Hmm...yes I'm straying from my friday-fetish where Xiara is concerned...I hope you don't mind, if you do; sent complain e-mails to Pia and Gloria *g*
Now, I've run this by a couple of ppl, the first scene anyway, and the opinions were devided. Personally I think it works pretty well if you keep previous events into consideration :-)

Disclaimer...I'm really not in the mood to be sued...pretty please?
Note: Stupid 'title' I know, but it popped up and wouldn't leave me alone *sigh*
Next chapter: deadline set for Friday 26th sept.
Update: the entire story (Xiara I included) now contains about 85.000 words...if you're surprised, double it and then you know my reaction *ggg*
Reviews: Even after 85.000 words, still as much cherished as the first one :) Flames, criticism and downright brownnosing included ;-D

Now, on with the story :)

Chapter Thirty-Four: Lean on Me

With his hands clasped behind his back, Captain Picard followed his Counselor and former First Officer to her quarters, where she offered him a seat and ordered drinks for both of them from the replicator. She handed him a glass of tea and sat down across from her, slowly sipping the yellow-ish drink she'd gotten herself.

A little too self-conscious for his liking, Jean-Luc tried to figure out what he should say next. This was unlike any situation he'd ever been in and worse, one where his instincts seemed to fail him. "Deanna, I…I wanted to let you know that Data has offered to defend you as well."

"You already told me that, sir." Her voice was filled with teasing tones, and Jean-Luc felt his cheeks flush.

"Yes, I suppose I did." He recovered and decided that honesty was really his only option, not just because Troi was an empath, but also because she knew him better than most people alive. "I wanted to let you know that I know what you're going through." Thin ice there. Her features hardened, and her eyes glittered with barely contained anger. Knowing that he had to say something before she exploded, Jean-Luc stood and crossed the room.

"I know you don't want to hear it, I didn't want to hear it either. I didn't think anyone could possibly understand what I'd been through, and all I wanted was to be left alone." Her anger seemed to be fading, giving way to curiosity and sympathy. "But you and Beverly stayed with me regardless, and you were always there when I woke up from a nightmare."

It was true. She remembered it as vividly as he did. What he didn't know was that for the duration of his recovery she and Beverly had shared the quarters directly adherent to his, just in case something went wrong. His nightmares would often wake her up and she would make her way to his cabin, sitting with him as he battled his memories.

"I hated you for it. I hated them for what they'd done to me, but I hated myself above everyone else. I remember screaming at you to leave me alone, but you wouldn't. I even hit you, and you still wouldn't leave." It was clear to her why he was telling her this. They'd covered it in counseling long ago, but he brought it back up for her sake, even though it made him remember. "You were there for me, both of you." He paused, gathering his thoughts and then continued. "What Thomas did to you…" she averted her eyes, "…you can't do this alone, Deanna. You wouldn't let me, and I won't let you."

The memories had brought with them dark emotions and they, combined with her captain's sympathy, affection and concern pounded against her shields, but despite what she sensed, she felt anger at what he was suggesting. "No! I *can*. I have to."

He took her by her shoulders, his frustration rising at her stubbornness. "Deanna, you can't deal with this on your own, believe me, I know!" His exclamation was more forceful than he had intended, but the situation brought back unpleasant memories and he found himself being pulled into them.

The exclamation startled Deanna, and despite realizing that what she was doing was wrong she could not stop herself from reacting the way she'd been taught to. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against Picard's, her tongue sneaking out of its own accord. Shocked, Jean-Luc froze, and then pushed Troi away from him. "What the hell was that?!" He watched numbly as she fell onto the couch, trying to comprehend what just happened. "Counselor?"

"I…I don't…I'm sorry sir." She flew from the living area and disappeared into her bedroom, the door closing behind her.

"Merde." What now? His instinct was to leave, the situation had been uncomfortable enough but after that kiss…why the hell had she kissed him anyway? He knew of her 'training', but everyone had been convinced that Deanna had overcome that.

That the episode with Will Riker several days ago had caused a relapse was understandable… perhaps this was simply the aftermath? Beverly had said…oh god, Beverly. What the hell was he going to tell her? He stared at the bedroom door and decided to wait for Deanna to come out.

When minutes had passed without a sign of life from her he began to feel uneasy. What was she doing in there? He remembered wanting to kill himself after the Borg, after yelling at Beverly and hitting Deanna. Was she going through the same thing? Did she, too, felt the guilt eating at her?

