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r_scribblesI've finally got another Rollercoaster chapter done! (And yes, I did start back on Family Reunion tonight as well...)
I decided in the end to use Sela after all. I found a way to introduce her that I think makes sense, and I'd feel that there'd be something lacking without the pointy-eared Uber-Bitch. Plus this opens doors for Undercover!Tasha possibilities. So anyway, this is set during 'Redemption, pt 2'.
ROLLERCOASTER
-x-
Some Are Born To Sweet Delight
-x-
Something changed.
There are countless realities in which Natasha Yar ceased to belong with the living following the encounter with Armus, and countless still where her timeline was changed to temporarily conjure her back from death, in which she chose to take her chances attempting to travel to the past and fight, rather than face the void once more. Nobody could know, however, quite how many realities were knotted up in that rift. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to loop back in time under such circumstances and remain on the correct trajectory? No? Neither did they, those accidental time travellers. Some ended back in the correct past, but many did not, and even some of the dimensions that the rift initially seemed to pass on by – dimensions in which Natasha still naturally belonged in the present – were affected in the past.
The reality we are watching now was no exception. Twenty four years prior to the time we are viewing it gained what is best described as an interloper – out of time, out of place – expecting imminent death, but unprepared for the misery that was to come. By the time death finally found her, it was too late. A mark had now been made in the universe; a new life brought forth that did not belong.
And that mark, that blot on reality, was a young girl – half one being, half another, and full of the rage of war.
And the girl’s name was Sela.
-x-
Why did these things always happen to her on the Bridge? Why was it always through that giant, public viewscreen that unexpected, familiar faces would stare suddenly down at her? She had already been subjected to first seeing the mutilated image of Locutus and the cold gaze of her presumed-dead sister in this manner – forced to remain silent and attentive to her duty instead of screaming and railing at the unwelcome image on screen as her leaping emotions always urged her to do.
But this time it was different. This time it was so much worse. This time she was completely wrong-footed. For starters, most of the good friends who had surrounded her when Ishara had shown up were not with her this time. Worf was gone. She missed the crap out of that big lug anyway, but now she felt the sudden pang of absence, and desperately wished that she still had his stony strength and dry wit close at hand. Similarly, she wished that Will Riker were still on board, or Geordi, or Wes… those guys were all so good at making her smile, even in the toughest times, but none of them were with her now. Her eyes flitted very briefly from the face on the viewscreen to the position at Ops, and saw only the bright red updo of Lt Kotowska. It suddenly struck her quite how many times over the years she’d taken a moment to look at the back of Data’s head while on Bridge duty – when she’d been afraid, when she’d been uncertain… just to remind herself that he was there. But he wasn’t anymore. He too was gone. She wanted him to be there… probably even more than she wanted Worf to still be there. She wanted him to be in the same room as her, watching the same screen as she was right at that second, sharing in the shock. Watching that face…
That face.
It was her face. It was her face! It had been warped and twisted into a Romulan scowl, but it was still her face. Her mind was so full of ‘how’s and ‘what’s and ‘why’s that for a moment it was impossible for her to clearly rationalise any thought. All that she was able to do for a second or so was to stare at her own, altered image in front of her, with a sensation of growing, sickening doom.
Captain Picard rose, automatically it seemed, to his feet and she, just as impulsively, mirrored him. When she had first sat in Will Riker’s chair earlier that day, she had felt excited and proud to be - albeit temporarily – assuming his position as First Officer. Although it was a giant step up from her usual position, there had been something very… very right about sitting in it, as though somehow it exuded Will’s confidence in her. It even smelled faintly of the dreadful cologne that she’d laugh at him for wearing from time to time. The chair had welcomed and comforted her. Now, it felt as though it was crawling with poisonous insects. She didn’t want it any more. She wanted Will to be back in that chair, not her. She wanted to be back at Tactical with Worf at her side, she wanted to know that Geordi was in the Engine Room, and she wanted to be able to see the back of Data’s head, Goddammit! And she wanted that face on the screen to go away. She wanted that face staring at her to never have existed in the first place.
The image on the screen spoke – again, using her voice, only harsher and colder.
‘Captain Picard,’ greeted the Tasha-thing. ‘We meet at last.’ Her gaze shifted to Tasha. ‘And you,’ continued the doppelganger, bitterly. ‘Still here, I see. For now.’
‘What are you?’ Tasha blurted before she could stop herself.
The doppelganger smiled joylessly. ‘Me? Why, I’m your destiny…’ she curled her lip in distaste, bearing her teeth ‘…dearest Mother.’
-x-
‘I never had a daughter,’ repeated Tasha, for what was probably the tenth time at least. ‘How could she be my daughter? She’s gotta be close to my own age… I never had a daughter!’
‘We believe you,’ soothed Deanna.
‘So Sela is lying?’ Picard ascertained.
Troi stared at the Captain and shook her head. ‘I sensed no deception from her.’
‘It’s impossible,’ Tasha replied. ‘She has to be lying.’
