Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek TNG or any of its original characters.
Chapter 14
At 8:45 Deanna walked into her office for the first time in months. She wore her uniform, crisp and clean, her communicator pinned neatly on the front, and her hair pinned back so it flowed down her back. The office looked bare without her things in it, especially her desk. It was an odd feeling knowing someone else had been here, doing her job, for weeks.
She walked to the replicator and ordered a hot chocolate, then settled onto the couch, sipping her drink and breathing deeply as she waited for Lieutenant Soto. She had been up most of the night, reliving it, analyzing it, knowing that Amy would not give her the option not to share. She had rehearsed it in her mind, knew what she would say, but still she was scared.
"Deanna," Amy said as she entered and found Deanna sitting on the couch with her eyes closed. "I thought you might make me come get you," she told her.
Deanna didn't speak, just shook her head and then looked around the office.
"What do you think?" Amy asked her tentatively, sitting in the chair next to the couch.
"It looks bare. Cold, even," Deanna said a bit harshly.
"Well, I'm sure you'll change that," Amy replied, no hint of emotion showing. "It should work well if I use the office in the mornings and you have the afternoons. What do you think?"
Deanna shrugged. She couldn't think about anything like that. She didn't want to ease into it. She would prefer it to be quick… Painful either way, but quick would be preferable.
As if Amy could sense Deanna's thoughts, she leaned back and her air changed to one of personal detachment. "Deanna," she began. "I would like to talk about last night. Is bulimia something that you have struggled with for a long time or is it only recently?"
Deanna furrowed her brow. "I'm not bulimic," she said firmly.
"You ate dinner with your friends and then left the table and went into the restroom and vomited. Sometimes it is referred to as purging."
"I didn't feel well."
"And how often have you 'not felt well'?"
Deanna sighed and shook her head. "I don't know. Occasionally, I have been very sick."
"Deanna," Amy cut her off. "You aren't eating. And when you do eat, you apparently vomit. Why?"
Deanna shrugged. It was harder than she thought it would be.
"What happened? Food is the trigger for some form of trauma. You know as well as I do that it will not get better or go away on its own. I think you know what started this. I would like you to tell me about it."
Deanna hung her head and began to take deep calming breaths. Somehow saying it out loud was harder than she had anticipated.
"Deanna, secrets are like poison. They rot you from the inside out. I can see now that you are carrying something very heavy that you have locked inside, your secret. What is it that you are so afraid of?"
Silence hung heavily in the room, but Amy waited for Deanna to feel safe enough to respond.
"Everyone keeps telling me that it wasn't my fault, that I'm not responsible," Deanna whispered, her voice leaving her. Her body was shaking. "It makes it tolerable for them. They can stomach being around me, still respect me because it was not my fault. But what if that weren't true? What if some of it was my fault? What then?"
Amy studied her for a moment, the way she hugged herself to offer herself support through it. "That is a very good question," she told her. "What then?" she asked.
Deanna looked up at her counselor, confused.
"What if some of what happened to you was your fault. What would that mean?"
Deanna fought back the tears that sprang to her eyes. "I..ah…It would mean that I'm not who they think I am, not who I thought I was."
"Deanna, I would like you to tell me what you did that you think is so out of character."
Deanna closed her eyes tightly and began to slowly rock back and forth, her arms holding herself tight, as if trying to protect herself from what she was about to say. "After a few days on the planet, a few of them took me outside the city. I was sold to the town elder's son. Before I left the caverns, I hadn't eaten or been given anything to drink at all. I was weak. I wanted to fight back. I wanted to get away, but I was too weak to run, too weak to fight. I was starving, and dehydrated. When they were moving me, the night before they took me into the town, there were three men. They had food and water, and they told me they would let me eat and drink all I wanted. But they wanted something in exchange." Deanna choked back a sob.
"They wanted you to have sex with them, and in exchange they would give you food and water," Amy finished for her as tears spilt down Deanna's face. Deanna nodded. "What about that would make what happened to you your fault?"
"They didn't force me. They would have left me alone…if I would have said no."
"But you didn't say no?" Amy asked her.
Deanna shook her head, her eyes shut tight.
"Did you initiate it?" Amy continued, but a long silence was her only answer.
