Snow Falling Softly VIII
Allie shrieked.
Beverly had been musing to herself as she stood in the living room of the house on Caldos that she really needed to stop running away from things. At the sound of her oldest daughter shrieking--and Allie wasn't one to shriek--Beverly went running towards the room her daughter was in. Andrew had apparently heard the shriek as well and he ran smack into Beverly.
"Sorry," he said.
"It's okay," she said, opening the door to the library Nana had kept downstairs. Just as the doctor opened the door, Allie came practically flying out the same door, taking the knob from Beverly and slamming it behind her.
"Don't go in there," she said, taking in deep breaths.
Andrew frowned. "Why? Is there a masked murderer in there?" He went for the doorknob.
She slapped his hand away. "I'm not kidding. There's a bat in there."
Andrew burst into laughter. "A bat? Allie, you love animals, a can't be bat bothering you."
She turned to him, crossing her arms. "It flew into my hair."
Andrew kept laughing.
Beverly couldn't help it. Despite her better efforts, she joined Andrew in laughter. The idea of the girl who kept tarantulas as pets, tended to horses, had never been bothered by a single stinging insect, being afraid of a bat, felt absurd.
"Beverly!" Allie said, outraged. "Don't encourage him!"
"I'm sorry," the doctor choked out.
"Honestly!" the girl said, and stalked out of the hallway, leaving Andrew and Beverly to deal with the bat.
"Does this happen a lot?" Beverly asked Andrew.
His brow furrowed in thought. "Allie freaking out? No. Only over bats. I really should look into getting a bunch of them for pets, I could get to like this." The boy's gray eyes shined with mirth.
"Do you have a death wish?" Beverly asked.
"You're right," he said, sighing. "Let me go take care of the bat." Andrew slowly opened the door and slid inside. Footsteps ran about the room beyond the closed door. She heard windows being thrown open, more footsteps, a click, then Andrew racing into the hallway. "Done," he said.
"What did you do?" she asked. She couldn't remember what she and Nana had done when bats invaded the house when she had been a girl.
"Opened all the windows and turned off the lights. The bat will fly out at some point tonight." He frowned. "I can't believe that rhymed. At least it helps people remember. 'Open all the windows and turn off the light. The bat will fly out some time tonight.'"
She remembered now.
Andrew shouted to Allie that it was safe now and to keep out of the library until morning. "Anyway, I think I should--." A yawn caught him mid-sentence. He gave Beverly a wry smile. "Get to bed." Like the night before, Andrew pulled her into a hug without warning. "It's good to have you here," he said, then stepped away. "I mean it." Then he was up the stairs before she could reply.
The doctor wandered into the kitchen, not quite ready for sleep, her mind too much on the intense day she'd experienced, and with things still left to do. She needed to at least glance at Nana's journal, she had a letter of resignation to write, legal papers to file, children to tuck into bed. Putting the teapot on the stove, she smiled at the thought of tucking them into bed. Of course, Andrew and Allie were at the age where they'd be awfully miffed at the idea. But Gracie was only five, and expected things like that. Tucking her in, that was something she could get used to. Light footsteps sounded behind her. Looking up, Beverly saw that Allie had walked into the kitchen, appearing about as tired as Beverly felt. "You should go to bed," she said.
Allie nodded. "I know." Then she sat down at the table, communicating that she also wasn't ready for sleep.
The water heated, Beverly poured another cup in addition to hers, then handed it to Allie without a word. The girl cupped her hands around the warm mug, put her face over it. "It always seems colder at night," she said. "Even though I know the house is the same temperature as the daytime."
Beverly sat across from her. "Probably the bat," she said.
Allie glared. "You're as bad as Nana."
"Where do you think I got it from?"
Allie said nothing, took a sip of her tea. For awhile, they sat in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts, the wind howling outside, the fire crackling in the living room. Beverly took the moment to observe her eldest daughter. Physically, Allie looked the least like her father, with her nearly black hair, those wide blue eyes, the porcelain skin. Everything seemed to be Howard, except in this moment, when her pensive daughter held her mug of tea absentmindedly, and Beverly could see something about Allie's expression that resembled Jean-Luc when he got like this. At least once she finished cutting her ties with the Enterprise along with her captain, she would have these reminders. Somehow, she appreciated the subtle ones, such as Allie's expression, as much as the obvious, like gray eyes of Andrew and Gracie.
