"Counselor Troi?"

She hears Alyssa's voice before she really see's the woman appear, the confusion of an early morning colouring her voice.

Deanna smiles gracefully to her, and it is abominably early, too early really for getting out of bed, yet here they all are, uniformed and setting up the Sickbay for the day shift. It's remarkable to see the moving parts of the ship in such an unpolished way, everybody yawning their fatigue and still working to straighten out their collar pips.

She herself is straighter than she's ever been, and maybe she's over compensating for being awake so early, trying to make it seem as though there's really nothing wrong at all, and she's just here for a checkup or an early breakfast.

That would be easier to believe if the rumours hadn't already started.

"Good morning Alyssa,"

She manages to say warmly, moving past her with as much speed as she can manage without being too obvious in her desire to not linger. The nurse is a nice enough woman - well suited to her career - but she has just as much fear in her as anybody else; when she thinks of what has happened, it is clear that there is more than simple discomfort towards her.

Beverly is inside a private room at the back of the Sickbay, and she can feel that the woman is anticipating her arrival, something not quite like excitement brewing within her. The screened door opens automatically for her, and Crusher turns almost immediately away from the panel she had been calibrating; it's possible to see that there are a number of specialist instruments set up around the room.

"Deanna, you're a little early,"

And she wonders when Counselor stopped being personal enough.

"Sit down, sit down!"

Beverly exclaims, one arm extended towards the lowered biobed against the wall, trying to rush with whatever it is she's doing.

"I was hoping to avoid the command shift changes,"

Deanna says, following the extension of her lowering arm.

"The rumours are already becoming outrageous,"

She pushes herself up and onto the surface of the bed, letting her legs swing slightly beneath her, and Beverly turns from her work to regard her with an expression of sympathy.

"I'm sorry about that, I can promise nothing is coming from my staff though, their discretion is one of the things that makes them so good,"

It is not that easy to be soothed, and so Deanna just smiles sadly in response as silence follows them again.

There is not much to say that isn't weighted heavily with issues she'd rather save for a few moments more solitude.

A few moments of strained silence follow, until Beverly is wheeling over to the edge of the bed, sitting on a stool and dragging with her an equipment stand.

The sight is a little daunting.

"I'm sorry to bring this up straight away,"

She begins delicately.

"But did Commander Riker help you come to a decision,"

Deanna does not respond, does not even look her in the eye.

"I wouldn't push you, it's just that -"

There is an uncomfortable pause.

"Well, I need to write up a report for Starfleet Medical,"

The Doctor looks down at her hands in shame, but there really is no need for it, and whatever silence she has been maintaining, Deanna chooses now to break it.

"Beverly,"

She chides.

"That is your job, it is not for me to make that any harder for you to do,"

Their eyes meet, and there is sympathy now in her instead, for having put so many of the people she cares about in positions they do not deserve.

"Although, if I may do so anyway,"

A beat, cautious and trepid.

"I do not have it in me to terminate this pregnancy,"

Beverly sighs lowly.

"I don't know what that means for me or my future, but whatever else I may sense of this life, there is innocence,"

She shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath, tries to live in that feeling however hard to find it may be.

"I cannot justify extinguishing innocence,"

A brief wave of terror surges in the Doctor, maybe not the decision she had wanted, or would have chosen for herself, but one she had expected nonetheless.

In this situation, she's not so sure she'd be so forgiving herself, and though she hasn't pushed Deanna on the issue at all, if it had happened to her instead, then she would call it rape.

And she's almost certain she couldn't be that forgiving.

It had been difficult enough to sit in on the staff meeting and listen to her have to explain what had happened to a room full of colleagues, to have to describe rape to them and have them completely misunderstand what that meant.

It had been painful.

"Stop, please,"

Deanna utters, and she is shocked out of her thoughts.

"I have heard it all from Will already,"

She is smiling, and it means nothing at all.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -"

Beverly gives up on trying to apologise for something she can't control for an empaths sake, her brain too unsophisticated to even try it.

"I'm sorry,"

Neither one says anything at all, and she tries not to fill this silence with more thoughts much the same. Her fingers play with a hypospray in her lap, uncharacteristically at a loss.

"Beverly,"

Deanna says finally, calling her attention up to where she sits.

"I'm having a baby,"

The girl's voice is not shaking, and she maybe would sound resolute if it weren't so full of trepidation, eyes creased in such a way that she could even be asking a question.