‘Maybe she meant “Mother” metaphorically,’ helped Beverly. ‘Could she be a clone?’
‘Why would the Romulans want to clone me?’ Tasha tried hard to contain her growing panic.
‘I don’t think she is a clone,’ interjected Troi. ‘She seems to genuinely believe that you are her mother.’
‘But, that’s…’
‘Impossible. I know.’ The Counsellor shot Yar a concerned glance. ‘She represents something terrible to you, doesn’t she? There’s more to your horror than just being faced with your own image. There’s something about her that makes you feel as though something’s pursuing you, and closing in… a fate worse than death… but you don’t know what it is.’
‘It’s like one of those nightmares,’ Tasha admitted, ‘where you’re paralysed, and there’s some unseen menace creeping towards you…’ She shook her head, still struggling to rationalise her pervading sensation of dread. ‘I can’t explain it.’
‘I might be able to,’ announced a voice from the door.
The Captain and the three women turned their heads to see a serious and rather drained looking Guinan in the doorway to the Observation lounge.
‘May I?’ Asked the Barkeep, indicating to a nearby chair.
Picard nodded. ‘Of course.’
Dr Crusher frowned with concern at the slow, delicate manner in which Guinan sat at the table. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Bit of a headache,’ Guinan admitted, touching her forehead lightly. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You should come down to Sickbay,’ insisted the Doctor. ‘I can give you something for the pain, and look into what’s causing it…’
Guinan gave the Doctor a small smile. ‘No offence intended, Beverly, but I know the cause already, and I don’t think you’re qualified to treat it. Even the best Doctor in the cosmos can’t exactly stick a plaster over a paradox and make it all better.’ She smiled again, reassuringly this time. ‘Seriously. I’ll be OK. I just need to stop thinking so metaphysically and have a lie-down for a while. But I can’t do that until I’ve at least tried to explain our little conundrum here.’
Troi nodded, understanding. ‘I think we’d better get back to work, Doctor.’
‘Sure.’ Crusher rose to her feet. ‘We’ll give you some privacy, Tasha.’
Picard gazed at Tasha with a furrowed brow as the women left. ‘Would you like me to leave as well?’
‘No,’ chorused Guinan and Tasha as one.
‘I think this concerns you, too,’ Guinan added.
There was a sickly pause as Guinan attempted to collect her thoughts.
‘The Enterprise C,’ she began abruptly, before trailing off again.
‘It was destroyed in battle 24 years ago,’ Tasha interjected. ‘But what does that have to do with…’
‘Before that,’ interrupted Guinan. ‘Before it went into battle with the Romulans… There was an accident. An accident in time and reality… as a result of which, one of the crewmen of that ill-fated ship, all those years ago, was one Natasha Yar.’
‘I’m thrown back in time,’ Tasha sighed. ‘That’s how it happens.’ She looked up at Guinan. ‘Let me guess. There were survivors, which the Romulan victors took prisoner…’
‘... and Tasha Yar was one of them,’ confirmed Guinan.
Tasha nodded, bitterly. ‘Well, it’s not exactly cybernetic brain surgery to work out how I end up giving birth to a half Romulan baby.’
She scowled down at the table as the vague sensations of a looming horror were suddenly brought into sharp focus. She could see what Sela represented now. The Romulan hadn’t been lying – she was Tasha’s destiny. She was her future. And, Tasha realised, her heart sinking, her future was destined to be the same as her past. After everything she had fought for to get away from the brutality of her childhood it appeared certain now that she was doomed to return to a life of unhappiness. For so many years she had believed that she had put that life behind her forever… now, it seemed that her years in Starfleet had been simply a sabbatical – the chance to glimpse the freedom and joy in which some people were able to live before being plunged back into the mire. And this time she wasn’t just going to be the plaything of whatever gangs could catch her… this time she was going to have to bear them children. That felt worse to her, somehow, knowing that she was going to carry and give birth to that… that thing…
‘Dammit,’ she exclaimed, her voice louder than she’d intended.
‘We have to be able to change this,’ Picard told Guinan. ‘If we’ve been warned…’
‘You can’t,’ Tasha breathed. ‘It’s already happened.’
‘I will not allow a member of my crew to simply be sent away in order to suffer imprisonment and rape. We still have choices. We can ensure that this never occurs…’
‘Captain,’ interrupted Guinan, gently. ‘It’s like Tasha says. It’s already happened…’ She turned to Tasha. ‘But not to you.’
Tasha screwed up her face. ‘What?’
‘This accident in time that caused Sela’s mother to fall into the past,’ explained Guinan, ‘we’ve passed it already.’
Tasha’s expression didn’t change. ‘The rift.’
Guinan nodded in agreement. ‘The rift.’
Picard blinked a little, confused. ‘The rift…?’
‘Last year,’ Tasha explained. ‘We saw another Starship Enterprise, only for a second…’
‘I’m fairly certain I would have remembered that, Commander.’
‘You’d think so,’ Guinan shrugged, ‘but you didn’t. Tasha was the only one who remembered seeing it. Looks like we finally have an idea why that was.’ She turned to Tasha again. ‘I had a feeling that it had something to do with you. My feelings are usually right.’
