He recognizes he isn't worthy of her. Deanna Troi is way too much woman for him and he's certainly disappointed her more times than he can count. But still she sticks around; always at his side. Come hell or high water, in sickness and in health, but always at his side.

This time it is no different. It is just his luck to get wounded during an away mission. He has bruises everywhere; even in places he didn't know could bruise, scratches in his forehead and arms, four broken ribs, and a concussion. He is to remain in bed rest for at least a week, Beverly instructs and keeps ranting on and on about security procedures as she scans him with her medical tricorder for the nth time since he was beamed to sickbay.

And all through it there she is; beautiful and aristocratic, as always, with a look of worry in her eyes that makes him want to pull her toward him and kiss her on the spot. If Beverly weren't in the room and his body didn't hate him as much as he hates himself for thinking about her in such a lascivious manner, he probably would've done so.

"Before you begin," he says, both hands flying up in a defensive manner, "I'm okay!" She walks into sickbay with that usual slyness of hers that always reminds him of a pampered kitten. She is royalty, and she knows it.

The unusual volume of patients has Beverly running out, and they are left alone almost immediately.

"Even you don't believe that," Deanna says donning a smile that attempts to erase the lingering dread that clouds her eyes, but it fails to do its job properly. She'd always been able to lie to herself more easily than she had to someone else, especially if 'someone else' was Will.

Deanna lifts a shaking hand to his forehead, right at the hairline, where an ugly gash lays in plain view. That's bound to leave a scar.

"Will, what exactly happened down there?"

"We were scanning for samples of an unknown mineral when our tricorders detected life signs."

"But I thought there were no life signs."

"So did we, so naturally we took it for one of our own who'd gotten left behind."

"Only it wasn't," Deanna begins to understand now as she sees Will nod.

"There is a pre-warp civilization down there; I fell into one of their hunting traps while they attacked us with their primitive weapons." The Betazoid takes a hard, clean look at him; as if wanting to make sure there is nothing missing.

"That explains the broken ribs and the concussion, but it looks like you took the worst of it."

"It certainly feels like it, too." His tone is beyond acerbic, even when he wants sweetness instead. She winces, an intrepid hand splaying across his chest. She hasn't touched him this way in years, and Will can feel his heart kickstarting with the sweetness of it all. He can read her like a book from cover to cover, he knows her every nook and cranny of that slender body, inside and out.

Her free arm coils softly around his neck.

"Don't you ever dare scare me like that again, William Thomas Riker!" She means it as a form of threat, but her voice breaks and she practically has to bite her tongue to keep from calling him "Bill" or even "Imzadi." To Will, it comes out sounding very much like that time at Farpoint Station, when she begged him not to go even when she had reason to be angry; a reason to hate him with all her might.

But 'Hate' is a word too abject to fit within the context of Deanna's ample vocabulary. She's all love with a few ghosts of her own and a propensity to quote books.

It has now been close to three years. They are older than they were back then, wiser, too. And Will cannot help but draw her close to him, impossibly so, and ask for forgiveness once and again.

Deanna soothes, runs a hand through his hair lovingly. Her heart skips a beat and a swarm of butterflies unleashes in the pit of her stomach. That might be an inadequate metaphor, she thinks; more like killer bees. The professional in her cites information from one of her neuroscience textbooks. It's not love, it's only a sequence of chemicals and neurotransmitters flowing in her brain. And then again, the psychologist in her would quote Freud and tell her she is rationalizing.

"Shh, we'll talk about this later, okay? For now, let's get out of here." They walk laboriously toward Will's quarters, him trying to walk as steadily as possible despite the sharp pain in his abdomen, her as always offering constant support.

His cabin sits like a white, metallic ghost in the middle of a practically empty hallway. There is a simple, metallic plate on the door stating his name and rank. Will enters his access codes, heavily relying on Deanna for balance, and the doors whoosh open. Deanna carries him toward the sofa by the viewport, then disappears off toward the hidden portions of the cabin. She returns minutes later, with a cup of Valerian tea and an analgesic for the pain. With utmost care, remembering her scarce medical training, she presses the hypospray to his neck, avoiding the lacerations and fresh bruises. She then hands him the tea.

"This should alleviate the pain a bit." But by now the cat's out of the bag and there is a giant, purple elephant in the room.

"Deanna?" Her name rolls out of his lips in a whisper, like a prayer.