"I only wanted to get the strength to fight back. I had to eat something. I was starving!" Deanna cried. "I didn't see another option," she said defensively.
Amy calmly held out a hand for Deanna to stop. "You are safe here." Her quiet voice was in stark contrast to Deanna's own shrill panic. "I wasn't judging you, Deanna. I was simply trying to understand what happened to you." The two women watched each other for a moment. Deanna's hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her breathing hard but rhythmic. Finally, Amy spoke again. "After you had intercourse with these men,"
Deanna shook her head slightly and whispered quietly. "That wasn't what they wanted." She wouldn't look up to see Amy's reaction.
Amy nodded, remaining calm and even to reassure her patient. "Okay," she tried again. "After you preformed sex acts, did they let you eat?"
"Yes."
"And drink?"
"Yes." Deanna's eyes remained on her hands clenched in her lap.
"Then what happened?"
Deanna sniffed. "I got sick."
"You vomited."
"Yes."
"Was it the food that made you sick?"
Deanna shrugged.
"It may have been that your stomach was not prepared for what was put into it."
Deanna nodded as a tear slipped again down her cheek.
"Or is it possible that you were sick with what you had done?"
More tears spilled down her cheeks.
"And you go back to that night every time you eat," Amy said. It was a statement, not a question. "And you haven't told anyone?"
"No," Deanna cried. "They can't know! If he knew, it…I…it would change everything."
"Who?" Amy asked.
"The crew, my colleagues, my mother!"
"You said 'he'."
"They," she corrected herself.
"If he knew, it would change everything." Amy repeated Deanna's words. "Who?"
Deanna glared at this woman sitting in her office, counseling her as if she didn't have two advanced psychological degrees.
"Secrets are like poison. They rot you from the inside out," Amy repeated. "If he knew, it would change everything." Amy waited for Deanna to respond, but she sat silently.
"Commander Riker?" she asked softly.
"He can't know," Deanna whispered. "If he knew…"
"He would think you aren't who he thinks you are?" Amy asked as Deanna continued to cry on the couch, silently. "You love him," Amy said simply.
"He's always… been there," Deanna said between sobs.
"And you think this would change this?"
"I chose. I chose!" she said pointing viciously into her chest. "I chose to do what I did."
"You're afraid he would abandon you, leave you."
"Again," Deanna murmured.
Amy paused and watched her. "That's the second time you have said that," Amy said remembering their first meeting. "You mean on the planet? He took the ambassador and you were left behind."
Deanna said nothing.
"And when he came to rescue you, he left you there for another day. He left you again."
Deanna still sat silently.
Amy watched her. It was like she was building a wall around herself. Amy hadn't gotten through. She was missing a piece, somehow.
"When did he leave you?" Amy asked compassionately.
"We dated," Deanna told her. "It was years ago. He was stationed on Betazed and I was in school. We dated."
"And when he was transferred?" Amy asked. Deanna closed her eyes tightly, but did not respond. "He left you," Amy concluded, and Deanna began to cry again. And it all began to make more sense. "Deanna, I need you to look at me," Amy told her, leaning forward to be nearer to her. "You're afraid of what would happen if people knew what you did, what would happen if Will Riker knew. I want you to follow that train of thought through to its inevitable conclusion. What then? What is your worst fear?"
Deanna paused while she thought about the question. "He would look at me like I'm a whore and he…I would loose my friend, my best friend, my…" she let the sentence die away.
"And then what? What would that mean for you?" Amy asked, but Deanna did not answer. "I know that would hurt you, deeply. So then what? What would that mean for you?"
"I couldn't stay here. Not like that. I'd leave."
"Leave the ship?"
Deanna nodded.
"Star Fleet?"
Deanna hesitated. "I don't know."
"Would you continue counseling?"
"I don't know. I think so."
"What would your life be like?"
"Lonely," Deanna finally answered.
"And do you think your life would stay like that forever?"
Deanna shrugged.
"Would you live?" Amy continued despite Deanna's confused look. "Would your heart continue to beat? Your lungs continue to breathe? Will it be more torturous than what happened to you on Galia Prime?"
"I don't know. No, I suppose not."