‘So if I didn’t go back in time,’ Tasha asked, ‘who did?’
Guinan sighed, rubbing her painful forehead. ‘The rift wasn’t just a simple loop in time. It was an intersection of countless different timelines, all confused, all shifting constantly from one reality to the next… Like I said at the time, Tasha, you don’t want to go leaping from reality to reality. You’re bound to get lost. I guess the Tasha Yar who ended up in our past just… got lost.’
Picard stared at Guinan. ‘So Sela’s mother was from an alternative reality?’
‘Yes,’ replied the Barkeep. ‘That must explain why you remembered seeing the rift, Tasha. It had millions… billions, perhaps, of Tasha Yars, all caught up in its tangled web, all falling through time and reality. They must have called out to you, somehow.’
‘So,’ Tasha pondered, ‘there are two “me’s”, now?’
‘Assuming the other has survived so long,’ replied Guinan.
‘Two “me’s”, and a daughter my age who looks just like me,’ Tasha continued, ‘and a rift in reality that’s been and gone but means that cause and effect don’t quite apply to me any more… Great. Now I think I‘m starting to get a headache.’
Guinan nodded sympathetically, massaging the bridge of her nose. ‘A SNAFU in the fabric of reality’ll do that to a person.’ She got to her feet. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a date with a cold eye mask waiting for me. I just hope what I said was able to help you.’
‘It was,’ Tasha told Guinan as she left. ‘Thank you.’
A brief silence fell between Tasha and Picard as the door closed behind Guinan, leaving them alone in the Observation lounge. The Captain gave her a brief, concerned smile.
‘Are you all right, Commander?’
Tasha nodded, a little vaguely. ‘It could have been me back there on Romulus… perhaps it should have been me… gives me the feeling that I cheated fate, somehow – cheated death and disaster.’
‘Commander…’ Picard sighed. ‘Tasha. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have defied death and disaster. All of us have. It comes with the life we’ve all chosen.’ He paused. ‘Admittedly, not all of us have to face the half-Romulan offspring of an ill-fated self from a parallel dimension as a reminder of one’s near-escapes…’
‘Yeah,’ Tasha agreed. ‘She’s quite the headache.’
Picard got to his feet. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock. The Frenchman in me has a burning desire to pour you a large Brandy.’
That made Tasha laugh a little. ‘As kind as that is, Sir, I think there might be somebody else out there in much greater need of a stiff drink than me.’
Picard gazed at her in understanding. ‘The other Tasha Yar.’
‘I don’t want to just leave her there,’ Tasha explained.
‘Neither do I, Commander. But it’s been over twenty years. I can’t imagine the chances of her surviving that long as a prisoner on Romulus are particularly high…’
‘She’ll already have survived fifteen years on Turkana,’ Tasha countered.
Picard nodded. ‘That’s true.’ He placed a hand on Tasha’s arm. ‘We’ll start asking questions. Not least, from Sela herself. If the other Tasha Yar is still alive, we’ll find her.’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ Tasha smiled. ‘Thank you.’
-x-
Data had not been expecting the small ripple of applause that broke out as he entered Ten Forward. In fact, he had been anticipating some hostility. He could not understand why his decision to disobey Captain Picard’s orders were being praised rather than admonished, not least from the Captain himself. True, it was that disobedience which had lead to the successful detection of the Romulans’ attempted interference with the Klingon’s conflict, but that, Data believed, was beside the point. He gave those applauding him a slight nod of acknowledgement and approached the bar.
Tasha was sitting alone at the far end of the bar, hunched over her drink. She seemed unhappy. In fact, she had seemed unhappy ever since he had returned to the Enterprise. Perhaps he would be able to offer her a distraction.
She appeared to detect his presence without either turning to see him, nor his announcing himself.
‘Well,’ she grunted, still staring down into her glass, ‘if it isn’t the Romulan-finder General.’
Data frowned. ‘I have not been made a General…’
‘Joke,’ added Tasha, in a tone that was, confusingly, far from jocular. She finally looked up at him. ‘You did good out there.’
‘So I have been told, by various sources,’ Data replied. ‘However, I am somewhat…’
‘She’ll know not to underestimate you again at any rate,’ Tasha interrupted. ‘I hope you’re prepared for that.’ She took a slurp of her drink. ‘You got her good and pissed off there, I’ll bet…’
‘Are you referring to Commander Sela?’ Data asked. ‘Tasha – I believe that I should enquire… you have just completed a mission as acting First Officer of the Enterprise for the first time, with considerable success, in spite of unforeseen and extraordinary obstacles. Further to this, it has just been announced that Lieutenant Worf, with whom I have noted that you are particularly close, is to be returning to his post on the Enterprise. Under these circumstances, I would have expected you to be happy. However, on the contrary, you appear in fact, to be exceptionally unhappy. I can only imagine that it is the revelation of the existence of Commander Sela that has generated such a reaction from you…’
‘Data,’ interrupted Tasha again.
