Snow Falling Softly IX
As Beverly Crusher stared at her son standing outside the door, her throat closed up and refused to open, letting her know that if her brain hadn't realized it yet, she was inching very close to her breaking point. Trying to will her throat into working, she studied Wesley's face, searching for any indication of what had caused him to visit. Whether he felt guilty, angry, sad, everything, or nothing. Her throat as stubborn as her mind, it continued to stay closed. The doctor reached out with her hand to pull the young man inside, out of the cold. Some motherly instincts would never go away, no matter how angry you were at the child in question.
When her fingers came into contact with the material of his winter jacket, Wesley flinched, his eyes finally coming alive and staring her down. She saw it then. Anger and its hot familiarity. Recognizing its origin, her throat loosened and allowed her anger out to answer his unspoken challenge. "If you aren't going to come inside, I'm going to have to shut the door in your face before it starts snowing in here."
In reply, he took a few heavy steps into the front room. Staring her son down, Beverly shut the door quietly behind him. Wesley stood in front of the fireplace, his jacket and boots still on, his hands shoved into his front pockets. He made no motion to make himself comfortable by taking any of the outer garments off. They were a sort of armor he felt he needed. Since he continued to stand and say nothing, Beverly went about starting another fire, working around her eldest son, letting him stew. Paper, kindling, logs. Another tiny wall.
Wesley watched.
Beverly lit a match. "If you've come here to argue with me, feel free to start. But don't you dare raise your voice and wake up the other people in this house." She held the match to the edge of the paper until the paper caught fire, then flipped it away, into the fireplace.
"I want to know what you're going to do," Wesley said quietly.
The doctor set the box of matches down on the hearth, stood and went into the office. As she passed the closed door of the library, she wondered if the bat had managed to fly out during the night. In the office, she found the PADD she'd used the night before. Back in the living room, she handed it to Wesley. Then she squatted back down in front of the fireplace, lit another match, and held it under paper on the opposite side of the pile of logs. A thump from behind her told her that Wesley had dropped the PADD onto an armchair.
"You're resigning," he said.
"Resigned. I transmitted that last night." She put the box of matches away and studied the fire as it began to take hold, eating away at the kindling.
"Does Captain Picard know?"
"Not unless he read every single transmission that came through during the night. I sent it on a low priority to give myself some time." She stood, still looking at the fireplace.
"Does he know?" Wesley asked again, yet a different question.
"No."
"If you don't tell him, I will."
Beverly turned on her son, her eyes burning into him, hotter than the fire beside them. The statement brought Beverly's anger flaring, drawn by the frustration and pain of the last few days, her inability to fix anything, at having to choose between one person or another, over and over again. At this boy trying to take control from her through his own indignance, as if he were the only one who'd been hurt. She spoke slowly and carefully. "You will not," each word its own command.
"You're just going to disappear from his life? Just like that? Never tell him he has three children by you?" Wesley's tone bordered on disgust.
"Perhaps," she said. "But whatever I decide, it's my decision. Not yours."
"Maybe it's what you do. Leave people behind. After all, you left me," he said.
She blinked. "What?"
He looked up from the floor, meeting her eyes, his brown ones blazing as much as her blue. "That second year, on the Enterprise. You went to Starfleet Medical and left me on the ship. So you could spend time with them." Then he glanced down at her abdomen, then up the stairs. "And have her."
Beverly wouldn't stand to have one child take away the identity of another. "Your sister has a name."
"But she isn't my sister," Wesley replied, seeming to take some sort of perverse pleasure in the revelation. "She's my cousin. Isn't that what you told me? Told everyone else? The poor kid thinks her parents died when she was a baby. You know what? I think it's true. Except her parents died way before she was ever alive. They died the night before my father was buried."
No, they were dying now, as they spoke, and Beverly was killing them. "I didn't know," she said, the truth escaping, slipping away through a tunnel made underneath the wall that protected her from her son.
It was Wesley's turn to be surprised. "What?"
"When I left for the position at Medical. I didn't know about Gracie."
He threw up his arms. "Then why did you leave? Did you leave me just to go spend time with your other children?"
She crossed her arms, fixed her eyes, angry again, on her son. "If you recall, Wesley Crusher, you were supposed to go with me to Earth. You chose to remain aboard the Enterprise. So don't go accusing me of things that you decided on your own. I left the ship because I was trying to get away from Captain Picard. To stop this relationship that you seem to hate with all your being."
"Mom, stop--."
