Part 10
'Breathe, Beverly,' she coached herself as she stood outside the door. Her palms were damp as she smoothed her straight black skirt and tugged on the hem of her ivory blouse in an unconscious mimic of the man she was about to face. 'Just ring the bell and stop imagining what you think he'll say.'
The doctor knew this surprise visit was going to give her the upper hand, but somehow it was not giving her the confidence she hoped for and desperately needed. Waiting a day hadn't been an emotional bolster either. She was holding her breath again as she pressed the door chime.
His sharp, "Come" told her he wasn't pleased at being disturbed at this hour. That was key to her plan. First he would be angry, but his anger would falter when he saw who his visitor was. That was another key. He was still in uniform as she had known he would be... which was why she had chosen civilian clothes.
Shock flashed across his face before he could put his 'Captain's face' firmly in place. When he didn't offer her a seat, she remained standing but moved closer to where he sat on the sofa so that he was forced to look up at her.
His tone was suitably neutral, and only a friend of long standing would hear the faint edge of annoyance as he asked, "What can I do for you, Doctor?"
Use of her title told her how to proceed next.
"A few minutes of your time, Jean-Luc." She saw confusion in his eyes when she called him by name. She had so many keys to him... except the key to his heart.
"I've made a couple of decisions that I believe you have the right to know about first hand. I'm leaving Starfleet. I could simply leave the Enterprise, but I want the gossip to die down as soon as possible."
"Leaving? Why? And why would there be gossip?" he asked aloud. 'And why involve me?' was the question he kept to himself.
"It seems that I've hurt you, Jean-Luc -- terribly. The problem is, I don't know how I've hurt you. You won't tell me, and I can't figure it out. All I can say is that I would never deliberately cause you pain. That's why I'm leaving."
She stopped, looking away. None of this had been easy, but now came the hard part. Turning back, her blue eyes locked with his hazel ones. "I'm pregnant, Jean-Luc," she said softly. "I know how much the speculation would bother you, so I'm leaving before anyone else finds out. I'm going to Caldos. It's not on the regular Starfleet traffic pattern so there is less chance for me to encounter anyone who knows both of us."
Realizing that she was just short of babbling, she forced herself to slow down. "Please understand that I don't expect anything from you, Jean-Luc. I'm telling you where I'll be in case you ever want to see the baby. I won't try to keep you away. You aren't comfortable with children, but if you should feel differently about your own child..." The hope that blazed in her heart quickly burned out as his face remained impassive. "Just tell me how you want me to handle it, and I will."
Jean-Luc wasn't sure that she took more than one breath during her final speech. It was one more than he had taken.
When she came through the door, he had been caught unawares to the extent that he could not get to his feet to face her squarely. The announcement that she was leaving had been so quickly followed by her apology for hurting him that he could scarcely comprehend the revelation about her pregnancy. It was too much information too quickly. He spoke words he hadn't known were waiting on his lips.
"You intend to keep this child?"
Despite the validity of the question, he phrased it badly, and that was the way she chose to take it.
"Let me amend my statement," she said, glowering down at him, unconsciously wrapping her arms around her waist. "I'll do almost anything you want, but this baby is also mine. Yes, I intend to keep it. If you never want to hear from me again, I'll abide by your decision." She nearly choked on the words, knowing she would pity him forever for turning away his child.
"Why?" he asked slowly, still trying to get a grasp on what was happening.
"Why what?" she demanded sarcastically, determined to make him state his position clearly.
Confused on so many levels, Picard wasn't quite sure what he meant.
Why had she rejected him when they returned? Why did she want this child? Why had she told him about the baby? Why did she care about how he felt?
Just how did he feel?
The first clear emotion was the one that had become a part of him the moment he first saw her. He loved her. Unspoken for years -- then rejected when it was spoken -- it was still and would always be the way he felt about her.
"When you were..." his voice cracked and he had to start again. "When you were 'dying', I told you I love you. In front of everyone. But when it was all over, you said it was a fantasy, and you were bored with it." The anger and betrayal he had felt at her words surged within him once more. His voice rose, "You let me believe that what happened between us was real..." before it broke to a harsh murmur "and then you tossed it aside as though it was some casual shore leave liaison." Unable to bear seeing the truth of his words that he knew would be in her eyes, he kept his gaze locked somewhere around her knees.
She heard the pain that darkened every word and would have been properly contrite and sympathetic for inadvertently hurting him with her imprecise statements -- if he had told her any of this during their conversation in his Ready Room. But he had chosen to shut her out and that infuriated her.
"Are you upset that you revealed your feelings in front of your crew or is it the fact that I had the gall not to die?" She gave him no chance to answer the question. "Last week you loved me, the week before that it was Anij. Who will it be next week? You don't love me or anyone, Jean-Luc," she added harshly, "you just love being a martyr."
His head snapped up at the accusation. "How dare you! I..."
"You what, Jean-Luc? You love me so much that you let me marry another man? So much that you let me go when I said I was afraid after Kesprytt? So much that you let me trample your heart again and again?"
