11. The Return

"You can't go home again," Deanna Troi heard Beverly saying.

She had been watching Will; he was sitting at the other side of Ten Forward staring out of the window into space. She tore her eyes away from him to look at Beverly across the table they were sharing. Her friend was gazing at her, a little smile on her face. "Sorry, what was that?"

Beverly leaned over the table. "I said, you can't go home again. It's an ancient human writing. Means that we don't always come back to the same place we left."

Yes, that was exactly it, precisely what she was experiencing, ever since she had come back to the Enterprise. She hadn't returned to the same place she had left. This wasn't the first time she had been struck by the captured wisdom in Terran literature. There was a lot to be said for the human practice of encoding emotional reference points into their art, a sort of shorthand map into the profound human heart.

You can't go home again.

Her eyes drifted back over to Will again. He had been sitting in exactly the same spot, at the last table against the wall, gazing out through the glass, since she had joined Beverly for lunch almost an hour ago. Something about him had changed; from the time she had returned to the ship, she had been trying to understand exactly what was different, but hadn't been able to pin it down. He seemed to be the same Will Riker she had always known - and yet, not the same. And not only him. The Captain, too, seemed like a different person. At times she felt as if ... as if she hadn't come back to the same people she had left.

You can't go home again.

"How did you know, Beverly?"

The other woman sighed and leaned back in her chair. "The poignant expression on your face. I've been seeing a lot of that look lately, in my own mirror. Seeing it in you made me realize how really different things are around here."

You can't go home again ...

When she had returned to the Enterprise, the ship was fully engaged in a search-and-rescue mission whose purpose was to find five people missing from Selasdana Station and presumed held by Rebel forces. Will had been placed in charge of the work and she had felt in him a sense of terrific urgency and crisis in the effort. And not just Will, the Captain was as keen on helping find the hostages as on any mission they'd ever undertaken before. Whenever she looked around, it seemed, the two men were huddled together in a corner, conferring, planning, directing, seemingly working tirelessly every minute around the clock on finding and saving those missing people.

Both men greeted her return with a warm but distracted cordiality; she felt their distance but set it down to their intense involvement with the work at hand. When she had joined the search task force, her instinct had cautioned her to go slow at first; she eased herself into the meetings, quietly listening, waiting patiently for someone to ask her a question she could answer, speaking only when she had something very pertinent to say, and then only to that point. When she had begun to ask questions about the attacks in the Corridor, the answers came primarily from Beverly, Worf or Data. Will would hardly speak of it, was almost curt if she pressed him on details. The Captain was another, equally complicated, matter. His replies to her queries, while more expansive, were also reserved.

At one meeting, after fielding a particularly tricky question that seemed to open a way into possibly searching for the hostages within the Neutral Zone under certain limited circumstances, Will had looked at her, really looked, as though he had suddenly realized that she was here among them, even though she had been back on board for over a week at that point. It was a strangely intense look, and for one wild moment as though his appearance had somehow been radically altered, though she could see for herself that it hadn' t. Still, he had acknowledged her presence and she contented herself with that; his mind was all in one direction, pinpoint-focused on his work, but she had felt many times by then how torn up he was inside, his heart and soul deeply ravaged with pain and racked with guilt. There was almost, but not quite, a mirroring of those feelings in the Captain, although she couldn't be certain they stemmed from the same source. She couldn't be certain because, to her amazement, for the first time since she had come to the Enterprise, both men were intentionally freezing her out. She sensed that this had to do with what had happened on Selasdana, though she could not find out exactly what about those circumstances would provoke such feelings in either Will or the Captain. All of this was a shocking and distressing situation, knowing they were in dire personal need of her counsel yet being kept strictly at arm's length, and restraining her Betazed nature had never been harder for her to do. But she had no choice in the matter: Much as she wanted to help her friends, she had to respect their desire for privacy.

They were in the Captain's Ready Room one morning, she, the Captain, and Will, reviewing the personnel files of the crew stationed on Selasdana; the Captain had asked them to look for any indications of previous misconduct in the Outpost records. She could feel that, although Will was also actively helping with the review of the records, he was bewildered, and even somewhat angered, by the suggestion of unprofessional behavior within their dead colleagues' ranks. In the Captain, she felt a patient, gentle, dogged, determination, along with sympathy for, and even entanglement with, the feelings of the other man. And yet, neither said anything openly to the other; this in two men she had always known to be utterly frank and even outspoken in expressing their opinions to one another. How did all these things fit together, what did it all mean? What had happened on Selasdana?