"Because you survived that, Deanna. You survived. And I believe that even though it would be hard, you would live through this, if that were what would happen. By the way, I don't believe that he would react that way. I don't know him as well as you do, but I do know that he loves you, cares deeply for you, and that whatever else has happened, however he left, he has always come back to you."
Deanna sat unmoving on the sofa, lost in her own thoughts.
"And it was not your choice. No matter how they made you feel about it, whatever choice you believed you were making…When someone holds complete control of your life, food, water, air…you lack the ability to consent. What happened that night was no different than what happened on any other occasion. It was the illusion of control that you felt. But the illusion of control and consent are not the same thing."
Deanna looked up, surprised by Amy's comment. "I…" she began, but changed her mind. "I haven't thought of it like that."
Amy sighed and leaned forward, closer to her patient. "It's been long enough," she told her. "It's time to reclaim your life, if you want it. That means making some hard decisions, showing the kind of courage you did every day on that planet. You have been making it through, day by day, getting by, only allowing yourself to skim the surface of your anxieties, putting a bandage on the immediate problem and trying to move on. You have been doing triage to your own emotions, and it has worked fairly well so far. But if you want your life back, you need to stop, go back, take off the bandage and heal the wound."
"Face your fears, Deanna. That is the road that will lead you back to the life you want to have. What you have been doing until now will only help you get by for so long. And it will be just enough to get 't you want more than that? Don't you deserve more? I know you are strong enough to do this. If you weren't you wouldn't still be alive. And I know you know how to do it. But it must be your choice. Let go of the secrets, let go of the shame and anger. Tell him what happened, why you are afraid to eat, what it makes you feel. Trust him. Believe in him."
Deanna took in what she was told, slowly and without visible reactions, as she mentally reevaluated herself.
"Could you meet me here again on Monday at the same time? I'd like to follow up with whatever choice you have made," Amy finally spoke.
Deanna nodded vaguely, still lost in thought.
"You should go home and get some of your personal things before Ensign Dillard comes. I don't want her to feel like it's cold in here when she gets here this afternoon." Slowly
Amy stood and straightened her uniform. "I'll go now and let you get reacquainted with the place."
"What?" Deanna asked shocked. "You are still…I…you think I should still.."
"Go back to work? Yes, absolutely. Face your fear, Deanna. It's time. And I'll be close by if you need me. I hope you have a good day."
With a soft and sincere smile Amy walked out of the office, leaving her patient alone. Sitting in her otherwise deserted office, Deanna felt oddly small, like a child in an adult world.
Unsure of what to do, Deanna walked back to her own quarters as if she was in some sort of a daze. She found the picture of her parents that had been on her desk for years and placed it by the door to carry back to her office. Then she sat on the couch and began to look around the room. What else should she take back to her office? What else might she need? Her eyes drifted over to the drawer that held the wrapped up fala root. She could feel the fluttering anxious feeling in her stomach. Every second it grew nearer to the time she would see her first patient, her anxiety grew along with it. What if she couldn't do this? What if she needed help? Slowly she stood and walked to the drawer and removed the long fala root from its wrap. She swiftly broke off a section and walked towards the door, then reached back, grabbed the captain's book of poetry and slipped the fala root inside the pages and tucked it to her chest with the picture of her parents and headed back to her office.
She placed the photo on her desk, locked the piece of the fala root in a drawer and took the book to the couch with her. She sat on the couch, the book on the table next to her.
Was it possible that she had not been willing to heal the wounds, only bandage the surface? If it were, what would it take to reclaim her life? Amy had said that she knew what to do, but she wasn't sure that she did. Wasn't she fighting as hard as she couldn't, doing everything she knew how?
Deanna felt confused and overwhelmed and somehow less sure of her abilities than she ever had, and in only two hours she would be seeing a patient she was sure she would have no idea how to help.
What am I doing? She thought. Though it seemed a bit late to run away now. She needed to focus. With a sigh, Deanna pulled the book back into her lap and opened it and began to read. The words, at first, were not being retained at all, but slowly after she read a few poems began to seep into her consciousness, and struckat her heart. She looked to the title of the poem, and the line art of a wooded path, a road less traveled. And it made all the difference. All the difference. What road was she taking? What if maybe Amy was right? What was it she needed to do? Face your fears. Did Deanna know her fears?
