Fog blanketed the streets of San Francisco. Light from the street lamps cut through the dense vapor, glinting off of the damp streets. Looks like something out of a Dixon Hill program, Beverly Crusher thought as she glanced out of her bathroom window. Quickly she put the thought out of her head. That wasn't something she wanted to think about. He wasn't something she wanted to think about. Not right now. She stepped into the shower, letting the hot water run over her.

All day she had been restless. It had been her hope that the shower would wash away all the tension she felt. Leaning against the cool tile wall and closing her eyes, she found that it wasn't helping. She sighed and reflected on her day, shampooing her hair as she went. It had been, by no stretch of the imagination, perfectly normal. Meetings, reports, debriefings, memos, research grants. Beverly was surprised at how fulfilling she found it all. Starfleet Medical was presenting a welcome change of pace from the Enterprise. The Enterprise. Jean-Luc. There he was again. Try as she might, she hadn't been able to get him out of her mind lately.

They hadn't parted well. Eyes gazing unfocused through the steam swirling around her, Beverly recalled their dinner together her last night on the ship. They'd eaten, chatted about this and that, and retired to the couch, as per usual. And then, in a rare moment of true honesty, Jean-Luc had taken her hand, that look in his eyes. Beverly's heart quickened again at the memory. He had asked her to stay. It was a selfish request, and that had made it all that much harder for Beverly to deny. Jean-Luc was anything but selfish. For him to ask her that bespoke his desperation, brought to light his yearning. But she had denied him. She had told him that he wasn't thinking straight. That he was torn up inside over Data's death, Will and Deanna's departure, clinging to anything he could to stay afloat, to keep some sense of normalcy. That he didn't want this, not deep down. That neither of them truly had those feelings anymore. She had been scared: too scared to move forward with him, so she had moved on alone. She had risen from the couch and left. As the doors to his quarters had opened, she'd heard him say that she was making a mistake, but she hadn't heeded his warning. The next morning, he had come to say goodbye in the transporter room. There had been a brief, chaste kiss, utterly devoid of any of the bittersweet sorrow of parting she would have expected. It had been a sad kiss: one without hope. And then, she had gone. As she remembered, the hot, damp air surrounding her felt oppressive rather than soothing. It was as though she couldn't get a full breath.

Beverly turned the water off and stepped out. She hated that they had ended things like that. They had hardly spoken since. The one time they had, a few months ago, Jean-Luc had been a different person. Although, she had to admit, so had she. They had been cordial and someone who didn't know them well would have seen nothing wrong. But the heartbreak in his eyes had been plain as day to her.

As she toweled off her hair and body, Beverly tried to center herself. She had moved on, she reminded herself. She was head of Starfleet Medical, and things couldn't be going better. At times she wondered whether that was what she had needed, to get away from Jean-Luc and put that part of her life behind her.

Steam from the shower had fogged the mirror. Wiping a circle of condensation away, Beverly looked at herself. Yes, she thought, that was what I needed. She hadn't looked so young in years. The dark circles she had battled during her time on the Enterprise were gone; she was well-rested. Sure she had a few wrinkles around her eyes, the corners of her mouth, but she was in her fifties. It was only to be expected. Her hair hadn't started to grey yet. She looked…good. And yet, something still felt wrong.

Goosebumps spread over her skin as she walked into her bedroom to retrieve a nightgown. Opening a drawer, she picked through it, looking for one. She pulled out several long white flannel gowns, choosing one and pulling it over her head. God, when did I turn into Nana, she asked herself, looking at the garment. She straightened up, thinking. Sitting down on the bed, she inclined her head in thought. When DID I turn into Nana? She looked around her apartment. Several potted camellias graced the room. Nana's favourite. The nightgowns were certainly reminiscent of her grandmother's. Here she was, alone, only child grown and out of the house, not a man in sight. Just like Nana. Beverly had always had Felisa's sharp tongue and formidable mental prowess, but they often masked insecurity and fear in both women. She looked over at her grandmother's journals, which she kept on the bookshelf next to the bed. I can't be Nana. I just can't. Goodness, I loved Nana, but I can't be her.

The more she thought about it, though, the more she was honest with herself, the more it made sense. Both women threw themselves into their work to avoid dealing with the fact that they had pushed others away to avoid being hurt. They had spent their years carrying on affairs with ghostly lovers in lieu of the real thing. It was true that Jean-Luc was corporeal, while Ronin was not, but neither was anything but a ghost when it came down to it. Her relationship with Jean-Luc wasn't real. It lived in the realm of long, wistful looks, subtle glances, and dreams. In reality, it existed no more than Felisa's with Ronin had, than her own brief affair with the anaphasic life form, perhaps even less than that. Yet it monopolized her life all the same. At least it had: now it didn't exist at all.

A wave of what Beverly could only describe as relief washed over her at the thought. Where did that come from? She wouldn't have believed that losing Jean-Luc's friendship could produce that response from her. But it had. That disturbed a part of her. This was a part of her psyche she didn't want to explore, but she felt compelled to. Why would she feel relieved that Jean-Luc was out of her life? True, their friendship had been struggling before she left. It had become harder for Jean-Luc to push his feelings aside. Beverly had seen it. She herself had begun to regret that so much of her life was tied to this man. Our friendship was poisoning us both, she mused. Jean-Luc was in agony, while she had become bitter and detached.

This wasn't the Beverly Crusher she knew. There was a time in her life when Jean-Luc's friendship meant everything to her. It didn't now and she missed that. She missed being her old self. Since when had a desk job become fulfilling? Since when was she willing to simply delegate tasks to others without having a hand in them herself? Since when did she not want Jean-Luc Picard in her life? The Beverly Crusher that she knew, that she'd been proud to be in her younger years had become a dim memory.

