The BLTS Archive - Tranquillitas
by Kassandra (obscure_creature@gmx.net)

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DISCLAIMER: All belongs to Paramount.

NOTES: I was a fan of TNG for so many years, but I've never really
managed to write fanfic. But well, what do they say? It's never too
late?

FEEDBACK: Will make my day.

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I always used to admire how he could sit in perfect stillness.
Sometimes, for hours, lost in some combination of 0 and 1 that only
his artificial brain was able to process. Not a muscle in his face
twitched, not even his golden eyes blinked, finally a dead give-away
of his non-human state. If the ghostly white skin and the disturbingly
unnatural inaction wasn't already clue enough.

Most inevitably he would at some point turn his head and catch me
staring at him in the dim and milky lights of Ten Forward. The
expression in his eyes wouldn't change, and I started to suspect it
couldn't. I looked away, pretending to nurse my drink, and when he got
up to leave I knew he had already forgotten about me. I don't think I
was ever important enough to get filed away somewhere in his memory
banks.

I remember, all those years ago, when I first saw him, I was -
irrationally enough - anxious about the first time I would touch some
part of him. I imagined the skin to be somehow cold, hairless,
unnatural. Not like that of a human male at all, even though the rest
of his physique left no doubt about that. So I watched him, and during
the few times we met on the ship for one or the other reason I
couldn't detect any sign of the fact that he was hurt by my distance,
because he was used to it. Most people regarded him with a certain shy
respect, the mixture of a brilliant mind with the social manners of a
ten year old was enough to confuse even the most tolerant and patient
of them.

Now, reminiscing about that long ago time I wonder why I even
entertained the idea that I would ever touch him at all.

One day, it was in my second year aboard the /Enterprise/, I happened
to ride on the same turbo lift with him. It was some emergency, and
everything was pretty hectic, but since the ride was a rather long one
in comparison he fixed his eyes on me after I had told the computer my
destination, and addressed me by my name. I must have looked very
dumbfounded, because there was a slight smile appearing on his
features when he said, quite matter-of-factly, that the turbo lifts
might fail any moment now and that I should probably hold on to
something. I hadn't even finished processing that information when a
violent jolt went through the cabin, and I anticipated my face to come
into very close contact with the ground.

Before that could happen I felt a hand grab me by the shoulder and
pull me upright, a gesture that combined amazing reflexes with an
inhuman strength that was still tempered enough not to crush my collar
bone, even if it was very close. I tried to regain my footing, and in
the process I clamped my own hand around his arm, the wrist now
exposed.

I could say that the moment was too fast-moving to even experience
certain sensations, or that I've forgotten after all this time, but
that would be a lie. As weird as it may sound, but in the midst of all
that chaos I felt his skin warm and vibrating with tensed muscles and
sinews underneath, and it appeared to be even more human than my own.
Utterly natural. Of course, it all lasted only for the blink of an eye
before I had steadied myself, the doors opened and he stormed onto the
bridge, ignoring the "thank you, Sir" I threw after him.

Afterwards I went back to my compulsive studying of his meditation in
Ten Forward, but he never again turned around to look at me, to give
me the impression that he has, at least, noticed my existence.

When I was transferred to another ship a couple of months later,
without the possibility of even crossing his path in one of the
corridors accidentally, I finally realised what had happened to me.
And although it was no comfort at all, I was often thinking back on
his motionless contemplation, and suddenly I envied him that peace of
mind his lack of human emotions must have given him.

But then, we always crave what we can't have. And I think that in that
not even he in all his specialness was an exception.

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The End