"What's going to happen?" Allie asked.
The girl hadn't looked at Beverly when she asked. The doctor wasn't even sure if Allie knew she'd asked the question out loud. "What?"
Allie looked over. "To us. To me, my brother and my sister. You and Wes are all we have now, and we're not old enough to be guardians for ourselves, much less Gracie. Was today some sort of introduction, to get us used to the idea of living on the Enterprise?"
Beverly shook her head. "No, that wasn't planned. Not by me, anyhow. I was as surprised as you were when the captain asked."
"Then what will happen?"
"I'm going to stay here," Beverly said. It was the first time she'd made any verbal indication of her plan.
Allie pushed her chair back slightly in shock. "You're going to resign?"
There, decision made. "Yes."
The girl frowned. "I don't like it."
"How come?"
"I don't want you to have to give up your life for us," she said. "It isn't fair. It's not like you asked to have to take care of us. We aren't your responsibility."
Beverly couldn't say what she wanted. Couldn't tell her that she was very much her responsibility. That she wouldn't be giving up her life, instead she would finally be welcoming it. That is was she who was unfair, to have left them and denied them a mother, not to mention a father. To Allie, she said, "You are my responsibility. You're family."
"It still isn't right that you sacrifice your career to stay here on Caldos." Allie refused to back down.
Beverly realized that as much as Gracie was her father's daughter, so was Allie. The young lady had seen something she viewed as unfair, and would seek to make it as far as possible, and not give any ground. Luckily, Beverly had a lot of experience in dealing with this sort of Picard determinism. "My career is being a doctor, something I can do as well here on Caldos as I could on a starship." Appealing to reason.
"I don't see why we couldn't go with you on the Enterprise." Allie took another sip of tea, looking at Beverly over the rim of the cup.
"Of all three of you, I think you're the last one I expected to be so adamant about going on the ship instead of staying here. You love it here, you have your horses, your studies, your home is here. I can't take you away from that. Instead, I can make it my home again." Beverly felt odd, hearing the arguments she'd had in her head for twenty four hours voiced to her sixteen year old daughter.
Allie sat back. "And it will be here whenever we come back. Planets are like that, they tend to stick around. I'd have to leave sometime anyway, to go to veterinary school. I can get someone here to stable the horses while we're away. Then there's Andrew and Gracie, they would love it up there, being in space all the time."
"They would, wouldn't they?" She didn't need to ask the question, they both knew the answer. Neither Andrew nor Gracie were meant to stay on a planet for any long length of time. They were meant for the stars.
"And Gracie seems really attached to Captain Picard," Allie said, then slyly looked at Beverly. "I'd also like to take this opportunity to bring up your relationship with him once again," she held up her hand to quiet Beverly's coming protest, "But considering the late hour, I'll hold it in abeyance until tomorrow."
"How long have you been this reasonable?" Beverly asked.
Allie smiled. "Nana insists that I'm like this whenever Andrew isn't trying to get a rise out of me."
The doctor sighed. "I do think it's for the best for me to stay here with you three, for now. I don't want to take you all away from what you've known your entire lives." I don't want to risk people finding out who you really are, she thought.
Allie stood up, putting her empty mug in the sink. "I still think it's a mistake."
"You're allowed to think that." Beverly moved her fingers across the warm surface of her mug.
Allie gave her a hug as warm as the one her brother had given earlier. "Good night," she said, then walked towards the door. She stopped, turned around. "And thank you," she said quietly. "For being here." Then she was gone.
Beverly stared through the empty doorway for a few moments, letting everything settle, become real. Then she was up from her chair, putting her cup in the sink, walking into the hallway, up the stairs. She wanted to make sure Andrew had been able to fall asleep. Many times, Felisa had written to her granddaughter about Andrew's insomnia. Allie's door was closed, she'd already gotten to bed. At the end of the hall, Andrew's door was still open. The boy lay on the bed, paging through a large book. Beverly recognized it. She'd sent it to him when he was a small boy, when she found it in an antique bookstore in San Francisco. An old book called Our Universe, from the late twentieth century Earth, the book Allie had talked about earlier. She rapped softly on the door. Andrew looked up, shut the book quickly, set it aside. "Come in," he said.
She smiled. "You know, with that reaction, someone might think I caught you looking at something more risque than an old book about the Terran system."
