him. 'I'm sorry. I thought this was what you wanted…'
'For a moment, I thought so too,' admitted Data. 'But… this is all wrong. I apologise.'
'Of course it's all wrong.' Tasha rolled herself off him. 'You've just gone through a horrible physical and emotional trauma, your systems are still messed up, your mind's all over the place and there's me jumping on you at the first opportunity. It's me who should apologise.'
'I am not so mentally and emotionally compromised to not be aware that instigating sexual behaviour was a mistake,' Data told her. 'I should not have done that. I just… I craved a physical sensation that was normal – comfortable – familiar.'
'"Familiar"?' repeated Tasha. '"Comfortable"? You really know how to make a girl feel special, don't you?'
'That was not intended as an insult,' Data replied. 'Far from it. My meaning was that I felt that somehow you could make me be… be me again.'
'But you are you! You're always you – idiosyncratic, annoying, frustrating, wonderful you.'
'I do not feel that I am. I have not for some time. That was my part of my reasoning for unfairly propositioning you last year.'
Tasha stared into his eyes – she didn't have much choice, there really wasn't anywhere else that she could look. 'This isn't really about Poklar, is it? This is still about Her. The Borg Queen.'
'I do not wish to belittle the mistreatment that Poklar bestowed upon me,' Data replied. 'Had she had me abducted before the Borg attack, there is no saying what effects her conduct could have had upon me. Indeed, once she realised that the Borg still weighs heavily on my conscience, she took great pains to manipulate that to her own end. The Queen is never far from my mind, but Poklar managed to almost bring her back to life. I saw her. I saw her so clearly, as I do in my dreams… my nightmares.' He paused. 'She changed me. She said that she would change me, and she did, although not in the way that she had promised. I feel infected. It is as though she is still in here…' he tapped his forehead. 'As though they are all still with me all the time, reminding me of how close I came to being one of them. It makes me feel ashamed.'
'You didn't have any choice,' Tasha reminded him.
'Of course I did. There is always a choice.'
'What else could you have done – let them rip you to pieces for spare parts and then get on with destroying humanity's past? Data, we've been over this.'
Data shook his head, sadly. 'Perhaps you are not the correct person to discuss this with. You are so intent upon comparing what happened to me in Engineering with what happened to you on Turkana. I believe it has led you to draw the conclusion that I was a far more innocent party in it than I actually was.' He paused. 'I complied. I freely complied. Yes, I had reason to believe that had I not done so, I would not have been given the time to formulate a plan against them; yes, I was physically restrained, but I was tempted by her offer, and I did comply. And… and…' he glanced down, shamefaced. 'And on certain levels, I actually enjoyed it.' He looked back up at her, tears in his eyes. 'What am I to do? The knowledge of my submission to her and of the levels to which I stooped disgusts me, constantly. How am I expected to live with that? When I ask you if I am a good person, I ask you because I no longer know myself. Perhaps I am a monster, after all. Perhaps Poklar was right.'
'Data.' Tasha laid a hand on his shoulder. 'You're still in a period of change. Your emotions are still so new – I know you struggle with them at the best of times, and it makes it so much harder when you can't switch them off – like now, and like back then in Engineering. Both Poklar and the Queen exploited that vulnerability; Poklar played on your senses of fear and horror, and the Queen on your wants and fantasies. She's the only one you've been with since getting emotions, and she forced you to feel the whole thing. Of course it would have been different with emotions – you're developing a sexuality.'
'Am I?' Data asked, unconvinced.
'Certainly felt like it when we kissed just now,' Tasha replied. 'You're starting to explore what it is that you want out of sex, rather than just your partner. That's perfectly normal human behaviour, and no more shameful than your discovering what sort of music you like and dislike. It's just a real kick in the teeth that the first time you got to do so, you were being forced.'
'Just as you were,' Data murmured.
Tasha nodded. 'You feel that getting anything out of sex like that makes you culpable somehow, makes you a bad person… I've been there, all right. It took me a very long time after Turkana to learn it was OK for me to actually enjoy sex, and particularly to get pleasure out of things that were first done to me in aggression.'
She paused. Data seemed nonplussed.
'You like the idea of being held down, don't you – or at least pretending to be held down, given you could probably lift a partner off of you with your little finger – you just generally like the idea of there being someone on top of you, but now you feel that you're not allowed to because that's what she did.'
Data looked away, but his expression told her that she was right.
'You know the hair-pulling thing that I used to ask you to do?' Tasha asked. 'First person to do that to me was on Turkana. But later in life I found myself wanting guys to do it while we were in bed… I never forgot about that first time, that bad time, but eventually it stopped being about being hurt and ashamed, and just became a little bedroom quirk that I enjoyed… when it was done right, that is.'
'I hope that I "did it right".'
She smiled. 'Sweetie, you set the bar. Still do, for an awful lot of things.' She paused again. 'Do you still think I'm not the right person to talk to about what happened with the Borg, given my past?'
'Actually,' admitted Data, 'your insight has been useful to me.'
Tasha gave a small laugh. 'You didn't even suggest at all that I was lying – that's a step in the right direction.'
'Indeed.' It was Data's turn to pause, awkwardly. 'Do you believe that we can be friends again, Tasha?'
'I'd love that. Only, do me one favour?'
'Of course.'
'Don't ask me to kiss you because you're hurting again. Because I'll want to, even though we both know that that's the last thing you need right now.'
'You are right. I will not.'
There was another long silence. Tasha didn't pull her hand from his shoulder. She closed her eyes and basked in his close presence.
'We have missed the wedding,' Data announced after quite some time.
Tasha shrugged. 'Might be for the best. You would probably have proposed again.'
She opened one eye and gazed at him, impishly. He didn't seem put out or confused – he seemed to actually be sharing in the joke.
'You would probably have danced again.'
'Exactly. I'm sure they'll have saved us some cake.'
'Is there traditionally cake at Klingon wedding ceremonies?'
Tasha wrapped her arm further around her friend. 'There'd better be. I'm starving.'