"What? You don't want to hear that I've had moments of reason? That I'm not the cold heartless bitch you think I am?" She took a step closer to him. "You want to hear it all? I'll tell you. It happened after Tasha died, the night of her funeral. And it was only once and it was a mistake. I couldn't let myself stay on the ship with him, not while I didn't have any bearings. He wanted me to stay, you know. He's wanted to make things right for a long time, for us to have a real relationship instead of what we have--."
"Stop, I don't want to hear this!"
If he couldn't tell her what he wanted, she couldn't give it to him. "Then what did you come here for? To get me to beg you for forgiveness? Because that isn't going to happen." She didn't need his forgiveness, she needed his love. He was her son.
Wesley muttered something under his breath. She couldn't hear it, the crackling from the fire covered it. "What?" she asked.
When he looked at her, his eyes were reservoirs of disgust. "I said that a whore wouldn't ask forgiveness for her bastard children."
She went numb, couldn't feel her fingers or toes, a white noise nearly filling her ears. "If I hadn't given birth to you," she said to Wesley, "I wouldn't be so sure right now that you're my son." He went to protest and she cut him off. "I raised you. I kept you with me since you were little, choosing assignments where I knew you'd get good schooling, good experiences, be able to have friends. I raised you better than you're acting. I see you right now, standing before me, looking exactly like the son I've known for his entire life, and I don't know who you are."
"It's not like I know who you are." He motioned upstairs. "Or they know who they are. Or Captain Picard knows who he is. You hold everything, you know who everyone is, and you keep it all to yourself, as if you're the only one who matters."
Something inside Beverly collapsed. Wesley was so certain that she was sure of who she was, when she was the least knowledgeable out of all of them. What she blamed on fate, on fortune, on superstition, or science, he blamed on her, slammed it squarely on her shoulders, an unyielding anvil. "I am your mother," she said, one thing she was certain of. "And that will never change, no matter how you feel about me."
His reply shot back to her, mocking. "And that's another thing that the all-important Beverly Crusher gets to decide?" The young man managed to lob his words as if they were thousands of tiny daggers, picking at her wherever they landed.
Any possibility of a rejoinder was cut off by small steps on the stairwell. Gracie walked down the stairs, fists rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She stopped right before reaching the first floor, when she saw Wesley. "Hi," she said. "I didn't know you were visiting."
"Neither did I," said Wesley.
"Want some breakfast?" Gracie asked. "I'll make it for you."
Beverly stared at her son, daring him to be as rude to the little girl as he'd been to his mother.
For the briefest of moments, he stared back at her, challenging. Then he turned to Gracie and said, "That would be great," and followed her into the kitchen.
The doctor stayed in the living room, needing some space between herself and her eldest son. Scratching came from outside the front door and Beverly let Conal back inside the house. The large dog shook the excess snow from his fur coat, then settled down in front of the fire, his dark eyes watching her. She took a seat on the floor in front of the fire, leaning back on the couch. Everything seemed to be imploding around her. The hidden aspects of her life had been dangling over her, swords on gossamer threads. Nana's death had started the sawing of the razors of reality and every passing minute cut another thread, releasing another sharp point. She wanted nothing more than for everything to be fixed, for her to have Jean-Luc in her life, as husband and father, for all her children to be able to know one another as brothers and sisters. Instead, she would have to keep striving to have everything separate. The captain away from the family entirely, never knowing what he was missing. Wesley away from the other three, staying a cousin and not taking his role as the oldest child.
Child. The cadet who had shown up on her doorstep earlier that morning was no child. In his three years at the Academy, her son had become a young man, now twenty one years old. A young man that now seemed to loathe his mother, whoever she had become to him. Wesley's reaction to his discovery removed any options she might have considered of telling Jean-Luc about the three children. If even-tempered Wesley reacted like this, Jean-Luc's reaction would be only stronger, and hurt that much more.
She knew he would be coming down today, once he read her resignation. Demanding answers. She couldn't allow him in. If she could keep him out, this one last time, then he would have to leave her alone, and she could set aside this sword, reinforce at least that one thread. Make it into a rope, weave it into a net, and finally an impenetrable wall. But she didn't want to, didn't want him gone. Then again, you couldn't always get what you wanted in life. It just was.
She had no choice. A whine from in front of her broke her from the reverie. Conal sat there, his eyebrows quizzical. Then the dog moved forward, licked her face, wagged his tail. Her hand moved to her cheek--she'd been crying without sound. "It must be so easy for you," she whispered to the dog. "All you do is love unconditionally, and expect no less from others. And that's what we give you back, unconditional love. If only it were that easy with people." Conal licked her face again, then placed his head in her lap. Absently, she patted his head.
A soft male voice behind her. "Are you okay?" It was Andrew who had asked, sounding so much like Jean-Luc that it hurt as much as it comforted.
"Oh, I'm fine," she said.
