"Would you like some tea? I've just brewed some."
The words were friendly, the smile gracious as the spry, older man held out a bone-white mug. Steam wafted into the air and he lifted his own drink to inhale with evident appreciation.
She had already accepted the proffered mug before the distinctive aroma reached her, the citrus scent so intimately familiar that she knew it even before her mind could summon the word: bergamot.
All at once the memories rushed in, stopping her breath in her chest, and the smile froze on her lips at the same time as the heat from the boiled liquid nearly scalded her hand, so tightly did she grip the mug.
The tea…
The grief, that sleeping beast curled in her belly, that woke at the smallest proddings, that threatened to devour her even on the days when she maybe could have almost forgotten its existence, roared to life, and she tried to remember to breathe.
Breathe, dammit.
Graying eyebrows knit in concern. "Are you all right, Doctor? Is it too hot? I have some milk."
Blinking rapidly, she smiled again, adjusted her hold on the mug and took her seat, hoping the movements would distract from the weakness in her knees, the sudden trembling of her hands, all the little external signs of the destruction being silently wrought by the twisting monster in her gut.
She forced out words, and her voice was clear as she spoke the lie. "It's fine, Doctor. Thank you. Please, tell me about this new proposal."
Settling into the chair behind his desk, his face brightened with enthusiasm as he began to speak, and she leaned forward, nodded as she listened.
But the monster made it difficult to breathe.
#-#-#
She chose to walk the two kilometers through the residential district back to her apartment, passing along the crowded walkways in safe anonymity. The sharp grief that she'd managed to suppress for the rest of the day had subsided into the usual dull ache, but she felt a lingering exhaustion from it. Most days it didn't take so much effort not to remember; most days, by design, she spent time concentrating on the new: new home, new colleagues, new career.
Most days.
The other days—
She really ought to know better, she thought bitterly, than to believe one year and one hundred light years were enough time and distance to outpace the worst of it. She ought to know better, because she'd been through it all before. No matter how far you fled, it was never far enough, never fast enough to escape what pursued: the million little triggers like so many needle-thin darts arcing swiftly through the air, delivering, with each precision strike, their crippling poison of memories.
Triggers, like a simple cup of Earl Grey at an early morning meeting.
She glanced sideways at the kitchen when she arrived home, then bypassed it, slipping off her shoes and sinking onto her couch instead. She rested her head back against the cushions and stared out her windows at the blackness of the lunar sky. The perpetual darkness might seem oppressive if she hadn't spent so much of her life in deep space, but for her it was a reassuring sight, an indication that she hadn't abandoned her former life entirely. After so many years, she wouldn't feel at home with any other view.
Yet she could also see, in the middle of the sky above, the bright swirling colors of Earth. And it was that view that mattered most. Her son, living down there, didn't need her to raise him anymore, but she needed him, or at least needed to know that he was still safe, still somewhere near; and from here she could feel that reassurance. He probably wouldn't have minded his mother moving closer by than this, especially under the circumstances, but she wanted to respect his independence. He'd had a hard enough time at the Academy since the incident with Nova Squadron to want his mother, as senior a Fleet officer as she'd been, to complicate things for him by her presence. He still appeared determined to graduate and he was close to his goal. She wouldn't risk jeopardizing that now. And she wouldn't try to dissuade him from following the path he felt called to.
Even if she couldn't follow it anymore. Even if it had cost them both so very, very dearly.
Her eyes strayed to the far edge of the globe, half a world away from her son, where she imagined she could almost see, amidst the white clouds in the northern hemisphere, the olive patch of land where he had been buried in the place he had been born. She couldn't bring herself to live there, either; it wasn't her home. But she wanted to be near him, too, because aside from the handful of mementos she'd so carefully packed away, the nearness was almost all she had left.
Jean-Luc...
