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More Rollercoaster, everybody peeps! Just chapter 1 - chapters 2 and 3 will be up once my awesome Beta's set her Red Pen to it.

Set during S5/S6 bookender episode Time's Arrow.


ROLLERCOASTER
-x-

Baby Got Your Head Screwed On

-x-

One

-x-

Tasha ran her finger around the rim of her empty glass. A distinctive laugh from the bar behind her told her that Lieutenant Llewellyn was drunk again. Well, could anyone blame him? It wasn’t just that it was a party; it was a leaving party. One of his closest friends was off to head the security of some tin can Science ship out in the middle of nowhere. Of course he was hitting the sauce, especially if it was Worf who was filling his glass. She might have known that the Klingon would have picked up a few bottles of vodka on his latest visit to Earth, and naturally it was rational that he’d choose to honour the departing Security Officer with some real drink… And then, there was the other reason for drinking tonight. They’d all had quite an unpleasant shock…

Worf slammed a shot glass down on the table in front of her. ‘Drink.’
She glanced up at him. ‘I’m on duty soon.’
‘I have seen you drink,’ Worf reminded her. ‘A single shot of vodka is highly unlikely to affect your abilities. Drink.’
‘I’m fine with synthahol.’
Worf scowled at her, without menace. ‘This is the finest vodka that Russia has to offer. My adoptive parents gave it to me as a gift to my comrades. You are my comrade. Drink it.’
‘I don’t feel like drinking tonight,’ sighed Tasha.

Worf glowered, and leaned in to her a little closer. ‘I know that you are not a bitter woman,’ he muttered into her ear, ‘but it appears to some of the others that you feel Lieutenant D’Sora’s service on the Enterprise has been unworthy of your celebration.’
‘I think she’s making the wrong decision,’ Tasha replied, quietly, ‘and I think, without meaning to, I’ve helped her to make it. That’s why I don’t feel like celebrating.’
‘I don’t care,’ Worf replied. ‘They don’t care. D’Sora certainly doesn’t care about whether you approve of her leaving or not. Stand up, make her a toast, congratulate her and drink the vodka.’ He paused. ‘Sir.’

She stared at him, a grudging smile creeping onto her face. Nobody could make “Sir” sound quite as argumentative as Worf could. She got to her feet and cleared her throat. A hush descended over the bar, only occasionally interrupted by Llewellyn’s muted giggle.

Tasha raised her glass. ‘So, Jenna’s leaving us today.’
She met eyes with D’Sora. The other woman nodded expectantly.
‘I wish it weren’t the case,’ Tasha continued, ‘as well you know. I’d hoped that Lieutenant D’Sora would continue the adventurous challenge of keeping security on Starfleet’s flagship for many more years. However, I guess a command post is a command post, even if it is nothing but three years of looking at rocks.’
Jenna laughed a little, silently.
‘And besides,’ continued Tasha, heartened that Jenna was taking her speech with good humour, ‘there’s no way any of you are going to get to be Chief of Security here without taking the post out of my cold, dead hands…’

Somebody at the back – possibly one of the bar staff – muttered something that she was unable to make out, causing a handful of people to snicker. Tasha chose to ignore it.

‘You’re moving up,’ Tasha continued, ‘and I commend you for that, Jenna. And I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye…’
Another joke was cracked at the back. Tasha pursed her lips for a moment, exchanging glances again with D’Sora. Dammit - everybody was muttering about it anyway, she might as well say it out loud.
‘Well,’ she added, as breezily as possible, ‘maybe there was one matter that we agreed a bit too closely on for comfort…’

A much louder laugh broke out throughout Ten Forward – laughing with her now, rather than at her. She was pleased to see that Jenna too was laughing along with the rest of them. Tasha added a slight, self-deprecating giggle of her own before continuing.

‘You’ve been a credit to my team, D’Sora, and a credit to this ship. I’m proud of you. To Jenna.’

