He has moved in, officially, and he is cooking for her, and sleeping in her bed, and taking showers in her bathroom, and picking up her clothes from the floor. It's wonderful, truly, but after a few days the novelty seems to have worn off.
Beverly is still harping at her to gain weight, but all she seems to do is lose more, and the Captain is doing his best to look the other way, not that there are any rules against their kind of relationship, but the situation warrants his discretion.
She is feeling very tired lately, not so much in her mind but in her bones, and the doctor estimates she is coming to the end of the second quarter, though she cannot be sure. Her uniform stopped fitting the day she wore it, her body breaking out in all the wrong ways, her belly becoming slightly softer, and sloping, and her shoulders, ribs and arms becoming bonier, harsher.
Will doesn't like seeing it happen to her, but there is little he can do to stop it other than memorise the recipes to all her favorite Betazoid dishes, for future reference of course, just so that he won't run out of ways to keep her interested. It seems these past few days she has been turning her nose up at everything, averse to even chocolate, chocolate.
And if he wasn't concerned before.
The patients that she has been seeing are beginning to see the changes in her too, and often she finds herself having to field their questions, assure them she is well, and that she is not abandoning their treatment. She has already had to reassign two cases who couldn't handle the uncertainty - she wishes she could just do that for herself.
She takes a shower every night now, sometimes a bath, anything to soak her aching limbs, some way to smooth a herbal balm over the skin of her belly, to ease the itching of fast stretching skin.
She still hasn't spoken to her mother.
Will calls her name, and she reels out of her own train of thought, calls back to him that she's coming and takes her hands away from where they are resting uneasily over her stomach, the appearance of her belly taut and alien.
His t-shirt falls back down around her naked self, one of his academy sweatshirts that she had commandeered the second it seemed her stomach was becoming something other than her own, and her frame is hidden snugly within it.
The space beyond her bathroom smells peculiar, a scent she can't quite put a name on, sweet and sticky almost, hot like cooking food. Sure enough, he had moved a hotplate into her quarters, and she emerges into the cloud of steam surrounding him, where he is wearing his own civilian clothes and an apron she had bought for him on shore leave once.
It seems like an awfully long time ago.
"What do you think of this for a change?"
Will comes towards her holding an alloyed spoon, one hand beneath it to catch any drips, and offers it to her lips. Despite where her thoughts have been sneaking off to, she finds herself smiling, because it seems he has finally had enough of the particular tastes of Betazoid cuisine.
It is hot, and the smell is very strong the closer it gets to her, but she can't deny the fact that her mouth is watering in anticipation.
Deanna laps the tiniest drop of sauce in her mouth, and he smiles with his grip steady on the spoon, one eye looking back at where the rest of the dish bubbles up.
"It's orange chicken, a taste of the orient."
His eyebrows raise and he speaks in that way that he does, when showing her something she hasn't seen before, given that she's seen so much; and in her presence even he seems wise too.
"Well,"
She says, trying to sound enthused, but really honestly wanting nothing to do with any kind of food, let alone something foreign.
"I prefer your Italian myself, but I'm sure this meets Beverly's dietary requirements just the same,"
She speaks dryly, then stalks off to sit at the desk in the corner, her hands finding the latest personnel report she has been writing up, dejected, discontented.
"Deanna, don't be that way,"
He chastises her, putting the spoon back down in the pan and turning down the heat a little, then he turns to face her, wiping his hands on the front of his apron.
Slowly, she looks back up to meet his eyes, and her hair is loose in front of them, damp and springing back tightly into curls; she presses the fingers of one hand against her forehead.
"You're right,"
She says,
"I'm sorry, I guess I'm just tired,"
A hand absentmindedly finds its way to her stomach, and maybe she doesn't notice that she's doing it, but Will does, and he just nods then turns back to his cooking, not really having anything to say other than the kiss he will likely give her later.
The computer terminal lights her up as she starts typing some notes, and there is nothing more to say or do other than what they would in the absence of the other, and maybe that is the mark of a strong relationship. Her typing is slow, she thinks he may be strong, but she is not.
So when finally she finds herself with a fork in her hands, she doesn't quite have all the strength she needs to hold on tightly and chew through a meal she has no interest in. A food aversion, the professional within her says, and she must remember to keep an eye on that, make sure it doesn't develop into a new neurosis.
Will watches her with an intense gaze, but she cannot even think about taking another bite, so she stands, feeling not even a little out of place in her own quarters, and tells him she's too tired to eat anymore.
