Flashback/Test Scene:

[tasha_yar]

It was a nice simulation - all rolling hills and green grass. The sky was almost too blue, but Tasha didn't have the greatest color sense in the universe.

Picard had ordered her on a long break for everyone once the Enterprise returned to normal space after their time with the Traveler, and most of the crew was on well-needed shore leave on the world below. She tried going back to her normal comforts - working out, practicing with the aikido program, reading the latest reports. Hell, she even broke down and listened to Klingon opera in order to refine her grasp on the language.

It hadn't helped. The nightmares of being chased and caught with her senses blurred from any variety of drugs she could find making the dream-memories even more nightmarish and barely contained. They melded with the cage from her fight with Yareena. They blurred with Q's courtroom. And they had been blending with...that...ever since the Tsiolkovsky encounter.

It was all getting worse, not better, even as she felt herself wanting to settle in and make this a home. She was feeling her walls come up again - just like when she'd managed to do or say something stupid on her other postings. Lieutenant Yar could handle anything - minefields, riots, the criminally insane. Tasha made Wesley look like a goddamn sophisticated grown-up!

She sighed and looked at the holo-recorder in her hand. She stretched and pressed the button again. Self-pity wasn't going to get this done.

"Geordi, in those moments I felt the most despair, you took my hand and helped me to see things differently. You taught me to look beyond the moment."

Good. Solid. Decent. Sure, it felt woefully inadequate. It's not like she had a gift for words. With a silent apology, she moved onto the last person on the list. She'd splice this all together to put this in the middle - just to save some face somewhere. He wouldn't care, but she cared about the kind of idiocy he'd face.

"My friend Data," she starts on the speech she had planned. "You see things with the wonder of a child -" A smile plays across her lips. "And that makes you more human than any of us. And Data..." She hesitated. "Data, I..." Sigh, rewind, try again. "Data it did happen!" she manages to blurt out, followed immediately by a "Fuck!" Then a realization that was all being recorded again.

She flopped on the ground in defeat and impulsively threw the crystal hexagon back behind her.

"How about, 'Data, I'm sorry.' 'Data, I wish I wasn't so damn scared.' 'Data, I hope you didn't scar you for life so when you do find some person who is as wonderful and smart and fantastic as you are -" She growls in further defeat.

Then she realizes she never heard the holo-recorder land.

Comments

[tasha_yar]

She sighs and nods a slow, small nod.

"There are...things..." she says slowly, swallowing hard in between sets of words. "That may come out here. Things no one knows. Not the Captain, not Deanna, not even the people who found me on Turkana IV." She takes a step forward and faces him, putting her hand on the holorecorder. It's the closest she's been to him since..."Please, Data," she searches his face. "Whatever we discuss here, it needs to stay private."

She squeezes her eyes shut. "And I trust you," she whispers. "I trust you to ask anything you ever wanted to ask about me. I trust you to help me try and put this mess in my head into words and to answer whatever I ask - and I know I asked too much before and I'm asking for even more now and it's not fair."

"Also, before I lose my nerve," she admits. "I think you're wonderful. Not just 'capable officer' wonderful, but as a friend." Her lips twitch and she flushes scarlet, but she stays linked to him via that shared touch on the device. "As a man."

[humandroid]

"You will find that the limits of what I consider acceptable to ask are extensive." He quickly glances down to where her hand rests on the holorecorder, then back up to meet her eyes. And it's there for a moment when her admission reaches 'as a friend': the crooked upward tug of his mouth, as expressive a smile as Data's ever managed on a typical day. As much of a reciprocation as he's ever managed, too.

"As your colleague and your friend, I will respect your request that this discussion not be shared with others. Keeping confidence is often considered one's duty within those relationships, is it not? And I am--" What would be the most accurate way to put it? "- familiar with a determination to keep certain facts from becoming common knowledge."

It contrasts his approach to the vast majority of any facts he's intrigued with, but for some things, exceptions must be made. Otherwise his Academy classmates probably would have shut him off to pose him next to a statue once or twice.

"I will help in whatever capacity I am able."

[tasha_yar]

That smile. It's mimicry, but it's also his, and it always make her smile. She nods, once, not breaking eye contact.

"I...Everything I told you was true, I mean with the Tsiolkovsky. It just wasn't everything, the whole truth. And that truth is that I didn't always avoid the gangs. I was caught - more than once. And sometimes..." Her whole body tightens with the memory.

