Geordi Laforge looked between the ambassador and Dr. Crusher for some clue of what to say or do.
"That was a foolish action," Worf finally spoke.
"I know, and I thoroughly agree, Mr. Worf," the ambassador replied. "And I take total responsibility. I started it. It was stupid and insensitive of me. I suppose that I was only trying to tell him that I knew Deanna and she was not going to be an easy target. He could have chosen someone who would have taken a lot less effort," the ambassador concluded.
"So let me get this straight," Dr. Crusher spoke from her seat. "You and Commander Riker made a bet seven years ago when you were the Federation ambassador to Betezed and Will was a lieutenant, that he wouldn't be able to get Deanna to have sex with him? Did Deanna work for you or something? How did she get involved in this?"
"Oh, no no. Deanna was still a student at the university. But I knew her mother well and Deanna and Wendy were about the same age, so there were several social events that they attended together. I had gotten to know her well over the years. In fact, I believe your Commander Riker met Deanna at one of those social events he was attending with my daughter on my behalf."
"And what was that?" Beverly asked curiously.
"Deanna's friend Chandra's wedding… haven't you heard these stories a hundred times?" the ambassador asked.
"No," the remaining members of the enterprise staff said in unison.
"Oh," the ambassador seemed taken aback. "Well, if they haven't shared these sorts of things with you, then perhaps it would be better if I didn't either." The ambassador sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his belly.
"At Betazoid weddings, the guests are naked are they not?" Worf asked after an awkward silence.
The ambassador nodded his head. "Yes, why?"
"You mentioned that Commander Riker and Counselor Troi met at a wedding…" Worf continued. "It would seem to be an uncomfortable way to meet someone," he concluded.
The ambassador began to chuckle. "I would have to agree, but it is Federation custom to comply with the cultural norms that we encounter on the worlds where we serve."
There was another pause.
"So should we deal again?" Geordi asked awkwardly.
"I have another question, Ambassador, if you do not object," Data interjected.
"What can I tell you Mr. Data?" The ambassador turned in his seat to get a clear view of whom he was speaking to.
"You mentioned in the staff meeting this morning a parallel between the Torranian world and their relationship with the Celic's, and the Sirandeen raids that Betezed experienced for over twelve years."
"Yes, I believe I did."
"To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a Sirandeen raid in over seven years. And it is also my understanding from reading Commander Riker's service record that he was in command of the ground troops that led the offensive against the last Sirandeen raiders."
Data waited for the ambassador to respond, but he did not. He was apparently waiting for there to be a question. "Do you feel that the commander's experience in that situation has somehow tainted him on this occasion?"
"No, Mr. Data. Not at all. I value his opinion. He made a decision. The raids were becoming worse with each attack. Several Betazoids had been wounded in the last few. He decided that in the interests of peace, he would rather risk an innocent civilian being lost or wounded to have it end, then and there. If he did nothing to stop them, they would only come back and in the end more people and property would be hurt or lost."
"So what happened?" Geordi asked.
"He has never mentioned this?" the ambassador asked puzzled, hesitant to reveal something that Will had not.
But Data had read the reports of the incident. "According to the written reports, there were nine Sirandeen raiders, and they were pillaging the Fine Art Museum in Betezed's central city. Then, Lieutenant Riker led the offensive that eventually killed all nine raiders, and returned the art, and one Betezoid hostage safely."
"And there hasn't been a raid since?" Geordi asked the ambassador.
"Not one. Will took a gamble, and he won. And so did the planet. They are a peaceful people. Some thought what he did was barbaric, but the Sirandeen learned that the star fleet ground forces would no longer sit by and watch the Betezoids suffer."
The Enterprise crewmembers looked around and nodded to one another, as if to agree that it in fact sounded like a decision that Will Riker would have made.
"But there was one rather large detail that Mr. Data left out of the incident."
Data looked back to the ambassador with a questioning look.
"Did your written records happen to mention the identity of the Betezoid hostage you mentioned?" Mark Roper asked.
"No. It did not. It only mentioned that it was a Betazoid civilian. The identity of the civilian would be irrelevant."
"Would you still find it irrelevant if I told you that the hostage the Sirandeen raiders took was none other than your ships counselor?"
"Deanna?" Beverly questioned. "Did Will know that?"
"You mean before he opened fire on them?" Mark asked.
Beverly nodded.
"Yes. He did."
"And they knew each other?" Geordi asked.
"They had been dating for a few weeks. When Will's troops shot down the Sirandeen ship, it crashed into the jungle. It took Will four days to find her and bring her home. She was lucky she survived," the ambassador finished.