Beverly really see's no other way, there is not much else she can do to change what has happened, and if this is the best outcome, then there are worse things to have than a baby.

"I guess we're having a baby,"


The Captain appears in the doorway to her office, late into the afternoon, blocking out the light that spills in with the squared frame of his shoulders. He is smiling, but it does not appear joyful.

"Jean-Luc!"

Her exclamation is familiar, and warm, her eyes removed immediately from the Monitor she had been focused on,

"Beverly, I was hoping we might talk?"

He looks concerned, and she motions him to sit at the seat opposite her, where she herself sits at the desk in her large, comfortable chair.

Doors puff behind him, and he moves to take the seat.

Several moments of silence follow, thoughtful and pensive.

When he is settled, his hands folded tightly in a clasp on is lap, he looks to her and tries to think of the words he had rehearsed, all of a sudden perhaps not so confident as he appears.

"Captain? Is there something wrong?"

Picard tries to wave away her concern, only he cannot unclasp his hands from their wringing, and so he simply shakes his head, and it is enough to dissuade her.

"I'm here about Deanna, I have concerns,"

"Oh?"

It is unusual that he calls her by name, only having known her for a year, though the care he is fostering for her is evident in the way his voice softens slightly when he speaks of her.

"She came to see me earlier today about the child, and now I find myself wondering if I should be looking to replace her, or reasign her to a planetary posting - given her decision?"

Beverly begins to laugh, but the genuine curiosity to him halts her, and she too begins to think in kind.

"Why would you do that?"

"Well, given the lack of evidence to suggest her condition is anything other than alien, I am inclined to consider the concerns of Mr Worf, and prioritise the safety of this vessel and the families aboard."

She frowns, the conflict in him clear to even her.

"The child is Humanoid, Jean-Luc, we only have to wait a few more days before an amniocentesis can be conducted - just because it's inception appears alien, that doesn't mean the foetus is. What danger can that possibly pose?"

"I'm not sure-"

He pauses, realises that he perhaps is coming from the wrong angle.

"But even for her own sake, ought she not be in a more stable environment, where she can be properly monitored and cared for should the situation become - dangerous?"

Beverly raises her eyebrows at him, and sits further back in her seat again, her arms crossing her chest defensively.

"Either you're insulting my capabilities, Sir, or you're suggesting she be subject to scientific research? Frankly I'm not sure which is worse."

"No!"

Immediately he sits forward with indignance, closing the distance between them, confusing his words so uncharacteristically as he speaks.

"You know me Beverly, and that is the last I believe- furthest from my mind… I'm just, simply, worried for her, Deanna, I don't want to fail her, or be an obstacle - if she needs something more than we have, to be well, or comfortable...I just, I'm trying…"

Frustration at his own incompetence cuts him off, and she finishes for him.

"You don't want to see her hurting, like you have before."

There is silence, deep and perhaps not even meaningful, but he nods his head anyway, worried that all of a sudden he will be unable to breathe.

"I know that you're trying to protect her, but think about it, where are the people that she cares for, the people she needs support from?"

His hands finally unclasp to gesture helplessly, like a child, to the space around him: the ship.

"Okay, and where is her least favorite place to be?"

Picard frowns, shrugs, then at the look in her eyes, the answer comes to him, his words low and rather more to himself than her.

"Sickaby…"

"Right, so leaving her at a medical facility - a giant sickbay, essentially - full of pained, hurting and conflicted individuals, seperate from her family, would be counterproductive, yes?"

The captain lets out a slight chuckle, dry and horribly unfunny, yet she smiles over at him sympathetically, sharing a moment of utter despair, disguised only by the sound of terrible humour.

"You're right, as always,"

He takes a deep breath.

"She's just too young for this Beverly, I want to be able to do something for her, to make it better, it's my duty as Captain."

"I believe you've done something already, something I'm sure she greatly appreciates."

He frowns again, a constant state of confusion.

"How's that?"

"You're standing by her decisions, Jean-Luc, letting her work this through in her own way. You could have left her at a starbase, ordered the experimentation or incubation of her foetus, even its termination, but you didn't, and you stood by her in that meeting when she told you it was her decision to make."

Beverly reaches across the desk to clasp the palm of her hand over the knuckles of his closed fist, at the centre of the table.

"I believe that is all she may have needed."


