Author's Note: I promise I'm not evil. Or cruel. I end chapters where they naturally end. I swear it's just happenstance that they end up being between 4000-5000 words apiece. Pure happenstance. And the ending isn't for a few more chapters. Even if P and C get together, there's other psychological bits and pieces for the other characters that has to be attended to, and things that could ultimately drive them apart. That's all I'm sayin'.

Snow Falling Softly XIII

As Beverly Crusher felt the moment slipping away, Picard said, "Acknowledged, Number One."

She frowned. "You aren't going."

He raised his eyebrows, the fire illuminating his face. I love firelight, lighting his face as it had been on Kesprytt. "Beverly, I've made the mistake of leaving too many times. Right now, my place is here, even if it's to sleep on the sofa."

The doctor smiled at him, a full smile she hadn't had in a long time. Stepping towards him, she took his hands. "And you thought that what? What were you saying before Will interrupted you?"

"I don't recall," he said, the playful nature of his comment given away by the look in his eyes. Such a master of the straight face, his hands warm in hers, the photograph nestled between their palms.

Beverly brought their hands up against his chest, moving closer. Everything between them had gone, the room around them had disappeared. The secret of their children no longer built a stone wall, allowing the truth of everything to move freely. The light played on the remnants of tears left on his cheeks. He hadn't wiped it away, instead he allowed them to remain, refusing to cast away evidence of being moved by his own child. The doctor felt her heart cave in on itself at the thought, that he had accepted his role in spite of all she had done. All she had done.

She dropped his hands and stepped away, the photograph fluttering to the ground between them. The conversation in the kitchen, when she had told him that she thought he would hate her, hate the children when he found out. His expression told her of the loathing he'd felt then. Loathing, it's how he felt for her. It had been a mistake to think that he had settled things out in his head, wanted a relationship with her. Delusional as when she'd thought she could keep the children a secret forever.

The captain knelt down, keeping his eyes on Beverly. Carefully, he picked up the photograph, brought it to her. Then he began to talk, his words carrying an unhidden affection. "Since I left for the Academy as a young man, I've carried a family album with me. More a scrapbook of sorts, filled with every important memory I've experienced. Photographs, letters, announcements. Like some sort of lovesick schoolboy, I framed your photograph with a paper heart."

She fought a smile. The idea of Picard, the composed starship captain, acting like a schoolboy.

"It belongs there," he said. "And I'm not angry at you."

"I saw it. I saw it on your face earlier. When I told you I thought you would hate me, hate the children, I saw the loathing."

He grimaced. "That wasn't loathing for you."

"It wasn't?" Her hand gripped the arm of the chair she'd sat in, scrabbling for an anchor.

"It was for me. That I could act in such a way that you could think I would ever hate you, or hate my own children, it abhorred me. The very idea."

"Then why?" she asked. "Why did you avoid me after I told you?" Her words sounded unafraid, yet her heart gave long pause, then began tripping over itself in its rush to beat.

"I had to sort things out for myself. At first, I was angry. Then I wasn't. Then I was. Back and forth, and everything coming up in between to keep me from being angry. Sad, guilty, embarrassed, mourning. I missed so much," he said and she heard the crack in his voice. "Missed so much. And then I was angry at you again, for making me miss all of it."

Something reached around her heart and crushed it. He did blame her. "I'm sorry."

Picard reached out, placed a comforting hand over hers, her hand that clutched desperately to the chair. "And I realized you had missed those moments as well. That you hadn't done anything out of spite, out of any intent to hurt, and in doing so, you caused yourself as great of a pain, perhaps even greater. You carried the guilt of knowing, and denying yourself your children, denying yourself whatever you saw between us, giving up your future to keep the past from hurting anyone else."

He drew her hand off the chair, into his other hand, the photograph resting between them again. "And because of you, and your courage to admit the truth to me, for the first time in my life, I was able to tuck my daughter into bed."

Beverly could only watch, her eyes wide, willing herself to maintain control over every emotion doing cartwheels inside her chest. Watched as Jean-Luc's jaw trembled in his own attempt to control his.