He is disappointed, she can feel it inside himself as if the emotion is her own, yet she leaves him alone at the table, disappears inside her bedroom where it is dark, and too early for sleeping, but too late to be doing much else.
People can only meet you as deeply as they have met themselves.
She has just finished explaining this to an ensign who worries she may never find love aboard a starship, but in truth she's not sure she understands it herself. It has been her defining thought since becoming a professional therapist, since finishing her doctorate on Betazed, the one thing she repeats to anybody who needs to hear it, the nugget of wisdom that will go down with her name attached to it.
After all these years she thinks she's finally questioning it, but the woman, Nan'ay, is talking again, so there is not time enough to think on it much more deeply.
"Maybe you're right, if I don't feel confident in myself, then how should I expect another woman to see me that way,"
Deanna just nods placidly, recognising the patient has reached their conclusion, and from here out the appointment is basically over. There is a peculiar feeling rising at her centre.
"I should stop measuring myself by how other people see me, that's no way to find love, if people want to project their own negativity on me then I should just move on, right?"
"As I said,"
Deanna begins, sighing as she stands, the pleats of the slightly larger uniform tunic falling into place neatly.
"There's no need to measure the success of your life by the longevity of any relationships you have had. People have a way of finding each other, when they are needed, I really don't see any reason for you to be concerned."
The Bolian woman stands too, and there are only two years between them, the ensign concerned about love and destiny and Deanna younger, and unconcerned with any of these things. She wonders if this is what she has to look forward to, if Will should leave.
"Thank you Counselor,"
Nan'ay's eyes cast downwards briefly towards her stomach when she speaks, and Deanna is all of a sudden very self-conscious, the feeling again churning within her, alongside the curiosity, the pity, that is being projected towards her.
They hug very briefly, maintaining some sense of personal space, and then the ensign leaves, back to engineering, or straight to lunch, she is unsure, yet she relishes the moment the doors shut, and she can fall back against the sofa, that peculiar feeling is still humming within her.
The curiosity she had sensed from Nan'ay is not gone, and somehow it is almost as if it is her own, because it is buried so deeply in her that she cannot possibly root out it's source.
Then, there is a moment of complete concentration, still not her own, and slowly something more is happening.
Turbulence at her core, deep in her stomach, like she is hungry, but full already, and a gasp when she finally realises what she has been feeling. All the breath is gone from her lungs, and she tries with desperation to make up for its loss, but it is of no use.
Very quickly she is struggling for oxygen, and she heaves in once, trying so hard not to become frantic, knowing the feeling of panic that rises within her so well, only this time it is not second hand, it is hers alone.
Air is lodged in her lungs, and she cannot force it out; she thinks finally she may understand how it is that people can devolve with such immediacy, that even she could not have seen coming.
There is nobody nearby who will hear her, because all the doors are closed, and she is the only empath aboard, and there are invisible hands gripping her neck - she is choked up on the feeling.
Her office is very suddenly too small for her, the walls heavy, oppressive, and closing in, the air thinning until it is gone. Hands grasp at her chest, the collar of her uniform tunic where it raises around her neck, the tops of her legs when she leans forward to hold her head between them, frantically recalling years of medical knowledge she has never needed.
She needs it now, she needs help, but despite all the desperate movements of her hands, they seem to be unable to get near her comm badge, to call for help, and even if they could she doubts there is breath enough in her body to make even one word.
A chime, at the door, and she's no idea who it is, can't even see beyond her own thick smog of terror to feel a single sense of self from the individual, and she starts awkwardly gagging on how big her tongue has become in her mouth, as she attempts to force herself to speak.
It doesn't work, and she is sobbing, hacking, her desperation rising like a great tsunami within her, and she worries the person will leave, and there will be nobody nearby to watch her die. Instead, the walls seem to back off a little, to absorb the sound of her frantically beating heart, and the computer says something that she can't hear over the sound of rushing blood in her ears, and the doors open wide.
"Counselor Troi, I was hoping we might -"
The captains jaw falls slack when he sees her, slumped on the sofa in the middle of her office, a scattering of data pads on the floor at her feet, hands clawed and scratching her neck, her chest, the woman's entire body heaving, red faced and full of terror.
He tumbles further inside the office, already reaching for his comm badge, but her voice, raspy and finally able to break out of her chest, stops him as he kneels at her feet.
"No - please, Beverly - will know,"
Deanna waves a tingling hand towards her chest, then in the direction of the computer, suggesting that the Doctor is still monitoring her vitals, but Picard is not so sure.