‘Yes, Tasha?’
‘Data, sit down, shut up and have a drink with me.’
Data paused for a moment, his mouth open ready for a reply, then simply nodded mutely in acceptance and drew up a barstool next to hers.
He sniffed at the drink as Tasha poured it out for him. ‘This is Brandy.’
‘Yep,’ Tasha replied, curtly. ‘French.’
Data took a tiny sip. ‘It is not from a replicator...?’
‘No. From a friend.’ She took a slurp. ‘I was saving it for somebody else, but it looks like we’re too late for her. Much too late.’
Data thought for a moment. ‘By “somebody else”, you mean Sela’s mother? I heard that Commander Sela has informed the Captain of her mother’s death some years ago…’
‘”Sela’s mother”,’ aped Tasha, bitterly, ‘”Sela’s mother”… why must everybody call her that? As though that’s the only thing about her that matters… as if that’s all in her life that ever defined her?’
‘I meant no offence, Tasha…’
‘Data, she was me! She was Tasha Yar, the girl who’d crawled up outta the sewers of Turkana IV to serve proudly on the Enterprise. She was me, and for some reason I’ll never know she ended up out of her time, out of her reality… a slave. A concubine. And when she tried to escape that life, find her way back up into the stars… she was murdered. We were too late to help her. We were decades too late.’
‘It is possible that Sela was not telling the truth,’ suggested Data, ‘that perhaps the alternate version of yourself is still alive…’
Tasha shook her head, taking another slurp of Brandy. ‘Romulan or not, if Deanna Troi says she’s not lying, then she’s not lying.’
‘In which case,’ Data reasoned, ‘ there was never anything that you could have done to assist the alternate Tasha Yar. By the time you had freed yourself from Turkana IV, she had already been dead for several years. Therefore, there is no logical cause for your distress.’
‘That’s the thing,’ Tasha breathed. ‘For her to go from Turkana to Romulus, at the same time that I’m still on Turkana… there’s something horribly cyclical about it. You look around you now and you see the clean lines of the ship, you smell the clean air, you feel the buzz of clean, happy people, and it’s so easy to forget that it isn’t like this for everybody, that some people still scratch around in the filth all their lives… “Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night”…’
‘William Blake,’ Data recognised, ‘Auguries of Innocence.’
‘Really?’ Tasha asked. ‘It was graffitied over a bunker I used to crash in back on Turkana. It used to make me angry. It was so damned defeatist. It didn’t speak for me – I was gonna get off that rock and sample some of that “sweet delight” that the writing on the wall told me one was either born to or not.’ She paused. ‘I wonder if she ever stayed in that same bunker, and read those words, and felt as angered and determined by them as I was. I wonder if she ever did find true happiness on her Enterprise. Did she have a Worf? Did she have a Will and a Deanna? Did…’ Tasha stared back down at her glass. ‘Did she have a Data?’
Data gave no reply.
‘Would it have been better or worse for her to have found happiness in Starfleet before living out her last, miserable years on Romulus? Would knowing what she was missing bring her hope or despair…?’
‘This is all speculation,’ Data reminded her. ‘You cannot know any of these things for certain. Even if you did, they would be of no benefit to anybody.’
‘I guess,’ sighed Tasha in resignation. She pushed the bottle of Brandy away from herself. ‘And it’s no good me sitting around here feeling sorry for myself…’
‘You are “feeling sorry” for her,’ interjected Data.
Tasha smiled a little. ‘Potayto, potahto.’
Data frowned, confused. ‘I do not understand what this has to do with potatoes.’
Tasha giggled. ‘You know what? I hope she did have a Data. Alternate Me didn’t have a lot of luck in life, from what I can tell. Maybe if she’d had a Data, if only for a little while, that’d have made up for some of it at least.’
Data curled the corners of his lips very slightly as he considered the compliment. ‘Thank you, Tasha. Although I do not believe that I consistently bring you happiness.’
‘You do well enough,’ Tasha shrugged. ‘Like just now - letting me blow off steam over the whole Sela issue, and helping me get a little perspective. Whatever her life was like, I’m sure glad my reality’s got a Data.’
‘And I believe that it is fortunate,’ Data replied, ‘that in this reality, you have remained in the present with the rest of us.’
‘Aren’t we a lucky pair?’ Tasha reached over a hand, and softly patted his arm.
A momentary silence fell between them. Tasha’s hand remained on his arm, her fingers gently curled around his angular elbow.
‘I believe,’ announced Data, suddenly, ‘that it is highly probable that we shall encounter Commander Sela again in the future. If you have not yet considered the possible ramifications of this event occurring with regards to your personal and professional life, I have taken the liberty of projecting so far seven hundred and thirty four hypothetical…’
She removed her hand from his elbow. ‘You always know how to ruin the mood, don’t you?’
‘I only considered that you might wish to be prepared for any further…’
‘Data?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up.’
...
Now. Having read that... 'SNAFU'. Does 'SNAFU' work, coming out of Guinan's mouth? I like it, but I'm not sure that it works. Thoughts?
