2.

It was too new for there to be any sort of a routine, and yet they'd happened upon having a light breakfast on her patio after waking. The weather was mild and warm, the humidity high but not stifling. When he'd asked her about rain, she'd laughed and told him it was the dry season, which made him tell her that he was glad he'd missed the rainy season. For some reason, this made her laugh harder, and then they were both laughing; and Picard felt as if he'd never been this happy before. He was watching how the light reflecting on the sea was the same colour as the light reflecting in her eyes – he thought perhaps it was the same colour green as a deep tide pool – when her secretary brought her the morning dispatches – a strangely old-fashioned diplomatic term, Picard thought, surprised that there was a padd with dispatches for him as well.

"A new mission?" Helen asked, sipping her tea. She was drinking some citrus-infused concoction and he could smell it from where he was sitting.

"No," he answered, perusing through the messages he'd hoped he could ignore. "Reports, you know…."

"Do you feel them, then?" she asked.

"What?" He glanced up at her, not quite sure what she meant, and then he noticed the corner of her mouth trying not to turn up and the glitter in her eyes. "Do I feel what?" he asked, and he donned his neutral expression for her.

"The tendrils, Jean-Luc," she replied, and he could see it was a struggle for her to keep from smiling.

He was mystified. "Tendrils?" he repeated.

"Reaching out for you, bringing you home," she replied, and he actually looked down, to see if they were there, greenish-grey and thick, winding around his feet, and then they were laughing again, and he took her in his arms, and the dispatches were forgotten.

He was surprised that there was nothing from Will. It was almost a week, after all, and Will usually communicated with him several times during any time he was gone for a long time; this was now heading into his third week of being away. Will had received his message, the one he'd sent when he explained negotiations were stalled, and he'd be staying another week; the ensuing silence, then, was deafening. It took time and organisation to catch up to the Titan; sometimes he had to shuttle to a starbase and then wait several days there; other times, he could take a shuttle directly to the Titan, but there was always logistics involved. Will handled it himself, sometimes, or his XO did; Picard had heard from neither.

Helen, still teasing him about the tendrils, had explained that she had some of her own; work-related; he could come with her, she'd said, to the city, or he could remain at her cottage and she would see him for supper – what, she asked, would he prefer?

He'd opted for staying behind, sensing that perhaps there were things of a more private nature she needed to do. After the intensity of the past week, perhaps it might be a good thing to have a little space, and he was curiously disquieted for the first time since beginning the negotiations.

He watched Helen leave, and then he returned to her kitchen and the replicator for a mug of tea, more out of habit than anything else. During the negotiations, his time had been structured; either he was in the talks or he was preparing, in some way for them; attending meetings, writing and reading reports, and then falling, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep. Since joining Helen here, in her cottage, there'd been no structure to his time at all. They'd done whatever they felt like doing, whenever they felt like doing it; walking on the beach, swimming in the tepid sea; eating, talking, making love. As before, in the negotiations, his days had been filled; this was, he reflected, the first time he was really alone with nothing at all to do in he couldn't remember how long. Years, perhaps, he thought, and he took his mug of tea out onto the patio and sat down out of habit. Even though there was a slight breeze blowing in off the sea, he thought he still could catch her scent in the air, and he breathed it in. Intoxication, he thought; he was intoxicated. He hadn't felt this way since – since forever.

He thought perhaps he could take a swim, after he'd finished his tea. The padd her secretary had brought him was still on the table, and he decided he'd better bring it in before he walked down to the shore. The humidity seemed higher, somehow, today, and it wouldn't do to leave the padd out. He set his mug down and picked the padd up. There was a communication from the Titan, and he couldn't stop himself – first he felt like a naughty little boy, waiting for his maman to scold him, and then he felt anger. It surprised him. He was not a man who felt anger often; he'd always thought of himself as calm; measured; rational. But there was no denying it; anger was what he felt. He debated ignoring the message, and then he wondered, who are you? And where did the real Picard go? Picard would never ignore a message from his ship; would never ignore a message from his lover of over ten years, the father of his children; a Picard, came his father's voice suddenly, would never have an affair.

