2.
As he'd suspected – and, perhaps, if he were being honest with himself, hoped – Jean-Luc was asleep when he'd checked on him. They'd shared a study when they'd lived in married captain's quarters on both ships, but this villa had been in Jean-Luc's godmother's family for generations, and it was quite large. Jean-Luc had his own study/library, and he had his own office, which he used primarily for 'Fleet business. By mutual agreement they'd turned the back bedroom into a music room, and he did most of his writing and composing there.
Jean-Luc still had his book in his hand, and Will knew from experience that if the book fell, there would be yet another upset. Sound, which had always bothered the captain shipboard, now disturbed him deeply, and left him anxious and afraid. Gently he removed the book from Jean-Luc's hand – mentally rolling his eyes when he read the title; apparently Jean-Luc was rereading The Aeneid – and set it on the antique reading table beside his chair. He placed his palm on Jean-Luc's cheek, softly, and then removed the shawl from the back of the chair and draped it over his lap. Jean-Luc might complain about the placement of the shawl or he might not, when he awoke, but his complaining was less likely to be as vociferous as it was over the damned sweater.
He figured he had twenty minutes. The captain had always been a light sleeper; their first year together, when he was in recovery from his illness, had been difficult because he'd still been waking with nightmares and the occasional night terror, guaranteed to disturb the man sleeping beside him. In fact, Will thought, as he opened the back door and stepped outside into the warm, pale sunshine; Jean-Luc was often awake before he even knew he was having a nightmare. Now, any noise at all was likely to wake him; sometimes Will found himself wishing he had the courage to sleep in another room.
He didn't, though. Have the courage to suggest separate bedrooms. If he got up to pee in the middle of the night – the joys of an aging prostate – it woke Jean-Luc; if he snored (which was happening more often, probably due to his inability to maintain a decent weight, an irony in itself), it woke Jean-Luc. And despite all of these interruptions, Jean-Luc was still programmed to wake before alpha shift, the habit of a lifetime.
He walked down the stone path, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his skin. There was a light breeze coming in off the water, bringing with it the scent of salt and the realisation that he had to comm. Pere at the marina for maintenance on the boat. It would, he thought, as he walked down to the pond he'd dug, have been a perfect day for a sail. Jean-Luc hadn't asked about the boat yet; he didn't know what he would say when he did. Perhaps, he thought, he would ask Jean-Guy the next time he came home if he wouldn't mind sailing with them.
Jean-Luc's sunhat was floating in the pond. He'd told Jean-Luc to wait for him on the patio, and yet he'd come all the way down here by himself, and then had somehow managed to forget where he was and when he was.
It was terrifying.
He bent over the water and pulled the hat out, wringing it dry. He could leave it on the patio table and then reshape it overnight. He turned around and walked back to the house, pausing on the patio to leave the hat in the sun, and then he was standing in the kitchen, the day stretching out before him; all the things he should be doing but probably wouldn't, because he never knew, from one minute to the next, what he was going to find.
Of course, Jean-Luc was gone from the study when he looked in. The shawl was on the floor; the book still on the table. He took a deep breath, because logically Jean-Luc had probably just gone to the head. It was a big house, and there were any number of places that Jean-Luc could be, either on the ground floor or on the second floor where their bedroom – and the kids' bedrooms – were. He checked first the two heads on the ground floor, the one for guests, off the kitchen, and then the main one off their dayroom. Then he climbed the stairs to the second floor and systematically checked every room, even the walk-in closets. The attic door was closed and locked; no one used it anymore, now that Sascha was gone, except for storage.
"Jean-Luc?" he called. Then, "Captain?" because sometimes that got a response.
He took the stairs two at a time. Round the house, through the dayroom, the formal dining room, the breakfast nook, the music room, the heads, Jean-Luc's study, his office, the all-purpose room which they used for entertaining (or they had), the kitchen. He opened the back door to the patio and the garden, where there was no place, except the shed….but that door was also locked. Could he have gone into the garage? Back through the all-purpose room to the garage; the air car was there, Jean-Luc was not.
Shit, he thought, and then he had to hold onto the doorway, because he wasn't breathing; of course he wasn't breathing, dizziness and then panic as the thought came, unbidden, that he had spent the last sixty-four years in a nightmarish and seemingly never-ending search for those he had lost. He thought, desperately, I don't have time for this, and he reached into that old toolbox McBride had left him and looked for something that would derail the cottony feeling that was the harbinger of a flashback and allow him to breathe. Pause the memory, he thought, pause the memory and take it out, put it in the file cabinet, don't think about it, just do it. Now put your hands on your diaphragm and force yourself to breathe; if you pass out, how will that help Jean-Luc?
Flex your muscles, he thought. Bring yourself back into your body. Take the time to do this now. Anyone peering through a window would have thought he'd lost his mind as well, but there was no choice, and he stamped his feet, bringing feeling back into his legs, shook his arms, rolled his shoulders, and breathed. Count the breaths, do it slowly, take your time. Really, Number One, he could hear Jean-Luc say, after thirty-five years you should be able to do all of this without any issues.