The captain continued, his voice the whisper of autumn leaves whisked along the wind. "You gave me a gift which cannot be given any sort of monetary value, cannot be measured by any standard known to man."

Beverly watched as he gave in, opened himself to her, allowing her to see those very hopes and dreams he thought could destroy him. The fight inside him ceased and the tears flowed as freely as any new father that had just seen his child born before him. "She told me her dream, she called me Papa." The captain continued, regaining some strength to his tone. "I realized I could no more reject her mother, because to do so would be to reject her." He paused. "And I couldn't reject those whom I love."

The moment was on them again, his eyes searching hers, looking for the same acceptance, for him to be able to trust her with what he held most dear. As if of its own accord, her hand free hand sought his cheek, traced the wet trail of a tear. Her lips followed her hand and she kissed the tears away, offering him comfort as he had for her so many times before. Then she reached around, grasped the back of his head, placed her forehead on his. "Neither could I," she said.

His hand disengaged from hers, placed the photograph on the coffeetable, almost reverently. Then he brought those warm hands up under her jaw, brought her closer to him, closing the distance between them forever. She felt his lips on hers, inviting, and she accepted him without reservation. The room closed around them, collapsed and wrapped them up. The kiss deepened and became several, promises made of what would be.

For the first time, Beverly allowed herself to be who she was, and Jean-Luc was with her, being who he was. It just was. They found themselves, in front of the fire, comforting one another as they had so long ago. No secrets between them, no guilt in their actions, only the love that had started it all.

The fire had dwindled, the light it offered barely enough for Beverly to see the man holding her tightly, the quilt Jean-Luc had gotten after they had made love snugged around them both. "We can't stay here on the sofa," he said.

"I know," she said into his chest. "But I don't think any of our children would be ready for us to be sharing a bed."

With her head tucked under his chin, she felt his smile. "Our children," he said.

"Who are having one hell of a hard time," she said, thinking of Wesley and Andrew.

"We'll get through it." He kissed the top of her head. "We should also get some sleep."

She sat up. "Well, since you're sleeping down here on the couch, you had better put some clothes on." And when she left him downstairs, the bond stayed between them, nothing felt broken. It felt right.

Wesley Crusher had to finish. Had to finish cutting through the nacelle before everything went up and they all died. His father floated next to him, the environmental suit shielding his face. Wesley stopped, trying to see it, fear lacing through him and freezing his movements. "Back to work," Jack said. "You have to finish. You started this, you have finish." Wesley looked down at the phaser rifle he held in his hand, the heat from it penetrating his own environmental suit's gloves. Space hung around them, infinite and impossible, the starts witnessing, unwavering in their attention. Despite the danger that waited if they didn't complete their task, Wesley continued to hold his fire. "Dammit, you have to finish," Jack said.

"I don't want to," Wesley said. "This isn't what I want."

"It isn't about what you want, this is for everyone. If we don't finish what we started, everyone will die."

"We could die. I could die out here."

"Finish what you start."

And Wesley let the phaser rifle go, let it drift away from him, out of their reach. HIs father swore, renewing his efforts to cut away the nacelle. Blocking his father's yells from his ears, Wesley headed back towards the ship, away from his father, leaving him behind. There was a spark, an bright explosion that caused Wesley to turn away, and the nacelle flew away from the ship, end over end. The fires died instantly with no oxygen to fuel them. Wesley turned back and came face to face with his father's environmental suit, his father in it, and the tritanium shard that had pierced the facemask and cut into his father's head. It was his fault, he'd left him behind because he hadn't wanted to finish what he started with his father, and now he was dead. Wesley screamed, pushing away his father's body, sending himself end over end like the nacelle. He would die, adrift, and no one would hear his screams.

Wesley Crusher woke up. Moonlight from the lone moon of Caldos played inside of the room. The storm had abated. Wesley sat up, peering out the window. He'd loved staying here as a kid, on a real world with real snow and real seasons, things he missed on a starship. And on this world he'd had three cousins as close to him as siblings. He and Andrew had been friends for so long, writing to each other about every day things. Things Wesley missed about life on a planet, things Andrew wanted to know about being on a starship. Wesley used to pretend Andrew could be his little brother, wish that he was. So when Nana died, Wes had wanted to see if his mother would be taking his cousins in, if they could come that much closer to being a family.