She was skimming through the files, trying to get a "feel for anything out of the ordinary," as the Captain had requested, but hadn't found anything unusual. Each of the files had Federation records of service, with hyperlinks to personal histories, medicals, visuals. Under visuals, there were two new, grim, cross-references listed: Crime Scene, and Autopsy. She remembered suddenly, something she'd long been curious about: The Vulcan grip that had been used on the Commander of the Outpost, she'd wondered about that detail ever since she had heard about it. She touched the screen, requesting all crime scene visuals; she'd heard the massacre in the Command Post spoken of and described enough times to know what to expect: Scattered piles of uniformed bodies laying peacefully around a large room. She was skipping through the visuals, searching for the one she wanted -

On her screen suddenly appeared a visual of two mutilated bodies, the caption identifying the remains as those of Eric and T' Prianne Rhaenn. She gasped in horror at the sadistic carnage. "Oh my God, what happened here?"

Will had moved to see what was on her screen, quickly turning aside. "Don't look at it," he muttered, moving away.

Deep into the impression of what she had seen, she could only stare at him. Connecting unexpectedly to the storm roiling furiously up in his body and soul almost to the bursting point at the sight of the pictures. "Oh no, Will," she whispered, suddenly understanding his pain, and the anger and guilt behind it. "You were there, you saw this."

He spun around and reared over her, face flushing, breathing hard, the look in his eyes as if he could kill her for reminding him; her training, and the searing pain she felt welling uncontrollably inside him, kept her from recoiling away. "Leave it alone, Counselor," he said, between his teeth, eyes blazing out at her. "Don't think you can just nicey-feeley your way inside me and make this all better, because you can't, do you hear? You can't!"

Before she could react, he had turned and stalked out of the room. Bewildered, she looked to the Captain. The grey eyes were shuttering away from her, cold steel walls clanging down and closing her out, turning his face away; she caught a passing look of anger in his own expression that surprised her even more.

"This has been a hell of a time." The Captain's eyes were searching the air above her head for a moment; then looking back at her, face now set into a carefully neutral expression. "I don't ask you to excuse him because of that, Deanna. But Will's carrying a great deal of the burden of this mission on his shoulders, and it's been very bad, much worse than you can imagine, for him - for everyone." The Captain paused again, mouth closing tight. She felt herself fading completely out of the Captain's thoughts. And then, surging back on the unexpected: Pity, she felt it, saw it in his eyes.

"Why? Why do you feel sorry for me?"

"For you. For him. Some situations are not of our making, beyond our control." Shaking his head. "And yet we still pay for them."

"Yourself as well, Captain?" she asked, sensing an opening into his consciousness she might be allowed to plumb.

He looked at her, grey eyes brooding and somber; she felt a shimmer of pain running through his being. "I blame myself for losing those people. He does, too." But his defenses were suddenly up again, the doors closing. "It can't last much longer. Even if they are still alive, which is highly doubtful, those people could be anywhere. We've been trolling along the Neutral Zone closest to the systems we suspect the Rebellion of using for their bases for weeks now. But in reality, we're searching for a micron needle in a universal haystack, and he knows that, deep down. Excuse me, Counselor," he said, and he was standing and leaving the room.

And she was left to wonder, yet again. What had happened on Selasdana?

She was in her quarters that evening, when Will came to her door. The look in his eyes instantly opened her heart to him, and in another moment she was engulfed in an embrace so tight that she couldn't breathe, nor did she want to: Since the day she had met him, his arms were all the life she'd ever wanted, she would accept her death there, too. Imzadi, she almost said, holding it back at the last second. Instead she gently stroked his back. "I'm so sorry, so sorry," she heard him say, in a voice painfully broken and hoarse with anguish.

Her heart ached for him, for whatever mysterious agony it was that he was suffering. "If I could only understand, if only you'd let me help," she murmured.

His arms went tighter, abruptly releasing her a moment later, and stepping back, his face turned away. "You can't, Deanna," he said, his voice low and hoarse, straining. "No one can. Please, don't try. What happened on Selasdana -"

Grief, fathomless and intense, breaking in his voice, locked her into a wondering silence, and she watched him walking quickly out of her room.

What did happen on Selasdana? And what instinct had kept her from calling him "Beloved?"