She's on her way out of Sickbay for the third time in as many days, since the episode in her quarters, when she hears them - the voices. And ordinarily it wouldn't bother her, so many minds projecting directly onto her so openly, so knowingly, but now is different. The corridor is empty, but she can hear them as she walks.

Poor counselor

It's inhuman

Basically rape

Probably kill her

Her strength is sapped in trying not to listen in, leaving the nurses thoughts behind her as she moves as swiftly as this continued fatigue will allow, into a turbolift that will pull her away from their minds just far enough that they may become only whispers.

She hears the ensigns before she sees them, calling the turbolift, each side of a conversation echoing within them: the warp core, a poker game, the opening 'lift doors.

Like bullets hitting her chest, they are suddenly silent filing in beside her, thinking a conversation they will likely have later.

Such a shame

Picard is a fool

Needs supervising

Alien threat

Will file a complaint with command

Riker must be whipped

Wonder if she'll die

Maybe the kid'll have four-

They leave, and she has to take a deep breath, steel herself against the bulkhead wall as she is moving upwards again. And damn her for being too weak to temper her strength, too ignorant to think it would be a problem.

Her mind reaches elsewhere for only a moment, seeks those oblivious aboard: the lustful, the dutiful, the proud, the strong. She sighs into the feeling of his strength, uses it as a shield around herself, forging her own body into something made from iron, tears, and the emotions she has spirited from others.

Empty corridors open out before her, wonderfully, mercifully so, and she follows the tether to him, winding left and right until his mind is no longer singled out against the dozens beside him; Deanna bites into the side of a fingernail, maybe not so strong after all.

Ten Forward is busy for a lunch-time, whole groups of crewman from each department huddled into tables with half eaten plates and empty glasses before them, the whole place in shades of blue, red and gold.

She tries to pretend the sudden hush is not because of her, and moves more swiftly than usual through the space, feeling Guinan's eyes following her steps against the deck.

Will is there, in the same spot as they always have met in, more private, more secluded, yet with a spectacular view of the expansive stars beyond the forward portal.

He is smiling his welcome, and in a gesture she does not fully understand, but has grown accustomed to this past year, he stands as she approaches, the chair already pulled out at an angle for her to sit down.

She tries her hardest not to anticipate conversation, but she finds herself already with an answer when he speaks.

"How was your appointment with Beverly?"

Voice only slightly raised above the resumed noise of the crowd, she responds.

"It was okay actually, she is beginning to piece together some sort of timeline of events, from the incident in my quarters to now. She hopes this will lead her to a more accurate due date than she is working with at the moment."

"And you?"

He smiles again, endeared only a little by her daming ability to detach herself from the gravity of it all.

"Oh, yes, um…"

There is a dimple at the centre of her forehead as she thinks, tries to remember what she had been absent for.

"Well, apparently my vitals are causing her some concern, but not so much that she wishes to confine me to her care. She suggested I try to sleep and eat more, to attempt to make up for the deficits."

A dainty hand reaches for the glass of plum juice Will had ordered for her when he arrived; she takes a sip then continues in further hushed tones.

"Beverly seems to think it beneficial that I not be completely reliant on excessive artificial supplementation, though I cannot fathom why,"

All of sudden, the irritation she had been concealing shows its ugly face, so briefly, yet loathsome and fearsome, and she struggles to subdue it once more.

Will laughs lightly in response, alarmed by her borderline petulance.

"Well I'd guess she trying to make this as normal for you as possible,"

He seems to have thought this through some himself, and it irks her that he finds this all so - beguiling?

"Nothing about this is normal, Will."

Deanna looks down into the deep purple patterns of her swirling drink, her voice just softer than a hiss.

"I do not feel normal!"

Will reaches a hand under the table to squeeze her knee reassuringly, but a surge of worry that burns hotter and faster than fire within him prevents her from feeling the comfort there.

"Have you spoken to Beverly about it?"

He is mistaken, and she cannot even look up for the shame of speaking aloud.

"Not like that Will, this whole thing isn't normal, can't you see that everyone is looking at me?"

Will is confused again - always confused - and he takes a glance around the room, sees eyes amongst the crowd flitting away when they notice he has seen them.

His fists gather together, and he turns to face back at her, head still bent over her glass.

"How could you - ?"

He is cut off by her penetrating stare as she forces her eyes up to affix to his own, watering, perhaps not as tears, but with the strain of something else.