The tips of the boy's ears turned red. "Sorry," he said. "Habit."
Beverly took a seat on Andrew's desk. "You're embarrassed because of the book?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No, not exactly. I don't know if I can explain it, really."
"Would you like to try?"
He shrugged. "I just never really talked to Nana about it." His hand motioned towards the closed book on the floor.
"You aren't exactly talking to me about it, either," Beverly said.
Andrew gave her a self-deprecating smile. "I suppose I'm not." The boy got up, went to his bookshelf. Grabbing a book, he opened it, took out a photograph he'd tucked inside, handed it to Beverly. It was a photograph of a sunset. Something about it looked off. The setting sun looked too small. "That's sunset on Mars," Andrew said when he saw the confusion on her face. "Not a recent one though. That one is from one of the first Mars rovers that managed to make the trip from Earth to Mars and land safely." As she looked at the photograph again, Andrew picked up the book, paged through it. Then he handed it to her. "That's an artist's conception of what sunset on Mars would look like, drawn twenty years before that picture was taken."
She took the book from him, studied the artist's rendering. "I still don't understand," she said.
"You weren't meant to yet. I had to show you these before I could explain. I mean...think about how someone in that time period must have felt. Seeing that drawing as a child, then in young adulthood, being able to hold a real photograph of what they'd only imagined of as a child. How amazing it must have been." He paused, stopping next to the window, trying to peer outside. As it was night, all he could see was a reflection of his face. "And that's how I feel, every time I get to go off planet and into space."
Beverly placed the photograph carefully between the pages of the drawing and shut the book. "And you feel guilty about that?"
He nodded, still looking out the window. "Nana was always so tied to this place, to being here. Allie, too. I thought, me wanting to leave, wanting to join Starfleet, would be betraying them somehow. So I never talked about it with them. I did, a little bit, with Gracie, she understands. I mean, I think she does. She's only five."
Beverly frowned at the sadness in his voice. "Nana knew, you know."
He turned around. "She did?"
Crusher nodded. "It's something I learned as a girl. Nana knew everything."
Andrew smiled. "What did she say?"
"Oh, she wrote to me about how her silly grandson needed to stop pretending to be someone he isn't just to please everyone else. That he wasn't fooling anyone." Yet, Beverly knew he had fooled her, because she hadn't seen him each day like Felisa had.
"I heard that from her a lot," Andrew said. "That line."
"You're not fooling anyone, you know," they said together, and laughed.
"Yeah, that one," he said, taking his book back from the doctor and placing it on the bookshelf. "I'm not ready for the exams yet. I won't be for at least another year." The sadness drifted into his voice again.
Beverly wanted to tell him to talk to Captain Picard, that he could be a great help, guide him in his studies. How easy it would've been to tell Andrew to just go talk to his father, and everything would be okay. She couldn't, so she said nothing.
Andrew looked at her. "So now you know." The expression on her son's face was incredibly vulnerable in that moment. He had revealed something to her that he'd kept close to himself, well guarded, and now he had no idea how she'd react.
"I think," she said. "That Nana would be very proud to have seen you in Starfleet." And so would your mother and father.
He blushed. "Thanks."
She decided it would be best to let him be. "Do you think you can sleep now?"
"Yeah," he said.
"Goodnight, then," and she started towards the door.
His next words stopped her mid-step. "You know, Wes is really lucky."
"Why's that?" she asked, knowing that he'd say something about how Wesley got to spend his life on starships, got to fly a starship, was already in the Academy.
Andrew's ears were still red. "He has you for a mom," he said.
It was Beverly's turn to blush, stammer out a thank you, nearly fall into the hallway and down the stairs. She'd wanted to stay and ask for an explanation of what exactly the boy meant, what she'd done in the past few days that made Andrew say that, but couldn't deal with the answer. Couldn't even deal with the first statement, really. In the living room, the fire had burned down. The doctor stoked it, picked up a couple new logs, placed them on the fire, sparks flying upwards, following the smoke.
She turned to the couch behind her, where Gracie had fallen asleep curled up in one of the many quilts around the house. Beverly leaned down and kissed her youngest child's forehead, then sat quietly in one of the armchairs, PADDs stacked next to her. Allie had been right, she shouldn't be giving up her career in Starfleet. But after the experience she'd had in those two months at Starfleet Medical, she knew she couldn't deal with something like that again.