I decided in the end to use Sela after all. I found a way to introduce her that I think makes sense, and I'd feel that there'd be something lacking without the pointy-eared Uber-Bitch. Plus this opens doors for Undercover!Tasha possibilities. So anyway, this is set during 'Redemption, pt 2'.
ROLLERCOASTER
-x-
Some Are Born To Sweet Delight
-x-
Something changed.
There are countless realities in which Natasha Yar ceased to belong with the living following the encounter with Armus, and countless still where her timeline was changed to temporarily conjure her back from death, in which she chose to take her chances attempting to travel to the past and fight, rather than face the void once more. Nobody could know, however, quite how many realities were knotted up in that rift. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to loop back in time under such circumstances and remain on the correct trajectory? No? Neither did they, those accidental time travellers. Some ended back in the correct past, but many did not, and even some of the dimensions that the rift initially seemed to pass on by – dimensions in which Natasha still naturally belonged in the present – were affected in the past.
The reality we are watching now was no exception. Twenty four years prior to the time we are viewing it gained what is best described as an interloper – out of time, out of place – expecting imminent death, but unprepared for the misery that was to come. By the time death finally found her, it was too late. A mark had now been made in the universe; a new life brought forth that did not belong.
And that mark, that blot on reality, was a young girl – half one being, half another, and full of the rage of war.
And the girl’s name was Sela.
-x-
Why did these things always happen to her on the Bridge? Why was it always through that giant, public viewscreen that unexpected, familiar faces would stare suddenly down at her? She had already been subjected to first seeing the mutilated image of Locutus and the cold gaze of her presumed-dead sister in this manner – forced to remain silent and attentive to her duty instead of screaming and railing at the unwelcome image on screen as her leaping emotions always urged her to do.
But this time it was different. This time it was so much worse. This time she was completely wrong-footed. For starters, most of the good friends who had surrounded her when Ishara had shown up were not with her this time. Worf was gone. She missed the crap out of that big lug anyway, but now she felt the sudden pang of absence, and desperately wished that she still had his stony strength and dry wit close at hand. Similarly, she wished that Will Riker were still on board, or Geordi, or Wes… those guys were all so good at making her smile, even in the toughest times, but none of them were with her now. Her eyes flitted very briefly from the face on the viewscreen to the position at Ops, and saw only the bright red updo of Lt Kotowska. It suddenly struck her quite how many times over the years she’d taken a moment to look at the back of Data’s head while on Bridge duty – when she’d been afraid, when she’d been uncertain… just to remind herself that he was there. But he wasn’t anymore. He too was gone. She wanted him to be there… probably even more than she wanted Worf to still be there. She wanted him to be in the same room as her, watching the same screen as she was right at that second, sharing in the shock. Watching that face…
That face.
It was her face. It was her face! It had been warped and twisted into a Romulan scowl, but it was still her face. Her mind was so full of ‘how’s and ‘what’s and ‘why’s that for a moment it was impossible for her to clearly rationalise any thought. All that she was able to do for a second or so was to stare at her own, altered image in front of her, with a sensation of growing, sickening doom.
Captain Picard rose, automatically it seemed, to his feet and she, just as impulsively, mirrored him. When she had first sat in Will Riker’s chair earlier that day, she had felt excited and proud to be - albeit temporarily – assuming his position as First Officer. Although it was a giant step up from her usual position, there had been something very… very right about sitting in it, as though somehow it exuded Will’s confidence in her. It even smelled faintly of the dreadful cologne that she’d laugh at him for wearing from time to time. The chair had welcomed and comforted her. Now, it felt as though it was crawling with poisonous insects. She didn’t want it any more. She wanted Will to be back in that chair, not her. She wanted to be back at Tactical with Worf at her side, she wanted to know that Geordi was in the Engine Room, and she wanted to be able to see the back of Data’s head, Goddammit! And she wanted that face on the screen to go away. She wanted that face staring at her to never have existed in the first place.
The image on the screen spoke – again, using her voice, only harsher and colder.
‘Captain Picard,’ greeted the Tasha-thing. ‘We meet at last.’ Her gaze shifted to Tasha. ‘And you,’ continued the doppelganger, bitterly. ‘Still here, I see. For now.’
‘What are you?’ Tasha blurted before she could stop herself.
The doppelganger smiled joylessly. ‘Me? Why, I’m your destiny…’ she curled her lip in distaste, bearing her teeth ‘…dearest Mother.’
-x-
‘I never had a daughter,’ repeated Tasha, for what was probably the tenth time at least. ‘How could she be my daughter? She’s gotta be close to my own age… I never had a daughter!’
‘We believe you,’ soothed Deanna.
‘So Sela is lying?’ Picard ascertained.
Troi stared at the Captain and shook her head. ‘I sensed no deception from her.’
‘It’s impossible,’ Tasha replied. ‘She has to be lying.’
‘Maybe she meant “Mother” metaphorically,’ helped Beverly. ‘Could she be a clone?’