She stood and went back to her desk, the book of poetry still in her hands and began to write on a PADD. What is it I'm afraid of? She thought. Well, let's start with what we talked about this morning…
Deanna began to write and write. Her list went on for almost twenty items, some minor and others more paralyzing. They were scattered in no particular order, just how they had randomly occurred to her. Somehow the lack of organization annoyed her, and somehow unconsciously she knew she would re-write it into a more organized fashion at some point. As she read the list back to herself, she felt the anxiety of facing and conquering each one of them start to overwhelm her. One at a time, she told herself as tears sprug to her eyes. It was everything that she had been taught to break through the pain. If what she had been doing wasn't working, and in her heart, she knew it wasn't, then what else was there to do?
Twenty minutes until her first counseling appointment, the book of poetry lay open across her desk, a mug of empty hot chocolate on the table by the couch. Tears streaked her cheeks, and she sat clutching the list, trembling. This was not the way to begin. She had to clear her head from the clutter of her own emotions. She scrambled around the room, putting things right, and then sat at her desk, taking deep cleansing breaths. Finally she opened her eyes and took the PADD containing her list and slipped it into the drawer with the chunk of fala root. She stared at the root for a moment longer. She just needed to clear her mind, mute her own emotions to allow her to get through the hour ahead of her. Was it possible that she just needed a little help? Deanna reached down and broke a tiny piece of root off in her fingers. It was far less than she had ever taken, but she did not want to be tired. She just needed to ease her mind.
She walked quickly to the replicator. "One mug of hot water with lemon and honey and a small kitchen knife." The items instantly appeared in front of her. With one motion, she crushed the small section of root and dropped it into the water where it disappeared.
Deanna looked at the time, seven minutes. She began to sip at the tea. And by the time the chime on the door rang, she was beginning to feel a calm deep inside her, like everything that was distressing her was pushed somehow to the back of her mind.
…
It had been so long that the routine of making logs and notes in patient files seemed to take two or three times as long as it should have. She had seen two patients, and by the time she was done, all she wanted to do was to go home and go to bed. How was it possible that she used to do a full day of this? As she gathered up a few things she picked up the list she had made earlier in the day. Which road will I travel? She asked herself, then with a deep sigh, she took the PADD in her hand.
Item one: Tell Will.
"I have to start somewhere," she told herself. "It might mean leaving this life behind. But if I will have to leave to cope, isn't it better to know it now?"
She knew what she needed to do. All she had to do now was get the courage to do it.
…
Deanna rang the chime on Commander Riker's door.
"Hey there, Counselor," he said as the doors opened, emphasizing her position. "I thought you'd be wiped out, first day back. Come in," he said as she stood in the doorway. He turned around and started towards his couch. But she didn't move. He looked back over his shoulder. "Deanna," he said cautiously.
Deanna looked into Will's crystal blue eyes. They held such sincerity. Please, don't leave me, Deanna pleaded, knowing he would not hear her.
He tilted his head to the side. "Do you want to come in?" he asked her.
Deanna tried to swallow her fears, and she nodded. She stepped inside cautiously, but she tried to smile back at him. She just needed a little longer to gather her courage. "So what are you up to?" She asked, stalling for time as she stood looking nervously around the room.
"I was reading the briefing for our new mission," Will said showing her the PADD on his desk. "How about you? How was your first day back?"
Deanna paused before she spoke, choosing her words carefully. "Interesting," she finally answered. But she wasn't ready to elaborate. "So what is our new mission?" Deanna asked him. "I'm not accustomed to being out of the loop."
"We are on our way to patrol the Tremora region. The federation just finished negotiating a pretty aggressive trade agreement with the Torsians, and it would appear many of the Torsian traders are less than happy with the terms."
"Already?" Deanna asked curiously.
"Apparently."
"But the Torsians have always been knownas non aggressive, perhaps to a fault. Why is the federation sending its flag ship to settle a non existent squabble with a non aggressive ally?"
Will opened a file on the PADD and handed it to her. "Well, they have become the most heavily armed non aggressive ally I have ever seen," he said as she scanned over the report.
"Most of these weapons are federation in origin," Deanna said surprised. "I'm not sure I understand."