"What you witnessed was a part of myself I've kept locked away for 12 years. A part that needed the attention of men in exchange for food or protection. It scares me it's still there - and I hate myself for bringing you into that world. Even for a moment."

"I remember seeing your file when Captain Picard was choosing officers." Tasha allows a grin back onto her face that doesn't reach her eyes. "Everything in your file was - 'can lift this,' and 'can take that kind of punishment.' And I remember getting to the videos and, instead of this unstoppable soulless being, I saw you. Goofy, curious, wonderful you." She avoided his gaze. "And a lot of footage of you being treated like a thing." She swallows. "I wasn't going to be ones of those people."

[humandroid]

"By broad definition, I am a 'thing'. It is only personal belief which creates any potential conflict. Your chosen belief is very similar to my own. I-- appreciate it."

It would be vocalized as a distracted secondhand thought from anyone else. And in a way, perhaps it still is. Data's clearly devoting a fair share of processing power to the first half of what Tasha had to say. New information to file, new implications. Clear violations of ethical and moral subroutine standard behavior.

Life forms who treat him similarly to any other sentient life form they encounter from their first interaction on- particularly Starfleet personnel who have had access to his file- are less common than those who approach him as a technological marvel. The latter approach is understandable, but the former is intriguing in its own right.

Whether his inability to express traditional sympathy will hinder him in this moment remains to be seen.

"Lieutenant Yar. Would it not be the next logical priority to ensure you were also not permanently damaged by our encounter?"

He cannot personally understand the purpose or motivation behind the actions she seems to be referencing, but the gravity has not escaped him since he first questioned them. Humans are, by broad definition, not things. They can be harmed in more ways than the physical. For all that he can hold his own physical strengths in check, navigating the other aspects without causing damage is an ongoing challenge.

He wonders, briefly, if the sharing of personal history might be considered a separate form of intimacy.

[tasha_yar]

She huffs. "Data, don't talk like that!" She shakes her head vigorously. "Not to me." She then adds quietly.

Tasha grimaces and continues. "I'm not as broken as that sounds," she explains. "I'm not ashamed of what I had to do to survive. Even though I haven't been involved with anyone since then, it's not like sex is-" She fidgets. The words don't come, so she tries something else. "What I don't want is -" She huffs. "The clothing...The make-up...the whole latching onto someone because I was confused and scared -" She shutters. "High and lying." She debates adding something else, but - he needs to hear it. He needs to know.

She locks on to his amber eyes and adds the last important thing in barely a whisper. "And acting like someone's pliant thing,"

She quickly takes the holo from him and her fingers lightly brush his. "I'm not that person any more," she says with an uncertainty even he can hear while quickly looking away. "And you deserved better." Tasha looks away for a moment while setting it down.

"Frankly, I was amazed you went for it. I mean, I figured -" She shrugged. "No emotions, no desire, right? I didn't even think -" She frowns and looks back at him. "Did the virus change any of that?"

[humandroid]

"No," he offers, a statement of fact, "you are not."

He's not certain a crew member exists who would use those terms to describe her. The difference between her virus-enabled behavior and her typical patterns are significant. Data leaves the concept of deserving anything particular off for another time. As a human who, at some point, perhaps numerous times, felt inhuman in that capacity, a certain empathy for his own circumstances is reasonable. If perhaps unfortunate. His gaze shifts off-center as he shuffles through memory files regarding the virus outbreak.

"The virus was a... curious experience. I had not anticipated that it would be able to infect me, and I do not believe that the Captain anticipated it when he sent me to escort you to Sickbay." The Captain is nothing if not reliable in that capacity. "You are correct that sexual desire is not something I am typically prone to, regardless of my related programming. I could not be emotionally impacted by the virus, however: my functions were merely impaired in a manner resembling intoxication. The result of physical contact and a functioning circulatory system."

Or that's what he tells himself, at the very least. Goodness forbid he recognize potentially emotional behaviors within his own parameters.

[tasha_yar]

She looks at him with narrowed eyes. That wasn't an answer. Oh, it was a passable effort at one, but -

She replays what he said in her head. "The Captain wouldn't send you if he thought you were compromised." She forces herself to replay what happened. She won't be able to sleep tonight as a result, but something isn't adding up.

"'Not something you are typically prone to,'" she repeats slowly as her forehead scrunches in thought. "And it wasn't the virus," she adds after a long moment.