It was incredibly selfish of him, but a part of him was grateful to have someone who could really understand the horror he'd been through. Even if it was a decade and a half later, and even if the circumstances were somewhat different. The parallels existed, however, and there were a lot more similarities than he'd thought of.

Making up his mind he called for security and had them release the door. To his relief Troi seemed to be all right. She sat huddled against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, her long curls mostly obscuring his view of her face. "Deanna?"

"Please, please let me stay." It took him a number of seconds to realize she feared he'd have her transferred for what she did, and for some stupid reason it hurt that she thought he would be able to just send her away.

He stood in the doorway and tried to figure out what to do next. His inorganic heart was still beating rapidly, but he felt strangely calm. "Of course."

She tilted her head upwards and looked at his offered hand through her tears. He pulled her to her feet and more or less guided her back to the living area where he replicated her a box of tissues. "I'm sorry Captain, I don't know what came over me."

He gave her a few minutes of silence to groom herself. "I think you do." As he'd expected she turned away to hide her emotions from him. He hadn't seen her so evasive before but he'd known to expect it. Patiently he waited for Deanna to react. When she didn't he broke the silence again. "Why did you kiss me Counselor?"

"I…" She fumbled nervously at the sleeve of her dress. "Thomas, he…he taught me to react to his mood." Her eyes were trained on the floor at a point just before his feet. "When he was angry or frustrated I was to come to him and make him relax." Deanna allowed her thoughts to drift and banned all emotion from her conscious thought. "When I didn't get to him fast enough he'd beat me." She didn't feel it when Jean-Luc took her by her elbow and sat her down on the couch, or when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. Her mind was numb to anything and everything. She wasn't even aware that she was speaking her thoughts aloud.

Picard held her, still uncomfortable and unsure of what to do, but immensely relieved that she was finally talking. He wondered if perhaps he should contact Beverly, but figured that she had probably predicted that he would stay away until early in the morning.

He listened to her words and willed himself not to react. That someone was able to treat another living creature with such disrespect and cruelty was beyond him. That a man would do that to a woman he claimed to love was absolutely incomprehensible. He cringed at the terms she used and shuddered at the situations she described, but he didn't allow himself to think about them more thoroughly.

There were no words to offer comfort with; all he could do was hold her in a loose embrace and try to keep his emotions as bland as possible. Deanna fell silent, and when she didn't seem to be able to continue Jean-Luc got up and replicated a glass of water for her.

She drank it gratefully, but then suddenly became aware of the situation and froze. "I'm sorry sir, I didn't mean to force all that upon you."

Picard stared at the haggard-looking empathy, surprised by her apology. "Stop that." His soft, scolding tone got her to look up at him. "Stop apologizing Deanna. You need to talk, and despite my discomfort, I do want to help you. I know how hard it is to talk, especially to someone who hasn't had a similar experience."

Deanna nodded slightly, relief shining in her black eyes. "Thank you, that means a lot to me."

He nodded and sat back down, no longer touching her but close enough to be able to reach out. "What else do you remember?" Troi closed her eyes. As much as she wanted to forget she knew and had realized that she never would. Drawing a last deep breath she continued.

~*+*~

Walking into the Lounge Geordi LaForge surveyed the various humanoids scattered throughout the room, looking for a familiar energy pattern. His mind was still spinning with thousands of numbers, equations and other little, but extremely important information blocks.

He'd spend the last couple of hours comparing sensor logs from the Enterprise with the retrieved logs of the destructed starbases and was in serious need of a break. He found Doctor Pulaski in the far corner and made his way to her. A number of padds were scattered about the table's surface and the frowns edging in Kate's forehead suggested that she needed a break as much as he did. "Hey Doc."

"Geordi, have a seat." She nodded to the chair on the other side of the table. He pulled it back and was surprised by some unusual but familiar energy readings. Realizing that they were but a few pads he chuckled and put them on the table as well.

Sitting down he began to stack the pads. "I thought the Lounge is a place where people are supposed to relax?"

Kate sighed and put down whatever she'd been working on. "It's not easy to relax for a Doctor, period. Even less so when she's confronted with a mystery."

"A mystery?" His interest piqued LaForge leaned closer. His readings of the Doctor's face fluctuated, drooping down a bit before returning to what for him were 'normal parameters'.

