He had not held her for long, and surely that is a good thing, and instead of accompanying her to lunch, he walked her to sickbay, had a stern word with Beverly in the privacy of her office, and though she couldn't hear a word he said, she felt in the both of them a deep shame - a terror.

Beverly then had examined her, while the Captain returned to the bridge, and explained that sickbay had been so busy, that the link to her vitals was weak because of some kind of ionic storm they were traveling through, that she is sorry, and it won't happen again.

Now she finds herself with orders to relax, which really does seem impossible, and she counters that request with one of her own, a desire to just spend the evening on the bridge beside the Captain, nearby Will without being smothered by the love of him.

So she is - sitting on the bridge - and her heart rate keeps picking up slightly, each time with a little less surprise when the child moves, enjoying this new skill it has acquired, and though she is not yet fond ofit, she thinks maybe it might be time to find out if it is a boy or a girl, if only to stop calling it it.

She gets a message from Beverly on her side-panel, amongst a series of half completed crew evaluations and the current status of the escape pods, asking her if she's okay, now that the Captain has struck the fear of God into her, to diligently monitor her vitals.

Fortunately for Deanna, she never was a god-fearing child.

She thinks of this then responds, types out:

Yes, everything is okay.

Somewhere, on the other side of the ship, she can feel that there is a memory brewing, something being thrust forward into recollection, and it is not her own, but she feels it with the same intensity as if it were, only from a different point of view.

Beverly follows the girl into her quarters, the hour before a poker night that has been arranged by their first officer, an over-zealous man if she ever saw one, and he reminds her a lot of the man that Picard once was. The girl is another deal entirely, and maybe Beverly is being old-fashioned, jaded even, but it seems that she is just simply too young to be on the bridge.

A lieutenant, nonetheless.

The doors shut behind them, and in the two months they have been aboard, this is the first time she has interacted on such a personal level with the Counselor, aside from such conversations about certain crewmen, or a physical exam that she has still yet to attend.

Pink lights softly illuminate the space, tenderly, the whole area aglow and somehow conveying a delicately balanced sense of calm, if of inanimate objects such a thing is possible. And then, the surfaces all seem bare, a terrible contrast to the consideration put into the atmosphere, the slightly lowered temperature, the smell of some kind of flower she cannot name, and everything else is strangely spartan.

It is peculiar to say the least.

"I hate to ask,"

Deanna starts, turning around to face the Doctor, finally some conversation brewing between them.

"But poker is a game of emotions, yes?"

Beverly considers this for a second, frowns a little for thinking too hard on it, when the answer really is very simple.

"Yes, in a way, I suppose it is, more-so for an empath I'd imagine, but the human thrill of the game is about fooling the other players, bluffing,"

She says, transfixed a little by how, in front of the couch before her, Deanna has begun to take down her hair, slowly unloosing it from the severe bun it had been tied up in, letting ringlets of sleek black hair fall free of their silver twists, and using delicate fingers to extract the jewels from around her crown.

"I see,"

She meets Beverly's gaze, her hair almost completely freed and tumbling down to the small of her back, long and sheer and shining black. The girl is a most peculiar combination of opacity, and transparency. Perhaps she never was meant to be seen through.

"You wanted to borrow a dress, considering it is the commanders birthday?"

Gracefully, Deanna changes the subject, saving Beverly from the embarrassment of lingering too long in her awe, in the ambiguous sexuality of a Betazoid, maybe even just of her. The doctor just nods, and so Deanna begins to delicately unzip the back of her own leotard-like uniform, revealing sheer shoulder blades and a smooth, unblemished back, with every inch further her hands travel.

Beverly swallows, not sure if she should be looking away or not, feeling uncomfortable, but she takes the cue from Deanna, who seems not to be concerned at all about being so exposed, about being naked.

And this is such stark contrast to the insecurities of most 23 year olds, of herself at 23.

"I have a lot of spare fabric you can look through, I'm afraid most of my dresses will be too short for you, but the patterns are saved in the computer if there is a specific style you were thinking of,"

She calls over her shoulder as she disappears into her bedroom, stepping out of her uniform completely just before she is shielded by the darkness, leaving it behind on the floor. Beverly is having a little bit of trouble understanding the girl, but she continues to try, shaking away how her thoughts are becoming caught up in any number of questions.