The assembled crew chorused her toast, and they all drank in unison. The vodka was crisp and pure, freezing her tongue and burning her throat. Damn, the Klingon was right. That was a fine vodka. And honour, it seemed, had been satisfied by her little speech. Worf wandered away from her and allowed her to sit back down, turn her back to the bar and contemplate.

Her peace didn’t last for too long, however. She heard the scrape of the chair next to her and looked up in time to see D’Sora settling herself down at her table.
‘Thanks for the speech.’
Tasha shrugged. ‘Thanks for three great years of service.’ She smiled tightly at the other woman. ‘I meant what I said.’ She paused. ‘You’re too good for the Iris, Jenna.’
‘So you keep saying,’ Jenna retorted. ‘I can’t believe that you’re actually that desperate for me to stick around, after our… conflict of interests last year.’
Tasha regarded the Lieutenant seriously. ‘Tell me that’s not it, Jenna. Please tell me honestly that that’s not the reason you’ve transferred. Goodness knows I’ve tried my darndest not to make you feel uncomfortable since then…’
Jenna grinned. ‘I don’t feel discomforted or intimidated by you, Commander. I think I’d be a pretty lousy Security Officer if I were. I just want my own command, that’s all. It’s time I moved on.’ She paused. Something else was obviously troubling her. ‘You haven’t seen Data this evening at all…?’
Tasha frowned. ‘You invited him?’
‘Of course. We still met up, as friends. Admittedly, not as often as we had, but…’ She trailed off. ‘I just wanted to see him one more time, before…’ she cut herself off again, abruptly.

‘I saw him in Engineering a few hours ago,’ Tasha admitted. ‘I’m afraid he didn’t mention anything about your party.’
‘When I asked him to come,’ added Jenna, ‘he said he would “endeavour to attend the gathering, although current events may cause him to reprioritise his schedule against the favour of such an activity”.’
‘Yeah,’ nodded Tasha, ‘I’m afraid that’s Data-speak for “I think I might be washing my hair”.’
‘I remember Data-speak,’ smiled Jenna, wistfully. ‘Guess he’s pretty preoccupied of late.’
‘Pretty much,’ Tasha agreed.
‘Because of the head thing…?’
‘Because of the head thing.’
‘How’s he taking it?’ asked Jenna.
‘Oh,’ Tasha shrugged, ‘infuriatingly Zen-like. The usual way. It’s been fairly distressing for the rest of us, though.’

‘Tell me about it. It’s not every day your ex-boyfriend’s 500 year old severed head turns up in a cave.’ Jenna frowned. ‘Have you seen it? I can’t look it in the eye. It’s creepy.’
‘It’s horrible,’ Tasha added. ‘Beyond horrible. It’s his death; his inevitable death, just… staring blankly at us all.’ She paused. ‘But what can we do? What can any of us do? All it tells us is that he’s destined to die of decapitation. We don’t know how, we don’t know when… Well, technically we know when it happens, but we don’t know how that fits into our timeline. He could fall into the past tomorrow, or next year, or not for another thousand years. And even then, he could live a long, happy life in the past before whatever comes to pass, comes to pass. All this find tells us for sure is that he’s going to die.’

Seemingly from nowhere, Guinan leaned in to their table and freshened the two women’s drinks.
‘But then,’ interjected the Barkeep smoothly, ‘isn’t that exactly the same boat that the rest of us are all in?’
Before either of them could reply, Guinan had glided peacefully away.

Jenna watched the bartender seriously as she departed. ‘D’you think she knows something…?’
‘Of course she does,’ Tasha retorted. ‘She’s Guinan. Damned if she’s telling, though.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘There’s one thing I can tell from her, mind you. She hasn’t got a headache.’
‘Is that good?’
Tasha pondered this. ‘I don’t know.’

There was a long pause in their conversation.

