NEW: but for the grace of god... [R] TNG; Data, Lore; Chapter 4/8

[mlo...@ic.sunysb.edu]

RATING: R, for adult themes, profanity (Chapter 3: NC-17, for sex and
violence)

DISCLAIMER:
These characters, their ship, and their universe belong lock, stock and
barrel to PARAMOUNT-VIACOM. I am bending them to my will for fun only,
not profit (unless you consider the release of writer's angst to be
profit.)

Please see intro for the rest of the stuff.

Please keep headers intact.
*****

but for the grace of god...
by Melinda Loges

Chapter Four: Interlude

'One thing or another
Your head is filled with questions, sights and sounds
Distractions always get you down
Turn around

Trying to remember
Where you were the day before
North and south and east and west
Where to go

When it's over
When it's done
Let it go

Frightened by the numbers
All the possibilities
Changing minds you hope to find
One more dream
To remind you
What is lost can always be regained'

"Let It Go"
The Bangles

There were tests, of course. A full battery of diagnostics, a series of
complete physicals, a psychological evaluation so thorough that he
seriously wondered if he had crossed over into insanity. Deanna laughed
and assured him that he had not.

In the end, the conclusions were unanimous. As she put it, he had become
a fully realized emotional being, independent of the chip's functions.
His systems had become so fully accustomed to processing emotional stimuli
since the chip's installation, that, in the absence of its guidance, they
had compensated, providing the reactions that matched the feelings he
needed to feel. In the two months since he had deactivated the chip, his
network of neural pathways had increased by nearly fifteen percent, a rate
of growth unprecedented-except for the first months following his initial
activation. When he had passed into sentience.

The chip itself had become superfluous. He left it on anyway, recognizing
that--somehow--it provided a much needed sense of stability. And, in
quiet moments, he wondered if he had merely malfunctioned... or matured.

Of the tenuous link between himself and the Captain, no mention was ever
made. Privately, he noted the times when the Captain seemed to anticipate
his thoughts, often before he himself had fully formed them. A truly
extraordinary feat, he thought with wry acquiescence. But then, he had
always suspected that Picard was a much more extraordinary being than he
was.

No mention was made, either, of the events that had first brought his
condition to light. When he brought the matter up in a session with
Deanna, she shook her head and moved to sit next to him.

"I was wrong, Data. Not you. It was a private moment, and I intruded
where I had no business being. You were right to be angry."

He opened his mouth to speak.

"Shh." She took his hand. "What you said--afterwards--was true. You
don't have the outlets that humans take for granted. That I took for
granted. Use the holodeck. That is a place for you."

"But--"

"Forget it, Data. You didn't hurt me. I have thicker skin than you give
me credit for."

"I hurt Jenna," he said, staring at the hand she held. She gave it a
quick squeeze.

"Well, that's between you and Jenna. If I might give you a bit of
advice...?" He looked up and she smiled. "Grovel. Often as not, it
works."
-----

And in a long, rambling, excruciating letter, he did just that.

*****

He was laughing when Deanna burst into his quarters. He held one hand
pressed against his face while the other rifled through a tool kit on his
desk. He looked up, alarmed, when the door opened.

"Deanna? What is it? Is something wrong?"

She hesitated. "I felt a sudden rush of pain from you."

He laughed again and removed his hand. Four ragged gashes ran down the
length of his left cheek, a cloudy mucus leaking out of each one.

"My god, what happened?"

He pointed to the orange tabby skulking under the table. "She tried to
jump from the top shelf to the sofa." He gave Deanna a bland look. "My
face was in the way."

She laughed then. "Well, are you all right?"

"Yes, it is not serious." He turned back to the kit and pulled out a thin
silver implement. "I just need to seal them."

She walked around the desk. "Here, let me do it." He sat down, meekly,
and let her run the tiny laser light over the wounds.

"You have been monitoring me that closely?" he asked. She glanced over
to his eyes, and he added, "It is all right. I had rather expected that
you would. At least for a few weeks."

"No, smarty-pants. If you must know, I was a few doors down. That's why
I felt it."

"Ah. Lieutenant Stirens?"

"Don't be so nosy, gossip."

He smiled. The door chimed and he started to turn his head. She put a
hand on his chin and pulled his face back to her. "Sit still," she said,
and then, to the door, "Come in."

He saw Jenna enter and felt his eyes widen. "Jenna!"

"What happened?" she asked, looking from him to Deanna and back again.

"Spot. She is not as graceful as she used to be." He slid his eyes down
to the desk and then back up to her. "Dare I ask?"

"Ask what?" she said, with a trace of a smile.

"Why you are here?"

She curled her lip for a moment and then smiled fully. "The flowers were
beautiful."

"_The Book of Love_, chapter four, paragraph ten. 'When in doubt, send
flowers.'"