Beverly sighed and stood from the table, bringing her out of her reverie. Her companion smiled at her. "I'm going back. Nobody much feels like talking these days." Waving a hand to stop her protests. "Oh, not just you. Jean-Luc, too ... And Will. And maybe me, too. This thing's got us all crazy, I think." Sighing again. "And who knows when it'll be over?"

This thing: What exactly was This Thing? Behind Beverly, she saw Will standing, suddenly, and striding out of the room: On the table was the food he'd ordered, untouched. She watched him leave, then turned to her friend. "Wait a minute, Beverly. I've been wanting to talk to you about what happened, but we've both been so busy since I got back."

The green eyes registered wariness: She wondered why. Why so defensive? "About what?"

About what, indeed. "About Selasdana. I'd like to talk about Selasdana."

Her friend's face stiffened slightly. "It's all in the reports. What else is there to talk about?"

Will. I want to know what's wrong with Will. "You went with the search party to Selasdana. Tell me what happened there."

Beverly waved her hand dismissively. "My report's in the file, too. You've read it lots of times by now, surely."

Reluctance, and behind that, resistance. "Tell me, anyway. I want to hear it from you," she asked. "Please, Beverly."

Her friend looked at her a long moment. Sinking back down into the chair, finally. "Well ... All right," she said, at last. Settling back into the seat, brushing the titian hair away from her face. The green eyes grew distant, as if looking upon another scene, and suddenly filled with tears, the shiny drops splashing down from her lashes onto her cheeks.

"There were - so many bodies, so many bodies," Beverly half-gasped, half-cried, pressing her fingers hard to her lips a long moment, before going on. "When we arrived at the Outpost, they were already dead, there was nothing I could do. Forty-six of them, all in Federation uniforms. They were laying here and there, some on top of each other, as if they'd just dropped where they were, right at their posts. A lot of them were young. Very young. Looking so natural, so - fresh. . Only they were too still. Too still. If only one - If I could have saved - one. But they were all - they were all - They looked - I swear, Deanna, they looked - like they were just sleeping. As if any minute, they'd wake up and walk away. But they were dead." She stopped again, voice choking on her grief.

She leaned forward and touched her friend's hand. Beverly glanced at her through a sheen of tears, waving her hand after a minute and taking a deep breath, then another, speaking finally, in a somewhat steadier voice. "They never had a chance. They were completely defenseless, their shields dropped, weapons useless, as you've heard us say - puzzle over - at the meetings." Shrugging and shaking her head. "That's about it," Beverly said, brushing the tears from her face with her long, fine fingers.

"What about the Rhaenns?"

The expression on the other woman's face changed, green eyes darkening, as she nodded. "Yes, that was awful," Beverly said, in a low voice. "Utterly savage! Imagine, Deanna. Imagine seeing someone you love sliced slowly to bits in front of your eyes, imagine waiting, even wishing, for his death. I say his, because T' Prianne Rhaenn is - was Vulcan, she could have easily released her spirit anytime and left her body, all that horror, behind whenever she wanted. Instead, it looked as though Eric Rhaenn lived quite a long time, and she held out until his passing."

She shuddered, remembering the visual, and Will's reaction to it. "Do you have any idea why whoever did it killed them like that?"

Beverly was brushing away the last of her tears, looked up at her. "Me? No. Maybe the others ... Jean-Luc, Will, God knows they've been thick as thieves since then, since Selasdana."

So she hadn't been the only one to have noticed it. "You all went together to Selasdana?" Details she already knew, but perhaps she could uncover something in the re-telling.

"Yes, the five of us, Jean-Luc, Will, Data, Worf, myself. We started out at the Outpost, that's where most of the deceased were located. We were in a hurry, Jean-Luc wanted us to finish up fast there and get searching for the killers, he and Will went ahead to the Rheann home to find the last two bodies there, while we completed our work at the Outpost. I finished my work at the outpost, left Data and Worf to complete their investigation, and went to the house. When I arrived, Jean-Luc came and took me to the - where the Rhaenns' remains were in the residence. Then Worf called down with the message from the Transport Captain, that no one had left with his ship, basically confirming to us that there were still five people missing, the four officers and the girl. Jean-Luc left me with the Rhaenn's bodies, then we all met up again and returned to the ship."

"Wait a minute: what about Will? You said the Captain came to lead you to the Rhaenn's bodies. What about Will, where was he?"

