Gratitude

For musing_way.

Prompt 32: Gratitude

Data was in sickbay, half taken apart, Crusher and LaForge working frantically at putting him back together. Q felt awful. At first he'd thought the sick feeling he was experiencing was related to the attack on him, but the shot Crusher gave him -- after perfunctorily scanning him, and then turning aside to work on Data immediately afterward as if Q's injuries were so trivial she couldn't spare him a word, and given that he was the one the attack was aimed at, that hardly seemed fair -- had at least alleviated the pain in his head and in the places where he'd hit the floor. He was coming to the conclusion that what he was feeling had nothing to do with his human body.

He was alive, and mostly healthy, some bruises aside, but the Calamarain had been after him. Data hadn't even existed when he'd played his games with the Calamarain -- Data had had nothing to do with it. But Data was dying, and he wasn't.

( Debts that cannot be paid )