At the end of all things - Picard

Everything was quiet. The sun was slowly making its way across the wall in their living room. From outside the sound of children laughing and playing reached him. As in a dream. Or another reality.

So far had they come. So long a journey through an unstable universe. So many dangers, so many days of work, and oh so many broken dreams, but still, together they were, labouring on their endless task... and now...?

He shifted on the couch, but even that was painful, and could only be done slowly, slight nausea washing over him. He sighed and stayed still. He could smell the soup simmering in the kitchen and freshly baked bread, he could smell fresh grass through the open window, from far away he thought he heard the regular beating of hooves on a dirt road, and wished SHE would come to see him and banter away his fears. She would laugh already in the kitchen, noisy and brilliant as ever, she would enter the living room and approach the couch that now confined him, bringing colour and life into the room. And she would talk. Well, the latter was inevitable.

Footsteps announced the coming of somebody, but not her. These footsteps were more familiar, a part of his life for countless years, in good times and bad, and dangers uncountable, but now she settled on a footstool with a gentle smile on her still beautiful face. He raised a hand to caress her face and touch her hair, once a flaming halo around a face lost in passion... or a fire framing a worried frown in times of trouble, but now it was grey with only fleeting strands of red. He smiled at her.

'Beverly...'

'Haya is coming over for lunch with the girls. The school is over, and they will be home for a couple of weeks at last...'

'And Wes?' He asked, not knowing what answer he would expect

'He stayed in Timbur, he said the were so much to do, the election is coming up fast and he...he really believes in it...' She fell quiet, obviously worried.

'He is running for president? For real? What will he do when he fails?'

She didn't answer right away but looked without seeing at the wall and the photos there. Including the wedding picture of Haya and Wesley on a holodeck location years ago. Her daughter in law was looking right into the camera with a strange look of trust. A look she had lost way to fast when life – again – had played tricks on the poor girl. Not that she ever complained. Honor forced her not to. She was never very klingon in her ways, but somehow that honor-part was so much part of her being that she would endure anything as long as she didn't loose face.

'He don't believe he will loose, I think. He...He honestly believes that he will win because of his closeness to you...and to Will of course...that we have done so much for the colony that he will benefit from it...'

'One more reason why he should have stayed at the university, teaching! This...It smells of neopotism Beverly!'

He edged himself up in a sitting position, forgetting pain, nausea and weakness, her old 'captain' suddenly visible through the mask of an old, frail man. She tried to calm him down.

'Really Jean Luc it is a democracy. He will not win just because he wants to. He will win if the people of Tajo believes in him...'

She tenderly put a hand on his chest

'... and I will make a sidedish besides the soup when Haya and the girls are coming. Will caught some very nice trout last time he went fishing and Data smoked them...' She leaned forward and kissed him, happy to see him smiling at her again.

'I believed I heard a horse...?'

'It was Surea. I am sure she will look in on you when she returns'.

She kissed him again and left the room.

He sighed deeply, trying to push his annoyance with Beverly and Jacks son out of his mind. Wesley was ever brilliant, but also... a bastard. How could a child of two so lovely people end up being so...not lovely. At least he had provided them with Haya and their two girls Gaia and Bethra. And to be honest, those two girls, although now grown young ladies, was the joy of his twilight years... Twilight years! What a beautiful frase for something with that little dignity. Or at least dignity had been a rare commodity the last year. He had never been concerned about Beverly being younger than him, after all he had felt almost immortal...until last year...

Time is the fire in which we burn... he shaked his head at the memory. What made him furious was to see Beverly grow old and careworn, to see her slowly fade, her beauty seeping away, to see Will suddenly look like his father did, to see the lines tracing Deannas flawless face, to know that they would all be forced to move on toward the last frontier, the last adventure... And this time...they would not be together. They would leave one by one leaving only Data behind... He closed his eyes. What made him furious was that they had lived through all those dangers, all those missions, assimilations, coups, violent diseases and wars, wars enough for several lifetimes – and the final war for the freedom of every living being and the survival of their colony...to end here. Dying slowly in a living room in his case!

But it was ironic. Because that had been the very same thing they fought and died for...then. To be able to die in peace, of old age surrounded by loved ones. Why was it part of being human never to be satisfied? Because if a wish came true, it was always with a bitter-sweet taste? Well not every wish, he amended, Beverlys song reaching him from the kitchen. Her voice was not so powerful as it was once, but still hauntingly beautiful. To be granted what he had wanted most all his life, had never been bitter.

Try as he might he could not pry his mind away from Wesleys silly dreams of election. That was not how he wanted it to be! The colony was more a colony of the mind, supposed to run itself along guidelines, and what he and later Will had done, was more diplomatic in nature, had to do with relations to the universe that surrounded them rather than dreams of a palatial residence and power. Indeed. If Wesley and the other fools, H'scun in particularly, was to decide it would bring them right back were it all began. Right back were they broke free from the federation. He sighed. He was old, and weak, and utterly powerless. Maybe this was also the nature of man, regardless of the exact species, to feel compelled to make mistakes over and over again. Not that it mattered, really.

After it was all over they, meaning his senior officers and friends, had settled in the village of Jemo on Dneb III, part of the colony of Tajo. There they had stayed and there they lived that very day. Of course he had guided the colony in the early years, with Will as a helping hand, and the others as well, of course. Each in tune with his or her talents, and the years going by so fast. Now they were all old – or at least older. There had been many wounds to heal, but together they did it! And they were still with him...all of them. All who were alive anyway. In the last months Tasha had entered his dreams. And he wondered if she was coming to pick him up, but he didn't dare to tell anybody. Maybe I will tell Surea he thought, drifting of. Silently happy they all were beside him, at the end of all things...