Chapter Text
Wa'a 7, to Geordi La Forge's unique eyes, looked like a saturated hellscape, and the left half of his visor didn't work right anymore anyway, jittery, staticky, splotchy. The last person who knew how to repair it died two years ago and he didn't have the tools to fix it himself.
But there was no mistaking, even through the splotches, the energy image at the market square.
"DATA?!" he yelled.
A native Wa'aian next to him whisper-hissed, "Keep it down," they said. "I don't like to sell to loud people."
Geordi rather ignored them, hurrying through the market as fast as his old, aching knees would let him, around a whole left field of splotches and a bunch of waist-high Wa'aians, but the person that looked exactly like Data was nowhere to be found.
His job bleepered him on his pager and it was a long painful walk to the train station, crouching down on the "this train was built for a species that thinks 5 feet is tall" train and then spending the whole day helping correlate tech back and forth.
He was well-paid, valuable, had to get used to money here, had a house, had no idea what to DO with the money; he gave most of it to a book program for Wa'a and Refugee kids.
Now at work tinkering away, he wondered if they'd just -had Data- when the Borg attacked if that would have "fixed everything". Was Data -that- smart? Or would their assimilating Data or Lore have made the Borg smart enough to defend against the Yridian Mass Weapon?
His boss, a much younger half-human, half-Andorian child of survivors, Kori Noisan, tapped him on the shoulder.
"Hey--"
On her end--you're elderly, you're the smartest person we have, I really really really don't want you to die on us until you finish about fourteen more large projects. Pls live at least another decade.
"--you seem stressed?" pls just be stress pls just be stress and not you getting sick.
On Geordi's end, he looked over at Noisan. "I thought I saw someone from the old days today while getting breakfast, but when I went after them, I lost them in the crowd."
Noisan patted him on the shoulder and handed him a tissue. "Who is it, what do you need from us?"
Telling her it might be -Data- seemed insane. All the records said Data was dead, and Geordi had watched that goddamn hytritium explosion video so many times on so many frequencies he had the timing memorized. Lore, maybe. Was Lore a reasonable possibility? Or "Another Noonian Android". Lore was a surprise, who says there wasn't Data-Lore-Phil, short for Philosophy?
That sounded Not Nuts.
"It might be nothing," Geordi flicked his hand past the left half of the glitchvisor to suggest maybe it was just it being broken that was doing that, "But it might be another Noonian Android, like Data used to be. Soong made Lore, he might have made some other androids that survived. It's just that I know that energy signature-look anywhere. Only Soong androids have it and..." he trailed off.
Noisan's opinion was "so what if you are nuts, let's go find the guy, it's either a glitch in your visor or an android. It's not like anyone but you is doing anything right now anyway, might as well make you happy".
After getting a few more details, Noisan sent Henri, an oddly-named last surviving Lurian in the Universe as far as anyone knew, and Jokak, Klingon, out looking for a non-Wa'a-height person. Getting a description was a bit of a project. Geordi didn't see the way anyone else did and eventually they went with "I was -told- he looked Pale and had Black Hair and Yellow Eyes..."
Geordi was happy again and promptly went to work -finishing- a full on how-to guide on Reverse Polarity for Noisan, which was exactly why she'd humored him to begin with. Henri's most valuable trait was "is Lurian". Jokak's most valuable trait was "is Stronger than Wa'a by a considerable margin".
Geordi was irreplaceable.
Jokak came back the next morning with an elderly non-Wa'a alien in a wheelchair.
"Geordi LaForge?" the man croaked. "Fancy meeting you here all way out here on Wa'a. I hope you like their Baked Sun Muffins as much as I do."
On Geordi's end, he was straight up having flashbacks. Captain-Picard-what-happened? calm and collected and way way WAY too chill in Geordi's opinion. Everything-seemed-to-be-running-smoothly; [Hytritium] is-just-too-dangerous.
"Kivas Fajo," Geordi choked out.
"The Last pure-blooded Zibalian!" Fajo churruped. "I do have lots of lovely little half-Zibalians running around now after that, you know, Borg Fiasco. Pity the Enterprise got all caught up in that--"
Noisan prodded Jokak, "What does he have to do with the Soong Droid?"
"Oh -THAT-," Fajo said, cracking a knuckle and wincing at the crack. "First off, you're probably going to be utterly ~furious with me, and second off, technically he belongs to the Wa'a Preservation of Federation Treasures now anyway, and third off, the currency I sold him for doesn't work anymore so I'm not really sure what you want to -do- about it but--."