Then his wish had been granted and destroyed all at once and he'd gone to seek out those who had hurt him and hurt them back. After the past day, he'd begun to realize why he'd felt so close to his cousins--brother and sisters--in the first place. Sometimes he wanted to stop hurting them. And other times, he couldn't help himself. He knew Andrew was as hurt as he was. He and Andrew had talked about fathers, mothers, having parents. Andrew once looked up to him, when he was small.

2363

Wesley and Andrew knelt behind the wall of snow they'd built together. It was their fort, to keep out of the girls that seemed determined to kill them with snowballs. "Whose idea was it to make this guys against girls?" Andrew asked.

"Yours," Wesley replied. "Not the best idea you've ever had."

"How was I supposed to know Nana would be so accurate?" Andrew asked.

"You live here with her," he said, giving his cousin a look telling him how obvious the answer was.

"Doesn't mean we have snowball fights all the time," the younger boy said.

Wesley shifted uncomfortably, trying to rid his back of the wet, cold and now melting snow. "Your sister shoved snow down my back."

"She's mean. I told you before. She beats up boys all the time. You're lucky she didn't split your lip."

Wesley glanced at him, dubious. "She's nine. I'm fourteen. I'm bigger than she is."

"Wes, you don't understand," Andrew said. "She fights dirty."

The older boy sighed. "How long do you think they'll keep us pinned down?"

Andrew peeked over the top of the wall and was met with hail of snowballs. Ducking back down into cover, he said, "Until we surrender."

"I'm not surrendering," Wesley said immediately.

"Of course not," Andrew said. "Howards never surrender. But I do have an idea. If we throw enough snowballs over there to distract them and get them to hide, we can run to the barn and they'll never know we aren't behind the wall. So they'll just be sitting there in the snow, getting colder, while we watch and laugh from the barn."

"Excellent idea." The boys executed their plan and made their way into the barn. By the time the women in their family came out of hiding, they had managed to get to the second floor of the barn and find a good position to watch them.

After awhile, Andrew had gotten bored and moved over to the window on the opposite side of the upper room. Wesley followed, looking at charts the other boy had set up, diagrams tacked to the wall. "What's this?" he asked.

Andrew looked up from the book he was writing in and shrugged. Then he closed the book and put it aside. "Your mom got assigned to the Enterprise," he said.

Wes nodded, the excitement building up again. The flagship of the fleet, a Galaxy-class vessel, so he'd be able to stay with his mother the entire time. So many things to do, many opportunities to learn, and he could finish studying for the Academy entrance exams. Maybe he could even see the bridge of a starship. Best of all, the captain of the ship would be Captain Picard, the man Wesley had looked up to as he'd grown up, once he got over hating him. He'd hated the man for coming back when his father hadn't. Then the captain had taken care of them that one day, told him and his mother stories about his father, made them dinner, even tucked Wes into bed. Once his anger had died out, Wesley had come to admire him, not only because he was such a great captain, but also because he'd shown him and his mother such great care.

"You're lucky," Andrew said.

"I know," Wes replied.

Andrew stared out the window. "What's it like," he asked. "Having a mother?"

The older boy shrugged. "You have Nana."

"That's not the same thing. She's my grandmother, your great-grandmother. It's not the same."

Wes frowned. "I don't think I can explain it."

"I didn't think you could." Andrew stood up, still facing the window.

Wesley could never figure Andrew out. He got serious like this a lot, going from a normal nine year old kid to talking like some enigmatic philosopher. Wes watched him for a second, again realizing how strong Howard genetics were, how much Andrew looked like Wesley's mother. Oddly, Wes sometimes got jealous at Andrew inheriting the red hair of the Howards and Wesley not seeming to have a single gene from his mother. He looked like Jack Crusher, his father all over again. At times, it made him feel like a ghost. Everyone expected him to be in Starfleet, to follow his father. Wesley knew he wanted to, and would, but never felt it was his dream. Like he didn't have one of his own at all. Andrew was lucky in his own right, that he didn't have a father he would be expected to follow. "You're lucky, too," Wesley said.