‘Why would the Romulans want to clone me?’ Tasha tried hard to contain her growing panic.
‘I don’t think she is a clone,’ interjected Troi. ‘She seems to genuinely believe that you are her mother.’
‘But, that’s…’
‘Impossible. I know.’ The Counsellor shot Yar a concerned glance. ‘She represents something terrible to you, doesn’t she? There’s more to your horror than just being faced with your own image. There’s something about her that makes you feel as though something’s pursuing you, and closing in… a fate worse than death… but you don’t know what it is.’
‘It’s like one of those nightmares,’ Tasha admitted, ‘where you’re paralysed, and there’s some unseen menace creeping towards you…’ She shook her head, still struggling to rationalise her pervading sensation of dread. ‘I can’t explain it.’
‘I might be able to,’ announced a voice from the door.
The Captain and the three women turned their heads to see a serious and rather drained looking Guinan in the doorway to the Observation lounge.
‘May I?’ Asked the Barkeep, indicating to a nearby chair.
Picard nodded. ‘Of course.’
Dr Crusher frowned with concern at the slow, delicate manner in which Guinan sat at the table. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Bit of a headache,’ Guinan admitted, touching her forehead lightly. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You should come down to Sickbay,’ insisted the Doctor. ‘I can give you something for the pain, and look into what’s causing it…’
Guinan gave the Doctor a small smile. ‘No offence intended, Beverly, but I know the cause already, and I don’t think you’re qualified to treat it. Even the best Doctor in the cosmos can’t exactly stick a plaster over a paradox and make it all better.’ She smiled again, reassuringly this time. ‘Seriously. I’ll be OK. I just need to stop thinking so metaphysically and have a lie-down for a while. But I can’t do that until I’ve at least tried to explain our little conundrum here.’
Troi nodded, understanding. ‘I think we’d better get back to work, Doctor.’
‘Sure.’ Crusher rose to her feet. ‘We’ll give you some privacy, Tasha.’
Picard gazed at Tasha with a furrowed brow as the women left. ‘Would you like me to leave as well?’
‘No,’ chorused Guinan and Tasha as one.
‘I think this concerns you, too,’ Guinan added.
There was a sickly pause as Guinan attempted to collect her thoughts.
‘The Enterprise C,’ she began abruptly, before trailing off again.
‘It was destroyed in battle 24 years ago,’ Tasha interjected. ‘But what does that have to do with…’
‘Before that,’ interrupted Guinan. ‘Before it went into battle with the Romulans… There was an accident. An accident in time and reality… as a result of which, one of the crewmen of that ill-fated ship, all those years ago, was one Natasha Yar.’
‘I’m thrown back in time,’ Tasha sighed. ‘That’s how it happens.’ She looked up at Guinan. ‘Let me guess. There were survivors, which the Romulan victors took prisoner…’
‘... and Tasha Yar was one of them,’ confirmed Guinan.
Tasha nodded, bitterly. ‘Well, it’s not exactly cybernetic brain surgery to work out how I end up giving birth to a half Romulan baby.’
She scowled down at the table as the vague sensations of a looming horror were suddenly brought into sharp focus. She could see what Sela represented now. The Romulan hadn’t been lying – she was Tasha’s destiny. She was her future. And, Tasha realised, her heart sinking, her future was destined to be the same as her past. After everything she had fought for to get away from the brutality of her childhood it appeared certain now that she was doomed to return to a life of unhappiness. For so many years she had believed that she had put that life behind her forever… now, it seemed that her years in Starfleet had been simply a sabbatical – the chance to glimpse the freedom and joy in which some people were able to live before being plunged back into the mire. And this time she wasn’t just going to be the plaything of whatever gangs could catch her… this time she was going to have to bear them children. That felt worse to her, somehow, knowing that she was going to carry and give birth to that… that thing…
‘Dammit,’ she exclaimed, her voice louder than she’d intended.
‘We have to be able to change this,’ Picard told Guinan. ‘If we’ve been warned…’
‘You can’t,’ Tasha breathed. ‘It’s already happened.’
‘I will not allow a member of my crew to simply be sent away in order to suffer imprisonment and rape. We still have choices. We can ensure that this never occurs…’
‘Captain,’ interrupted Guinan, gently. ‘It’s like Tasha says. It’s already happened…’ She turned to Tasha. ‘But not to you.’
Tasha screwed up her face. ‘What?’
‘This accident in time that caused Sela’s mother to fall into the past,’ explained Guinan, ‘we’ve passed it already.’
Tasha’s expression didn’t change. ‘The rift.’
Guinan nodded in agreement. ‘The rift.’
Picard blinked a little, confused. ‘The rift…?’
‘Last year,’ Tasha explained. ‘We saw another Starship Enterprise, only for a second…’
‘I’m fairly certain I would have remembered that, Commander.’
‘You’d think so,’ Guinan shrugged, ‘but you didn’t. Tasha was the only one who remembered seeing it. Looks like we finally have an idea why that was.’ She turned to Tasha again. ‘I had a feeling that it had something to do with you. My feelings are usually right.’
