DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc and Viacom. The story contents are the creation and property of Djinn and are copyright (c) 2002 by Djinn. This story is Rated PG-13.
Echoes and Voices
by Djinn
I look in the mirror and I
see him. I see both of them. Shinzon. And Locutus. They live, warped and twisted and always
there. On the other side of the mirror. On the other side of my soul. They will never leave me. They are me.
I close my eyes. I don't want to look at the reflection. Don't want to think about Shinzon
impaled on that rod, pulling himself closer to me. The sound of flesh tearing, the smell of
blood, the feel of his breath—my breath on my cheek. Such hatred.
Such passion. The echo he called
himself, but he was vivid, more vivid perhaps than I am, than I have ever
been. More alive. His hatred for me, for humans, for Earth
animated him, gave him the energy to go on even as his body destroyed
itself. He would bring down an entire
planet even if it was the last thing he did.
And it would have been.
I see Shinzon's
face in my dreams. He stares at me with
red eyes and nostrils flaring with the pain he refuses to acknowledge, and I
stare back. Unable to move. Then I see his face suddenly tear open as a
Borg implant erupts out of the wound and another rips
through his chest. An assimilation tube
emerges from his hand, a hand he holds out to me. As the tube pierces my artificial heart, I
hear in my mind the voice of the Collective, Welcome home, Locutus.
"Welcome home,
brother," Shinzon laughs, even as his tortured
skin changes to the mottled gray of the Borg.
"We are ever one."
It's a nightmare I've had
since the Collective took me. But in the
past, it was my face that the Borg hardware pierced through, my hand that
reached out for my friends and assimilated them as they screamed. I thought it was the worst nightmare possible. That I might still have Locutus
inside me, that the Borg had not been driven out as completely as Beverly
thought.
But now the nightmare is
worse. Locutus
may have always been inside me. The
destroyer that Locutus was, the architect of Earth's
destruction—of the genocide of the human race—perhaps he wasn't brought by the
Borg? Perhaps he was inside me
already? The potential for him carried
within my DNA. I looked at Shinzon and I saw Locutus—and I
saw myself. Was I a killer? Was I the driven, hate-filled man I saw
crawling inch by tortured inch on that stake?
Have I been Locutus all along?
It paralyzed me then, as the
seconds went by, and I stood and stared at Shinzon's
body kept upright only by the heavy metal rod I had put in his path. His body nearly touched me, would have
touched me if I hadn't pressed myself against the wall. I couldn't move, couldn't make myself go find
my phaser. I just stared as the computer
counted down to annihilation for me and for all those
I held dear. I stood and waited, and
wondered which of us was indeed the echo.
What if I was? What if the voice
was meant not to speak in the measured tones of a diplomat but in the strident
commands of a dictator? What if I was
meant to usher in Armageddon? What if Jean-Luc
was a fluke and they were the real voice?
I would have stayed that way
forever. Catatonic, frozen in
self-doubt, in horror at what I had come up against, at having to kill my echo
even as I realized the sound of his voice would never leave me. I was weak—or perhaps I was strong enough to
want to die. That might have been
better. Who knows what the next
manifestation of the destroyer could look like?
Who knows how many might die under the hands of one that echoes my soul?
But I did not die. My friends didn't perish. Most of them didn't but one man did. Man—I use the term accidentally, then
deliberately. Man. Data the man.
Data had become a man to me. Like
some fine, tall form of Pinocchio that the blue fairy had turned into a real
boy. And until that moment I hadn't
realized it. As he slapped the emergency
transporter on me, I couldn't find the words to tell the man before me to stop,
to beg him to stop. If I had, what would
I have said? Would it have been along
the lines of: "You go back, Data,
the universe needs you more"? Would
I have resisted, if I hadn't been so weak?
Would I have thought of a way to save him?
Data thought I was worth
saving. I must make sure that he was
right. But how do I know I can do
that? How do I know that Shinzon isn't inside me right now? Isn't working with Locutus? Both of them whispering to the part of me
that sleeps in the deepest, darkest corner of my soul. I can feel Locutus
now, closer than I've felt him since those days after I was freed from the
Collective. I hear his voice inside
me. I hear the voice of the Queen,
lulling me into that fugue state from which only evil will emerge. I must resist.