The dizziness passed, and he closed the door to the garage. Jean-Luc had gone out; that was the only logical explanation. He'd left by the front door, and where he'd gone from there was anyone's guess. Mercè was next-door, she and her husband Pau, although he was undoubtedly still at work; perhaps Jean-Luc had seen her and walked over to say hello. He wouldn't think about the other things Jean-Luc might have done – walked down the road in either direction, to the centre of town, to the sea. He walked back into the house, grabbed his communicator from the kitchen, and strode through the front door. He'd been twenty minutes or so outside; another fifteen minutes searching through the house; five minutes to calm himself down. Jean-Luc could have been gone for forty minutes. Walking, at his age, in the sun. Halfway to the centre of Sitges, then, or halfway to the sea. Or maybe collapsed – no, he thought. I am panicky enough.
Of course he wasn't sitting at the table on their verandah. He walked down the stone path and stepped over the gate, and then walked the few metres to Mercè's smaller bungalow. He mounted the steps and pressed the door chime; Laia opened the door.
"Almirall Riker," Laia said. She was twelve, almost thirteen, and reminded him of Rose.
"És la teve mare a casa?" he asked. And then, because the anxiety was building again, "És el capità aquí?"
He heard Mercè call, "Qui és?"
"El almirall," Laia answered. In standard she said, "Come in, sir."
He stepped inside. "Parlo català," he said, and she laughed. "How come you're home?" he asked.
"Holidays," she replied. Of course.
Mercè came down the hall. "Guillem," she said, smiling. "Come into the kitchen. Have a coffee."
"I can't," he said. He already knew the answer to his question, but he asked it anyway. "Is Jean-Luc here?"
"No," she said slowly. "What's wrong?"
Will said, "He was napping, in his study. I went into the garden for maybe twenty minutes. When I came back inside, he wasn't there. He's not in the house. I don't know where he is."
"Deu," Mercè said. "Come into the kitchen. Have that coffee. We'll think about where he could have gone, and then we'll make some calls." She looked at his pale face and said, "There's no point in you going out on the road to look for him until we let the Guardia know he's gone."
"I can stay next-door, Mamà," Laia offered. "If the captain comes back, I'll comm. you."
"Okay," Will said. "Sorry, I just didn't expect…it's been a bit difficult this morning already."
He followed Mercè into her large whitewashed kitchen, and mutely took the cafè amb llet she gave him.
"He could have gone anywhere," Will said.
"You have to think what the most likely place is, and we can tell that to the Guardia."
"I don't know," he said. Over thirty years as a command officer and he was having trouble making a decision. "Half the time he thinks we are on the Enterprise again…and the other half of the time he doesn't even know who I am. I have to remind him, every morning." Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but it was how he currently felt. "I should comm. Rose," he said.
"Could she come?" Mercè asked.
Currently Rose was with Starfleet medical in Paris.
"She was coming home anyway," he said. "Jean-Luc's due for his check-up tomorrow, and Rose was going to be there. She was planning to stay the weekend…it's our anniversary soon, and she wanted to know what our plans were."
"Laia, why don't you go over to the admiral's house now?" Mercè suggested.
Laia nodded, and left the kitchen.
"How bad is it?" she asked, once Laia was gone.
He shrugged. "I don't think the medication's working anymore," he said. Then he stood. "I can't just stand here. I'll comm. the Guardia from the air car. There was a breeze blowing, when I was in the garden. It made me think it was time to get the boat ready. It might have given Jean-Luc the same idea."
"I'll drive into town, then," Mercè said, "but please. Call the Guardia. You don't have him chipped?"
Will said, "He was my commanding officer. How could I treat him like a pet?"
"It's not the same thing, Guillem," Mercè responded, "and you know it."
He shook his head, but said quietly, "I'll talk to Rose."
Rose, he thought, would know what to do. Of their three children, she was the one who always seemed to know what to do.
He called the local Guardia office, and spoke to the duty sergeant. Everyone knew who Jean-Luc was, it seemed, and everyone apparently also knew that he was suffering from an illness which had affected his memory. Piloting the air car, he made the call to the Barcelona office of Starfleet. It wouldn't do, he thought, if he couldn't find Jean-Luc right away, for Starfleet to be the last to know, rather than the first. The young lieutenant he'd spoken to was nonplussed, and had no idea what to do with the information. He left a message for the officer in charge, someone he occasionally met while at the university, and took the turn down to Pere's marina.
Now that he thought about it, it was the most likely place for Jean-Luc to be; Jean-Luc had bought the old ketch himself, and they'd restored it together, with Jean-Luc showing him how. He'd helped Dmitri and his parents all those many years ago with their boat, but there was a huge difference between a tribal fishing boat and the replicated antique sailing ketch Jean-Luc had bought. Perhaps one of the locals had seen him walking along the side of the road and had given him a lift. It was wrong of Pere not to have called him, but he would deal with that after he knew Jean-Luc was safe.
He'd convinced himself that he'd find Jean-Luc in the boatshed, running his hands over the wooden hull, using the sandpaper carefully, humming tunelessly to himself. Instead he found one of Pere's men working on a fishing trawler, with Pere not around, and the marina busy but empty of Jean-Luc.