‘So if I didn’t go back in time,’ Tasha asked, ‘who did?’
Guinan sighed, rubbing her painful forehead. ‘The rift wasn’t just a simple loop in time. It was an intersection of countless different timelines, all confused, all shifting constantly from one reality to the next… Like I said at the time, Tasha, you don’t want to go leaping from reality to reality. You’re bound to get lost. I guess the Tasha Yar who ended up in our past just… got lost.’
Picard stared at Guinan. ‘So Sela’s mother was from an alternative reality?’
‘Yes,’ replied the Barkeep. ‘That must explain why you remembered seeing the rift, Tasha. It had millions… billions, perhaps, of Tasha Yars, all caught up in its tangled web, all falling through time and reality. They must have called out to you, somehow.’
‘So,’ Tasha pondered, ‘there are two “me’s”, now?’
‘Assuming the other has survived so long,’ replied Guinan.
‘Two “me’s”, and a daughter my age who looks just like me,’ Tasha continued, ‘and a rift in reality that’s been and gone but means that cause and effect don’t quite apply to me any more… Great. Now I think I‘m starting to get a headache.’
Guinan nodded sympathetically, massaging the bridge of her nose. ‘A SNAFU in the fabric of reality’ll do that to a person.’ She got to her feet. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a date with a cold eye mask waiting for me. I just hope what I said was able to help you.’
‘It was,’ Tasha told Guinan as she left. ‘Thank you.’
A brief silence fell between Tasha and Picard as the door closed behind Guinan, leaving them alone in the Observation lounge. The Captain gave her a brief, concerned smile.
‘Are you all right, Commander?’
Tasha nodded, a little vaguely. ‘It could have been me back there on Romulus… perhaps it should have been me… gives me the feeling that I cheated fate, somehow – cheated death and disaster.’
‘Commander…’ Picard sighed. ‘Tasha. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have defied death and disaster. All of us have. It comes with the life we’ve all chosen.’ He paused. ‘Admittedly, not all of us have to face the half-Romulan offspring of an ill-fated self from a parallel dimension as a reminder of one’s near-escapes…’
‘Yeah,’ Tasha agreed. ‘She’s quite the headache.’
Picard got to his feet. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock. The Frenchman in me has a burning desire to pour you a large Brandy.’
That made Tasha laugh a little. ‘As kind as that is, Sir, I think there might be somebody else out there in much greater need of a stiff drink than me.’
Picard gazed at her in understanding. ‘The other Tasha Yar.’
‘I don’t want to just leave her there,’ Tasha explained.
‘Neither do I, Commander. But it’s been over twenty years. I can’t imagine the chances of her surviving that long as a prisoner on Romulus are particularly high…’
‘She’ll already have survived fifteen years on Turkana,’ Tasha countered.
Picard nodded. ‘That’s true.’ He placed a hand on Tasha’s arm. ‘We’ll start asking questions. Not least, from Sela herself. If the other Tasha Yar is still alive, we’ll find her.’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ Tasha smiled. ‘Thank you.’
-x-
Data had not been expecting the small ripple of applause that broke out as he entered Ten Forward. In fact, he had been anticipating some hostility. He could not understand why his decision to disobey Captain Picard’s orders were being praised rather than admonished, not least from the Captain himself. True, it was that disobedience which had lead to the successful detection of the Romulans’ attempted interference with the Klingon’s conflict, but that, Data believed, was beside the point. He gave those applauding him a slight nod of acknowledgement and approached the bar.
Tasha was sitting alone at the far end of the bar, hunched over her drink. She seemed unhappy. In fact, she had seemed unhappy ever since he had returned to the Enterprise. Perhaps he would be able to offer her a distraction.
She appeared to detect his presence without either turning to see him, nor his announcing himself.
‘Well,’ she grunted, still staring down into her glass, ‘if it isn’t the Romulan-finder General.’
Data frowned. ‘I have not been made a General…’
‘Joke,’ added Tasha, in a tone that was, confusingly, far from jocular. She finally looked up at him. ‘You did good out there.’
‘So I have been told, by various sources,’ Data replied. ‘However, I am somewhat…’
‘She’ll know not to underestimate you again at any rate,’ Tasha interrupted. ‘I hope you’re prepared for that.’ She took a slurp of her drink. ‘You got her good and pissed off there, I’ll bet…’
‘Are you referring to Commander Sela?’ Data asked. ‘Tasha – I believe that I should enquire… you have just completed a mission as acting First Officer of the Enterprise for the first time, with considerable success, in spite of unforeseen and extraordinary obstacles. Further to this, it has just been announced that Lieutenant Worf, with whom I have noted that you are particularly close, is to be returning to his post on the Enterprise. Under these circumstances, I would have expected you to be happy. However, on the contrary, you appear in fact, to be exceptionally unhappy. I can only imagine that it is the revelation of the existence of Commander Sela that has generated such a reaction from you…’
‘Data,’ interrupted Tasha again.
‘Yes, Tasha?’