Her own bitter laugh sounded foreign to her as she lashed out again. "That's not noble, Jean-Luc, it's pathetic. Did it ever occur to you that I might not have married Jack if I'd known how you felt? Did you care enough to ask me why I was afraid? Did you confront me about my 'boredom' to find out if I might have been trying to protect you from embarrassment? Did you stand up for yourself at all?"
She forestalled his attempt to respond with a raised hand. "No, you never do anything because you'd rather wallow in self pity. You carry on a string of relationships that you have no intention of committing to and blame me for holding your heart hostage. Well, I'm not playing your games any more. Decide now -- do you want me to stay in touch after the baby is born or do we end this whole thing now? What do you want?"
Her accusations and revelations pounded in his head. He wanted to scream back at her but could find no words because everything she had said was true. All the confidence and decisiveness he showed as a Starfleet officer seemed to fade away when it came to the woman he loved.
Amidst all the chaos, only one thing was important.
Slowly, he said, "I don't want you to 'stay in touch'..."
Hearing her soft gasp, he looked up to see her blinking back tears and knew that she had misunderstood his words the way he had misunderstood hers to start this mess. He spoke again quickly to correct her erroneous impression. "I don't want to be an absentee father."
Rising from his seat, he moved to stand in front of her, aching to touch her but holding back for fear of upsetting her more. "I want you to stay here so I can help you and be a part of the baby's life every day. I don't care about gossip or speculation, because nothing about you or our child could ever embarrass me. I love you, Beverly."
The words touched her heart, but she could not allow herself to be moved by them -- not yet. "Is that supposed to solve everything? I've just said some terrible things to you, and you've been thinking terrible things about me. Is one 'I love you' supposed to make that all go away?"
"No, but I hope that it will give us a better place to start. You were right about me. I was -- am -- afraid to find out exactly what you meant about being bored."
He held out his hand and waited an eternity for her to take it, grateful for the small concession. "Over the last ten days, everything I thought I could rely on in my life has been turned upside down. The Federation, Starfleet, my own judgment. I hadn't begun to recover from that when Q came along with his own brand of confusion and for whatever reasons, I was granted my deepest wish of being able to make love with you. Then you seemed to turn away... and I was no longer sure what was real and what wasn't." His voice hardened in self-recrimination. "No that's not true. I knew it was real, but I've never allowed myself to believe that you could love me. When you said you were bored with everything..."
"I never said I was bored with you," she interrupted softly, wanting desperately to stop the pain they had caused each other. "I was tired of the fantasy world Q put us in, even if it was my own creation. I wanted to be here, living my real life and sharing it with you." Her gaze fell away. "I thought you couldn't stand the sight of me because you had decided that what happened between us was a mistake."
"Beverly, I can't remember a time when I didn't love you," he insisted, squeezing her hand when she tried to pull away. "I will always love you."
She looked at him again, loathe to ask the question but knowing there could be no unfinished business between them if they were to go forward with their relationship.
"What about Anij?"
Picard was mortified to realize he had all but forgotten the Ba'ku woman. How could he explain that episode, not only to the woman he was still in danger of losing, but to himself as well? "My feelings for Anij were no deeper than an adolescent whim. Hard to think of myself as adolescent at my age, but that's how I was feeling on Ba'ku... young and impetuous and ready to take on the galaxy just like a cadet fresh out of the Academy." He gave her a sheepish grin. "Besides, I think it is an ancient genetic trait for men to aid damsels in distress -- no matter how capable they are of taking care of themselves."
The smile faded when she failed to respond to his explanation or to his teasing.
'She's right, this isn't something that can be tossed off in a joke.' He searched for the words that would say what he felt when he hadn't yet examined his own feelings.
"There is something in me," he began slowly, "that prefers the urgency of life rather than the unfathomable stretch of eternity. Anij wanted to teach me to live within the moment, to make a single moment last as long as possible. In retrospect," his mouth quirked in a small show of self-derision, "which came about an hour after we left Ba'ku, that seems to be redundant when a reasonable expectation of their life span is well over 300 years. No matter how long a moment lasts or how perfect it may be, it is only a moment."
His fingers tightened around hers. "You want me to live every moment. Beverly, you challenge my mind, my heart, my soul. Every moment with you makes me eager for the next and the next. Someday I hope I can prove my love and earn your love in return."
Her free hand was steady as Beverly reached out to touch his cheek, but there wasn't anything she could do about the tremor in her voice. "You can't earn what you already have."
He held her hand to his face before sliding it down to his mouth. The kiss he placed in her palm was a deliberate reminder of his similar actions on the contest field. "I'm sorry for being such an old fool."
"It doesn't matter anymore. What's one week when we have years ahead of us? Us, Jean-Luc... you, me and our baby."
His hands rested lightly on her hips as he dropped to his knees before her and kissed her flat belly through her clothes. "A baby," he murmured wondrously. "Are you sure?"
"Double checked and triple checked," she assured him, stroking his head and pressing him closer. "King Jean-Luc's subjects would be greatly pleased with your first efforts."
He loved the feel of her gentle laughter as it vibrated through her to where his cheek rested. Looking up, he saw sparkling sapphire eyes smiling at him. More importantly at the moment, he saw the lush mouth that had been driving him insane for years coming down to cover his.
~tbc~