Trust
(Soji, Elnor, Picard)
"You have a Romulan on board?"
Soji bites her tongue as soon as she's said it. She knows she's being unfair – this is the same man who stayed behind on the Artifact to cover her escape – but she didn't get a close look at him in the chaos, and the sight of those piercing dark eyes under sharply angled brows reminds her horribly of Narek.
In Picard's holographic study, with its wooden ceiling beams, oil paintings and paper books, with Picard's elderly human figure beside him, this Romulan looks more alien to her than Narek ever did.
"Soji, this is Elnor," says Picard, the civility of his manner an unspoken reproach of her rudeness. "My personal guard. You weren't properly introduced on the Artifact, were you? Elnor, meet Dr. Soji Asha."
Elnor bows, his long sweep of black hair falling forward. Soji returns the gesture with an uncertain nod.
"It is an honor," he says in perfect English, "To meet the daughter of Commander Data at last."
Soji, who until yesterday believed herself the daughter of a botanist, can't even begin to respond to that. (She thinks of the nightmare she has of herself as a doll in pieces on a workbench, her father a faceless stranger shouting at her for intruding, and if she says even one word right now, she might start crying.)
"I assure you," Picard adds, "You can trust him. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Qowat Milat … "
But there, her expertise (programmed expertise) on all things Romulan comes to her aid. (It's a distraction she really needs right now.) She takes another look at his sword, the markings on his clothes, even the way he wears his hair. At any other time, she would have been fascinated to meet him.
"You're Qowat Milat?"
"No." Elnor frowns. "As a man, I'm not permitted to join the Order. But I was raised by them, and choose to follow their way of life."
"The Way of Absolute Candor?"
"Yes."
Soji thinks of Narek, urging her to trust him, telling her what he claimed was his true name. A heat wave of something like adrenaline crackles through her body.
"Then please tell me candidly," she says, switching to Romulan, "Do you think I'm real?"
"What do you mean?" Elnor tilts his head in bemusement. "You're right in front of me."
If his English accent has an old-world elegance he must have learned from Picard, his Romulan accent is pure outer-colony, rough and ready. It sounds lightyears away from Narek's highly educated layers of subtext. She addressed Elnor by the formal pronoun to keep him at a distance, but he's using it right back at her with nothing but respect.
"Obviously!" she retorts. "I mean, do you consider me a person or something to be used?"
She crosses her arms and waits for his answer, testing him. If he's anything like Narek, he'll reassure her. He'll tell her exactly what she needs to hear to make her trust him.
Picard glances from one of them to the other, probably understanding more than he lets on, whether he speaks the language or not. He looks concerned.
Elnor's eyes narrow. Her suspicion must be getting through to him after all.
"If you're not a person, Dr. Asha, I just killed six men for nothing," he says stiffly, before turning on his heel and walking out of the room.
Soji steadies herself against Picard's desk, finding the breath knocked out of her by the force of that sentence. It was cold, it was harsh, it was completely inconsiderate … it was …
It was the exact opposite of what Narek would have said.
"You'll have to excuse Elnor." Picard rises from his chair with a creak and a sigh, then rounds the desk to place a hand on her shoulder. "He didn't mean to upset you. He just … he takes our mission very seriously."
"Yeah, I noticed." She lets out a half-strangled laugh. "And your mission is … what, me?"
"To keep you safe, yes." The old gentleman looks at her the way she imagines a father might (a real father, as opposed to whoever programmed her with a fake childhood). "And to discover the purpose for which you were created."
"And do I get a choice in any of this?"
"Of course you do." He sounded deeply grieved that she would assume otherwise. "My dear young lady, I would never keep you here against your will. But if you're searching for answers … "
He doesn't even need to finish that sentence. He's got her there and she knows it. As terrifying a prospect as it is to strip away all the illusions she believed in until, the only thing worse would be never learning the truth.
The truth. She glances at the door Elnor just walked through, hearing his blunt voice in her memory: If you're not a person, Dr. Asha …
Belatedly, she realizes what he meant. He does believe in her, however ruthlessly he expressed it. And after what she's been through, there are worse things than having her sentience affirmed by a Qowat Milat.
"All right, Admiral," she says, straightening her spine. "I'll stay … as long as you tell me everything you know."