"He found her?" Beverly asked. "Or his troops?"
"His troops had spit up to cover as much ground as possible. He was alone when he found her and the head of the Sirandeen raiders. They alone had survived the crash. He fought the last raider and brought her home safely. I can't believe that none of you have heard about this before."
"Me neither," the doctor replied. "It sounds like something out of an old romance novel."
"Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction," Mark told them. "I think I have probably shared enough about the two of them for one night. I am going to go home and leave the four of you to your game."
"You don't have to," Geordi offered.
"Well, thank you Commander. But I think I have had my fill of bets for today." The ambassador stood and nodded to the remaining players. "Goodnight.
...
Will walked into his quarters, fuming. How could she be so unreasonable? He knew she was angry. She had every right to be. But she wouldn't even listen to him! How could he explain to her what had happened if she wouldn't listen? It was so easy for her to tell him it was all his fault, that he had hurt her and so now he was simply lucky that she would allow him to be her friend. But he had been ready for quite a while now. He had even tried to tell her once or twice, but she had shut him down, tried to maintain the status quo, and he decided he would wait. He would wait a lifetime for her. But right now she hated him, hated him for a stupid joke from seven years before.
Will paced back and forth across his floor until he reached the bulkhead to his bedroom. He needed some way to let out some of his frustration. So he kicked the wall with all his strength and the pain immediately shot through his foot. Now he was just angry with a hurt foot. "Damnit!" He said grabbing his foot and sitting down on the chair, pulling his foot up to rest on his knee. "Damnit!" he repeated. This time he grabbed a PADD that sat on the end table next to him and threw it across the room. It hit the wall and fell to the floor with a thud. He didn't feel any better.
He wanted to yell at something, someone. But not Deanna. He shouldn't have yelled when he left. How could he blame her for feeling used, betrayed even. He had acted so stupid all those years ago. He didn't appreciate that he had met the most amazing person, the person that would touch his life and change him forever. He didn't understand at first, maybe he hadn't even understood at the end, but he knew it now. And she wouldn't even talk to him. All because Wendy Roper got a thrill out of putting Deanna down. Wendy. He had hurt Deanna with that as well. Why was he always hurting her? Why was Wendy hurting her? What had Deanna ever done to her?
And with that one thought, Will was back up and charging out of his quarters, ignoring the throbbing in his foot and heading for the guest quarters where Wendy was staying.
Will hit the door chime as if it were in some way to blame for his problems, and the doors slid open in front of him.
"Hey there, Commander," Wendy said walking towards him as if she were going to hug him.
Will pushed her away from him, holding her by the shoulders. "Why did you do that?" he asked her.
"Do what?" she replied, shocked at his firmness.
"You know what, Wendy. You told Deanna about the bet your father and I made. Why?"
"Why not?" she asked stubbornly, pulling away from him. "It's the truth."
"What?" Will asked confused.
"The truth. Certainly you aren't trying to say that I told her a lie."
"It's not about truth or a lie," Will raged back, his voice getting louder as his anger came billowing to the surface. "It's about hurting people just for the hell of it!"
"All I did was tell her what I knew. I didn't make bets about whether or not I could bag her. You did that. You can't be mad at me for that."
"You hurt her just to enjoy watching it! What did she do to you, Wendy? What did Deanna Troi ever do to you?"
"What would you know about it?" Wendy yelled back at him. "You wouldn't have any idea what it was like to go to a totally different planet when you were fourteen years old…not able to communicate like everyone else and to have no friends." Wendy turned away from Will and walked towards the window. "All I needed was some friends, but I was beneath her, or maybe her mother. I was too mouthy and free spirited. Things that on Earth made me interesting, on Betezed made me intolerable to their society. And Deanna just watched me suffer. She never once reached out to me."
Will watched as patiently as he could as Wendy told her story.
"And it wasn't just her," Wendy said turning back to Will. "She was just the leader. The queen of the ice queens,"
"Don't call her that," Will said angrily.
"She is! No one is good enough for her. I wasn't. You sure as hell weren't. She had to change you before she'd allow herself to sink to your level!"
"You don't know anything about her."
"I know her better than you do!" Wendy yelled back.
"No!" Will's voice roared through the room. "No one knows her better than me. Maybe you are talking about some adolescent version of her that I never knew, but this Deanna Troi, ships counselor to the flag ship of the Federation, commander in Star Fleet…she is kind and warm and giving to anyone and everyone she meets. She puts herself last, behind everyone else. She is the most amazing person I have ever known."