He places both his hands squarely on her knees, tries to make eye contact like she would do for him, only her eyes are darting back and forth, blinking profusely.
"You need to breathe, Deanna,"
He says with authority, with care, then he drags in a steady and deep breath, slow and long and exaggerated.
"Like this,"
Then he exhales deeply, slowly again, from his mouth, a technique he has seen her use once on an ensign with a fear of fire, last time his bridge almost blew up. Realising where his thoughts are going, and that she will invariably have noticed too, he tries instead to think of France, and horses, Dixon Hill and pencil cigarettes.
She follows him eagerly, her eyes finally finding focus in his face and widening as she bends her body to his will, forces herself to accommodate such large drags of air, forces herself to wait and not hurry.
There are minutes of this, Picards steady breathing and her efforts to mimic it, increasing in their synchrony until they may as well be breathing as one, though she is still trembling, her hands still tingling, and her face flushed crimson.
She's surprised, now that she can sense him with more clarity, that he is not embarrassed, because the personal aspect of Captaincy has never been his cup of tea, and these kinds of intimate moments are the exact reason he is averse to counseling in general. He is like a nervous little boy usually, but somehow something else has been brought forward.
He still holds his hands over her knees, only now the thumb of one hand is smoothing up and down slowly, against the fabric of her uniform trousers, and he too is thinking that he maybe should feel more self-conscious, that it is peculiar of himself to not feel horribly out of depth in such a situation.
"Deanna?"
Picard calls her by name, and he thinks maybe that she inspires in him the desire to be more, to be better, to act in a way that is intimate and caring and something he ordinarily would run from.
"I think you've had a panic attack,"
His voice is soft and concerned, and she is breathing now on her own, more regularly, but still raggedy and harsh.
"Are you feeling okay, did something happen?"
Deanna's eyes bulge a little, and her hands move from the tops of her thighs to encompass the two sides of her growing stomach, the blood flow restored to all her limbs and every sensation sharp and clear again. Recollection serves her too well, and her breath hitches again.
Her voice, shaky still, but present, is hoarse when she speaks.
"It - is moving,"
Captain Picard blinks once, his confusion turning him into somebody he doesn't appreciate, somebody hideously unprepared. At a loss for her meaning he follows instead her actions, tries to be her, to understand how it is she is so understanding; it is an impossibility.
He sees her hands covering her middle, realises how little he's really been noticing her lately, so consumed by his own concerns for the ship, the mission, that he maybe hasn't taken any time to look at her, to listen to her. Now it is, that he sees a child truly is growing of her, and he cannot fathom why.
"Moving?"
His voice lingers on the consonants, stretches out the vowels, and he pulls his hands away from her knees to try again at his comm badge.
And again she stops him.
A gasp, her knuckles becoming whiter in her shock.
"Counselor?"
He has returned to title, to formality, and she can feel further panic rising once again within herself, she tries hard to grasp onto his calming self, a man she has not known for as long as she feels she has.
"It is becoming real,"
Her eyes have begun to squint her tears, and she's doing her best effort to maintain contact with him, but the feeling at her centre is becoming stronger, she can no longer deny what it is.
Picard throws caution to the wind, cringes at himself, at how terribly unprofessional this is, but she is an exceptional woman, and if he owes her anything then it is this.
Large, one of his own hands joins hers over her stomach, tentatively, unsure, but there nonetheless, and he waits with patience for seconds, until he can feel it too, equal measures disturbing and wondrous.
He turns to look up into her eyes, awed.
"The child is kicking,"
He stays by her side for a lot longer than she thinks makes him comfortable, but somehow inside him he is not feeling displaced, he is just calming, and impassive - companionable.
Her own breathing has calmed, but she is still a little uneasy, and Beverly never came.
She wonders if this is what he is waiting for.
"Could I tell you something?"
Softly, his voice undertakes to begin conversation, a question that he isn't really asking, a story he desires to tell.
Deanna nods, looks over at him from the corners of her eyes, where he has moved to sit beside her.
"When I was told I had to appoint a Counselor to the bridge of this ship, I thought it was just another bit of Federation bureaucracy,"
Picard pauses, because she is smiling fondly at him; she has always known this.
"I don't even think I reviewed your file when I chose you, there were letters of recommendation from Admirals I admire and that was enough. I didn't want to have to spend very long looking,"
There is remorse within him, her smile seems to fade and she had thought this to have been the case.
"Sometimes I worry I made the wrong decision,"
He says, full of a terrible regret, a sadness, and she can feel this in him as in herself like a phaser blast, like a lance. Here is something she did not know; how strange it is to be caught off guard.