He set the padd down. He'd had plenty of affairs, dozens of them. He could feel the anger, sitting there, deep down, in his core. Were they tied at the hip, then? He couldn't take a much-needed week off, once in a while? Was it necessary that he, Picard, ask permission now to do something he felt like doing? Who the hell did Will Riker think he was, anyway?

He stood up. He could feel a rivulet of perspiration trickling down the back of his neck, and along his brow, and he wiped his forehead. He wished he'd worn a hat, feeling the beginning of the tingling of a burn on his crown. He was sure the humidity was higher, dry season or no; and the breeze had slipped away. It was hot. He was uncomfortable. He picked up the padd and walked inside, leaving his mug on the table.

The dayroom was cooler, a ceiling fan whirring, although certainly the inside temperature in the cottage was warmer than in his quarters on the ship. He could, he supposed, tell the computer to turn the temperature down a degree or two, but he couldn't understand why the temperature was bothering him now, when it hadn't bothered him all week. Nothing had changed. The weather was the same; diffuse sunlight over a lavender sky which deepened to fuchsia as the evening rolled in; the seabirds calling, the waves tumbling onto the sand. Yet he was hot, and sweaty, a feeling he detested, and there was no one to distract him from the anger which was still swirling around in his gut.

Just what the hell was he angry with, anyway?

Or who?

He booted the padd up, and opened the communication, expecting it to be Will, or perhaps Will's XO, with questions about his travel plans and recommendations thereof. Instead, it was from Deanna, who'd gone with them to the Titan as ship's counsellor. He read it quickly, recognising almost immediately that she was using what Will called her "Ten Forward voice" (even though it was Seven Forward, on the Titan) – chatty, breezy, gossipy, the psychologist hidden. He smiled, reading the opening, because it was not from Deanna at all, but a note from Sascha, who, in his serious voice – which somehow managed to carry through in his first attempts at writing – explained that he had won a prize of some sort at school. The first of many, Picard thought, and then he was reading Deanna's letter, full of ship's gossip about the bridge crew and the bizarre group of new Federation candidates that they'd met, and there it was, in the middle of the froth – Will was working himself to death, apparently, not sleeping and doing double shifts; Rose was teething, which wasn't helping matters; Sascha had written a story – the prizewinning one, apparently, about a little bird who couldn't find its way home. Jean-Luc, she wrote, he will not ask you to come home. He is too proud. You must make the decision yourself, and you owe it to all of us – not just Will and your children – to let us know.

He is too proud to ask me to come home, Picard thought. Instead, he will work himself into exhaustion and then beyond exhaustion. Would he stop eating? Picard wondered. Apparently he was no longer sleeping. In his mind he could picture Will waking, terrified from the old dream which always appeared when he was stressed, and it wouldn't be himself who would be there to comfort him; no, it would be their serious little son, who would somehow take on the responsibility to make Dad okay, in the way that children did; take on the emotional responsibility of their parents. Hadn't he felt responsible for his mother's unhappiness, blaming it on his inability to please their father; on his failure to get along with Robert? Hadn't Will believed completely that it was his fault his mother had died, and thus his father's monstrosity was simply what he deserved?

The anger was still there, and it was because, Picard realised, he was angry with himself. When Helen returned, he was already packed. Neither one of them said anything; she'd known, when she'd left for the city, that it was already over. He'd just needed to realise it himself. He took her in his arms one last time and kissed her gently on her forehead.

"Will he take you back?" she asked, standing beside him on the patio, waiting for the air car to come and pick him up.

Picard shrugged. "I don't know," he answered, honestly.

"Does he love you?"

"Yes." Picard watched a sea bird circling over the waves.

"Then he will take you back," she said.

Picard picked up his case as the air car pulled up. "Helen," he said.

"No regrets, Jean-Luc," she replied. "Now go home."

He nodded and sat down beside the pilot. The Titan had been his home. He was no longer sure that it still was. He had become his son's little bird.