How had she never realized this before? Slowly, but surely, she had lost herself. When did it all start? She thought back. Her horror grew as she realized that it had been years. Much longer than she'd realized. Jack. It started after Jack died. Jack's death had been the first truly great loss she'd experienced. She remembered very little of her parents' deaths, and their presence wasn't as sorely missed as her husband's. Losing Jack had made her timid, fearful of getting too close to anyone else. And poor Jean-Luc had taken the brunt of that. That wasn't all there was, though. She knew Jack's death was to blame for her wariness of emotional entanglements, but that didn't explain the rest of the problem. Her life was stagnating and she didn't give a damn. At last it was clear to her what felt so wrong. She felt old, as though she had outlived the age at which she cared about the things she had once loved and was now simply existing, passing the time until… Until what? Until she died? She already wasn't living. And why was that? What else, other than Jack, had caused this?

Jean-Luc. That was it. She had kept him at a distance for so long, just close enough to keep them both from finding happiness elsewhere, but far enough to keep him outside her walls. They had reached the point where friendship was not enough. The pain of not being the way they were meant to be had finally outweighed the joys of what they had together. But that had not been enough for Beverly to knock down those barriers. Instead, she had left, fed up not just with Jean-Luc but with everything she associated with him: the Enterprise, her position, her patients, all the things she had once taken pride in, once shared with him. Anything was preferable to that life. But it wasn't that she didn't want that life anymore, just that she couldn't carry on the relationship that accompanied it. Finally, she realized, she had to take that last step. For either of them to regain the lives they wanted, it was necessary.

Beverly rose from the bed, a look of determination set on her face. She wasn't old yet and she'd be damned if she was going to wither away rather than face her fears. Stripping the nightgown off, she walked to the reclaimator and tossed it in. That was enough of that. It was time for her to start acting her age.

She walked to her dresser, pulled out a pair of underwear, and slipped them on, along with a bra and camisole. That felt better already. Now all she had to do was deal with Jean-Luc. What would she tell him? Her mind began working through it all. What did she want to say? That she loved him, that much was obvious. It was the one thing that had never really come into doubt. She'd questioned whether they should be together, be friends, be anything, but never whether she loved him. That was a given. It had been a part of her for as long as she could remember. It was the reason that his absence from her life had left such a huge hole. Until today, she hadn't even realized that hole was there, but in the harsh light of her realizations, it became apparent. She would reassure him that she wasn't going to leave him again. She'd tried that too many times and her lesson was learned. She needed him.

What would his response be, she wondered. Surprise, certainly. She doubted if he thought he would ever hear from her again. And she knew with great certainty that he'd given up on her reciprocating his feelings long ago.

Suddenly, doubt crept into the corner of Beverly's mind. What if he really had given up on her? What if this time, finally, after all these years of pushing him away, she'd pushed too hard? After all, Jack's loss was what had started this in her to begin with. Was it so hard to imagine that Jean-Luc had reached a point where he would close himself off to her to avoid being hurt yet again? She recalled the heartbreak she had seen during their last conversation. Had he looked defeated? Not that she'd seen. But his mask had been up. At Admiral's banquets, diplomatic functions, even the occasional briefing or two, she'd seen it before. He had been able to hide his love behind that mask for years, making her believe that they were truly just friends. Could he be hiding his surrender behind it as well?

Or what if he was with someone else? Beverly knew it was rather unlikely, but there had been others before. Nella and Vash had been flings, nothing more. Anij, though. She had been a fling, yes. A result of Jean-Luc's raging hormones. But he still thought of her. At least Beverly thought he did. There were times when he would get a far off look in his eye…. And by then their friendship had certainly been on the downward slope at that point. Anij had been a response to that. What if he had finally moved on?

Shaking her head, Beverly walked over to her desk. No. She wasn't going to let fear and doubt get the best of her. Jean-Luc had put himself out there enough times with no reason to think that she was going to do anything but deny him. She could do the same. She owed him that. She owed them both this one last chance. As she sat down, Beverly ran her hands down the tops of her thighs, taking a steadying breath. All of a sudden she was more nervous than she could remember being in quite some time. This could change everything, she realized. Turning on her computer console, she forced herself to imagine how he would respond.

In her mind's eye, she saw him on her viewscreen. He listened patiently to what she had to say. Even her fantasy self was suffering from jitters. She stuttered and fumbled her way through, trying to get the words out, but he stopped her, telling her that everything was alright, that he loved her. That he wanted her to come back to him. That all was forgiven. In her fantasy, they talked until the wee hours of the morning, speaking of this and that, catching up and planning their future together, laughing and crying.

Her imagining was broken by the chirp of the console. In the dark of her living room, she squinted at the intensity of the Starfleet logo on the screen before her. This was it. The Enterprise was just barely within range for visual communication. All she had to do was punch up the frequency and she would have her answer. Slowly, she raised a hand to the screen, a trembling finger poised over the button she needed. Closing her eyes, she touched her digit to the screen and waited. And waited. She knew the Enterprise was quite a ways off, but the suspense was killing her.

Finally, there was a response. Beverly looked up to find herself face-to-face with a sleep-tousled Jean-Luc. He was in his robe, but hadn't bothered to tie it shut, his bare chest exposed for her to see. It was his turn to squint at the brightness of the console. The surprise on his face was apparent as his brain registered that it was Beverly who had roused him.

"Beverly?"

"I'm sorry to wake you, Jean-Luc, but it's rather important." His confusion was apparent. Beverly's heart felt as though it were about to beat through her chest and land on the desk in front of her. She could see the concern in his hazel eyes and hope blossomed within her. Perhaps this would turn out alright after all. She took a slow breath and began. "Jean-Luc," she said, "there's something I've been meaning to tell you…"