"Oh…"

The realisation rails into him like a speeding cargo transport, and all at once the place seems to become much louder than it really is, a sea of voices, and in the middle of it all, hers.

"Perhaps, we can meet for lunch in my quarters instead, for a little while, at least until the gossip stops?"

She smiles, but it is not joyful, and it is not sweet, instead it is just there to occupy the sorry tilt of her head, and the bitterness of recollection.

"This just - it's too much like school again, everyone one way and me another,"

Deanna swallows hard around a lump in her throat,

"Defective."

His face too darkens suddenly, until he stands, resolved, his hand extended into her vision, pulling her out of whatever memory she was caught in.

"We're leaving."

She stands with him, perhaps too caught up to care that she still holds onto his hand as they walk, or that Will is throwing daggers at all the gazes that follow them.

He leads her, all of a sudden dependant, the extra distance to her own quarters, where they are situated on the other side of the ship, specially isolated by her own request, after those first few nights aboard, feeling the dreams of others within her own. It seems no time at all before they arrive at the unoccupied section of this ship, rows upon rows of guest quarters, unused for the majority of their journey. And in the centre, a plaque with her name on, in small and unassuming lettering, much like her, beside the door access panel.

He inputs his own override codes, not knowing the actual sequence, regretfully, and guides her into the darkness, the merciful silence within.


There is the terrible sound of a screeching bird echoing between the mountains around her, somewhere in the trees where a chick has fallen from its nest, and the mother is mourning its loss, screaming, screeching, some kind of harrowing sound.

But then, finally, the roaring of the waterfall opposite her is louder than anything else, and she cannot hear a single lone thing at all.

She looks down, and there are sharp blades of grass peeking up from between all her toes, long and a rich shade of green, deep and emerald and shining with the fresh water spray that covers all the valley like a fine dew.

She walks forward, and catches a chill in her nightgown as the breeze dips down in a swell of cool air, caught where the sun is unable to warm her.

She reaches the water's edge, and finds at the banks of the pooling water, a squawking baby bird. It's feathers are daggers in her hands, but still she picks it up, small and screaming for something she cannot provide. Soon, it is wet, the tears of its pain dripping off the tip of her nose, where she has bent her head over, marvelling at the youth of the creature.

And then all of a sudden the bird has vanished, and her hands are filled instead by a pool of her own tears, but the water is slowly boiling, bubbling until it is so searing that she has to unclasp her hands, let it fall against her bare feet, then flow down into the lake.

She wants to kneel down by the waterside, and there is a pain rising in her head, the bird gone but still crying, the water still rushing down into a foam on the water surface.

She hits her knees, but the ground is no longer there, and she instead is at the very centre of the lake, holding the palms of her hands up against her face, shielding herself from the spraying water.

When her hands move away, they are dripping thick and red and hot with blood, and she begins to swipe more frantically at her face, bleeding as if from nowhere, that bird still screaming louder and louder.

Around her, the water is slowly becoming red too, and she is bleeding into it, it is bleeding into her.

The birds are still screaming.

Her world smells like copper, and somewhere far off above her in the mountains, there is a man's voice, calling, yelling, and if only she could hear.

Suddenly, the rock she has been kneeling on slips beneath her, and she is drowning with such immediacy that there is no chance to kick out her arms, her legs, to flail, to fight.

The screaming continues around her at such a pitch that even as she breathes in the blood around her, sucks in gulps of copper and lead, the sound is present around her still.

She is swallowed by blood, and water, and the screaming of new life, and she wakes, as though it all was terribly real.


She's crying, and he cannot fathom why, or how he can hear her, he knows only that he woke to her voice, sweating to the beat of i need you i need you i need you within his mind. It made him nauseous at first, when he stood, unable to shield himself from her.

He had wanted to beam straight to her, but forgot somehow, so he tapped his comm badge, and listened to the silence on her end.

At some point, he gets through to Beverly.

"Is Deanna with you?"

He does not even have the ability to introduce himself, in all the confusion of 3am, and in her response, the alarm is evident.

"Will? Is that you, is something wrong?"

"I think something's happened to Deanna, is she with you or not?"

He is pulling on a pair of pants and hopping closer to his door when she responds, his ears barely able to hear.

"No she isn't, what's going on?"

