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Until now. Worf was finally doing what he wished. Of his four years as an ambassador, he had no regrets, but he also knew that the best years of his life were in the service of Starfleet, whether on the bridge of the EnterpriseD or in Deep Space 9’s operations center or in the command chair of the Defiant or by Martok’s side on the Rotarran.

None of that, though, made what he and La Forge had to do any easier.

“Thanks, Worf,” La Forge said as they approached the door to Data’s cabin, each of them holding a small plastiform container. “I feel better having someone else along.”

“Of course.” If nothing else, La Forge was a good comrade of many years’ standing—as was Data.

They entered the darkened cabin. Data had decorated his quarters on this ship in a similar fashion to the way it was on the EnterpriseD. The walls were lined with paintings—Data’s own work—and a full computer station had been installed to allow the android a greater range of work functions.

Worf had never thought much of Data’s paintings, though he had never said so. One of his regrets about the destruction of the EnterpriseD was that the hideous painting Data had given him as a birthday present, The Battle of HarOs, had survived the ship’s crash landing intact, thus forcing Worf to keep the work. It was currently hanging in the Rozhenkos’ living room, where Worf had sent it prior to his posting to Deep Space 9. He briefly considered sending for it to keep as a tribute to his fallen comrade, before Klingon aesthetics triumphed over human sentimentalism.

La Forge went over to the desk where Data kept his violin, then proceeded to where he kept the pipe and deerstalker hat that went with a literary holodeck program that the two of them indulged in fairly often.

I should not be here, Worf thought as he set the container down on the floor. This was La Forge’s time to grieve. Data had started painting in part because La Forge encouraged him. The Sherlock Holmes program was something the two of them shared. The music Data played on his violin was human music that to Worf was just painful noise, but which La Forge genuinely appreciated. Worf had many fond memories of Data, but none of the items in this room prompted them.

“Geordi—”

“It’s weird. You know that they took his emotion chip out last year after Rashanar, right?”

Worf nodded.

“I was really worried there for a while. At first, he wasn’t interested in doing any of this.” La Forge gestured at the paintings on the walls and to the items on the desk. “I felt like I lost my friend. But after the Dokaalan mission, he started to act like himself again. Maybe not the same as he was with the chip, but he was definitely more than he was before he put it in. Now—” He shook his head. “Now I’ve lost him all over again.”

La Forge’s voice was shaking, and Worf wondered if he was going to cry. Can he even cry with his optical implants? Realizing that his friend needed some kind of response, and not wanting to deal with the spectacle of human tears, Worf said, “When Kahless appeared on Boreth, Data questioned me about the nature of my faith. He was—curious.”

Smiling, La Forge said, “That was Data all over.”

“When Kahless was exposed as a clone, Data remarked on the Klingons who still believed in him despite his origins in a laboratory. They had made a leap of faith, trusting that the clone was the true reincarnation of Kahless. Data told me of his own leap of faith after he was discovered on Omicron Theta.”

Looking at Worf quizzically, La Forge asked, “What do you mean?”

“He said that he was told that he was an android—a machine—and that he could not accept that he would be nothing more than an automaton. So he made a leap of faith that he could grow as a sentient being.” Worf moved closer to La Forge, and spoke in a softer tone. “Everything he did after that was an attempt to become more than what he was programmed to be—including his sacrifice to save the captain. It was a very Klingon gesture