‘Data, sit down, shut up and have a drink with me.’
Data paused for a moment, his mouth open ready for a reply, then simply nodded mutely in acceptance and drew up a barstool next to hers.
He sniffed at the drink as Tasha poured it out for him. ‘This is Brandy.’
‘Yep,’ Tasha replied, curtly. ‘French.’
Data took a tiny sip. ‘It is not from a replicator...?’
‘No. From a friend.’ She took a slurp. ‘I was saving it for somebody else, but it looks like we’re too late for her. Much too late.’
Data thought for a moment. ‘By “somebody else”, you mean Sela’s mother? I heard that Commander Sela has informed the Captain of her mother’s death some years ago…’
‘”Sela’s mother”,’ aped Tasha, bitterly, ‘”Sela’s mother”… why must everybody call her that? As though that’s the only thing about her that matters… as if that’s all in her life that ever defined her?’
‘I meant no offence, Tasha…’
‘Data, she was me! She was Tasha Yar, the girl who’d crawled up outta the sewers of Turkana IV to serve proudly on the Enterprise. She was me, and for some reason I’ll never know she ended up out of her time, out of her reality… a slave. A concubine. And when she tried to escape that life, find her way back up into the stars… she was murdered. We were too late to help her. We were decades too late.’
‘It is possible that Sela was not telling the truth,’ suggested Data, ‘that perhaps the alternate version of yourself is still alive…’
Tasha shook her head, taking another slurp of Brandy. ‘Romulan or not, if Deanna Troi says she’s not lying, then she’s not lying.’
‘In which case,’ Data reasoned, ‘ there was never anything that you could have done to assist the alternate Tasha Yar. By the time you had freed yourself from Turkana IV, she had already been dead for several years. Therefore, there is no logical cause for your distress.’
‘That’s the thing,’ Tasha breathed. ‘For her to go from Turkana to Romulus, at the same time that I’m still on Turkana… there’s something horribly cyclical about it. You look around you now and you see the clean lines of the ship, you smell the clean air, you feel the buzz of clean, happy people, and it’s so easy to forget that it isn’t like this for everybody, that some people still scratch around in the filth all their lives… “Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night”…’
‘William Blake,’ Data recognised, ‘Auguries of Innocence.’
‘Really?’ Tasha asked. ‘It was graffitied over a bunker I used to crash in back on Turkana. It used to make me angry. It was so damned defeatist. It didn’t speak for me – I was gonna get off that rock and sample some of that “sweet delight” that the writing on the wall told me one was either born to or not.’ She paused. ‘I wonder if she ever stayed in that same bunker, and read those words, and felt as angered and determined by them as I was. I wonder if she ever did find true happiness on her Enterprise. Did she have a Worf? Did she have a Will and a Deanna? Did…’ Tasha stared back down at her glass. ‘Did she have a Data?’
Data gave no reply.
‘Would it have been better or worse for her to have found happiness in Starfleet before living out her last, miserable years on Romulus? Would knowing what she was missing bring her hope or despair…?’
‘This is all speculation,’ Data reminded her. ‘You cannot know any of these things for certain. Even if you did, they would be of no benefit to anybody.’
‘I guess,’ sighed Tasha in resignation. She pushed the bottle of Brandy away from herself. ‘And it’s no good me sitting around here feeling sorry for myself…’
‘You are “feeling sorry” for her,’ interjected Data.
Tasha smiled a little. ‘Potayto, potahto.’
Data frowned, confused. ‘I do not understand what this has to do with potatoes.’
Tasha giggled. ‘You know what? I hope she did have a Data. Alternate Me didn’t have a lot of luck in life, from what I can tell. Maybe if she’d had a Data, if only for a little while, that’d have made up for some of it at least.’
Data curled the corners of his lips very slightly as he considered the compliment. ‘Thank you, Tasha. Although I do not believe that I consistently bring you happiness.’
‘You do well enough,’ Tasha shrugged. ‘Like just now - letting me blow off steam over the whole Sela issue, and helping me get a little perspective. Whatever her life was like, I’m sure glad my reality’s got a Data.’
‘And I believe that it is fortunate,’ Data replied, ‘that in this reality, you have remained in the present with the rest of us.’
‘Aren’t we a lucky pair?’ Tasha reached over a hand, and softly patted his arm.
A momentary silence fell between them. Tasha’s hand remained on his arm, her fingers gently curled around his angular elbow.
‘I believe,’ announced Data, suddenly, ‘that it is highly probable that we shall encounter Commander Sela again in the future. If you have not yet considered the possible ramifications of this event occurring with regards to your personal and professional life, I have taken the liberty of projecting so far seven hundred and thirty four hypothetical…’
She removed her hand from his elbow. ‘You always know how to ruin the mood, don’t you?’
‘I only considered that you might wish to be prepared for any further…’
‘Data?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up.’
...
Now. Having read that... 'SNAFU'. Does 'SNAFU' work, coming out of Guinan's mouth? I like it, but I'm not sure that it works. Thoughts?