He could carry on basic conversations in Catalan, but he was too frazzled to try to translate what he wanted to say; for some stupid reason, Klingon kept coming up instead.
"Where's Pere?" he asked the guy on the trawler; he couldn't remember his name. He didn't care what his name was. Using his command voice he said, "Have you seen Captain Picard?"
The man on the trawler said, "Senyor," and stood up, comically, almost at attention. "Admiral Riker. Pere went to the store. He should be back soon."
"Will you comm. him?" he asked. He realised he was standing at parade rest; it was no wonder the man had responded the way he did. "The captain isn't here?" he said, even though, again, he knew the answer already to this question. Perhaps Pere had taken Jean-Luc to get supplies. There was a supplier in town who could get almost anything, including tools which weren't replicated.
"No, Admiral, the captain isn't here," the man answered. His name was Cintet; he remembered that now. "Let me wipe my hands. We'll go to the office," he said.
"Thank you."
Will waited while the man went below, and then followed him mutely into Pere's office.
"On my way back now," Pere said in Catalan, answering the comm.
"Admiral Riker is here, looking for Captain Picard," Cintet said.
"Is he listening in?" Pere asked.
"Yes," Will said. "He's gone from the house. I've let the Guardia know. I was hoping he was here, working on the boat."
"He did comm. me yesterday," Pere said in Standard. "He talked about getting the boat ready."
"But you haven't seen him," Will said.
"No, my friend," Pere replied, and Will could hear the worry in his voice. "I haven't seen him, but I will keep my eyes open. And I'll let the others know." He paused, and then he said, "At the other docks –"
"I know. He could have forgotten which marina the boat was at," Will said. "Thank you, Pere. And you didn't see him in town?"
"No, but I only went to two places," Pere explained.
Pere disconnected, and Cintet offered, "I'll make sure everyone knows here."
"Thanks," he repeated. "You don't mind if I check the shed anyway?"
"No, sir," Cintet said. "You do what you need to do."
Will walked out of the office and headed toward the shed they leased. It was entirely possible that no one had seen Jean-Luc enter the shed; everyone was busy with their own affairs. He noted with relief that the door was unlocked; he opened the door, calling, "Jean-Luc?" He didn't seem him at first; he was on the other side of the boat, on the floor.
"Will? Is that you?"
Will wasn't a believer in supernatural beings, except those that he'd met personally, such as Q, but he muttered "Thank God" under his breath and practically teleported himself to the far side of the boat. He took in Jean-Luc's form quickly, looking for blood or obvious injury; breathing deeply when he saw there was none. He crouched down next to the man he'd loved for almost forty years and said,
"Just what the fuck are you doing?" He'd been thinking he'd go for calm and tenderness; what came out was rage.
Jean-Luc flinched, and Will immediately felt like crying. He'd never – even when he'd been so sick that he'd tried to kill his therapist – ever threatened Jean-Luc in any way.
"Don't be angry, Will," Jean-Luc said. "I'm all right."
He took a deep breath. How could he have frightened Jean-Luc? "Why are you on the floor?" he asked, forcing himself to speak quietly.
Jean-Luc shrugged. "I don't remember," he said. "I – I don't know how I got here, Will."
Will saw that he was still afraid. He said, "I'm not angry with you – I promise you I'm not." He sat down beside him. "Will you let me hold you?"
"Please," Jean-Luc said, and then, "I don't want you to be angry, Will."
I'm never angry, Will thought, but he said, "Come here, then," and took Jean-Luc in his arms. When, he thought, had he gotten so small and frail? "I'm sorry I scared you," he said. "I was just so worried when I didn't know where you were."
"I don't know how I got here," Jean-Luc said. "It was as if I were sleepwalking. I woke up and I was on the floor. I don't believe I'm hurt."
"I'm calling the doctor just in case," Will said. "And I have to call everyone to let them know I found you."
"Mon Dieu," Jean-Luc said. "You mean you called out the troops?"
"You are one hundred and two years old," Will said. "If you think I wasn't going to call everyone and their brother to find you…." He was quiet and then he kissed Jean-Luc's head. "I thought I'd lost you," he said. "What could I tell the kids if I lost you?" He was weeping, holding Jean-Luc in his arms, sitting on the floor of the damned boatshed.
"I'm sorry, Will," Jean-Luc said into his shirt. "I don't know what happened. One minute I'm myself and then the fog comes…and I don't know how much more of this I can take."
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "It's all right," he said, and he was trying to convince himself as well. "You have your check-up tomorrow, at the hospital, and Rose will be there. We'll figure it out, Jean-Luc, I promise you."
Jean-Luc said, "Rose is someone who can help me? Should I know her?"
For a moment Will didn't say anything, because he didn't know what to say. He tightened his hold around the captain and breathed in.
"Have you had a trigger, Will?" Jean-Luc asked, concerned.
Once he'd told the captain – when was it? he thought, and then he remembered that it hadn't been the captain he'd told, it had been Locutus. If the captain is there, he'd said, then he'll know I've never lied to him.
"No," Will said now. "No triggers, Jean-Luc. Come on, let's get you home."