"I'm not sure any of us understand," he said taking the PADD from her and placing it back on his desk.
"So off we go," Deanna concluded.
"That's the general gist of it, yes."
Without the PADD in her hand, Deanna began to toy with items on his desk, flitting from one to the next in a restless manner.
Will watched her for a moment. She seemed to be increasingly nervous. "Deanna," he said curiously.
"Hmm?"
"You're fidgeting."
Deanna looked down at her hands and sighed as she replaced a plaque to its place on Will's desk.
"Everything okay?" he asked her.
No, she thought simply. Time was up. She needed to say what she had come to say. "Can we talk?" she asked. The volume of her voice seemed unwilling to cooperate, as her words came out in no more than a whisper.
Will nodded and began leading her over to the couch. "If this is about last night, I am sorry. I really thought it would be easier if you didn't have to worry about it all day. I knew you were nervous about eating in Ten forward, and you were embarrassed about facing Worf and Data and Geordi. But it just seemed to me that it would be better to get it over with, rather than let anything fester. I should have told you. I know it was a really hard night for you, and I'm sorry. But I thought you handled it so well. You did great."
Deanna listened to Will as he rambled on, and if he continued she knew she would loose her nerve.
"I threw up," she blurted out, and it made Will stop in his tracks. "Last night when I left the table, I went into the bathroom and I threw up everything I had eaten. I was so nervous, and I just…I just couldn't…" She looked over at him, where he sat next to her on the couch. He looked sad, though the emotions coming off him were more irritation and frustration.
"You didn't look so good," he told her quietly.
"Thanks a lot," she said, her one last stab at being jovial.
"Is that what you came to tell me?" he asked. He didn't know why but he doubted that was it. Had he misread her? Had this been going on the whole time?
"No," she said softly. "I came to tell you why."
Will sighed heavily and moved so he faced her. He tried to remain neutral, to listen to her, but he was afraid he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. "Is this what you've been doing all along? Eating when I nag you and then vomiting?" he asked. Then he paused. He could hear the anger and frustration in his own voice and knew she could sense it as she shied away from him slightly.
"You can't do that, Deanna. That's not healthy. You need to talk to Lieutenant Soto about this. Now, you should do it right now."
"I already have," she tried to continue. "When I came out of the bathroom last night, she was waiting for me. We met this morning and we talked about it all."
Will sighed with relief. "Good. Good. Okay, so you've talked to her about it. Okay," he said placing his hands firmly on his knees and preparing to stand up. "So it's done. I should have said something earlier-"
"Will, please," she interrupted him. He could see her fighting against the tears welling up in her eyes, and he sat back down. "This is so hard for me. Please, I'll never get through it if you keep cutting in."
Will repositioned himself on the sofa to face her again. He didn't know that he wanted to hear what she was about to say, but she apparently needed him to. "Okay, I'm sorry."
For a moment, they gazed into each other's eyes, searching for some sort of reassurance. The silence was deafening, as he waited for her to speak. But Deanna had lost her momentum and trying to start again was proving to be a challenge.
"When I was on the planet, when I woke up, I was in the caverns where the ambassador had been held. They kept me there for the first few days."
Will felt waves of guilt crash over him. He had left her there. Until this moment Deanna had spoken about her time there in generalities. She had never given him any sort of timeline or spoken of any specific event. He wanted to be there for her, but a part of him dreaded knowing.
"They beat me and flogged me with a whip when I wouldn't tell them who I was, and…and they raped me."
Will flinched again. She hadn't used that word hardly at all. It was so vivid. There was no way around it, no nicer, more tolerable way to look at the situation. He couldn't stop the pictures in his head and they made him want to scream.
"Sometimes it was just a guard or two that were left with me. Other times it was groups of them." She shook her head. "Some of it, I don't think I remember very clearly. It was dark all the time. The only way I could tell day from night was by how many men were in the caverns with me. They never gave me anything to eat or drink. I was dizzy and tired. After each attack I would bleed for hours. I knew I was loosing too much blood, and that if I didn't get food or water, I would never be strong enough to get out of there. But there was nothing. Nothing but darkness." She paused and took a few deep breaths, but did not look up at Will, she couldn't bear to continue if she did.
