Story notes: I didn't originally have any intention of tackling "Sub Rosa" in a story, as the truth is, as much as I appreciate Gates McFadden's efforts in this episode, I have a tough time with the plausibility and some of the implications of it. (Yes, I know that's arbitrary, but for me, temporal causality loops and phasing cloaking devices = fine; seven-hundred-year-old anaphasic ghosts = questionable.) Nevertheless, my muse apparently had other ideas since I'm a few thousand words down the line now. For the first three scenes, almost all dialogue is Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga's—I'm just novelizing these scenes from Picard's POV. Scenes after those will be mine.
Clenching the padd in his hand, Jean-Luc Picard moved determinedly through the Enterprise corridors, hoping he wasn't too late to catch her. As the transporter room doors hissed open, he found her, dressed in a long brown skirt and floral vest, setting down her suitcase on the cargo transport pad. But instead of feeling relieved that he hadn't missed her, he felt only consternation.
Beverly Crusher flinched almost imperceptibly at the sight of him, meeting his eyes with an agitated look that disturbed him. It was clear that she hadn't wanted him to find her.
Too bad. "Beverly," he said through gritted teeth, brandishing the padd and its offending message in front of him, "what the hell is this?"
She was speaking too fast, almost nervously. "I thought it was pretty self-explanatory. I'm leaving Starfleet," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to abandon her career of two decades without a personal word to anyone—or at the very least, to him. She looked behind him and rushed the word: "Energize."
"Belay that order," Picard snapped to the transporter chief over his shoulder. He turned back to regard his chief medical officer—his closest friend—with a measure of bewilderment, not sure how to even begin to have this discussion when she was being so irrational. Uncomfortable with having an audience, he lowered his voice and tried again. "Beverly. You can't just resign," he insisted.
"I can, and I have. I've decided to stay on Caldos and become a healer like my grandmother. It's a proud Howard tradition and I've decided to uphold it. Energize." At the transporter chief's hesitation, her eyes blazed at Picard. "I've resigned my commission, so unless you plan on kidnapping me...?"
He cursed inwardly. He had no intention of accepting the abrupt resignation, but it had been submitted, and if she would barely even talk to him, she certainly wouldn't obey an order at this point. Mutely, he nodded an assent to the chief, and watched her shimmer out of existence in front of him.
This would not be the end of it.
"Beverly was attracted to Ronin in a very intense and—intimate way." At the counselor's choice of words, Picard turned around sharply to find that Deanna Troi looked almost apologetic, knowing the man she was speaking to. "I warned her that it was all very sudden but she didn't want to talk about it, so I let her alone. I sensed that she was holding something back, that she wasn't telling me the whole truth."
Unsurprising. She certainly hadn't mentioned anything to him. Picard's frown deepened. "Do you think this Ronin could be exerting some sort of influence over her? That it's because of him that she's staying?" It was the only thing he could think of that made any possible sense. Beverly had seemed more or less at peace with her grandmother's passing after a long, fulfilling life, and she hadn't seemed at all inclined to make drastic changes in her own life because of it, until the appearance of Ronin. Although, come to think of it, based on what the counselor was saying, Ronin hadn't "appeared" to anyone except Beverly—as far as he knew, no one else had been introduced to the man yet. It was damned odd.
"It's possible," Deanna agreed. She hesitated, then added gently, "But she may really believe she's in love with him."
The words stung, and as he turned back to stare out his ready room window at the planet below, Picard found that he rejected them out of hand. He couldn't accept that—not now, not after Kesprytt. Beverly might not have been ready to act on her feelings for him, but she did have them. He knew that with a certainty. And even if he was somehow mistaken, their decades-long friendship would be more than enough consideration for her not to act in this manner. No—he simply couldn't accept that she could fall in love with someone so completely within mere days that she'd throw aside her whole career, and their friendship, without so much as a by-your-leave. The very notion was outlandish. He shook his head. "This is a rash decision, ill-considered," he said in a tight voice. "It's not like Beverly at all."
"I agree," Deanna said quietly, "but she does have the right to make that choice, even if we don't feel it's a good one."
He didn't reply to that. He usually found Deanna's counsel to be helpful, but he strongly disagreed with her now. Beverly's right to make the decision was hardly the point at issue, and he was at a loss as to why the counselor thought this would somehow placate him. Or, for that matter, how it could satisfy her, as Beverly's other closest friend on board. For his part, it was simply was not a decision he could, or would, accept so easily. If Beverly was going to leave, he at least wanted to understand why. She owed him that much.
The door chimed and Data entered. "Captain, Geordi and I have detected an energy residual with the same anaphasic signature as the one we found on Ned Quint's body."
He paused, glancing at Troi. "Where?"
"Approximately seventeen kilometers from the center of the colony, sir," Data replied. "It is coming from the cemetery."
He couldn't quite articulate his suspicions yet, but he was starting to feel that all of this was somehow connected. "Data, I want you to go down to the cemetery. See if you can pinpoint the source." After the android had left, Picard said grimly, "In the meantime, I would like to meet with this Ronin."
He waited for Troi to object, but when he met her solemn dark eyes, she only nodded her agreement. "Good luck, sir."