She laughed. "Does it really say that?"

"No." He grinned. "I made it up."

Deanna tapped his forehead. He turned his eyes back to her, and she
handed him the tool. "All done." She rubbed her hands together. "What
is this stuff, anyway?"

"Silica, water, electrolytes."

She looked at him. "It's sticky."

He nodded. "And sticky." He laughed and got up. "Just a moment."

He came back with two towels, handed one to her, and wiped his face with
the other one. When she was done, he made a small sound in the back of
his throat. She rolled her eyes at him.

"Yes, I get the hint. Good night, you two. Don't stay up too late."

He stared at the door for a few moments after Deanna left, and then with a
sudden movement, cleared the data padds he had been reading off the couch
and headed for the replicator.

"Are you hungry? Would you like something?"

"Data." He stopped. "I came to talk, not to eat."

He nodded and gestured to the couch. "Sit down," he said quietly. He
knelt in front of her, took both of her hands in his, and looked directly
into her eyes. "I am more sorry than I can ever possibly tell you, Jenna.
I was a complete and utter asshole. I do not deserve your friendship."
He looked down to their hands for a moment. "Will you forgive me anyway?"

She sat back. "I haven't quite decided yet."

He hunkered down lower and rested his chin between her knees, blinking up
at her.

She laughed. "Oh, stop, you fool."

He stuck his lower lip out. "Please? Pretty please?"

She raised her brows. "Well, go on."

"Ah..." His head tilted as he accessed his memory files. "Pretty please
with a cherry on top?"

"And...?"

"Ah..." The cherry was the end of the file. *Shit, what else?* "Whipped
cream?"

She nodded. "Good start. What else?"

"Ah... um..."

"Hot fudge sauce, idiot."

"Oh, yes, of course. Hot fudge and, ah..."

She laughed. "O.K., that's enough." She kept laughing for a minute, and
then she looked serious. "You'll have to be punished for it though."

He stared for a minute and then bowed his head. "As you wish," he said
in a tiny voice.

"Lift your head, and keep it still." He did as she asked. His eyes
flicked to the side as he saw her hand raise, and he squeezed them shut.
Nothing happened and after a moment, he opened one eye. She was grinning,
her face a few inches from his. She placed a light kiss on his nose.

"Fooled you."

He leaned back. "That was dirty. But I suppose I deserved it."

"Oh, yes, my dear, you most definitely deserved it." She put her hands on
his face. "Don't you ever do anything like that to me again."

He shook his head slightly in her hands and whispered, "I will not.
Ever." A few tears escaped his eyes. "I love you, Jenna."

"You know, somewhere along the line, I think I figured that out." She
smiled and wiped the tears away.

He gave her back a crooked grin. "I cry like a baby."

"And a cute one, at that."

He stood and pulled her up with him. He kissed her gently for a long
moment and then buried his face in her hair. She sighed a little.

"I love you too, you know."

He squeezed his eyes against another run of tears. "No, Jenna, do not
love me," he said softly, catching his voice on the words.

"Oh, no, you don't. You do not have the right to tell me who to love."
She pulled his face around. "I love *you*, and I don't give a damn what
you think about it. Your opinion is neither invited nor required.
Understand?"

He looked at her. "I cannot give you what you need."

"Presumptuous little shit. What makes you think you know what I need?"
She gave him a small push. "I need you. No promises and no questions
asked."

His face tilted. "You have changed."

"You're not the only one with that prerogative." She laid her head
against his neck. "Everyone changes, Data. I've spent too many years of
my life looking for perfection. I won't find it." She looked up at him.
"I'll never have all of you. I know that. But whatever you have to give
me, I want. For as long as you're here to give it." A small tear fell
from her eye, and he wiped it away.

"I was not planning on leaving," he said, smiling.

She moved closer into his arms. "One never knows."

He held her for a while. She finally pulled out of his arms and put a
firm hand on his chest.

"Now, I believe you owe me a rematch. And you'd better do it right this
time."
-----

She was lying naked in his bed, a small smile on her face, the sheets
pulled up lazily by her side. She made a soft sound and rolled over.

He stood in the doorway watching her with a smile of his own. She opened
her eyes and looked up. He had pulled on a pair of black shorts and she
wrinkled her nose at them. "You look funny."

His smile deepened, he crawled into the bed with her. "I think I should
take offense at that." He kissed her softly and she closed her eyes.

"You were giving me a backrub."

He laughed. "I know. You fell asleep."

"Oh, is that what happened?"

"Yes." He brushed a hand across her cheek and lay down next to her.
"So?"

"Hmm?"

"Did I do it right this time?"

She smiled and curled up against his chest. He put his arms around her.
"I take it that means yes. Would you like anything?"

She shook her head. "What time is it?"

"0300 hours. We have a while yet. You should probably get some more
sleep."