Wendy sighed sarcastically and shook her head. "Where did you get this romanticized idea of who she is? I've been here two days and I can tell you she hasn't changed one bit from the ice queen I remember." Wendy began to walk away.
"I said, don't call her that!" Will said grabbing her by the wrist. He could feel his hands trembling with anger. "Just leave her alone, Wendy. We all have a job to do, so let's do it. But you leave her alone."
"Is that an order, Commander?" Wendy asked, sarcasm dripping from every word. "It's a real shame I don't take orders from you, or from anyone else."
"You'll take them from me," Mark Roper's voice echoed from the doorway behind Will. "It was unkind and unnecessary, Wendy," he told his daughter, walking into the room. "And it won't make anything that we need to do here any easier. If Will says leave her alone, then leave her alone. If he wants you to apologize then you will march your butt over to her quarters and tell her you're sorry. Is that clear?"
Will had never heard Mark Roper talk to anyone the way he just spoke to his own daughter, and the look on Wendy's face only confirmed his suspicion that this was an incredibly rare moment.
"Yes, Daddy." Wendy said softly.
Will looked from Wendy to her father.
"Is there anything else Commander?" Mark asked.
Will shook his head at Wendy. "No," he said quietly.
The two of them followed him with their eyes as he turned and walked out.
...
Within two days the peace negotiations had begun. The two delegations were wary of meeting together at first. Things were tentative at best and everyone was on their toes. After two days of negotiations Ambassador Roper and the captain agreed to assign Commander Riker to work as the lead with the Celic delegation. The leader of the Celic delegation, Parto Brose, took to Will right away. He was more comfortable talking to Will than he was with any of the other members of the crew or ambassador's staff and Will got his way. The Celic's agreed to a large concession in trade routs through the system within the first few days that he was working with them. After that, things began to fall into place. The delegations were meeting with the ambassador together, making progress on each of the issues that divided them.
If only other things were going as smoothly, Will thought to himself as he headed home. He hadn't spoken to Deanna since that night in her quarters almost five days ago. Of course, they had spoken while on duty and about the peace negotiations, but their relationship was like a flip of a switch, on for work and then off. There were no niceties, no words of encouragement. At first he was hurt that she wouldn't even give him a chance, but as the days went on he began to resent the anger she felt towards him, without so much as letting him defend himself. He could tell that she could sense the change in his attitude. It only made her withdraw from him more, if that were even possible.
A full week into the negotiations, everyone was starting to show some of the strain from the constant stress between the two parties. Each delegation negotiated each matter as if the future of their universe depended on it, and to them, it probably did.
Ambassador Roper sat at the observation lounge table with three of the five members of the Torannian delegation. Captain Picard sat with Grota Rau, the leader of the group and Counselor Troi sat at the ambassador's right. Each person had a PADD with the current terms of the treaty in front of them. Grota Rau was leaning in to speak with the other members of his delegation and the ambassador, captain and counselor sat patiently waiting.
Deanna startled when her PADD popped up with a private message.
Counselor,
I need to speak with you briefly after this meeting, in my ready room.
Deanna looked across the table to meet the captain's gaze and gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement as Grota Rau leaned back to rejoin the group.
When the meeting adjourned two hours later, Deanna quietly followed the captain to his ready room and took a seat on the couch as he directed her to.
The captain leaned back on his desk and sighed then tugged on his uniform tunic. She could sense his discomfort.
"Is something troubling you about the negotiations, Sir?" Deanna asked.
"No," Jean Luc answered. "Quite to the contrary. I think everything is going better than expected, even if it can be a bit…tedious."
Deanna nodded.
"No, I wanted to speak with you about a different matter."
Deanna waited for him to continue as he cleared his throat.
"I spoke with Admiral Rogan, on Star Base 131, this morning. He was under the impression that you were interested in hearing about other openings that may be available to you," the captain concluded.
"I'm sorry, Captain. It wasn't meant to be like that," Deanna sighed looking down at her hands that rested in her lap.
"May I ask why you would be looking at other positions?"
"Captain," Deanna began.
"If there is something else you want to do with your life, if there is something that is better for you…Deanna, I hope you know that I would support that. But if this is about whatever has been going on between you and my first officer…"
"It's not about Will. Not exactly. And I was not asking for a transfer. It was just I thought I had to see what options might be available."
"Deanna, you would leave over this…this woman?" he asked puzzled. Jean Luc Picard had come to think of his senior staff as his family and Deanna could sense the captain's serge of emotions at the thought of something tearing them apart.
"Captain, I value my colleagues and crew on this ship too much to not insure that they have the best possible leaders,"
"They have the best possible leaders," the captain interrupted her. "You and Will fight. I know it, the senior staff knows it and then you both move on."