"Yes…I thought I'd worked out the purpose and effect of each drug found in Deanna's blood. But when I was archiving them I came across a tiny viral body. There's nothing like it in any medical database and although is has a construction nearly identical to that of the Zanthi-virus there are a number of significant differences."

"Zanthi-virus?"

"Hmm…It's a virus often attracted by older Betazoids. It originated from the Zanthi-springs on Betazed. When attracted the Betazoid metaconscious projects emotions onto bystanders. Lwaxana attracted it during a trip to Deep Space Nine and caused some…unusual situations."

"Like?"

"Well, from what I understand she unknowingly enforced some of the emotions she sensed, thereby causing people to act on what was simple physical attraction."

"Oh." Yes, he could see how that would lead to 'situations'. Maybe he could ask Miles about that sometime, it sure sounded rather interesting. "Then how was the virus you found different?"

"Well" Pulaski shuffled through the stack of padds, then fished one out and handed it to him. "the Zanthi-virus would not have affected Deanna, but this virus did." Her finger, as she pointed at one of the graphics, was bright orange against the dark-blue of the cold, inorganic material. "Her blood contained a number of anti-bodies, which don't appear to have been effective."

Geordi studied the contents of the padd in his hands, but was unable to process the information. The equations the Doctor had written down were nothing like the ones he'd been studying all day. "Where you able to determine what effect the virus must've had?"

"No. The RNA that I located gives little information, other than that it doesn't have the same symptoms as the original virus. The structure shows that it was non-lethal; which makes sense because Thomas was bound on keeping her with him."

He nodded sadly, thinking about the days Lieutenant Riker had been on board. He remembered that most of the crew had been keeping an eye on him and the Counselor. It was no secret that her and Commander Riker had been involved at some point and the ship's grapevine was usually buzzing with rumors about their relationship; past, present or future. A second Will Riker had resulted in the wildest conjectured stories since the ship had left Utopia Planetia, Geordi was certain.

"I'd almost wish we could test it on someone."

"But we can! It shouldn't be impossible to have the compute run a simulation of what would happen on the holodeck."

"I thought about that…but with all it's sophistication, a computer can't possible simulate emotions."

"But if we provided enough background…"

Kate shook her head again. "Then we'd influence the results." Her sigh was only slightly louder than his. "I'll just have to run more analyses."

"After a stiff drink." Geordi added quickly, realizing how dry his mouth was.

"After a stiff drink.' She amended, once again stacking the pads; the analyses could wait a few minutes.

~*+*~

Although already five minutes late for the 0800 meeting Jean-Luc decided to stop by his quarters first to change into a clean uniform and check up on his wife. As he'd expected she was still sound asleep. Due to her pregnancy she slept a lot longer than usual and it was a good thing that she'd taken on the Beta-shifts for most of the time. It sometimes required some juggling with duty-rosters to be able to spend more than a few minutes together during daytime because Sickbay ran on shifts of six hours instead of eight, but now the shorter shifts were definitely beneficial.

He kissed her forehead, brushing a few red locks out of the way, and watched as she stirred. He remained watching her for longer than he could afford; longer than he would have, had he not spent hours listening to one of his close friends telling him the horrors she'd been through.

It were times like this, when something would harshly remind him of all the unjust and terror in the galaxy, that he'd take comfort in her presence and that she reminded him that despite the horror and the pain, there was still love and beauty.

If the choice had been his he would've stayed to watch her wake up, but the ship needed his attention and thus he settled for leaving a small note on his pillow. On his way to the Bridge his thoughts drifted back to Deanna. She'd been remarkably calm all through the night; there had been tears, but no crying, there had been some biting remarks, but no real anger and he couldn't figure out if that was because she had accepted and dealt with her memories or because she refused to deal with them.

And then there was the matter of her, so far undetected, amnesia. She'd told him that she didn't remember how she got back on the Enterprise and when he'd asked her if she'd tried to recall Deanna had quietly admitted that she didn't want to remember.

The doors to the Bridge opened, effectively interrupting his thoughts, and as he walked onto the command center he unconsciously pulled his uniform-jacket down. The ship's ETA for Darona III was thirteen hours and the first meeting with the opposing counsel and judges was twelve hours after that. But although he was convinced that he and Data would be able to defense Troi more than adequately, a sense of dread throbbed persistently in the pit of his stomach.