She moves further inside to sit on the edge of a futon, a silvery blanket draped over its side, and thinks back to the first time they had ever met.

There was a function in the Ten Forward Lounge, celebrating the launch of the flagship, introducing the new crew a few weeks before they would be departing the dry-dock, Beverly herself due to return to Farpoint the next day. Deanna had been mistaken several times for the daughter of a crewman, being so small and young in the face, but it was the dress she wore that clued Beverly into something more. Her entire back was exposed, all the way down to the crevice of her spine, just before revealing too much of herself, and there was a spun silver chain connecting the very deepest swell of fabric to a collared necklace that was wound once around her neck.

The front of the garment had been plunging too, almost down to her belly-button in two halves of cream coloured silk-like fabric, joined at a point by one single lavender jewel. It was not a gem she was familiar with. A very daring outfit, perhaps for a human woman, but this was Deanna, and maybe she hadn't realised what that meant at the time, but the doctor is slowly beginning to understand.

Deanna reemerges from her bedroom, wearing a much simpler dress, a kind of delicate grey bodiced number that does not quite reach the ground, but still leaves the majority of her back exposed.

Beverly supposes this must be a Betazoid thing.

"I was hoping for something simple?"

She says with some sort of flapped desperation, feeling now a little out of her depth.

Deanna smiles knowingly, disappears once more then reappears just as quickly, brandishing a flowing length of emerald fabric, playing it between her fingers like it is water.

On her way over to where Beverly sits, she picks up a data-padd that had been sitting on the coffee table.

"Here are a few patterns I think would suit you exquisitely, and this is a kind of woven material made from the silk of Betazoid Meshi - they produce a very rare synthetic silver fibre which changes colour relevant to the creatures diet, this Emerald I believe will best bring out your eyes,"

She suggests with modesty, gesturing first to the data pad that Beverly takes gratefully from her, and then to the sweeping bundle of fabric she carries still in her arms.

There is much gratitude within Dr Crusher, unused to the refinery of Betazoid culture, to the indulgences they seem to live their lives in, and again this is another contrast she finds within Deanna Troi, something which the girl accepts, delights in, and yet at the same time she is sparse, and utilitarian.

The evening is full of contrasts, of dualities she thinks she never will understand.

Deanna sighs, the memory a lot more gentle than the last time this happened, and if people weren't thinking so directly of her, then it wouldn't be possible at all, only there are so many moments that people don't even realise they are capable of projecting.

The artlessness of humans.

Picard demonstrates the greatest emotional control of all the crew, and yet even he had swallowed her with his memory, ungainly and incapable, entirely accidental in every projection of thought. They are a species that likely will never evolve telepathy, the two so incompatible it would likely destroy them, as the scholars of Betazed had believed it would destroy her.

Will glances side-long over at her, apparently having noticed her moment of absence, and he dips his eyebrows in question. She smiles gracefully back at him, turns to face where the captain is standing at the centre of the bridge, his body open to the image of an admiral on the viewscreen.

"And what is your ETA Captain?"

Admiral Kyoto asks from his seat at the operations centre of Starbase 71, and she remembers now where it is they're heading, why she has been thinking of home.

"Mr Data?"

The android's answer is sharp and delightfully predictable of him.

"The Enterprise will enter synchronous Orbit in 17 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds, Sir,"

The admiral tries not to respond with irritation at the answer of a machine, but the expression on Picards face is one of pride, and so the older gentleman knows not to let it show in his voice.

"Excellent Captain, our engineering team will be ready to beam aboard at 12:00 hours tomorrow, the refits will likely take two or three days - your crew is welcome to enjoy the recreational facilities aboard the starbase in the meantime,"

He is smiling tightly as he speaks, clearly unenthused at the idea of having the Enterprise docked for longer than a few hours, given her reputation for finding trouble, and even though Deanna cannot sense such a bland individual from such a great distance, she is sure that dread is churning inside him.

"Thank you Admiral, I'm sure my people will be grateful for the opportunity - Enterprise out,"

Picard responds with the same kind of tight smile on his face, damn bureaucracy, and turns to Worf to cut the feed, his face falling away into a tired grimace when the viewscreen goes blank.