Geordi threw the table.
The whole table.
Despite it being very heavy and he was not anywhere near being young anymore
It didn't get as far as Fajo's wheelchair, and Fajo made an odd frown at it. Jokak very lightly held Geordi's arm and gave Noisan a "wtf do I -do-" look.
"I KNEW I MISSED SOMETHING!" Geordi yelled, freezing cold with shock and horror and the whole last several decades crashing down on him. "YOU -DID- SET UP THE TRICYANATE! DATA'S ALIVE--"
"Data's an android," Kivas Fajo said off to the side like getting screamed at was normal.
"--Data's been alive THIS. ENTIRE. TIME!" Geordi collapsed into the seat, coughing and choking and Noisan worried he'd have a heart attack.
"Take -him- out of here," she ordered at Jokak about Kivas Fajo and went over to poor little Geordi, getting him a drink of water.
"I never forgot that, all these years later." Geordi was ranting to himself, "The last thing I said to him was 'Containment field stable. Gravitational fluctuations within acceptable parameters. Gravitational fluctuations within acceptable parameters. Gravitational fluctuations within acceptable parameters..."
Noisan stared off after where Fajo's gone.
"I have a tiny confession to make--" she said, and given Geordi's horrified look at her, maybe she'd picked the wrong words. "Er. I was looking for files about how warp used to work before the Yridian Mass Weapon and found a file about an exploding shuttle. I didn't ask then, not sure if I should ask now, but you are definitely not okay..."
Geordi took another very big drink of water, like he was drinking his emotions. He also ignored her "question".
"What'd he say he--" the rage came back, hard, and he started that sentence over. On Geordi's end, he couldn't get himself to say 'sold Data to'. The words just woudn't come out. "What Wa'a... museum? did he say Data was at?"
"Wa'a Preservation of Federation Treasures," Noisan said. "HENRI go call them and ask about an android?"
Henri nodded a bunch and waddled off as fast as his stumpy Lurian legs could go.
"Gravitational fluctuations within acceptable parameters..."
Geordi was talking to himself again. Noisan pushed the water at him again. It'd worked last time. It worked this time again too and he downed more of it.
"Tell me everything," she said."
And he did.
He told her about Kivas Fajo and the Hytritium and Tricyanate poisoning. The explosion. The horrifying explosion. Several weeks of researching and flying back to Beta Agni Two and re-interviewing Kivas Fajo twice and everything check out just fine over and over again despite all of Geordi just feeling that Something was Wrong--
--and then a month later, Borg.
And there was never any time to care about anything else ever, ever again.
The Borg took Picard.
The Borg took Earth.
The Borg took the Federation.
The Borg took Everything.
There was another battle.
The Enterprise had to be evacuated.
Geordi and OBrien and everyone out of Engineering ended up evacuated to the civilian ship Anokye.
The Bridge Crew evacuated to another ship.
That ship
didn't make it.
And then Anokye had a Yridian named Biki Hao on it.
Biki Hao and Geordi'd been in the same cafeteria when Biki's com badge went off with some female voice singing eerie quartertones.
"Where sands speak,
And water talks,
The air that sees,
Chases 'bears' away,
This we call Amorphi"
And then the Anokye just -stopped- dead in space.
And there were no more Borg.
How?
Geordi had no idea, and Biki Hao's opinion was that Amorphi were basically Yridian Gods.
Then it was two years of PTSD-inducing hell crammed on the dimly lit, reeking Anokye. OBrien offing himself in the middle of it and Geordi walking in on what was left. Eight weeks in, figuring out how to crawl by impulse, then a crude, crawling Warp 1, then a sputtery Warp 2.
A decade of miserable nonstop work on a crumbling, half-Borgcrushed, dying Tellar Prime where EVERYONE wanted him ALL THE TIME because he could (kind of) get the Yridian-broken universe to still give them Warp.
Sometimes.
Eventually, someone found that the range of the Yridian Mass Weapon only extended to MOST of the universe, and there was a handful of full Warp-Capable civilizations out on one end of the Beta Quadrant.
Mostly the Wa'a. Who thought 5 feet tall was Tall, but were otherwise benevolent kind people who accepted the survivors.
And here they were.
And apparently
Data
was
too.
Henri handed Geordi the phone. "Wa'a kahi'i kouu--" and then the translator kicked in, "--Treasures." said a nice Wa'a person. "Please hold while I connect you to Mister Data."