(no subject)

[tasha_yar]

Go to Deanna, some instinct said.

When she got there, Deanna hadn't been there. But she knew it was safe. She remembered hearing in some psychology class that humans needed play to develop. Maybe that's why she wasn't thinking. She hadn't been playing.

It was harder and harder to keep her thoughts together. As soon as she grabbed one, it just - popped - like a soap bubble.

A flash memory...The colony...someone had traded her soap for an errand. At first, she didn't know what to do with it outside of some vague memory it went with water. Ishara tried eating it. Tasha snatched it back and Ishara started crying. They fought and the soap dropped in some water. Colors floated to the surface. All the colors. Purple swirled with blues and greens and when she fished the soap out of the water, it was so slick and warm. Rubbing it against her skin made more colors and took the dirt away.

A flash of yellow catches her eye, snapping her back to the present.

That's what she needs! Colors! All the blues and purples and golds...Deanna has so many pretty things. She'll put them on, move them across her skin and this bad, out-of-control feeling will be washed away.

Tasha dives for the closet, opening it with a giggle and buries herself in a heaps of pliable, billowing cloth.

------------------------

That hadn't worked. She had been smiling, but Troi had felt it. The panic. The thing screaming in her to find control, to run, to hide, to wait until this feeling passes because it exposed her.

The clothing was pretty, but she couldn't make herself wear it. Some apprehension stopped her. It demand that she find her control.

But wasn't this control? Right now, she could shove doubt to the side. Let the excitement of it all carry her down the corridor. She was the chief of security in this gang. She could beat up anyone here. She needed to be happy. She needed to celebrate this.

Hide. No. Celebrate. No. Hide.

And then a devil on her shoulder whispered in her ear as an attractive man passed her: She could do both. Men had traded safety to her for their pleasure. The thought made her bearing change. She could do the same. She could feel her hips swing back and forth as she walked. Her whole body swayed like a water snake, and why not? She was powerful now. She should do the same. Entitled to it now. Things were out of control here. She should find someone and take them away from this. Someone who could please her this time! Maybe this one?

Someone makes the mistake of just staring at her as she walks dumbfounded. He's a slightly diminutive man. Shorter than her. The outfit says he's in medical or sciences; not a warrior. Perfect. She slows her gait enough to take his shoulder with her left hand and turn him to look at her. He just keeps staring and staring while she - after another possessive glance grabs the back of his head in one hand and crushes his lips with hers.


Sobriety then hits and hard. Whoever this is, isn't kissing back. He's not kissing back and she's not that. She not part of the rape gangs! She's Lieutenant Yar!

"Security Chief," she mumbles, letting the man go and jumping back as if he were set on fire. She can't even look at him. "I'm sorry, I'm not -"

She looks up. The man is staring off into the distance again as if she never happened, this time at a man. This time, his features melt into relief and enjoyment when the other man comes up and moves a hand across his cheekbone with the faintest of touches. Idly, she realizes she's never been touched like that. People are too afraid of her now.

Fear is good. Fear keeps you alive. Fear is what moves her along to her quarters.

--------------------------

Her uniform is too warm and is making her feel horrible. It's removed in favor of this outfit someone packed for her as a joke. It was this indigo thing. She thinks it was supposed to be sleepware. Whatever it is, it's loose and gauzy and colorful. The color helps. Plus she could fight in this.

--------------------------

The coms are going mad. Something about engineering the first minute. Something about security the next. Oh, wait...that was her name being mentioned. By the Captain.


"Captain Picard," she replies in a lilting tone, to herself, not realizing the coms are open.

But they are on, so he replies, "Lieutenant, where are you?"

Never let them see you scared. Keep smiling. Keep charming them. Keep the fear from your voice.

"I'm in my quarters, and I'm pretty busy right at the moment," she lied and then added - just to throw him off. "Jean-Luc." My, what a pretty name the Captain had!"

"All right, Lieutenant, you just stay right there. Data, please go to Lieutenant Yar and take her down to Sickbay."

Data! Oh...She bit her lip as she glanced in the mirror. Data is on the way. No, this wasn't good. He didn't get frightened. He didn't want anything other than to just be with people. She couldn't hide from Data. She'd tried in the holodeck once and nothing fooled him! People were afraid of Data for good reasons.

But she wasn't afraid of him. If they stayed together, they could get through this. Her mind rushed, discarding idea after idea as to what to do when he got here. This was too important to screw up, damn it!

A half-formed idea...more like a daydream she dismissed weeks ago...comes to mind. It ended well. So well she starts to giggle again as she runs to her bedroom. Data needs to see her different than she's been if this is going to work.

------------------------------

Comments

[son_of_my_father]

If Data was capable of emotions, he would be worried by what is happening to his fellow shipmates. His...friends.

As it is, he is extremely concerned, especially at the rate the infection seems to be spreading.

Upon reaching Tasha's door, he first tries activating the button to let her know she has a visitor.