"Yes, Will?"

"I don't want any painkillers. I want to talk about this; about us." Will sees her swallow, trying to compose herself, and his own mouth goes dry.

"I thought everything that was to be said was already said."

"It is not. I still have more to say," Will swallows harshly, looking at Deanna's black-as-night eyes fixed on his, "Please, Deanna, just listen to me. If not for our current relationship, then do it for the love you once felt toward me."

Deanna says nothing, but deep inside she is burning with the desire to run away and hide in the smallest of crevices she can possibly find in the Enterprise. At the same time, she wants to tell him to shut up, that she has never forgotten him and that she still is madly in love with him just like she was all those years ago. But the words won't come out, and she finds herself just looking at him. His mind and his feelings are nothing but a jumble, nothing makes sense to her.

"Could you help me up for a minute?" She does, walking with Will at a hindering pace. When she tries to help him pass the bedroom door, however, he holds out a hand and asks her to wait for him.

The room is in shadows, but he does not bother to ask the computer for the lights. With painful effort, Will manages to reach the bedside table. He draws out a dusty, old paperback from the first drawer to his left and walks back out into the common room. He doesn't bother to close the drawer.

Deanna is sitting by the viewport, long legs lost under her lithe frame. Eyes fixed on the void of space. He walks to her, splays a hand on her back. Slowly she unravels, eyes sliding past the viewport and back to him. Will hands her the paperback and observes as her eyes open wide, recognizing the title. The cover, black with red lettering, reads Shakespearean Sonnets.

A shallow gasp leaves her lips like an exorcized ghost. Will observes as her eyes, black as the darkest night, water.

"All these years…" she lets out, "you kept it?" Her long, bony fingers open the cover, her eyes find her name at the very top. The handwriting, so very delicately hers, curls and twists into a gracious tracing of black, gel ink.

"Yes, I kept it." Deanna notices the signs of wear on the spine, the dog-eared pages making the book look bulkier than it is, and the fine paper of the cover beginning to tear. He must've read it about a thousand times, and her heart flutters at the fact that he hasn't just shoved it in a drawer and forgotten all about it.

A quick movement of her wrist and things start flying about the room. A Polaroid, a dried-up rose, and a blade of grass fall into her lap. The latter she has no clue where it came from, but the rose she recognizes as the one she gave him before he left for the Potemkin. The Polaroid brings even more tears to her eyes; it is of the two of them, young like the buds of May and feverishly in love.

"I know it's silly, but I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. Whatever happened between the two of us, poor book's as innocent as they come." A smile breaks into her face, then she loses it, laughing at Will's witticisms. And Will wipes an insurrect tear from her blushing cheeks. "That's it, all good now. That's the smile I wanted to see. You're far too beautiful to be crying." Deanna can help the fact that it's been years since the last time they were this brutally honest with each other and blushes even harder.

"Will, I…" She's left speechless when a stout index finger lands on delicate rose-colored lips.

"Imzadi," Will starts, "I know I was the biggest of idiots when I gave you up to go to the Potemkin. It is and always will be my biggest regret…"

"Will," Deanna puts an end to his babbling, a hand landing lovingly on his face, "I let you go because I thought it was what made you happy."

"And it did, it truly did. For a while, it did. But when I arrived at the Enterprise and I saw you… By God, you were beautiful; even more so than how I remembered you, and you were splenetic. You approached me and I could tell by the degree of frigidness in the way you spoke and acted that you were beyond pissed. You were right; as always, the least I could do was a call. But I didn't call, I didn't keep the connection going. Instead of choosing to keep in touch, I chose to disappear. Very much like my poor excuse for a father."

"Yes, you could have. And yes, I was beyond pissed."

"Damn it, Deanna! Could you be any less vague? Most women would be choleric with all of it. Some would even try to inflict pain…"

"Bill," she says, "You forget I am not most women." And the sweet euphemism slides through her tongue and past her lips. It's been a long time, too long since they've been this close and yet so far away. "It is true that I was angry. In my mind, you were able to move on quickly enough and I was clearly too involved to let you go once and for all. There was a moment, right before you arrived when I was able to convince myself of the fact that I'd put your memory behind me but when you did arrive on the ship everything came back like a tsunami. Every minute of every hour that I was sitting on that bridge it was as if someone drew a dagger through my heart over and over again."

"Imzadi," Will is speechless. Words elude him and he is afraid he, too, might start crying if he doesn't do something soon.