Beverly shrugged. "Oh, I don't know, exactly. Somewhere in the house, I suppose." Pausing, the green eyes looking around as if trying to recall. "I remember him being quiet when he joined us afterwards, looking really awful, as if he were just devastated. He'd had dinner with the Rhaenns the night before, so naturally, it hit him hardest of all. I assumed he needed time to be alone. Why, what are you thinking?" Her friend's eyes were still slightly reddened, but completely dry now, and looking curiously at her.

"That I missed something terribly important. It may sound strange to you, but I wish I had been there." She leaned forward. "Thank you. You helped me see what happened."

Beverly smiled, slightly. "Thank you for making me talk about it. I think I really needed that cry, Counselor." Pausing for a moment, biting her lip thoughtfully, gazing at her. "This whole thing's affected Jean-Luc, Deanna ... shaken him deeply."

"Shaken him?"

"I can't explain it. It's just a feeling I get. Like he blames himself for what's happened." Beverly shrugged again. "I also get the feeling that Jean-Luc's been - protecting Will, somehow, since then, since Selasdana."

Perhaps that was what she had been sensing. "Protecting him from what?"

"I don't know." Her friend smiled gently at her. "You tell me what's going on inside their heads lately, I haven't got a clue."

That was just it: She couldn't.

[* * *]

She was stepping into the lift the next morning when the communicator signaled; she felt the warp engines engaging at the same instant. "Counselor Troi to the bridge."

"On my way," she replied, instructing the turbolift: "Bridge." Around her, as the lift instantly accelerated to its destination, she sensed it: They were gearing up for something - something big.

The doors were sliding open, and she stepped out onto the bridge. Will was standing in front of the viewscreen, looking over Data's shoulder at the comm panels. She started down the ramp and saw the Captain, sitting low in his chair, legs crossed, one hand covering his mouth. He turned and, seeing her, was straightening, tugging his tunic down.

"We've intercepted a Rebel cruiser," he said, turning away, as she sat down next to him; clearly signaling that he didn't want to hear anything from her at the moment.

She focused her thoughts instead on what he had told her: They were chasing a Rebel ship. According to the intelligence reports they'd received, there weren't many of them. The entire Rebel fleet numbered certainly less than a hundred, even fifty seemed like an outside number, a ragtag bunch of mostly stolen ships, as well as old merchant ships from their own Corridor fleet that had been retrofitted for battle, although they had been hearing rumors of some newer battleships being acquired recently. And yet, even out of fifty, what were the chances that the one they were about to encounter had the five missing people from Selasdana? Still, if they could talk ... Even less chance of that, she knew. But she had to be ready. If they did have the hostages, that meant there would be negotiations. The main element in negotiating any deal was to remain calm, and focused on the objective, which was to get the hostages back safely. The Quarain had been merchants before all of the conflicts had begun, surely they understood the art of the deal. This would be a trade, of sorts, the hostages for - for what? What could the Enterprise offer that the Rebels would want?

The room was silent. The Captain had leaned back in his chair again, and hadn't moved, since speaking to her when she first arrived. She felt the tension level increasing, tightening the base of her spine.

"The Rebel vessel is within visual range, Captain," Worf was calling out; she was jolted by the sound of his voice, and yet at the same time relieved that the silence was broken at last.

The Captain, elbows on armrests, was pressing his fingertips together. "Commander Riker has the conn," he said.

"On screen, Mr. Worf," Will ordered, crisply: From the quick handing-off, it was clear they had decided on that course of action beforehand; this was Will's mission to carry out.

On the viewscreen appeared a flattish opaque dot: The Rebel ship, far enough away to be insignificant-looking against the vast panorama of black space sprinkled with stars.

"Magnify by ten, Mr. Data," Will said, looking up at the viewscreen.

The ship increased measurably on the screen, to the size of a child's toy. It clearly wasn't a battleship, or hadn't been built as one; judging by the looks of it, the vessel had once been a pleasure cruiser, visibly stripped of its fancy ornamentation, but still looking like the kind of ostentatious riding vehicle used mainly in and around resort planets, refitted for its current use.

"Don't lose her," Will said. His voice, carrying across the bridge, was tightly controlled, his feet firmly planted, fists closed; his stance, his voice, everything, told how utterly set and determined he was on catching the quarry he was pursuing.

"We are within hailing distance, Sir," Worf was calling out.

"Acknowledged," Will replied, without looking around.

The Captain stirred in his seat. "What are their weapons, Mr. Worf?"

"Class III phasers, Sir," came Worf's reply. "They cannot penetrate our shields."