There is no reason to be rude, after all.

[tasha_yar]

Time's up. He's here. Tasha puts down the mascara, forgoing the earrings she chose. (Why can she put it on now effortlessly and not any other day she's getting ready?) She needs to make an entrance. She remembers some advice her roommate at the Academy told her:

Make them wait. Make them come to you.

She remembered remarking to Tris'ela that she made going out to dinner sound like combat, with the walk in the door being the ambush point. Tris'ela had smiled at her just like...

That. She was going to greet him with that expression when he lost patience and opened the door. It made her giggle more to think about it; what his shock would be like seeing her like this. Seeing her as something other than a colleague.

[son_of_my_father]

When the door does not open after 30 seconds, Data quickly overrides the door's security and enters.

"Lieutenant Yar?"

He stops when he sees her, his mind running dozens of processes all related to her. His first friend, and the first person ever to care about how someone treated him.

He doesn't have emotions. Yet he almost thinks that he now feels something...uncertainty?

Unsure of what else to do, Data repeats his previous words.

The inflection, however, is rather different.

"...Lieutenant Yar?"

[tasha_yar]

Let it begin then. She covers a steadying breath by making it sound like an enticement. "Here, Data."

The door hisses shut. She hears footfalls and her name being called. It's just them.

Her lips twitch upwards in the corners as she drinks in his look of bewilderment. "You wanted me?" she asks as she forces herself to slowly walk one step at a time towards him, closing the gap between them, but...not...too...fast...

[son_of_my_father]

Data cannot identify most of the reactions his brain is processing; there must be something wrong that his own scans cannot find.

He should go to engineering. After taking Lieutenant Yar to sickbay.

He finds himself uninterested, for some reason in doing either.

Intrigue. He is intrigued. That, like curiosity, must not be an emotions. If it was, he could not feel it.

Part of him does remember his duty, though he is strangely reluctant to discuss the matter. He still must.

"Captain Picard ordered me to escort you to Sickbay, Lieutenant."

[tasha_yar]

His look of astonishment emboldens her. "Did he say when?" she breezily shoots back, closing the gap between them to less than a meter, never once breaking eye contact even while raising her chin and locking herself into place.

Dimly, she realizes what she's doing is a dominance tactic, he could carry her out of here if it occurred to him. The question is, will he?

[son_of_my_father]

Data does not, in fact, get off-balance.

But if he did, he would be off-balance now.

This is not, in fact, standard behavior from the Lieutenant.

If anything did throw Data off-balance, it would be when people deviate from their standard ways of behaving.

"I am sure he meant now. So, you need time to get into uniform," Data responds aloud, recognizing the dominance tactic that Lieutenant Yar is using even as he dismisses it. He only submits to the lines of code within his programming; even obeying Starfleet's commands, or the Captain's, are only choices he makes.

The thought that part of him might, in fact, respond to Lieutenant Yar's display of dominance would be something he would find laughable (assuming he laughed).

That is not to say that he would be correct in finding it to be so.

[tasha_yar]

Seeing Data confused emboldened her. She let her eyes wander just a bit to his arms, looking for any resistance and finding none, even as he insisted she do the right thing and just give up.

"But I got out of uniform for you, Data!" she protests slightly, surprised she was able to say that without another fit of giggles.

Seriously, as her eyes keep glancing at his shoulders and the door behind him, she had wondered if he had off-duty clothing.

The situation was so strange. She wanted this. She wanted to be here. Like this. With him. But...It was like watching something on the holodeck.

She should explain the dual purpose she has here for them. Data's stunned silence gives her the opening. "Do you know how old I was when I was abandoned?"

[son_of_my_father]

He was about to point out that they still, in fact, were not on their way to sickbay when the seeming randomness of her question makes him answer it instead of making the statement he had already composed in his brain.

"Chronological age? No, I am afraid I am not familiar with--"

[tasha_yar]

"Five." She interrupts. "Five years old -"

Lure taken.

He's asked so many questions and she's answered most of them with half-truths or things that could be gleaned from her file. But now it's like she can't stop herself and that tractor beam on what life should be like sputters, halts, and she can hang onto it by a single golden thread.

As if from the outside looking in, she hears herself go on. "But I survived. I learned how to stay alive, how to avoid the rape gangs. I was fifteen before I escaped."

[son_of_my_father]

He does not know how to reply to this. It is information that he is not sure he has the right to have.

It adds, his brain concludes, a strange element of intimacy to their relationship. He is not sure that it can be removed. Only ignored. But should he ignore it?

Part of his mind continues to analyze the issue.

The rest of it decides on a response. It is simple, and he cannot put emotion into it. He doubts the words will bring any comfort.

But they are true.

"I am sorry. I did not know."

[tasha_yar]

The words Tasha rehearsed in the mirror before his arrival roll off her mind and into the narrow space between them with minimal effort. "And what I want now is gentleness. And joy. And love." Her eyes search him briefly as she finishes the speech. "From you, Data."