He sat down next to her, stretching his socked feet towards the fire, wiggling his toes. Conal's tail thumped on the warm granite stones of the hearth. "I think you're lying," Andrew said. "I should know, I suck at it too."
I'm a better liar than anyone knows. "Don't worry about me," she said aloud.
"I'm not worried about you. The person who practically raised you died a few days ago, it's perfectly normal for you to be upset. I was concerned."
"You see a difference between concern and worry?"
He nodded. "Sure. Worry eats you up, it's all you think about, whatever or whoever it is you're worrying for. When you're concerned, you care, but it doesn't become all of who you are."
"So what makes you concerned about me?" she asked.
"Conal has some sort of sixth sense. Or dog sense. I don't know. He just knows when people are really hurting and tries to make them feel better. He's good like that." Andrew frowned. "He also hates fighting."
He must have heard Wesley and I fight, she thought, maybe I'm as horrible liar as my second son.
"I heard Wesley's voice," Andrew said, confirming her suspicion. Tendrils of fear brushed against the back of her neck. "Couldn't make anything out." The boy cast a glare in the direction of the kitchen. "Though he seems to have done a damn good job of upsetting you."
"I'll manage," she said, scratching Conal behind the ears.
"You won't tell me, will you?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No. It's something Wes and I have to work out between ourselves."
"I understand," he said, and said nothing more about it.
So she sat companionably in front of the fire with her second son and his dog, both of them quiet, yet giving the other support. Beverly realized that Wesley could learn as much from Andrew as Andrew thought he could learn from Wesley. Somehow, Andrew had gained so much from Nana in terms of empathy, knowing exactly what to do and say to make a person feel somewhat settled in times of tumult. The doctor wondered where she'd gone wrong with Wes in that regard. He was a good man, had high ideals, yet she hadn't managed to instill that same empathy in her son as Felisa had in her great-grandchildren. It could be because Beverly didn't possess that empathy herself. No, it wasn't that. She wouldn't be a good a doctor as she was if she didn't have empathy. Most likely, it was example. She had been working so much, that Wesley rarely saw that empathy from his mother other than short glimpses. He never watched his mother work as Andrew had watched Felisa work out of her home. Wesley hadn't lived with other siblings and learned to deal with the ups and downs of that sort of love.
She'd done him a disservice and they both suffered now as a consequence. There was also the question of paternity, of Wesley being his father's son and Andrew his own father's son. Jack had been the type to outwardly confront things, not let them simmer and sort out in any way within himself before bringing them into the open. So forthright at times that he could hurt as he healed others. He'd always been so amazed at Beverly's ability to comfort so easily, without any conscious thought on her part. Yet, he'd been a good man and Beverly had loved him. Wesley was like Jack--the act of comforting was a learned thing, not something he'd been born knowing how to do.
After awhile, Andrew got up and went to the kitchen. The morning passed slowly, at least to Beverly. She dreaded that contact from the captain she knew was coming. It was inevitable. And the closer it got to midday, the more tense she became. Allie and Andrew inspected the library and declared it free from bats. Andrew sequestered himself in the library after that, then Allie in the office, Gracie pulled Wesley into a game of checkers. Hunger brought them all into the kitchen around the same time and they found themselves seated around the table. Together.
At first, they'd eaten quietly. Then Gracie grew restless. "How'd your exams go, Wesley?" she asked.
"Fine," Wes replied around a bite of his sandwich.
"What were they on?"
"Starfleet things."
Gracie made a face at him.
"You know, you could give her a little more detail than that," Allie told him. "Maybe she might want to go to the Academy one day. More information could give her a leg up on the competition."
Wesley muttered something.
"What'd you say?" Andrew asked, eyes narrowing.
Wesley met his look. "Nothing."
Andrew frowned.
The doctor breathed an inward sigh of relief.
Then Wesley spoke up, addressing Gracie. "Anyone ever tell you about your parents?" he asked her.
Beverly's head snapped up. Andrew stopped eating. Allie put down her sandwich.
"Not really," she said. "They died really soon after I was born. I never knew them."
"Haven't you wondered what they were like?" Wesley continued. "If you looked like them, if they had your sense of humor, if they were smart, any of that?"
Listening to him, Beverly became immobile. Each word shoved her guilt deeper inside, ripping as it went.
"Yeah," she said.
"Have you ever dreamed about them, about them still being alive?"
Beverly stared at the stranger across from her, the man who claimed to be her son. Torturing a small child with words meant to cut, not just the girl, but also her mother.
Gracie bit her lip.
Wesley didn't give up. "I mean, just imagine, what it would be like to live with your parents, to be a family--."