2365
The morning after Beverly Crusher had broken her tricorder in the bathroom of her San Francisco home, she had to wake the twins early, to get them to their early appointment to be scolded by the Academy groundskeeper. The idea of bringing them on Academy grounds filled her with dread, paranoid that someone would recognize the children for who they were. She already had a hard enough time dealing with looks she'd get at Medical, and she supposed those looks were only formed by her own paranoid thoughts. But bringing them to the Academy didn't help matters much.
Both of them unwillingly rolled out of bed. Allie bounced awake after just a few minutes and began torturing her brother to make him get up. At first, the doctor wasn't quite sure of what she saw. So she stopped outside Andrew's door and confirmed that Andrew had most certainly thrust his hand, and only his hand, outside the covers and given his sister a rude gesture. Allie replied by sitting on him, causing Andrew to shout. Beverly did nothing to intervene, the boy had brought it on himself with his crude communication. Though, Beverly did recall herself giving the same gesture to roommates in the Academy who were morning people.
On the way to the grounds, Andrew remained bleary eyed and Allie practically skipped the entire way. Briefly she wondered how she had given birth to such a morning person, then she remembered that Jean-Luc always seemed chipper in the morning. "Beverly, can you get her to stop?" Andrew asked.
"I doubt it," she replied.
"Damn," he said.
"Andrew!"
"Sorry," he said automatically. Then he looked over at his skipping sister. "Mostly."
She didn't have the heart to scold him, she knew exactly how he felt. There had been breakfasts when Jean-Luc had been so thrilled to be awake that she'd had to use her best emotional control to not take the spoon in front of her and stab him until he turned properly somber for the early morning hour. They arrived at the shed Boothby had specified for the early morning meeting to find the groundskeeper already waiting.
"You're late," he said.
Beverly frowned. "Are we?"
"I wouldn't have said it if you weren't." The old man, who had been old when Jean-Luc was a cadet, when Beverly was a cadet, when everyone was a cadet, looked down at the two ten year olds. "And you're the two who ruined my flowerbed."
"Sorry," they said together.
"Mmm. I'm sure you are. People are always sorry this early in the morning."
"Allie's not," Andrew said. "She likes the morning."
"Some people are strange like that," said Boothby, tossing a sack of soil into a wheelbarrow. "A cadet I knew a long time ago was punished by being forced to run before dawn when he was a freshman. He hated it, which was why they made him do it. So to spite them, he entered the Academy marathon, and I'll be damned if he didn't win. First freshman to do it, too."
The doctor wondered why Boothby had brought that up. The cadet in question had been Jean-Luc. Had Boothby figured it out already?
"Are you going to make me run?" Andrew asked.
"No, no. You get to help me fix my flowerbed, make things right." He pointed to Allie. "You too, young lady."
Beverly had to be at Medical soon. "How long will it take?" she asked.
"Oh, about noon," the groundskeeper said. "Can you pick them up then?"
She nodded.
He nodded back. "See you then." And he went about directing the two children on what to do.
She came back at noon as instructed to find a pleased groundskeeper and two tired, hungry, and thirsty children. After thanking Boothby for the lesson, she walked them back towards her home and off Academy grounds. That morning, they'd been lucky, as very few cadets and officers were up and about. But at noontime, the campus teemed with them, flowing from building to building, then surging towards the cadet mess hall. None of the cadets gave the group a second glance, they were used to officers and their families being around the Academy.
It was the officers who gave them second, longer, glances. Especially in the admirals, as she imagined in their faces as they must be thinking that these children were certainly not her cousins, but must be hers. And there'd be no other reason to think that, because most had no idea that she had her cousins visiting. Medical did, but the command officers rarely ventured over there, much less kept up on scuttlebutt. So they must be assuming that they were her children. Then they would be trying to figure out who their father was. She hustled the two of them along, eager to get home, and away from Starfleet.
2370
Another pocket of pine sap burst, making Beverly jump. She shook her head to rid herself of the memory she'd been thinking, but to no avail. As much as she wanted to give Andrew and Gracie, even Allie, the chance to live on a starship, she couldn't stay with them and remain in Starfleet. The doctor couldn't deal with the surreptitious glances, idle comments. Couldn't deal with having to run interference to keep the three of them from becoming so close to the captain that any one of them could figure out what was going on. And two people on the ship already knew. Deanna and Guinan had figured it out so quickly, so easily. If Beverly stayed on the ship, brought the three children with her, it would only be a matter of time before others managed to put it together. And god forbid if Lwaxana Troi showed up on the ship. Everyone would know in a heartbeat if that happened.