"Are we within close striking distance of them?" Will asked.

"They are coming within that range now, Sir," Worf replied, looking at his panels.

Will nodded, to the viewscreen. "All right, let's get a little closer, then. Helmsman, keep our speed at warp nine. Shadow their moves: If they itch, we scratch, understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Shields up, weapons up, full array," Will ordered.

The stance surprised her. Class III phasers were peashooters compared to their own weapons. Why were they gearing up as if for full-scale battle, when it was perfectly clear the other ship couldn't possibly harm them?

Will was turning and looking back at the Weapons Officer. "Your target painted, Mr. Worf? Have we got them in our sights?"

"Yes, Sir," came the reply.

Will nodded. "Good. Mr. Data, getting anything on your scanners?"

"Not yet, Sir. We will be within short range sensor -"

"Understood," Will interrupted.

Silence fell again. Closer and closer they were coming to the ship, bearing down, closing at an alarming rate, going full out, almost as if they were planning to ram the little vessel.

"Open a hailing frequency, Mr. Worf," Will said.

At last! she thought, relieved. For a moment there, she had wondered if they were just going to blow that ridiculously small and defenseless ship right out of the sky without so much as a warning. But of course, Will wouldn't do anything like that, how could she even think it was possible?

"Hailing frequency open, Sir."

"This is William Riker, in command of the Federation Star Ship Enterprise. Captain of the cruiser, stop and identify yourself, and prepare to be boarded," Will declared.

Silence; there was no reply. Even knowing not to expect one, her heart sank in dismay.

"Captain of the cruiser. Stop and prepare to be boarded." Will was turning to look at Worf. "Stand by to fire phasers."

"Standing by."

Will nodded. "On my signal."

She looked from Will to the Captain, her alarm increasing: What was going on here? But Jean-Luc was sitting back in his chair, eyes half-closed, as if he were watching a story visual, and not the imminent destruction of a defenseless little Rebel ship. She was starting to rise to go to Will - The Captain lay his hand on her wrist, a cool glance from the grey eyes moving her to keep her seat.

"Captain of the cruiser, this is your final warning," Will was saying, turning to Data. "Any of our people on that ship?"

"No, Sir."

Will lifted his head sharp and straight. "Then take your readings for posterity, Mr. Data," he declared. Looking at Worf, he nodded, as he turned back to the viewscreen. "Ready, - Shields up."

The little ship had exploded into a ball of flames, the shock wave a moment later rolling under them, rocking the ship up and back slightly, like a wave's heavy swell, righting itself immediately afterwards. On the viewscreen, bits of metal and other, more grisly debris floated toward them, bouncing gently off their shields, all that was left of the Rebel cruiser, the entire scene playing out in silence.

"Mr. Data," the Captain inquired, after a long moment, from the depths of his chair. He hadn't moved during the entire action, except for the touch of her wrist.

Data looked up from his comm panels. "The ship's core exploded, Captain. It appears to have been deliberate."

Will was looking around at Worf. "Damage report, Mr. Worf."

Worf checked his panels again. "No damage to the Enterprise, Sir."

"All right. Return us to normal status," the Captain ordered. "Prepare to resume our previous search pattern, helmsman." He was standing, tugging his tunic down. "Excellent work, everyone," he said, looking around the room, then directly at his Second-in-Command. "A textbook execution, Commander. Well done."

"Thank you, Captain," Will replied, accepting the Captain's commendation.

The Captain was nodding and looking away. "Mr. Worf, forward the entire incident report to Federation headquarters. Helmsman?"

"Ready to resume our previous course, Sir."

The Captain lifted his finger. "Engage," he ordered, and he was starting away, leaving the room. "You have the bridge, Number One."

"Yes, Sir." Will walked over to the Captain's chair, and took his seat. He looked out at the viewscreen ahead. Finally, he was turning to look at her. "What is it, Counselor?"

She realized then, that she had been staring at him. "I was just - thinking about what happened, Sir," she replied. "This was all very - unexpected."

He nodded, absently, as if he hadn't quite heard her to the end, and turned back to the viewscreen, his eyes fixed on some distant point in the space beyond.

What I'm thinking is that, I don't know why this happened - and therefore, I don't know you. I don't know the man who just confronted that Rebel ship. After all these years of being so very, very close to you, to your heart and soul, I don't know you anymore. I don't know you, and that's terrifying to me.

The Will Riker I knew - is gone.

.