"You must remind me, number one,"

He says, moving to sit back in his chair, pulling down his uniform tunic as he goes,

"Never to accept a promotion,"

Riker chuckles a little, nods in solidarity.

"Aye Sir,"

There is a lighter sense of humour enveloping them all, as the hour ticks over silently into 17:00, and Deanna takes her turn to share in the mood, gently tapping the arm of her chair.

"As your counselor I would also be obliged to advise against that, if you wish to retain your personality, that is,"

She jokes coyly, and he turns to laugh lightly at her words, at the sight of a smile creeping up across her face, charming and genuine; he pats the top of her hand fondly, then matches her expression with a wry smile of his own.

"I'll be counting on that, Counselor,"

Data turns around in his seat, a confused look forced upon his face, full of all the wonderment of a child. He is likely logging the conversation in his data banks, setting it aside for later analysis; it is something he will question her about at some obscure point in the future.

Deanna smiles: she looks forward to it.


Starbase 71 is a relatively new construction, located in the Beta Zeta system, orbiting the furthest of the 7 moons of Betazed, the one known as Yareakh.

The Betazoids had been resistant to the development of a starbase in their planetary system for such a long time, given the difficulty that comes with having so many non-telepaths nearby on a permanent basis, but in the end they had given in, due in part to the rising tensions with the Romulans pushing further along the Neutral Zone.

The Federation hadn't realised that Betazoids don't require physical armament to defend themselves, though they had allowed them to believe that they are defenseless, and weak, even when they are not, having survived as an isolated population for so long, it being easier than explaining how they had done so.

But that is another story.

Deanna had checked with the Embassy on Betazed before asking for shore leave, just to be sure she wouldn't have to try and explain all this to her mother, and fortunately Lwaxana will be away for another week, long after the Enterprise will leave the system.

Beverly had raised few concerns, given that Deanna was essentially just going home for a little while, and though Will is only allowed to join her for one full day, and the evenings of the other two, she was initially unconcerned that she would be alone.

After all, it is a planet of telepaths.

But as Picard and Crusher wave away Will and Deanna on the extended range transporter pad of Starbase 71, they both can't help but feel envious, maybe nervous, maybe even as though they are letting control slip from their fingers.

The planet that rematerialises in front of her is exquisite, the sky a beautiful deep indigo as the afternoons of the third season grip the continent. The Fifth House stands elegantly in amongst a series of tall and almost black barked trees, and rain begins slowly to drizzle down, sweet smelling and soft against her skin as she walks ahead, leaving Will slightly further behind her to carry their bags.

Everything is still as she remembers it from 2 years ago, and she is glad that Will never came here before, instead spending most of their time at a cabin near Lake El'Nar, or his quarters at the Starfleet barracks on the central continent.

This place is entirely her own, and the door opens, heavy and wooden, in response to her dermal scan, immediately warmer and impossibly more inviting than the wilderness outside. Will is impressed by it all, as the doors shut behind him and he drops the bags at his feet in the hallway, gazing up at the tall and finely sculpted ceilings. There are waves of awe coming from him, and so she turns around to look into his eyes.

"This is not called the Fifth House for nothing, Will,"

Deanna says, smiling sweetly, and he remembers vaguely how she had told him of its history, how it is one of a series of households almost 1000 years old, the structure itself equally as old - a testament to the longevity and continued peace of the Betazoid people.

She leads them through into the sitting room at the front of the house, where a large, wooden armed sofa sits in the centre of the room, inviting and homely, an opulent rug beneath the low wooden table that sits before it.

Some creations are universal, Will thinks, watches as she lowers herself awkwardly into the cushions, sighing when the pressure is taken away from her spine.

She has just begun to experience back pain, amongst a dozen other things.

He takes a moment to look up at all the walls around them, and follows how the three closed sides of the room are formed entirely as shelves, all kinds of coloured and bound books leading the line of vision all the way to a large bay window. It is stained lightly white, and this causes the lush scenery beyond to take on the quality as though it is being seen through a veil, looked at in a dreamscape, as opposed to the kind of clear reality many people are driven to insanity by.