Something doesn't fit. She knows about the dark side of biological beings and the uses he could be asked to do or be coerced into just because he was so curious...so willing to please.

It was the one blessing she had counted on. She knew damn well sobriety brought restraint and better judgement - but if someone did anything under the influence it wasn't the drugs magically creating new thoughts for you. The impulse was already there. You just had enough sense not to act on it.

So, yes...She had been trying to find a protector. Yes, she would have tried those ridiculous lines on Jean-Luc if he'd shown up and knew that...if he'd...

She physically shakes that thought away.

The one protection Data had, she figured early on, was there was no way he could be intimately abused. No interest was no interest. It made it safe to come to him when the nightmares got bad just to talk and laugh for him at him continued experiments in humanity. It made it a warm, friendly thing to answer his questions...to let a softer side of herself slip out; to admit she frequently didn't know much more than he did. If that warm feeling grew - and, if she were honest - grew quickly, then it was just too bad there was one more aspect of humanity out there that would never be reached, but, she rationalized, it also meant no one would ever be close enough to be hurt on either side of the equation.

And now the equation wasn't balancing. She was hurting and there was something not adding up on his side either.

"'Typically,'" she says, as neutrally as possible, searching his face for any clue. "Is not 'never.' It's not even in a light year of 'incapable'." Tasha starts to feel the potential in this, even where he doesn't. She blushes furiously and it's as if the whole ship shut off the artificial gravity; all heady and with her stomach forever falling, but she presses on. She is sure she'll hate the answer, but she has to know.

"Was it the situation - the offer? Would anyone would have sufficed - or is it because I asked?"

Inwardly, she prayed to whomever listened to such things that this was not the moment her friend had finally learned to lie.

[humandroid]

Data offers no immediate answer. It isn't a lengthy pause by typical human standards, but for an android, it proves sufficient.

Were it not for this incident, he might say he has not found himself prone to sexual desire at all. His related programming and physical functionality have been defined and recorded, but attraction itself is something he's always found difficult to contextualize. A base variable in the human equation that differs between each individual without following any set logical course. And often not relevant to situations as they are at hand. He is aware that factors such as physical appearance hold sway, but certain pigmentation or proportions versus other examples do not strike him as superior or inferior.

He does not typically experience a physical or sexually-inclined draw to others. Seeking sexual gratification is not a programming subroutine that regularly cycles. To his knowledge, no individual has indicated such a draw towards him, either. Until the virus. By a purely logical standpoint, he should have been capable of politely declining and escorting her to seek medical attention. Physical sensory input cannot reroute an entire processing system. It is not an offer he would ordinarily accept, regardless of its eloquence.

It does not make logical sense.

A malfunction?

"I am sorry," is where he settles first and foremost, eyebrows furrowed in the vague, almost-unsettled expression of an android which cannot provide an answer regarding its own actions and programming. "I do not believe that receiving the same offer from another individual would have borne the same result, but-- beyond that, I am uncertain."

[tasha_yar]

Her free fall stopped with a crash, but she's no less confused. She's also no longer angry. With a strange numbness, she reaches out and takes his hand. It's an experiment more than anything. What does he do with touch?

"In short," she finally says. "This between us is something you don't know." She then shocks the hell out of herself by asking. "But was it something you wanted?"

[humandroid]

He stares at the point of contact, mostly. Accesses relevant records, tips his chin upwards, then back down, and cautiously folds his fingers over. Distracted would be an apt word to describe him at current. Internal diagnostics and his self-correcting mechanism have made an abrupt rise in prioritization. Queries with no definitive answer are pressing matters: developments which require certain overseeing as they form.

This meeting is providing more new developments than he had anticipated.

Intriguing.

"Are you referring to our encounter or to the possibility of 'this between us' prior to it?"

[tasha_yar]

That snaps her out the fugue. Her eyes move from his, back down to the curled hands. Back up, then down. Her thought fall like twigs over a waterfall.

Emotionless Being.

Perfectly Logical.

Perfect Officer.

Prevented by the limits of programming and construction against giving or accepting hate or sadness. Or gentleness. Or joy. Or...

Nothing you do drunk...

Typical.

Don't know.

Encounter or possibility.

It would be safer if she ran. She's not running.

"This seems a bit more intimate then drunkenly fumbling around and then literally turning you off while -"

Nope. Can't finish that statement. He's blunt enough to follow up if he wants.

