A/N: This is my take on one of the most affecting scenes from Season 3, the mind-meld from "Sarek." Written from Picard's perspective. Episode credits for "Sarek" are Peter S. Beagle (teleplay) and Marc Cushman and Jake Jacobs (story). Remainder is mine. P/C, naturally, but stays with canon. Feedback welcomed.

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He had intended to offer, if only for a few crucial hours, the support of his mental discipline to the great man whose own iron control was, in a terrible indignity, slowly crumbling. He hadn't known how, exactly, he would manage to dam the flood of Vulcan emotions that would be deposited in exchange, the weight of which, he'd been warned, could crush a mere human. But when balanced against the prospect of losing a peace scores of years in the making—along with the chance to enable the foremost diplomat of his age to end his career with honor instead of ignominy—he was willing to assume the risks of the mind-meld.

Still there was, he admitted, no little trepidation. In his own way, Jean-Luc Picard valued self-restraint as much as any Vulcan. If he couldn't hold the emotions, if they were to overwhelm him as they were increasingly overwhelming Sarek, well...he couldn't readily countenance the idea of anyone witnessing such a display on his part. And yet logically, he knew it would be unwise to be completely alone…

There was very little time to consider whether there was anyone he could face being present for, as Sarek called it, the terrible intimacy; but that time was enough to realize that there was, in fact, one such person. He knew—as she told him directly—that she would not approve of his choice to proceed with the Vulcan ritual, but she also would never hesitate to stay with him. And so she waited patiently, in the shadows of his dimly-lit quarters, as Sarek spoke the words that would join their minds.

The strange sensations of the meld were a shock. Thoughts and feelings not his own, memories of countless alien worlds and beings he'd never known but now did know, somehow—all of it poured into his mind, his very self, and he struggled to remember what belonged to him and what did not. Through a massive exertion of will he managed to contain it all long enough to assure Sarek he would be fine while the ambassador conducted his negotiations. Beverly Crusher slid quietly into the Vulcan's seat across from him, watching him carefully. Then Sarek departed.

But Sarek was here—

The eroded foundations of his mind cracked and suddenly he had no more defenses, nothing of Jean-Luc Picard capable of controlling two hundred years' worth of emotions bursting forth in successive waves, drowning him, expressing themselves by and through him with no filters, no resistance.

I am Sarek.

Rage. Pleasure. Bitterness. Anguish. Contentment. Desolation. The torrent of emotions rushed through him and he experienced them not as himself, but as the man four times his age who had spent a lifetime diligently, expertly suppressing them in the rational manner his culture demanded.

And now he was failing, weakening, foundering, and it was wrong. He—

(who was he?)

—raged against the injustice and indignity of it all, lashing out at first incoherently and then with words hurled out into the darkened room.

"It is wrong. It is wrong! A lifetime of discipline washed away, and in its place bedlam. Bedlam!" He shuddered, sighed, and then shouts diminished to a bitter whisper. "I am…so old. There is nothing left but dry bones and dead friends. Tired. So tired…"

A woman's voice, gentle but firm, came from somewhere nearby; he had forgotten her. "It will pass, all of it. Just another hour or so. You're doing fine. Just hold on." Her fingers curled over his on the desk, offering solace, but it was illogical to require solace simply because one could not manage to control one's own grief—

"No!" He yanked his arm from her grasp and spun away, spat out the words. "This weakness disgusts me! I hate it! Where is my logic? I am betrayed by…desires. I want to feel. I want to feel everything. But I am…a Vulcan. I must feel nothing!" He hunched over, beginning to shake with sobs, begging, pleading: "Give me back my control..."

Behind him came the crack of a hand slamming down on the desk. "Jean-Luc!"

He startled out of the despair, turned towards the sound, remembered himself.

I am Jean-Luc.

He saw her—saw Beverly. She who was his friend, meeting his eyes with deep compassion.

Compassion. Love.

He saw her—and Sarek saw—

"Perrin. Amanda." His eyes slipped out of focus again and he gasped at the crashing waves of love and desire, suppressed for so long. "I wanted to give you so much more. I wanted to show you such…tenderness." The word broke on another anguished sob. "But that is not our way…."

He tried again to remember himself, to bring the Vulcan's roiling emotions under some semblance of control, but the onslaught was unrelenting. Faces from the past, from Sarek's past, surfaced in his mind's eye. "Spock. Amanda. Did you know? Perrin, can you know how much I love you?" He faltered over these words, never spoken aloud, shuddering as tears began to stream down his face. "I do love you!"

He hadn't seen her move but suddenly she was beside him, her hand stroking the back of his neck, and to him, to Jean-Luc, her touch was a lifeline, pulling him out of the maelstrom that had threatened to drag him down. He blinked away the tears as he looked up at her, exhausted, struggling to hold on to the lifeline. To himself. To her. "Beverly."

Her thumb brushed his cheek. "I'm here, Jean-Luc. I'm not going anywhere."

He smiled his utter relief at that knowledge. "It's quite difficult," he admitted in a low voice. "The anguish of the man, the despair pouring out of him. All those feelings, the regrets. I can't stop them."