‘Do mind if I ask you a personal question, Commander?’ added Jenna, eventually.
‘Shoot.’
‘What the Hell are you doing?’
Tasha blinked. ‘Hmm?’
‘Seeing me and Data together drove you to distraction, didn’t it? Admit it!’
‘What?’
‘You thought the chance for the two of you to be together had passed you by,’ Jenna continued, ‘and it infuriated you. And now, here we all are – he’s single, you’re single and you’ve just been handed a pretty nonnegotiable deadline. Why aren’t you doing anything?’
Tasha opened her mouth to peevishly respond.
‘And don’t tell me I don’t understand,’ Jenna interrupted, ‘because I know what it’s like to be crazy about that guy, I know how difficult it can be. But I also know that he’s worth giving the benefit of the doubt. Data and me didn’t work out… probably in retrospect it was always doomed not to work out, but you know what? I’m glad I tried. Even though it meant my friendship with him was never quite the same again, even though my working relationship with you was never completely healed… even though my mother went crazy when she found out… it was better to have those few days trying to make it work than to spend year after year thinking “what if”.’

Tasha stared at her for a moment, her lips still half parted, willing a suitable response to come to them. None did.

Jenna leaned in a little closer to Tasha and lowered her voice further. ‘You know what? I want to cut you a break. Ever since he and I were an item there’s been one piece of information that you’ve been just aching to know. And sometimes, when I was in a really petty, bitter mood, I actually revelled in holding it over you.’
Tasha shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you feel you know me better than you really do.’
‘I know how possessive you can be, Commander,’ D’Sora replied. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Data told me outright that you seemed keen to know and asked me if it was right not to tell you.’
Tasha gazed down at her drink. ‘Well, I guess that solves the mystery of who killed him. If anyone needs me I’ll be in a darkened corner, replicating myself a hacksaw.’
D’Sora’s earnest expression didn’t change. ‘We didn’t have sex. That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?’
Tasha blinked at her. ‘You didn’t?’
‘I’d just come out of a serious relationship,’ Jenna shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to rush into anything – I wanted it to be the right moment. Turns out there was never going to be a right moment for us.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not gonna tell you that nothing happened, just… that didn’t happen. I asked him just to hold me, and to talk, and to let me fall asleep in his arms.’
Tasha looked down at her drink again, picturing the scene. ‘We never did that.’
‘I know,’ Jenna replied. ‘I was the first person who’d ever asked that of him.’
Tasha took a sharp intake of breath. ‘That’s so sad.’

‘You’re making this sound so final,’ Jenna noted, ‘like you’ll never get the chance to do those things. What I’m trying to tell you is that you do have the chance. The time is now.’
Tasha gazed back up at her. ‘Carpe Diem, right?’
Jenna giggled. ‘You know, when I was little, I used to think that meant “fish of the day”?’
‘No kidding.’

There was another pause.

‘Anyway,’ Jenna added, ‘I think I’ve said enough now, right? Anyone would think my new post was Ship’s Counsellor.’
‘You’re gonna make a wonderful Chief of Security,’ Tasha told her with a small smile. ‘You’re bossy as all Hell.’
Jenna returned her smile. ‘I’m going to get back to my leaving party. See if Lester’s left me any of that vodka.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Tasha called.
‘Fish of the day,’ retorted Jenna as she moved back into the mass of revellers, ‘remember that, Sir.’
‘Yeah,’ Tasha told her drink. ‘Fish of the day.’

-x-

Fish of the day…

Data faded a little from her view.
Fish of the day…

She’d thought about D’Sora’s advice long and hard, but they’d all been so busy, she hadn’t come to a conclusion about whether to actually take it… until that very moment. She stared at the android, pale and translucent as a ghost, as he shifted further out of phase with the rest of them, growing ever more transparent. How silly to make the decision that she wanted to attempt a monogamous relationship with somebody just as they slipped into nothingness, she thought… and how very typical of her.