Andrew turned towards him. "I don't see how. I don't have a mother."

"And you don't have a father."

The boy walked over to Wesley, standing toe to toe, glaring up at him. "I wouldn't call that luck."

Wes took a step back. He hadn't meant to piss Andrew off. "I mean..." He sighed, trying to figure out how to word it. "I look like my dad. Everyone say so. As I keep getting older, I look more like him, and everyone thinks I'll do exactly what he did. Become a Starfleet officer."

Andrew sat down on one of the bales of hay. "I thought that's what you wanted to do."

"It is." He walked up to the window, looked at the sun breaking through the clouds to light up the snow on the ground, at the trees reaching for the attention of the sun so sparse in winter. "It isn't."

"Might be a good thing to figure out before you enter the Academy," Andrew said.

Wes gave him a rueful grin. "You think?"

Andrew nodded. "Might be good to follow a dream of your own instead of your dead father's."

Wesley sat down on a bale of hay across from his cousin. "That's what I mean by luck," he said. "No one expects you to follow your dead father's footsteps."

"Only because he hasn't left any." Andrew studied his feet, kicking the bale of hay with his heels.

Wesley noticed Andrew's voice change, become serious, more so than before. "You'd want that?" he asked.

"Who wouldn't? Andrew said, looking at him closely. "I mean, I've got two holes in my life, in me, that can't be filled. Ever. Because I don't have parents. I'd rather be in your place, where you have a mother still alive, and you had a father, at least for a few years."

And Wesley wished again that these two cousins were his brother and sister, so they'd have a mother too, and he would have a bigger family. "I wish you could stay with us," Wesley said aloud.

Andrew looked back down at his feet. "Me too." When the kid glanced back up at Wesley, the older boy saw what looked like tears in Andrew's eyes. "I wish your mom was mine," he said. Then Andrew ran down the rickety stairs, into the yard, where the women spotted him and assaulted him with snow.

2370

Wesley turned when he heard a knock on the door. Frowning, he watched as Allie cracked the door open and came in. "Good, you're awake," she said.

He glared. "And if I hadn't been?" Brought his anger back up to protect him.

"I'd wake you up." She held up a book. "You need to read this."

"Why would I want to?" He kept his tone harsh.

She glared back at him. "Will you just shove it? I'm sick of dealing with this 'I'm pissed off and angry at everyone around me' act of yours."

"Then you could not wake me up in the middle of the night," he shot back.

"You were already up."

He sighed and looked at her, saying nothing.

She sat on the edge of the desk. "What's this I hear about your failing classes at the Academy?"

Wesley frowned. "How did you know?"

"I have my ways," she said. "You've been a shithead since that whole incident with the cadet who died."

"Josh," Wesley said softly. The guilt came back, the guilt over failing his mother, his father, the captain.

"I heard he came down on you pretty hard."

"Who?"

"Captain Picard," Allie said, looking right at him.

Andrew must have told her about the dressing down he'd gotten. Wesley hadn't thought he could ever feel more awful than when Josh had died. Then more had been heaped on--his mother's sadness, the captain's disappointment and cold, absolute anger at what he had done. "Yeah."

"What'd the other cadets think about his involvement?"

Wesley blinked. "Where are you going with this? Why are we talking about this in the middle of the night?"

"I'll tell you if you answer the question."

He looked at the person he'd known since she was a baby, whom he'd trusted until a week ago. Realized it she was the same person she'd been before, he was the one who had changed. "They acted like the captain was my stepfather. Some of them even thought he was my stepfather. Everyone giving me crap about letting him down, how it must be so awful to have failed such a legendary man. One cadet said it must be hard being the failed stepson of the great Captain Picard."

"You aren't his stepson," she said.

