Snow Falling Softly XVIII

Beverly Crusher sat at a table in the far corner of Ten Forward, a forgotten drink beside her hand, her eyes on the stars outside but seeing nothing. It had taken her five minutes to storm from Jean-Luc's cabin to securing a lone table in the lounge, ten minutes for to her order a drink, and fifteen minutes for her to realize what she'd done. I walked out on him again.

"Damn," she said, pushing the drink away from her, as if the drink had caused her problems.

"It tastes much better when it's cold," came a voice from behind her. Guinan stepped into view, clad in her heavy robes and with her trademark wide brimmed hat. "I can't imagine how awful that drink must taste when it's lukewarm." The El-Aurian settled herself into a chair across from Beverly.

The doctor returned her gaze to the stars, trying to ignore Guinan. The one person on the ship who had an innate ability to get anything out of anyone and then help them see a solution. The only other person Beverly had known to be like that was her grandmother. She sighed.

Guinan refused to be ignored. "So how are the three little Picards settling in?" she asked.

The doctor's head came around sharply. "How did you know?" She regretted the question as soon as she asked it. There wouldn't be an answer. Beverly had figured out that Guinan knew during that first visit to Ten Forward with Jean-Luc and the children. Knew without being told, knew with barely a glance, barely any interaction. Yet once a question was asked, it was there, waiting for an answer. She took back the drink, fiddled with the glass.

"I just did," the bartender said, with no note of mocking in her answer. As she spoke, she gestured with her hands, her dark brown eyes picking up the light from the stars outside. "It's who I am, I haven't questioned it in a long time. When I saw those three walk into this lounge with you, I knew immediately who they were, and where they were meant to be."

"Here," Beverly said, answering the unasked question of if she knew where her children belonged.

Guinan nodded solemnly. "Here. With their mother and father. Together."

Beverly peered into the tumbler, trying to see if the liquid inside could reveal what to do, what was right, and how her children managed to bring them together and pull them apart all at the same time. "Maybe," she said.

"You were certain before," Guinan replied.

Beverly sighed, resigned. She had no idea why she fought it. She'd known from the moment she walked into Ten Forward that Guinan would pull the story from her whether she gave it up freely or told it kicking and screaming. "That was before their father kept my two sons in the brig for hours longer than they should have."

"Ah," said Guinan.

Beverly gave the bartender another sharp look. The woman across from her didn't seem appalled in the least over what the captain had done. "Didn't you hear what I said?" Then she cursed in her head. Another question with another obvious answer.

"Awful things happen in places like that," Guinan said. "Interrogations, tortures of all kinds. Bad food, bad beds, bad prisoners that are as much criminals inside as they are out." The El-Aurian sat back, steepling her hands on the table. "Did I ever tell you how I ended up on Earth in the nineteenth century?"

"No," said Beverly.

Another nod from Guinan. "I was hiding from my father. You see, I had decided to leave my planet and go listen to other species. Just listen, because there were so many stories and so many lives, and much more talking going on with species who aren't comprised entirely of listeners. Well, my father disagreed, thought I was too young to leave. He came after me. I ended up on some planet in the Delphic Expanse populated by humans that had been abducted and enslaved by Skagarans. I found it a fascinating society. The humans had overthrown the Skagarans and made their former captors their own slaves. It was the first time I had seen things like this first hand. Before, I had only been told stories from others. At first, I only listened to the humans. Then I got bold and went to listen to Skagarans as well. I got caught."

"Caught?" asked the doctor. She was familiar with this colony, it had been discovered by the first Enterprise in the twenty second century. "By your father?"

Guinan shook her head. "Oh, no. Caught by the humans. You see, by my listening to the Skagarans, they said I was teaching them. Which, of course, was against the law, punishable by ten years in jail. Eighteenth century Earth civilization jail. Inedible food, diseased water, straw ticks for beds if you were lucky enough to get a bed at all. I managed to get a message out to El-Auria about my plight. I got a message back fairly quickly. Told me that I had chosen to go out listening on my own and I would have to face those consequences on my own as well. And I spent nine years in that jail."

The doctor crossed her arms, disbelieving that Guinan's father would allow that, even though he had been angry with her. If anything, he'd sounded protective. And spending that long of a time in a jail of that sort would certainly be dangerous. "Your father left you there?"

"My father never knew."

"What?"

Guinan nodded. "I was hiding from my father. I sent the message to my mother. It was my mother who sent a message back to me."

"Your mother left you in that jail?"