"Come sit down," she says, and he remembers he is still standing up and that Beverly prescribed lots of bedrest. He complies, sitting heavily next to her with robotized, brusque movements. His hands slowly find Deanna's, still holding the polaroid.

"Will you ever be able to forgive me, Deanna?" Silver eyes meet obsidian ones, and there is a moment of silence. Then her head lowers, and she fixes her eyes in their joined hands; as if mustering the audacity to speak.

"I already did," she reflects, "I thought about you so often throughout the years that I never realized I did until a few weeks ago."

"I don't deserve you, Deanna." And the professional within her goes off like a proverbial timebomb. Her hands begin to itch, and she must stop herself from psychoanalyzing every single one of his movements.

Will's eyes drop to the floor, focusing instead in the grime atop his, otherwise immaculate, boots.

"Hey," she says, voice now down to a whisper, "hey, look at me," her hand lands on his chin to force him to look at her, but his eyes remain locked on the floor. "Will, please look at me," she implores, and sure enough he does. What he finds in his eyes goes beyond anger, beyond regret, beyond dejection. She's not even sure she can put a name to such feeling. Again, both of her arms coil softly around his neck, an embrace so sweet and yet so bitter at the same time. Will, his own arms coiling around her lean waist, allows for silence to fall over them, like a blanket.

She plays with his hair, her head reeling at the speed of Will's own, then notices how the turmoil stops and everything is quiet. Will has fallen asleep in her arms. Deanna is hesitant to move and risk waking him up.

"Crusher to Counselor Troi," her combadge comes alive with a chirp, startling her. She taps her own badge.

"Troi here. Go ahead, Bev."

"How's will doing?"

"Just fell asleep, but I can see he still is in pain despite the dose of triptacedrine I gave him earlier."

"He does have four broken ribs and a possible concussion. How much did you give him?"

"30 ccs. He should be good for a few hours; I didn't want to overdo it."

"Good, keep that dosage as is and make sure he drinks plenty of water. Dry mouth is a side-effect of the medication."

"Will do. By the way, Beverly. Exactly why did you call me and not, say, Captain Picard?"

"Because he needed someone to take care of him and force him to stay in bed. Picard might be the captain of this vessel, but you know how big of a baby Will can be when he is sick. Plus, Katherine Pulaski told me what happened with Will a few months back in Surata IV." Deanna rolls her eyes.

"I'm going to kill her!"

"Well, she was the CMO for a year, Deanna. She had to brief me." Deanna rolls her eyes once again, a very human gesture she'd learned from her father just to infuriate her mother.

"Yeah, right." Deanna closes the channel.

Will wakes up to find himself on the sofa. Someone has put a pillow under his head and covered him with a blanket all the way to his neck. The room is in shadows from corner to corner.

"Computer, lights at fifty percent." Now that the room is somehow brighter, he looks around. Atop the coffee table, sitting in a neat pile, are the book, the dried rose, and the polaroid. There is a hypospray next to the heap of silent items, and next to it a cup of lukewarm Valerian tea. There is no sign of Deanna, however, and Will asks himself if everything was nothing more than a dream.

He tries to make a movement, but a sharp pain on the top of his abdomen sends him in a howl. Even the mere act of breathing hurts. Whatever was on that hypospray clearly wasn't doing its job.

"Easy, Will, you've got four broken ribs," the voice emanates at the center of his brain, it ripples through him like a river of honey.

"Where are you?" he asks, not outwardly, but instead conjuring the question in his mind.

"I needed something from my office. I'm on my way, I'll join you shortly."

Sure enough, she makes her appearance known a short while later. This time she carries a portfolio with an unknown number of PADDs.

"Crew reports?" he asks, pointing at it. She nods.

"The Captain allowed me to play nanny, just as long as I don't neglect my duties." Will feigns insult now, cheekily eliciting a smile from Deanna.

"For your information, missy, I do not need a nanny."

"Do I need to remind you what happened after the incident on Surata IV?"

"Please, don't."

"I rest my case, then, Commander." She sets her portfolio on the coffee table, the piles, and piles of almost a week of accumulated paperwork. "How are you feeling?" she asks, eyes boring into his.

"Well… like I fought a Klingon and the Klingon won," she laughs.

"It is only to be expected. How's your head? Any headache? Blurry vision?" He denies with a single head gesture.

