Chapter Text
"Data the Federation Android speaking," said Data.
And it was
Data.
IT WAS ACTUALLY DATA.
"DATA!" Geordi yelled.
"Geordi!" Data greeted back, and he was infuriatingly -chipper and emotionless about it-. "You are one of the survivors? Where are you located? I will come straight to you!"
"The Harbor at Eko'oa'ika'ika." Wa'a place names were hard to do in a good mood, let alone when half overjoyed and half furious.
And Data beamed in.
On Noisan's side omg i thought you'd be older oh wait you're an android duh i knew that.
On Geordi's end, his whole life crunched down in his head at once, remembering weeks of work interrupted by Borg and decades of knowing SOMETHING WAS OFF, and here Data was, in a tailored green Wa'a Museum uniform and looking perfectly ordinary other than random Zibalian face paint?
"Data did you get STOCKHOLM SYNDROME?" Geordi meeped, touching his old friend barely with the back of his hand mostly to know it wasn't just a glitch of the left side of his visor and mentally sifting through a zillion scenarios. Data willingly leaving seemed insane. Data getting kidnapped was the only thing Geordi would let himself believe at the moment. The other options were "turncoat!" and "you betrayed us" and he couldn't quite force himself to contemplate that just yet.
Data did the adorable headtilt and Geordi kind of wanted to sob right there. "Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor. Is your visor in need of repair?"
"You still quote dictionaries," Geordi squeaked, trying to juggle about 18 zillion emotions up against Data who didn't fkking HAVE ANY. He sat down and took the visor off, and could hear Data repairing it, buzz-buzz-zip.
"But Geordi," Data continued, while doing repairs "Fajo rescued me from the Borg Invasion. I have become the preservation of everything Federation.
It sounded like as much of a quote as the dictionary quote had.
"No, he didn't!" Geordi yelled.
Data took a moment to process that. "Explain." There was no emotion in his voice at all, which was infuriatingly normal for Data. He seemd so damn -innocent-, (and YOUNG?!) and wide eyed and adorable and infuriatingly emotionless at the moment and Geordi kind of wanted to melt-glomp him or something and there wasn't anywhere for GEORDI's emotions to go.
"On Stardate 43872.2, you were transporting Hytritium and then the shuttle looked like it exploded but -I THOUGHT SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS HAPPENED- and--"
Data handed him his visor back and being able to see anything but hexbars and static down the whole left side added another 18 zillion emotions. "--wow, thank you Data."
"You're welcome Geordi."
Geordi really wanted to glomp him and settled for shoulderpatting him instead. "I tried SO HARD to figure out what went wrong, and then we got Borg and I..."
Data headtilted the other way, and on his end, he was scanning every single file he had on his first encounters with Kivas Fajo.
We rescued you.
Not -from Borg-.
Just 'rescued'.
Just.
Rescued.
"Geordi," Data asked. "By your records, when did the Borg arrive?"
"43989.1." Dates he would remember even with his squishy human brain into infinity.
Data did the headtwitch thingy and on Geordi's end, Geordi suddenly felt young again; it was very nearly the same headtwitch Data'd done when they'd been Sherlock and Holmes. Data's Thinky Twitch. He hadn't lost it, even after all these years.
"Geordi, please come with me," Data said flatly.
Geordi flicked a look at Noisan.
"You're off work anyway??" Noisan shrugged. On Noisan's end, why are you asking me, I think in this case you outrank me, and you're off the clock now anyway. ithink. imma check the clock.
Data stepped close to Geordi, pulled out the Wa'a communication device and tapped a few buttons. Wa'a didn't quite "do" the "com badge thing" the same way.
They beamed in to a big (big!) building with the ceiling 2x higher than it had any reason to be, made of big gray stones and grass growing off of them, filled with empty bookshelves with half the books gone away to the Wa'a Preservation of Federation Treasures with Fajo in the wheelchair and a Wa'a employee reading CS Lewis's Silver Chair to him. He'd been in a nostalgic mood.
"Kivas Fajo!" Data said in Command Voice. "It has come to my attention that our association with one another began with an abduction, not a rescue. You lied to me."
Fajo signaled for the Wa'a employee to turn the chair around. On his end, he wasn't feeling so great at the moment anyway, and he wanted Out. He looked at Data now with none of his book-learned courtesy, none of his book-learned compassion, none of the mirroring, none of the listening.
None of the Faking It.
Just a tiny smug glimmer of quiet glee.
"What was your motive in abducting me?" Data demanded.
"Data, Data, Data, look in the mirror," Fajo said. "You are absolute -perfection-." He flicked a look at the book on the desk that he didn't know had made all of this possible by fine-tuning his reactions to things a decade before deciding he even WANTED Data. "I believe in the power of great art to transcend geographical boundaries, political differences and even the restrictions of time, and you, Data, are -art-."
"Our sexual encounters are not consensual." Data said. Still in the flat "sometimes I really wish you had emotions" voice. Geordi gave Data a look, and sort of never wanted to let his waaaaay too naive android buddy out of his sight again ever after that one.
"No, they weren't," Fajo grinned. On his end, he was -trying- to goad them into Something. You gonna get Angry and kill me yet? I want outta here. My head hurts.
"Nothing you have done is ethical or legal." Data said.
"I would think by now after everything your Federation is got destroyed by Borg and Yridians and now we live under the Wa'a Kings of the barely-pronounceable Hopo'okoko, that you would think ethicality and legality don't matter. Nothing matters, Data." can i throw up now?
"You may have, by your actions, inadvertently caused the termination of the entire Federation." Geordi yelled, capable of way more emotion than Data was.
wait what?
Now it was Fajo's turn to have 80000 emotions. Surprise, bafflement, Data thinking Data meant that much and very well might have. All the art he couldn't steal, all the books he couldn't read, all the music he never would have had time for, all the little politicy games--
--If he couldn't have it, no one could.
How fascinatingly -wonderful-.
"I'm dying of Gerattiks Syndrome anyway Data," he said, standing up even though he really really shouldn't be. The world whirled around him and he was sick and dizzy and also utterly elated.
Maybe he had destroyed Everything, making it here for him and only him and no one else would ever experience it. Data and Geordi were talking; Fajo really had hoped Geordi would be angry enough with him to just kill him and get it over with, using the nice safe little painless Federation phasers, but apparently the man was too Federation for that. Too bad the Borg suicide pill hadn't worked. They were blathering about punishment.
It wasn't like he'd -meant- to Destroy Everything, but if that was the case, this was a wonderfully -empowering- mood.
What kind of punishment would you even give me? You want to preserve what I may or may not have accidentally ruined? Great so do I. I fund half the museums anyway. You want to destroy it all as punishment? Great, then -I- experienced it and with me gone, no one experiences it. You want me to pay for it? Too late, all my Federation assets have long since become meaningless and my Wa'a assets are gifted away or part of long-term-care packages, reverse mortgages, and annuities set to expire when I do. I don't own anything anymore. You want to imprison me? You could -try-, I'm friends with Constable Yihikokahani and by the time anything got beyond his courtroom check, I'd be dead anyway.
You want to kill me over this? Great! -I- want you to kill me over this. I'm medically miserable and want Out.
Ohwait.
The Borg Suicide Pill.
"Though under earth and throneless now I be," he said, gazing at the blur that was Data through his pillbroken dying eyes and quoting Silver Chair because it was there. "Yet while I lived, all the earth was under me."
There are Many Universes, as shown by the episode "Parallels"--and in this one, Kivas Fajo got everything he could ever want.