"For nine years," said Guinan. "And it was exactly what I needed. I listened and learned more in those nine years than I did in the next ninety."

"Your mother left you in that jail." This time, it was a statement. Beverly saw what Guinan was helping her to see. That Jean-Luc had done exactly what needed to be done. Wesley and Andrew had been done no harm. Instead, they'd learned the consequences of their actions and were given time to think and calm themselves before being left to their own devices again. The captain hadn't been a bad father. He'd been a good one and she'd told him otherwise. Then she'd left him there, walked out on him again. Beverly peered into her drink. Nothing.

The El-Aurian patted the doctor's hand. "She did."

And Guinan had turned out perfectly fine. Better than fine. Beverly sighed.

Guinan leaned forward, elbows on the table, placing her chin on folded hands. "So who won?"

The doctor started. "What?"

"Well, your sons were put into the brig for fighting. Who won?"

Frowning, Beverly said, "Neither of them. Security broke them up." Guinan's current line of questioning confused the doctor more than most of her normal questions. Not like her normal questions weren't confusing enough. It didn't matter who had won the fight. What mattered was what caused it.

"So what were they fighting about?" Guinan asked, on cue.

Beverly sat back again, looked away from Guinan, away from the table, away from everything, and outside the ship's window. She'd no idea. Her sons were fighting over nothing and everything. They hated each other and hated themselves for hating the other. How had Wesley explained it to Gracie? "At first it's this huge adventure, then you start to think maybe your adventure is somewhere else and you flew right past it at warp seven." Wesley had had his entire life planned out since he was four. He'd study constantly, learn everything there was to know about starships and Starfleet and the Federation. Pass entrance exams to Starfleet Academy. Graduate, enter Starfleet and become a Starfleet officer, like his father had been. As soon as Wesley had come up with his plan, it had been knocked about by the universe. His father killed in action. Failing the entrance exams. The incident with Nova Squadron. Maybe Wesley was thinking that his adventure waited for him elsewhere, that he might have missed it already, having been so focused on Starfleet, on his father and following him. And now he had to learn another role entirely as brother, older brother to two sisters and a younger brother.

Andrew, the brother that saw the stars for himself, didn't follow anyone's footsteps and chose to break his own path. At least, that's how Wesley must have seen it up until very recently. But as Wesley struggled with deciding where his future would be, Andrew struggled with deciding who he was. Deciding if he hated himself or everyone else, deciding if everyone hated him for who he was. That was the thing--he didn't know who he was. Neither of them did.

"I don't know," Beverly said.

"It's funny," Guinan said. "I once stood very near here with your son, looking out those windows. He wanted to stay here but wouldn't even allow himself to ask, because he was expected to leave and join you on Earth. When he chose to stay here, it was the first time he'd done something entirely for himself and it wasn't what everyone expected him to do. But when he chose to stay here, it was exactly the right thing. If he had gone to stay with you, he would have found things out that he wasn't ready for, everything would've come apart. Funny, how history seems to work itself out like that."

Funny, indeed. Like how Guinan knew everything, as if she were prescient, and helped guide people to choose to do the right thing.

The El-Aurian continued. "Picard wouldn't have been ready then. He learned a lot having your son on this ship without you to go to for help. He needed that time. And now his son--your son--is on this ship, at exactly the right time. It's how it's supposed to be. Except he's avoiding me."

Beverly looked up. "Captain Picard?"

"No. Your son, Andrew." As it was her way, Guinan didn't give any further explanation of her statement.

The doctor frowned. "How do you know he's avoiding you?"

With her small enigmatic smile, Guinan said, "Because he's Picard's son. He's damn determined to figure everything out on his own and won't talk to a soul. He knows that if he comes in here, he'll end up talking, I'll end up listening, and somehow he'll figure out the right thing to do. So he doesn't visit. Picard does the same thing when he knows he's thinking something through and can't get an answer from himself. I always have to chase him down."

Beverly nodded. "I know the feeling."

Guinan leveled her gaze at the doctor. "He isn't the only one I have to chase down."

Crusher suddenly found her now room temperature drink fascinating.

"And sometimes," Guinan said, "People show up down here when they're supposed to. Makes things much easier for me." Then she stood up. "Excuse me."

At Guinan's sudden dismissal, Beverly looked up from the table and saw why Guinan had taken her leave. Jean-Luc had walked into the lounge. His hawk-like gaze quickly spotted her in the far corner and he strode towards her with a purposeful determination. The captain sat down in the chair Guinan had vacated moments earlier. When he sat, they both spoke, their words overlapping.