Deanna is staring straight ahead, through the veil, her eyes deep and dark, and perhaps greater than any ocean he has ever come upon.

Her silence terrifies him.

The whole planet, in fact, is so deeply silent that even the animals seem to respect it, and he wonders if maybe it is not so quiet in her mind as it is in his, if maybe she is having any number of a thousand different conversations while he looks on dumly.

She twists her neck to face him, to watch where he stands taking in everything around him, and this is only the first room he has seen.

"You can feel free to look around, I think in particular you will enjoy the kitchen, but there are many rooms upstairs also,"

Deanna offers, waves one hand to the stairs across the hallway, behind him where he blocks the door, then she pulls one of the cushions surrounding her and tucks it in behind her head.

Will frowns

"Are you not going to give me the grand tour?"

He asks playfully, but he can tell by the exasperated look she hands him in return, that this is not a very likely eventuality.

"I think I would just like to sit for a while - listen,"

He nods at her as she turns back to face the window, thinks listen to what, but there is a clear change in her coming home that he can't put a finger on, and so maybe there is something to listen to, something healing, and he is just too closed to hear it.

Will swings on his heel, leaves her where she sits with her eyes slipping closed, and turns left further down the hallway, towards the back of the house and through a door that leads him into the kitchen she had told him about.

There is no replicator that he can obviously see, and the whole layout of the space is very peculiar to him, so used to the conventional appliances of Earth that he begins to feel terribly out of place. In the very centre is an island counter, the top of which is matte and smooth, and as he comes closer he sees that it is carved of some mineral he has never seen before, similar to granite only in that is is delightfully marbled, but it is somehow translucent and reflecting back the lights in a thousand different shades of grey and green.

Above the island is a series of hooks that hang from the raised ceiling, the ends of which are draped in raw herbs and certain dried roots, a few of which he can name, but the majority a mystery.

He continues forwards and closer to the main row of counters on the far right wall, and there is a large archway in place perpendicular to this, through which he can see an entirely glass ceilinged dome of a room, in which a large table runs from end to end, 12 seats finely carved and gathered around it.

Turning his attention back to the worktops in front of him, he fingers the surface and skims down along until he meets a large stone column, the imposing main feature of the kitchen, reaching up and through the ceiling, and coming to a horn like opening at its base, full of lumps of clean coal and wood logs.

The child in him absolutely cannot wait to try to cook with it.

The rest of the house is much the same, another lounge like-room, only smaller and more intimate looking, a few boxes of old child's toys carefully arranged within sight but out of the way of a large fireplace at its centre. There is also a kind of utility room, infinitely more modern looking, containing refrigeration units, recyclers, washer-dryer units, and a replicator like appliance, not starfleet issue but likely just as functional.

The stairs, he finds, wind a little at the top and open out into a sprawling landing, a long corridor immediately that runs alongside a banister and ends in a floor length window at the front of the building. It is joined further along by a second corridor, and all the walls seem to be broken up by doors and portraits, a few individuals he does recognise - Lwaxana, Deanna and Ian - and many more he does not, older looking but with that characteristic thickly curled Troi hair.

Will decides to pass by the rooms clearly designated to Lwaxana and Mr Homm, but he finds himself caught in his tracks when he comes upon a door that is slightly ajar, and within he finds something he could scarcely have anticipated.

The two exposed walls are made up from entirely glass panels, and the whole of the lower continent can be seen from them, up until where the land is swallowed up by the ocean, dense evergreen trees in different shades of brown and red, and sprawling fields of dark blue grass, where the colder season has altered the shade.

The space itself is almost a perfect square, and it is in a state of disarray that is not consistent with the rest of the house, a few stools at different points around, with sheets of parchment and wooden storage boxes atop them, shorter than he maybe would expect and standing on 6 intricate legs.

Equally short and dispersed in the space, are three wooden stands, most closely resembling artists easels, only standing lower to the ground, relevant to the stools, and supporting a more flexible backing that holds up sheets of parchment with fluidity, rather than the rigid wooden backing he might have expected.