She squeezed her eyes shut. She'd been so afraid to start a relationship with him, afraid that one day she'd lose him forever, but somehow he had made her want to risk everything for just the chance at a happiness she'd barely fathomed. There was so much love there that it utterly astonished her. And so even though they both knew there couldn't be any promises, she couldn't help but believe it was worth braving all the uncertainties; and for the few years they had together, it was worth it—everything felt right—
And then she did lose him. Exactly as she'd feared.
And it hurt worse than she could even have imagined.
There was nothing she could have done; at least she hadn't been the one who couldn't save him when the peacekeeping negotiations on that far-flung world had gone all to hell. But it was cold comfort. The capricious whim of the universe took him anyway, and her soul retreated somewhere deep within to scream into a soundless dark void.
The voyage to bring him home had taken four weeks. Four weeks—during which she had completed all her shifts, kept to her usual schedule as much as possible, ate her meals at their table, slept in their bed. She accepted condolences and even consoled a few crewmembers herself. The rational part of her that had efficiently, automatically taken over on the outside—that had kept her from completely shutting down at the surreal knowledge that his beautiful, lifeless body lay in her morgue—took cold measure of her situation. The captain's quarters rightly belonged to Will now, so of course she would vacate them; but moving back into her old ones, alone, was impossible to fathom. And the thought of continuing in her position, with the hastily stopped conversations and averted, pity-filled gazes whenever she entered a room, was unbearable.
By the time they arrived she had made the only logical decision. Poor Deanna, as friend and as counselor, had gently tried to keep her grounded, to keep her from breaking all the rules about how she was supposed to be coping, but she was far beyond giving a damn about supposed to's. She left the ship, first; and then she left Starfleet altogether, accepting a civilian position as director of the medical research division of the Lunar Exobiology Institute, where they seemed thrilled to have her. If almost a year later she still wasn't eating much, or she didn't socialize with many colleagues, or she still slept every night on the couch, she couldn't bring herself to care about those broken rules either. She was just numb enough to feel that surviving in this new life was the bare minimum she could manage. Maybe, someday, she would do more than that. (Again.) But now?
Sometimes, she thought, she'd give anything, even give it all back, not to feel this hollow inside.
#-#-#
A beep sounding from her personal comm unit on her desk heralded an incoming subspace call. Startled awake, she roused herself from where she had curled up on the couch and moved to answer. She tensed momentarily at the transmission origin, then relaxed at the bearded visage that greeted her.
"Beverly, it's good to see you." Will Riker's blue eyes crinkled with affection.
She ran a hand through her long, sleep-matted hair and smiled back. He was a far better friend than she deserved, always checking in on her even though she reciprocated much less often. "You too, Captain."
"Sorry if I woke you. How are things at LEXI?"
"Good—I've been keeping busy. We've got a few new projects starting up this month that I need to find a few doctoral students to staff on, and I think we're close to a breakthrough on the ongoing research into Bendii Syndrome."
"That's great to hear. You know we miss you around here. Dr. Selar doesn't quite have your bedside manner. And she still won't join my poker game."
Beverly laughed. "You can't really hold it against her."
"I know. Besides, poker does defy logic sometimes." His wide smile faded a bit. "So how are you really doing?"
She shrugged and dropped her gaze. She considered deflecting the question the way she usually did, but that would hardly be fair to her old friend. "Some days are harder than others," she admitted finally, glancing back up, glad to find not pity, but only honest concern on his face. "But I'm doing all right," she assured him, and caught his tiny, relieved nod. She paused then and studied him more appraisingly. "Why else are you calling tonight?"
He hesitated, broad shoulders visibly tensing. "We—Data, that is—found something in the captain's personal files. A message marked for you. I don't know why it wasn't discovered previously."
Beverly sat back, stunned.
Breathe.
"I didn't know he'd left anything else."
His face tightened. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm sending it to you now over encrypted subspace channels. I just—didn't want it to come as a surprise, so I thought I'd call first."
She nodded, unable to speak for a moment, and glanced at the notification at the side of her screen showing the transmission had been received.