Will grasps his comm badge and stands at the exit to his quarters, by the wall panel, trying to make sense of all the glaring lights.

"I'm not sure yet, I'll let you know, Riker out."

His shortness startles even him, but soon enough he is rematerializing in Deanna's quarters, where they are dark and glaring so lightly in shades of pink and gold.

Making his way to where he hears her breath, he is readying himself to swear that if even one hair on her head is harmed, then he will walk into war to avenge her.

He continues to fumble through the darkness to find her, not thinking to just turn on the lights, and instead following the sound of deep breathing, unsteady but forced. He comes upon her in the clearing of her room, the colour of the nebula beyond her viewport still, lighting one side of her face, and all the rest of her shrouded in nothing. As he goes to speak, he finds his voice gone, and somehow ends up kneeling at the foot of her bed, praying some ancient mantra that she can be saved, that she won't be taken from him.

And she cannot breathe, yet she is trying to say his name, frantically almost, through a meditation that has ceased to work; she slumps over the edge of her bed to grasp onto him.

Through a series of confused and confusing movements she has curled into his lap on the floor, so much smaller than him, their backs to the end of the bed, his flannel pants soft against her skin where she is exposed, sweating through that pale pink nightgown.

Deanna shies into him, buries her neck like a child into his chest, and he is bewildered, so indulged by her usual confidence that he is drowning now, out of the ocean of her strength.

"Imzadi?"

His voice returned, he calls to her, seeks to reach the woman he thinks perhaps he doesn't know at all, and at the sound she faces into him, up and through his eyes.

"I was drowning,"

Lungs beneath her chest that expand and contract the thumping beat of a hummingbird heart, undertake to form words that, though heartbreaking, are articulated so slowly and carefully that they can be nothing more than truth.

And in his haste and confusion, Will looks around the room, where it is dark, wonders if there are waterfalls cowering in the shadows, wonders if they will drown him too.

"A dream?"

His own voice shakes and he cannot fathom why he too is so shaken, so deeply feeling that he hopes it will not last forever. A noise escapes her, frustration, and terror still, as though he is close, but not yet there; his arms around her but not truly understanding her plight.

"A nightmare."

His clarification has her nodding her head against him, young and small as she tries to further curl herself atop him, wound like a child in his lap.

They sit unmoving for many moments more, before he notices that the rumbling in his chest is her voice, physically poured into him through her tears, yet not through his mind, nothing since she first called to him.

Taking her shoulders, clammy and jutting, he pushes her back to look into her eyes, to pull her words out of his chest and know her.

"I can't do this, I can't do it, I'm not going to make it…"

She looks at him with desperation he has never before known, and he cannot even recognise it on her face until he sees the shining of her eyes, and she speaks again.

"I think this is going to kill me,"

Her sincerity burns into him, and he is itching now to reach for his comm badge, to call Beverly, to call somebody, anybody who might be able to offer her something he cannot. But she is already falling back into him, their gaze broken, her body cold now and shivering against him, simply melting now into his chest, her words no longer aloud.

He can almost feel her heartbeat within himself, fast and frantic like a hummingbirds, but so damming it feels as though a kick drum is being beaten in his very bones.

He wonders if she's doing it on purpose.

And it takes so many more minutes before she is completely still, maybe not as comforting as having the movement of her there, thinking she may only be dead. Her body is limp when he lifts her back into her bed, and tucks her up beneath the top-most covers with care, then once again, for the second time in the past week, he finds himself holding her from behind.

They are as twinned lambs together, perfectly mirrored to the body of the other, in all the sleeping patterns of the night.

Deanna's fatigue is infectious, and he lets himself be swallowed by it, joining her wherever she has gone.

A baby bird is screeching, but he cannot see anything at all, his surroundings completely black. And he can hear the rushing of water on water, like a tumbling waterfall, though he is not sure. A woman is calling out, and he would know that voice anywhere, even if he cannot feel her near to him. There is a strong wind blowing in his face, but he cannot see when he raises his hands and it is as though he has no body at all. The wind smells of blood, iron and wine, and he's sure that if this were any world he was a part of, then it would be coloured in all the shades of red.

And suddenly, like the swell of a wave, he feels the need to yell for her, in all the surrealty, sure that wherever he is, it belongs to her.

So as he shouts, the echoes return, and his eyes slowly begin again to reoccur to him anew, and he opens them, the light pours within him like water.