Data was now completely vanished. All that remained of him was a tinny, placid voice over the Communicators, calmly describing his bizarre new surroundings. She suddenly, desperately wanted to talk to him – probably, she conceded, because it was now impossible for her to do so. She wanted to tell him to come back; that he should never have left the protection of the Enterprise in the first place, that she was concerned that something was about to happen which would suck him backwards through time, leaving nothing behind but a lifeless, 500 year old dismembered head. She inwardly shook herself as his disembodied voice continued its observations. Causality didn’t work that way. Just because you’d recently discovered an artefact whose presence could only be explained by the owner of said artefact falling through time didn’t necessarily mean that the event in question was imminent. Data’s head had been lying around underneath San Francisco all of their lives – the only thing that had changed was that it had now been dug up. Look at Sela, she reminded herself; she’d been around in Tasha’s universe almost as long as Tasha had, and by the time she’d found out about her, the time rift that had caused her presence had already been and gone, and passed Tasha by. Maybe the same sort of thing would happen to Data now. Maybe his realities were all knotted up too, and it was a different Data whose head they’d found.

Still, she worried. Still, she chewed her lip silently and willed him to fade back safely into view. As Data continued to speak out into the tense silence, she found herself doing a very strange thing. She actually found herself praying. Never having been one for organised religions, she wasn’t particularly sure at first to whom she was directing her prayer. A few images flashed up in her mind – The Madonna, Vishnu, Athena and a couple of Klingon Gods that she could never remember the names of, much to Worf’s annoyance, all popped into her mind and were quickly rejected. It was only as she started concentrating on what she wanted to ask of this unknown deity that she realised with whom she sought to strike a deal.

I don’t know who you are, she announced, internally, but something or someone tinkered with my timeline a few years ago. Something saved me from death, and let me stay in the place where I was happy. If it was you, and you’re listening… I’m not sure that I ever thanked you for that. I don’t know what it was that made me worth saving… if, that is, I was saved on purpose. She blinked, aware that she was rambling, albeit silently. Thing is, she continued, he is worth saving. He’s special. And I’m asking you now; if you were able to make a special case for me, can’t you make one for him as well? I don’t want to lose him. Bring him back…? She paused. According to Data’s distant sounding communications, something odd was afoot. Strange creatures were approaching him. This did not sound good.

I’ll throw in a sweetener, she added, with growing desperation. You bring him back, and I’ll do it. I promise I will. I’ll put an end to our silly little dance and give in to monogamy with him. Dates, kissing in public, boring evenings in his quarters getting beaten at chess - the whole deal. Because, you see, I may not be able to vouch for you personally, but I’ve only ever met one omnipotent immortal before, and he had a sadistic sense of humour. If you’re anything like that, you’re gonna watch from on high as I open myself up to becoming emotionally dependant on a man who can’t love me, and has the most basic of understandings of human relationships; and you’re going to just love watching me squirm…

A sudden burst of bright light flooded the cavern, and disappeared as swiftly as it had come. Deanna, her expression alive with panic, called out Data’s name. No voice came over the Communicator.
No…
‘Can we get him back?’ It was only after that the question had been asked that Tasha realised it was she who had posed it.
Deanna shook her head, sadly. ‘He’s gone.’
‘He’s dead…?’ asked Geordi.
‘He’s just… gone,’ repeated Deanna.
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ Tasha added, ‘I mean, you’ve never been able to sense him, right?’
‘Not as such,’ the Betazoid admitted, ‘but I can still tell that he’s…’
‘That he’s gone,’ Tasha concluded, testily. ‘OK. I get it, Deanna. He’s gone.’ She kicked at a loose stone, violently. ‘Shit!’
‘That’s enough, Commander,’ warned Riker.

She clasped her hands over her head, biting down her fury and frustration. ‘Sorry, Sir. I’m sorry, Deanna.’
Riker laid a calming hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK. You’re not the only one who feels like kicking rocks right now.’
Geordi, still shell-shocked, raised a hand. ‘I could kick a rock or two. Won’t bring him back, though.’
‘So, what?’ Tasha asked. ‘We just give up on him?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Geordi replied, quietly. ‘But there’s nothing we can do down here.’
‘What can we do?’ asked Riker.
Geordi shook his head, sadly. ‘Beam back to the Enterprise. Back to the drawing board.’
Tasha didn’t reply. She had one last bit of praying to do.
Well, thank you very much, she told the faceless deity silently. Thanks a lot for nothing.
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