"Shut up!" Andrew shouted, standing up. "Are you trying to make her cry? Because if you are, you damn well succeeded."
Indeed, Gracie's attempt to stem her tears hadn't been at all successful. She didn't move, didn't make a sound, but the tears fell anyhow.
"And what if I am?" Wesley stood up.
Beverly watched in askance as the brothers faced off. Andrew was already taller than Wesley, more muscled. Yet Wesley had been trained in Starfleet defensive techniques. It couldn't come to a physical fight, she had to stop them, but she was riveted to her chair, chained by shock.
Andrew stepped over to him. "Then you'd better stop, right now, and pick on someone else."
Allie drew herself up between the two boys. "That's enough," she said. "I'm not going to watch you two fight over who gets to be the alpha male." She turned to face Wes. "I think you need to go for a ride and cool off. You're being an asshole, I don't know why, and I'm sick of it. I've been trying to ignore you all morning and it worked until now."
Wesley tried to protest. "I'm not being an asshole."
She raised her eyebrows. "Fine. You aren't being an asshole."
Wes nodded.
"You're being a dick," she said.
He glared.
"Fine, you know what? We're all going for a ride to cool off. Me, you, and Andrew. So go put warm clothes on and get to the barn." Allie's request had the cadence of a command, and the boys did as she said without further protest.
Beverly watched them grab jackets and winter hats and walk outside. The snow was light, only a few inches accumulated on the ground, they'd be fine. And maybe, when they got back, they'd be calm. The doctor turned away from the window and towards the table. Gracie had disappeared. Frowning, Beverly went in search of her. Then she heard footsteps on the stairs, Gracie's light ones followed by Conal's heavy ones. She let them go, giving the little girl a head start on collecting her feelings before going up to speak with her. Beverly needed some time to figure out what she would say, to gain control of her own dreams, the ones Wesley had spoken about.
A sharp knock sounded on the door. The doctor glanced at the chronometer out of reflex, but she knew exactly who it would be. A sigh escaped her and she girded herself to be resolute through the coming confrontation. It seemed the day's onslaught would never end. But knowing this could be the final confrontation with Jean-Luc gave her some hope. At the end of it, there would be some resolution, and she could move on, free.
The doctor opened the door and found Jean-Luc Picard standing there, wearing only his regular duty uniform, and holding a PADD. He shoved the PADD at her as he stepped into the house without her invitation and asked, "What the hell is this?"
She took it from him, took in the look he was giving her, filled with anger and outrage. Met him head-on. "I thought it was pretty self-explanatory," she said, relying on instincts. "I'm leaving Starfleet." Then pointing to the door she said, "You can leave now."
His face darkened, became resolute, he would not give in. "The hell I will," he told her, staying put.
She crossed her arms and stared at him, as resolute.
"Beverly, you can't just leave Starfleet," he said. While his face seemed set in steel, his voice was gentle, almost pleading.
When she answered, her voice matched the hard look on her own face. "I can. And I have." She decided to offer up the explanation she'd concocted. "I've decided to stay on Caldos and become a healer, like my grandmother. It's a proud Howard tradition, and I've decided to uphold it."
"Just like that?" he said.
She nodded.
"Is this about your cousins? Because I'd give you permission to bring them on the ship, they are your family, and I can't imagine there being anyone else to take care of them aside from you."
It wasn't about her cousins. It was about her children, their lives, and hers. "It isn't about them."
"Does Wesley know?"
"Yes."
"I can't imagine he approves," the captain said.
"It isn't his decision to make," she replied, as she'd told her son earlier that day.
His face softened a bit, showing he felt emotions other than the anger he'd been solely expressing. "I think it's a mistake."
Allie had said that. I still think it's a mistake. "You can think that all you want," Beverly said. "But it isn't going to change my mind. This is my life. I've made my decision and I'm not going to change it." She made her voice as hard and unforgiving as forged steel. "So please leave me alone."
And when she met his eyes with her challenge, and saw something break inside the gray of the winter sky he held in his irises, she knew she had won. It was over, the confrontation done, he would let her be. She thought she should be rejoicing and instead, felt something inside of her break as well. Another thread, another sword dropped, and when it fell it pierced them both to depths they hadn't know they possessed.
When he spoke, it was so soft she had to strain to hear. His voice had broken too, broken from the self assured baritone to the gentle, hoarse whisper. "I suppose I should be leaving, then." He looked at her.
She realized it would be for the last time. The doctor willed her hands not to ball into fists, willed herself not to cry, willed herself not to reach out to him and tell him not to go. She nodded.
He nodded back. "Have a good life, Beverly." He tapped his communicator, holding her gaze. "Picard to Enterprise. One to beam up."