He said, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

She said, "I'm sorry I walked out on you."

A second of silence passed between them before they each began to laugh. The tension that had ratcheted up inside the doctor over the past hour slowly began to ease. It wouldn't be as hard as she thought. She reached out and took his hand. His smile slightly lessened, afraid of what she was going to say. "I'm sorry I walked out on you," she repeated. "You were right. It was no worse than grounding either of them or sending them to their rooms and it kept them from beating the hell out of each other. Which means they stayed out of my Sickbay."

Picard squeezed her hand and smiled. "Where I imagine their mother would have killed them both herself."

Her eyes went wide in mock horror. "Not in my Sickbay."

He sighed. "I've realized I haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing. Being a father, I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants, something I've never done as a captain. It's so much easier to face down Romulans or Cardassians than your own children."

"Jean-Luc," she said. "No one is born being a parent. You sort of learn as you go and hope you don't screw them up too badly."

Picard's eyes flicked to his left, looking at the stars, then back to her. "I wanted to connect with them. With Andrew. I don't understand, how it was so easy to connect with Allie and Gracie, and Andrew will barely exchange two words with me."

It was Beverly's turn to sigh. "Andrew will barely exchange two words with anyone," she said. And he wouldn't. Breakfast that morning had been miserable for all involved. Gracie glaring at her brother when he even glanced in her direction, then when he turned away, her eyes sorrowful with the hurt of having lost her brother. Then Allie, yelling at him whenever she got the chance, trying to shake him out of whatever funk he was in. Even the dog was in on it, practically on Andrew's heels whenever he was in their quarters, then waiting by the door until Andrew returned. Nothing had worked. "Did he say anything to you earlier when you talked to them in the brig?"

The captain shook his head. "No, nothing." Then something changed, sadness crept over his face, hand in hand with shock. "I felt like my father," he said, looking at her. "I think I sounded like him. The lecture I gave them. But it wasn't even that, it was when I told Andrew that I expected to be obeyed. As if I wanted my son to be some sort of martinet, like my father wanted out of me."

Beverly frowned. "How did you word it? That doesn't sound like you at all." The captain wasn't a leader who expected blind obedience from his crew. He expected intelligence and discussion, the uses of individual strengths to compensate for weaknesses from his people. She had suspected he would be much the same as a father.

Picard thought it over for a moment. "I told him I was his father, and that in matters of safety regarding my ship and my family, I expected to be obeyed."

She gave him a reassuring smile. "That isn't a bad thing. That was telling him the truth, a truth that holds for any member of your crew. You're a very fair man, except when your ship and crew are threatened. Then you become absolute and will not compromise on their safety. It's a strength of yours," she said.

He didn't seem to hear her and continued on the same line of thought. "And after I said that, he looked at me for a moment and I saw...something. I don't know what. Something in his eyes. Then he turned around and lay down on his bunk and refused to even look at me." In counterpoint, the captain made eye contact with Beverly. "Maybe I shouldn't push him," he said. "Maybe I should leave him alone, let him come to me."

Beverly resisted the urge to laugh out loud but didn't quite succeed. That would never work, waiting for Andrew to go to anyone when he was like this. It's exactly what he was trying to do, to keep everyone away from him. She covered her mouth in an attempt to hide her amusement, but Picard noticed.

"What?" he asked, slightly annoyed.

"Does that ever work with you?" she asked.

Picard frowned, then shifted to a look of annoyance directed at the doctor. "No."

Satisfied, she sat back, crossing her arms. "Exactly. It won't work with your son, either."

He sighed. "So I should press him? Keep after him?"

"Isn't that how we deal with you?" she asked. "I seem to recall having to rope the entire ship into the plan just to get you to take a damn vacation." So you could find yourself one hell of a girlfriend, she thought, then shoved it out of her mind.

Her comment made him smile. Was he remembering Vash? Again, she was forced to kick the errant thoughts of out of head. Shut up, self doubt. Shut the hell up. "You know, this parenting thing doesn't seem so bad when we work together," he said.

"Yes." Yes, she knew. When Jack was alive, Wesley didn't seem as hard to raise. When she got frustrated, she could talk to Jack about it. Kids didn't come with manuals and having another adult around to try and figure out how your kid worked came in handy. Wesley had been the cause of some rip-roaring good fights, too. Some minor point of parenting they would disagree over and they'd be at it. Hours later, they'd come to their senses and wonder how the hell a kid could do that, make them fight like that. The thought of raising a child had been a daunting task, one made less daunting with a partner. Then Jack had been killed.