Every file she's ever read; every conversation with Data has concluded the same way. No emotions, even as much as he wishes he could. But here. Now. He moves like he's nervous and off-guard and it delights her to see that foundation shake. Nothing would please her more than to watch it all fall away.

"You are fully functional, aren't you?"

[son_of_my_father]

His brow furrows, an act that he has not yet managed to make look quite natural; each furrow is too deep, too defined, to look natural on a human.

Which is, after all, both the race he appears to most resemble and the race that he most desires to emulate.

"Of course, but--"

[tasha_yar]

Tasha's hands move across his shoulders briefly as she interjects. "How fully?"

[son_of_my_father]

There are sub-systems that are aware something is off, without being able to diagnose what it is. Perhaps the fact that Data ignores them, ignores the fact that Picard's orders are not yet fulfilled and instead allows himself to be drawn into the conversation with Tasha is the most significant sign that something is wrong.

The problem being that Data is unaware of all of this.

"In every way, of course. I am programmed in multiple techniques, a broad variety of pleasuring--"

[tasha_yar]

Light laughter cuts off his explanation. She knew it! She can't put words to this discovery. If she tried, she knows it would just - pop - like a soap bubble. Somehow, logic, duty, and sense would just undercut this. This isn't even about the plan to keep them safe anymore. That left the room; left them alone.

"Oh, you jewel!" she exclaimed, with excitement and drunkenness making her trip over the words ever so slightly. "That's exactly what I hoped."

And that's when something entirely expected and unexpected happened. Data smiled at her. Not some off-attempt where he was trying too damn hard, but this wondrous, curious, open smile! Tasha wanted more of that right now than anything else. She wanted to be the reason he smiled.

As she pulled him into her room and then pushed him gently on the bed her only thought was: Wonder what else he doesn't think he can do.

[son_of_my_father]

Primary, secondary, and tertiary systems, all in different areas, have shut down.

The vast majority have to do with control.

There are a few, though, that exist in a section Data is unaware of.

His father wasn't entirely done with tweaking parts of Data. Emotional development was an area he had explored addressing in various ways. An emotion chip was one idea; it would serve as a shortcut around a problem that was difficult to address: how to make the intelligence aware of emotional growth taking place and to identify emotions being felt. How to let the person he'd created not just feel, but know that he'd felt--and to allow the emotions, then, to naturally, without the need of thought (even at the speed of thought a positronic brain is capable of) have those emotions influence actions.

Dr. Soong would give a great deal to be able to have observations of this interaction, along with all possible test results Dr. Crusher will have in the end. Even if Data's emotional growth lacks the maturity to know when not to act on his emotions.

But then, everyone on the ship is acting out a bit.

Data spreads his legs slightly apart and tugs her towards him so she's standing between both, one hand resting on her right hip.

The other picks up her left hand and carefully presses a kiss to it. He doesn't calculate how much pressure to use, nor does he analyze the chemical traces of several things she's touched that day.

(Later, after he's been told It did happen, he will allow himself to remember. Then he will realize that he took in that information without registering it at the time, because it was unimportant. He had behaved...naturally. Not naturally for him; naturally as a creature of nature, rather than technology.

He will not be able to replicate the experience. And he will register regret for the fact that he cannot tell Tasha the gift she gave him.

But that is later.)

[tasha_yar]

It doesn't register with Tasha that she closed her eyes with that kiss on her palm until she's opening them.

Rules from the colony flood back. Never let your guard down when fucking. Always watch out for them.

It hasn't been different in Starfleet. Sure, it's all free love until the diplomatic incident starts. Tasha prided herself on control - not as much as she'd like to have - but it's a never-ending process.

She dives in for his neck, leaving slow bites across it, tasting citrus and sweat. She'll know late it's not sweat, but so much of this feels like warp - something outside what, for a long time, flew in the face of rules science thought governed the universe.

So to hell with the rules. Her left hand rests on his shoulder while the right finds the zipper front of Data's uniform and moves it down in one, fast tug; faster than the speed of rules.

[son_of_my_father]

His hands wrap around her torso, then, holding her slightly away from him; for someone with his strength who is forcing her to be where he wants her, his touch is incredibly careful and gentle.

"Tasha," he says quietly. "Pleasuring you is not something that either should or can be done in a hurry. It is not meant to be rushed. Nor do I wish> to rush. You expressed delight when I told you I am capable of several pleasuring techniques. Please allow me to use them."

[tasha_yar]

Data's comment throws her completely off-balance. For an instant, sobriety finds her and slaps her out of this...this fantasy she's been in.

There had only been one man who'd ever said anything of the sort to her. He'd been back on Turkana and the less she thought about him the better.

Tasha realizes she'd closed her eyes again. When she opens them, there's a here and now and a man gazing at her teetering between confusion and anticipation.

"What about you?" she asks, with the hand working his zipper poised over his chest.