Shinzon said it.
Resistance is futile.
But I must resist. And the Queen is dead in any case. Or at least my Queen. Somewhere another
lives on. I don't want to think about
that. I tell myself that she lives only
in my mind...that the voice of the Collective sings only in my head. Nothing more than the echo of what once
was. Shinzon
was the echo of what never was. The life
I didn't lead. The hardships I never
knew. He was me without the ease. My life turned upside down and colored
black. And he hated me for it. Resented me.
But he hid it well at first. And
at first, I was captivated by him.
Fascinated. Intrigued. How vain I was. I thought it was me. And it was.
Just not the me I wanted it to be.
I suddenly understand Will's
reaction to Tom Riker. The strangeness of
coming up against yourself and finding that you aren't quite what you
expected. The need to reach out, while
at the same time feeling an odd repugnance that colors every reaction and makes
you want to draw back. You speak and your
own voice answers. Only not your voice—not
my voice, for I didn't grow up in the Dilithium
mines, I didn't breathe the corrosive vapor for so many years. I didn't live with broken bones; with a face
so battered it bore little resemblance to my own. I did not live that life.
But what if I had?
The echo was deeper than the
voice. More strident. Louder.
And never louder than when he whispered our death, as he pulled himself
to me. His voice rushed over me,
overcame me. I could do nothing except
stand mute as I watched my evil twin die.
My evil self. Myself. I watched myself die. I killed myself. I killed.
I am a killer.
I am not a killer.
Deanna is worried about
me. She can sense the way my thoughts
turn these days. She comes to me and
urges me to talk. "I know what his
touch felt like," she says. "I
can still feel him in my mind."
I had hoped she was free of
him. But her eyes are haunted and she's
lost the spark of joy she used to exude.
She's trying though, for Will's sake, for her marriage's sake. She tries to resurrect the old Deanna and to
some extent she must be succeeding because Will acts as if nothing is
wrong. She doesn't want to worry him, so
she comes to me instead. She comes to me
and talks and tells me what she feels because we share the fear that Shinzon will be with us forever.
I think, in time, the residue
he left inside her mind will fade. I
think she'll lose the terrible burden of his touch. And I envy her for I think that I won't. For how can I? His touch inside me is not foreign; his touch
inside me is familiar. It's the touch of
my own hand, my own mind, my own soul.
It's the cold, hard sensation of the mirror when you lean your face
against it and know that you touch something that is both the same and the opposite
as your own face. When you get that
close, you can feel everything, but you can't see anything, you can't make out
the details.
I look out the viewport at
the space dock and wonder when I will pull away from the mirror enough to gain
perspective and again make out the features of my echo without feeling this
sense of dread and resignation. I hope
that I will someday be able to look in the mirror and see Jean-Luc Picard and
not Shinzon or Locutus.
But until that time, I try to
envision Data. I close my eyes and
imagine how he must have looked when he destroyed the Thalaron
weapon and the Scimitar with it. Cool,
serene, emotionless but underneath perhaps there was a spark of resentment, a
moment of yearning for the life he was sacrificing. I imagine in my mind that he waited till the
computer had nearly reached zero before firing, that he wanted to squeeze out
every possible second left to him. That
he did not want to end his life at all.
I imagine that Data spent his last moment not wanting to die. I try to tell myself he didn't know the
meaning of despair. I wonder if that's
true.
I asked B-4 the other day if
he understood the nature of sacrifice.
He gave me the sweet confused look that he has worn since Data
died. He does not understand. He may never understand. I have to accept that. But somewhere in my heart, I want to believe
he can become what Data was. That he can
become more noble, more a man than the childish machine that I visit
daily. I have to believe that it's his
destiny to be more than the echo.
Just as I struggle to be more
like the voice he's modeled on. More
like the man who believed in me enough to risk everything to save me, to save
us all.
I push back the despair I
feel and try to be useful. I walk down
the hall and smile and nod and pretend.
I make believe I'm happy and every now and then, I am. I make believe that I look forward to the
future Data gave me, and every now and then, I do.
And then I look in the
mirror.
FIN