It was snowing when Jack died.

And the comforting thoughts she'd had in the past two days, in the comfortableness of her relationship with Jean-Luc, of the paths it could take, of having someone at her side for her life and her life with these kids, vanished. They were replaced by panic, fear, every foil of comfort that existed. When she looked at the man sitting across from her, at the earnestness of his face, the contentedness continued to leave her. That look on his face he'd had in his quarters after that post-Kesprytt dinner, the one on his face right then, as he took her hands in his on the tabletop.

"We'll have to figure out how to manage this, to remember to stay a team in raising these children," he said.

She nodded. They could be a team, they'd done it before. But he could be killed, as Jack had been killed, and she would be left alone again, now with three more children to raise single-handedly, after being used to having two extra hands.

The captain sought out her eyes, drew her in so he could study her face. "I don't want any of you out of my life," he said. "You're a part of it. You have been, for a long time. That year, when you were at Starfleet Medical, was one of my hardest years on this ship. I'd go down to Sickbay, and just before I walked in the door, I'd expect to see you. Then I'd walk in and you weren't there. I'd gotten used to you being around, as a part of my life, during that first year. And when you came back, everything felt right again. The Enterprise was home again. I'd like to keep it that way."

Then she would get used to him being there, comfortable with him, and then he would be killed. She would be left alone again. It would be easier to stay alone in the first place. "I've been a single parent for a long time," she said aloud.

He was looking at her like that again. That look, the one where she knew he was going to say something significant, something that could change their lives and their relationship. Immediately her brain recalled the throwaway comments he'd made in the past day, the day before, how he could try and get her on the ship if she refused to take back her resignation. Not now. She had to get him to stop, get him to not say this, or ask this, or whatever he had planned out in his mind. It would hurt them both. Beverly couldn't remember if she'd ever told Jean-Luc to shut up.

"Did you want to remain a single parent?" he asked.

She had to calculate, had to figure out what to say to him, what would make him stop cold, and not ask her what she thought he was going to. Then she thought of it and it came out and struck him as if she'd clobbered him over the head. "When I married Jack, I didn't think I'd be single again," she said.

When she saw his face go from the openness it'd had before, seconds before she'd spoken, to the neutral mask of the captain, she knew she'd chosen the right thing to say to make him stop talking. But it didn't feel right. She felt like she'd hit herself over the head as well, reeling from the emotional door she'd slammed in the captain's face. But it had to be right, not to let him even ask. Nearly dizzy from the tumult of her thoughts, she got up and walked out of the lounge. The doors hissed shut behind her and it took no time for her to realize she'd walked out on him again.

Damn.

Jean-Luc Picard realized he'd misjudged, read her entirely wrong, and in doing so had nearly done the most wrong thing possible. She was right. The two of them, they weren't meant to be, they couldn't be. He was associated with Jack's death in so many ways, it was his fault she had been a single parent in the first place. If he wasn't the ship's captain, he would have laid his head on the table and wished for the deck to swallow him up.

"Why the are you still sitting here?"

Guinan. While his head wasn't on the table, he hadn't moved. Instead, he'd watched Beverly go and hadn't looked away from the doors after they closed on her lithe form. "To keep myself from saying the wrong thing. I very nearly did."

The El-Aurian crossed her arms. "Picard, I'm not even going to sit down for this conversation. What wrong thing?"

He didn't get up. He knew that his standing up would be half the fight for Guinan. "It's absolutely ridiculous," he said. "Exactly what no one would expect. Everyone would expect the captain to wait, plan things out, not rush into things, to be completely reasonable. That I was even contemplating it is entirely ridiculous." The captain had directed the words towards the table, not looking at his friend.

Guinan regarded him with her deep, knowing eyes. "Sometimes the expected thing is exactly the wrong thing to do," she said.

Picard gave her a questioning look.

And the ancient, wise woman who looked no older than her mid-thirties, glared at him. "Are you being dense on purpose?" she asked.

The captain blanched. His old friend only challenged him like this when she felt particularly strong about some mistake he was about to make.

Guinan caught him in his realization. Leaned down to face him. "Go after her," she said. "And don't take no for an answer."

He went without a backwards glance.

Once outside Ten Forward, he headed towards the nearest turbolift. His stride was quick, but not so quick that passing crew members would think the captain running in a panic. Of course, that's exactly what he felt like. In a panic, thinking that his mistake was a mistake was a...mistake. "Computer," he said as he moved, "Location of Doctor Beverly Crusher."