"Then after a few days, one of the leaders of the group told some of the men to take me to the surface and to go to a neighboring village. He had spoken to a man who was interested in buying me. So I was brought to the surface. It was hot on the planet and dusty. They put a shroud over me like all the women wear. All that showed were my eyes. And they tied me to this animal, and we walked. It seemed like all day we walked. I was blacking out some of the time, but when I did, the animal would just drag me along. I don't remember reaching the village. I do remember hearing voices I didn't recognize, and people poking at me and pulling off the shroud to look at me. And then the next thing I remember, it was dark. It was nighttime. The three men that traveled with me were cooking food by a fire. The man in the village had already bought and paid for me. But I was still with them."
"It is their custom to show the seller honor by paying for your goods and then returning for them the next day," Will interrupted.
Deanna only nodded. Up to this point her voice had been even and steady as she relayed the events of those few days with as little emotion as possible. But her voice broke as she began again.
"There were only three of them. I thought maybe I had a chance of getting away. But I was so weak. I heard them talking, saying that they couldn't hurt me. That they couldn't take what already belonged to this other man. I knew I was safe for that night. But one of the men was fascinated by me, and his friend goadedhim on. He told him that they couldn't rape me, but if I gave myself willingly that was a different matter." She felt the first tear slide down her cheek, but she did not let go of her tight hold around herself to wipe it away. It tumbled off her chin and onto her uniform.
"They started discussing how long it had been since I ate, and if they offered food in exchange, what I would be willing to do to get it."
She saw out of the corner of her eye, Will's head starting to shake, no. Anger was pouring from him, but who it was directed at was unclear. Before she lost her nerve again, she plowed on. "I thought, if I ate and drank, I might be able to fight them off. I might be able to escape. They were talking about the man who they had sold me to and told me that he was cruel. I knew if I was going to get away, that this was my last chance. He told me that if I did what they wanted, I could eat and drink as much as I wanted. I was so tired," her voice broke again and more tears spilt down her cheeks. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest, she was sure everyone on the deck could hear it.
"And I felt so dirty and used. I just didn't know what difference it would make. And if I got away from them, then it would be worth it. They told me to take off my clothes, and I did. But when they saw the blood on my thighs, they worried that if they had intercourse with me, that Mortain would know. They thought he would kill them. So they decided that it would be better to do something that wouldn't leave a mark or a trace."
She glanced up and saw Will's eyes closed tightly. He was biting hard into his lower lip. She had to go on. She had gone this far. She could finish. She focused on the table in front of the couch and continued. "They wanted me to perform oral sex. And I did. They never forced me, never touched me, for the most part. The first man was almost indifferent. But the second one, he was more brutal. When he ejaculated, he made sure I swallowed all of it, wouldn't let me drink anything until he was sure."
"The third was quick, easily excitable," she said shaking her head. "But again his friend wouldn't let me go on until I swallowed. I hadn't had anything to drink in at least three days. I remember how it burnt my throat. And then it was over. They offered me water and food and I ate all I could. But I couldn't fight back my feelings about what I had done. I traded myself for food, and it made me sick.
They watched me as I ate. I could sense their erotic thoughts about me, like I was some sort of a show. After all that, I couldn't even keep it down. After an hour or so, I vomited it all up and they yelled at me for wasting their food, though the youngest one still let me have some more water, and they tied me back up. The next morning they brought me into the village where you found me. They were right. Mortain was crueler than any before him. I think he would have been just as happy to kill me. I'm sure in another few days he would have."
She looked up at Will and was surprised to see that he was, again, watching her. His blue eyes on fire with rage. But she couldn't stop.
"Whenever I eat, whenever I see food…I go back to that night. I go back to that feeling. That night at the poker game when you left…here I was with these three men, and I know that none of them would ever hurt me, but I was back there, that night, by the fire, and I couldn't stop it. Geordi asked me if I wanted a piece of cake and then he said something about that he knew that I liked it or something…I just lost it. I ran. And when Amy asked me what I was most afraid of, if someone knew what I'd done, I realized it was that you would look at me differently. That you'd think I was a whore. I never thought I would do something like that. I have always thought that intimacy…that it meant…"
"I know," he told her softly.