Beverly nodded sympathetically, and to his distress he began to weep again. He did know himself again—but his shattered defenses were so feeble, and the anguish so great….

"I can't stop them," he repeated brokenly. In wordless reply she gently pulled him towards her, sliding her arms around him, and he buried his head against her chest, clung to her desperately as the emotions inundated him once more. "I can't."

"Don't even try," she murmured.

He sobbed against her, giving into the despair, the regrets, even as Sarek's mingled with, amplified, his own. He grieved, as he never truly had, his lost ship, lost relationships with family, lost friends. Father. Robert. Tasha. Walker. Jack.

Jack.

A new emotion—shame—bled through as painful memories cut him, poisoning the comfort he had taken in Beverly's embrace. He drew back from her, shaken, looking away from the kindness in her clear blue eyes. How long had it been? They'd been friends for twenty years, even though he'd been responsible, in the middle of them, for the death of her husband, his own friend. He remembered, now, one of the few other times in all those years they had ever been this close, the last time he'd seen her before leaving Earth after the funeral. In the entryway to her quarters her smile had been brave as she hugged him tightly goodbye, seeming grateful for his support; but even as he had promised to stay in touch, to look in on her, he already knew, shamefully, it was a lie, as he could hardly bear the weight of his guilt whenever he looked at her…And then he'd kept his distance for several years. How was it that she could ever have forgiven him? How could he ever have asked her to?

And how could she somehow be, after everything, the only person he could trust with his very self?

"Jean-Luc." Her voice was firm again, pulling him up from another spiral into the deep.

"Why are you here?" he said hoarsely. It made no logical sense.

She tilted her head at him, perceiving the greater depth to his question, but replied simply, "Because you asked me." Then she reached out, took his hand in her smaller one. "Because you needed me." Her voice became very soft, and he shivered. "Because we're friends."

A shuddering breath tore through him and he felt another tear roll down his cheek as he held her steady gaze. In his mind he felt the memories, not his own but now a part of him, of Sarek's wives, of the love and devotion they had always shown him through the years, even though Vulcan discipline had not allowed such affection to be returned, and even through his—through Sarek's—weakness and decline. If he, Jean-Luc, had ever understood the barest hint of what such devotion might be like, he thought in this moment that he might. He knew that he did not deserve it; but he also cherished it for the gift he clearly saw that it was.

He ought to speak, he thought, but in drawing a breath he knew he wouldn't be able to without breaking down again. He squeezed her hand silently, tightly, instead.

Ever so gradually the foreign emotions within him receded, allowing him to slowly recover his own self-discipline, though his mind was still buffeted with occasional surges of the Vulcan's powerful despair. He concentrated on the touch of Beverly's hand in his as he drifted, exhausted, toward a dull oblivion.

He didn't know how much more time had passed before an electronic chirp broke into the quiet. "Riker to Crusher. Doctor, the negotiations with the Legarans have successfully concluded."

Sagging backwards in his chair, he nodded fractionally to himself, relieved. His role in the peace process, in Sarek's mission, was accomplished. Though it grieved him to know that Sarek's decline would continue, at least he had done this small service in allowing the Vulcan one last, significant achievement by bearing his weakness for a time. And while the part of him that was Sarek might always remain, he—Jean-Luc—had not been subsumed; he knew his own mind.

He also knew, if he had ever doubted, the incalculable worth of the woman beside him.

Beverly raised her free hand to touch her communicator. "Acknowledged, Commander. And the ambassador?"

"Returning to his quarters along with his delegation for now."

"Understood. Crusher out." She hesitated a moment, then slipped her hand free of his grasp and retrieved her tricorder from the far end of the table. He was utterly spent, ready to rest, but he realized she needed the measurements and vital statistics to reassure herself; and he owed her, at the very least, that much. "Adrenaline is elevated…. Your psilosynine levels are still high, but should return to normal after a day or so." She looked up. "I can give you something to help lower them now if the effects are still too much—"

He shook his head. "No."

"All right, Jean-Luc." She folded the instrument and set it to one side, then bit her lip, eyes searching his. "I suppose I shouldn't ask how you're feeling?"

A slight, rueful smile touched his lips. "Truthfully, Beverly, I'd rather not feel anything for awhile," he said dryly.

She smiled, running a hand through her shoulder-length hair. "Right. I think that's understandable. Time to rest now, then."

Helping him up from the chair, she tucked one hand under the crook of his arm, rested the other on his forearm. He closed his eyes for a moment, wavering a bit from the physical aftereffects of his experience, drawing on her presence—

Grateful, he thought, then murmured the word aloud.

"Jean-Luc?"

His whole body was increasingly leaden but he turned towards her, met her solemn, gentle gaze. "What I feel," he explained. "Grateful...that you stayed."

She squeezed his arm and he was surprised to see, after all that had transpired, that only now was she blinking back tears of her own. "I told you I wasn't going anywhere, Jean-Luc," she reminded him softly. "Now come on. Let's get you to sleep."