She tightens her grip. "I keep warning you. You deserve better than me."

[humandroid]

"I have found that the concept of what one is said to deserve is highly subjective. Logically, in terms of intimate interaction, I would most likely be considered the less than ideal companion of choice. After all, I cannot reciprocate an emotional bond. That creates a certain-- imbalance. You appear to be approaching the matter as most humans would."

More compliment than anything else, probably. As much as telling a human they act like a human can be considered such. That she was able to reactivate him without requiring an engineering consult (or several, who would then view his schematics and be privy to information he's made ready efforts to keep private)- and within forty seconds of initial shutdown, was a considerable feat on its own.

"Would it be beneficial to draw attention to my actively seeking you out at this time?"

[tasha_yar]

"Data," she murmurs. "I've known plenty of biological beings less human than you are. Don't argue the point. You...don't want to know."

She's not commenting on the emotional bond. He had her mind in overload at, "typically," and emotions are not her area either.

A memory surfaces from that night. The physicality was not her best - being both drunk and surprised. Data chattered away asking for preferences, which she tried shutting up with kisses that ended in drunken giggles while she still tried playing - badly - the role of dominant and knowing seductress. Still, none of her other partners had ever cared or asked about what she wanted. It was novel to say the least.

The drunken joke he'd managed about "turning him on," after the panic of having a denser-than-you'd-think android fall over her body was, even with all the guilt and confusion, something that still managed to be painfully funny in her memory. She'll take the memory of Data's possibly first under-analyzed smile at her riotous and relieved laughter to her grave - now, maybe, without overwhelming guilt.

"Yes," Tasha's lips twitch and form into a bashful smile. His hand gets a quick squeeze. "I think it is. What did you want to find out about?" She's not sure if she's hoping for something mundane or something impossible.

[humandroid]

Objectively, learning more on the matter intrigues him. Human behavior- inhuman in moral nature or not- is what he seeks to understand. The species has a broad history of violence. To exclude it, as others have attempted in the past due to his tendency to emulate human behaviors, wouldn't provide a full picture.

However, past incidents also indicate that to continue pursuing the subject after "don't argue the point" would not be acceptable. He has found that when someone tells him he doesn't want to know something, it indicates that they would just prefer not to delve into it.

He tightens his fingers in response, however minutely.

"I wished to seek you out for traditional social recreational activity while we are both off-duty. You have not appeared to make active efforts to avoid interaction, but opportunities have admittedly been infrequent since we began our initial voyage to Farpoint Station." His neural pathways became accustomed to a certain level of sensory input as the Enterprise gathered its final crew members and got underway. His records indicate that that level of input has decreased since they encountered Q and reached Farpoint Station. "If you would prefer interaction in a group situation, I am certain Geordi would find the idea acceptable when his shift has ended."

[tasha_yar]

She listens to all he has to say. Her bearing is far more relaxed.

"Damnit," she sighs a little. "I reconsidered my last statement. You...can ask." She lets go of her breath slowly. "I trust you, but...It's painful. And," she chuckles lightly. "Are you telling me that you missed me?"

[humandroid]

"My neural pathways are accustomed to your sensory input patterns. It is safe to say they grew to anticipate further input following those patterns. When input patterns are notably interrupted--" He pauses for a couple of moments, seeks out the most fitting terminology.

"My programming continues to function around the input it anticipates. In a sense, I suppose it can be said that I have... missed you. And I feel obligated to remind you that if you revise your statement again, we will both continue serving aboard the Enterprise for the foreseeable future. I am functionally patient."

[tasha_yar]

Tasha's laughter is as light as a feather and floats from her effortlessly.

"I've missed you, too," she admits. She lets go of his hand and picks up the dropped recorder. "And," she grins "Thank goodness someone here is." Before her sense catches up to her impulses, she gives him a quick peck on the cheek.

"Your move, Commander." She looks around the holodeck, turning her whole body; likely just long enough to confuse him with her meaning. Her head is starting to think she screwed everything they just did up all over again. "Let's turn the funeral here into something more fun."

[humandroid]

Certainly long enough to confuse him. Perhaps one of the greater benefits of being regularly confused since he was activated is that he's adapted to working with it.

A new day, a new curiosity.

"'Fun' is a subjective concept," he replies, in lieu of an (potentially already worn out) explanation of his inability to have fun. In any event, an activity she finds amenable should be fine. "But I am not opposed."