"But I did it. I didn't even have to think about it. I wanted the food, and I did what they wanted me to do. I didn't even cry," she said softly, as more tears slipped down her cheeks.
They sat in silence for a long time. Will didn't want to interrupt her if she had more to say, and he wasn't sure what he would say if it were his turn. He couldn't bear to see the pictures that kept racing through his mind of Deanna kneeling in front of these faceless barbarians, how it had humiliated her, how it had changed her.
"I'll go now," Deanna said suddenly standing up. "I'm sorry." She stepped away from the couch towards the door, but before she could take another step, she felt Will's arms close around her.
He didn't know if it was the right thing to do, whether it would frighten her. All he knew was that he couldn't let her walk away from him. He couldn't let her leave like that.
In one quick motion she spun around in his arms to face him and buried her head into his chest. Her crying came in sobs that wracked her whole body, and he held on to her even tighter. He felt tears began to slip down his own face, but he didn't dare let her go enough to wipe them away. They fell into her hair, wetting the top of her head, as they clung to one another.
"I'm so sorry," she said as her crying began to subside.
"No. I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't understand."
Deanna nodded, not lifting her head form his chest where the sound of his pounding heart soothed her.
"Why would you be sorry?" he asked her.
"I lied to you. I went against everything I have ever told you that sex means to me."
"Deanna," he said gently kissing the top of her head. "You didn't do anything wrong. You did what you needed to survive. It doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't make you a whore. It makes you the victim of terrible men who manipulated you to satisfy their own desires."
"You're angry," she said softly, pulling back from his fierce embrace slightly.
Will also pulled away, looking away from her. He wished just once that he could hide things as well from her as she apparently could from him. "Damn right I'm angry," he told her.
Immediately she flinched, as if he would hit her. It was something that he had only seen her do once before, when he raised his voice in sickbay.
"I'm angry at them, Deanna, not you. I am angry about what they did to you. I'm angry that they get to go on with their lives like nothing happened and we are here all these weeks later just trying to figure out how to get through the day. I hate them, Imzadi, not you. Never you."
"But you are hurt."
Will looked at Deanna as she stood before him, her eyes down, smaller somehow than she really was. "I'm hurt that you didn't trust me, that you thought that I wouldn't understand, that I would judge you. I'm hurt that you lied to me."
"I do trust you," she started.
"Not enough," he interrupted. "That's what keeps me up at night. We'll fight our own demons, Deanna. Don't make me one of them. Wherever you are, whatever you do…I am on your side. Always."
"I was ashamed. I didn't want that picture in your head."
Will pulled her closer to him and wrapped his arms back around her. "So what made you come here, tell me all this?"
"I was walking through the woods and decided to take the road less traveled."
Will paused, puzzled by her words. "Robert Frost?"
Deanna nodded. "What I've been doing, it's not enough. I have to face my fears, not run away from them. I made a list."
"Of your fears?"
Deanna nodded against his shoulder, where her head lay cradled.
"Can I see it?"
She shook her head, no.
"Well how's it going so far?" he asked curiously.
"This was number one."
"Starting off with the little things, huh?"
"You are a bastard," she said crossly, though she made no attempt to move away from him.
His voice was soft, and filled with sincerity as he whispered against her ear. "How is it going so far?"
Deanna pulled herself even tighter into his arms, the place she felt safest in the universe.
"So far so good," she replied as she hid her face in the space between his shoulder and neck.
"Is this why you don't want to go home?" he asked her after a few minutes of silence.
"Because you thought your mother would know what happened and that she would judge you?"
"I don't want her picturing it any more than I want you doing it. Can't I just spare her that much?"
"You'll have to go home eventually, Dea. You can't stay out here forever hiding from her. If you tried, she'd just track you down and find you out here."
"I know. But it doesn't have to be right now. I just need more time."
Will sat back down on the couch, and Deanna clung to him, amazed that he was still willing to hold her and be with her.
"Can we just stay like this for a while?" she asked him.
"All night if you want to," he told her.
"No. I need to go home tonight. I need to turn out my lights."
Will looked at her with a look of complete puzzlement.
"Number two on the list," she explained and then snuggled back into his embrace.