"Doctor Crusher is on Deck Ten."

He frowned and rounded the corner. There he found Beverly, who hadn't even made it onto the 'lift. She stood outside it, leaning against the bulkhead, staring at the ceiling. Then he knew what to say. "When you married Jack," he said, "I thought I would be single for the rest of my life."

The doctor's head snapped down and she looked at him, studying him as he had her minutes earlier. Her blue eyes growing wider as he approached, drew next to her, then in front of her, taking her hands. He brought her hands between them, on his chest. His face inches from hers. "When you married Jack, I thought I would never have children. When you married Jack, I thought I would never tuck my own child into bed. When you married Jack, I thought I would never get a talking-to from my own child about me showing my feelings. When you married Jack, I never thought I would be reaching out to connect with my own son." He saw she was biting her lip, a sure sign that tears would fall, but he pressed. "When you married Jack, I thought I would never tell you that I was in love with you." Soundlessly, Beverly cried in front of him. He said one more sentence. "When you married Jack, I thought I would never ask you to marry me."

She closed the distance between them, the inches that could have been light years, and kissed him. He tasted the salty tears that he had caused, kissed her more deeply, seeking to comfort her. Then he broke the kiss, whispered in her ear. "Don't answer. I had to say it. The next step is yours, whenever you decide to take it." He pulled back, looking in her eyes, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. "I believe I owe you dinner," he said, and pulled her into the turbolift.

In his quarters, they finally ate dinner, pretended the earlier events of the evening hadn't happened as they talked about everything else. Anything else. The captain played the game, danced the dance that had become their instinct. It was an intricate dance that kept them in their status quo during their time aboard the Enterprise.

But he had declared, with no uncertainty, that he wanted to end the dance. Now he waited for her reply, not knowing if it would take days, weeks, months, or years. With their track record, with his courtship already having lasted more than fifteen years, her reply could also take that long. Once they had finished eating, he immediately got up and retrieved his family album. He'd wanted to show her this earlier, before they had argued. When he handed it to her, she wordlessly settled herself onto his couch and began to page through it. She got to the photograph he had of her and smiled. "I thought you were kidding when you said you had a paper heart framing my photo," she said.

"I don't kid," he said.

She didn't look up at him, but he caught the lift of her eyebrow. Picard sat next to her, looking over her shoulder so he could see what pages she was on. The doctor had reached the pages he worked on that day. The photographs of their children. Beverly and Gracie just after she'd been born. A shot Felisa had snapped of Andrew and Allie together in a bassinet. A shot of Andrew standing next to a snowman, a shot following it of Allie toppling both the snowman and her brother. Allie astride her first horse. Andrew and Allie in a posted portrait, in fencing gear and holding their epees. Action shots taken during a few fencing tournaments. Andrew holding a three year old Gracie upside down, her small fists beating against his chest but her laughing face telling all she loved it. "Where did you get these?" Beverly asked.

"Allie," he said.

The doctor continued to look. Gracie dressed in her first fencing outfit. "When was this taken?" she asked. "I didn't know Gracie had started fencing."

"Yesterday," he said.

She looked over at him. "What? Isn't that a bit young?"

"I thought the same thing," he said. "But she was absolutely determined."

"Seems to be genetic," she said, closing the album. The rest of the pages were blank. As Allie had done earlier, Beverly traced the Picard name stamped into the leather of the front cover. "I'm sorry you missed everything," she said. "That you never got to hold them, see them take their first steps, hear their first words."

"Allie certainly learned to use her words well," he said.

Beverly turned to him. "Why, what did she say?"

He decided it didn't matter what he said, so he told her the conversation he'd had with Allie that afternoon, before Wesley and Andrew's fight.

The doctor shook her head. "If we have another one, it should be planned. Absolutely planned. No more surprises. I'm a doctor, accidents shouldn't happen." She smiled. "And that one could be a Picard before it was even born. I think being a Picard wouldn't be so bad."

He stared at her. "What?"

She nodded. "Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll file the paperwork tomorrow to change my last name. Very easy."

The look he gave her crinkled his brow, annoyed. She was teasing him. If she was teasing, she was dancing again, and the game would continue. When Beverly saw the look, she leaned over and pulled him into a kiss. He returned it eagerly. She drew him down onto the couch and he soon forgot what was expected, forgot what he worried about in their conversation earlier. This conversation was easier. This he knew was right.