Riker paused again, then nodded once, wanting to leave her in peace. "Take care of yourself, Beverly."
"Thanks, Will," she said softly. "I'll talk to you later."
"Of course. Enterprise out." Her friend's face blinked off to show the Starfleet logo, which in turn faded to the flashing message indicator.
Sitting perfectly still, she felt the silence stretching out around her in the darkened room, while the message light continued to blink.
Breathe.
Her finger stayed poised over the screen for several heartbeats before she could summon the courage to play the file. Finally she tapped it once.
And there he was.
A soft gasp escaped her as she instinctively touched the screen, as if she could feel the slight stubble on his cheeks, stroke the trim gray hair at the side of his head, brush the lips she had kissed.
"Beverly."
The gasp of air turned into a slight choke, and her eyes, always so stubbornly dry, filled with tears as she heard his richly textured voice. God, how she'd always loved his voice.
He cleared his throat. "You're away at the medical conference on Tavela Minor right now, and I must say I'd rather be there with you. Although I try not to display it much around here, I miss you. The ship is never quite the same when you're away." He shook his head with a chuckle, and she felt her heart melt at the sound.
"In any case, I've never recorded a message like this before, and to be perfectly honest, it feels rather strange to be doing so. I don't mean to be morbid. But after this latest...incident with the Cardassians, I thought it would be...advisable. In the event that something should ever happen to me."
Eyes burning, she wiped uselessly at the hot tears streaming down her face, remembering all too well that incident, and how thoroughly, desperately relieved they both were when he had survived to make it home, how foolishly she'd hoped they would never experience that threatened devastation again.
"What I wanted to say is," and he hesitated a moment, cleared his throat again. "Thank you. Thank you for being brave enough to overcome your fears. Because if you're hearing this, then they must have been realized. And I'm so sorry for that. After everything you've been through, I'm so sorry. But if you hadn't said yes to me, to us, then I would never have known this...joy in my life. It's something I never even thought possible. Beverly, I am so grateful that we have experienced this, that you have loved me. It has been my most extraordinary privilege to be your husband."
Barely able to see now, Beverly shuddered, paused the message, dropped her head to her folded arms on the desk—and wept. How did he know? How did he know how she would end up questioning everything, questioning their very foundations, questioning whether it would have been better never to have risked at all, because then she might not now feel so utterly bereft? But he did know, he knew all along, exactly how much it might cost when you bet everything and you lost, and now his words chipped away at the hollow shell of her being, letting in through the cracks the reminders of his love for her, the smallest rays of light that illuminated the entire empty void.
Gradually the ugly sobs wracking her exhausted body began to quiet. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, wiping at her eyes a few times, until she finally felt ready to resume the recording.
Jean-Luc's eyes were earnest, his handsome, angular features softened with genuine affection. "I will try to convey all of this so you hear it from me directly, hopefully many times over the years, and never have to hear it on this message... But if you are hearing this... Beverly, know how much I love you. I always have." A warm smile, and then he shifted and ran a hand over his smooth head. "Well. I don't quite know how to end this, either. I suppose I'll say for now, I am very much looking forward to your return next week." He smiled again, a little gleam appearing in his hazel eyes, and she smiled, too, at the memory of their particularly amorous reunion after that little trip. "Goodbye."
"Goodbye, Jean-Luc," she whispered.
She sat quietly for a long moment, hugging her knees tightly, staring unseeing at the blank screen in front of her, before finally unfolding her limbs and standing on somewhat shaky legs. She glanced around the silent, empty apartment, feeling utterly spent, and her eyes lingered on the bed visible through the bedroom door. It wasn't theirs, of course, but she'd always felt his absence too acutely to be at peace sleeping there alone.
A weary, comforting warmth spread throughout her now, as the echo of his words gave her the courage to take the steps through the doorway. It was a small thing, such a small thing, really, but for all these months it had seemed monumental. Slowly she laid down, resting her head on the pillow. She traced an outline on the pillow beside her where she wished that he was, too.
And she slept.