Wesley turned back to the window. "I know. But it didn't hurt any less." He faced Allie again. "I looked up to him. Tried to make him proud of me like I did my mother, and my father. Sometimes, I wished that he was my stepfather." He felt his throat constrict, heard his voice harden. "Now I don't."

"Why not?"

"Because he's one of the people that destroyed my wish. Him and my mother." It all came out, everything that had hurt him, all with a tremor in his tone. "When we were little kids, when we'd come visit, those were my favorite memories. The three of us, then the four of us, and my mother, all a family. We got to do normal kid things on a normal colony planet. I loved it. And I wished for it to be true. I wished that you and Andrew were my brother and my sister and not just my cousins."

"And you were hurt it when came true?"

He could barely see her through his clouded eyes, clouded with tears he refused to let fall. "It was a dream," he said. "A wish. Something that wasn't meant to come true. And never in the way that it did." Shame flushed his face.

She frowned. "It's that bad? Being my brother?"

"Of course not," he said. "I just...you can't tell."

"Tell?"

"Tell anyone my wish, okay? Tell anyone why I'm acting like this." Wesley grabbed her shoulders. "I'm serious."

Allie glared down at his hands. He removed them, deciding he didn't want her to do something drastic, like cut them off. "I promise not to tell if you promise to try and work things out without being a dick."

"I can try."

"All I ask."

Wesley frowned. He'd been so focused on Allie and Andrew and Gracie that he hadn't given any thought to his mother and the captain. "Where's Captain Picard?" he asked, fearing Allie would tell him that he was nowhere to be seen and must be in Beverly's room.

"Asleep on the couch," Allie replied.

He let out the breath he'd been holding. "Good."

Allie responded by tossing the book she'd been holding in his direction. He caught it just before it clocked into his nose. "And that's why you need to read Nana's journal."

"What for?" he asked.

"So you can understand how my parents feel about each other," she said.

He couldn't think of a thing to say.

"Promise me you'll read it."

Wesley knew he owed her and nodded.

She nodded back and went to leave.

"Hey," he said, catching her attention. "What'd you come in here for, anyway?"

Allie shrugged. "Wanted to talk to my brother." The door shut behind her, leaving Wesley to stare at it, wondering why Allie had chosen him and not Andrew.

Jean-Luc Picard opened his eyes when he felt a small hand patting him on the head. "Wake up," he heard Gracie say. "Come on."

"No," he replied. "I order you to allow me to sleep."

"You can't give me orders," Gracie replied, sounding strikingly like her mother.

He felt her body move away from his and decided she was allowing him a bit more sleep. Then he heard heavier footsteps, ones with nails clicking on the wood floors, and Gracie's voice again. "Come on, Conal," she said. "Wake him up."

Not wanting a bath from the wolfhound, Picard sat straight up. "Okay, I'm awake," he said.

Standing next to the dog was his youngest daughter, beaming at him, and all his annoyance drifted away. "Good," she said, and crawled to sit next to him. "I want to know something."

"What's that?" he asked.

She put her arms around him, buried her face in his chest. He heard her say something, but it was completely muffled.

"What?"

Gracie looked up at him. "I said I wanted to know how long my papa is going to sleep on the couch."

He frowned. "I don't know."

She sighed. "For a Starfleet captain, you don't know much, do you?" she asked.

Surprised at the cheeky comment, Picard's search for a rejoinder was stopped by a chirp of his communicator. "Speaking of," he said.

Gracie rolled her eyes.

"Picard here," the captain said, after tapping the communicator.

"Sir, there's a priority transmission for you from Admiral Necheyev," said Data.

The captain frowned. The type of transmission he'd have to take on the ship, a transmission that would most likely be a priority mission, a mission that would take him away from the family he had only started to get to know. But nothing could be done, he was a Starfleet officer, and he did what he had to. "I'll be up to take it in a moment, Commander," he said. "Picard out."

Gracie had pushed herself away from him. "You're leaving," she said.

"Yes."

Her face crumpled and she left the room quickly, so quickly that he couldn't catch her and tell her he would return. But he didn't know what the mission would be, didn't know where or how long it would take, didn't even have time to say goodbye, much less make any promises he couldn't keep.