After Every Thing
by august
cFeb 1999

The deal with this story is as follows. Once upon a time, Michele Masterson wrote a wonderful story in response to a challenge entitled Belated. This story inspired many off-shoots, including stories by: YCD, Boadicea, Tracy Thurman and myself. I was so taken with Boadicea's story of Seven's perspective that I was compelled to write a companion piece.

So here I present, for your dining pleasure, a companion piece to a companion piece to a challenge story.

Michele darling, you've spawned a monster.

Lyrics from, of course, Adam Duritz.

~ ~ * ~ ~

In August and everything after I'm after every thing

Some people don't like space docks, and I can understand why. Everything about them is temporary. Everyone is always 'moving through'. The only families here are those who own establishments, and in time the children always grow and move away. Sometimes people grow plants, or have pets. They are mostly forgotten, or lost, or move through. It's the nature of a space dock.

She was moving through, I knew it from the beginning. For those of us who stay -- who call this temporary place our home, we get used to that look in a person's eye. The vague acknowledgment of surroundings, tempered by the overwhelming feeling of indifference.

She came in with a Klingon ship. When I first saw her, I felt sorry for her - being a human on a ship full of Klingons. I had first hand experience on occasions of the less delicate Klingon touch. She spoke like a Vulcan, or a Pradi -- not universal translator English, but the English of someone who speaks through necessity rather than desire.

She did not speak to me.

I saw that she had scars on her face, around her eye. This seemed funny to me, because they could have easily been healed by a dermal regenerator. But I had seen stranger things, of course, than someone who wishes to keep their scars. I thought that I would like to ask her where they were from.

She spent most hours in the holosuite. After one week, she purchased a programme. The owner boasted for days afterwards that he had charged her three times the price he should have, and it was only for his kind nature that he did not charge her five. I thought it sad that she would want something so much, she would pay any price. I hoped it was worth it.

I somehow doubted that

I noticed her first because of her voice. I heard her arguing with a trader, and I thought she must have been an android. I had read somewhere that there was one in Starfleet. She had a magnificent physique, but probably a flawed design for an android. A more proportioned body would have made sense, and would have probably been more suited to the life of a space travel.

Some people said that she was Borg. The general consensus was that she was a member of the crew that had just returned from the Gamma Quadrant. They had apparently had a family of Borg onboard. I wondered why she was still alone. She certainly didn't look like any Borg I'd ever heard of, but then Wolf 359 had always just been a distant place, mentioned on the holo-reels.

Some of the other workers at the station had family, or had lived in that area. They had refused to approach her. I had just figured that latinum was latinum, any way you spilt it.

One night we met. I approached her at the bar, and we went to her quarters. They were sparse and impersonal, like she had just moved in. Maybe she had.

"Will you have a drink?" She asked, after we had settled on a price. I shook my head, and asked her about the Klingon ship. She answered vaguely, and sat next to me.

I was about to ask her another question when she touched my face. I leaned in towards her, and we kissed. She put her hand on my thigh. We went to her bed. She lay on her back, and I kissed her again. She *was* a Borg. There were still implants on her body.

I moved on her, and she arched against me. Her throat made an arc against the pillow. She did not make a sound. Her eyes were closed, and she was concentrating. I wondered who she was trying to remember, who she was making love to, in her mind.

She breathed in jagged breaths when I touched her. I wondered if she would make a noise when she came. She pushed up against my mouth and half turned on her side.

"Kathryn." She said, finally. It was the first thing she had said since we begun, and she froze almost immediately. I moved up her body to kiss her, because I was not who she wanted, but I was there. She opened her eyes and stared straight at me. She blinked twice and then sat up.

Breathing in slowly, she said "I do not wish to continue."

It was not the first time I had been called someone else's name, and I'm sure it will not be the last. I dressed myself, collected my latinum and left her room. She did not move.

She didn't approach me again. I only saw her on the station for a few more days. Once she was walking with a worker named Sarah, once she was coming out of a holodeck. She did not look at me either time.

People never stay long on a space dock. It's a temporary kind of thing. Her ship left here, eventually. The last I heard they were heading towards deeper space. Whatever she was looking for, I doubt she will find it there.

Maybe that's why she went.