"No, I feel just fine, dear." She had laid her head on his chest and
stroked his thigh. Then she sat up a little. "Good god, you still have
that?" she asked, staring at a piece of crystalline sculpture displayed on
the shelf recessed into the wall.

"It is a replica, actually. The one that you gave me was destroyed in the
crash of the __Enterprise__-D."

She looked at him. "I'm surprised you kept it."

"Why?"

She looked down. "Because I didn't really mean anything to you then."

He sat up and took her face in his hand. "Yes, you did, Jenna." He
kissed her, and put his arms around her.

"But you didn't have the chip." He was quiet for a moment, and she
quickly spoke into the silence. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said
anything."

"No, it is all right. I am just trying to find the words to explain." He
moved back and leaned against the head of the bed. After a moment, he
asked, "Have you ever tried to put together a picture without knowing what
it looked like?"

She nodded.

"It was like that. Like all my life I had been trying to fit the pieces
in without knowing what it was that I was trying make. And when I
installed the chip, the picture became clear. It was not sudden, it was
actually several months before I could see beyond the individual feelings
to the sense of... self that lay beneath them, but when I did, I changed
completely. It was terrifying at first. I looked back at my life and I
could not recognize the person who had lived it. And I knew that the
people around me--my friends--no longer recognized the person they had
known in me."

He stopped, and she sat still in the bed, waiting.

"When I first put it in, there was nothing but the feelings. I felt happy
or angry or afraid, but there was no... context to it, no continuity. It
was not until just after the crash that I first had a glimpse of the
change that was occurring."

"What happened?" she asked softly.

"I found Spot in the wreckage, alive and unharmed. I was holding her and
it just came to me that I loved her. Not that I had started to love her
or that now I could love her, but that--I loved her, and always had." He
paused. "That was the first time I cried. The feeling was not just a
fleeting sensation in a sea of new sensations, however intriguing, however
painful. It was real and it was... permanent. There was a whole history
behind it, a context--a part of my life that suddenly had meaning in a way
I had never anticipated. What is the phrase?--'the ties that bind.' It
mattered. And just for a moment, I had a raw sense of what it could mean
to share that kind of... depth with another person. It was...
overwhelming.

"And later, as I reviewed my memory files, I discovered new subtext, whole
new dialogues that I had never heard before. The play in the words, the
body language. Everything that moved just underneath the pictures. I
lived my entire life over again in the course of a few months. And at
some point during the process, I finally grasped something that I had been
missing all along."

"What?"

"That having feelings did not make all the whys disappear. As an android,
a being without emotion, it was easy to stand aside and observe the way
people act, and to ask why they did so. I had always assumed that the
questions I could not answer were the result of missing data--emotional
data. And now I have emotions and I still cannot say why one person falls
in love with a particular someone else, or why one person likes chocolate
ice cream while another likes vanilla. For so many questions, there are
no answers. You feel what you feel and there is no logic to it." He
looked at her and smiled. "It is a difficult thing for a computer to
accept."

She laughed. He moved to sit next to her. "I began to realize why
certain episodes in my life had always... stayed with me more than others.
And yes, our earlier relationship was one of those certain episodes. When
I replayed the memory files, I saw the things that I had not seen before."
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her--long, deep and hard. He let
her go and she caught her breath, smiling.

"Wow."

"Would you like to know what I was thinking about just then?"

She sat back. "What?"

"You--and nothing but you."

She smiled. "Why, thank you, dear. Can you do that?"

"Of course I can do that. There are autonomic subroutines that regulate
my body's responses, but, if I recall my anatomy
correctly--" He reached out and put two fingers to her wrist. "Yes,
there it is: your heart is still beating. Rather fast actually." He
raised a brow. "Has something excited you, my dear?"

She laughed. "I never thought you'd turn into such a smartass."

"Smartass is my specialty." He waited a beat. "I have one other caveat
for you."

"And that is?"

He stood. "There is no subroutine for this. No 'appropriate program'. I
am making this up as I go along."

"Good. Welcome to the real world."

"Thank you." He placed a light kiss on her hair. "Would you like
something to eat now?"

She leaned back against the pillows, smiling, and closed her eyes. "Yes.
A hot fudge sundae. Complete with whipped cream--" She opened her eyes
to look at him. "--and a cherry on top."

*****

The affair deepened over the months that followed, and for the first time
since his capture by the Borg, he was happy more often than not. The dust
that had clouded his thoughts settled to the back of his mind. He was
still wistful at times, brooding at others, but she took his moods with
grace, and a fierce temper that was almost as exhilarating as the sex that
usually followed their spats.

He learned to accept and to treasure the things that his life offered.

Relaxed and beginning to find some inner peace, he was entirely unprepared
for the subspace message that arrived four months later.

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