She is perhaps too weak to say anything at all.
"After seeing how you were affected at Farpoint, I thought maybe you were too young, that the recommendations had been falsely written,"
He seems to fuss over the memory, as though she is always in that same amount of pain, excruciating but with no point of origin. She recalls the moment too, and it just might be that she is always in that same amount of pain, always now.
Picard looks sidelong over at her, shifts a little to turn into her, another something he imagines she might do for him.
"You were just in so much pain, and too young, far too young,"
Sadness has begun to crease his face more deeply than before, and suddenly, he is speaking more quietly; it would be difficult for her to hear, if she weren't hearing him in her mind also.
"I - didn't even know you were empathic, I hadn't taken the time to learn,"
She thinks he might start to weep, and if his emotions were anybody elses, she is certain they would, but he is still captain, after all.
He straightens himself up slightly, clearly reaching a change in mood of his monologue, and for a moment, it's like he isn't even in the room.
He is so confused, the day he meets Mrs Troi, thinking he'd have the enjoyment of another deep accent, maybe thicker, maybe a little hard to follow.
But she is an American, and if her eyes weren't so black, her hair so big, he might be able to believe she is simply human.
Deanna has spoken always with elegance, with delicacy, her words carefully measured, calculated and meaningful. When her mother speaks, it is somehow blunt, somehow short, somehow lacking in any deeper sort of truth.
The young Counselor is in a turbolift with him, at some point before her mother leaves, and he just knows she can hear him, his mind in its confusion.
"My mother does not speak the federation standard - for telepaths, there is no language in one's mind, only meaning."
Her eyes are dark too, where they see into him.
"She speaks with the translators, and that is why you cannot hear anything of myself in her voice."
He looks shocked, as if he never really read her file in the first place, never really cared much further than a letter of recommendation from the Royal College of Betazed, didn't even really consider much more than her rank and a blank expression through his viewscreen.
"I do not employ their use, I find so much to be lost in the translation."
"I always thought -"
"I know,"
She smiles, leaves, great sweeping movements leading her down the corridor in a flurry, light and silken material, native to her homeworld.
Her mother told him she sends her fabrics on transport ships, and somehow the girl spirits them into her quarters, and reappears again in some gown, or new uniform style, or even some delightfully sweeping dress, made with skill and long hours alone with nobody's thoughts but her own.
He thinks maybe he should speak with her more often.
Deanna inhales sharply, and her lungs ache with the strain, his memory as clear to herself as it is to him, the two of them sharing in it in the most peculiar way. He blinks, and looks over to her, no idea that she was right there with him, even if only for a moment.
"I have underestimated you, Deanna, time and time over, and I am terribly sorry for having done it again,"
Picard utters, lowly, but with some kind of compassion that she rarely sees in him; it is refreshing to know that he is capable.
"You're very easy to care about, to want to protect, and shield, and in doing this I have lost sight of the fact that you're here with a job to do, just as we all are,"
He moves his hand to rest on the sofa cushion next to her leg, close enough for contact, but only if she reaches for him - a half commitment.
Deanna is having difficulty following his thoughts, it seems he himself doesn't know where he is heading.
"I've been using you without thought, letting you be my humanity, my conscience, telling myself that your job is easy, when all this time we've been leaning on you so heavily that you've no choice but to hold us up,"
Sadness, once more has coloured him something dreadful, and there is something swelling in her chest, maybe like pride, but she cannot be sure, cannot know if this is a conversation he will forget in a few months, and it all will go back to how it was.
"You are an exceptional woman, and I think now it's time to let us hold you up."
Her lungs empty in one instant, his sincerity so sharp that he might as well have just pierced her, left a puncture wound in her skin and the air would have rushed out all the same.
He seems to have set himself into a grim line, but there is loving behind it, and she can feel how he has begun to think of her - fatherly, awed. Hands inch closer again towards her, because she has begun to sag slightly further against him, and he thinks maybe he can allow himself further moments of weakness, to shuffle to her side and hold her body against him.
Deanna is encircled by his arms, and it is a terribly peculiar feeling, but somehow she feels it to be long-overdue, something which has been brewing, restrained only by a row of pips and their relative security.
He might only hold onto her for moments, she isn't sure, but his fingers tighten and squeeze her shoulder, then he tenses and leans even further to lightly press a kiss against her forehead, desperately wanting to live up to this role he has fashioned himself into, to be different, to be more than he has been before.