Beverly's gazed moved from the firelight to the sleeping five year old on the couch. But she couldn't leave them behind, either. She'd already missed five years of Gracie's life, sixteen of the twins' lives. No more. The decision was made--she would not miss any more of her children's lives. As Allie had said, for a different thing, it wasn't fair. The doctor's hands snatched up one of the PADDs beside her, typing in a simple resignation letter, effective immediately, as long as the captain read it and entered it into the ship's log. She placed the PADD aside, got up, picked Gracie up, quilt still around her. The steps made no sound as she carried the little girl upstairs. All was quiet on the second floor except for the sound of Conal's breathing. The dog padded out into the hallway, followed them into Gracie's room, watched as Beverly settled the girl into bed. Gracie sighed and snuggled up under her covers. Conal went over, licked her face, then walked back out of the room, apparently satisfied that one of his charges was well and asleep.
The doctor left the room as well, went into her grandmother's room. Immediately she saw Nana's journal, picked it up. The book fell open to an entry made after Beverly had spoken to her grandmother about Kesprytt. She remembered that conversation well, as Felisa had given her a hell of a hard time over it. Remaining standing, Beverly read the entry.
That child will be the death of me. I can't fathom how she could have told that man no. How many times has she told me she's in love with him? I could go back and reread all my journal entries to check, but I feel safe in writing that it's a lot. I've seen it with my own eyes, how the two of them are. How he looked at her at her wedding, how he looked at her during Jack's funeral, how he must have looked at her on that planet when he admitted his love, how I'm sure he looked at her when he suggested exploring their feelings.
I fear for the devastation in both of their lives when everything comes to pass. I know that things will resolve, I'm sure that one day, they will all be a family, but the road between then in now will be a furious one. And the longer they delay, the longer my Beverly keeps that man at bay, the more harsh the road will be.
Tonight, when I spoke with Beverly, I didn't tell her what was happening here, outside. Didn't tell her that nature knew exactly what was going on, that it had been snowing since the day they were captured on that planet. She doesn't believe in portents, in signs, in symbols. One day, she will. And that will be the day her family comes together.
There was more scrawled in Felisa's elongated handwriting, but Beverly slammed the book shut, threw it on the bed. She imagined Allie's voice in her head again. "Snow forms when the atmospheric temperature is at or below freezing and there's a minimum amount of moisture in the air." Nothing to do with any sort of supernatural anything. She imagined Andrew's voice declaring it bullshit.
The doctor found herself going back downstairs. The letter had yet to be sent, so she picked up the PADD from beside the chair and went into the small office across from the library that most likely still held the bat. The terminal powered up easily and Beverly transferred the data from the PADD to the terminal. She studied it one more time.
To: Picard, Jean-Luc. Captain. Commanding Officer, USS Enterprise
From: Crusher, Beverly. Commander. Chief Medical Officer, USS Enterprise
I resign my commission from Starfleet effective upon receipt of this message.
Simple and to the point. The doctor stabbed the transmit button and the message disappeared from the screen to reappear in the comm traffic of the ship in orbit of the planet. Her life now beginning again, she went out into the living room, settled herself on the couch in front of the dying fire, and fell asleep.
In the dark pre dawn on Caldos, Beverly was awakened by a dog shoving his face into hers. Without opening her eyes, she pushed him away, only to have him bound right back and continue shoving his face into hers and snuffling. Finally, she got up, glanced at the chronometer, glared at the dog.
Conal looked at her, looked at the door, looked at her. She got the message. Groaning as she got up, she let the large dog out into the backyard. Now fully awake, she went upstairs and went about her own morning ablutions, enjoying the solemn quiet of the household. She'd just gotten back downstairs to get something for breakfast when there was a knock at the door.
She frowned. Jean-Luc couldn't have read the message already. She purposely transmitted it on such a low priority that he shouldn't receive the message until midday. Most likely, it was Deanna, sensing some sort of cognitive dissonance in her and wanting to talk about it. Letting out a sigh at having to verbally fence with her friend, Beverly went and opened the door.
On the stoop, snow blowing in around him, stood Wesley.