Deanna shook her head. "I'm afraid this might be different. We are both doing our best to do our jobs to the best of our ability, Sir. But I don't know that it is a long-term solution. It isn't what is best for the ship."
"What did he do?" Jean Luc asked flatly.
Deanna only continued to look down at her hands and did not speak. But again, the captain was a patient man and he waited. "I'd rather not say," she finally concluded.
"Well, I wish you would reconsider. If you are telling me that my first officer did something that you find so offensive, so unforgivable in your mind, that you are saying you are no longer willing to serve with him, I think I had better know about it."
"It's personal," Deanna said quietly.
The captain nodded, though nothing about his posture indicated agreement.
"Captain," Deanna spoke again, but the captain turned to walk behind his desk.
"Dismissed," he told her without looking up at her again.
Deanna stood and sighed. She thought about trying to continue the conversation, but he had activated his computer monitor. He had ended the conversation. With another sigh and her head low, she walked out of the room. On the bridge Will Riker stood next to Worf looking over something on his display. He looked up when he heard her walk out of the ready room. She looked drained. Their eyes met and Will had the urge to talk to her, to see if she was okay, but before he could move, she turned from him and headed to the turbo lift.
That was how it had been. When he walked into a room, she walked out. When it was his bridge shift, she was just leaving. It was as if their lives were on opposite tracks. He kept thinking that maybe the next day they would make the time to talk, but it had been ten days since the fight that they had, and nothing was any better. Will watched Deanna step into the lift and disappear, and he sighed with frustration.
After a few minutes the captain stepped out of his ready room. "Number One," he called. "A word please."
Will walked towards the captain and followed him into the room. "Is there something I can do for you, Sir?" Will asked.
"Yes," the captain said definitely. "You can fix whatever this is happening between you and Counselor Troi."
Will sighed and slumped down in the chair opposite the captain's desk.
"I thought this was just one of your spats, and I was wiling to be patient, but apparently she is upset enough to consider requesting a transfer from the Enterprise," the captain told him.
"What?" Will looked up at him shocked. "That's a bit of an over reaction, don't you think?"
"I am not sure what to think, Number One. I don't even know what happened. Counselor Troi tells me it's personal. I suppose I could ask Dr. Crusher, but I'd rather hear it from one of you."
Will put his face in his hands for a moment before he spoke. "I was an idiot," he told his captain. "I made a bet with Mark Roper about Deanna, and now she is livid."
"You made this bet a few days ago?" the captain asked.
"No, Sir. Seven years ago."
"And you bet…?" the captain inquired.
Will took a deep breath. "Mark Roper said that she wouldn't have anything to do with me," he sighed. "I said she would…Somehow it turned into a bet about if she would have sex with me. I don't know how."
"And she just found out about this," the captain speculated. "And isn't too happy," the captain sighed as well. "That was stupid, Will."
"I know. I also know that it was seven years ago."
"Talk to her. Apologize. Do whatever it takes. I am not happy," the captain said. "Not happy," he repeated. "There is too much happening on this ship to allow this to divert any of our attention."
"Yes, Sir."
Will and Captain Picard watched each other for a moment.
"Go!" the captain urged.
Will rose quickly and with a nod, left the ready room and followed the path Deanna had taken to the turbo lift.
He found her in Ten Forward. She was sitting with Beverly Crusher and the two were talking softly. She looked up at him as soon as he walked through the doors. They were locked in a stare for a moment across the room. Then Deanna spoke quickly to Beverly and stood and began to walk out.
Will rolled his eyes, sighed and shook his head, before heading out the door after her. She beat him to her door and disappeared inside. Will did not even bother to ring the chime. He knew she wouldn't answer it. For the second time in ten days, he punched in his security override code and walked in behind her.
Deanna spun around, a look of shock more than rage plastered on her face. "What…" she began.
"You would leave over this?" he asked her, his voice filled with frustration.
"You can not just barge in here…"
"You would leave. You would transfer away from your friends, your family, because of something stupid I did seven years ago?"
"Maybe you're not the Will Riker I thought I knew," Deanna told him softly.
Will stared back at her. Her head was low. She was looking down at the floor.
"No, Deanna. You know me," he said stepping towards her. "You KNOW me."
Deanna only shook her head.
With a heavy sigh Will stepped back. His voice was firm but quiet. He was so weary about this. It had gnawed at him every moment of every day since Deanna had raged at him. "If you would walk away rather than talk this out with me…then maybe you are not the Deanna Troi I thought I knew," he responded and turned and walked away.