"Good." Somehow, the atmosphere of brutal honesty from earlier bleeds into one of trepidation now. Will's throat goes dry and he must swallow multiple times before speaking.

"Deanna, would you mind getting me a glass of water, please?"

"Not at all," she says, scampering off toward the replicator, "Beverly said this might happen; it's a side-effect of the medication."

"I feel like I have a hangover."

"You don't get 'hangovers,' Will. You never did." She hands him the glass of water.

"Sometimes it scares the crap out of me how well you know me. You're not reading my mind, are you?" Will takes the glass up to his lips and takes small sips. He swallows slowly as if the mere act of doing so hurt just as much.

"You know fairly well; I don't read minds. As per my empathic abilities, let's just say there are some lines I never cross."

"Like?"

"Like you, for one." Will sets the glass on the coffee table as his eyes shoot up to look at her.

"Why Deanna? Why don't you ever cross that line with me?" Their eyes meet this time. Will can now find within her the answer he seeks, he can find in her eyes the woman he fell madly in love with, all those years ago back in Betazed.

"Because you're too important to me, Imzadi, and I'm afraid of what I can find if I only do so much as look." There is that brutal honestly again; and the sweet, sweet endearment rolling so naturally of her tongue. She still is standing, and he takes her hand and pulls her toward the couch, next to him.

"Imzadi," Will speaks in a whisper now, shortening the distance between the both of them, "Please, forgive me."

"Will," his name rolls out of her tongue like the waters of Lake El'nar, "We already spoke about this. Please… Imzadi, no more guilt."

"Deanna, I…"

"Bill, enough. For now, enough." He plunges a hand into the crinkly, black mass of her hair, his other still grasping tightly to her own.

"You're just as beautiful as when I first met you." The total frankness in his tone makes a sudden blush creep to her cheeks and a small smile spread through her lips.

"Flatterer!" she says.

"No," he amends, "Only a man in love admiring the beauty of his beloved."

Will cuts the distance between them even further, little by little until it is impossible for them to get any closer. Their lips meet finally, one astonishing symphony of synchronicity, austere one minute and a raging fire the next. It's been a long time, too long, and their lips hunger for far more than a simple kiss. The swarm of killer bees in the pit of Deanna's stomach comes alive once again, and heat rises to her cheeks even more violently than before.

The need for oxygen breaks them apart. Chest heaving, forehead to forehead, hand in hand, they allow for their heartbeats to steady down to a normal flutter. There is silence, the room is now in shadows, but little do they seen to mind.

"Sickbay to Counselor Troi," it is the comm that breaks their pristine reverie. She smiles, taps the Starfleet insignia close to her heart.

"Go ahead, Doctor." Her mind is befuddled, and something so routine as answering a communication channel appears difficult.

"How's Will doing?"

"Bruised to an inch of his life, but fine. He did mention the medication made him feel a bit queasy."

"Hmmm… make sure he drinks plenty of water, his exams came up and he is severely dehydrated. Remember what we spoke earlier. Has he any headache or blurry vision?"

"No, he says he feels fine." A lean hand lands on Will's hair, running smoothly through it.

"That's excellent. Let me know if anything changes. Crusher out."

Deanna closes her end of the channel, turns to look at Will. He laughs and pulls her in his arms.

"There's no privacy on this damn ship!" Deanna laughs, her laugh a song to his ears.

"I agree," Will pulls her toward him once again, their lips touch vaguely, "But don't worry," she adds, "Since I will be the one babysitting you, we'll spend plenty of time together."

"I told you, Beautiful, I do not need babysitting." He plants another kiss on her lips, longer than the last, this one a spreading wildfire. A thin, lanky hand splays on his chest then another.

"Will," her voice is barely a whisper, a warning so much for herself as it is for him. She can feel the proverbial electricity zapping between them, and the amount of energy she employs in the mere act of restraining herself is so great that it could be enough to power the Enterprise and four other Galaxy-class starships.

"I know. Slowly," she nods, then stands up, walks to the replicator. She inputs a code after another and a cup of coffee with milk and a slice of chocolate cake materialize on the replicator pad. She saunters back to the couch, hands him the coffee. Will examines at it.

"You remembered?"
"How could I not? You tormented me with it for months." Will laughs as Deanna takes a bite of her chocolate cake.

"Now, why do I get the feeling we've been here before?"