There are paintings all over the floor, any number of sheets that are half finished in different colours of wax and oil pastels, different kinds of pigments than he has no names for, a whole other form of art that is disturbingly beautiful. The majority on the surface are all of the scenery beyond the window, in richer green colours of summer, but a few catch his eye, and he bends down to pick one of the sheets up.

At first glance it is another oil painting, of the waterfalls at Janaeryn, but behind all the deep shades of midnight blue and grey the water runs in, there are other images hidden within it, at the swell of the lake; the colours have run off the parchment before properly drying, and a face is isolated where the swell of water ordinarily should be.

His face.

Stunned, he gets down to his knees and rifles through some more of the paintings on the floor, finds that many of them are incomplete in the same way, some in charcoal and full of disembodied eyes, his eyes; others are landscapes that break away into a series of parted lips and shining, smiling teeth - and they are all his.

It is as if she had been trying to paint over the memory of him, last time she was here, but her mind kept taking her back to all the different parts of him she ever admired, leaving them scrawled in the way of beautiful landscapes and pictures of fruits, plants, starships - nothing beautiful anymore.


She is lost in the peace of wild things when she feels him at her shoulder, and when she turns around to look into his eyes, she knows without a doubt what he has seen.

But he says nothing about it at all.

Will's arms come to smooth over her bony shoulders, the soft fabric of the dress she is wearing, and he speaks only as a whisper, feeling terribly obscene in destroying the native silence.

"I have to get back to the Starbase, Captain Picard is waiting for me so that I can oversee some of the work in engineering,"

His voice is apologetic, but she simply smiles wanly at him, proud that he can resist the overwhelming urge she knows he feels to just stay, and share in that power the planet holds - it had been an urge her father could not fight against.

"Will you be okay on your own?"

She has no chance to respond before he hears an almighty thud at the back of the house, and a series of bounding, beating footsteps towards where they are. Pulling out his phaser, he turns to face the intruder.

Deanna is laughing, breaking the silence too, and the creature simply rushes past him without giving him a second glance, and up to where she sits still on the sofa.

The creature is almost wolf like, but it's fur is a light lilac, thick and accented by strands of silver and grey; it has a shining pink snout and flapping ears and a bushy tail which forks at the end, sweeping in two different directions.

"Merea!"

Deanna exclaims as the creature comes towards her, and there is just enough delight in her voice for Will to holster his phaser again, and watch as it places its large flat paws on either side of her body on the couch, reaching up to lick at her hands with an orange spotted tongue.

"Will, meet Merea,"

She is running her fingers through the fur around its neck when the creature turns to Will, responding to some command he didn't hear, and it regards him with curiosity.

"Merea?"

He repeats, and the creature bounces it's head happily, jumping to curl it's large body beside Deanna on the couch.

"Yes,"

She starts to explain.

"We met as children in the Yahar surrounding the house, she was an injured pup separated from her father, and mine had just died. We found each other amongst the trees, she heard me and I heard her. She has been visiting me ever since."

Deanna explains, as though looking back on a terribly fond memory, and she then turns to Merea, who has begun to nuzzle into her side and whine lowly, as though she can feel that something is not quite right. Will quickly follows as the translator scrubs over and replaces her word with forest - they had met in the forest.

"Is she wild?"

Will is still apprehensive as he regards the scene before him, but the look on his face only causes Deanna to start laughing, and he is certainly glad that this conversation has not led where he was expecting it to.

"All creatures here are wild Will, they are also telepathic, to a certain extent of course,"

The animal whines louder, her tail thumping the side of the couch where it drapes over the edge.

"She comes to me when I am home, we spent many years together as children, and now we are like old friends,"

Merea yips joyfully, happy that her sentiment has been expressed, and Will tries not to feel so excluded, repeats what he had said before.

"So, I guess you will be okay, on your own,"

He jokes, but the understanding he has formed is one that is not funny at all: that it is impossible for her to be alone when even the wildlife loves her.

He leans down to kiss her cheek, and Merea dips her head in concession, as Deanna reaches instead for his lips, and they share in a quick, familiar goodbye.

She watches him leave down the garden path, through the window before her, and he is one man against a backdrop of everything she loves and holds dear, until he is gone, dragged up into the sky in a stream of particles, and she tries hard not to let that feeling that lingers always with her envelope her.

The feeling that he will just never return.