"That's because we've been here before, Imzadi." He is clueless, and she adds, "Betazed, stardate 35241.01."

"Oh, that's right! Your 22nd birthday!" Deanna nods with a smile and takes another bite of chocolate cake, "You were wearing that skimpy, pink dress your mother forced you to wear…"

"And that barely covered anything," she finishes for him.

"You nearly drove me half-mad. Only the Four Deities know how the hell I restrained myself."

"And a fine job they did at that! If my memory serves me well, you were like a kitten on hot bricks for most of the night."

"Damn right, I was! Had your mother breathing down my neck!"

"Liar!" she laughs, "It wasn't my mother's presence what had you at the edge of your seat; it was the way Emmett Wilson was looking at me from the other end of the room." He laughs again. It's been a while since they were together, but he knows better than to argue with an empath; particularly this empath.

"Well, what can I say, Darling? I'm a jealous man, especially around you."

"Oh, that I know; you don't have to tell me."

"You're sharp as a tack today, aren't you?"

"With you, I have to be. Besides, you needn't be jealous, Commander. I've been yours since the first moment we met that fateful, rainy day in that old, dusty café back in Betazed. "

"Yes; as I remember, you were sitting alone with a cup of black coffee and a copy of Notes from the Underground."

"It was The Antichrist, actually," and suddenly the small smile that has crept her way into her pale complexion turns into a bitter scowl she has no time to bite back before he notices, "And it was the fourteenth anniversary of my father's death. That's why the black coffee was just sitting there, why every year on that day I set out a cup of black coffee and just sits there until it goes cold."

"Yes, it always weirded me out when you did that, and you never told me why. But I figured we all have our rituals, very much like Worf's especial calisthenics program or Captain Picard's Shakespearean stories. I was sure it was a Dostoevsky, though."

"The human brain is terrible at recalling information…aaand I am babbling." Her eyes have turned into black storms of grief, and he intends to bring back the brilliance of her; all of it."

"I love it when you babble, Imzadi."

"Gods, no! I sound like a middle-schooler!" She shudders, eliciting a smile from him.

"A cute middle-schooler, then." He kisses her again; less urgency and more sweetness this time. She closes her eyes, her brain turning to mush for about two seconds, then her reaction time kicks in and she manages to push him away. Will can see in her eyes that all clouds of the storm have rolled away and instead replaced with the effervescent hum that usually is the antecedent of passion.

"Alright, enough of this, William Riker. You're trying to sweet-talk me, and I won't have that. Off to bed with you, right this instant! If my memory serves me well, the Doctor prescribed bed rest," she scolds, very much in the tone a mother would use with her recalcitrant children. Will whines like a two-year-old with a temper, but he knows Deanna's temper is much worse. He's had the opportunity of seeing it a few times and he does not want to elicit it.

So, he goes off to bed, and Deanna injects another 30 ccs of triptacedrine into his neck before covering him up for a blanket. She kneels, tucks back a loose strand of graying, black hair and caresses his cheek lovingly with the back of a pale, bony finger.

"I'll be outside," she says, obsidian buried into cool gray, "Call me if you need anything."

For the next three to four hours, she hears not a peep. She assumes he sleeps since she cannot feel the constant rumination that she's come to identify as his and only his. Deanna opens her portfolio, pulls out a handful of PADDs and disposes herself to get some work done; but she finds her mind wandering between Will's condition and the conversation they just had. Her lean, right-hand flies up to touch her lips lightly, right where Will's were just a moment ago.

"Oh, for Goodness' sake! I'm like a lovesick teenager!" Her comm goes off, but instead of Beverly, it's the Captain's voice that comes through.

"Picard to Counselor Troi."

"Go ahead, Captain."

"How is Commander Riker doing?"

"No signs of blurry vision or headaches, no major infections for what I can tell. He is bruised to an inch of his life, has a severe case of dehydration, and four broken ribs. He'll be okay, though. Will is as strong as he is pigheaded. He is asleep right now."

"Why, Counselor, maybe we should let you play Riker's nanny more often!"

"Gods, no! Once is more than enough, he is a big baby when he gets sick."

"Yet, you still nurse him back to health every time. I always wondered what that was about."

"Maybe one day I'll tell you all about it, Sir."

"I'd like that. Keep me updated. Picard out." Deanna closes her end of the comm channel, forces her eyes down on the PADD in her hand. Paperwork won't fill itself out.