Author's Note:

Now that my exams are over it's time to update, and off the back of some glowing reviews I have to say that I feel so motivated to carry back on updating. It can be easy to get too critical of your own work, and I've been sitting on this story for over a year before deciding to post it because I thought it was no good. Honestly, I hadn't been expecting this kind of positive reception, I don't even know anybody my age who's seen a single episode of Star Trek, so I'm just so grateful that there are people willing to give me their honest opinions, and encouragement.

It means a lot, I really can't say, so before I get embarrassingly gushy, let's just press on with the story. As usual, your reviews would be massively appreciated.


He sees how her body is small amongst the grandeur of the house - when she walks him through into the library - sees how she was raised here but is not the embodiment of it, how she is more, how she is made whole in the house of her enemies.

It was never a case of convincing her to stay her post, as he had thought, just a case of listening a moment to her words, as one who watches the watcher, allowing her to air her feelings for a little while.

And they had sat for too long, her tea gone cold, the sun creeping slowly to a point just slightly higher in the sky, a real rain having begun beyond the windows. She had told him she never had any plans to leave, feeling that he wanted to ask, and just like that the sentiment had been gone, and the girl had all but insisted on allowing him to browse their collections, to make sure that Mr Data had not become overwhelmed by the scale of it all.

Picard had let her steer the conversation towards their shared love of poetry, of just good literature, because it had been easier than offering her further consolations than the promise to allow her the remainder of her Shore Leave alone, to have Will remove his things from her quarters, to have him step away for a time.

She had been grateful, though it was not terribly clear, and they had stood without discussing it much further. Then he saw her as he sees her now, terribly small surrounded by stacks and stacks of books, rows of shelves, a second floor, even, of bookcases with a twisted brass staircase leading to it, chairs scattered around.

She inspires as much awe amongst it all as the books themselves do alone, and he had not thought it possible for so many original copies to exist in one place - but the Troi's have them all.

Data is on the second level, sitting straight backed in a nook carved between the shelves, his eyes darting mechanically across the words of just one amongst a whole stack of books he has on his left. There is an equally impressive pile of discarded works on his right, all likely based on the historical events and mythology of Betazed, the kind that one cannot find in a database or a Starfleet library.

He has been allowed to convert the writings into bytes upon bytes of data, for his personal use only, as a friend of the Fifth House, on the condition that they not be uploaded to the interstellar Databases.

Picard is unsure exactly what the Betazoids are trying to conceal, if anything at all, but the relationship he has cultivated with the counselor is testament enough to the fact that he specifically requested to remain on the planet in place of Commander Riker - just in case.

And yet he still believes himself to be inhuman.

"Do you have everything you need, Data?"

She utters, it seems to herself, as she navigates through the corridors of shelves to find what she is looking for, but he can hear her voice clearly, as she had assumed he would.

"Yes Counselor, the material is very stimulating indeed,"

He calls back down to them, and Picard smiles to himself, following closely behind her as she moves, though it is not difficult, being that she is newly sluggish - not yet quite alarmingly so.

A small noise of delight escapes her as they come upon the corner of the room, beneath the timbered eaves of the upper floor, and there is a much shorter bookcase nestled in amongst a few deep blue plush bucket armchairs.

There are throw cushions around the floor, and blankets arranged just so, the corner layed about in perfectly organised disarray.

"Have a seat Captain, these are the classics,"

She has crouched herself down at the lowest shelf of books, and offers him the comfort of her home from over her shoulder, clearly a little distracted by whatever she is looking for. Tugging at his uniform tunic at last, he sits right into the back of one such chair, affording himself its comforts without feeling awkward as a Captain - completely at ease when surrounded by words, or maybe even something of the house itself.

Deanna turns back to him, one arm weighed down by a large leather bound book she has cradled against her chest, a much smaller and slimmer book at the end of her other arm. She hands him the larger one, leaving it to thud against the armrest of his chair, and she points a thin finger to the title - Moby Dick.

His face lights up.

"You once told me your white whale was to finish this book, my father could never finish it himself, though I'm sure you will find it more enjoyable to try,"

She returns to a chair across from him, grabbing up a blanket as she goes, then curling her short legs up under herself amongst the cushions of the seat.

"I'm surprised you remembered Counselor,"

He responds gratefully, but she looks up to meet his gaze, her eyes narrowing slightly in a way that is dangerously close to good-humoured, but still lingers with some other unidentifiable sense.

"Deanna,"

Captain Picard corrects himself before she can say anything to him, knowing, then he points to the old worn book that she has between her own hands now, the title obscured from his view.

"Might I ask what your white whale is then, seeing as you know so much of mine?"

His eyebrows follow along suggestively as he speaks, and for a moment they could just be two old friends, talking as though they have known each other for years, and not just the one. It is something she inspires in those she becomes close with, the feeling that she is ageless and infinite, that she knows you so deeply and keenly she may as well just be a twin who you had never known was walking beside you your whole life.

"The Velveteen Rabbit,"

Deanna responds fondly, pulling back the loosely bound hard cover, the whole thing as though it may fall to pieces any moment.

"I have been thinking about it a lot lately, it's something my father used to read to me,"

Her eyes leave his and turn downwards towards the words of the first page, her finger brushing lightly against the surface of the paper; without moving, she adds:

"There is just as much meaning in ten words as there is in ten thousand,"

Picard just nods, knowing she can't really see him anyway, but appreciating the sentiment so thoroughly that he hopes she can feel it.

He feels no need to say anything more to contribute to conversation, and he has already told her that he only has the morning with her, but that he will not leave without lunch and a good book. Looking down to where he has maneuvered the novel to his lap, he opens out the spine to reveal the many aged pages of it, trying to find where he was at last time he tried to tackle it, enjoying simply the feeling of the yellowed paper between his fingers. He then looks up to see where Deanna is reading through her own book, the tale of wanting to be real, to be wanted, her lips moving along in silence. She has one hand beneath her stomach, as it continues to have grown, supporting the swell of it in a motion that could either be caring, or just necessary. His eyes turn sad.

White whales indeed.


She falls asleep after eating lunch, and Picard is not an exhausting man to be near, but he is gone now. And there is something marvellous about being near to Data that she has yet to be able to vocalise; so many question her pleasure at being around him, why it is that she can tolerate his complete lack of emotion.

To say she senses nothing from him would be a lie, but then to suggest that what she senses is emotion would be a lie also. He takes up space in her mind like just another thought, but she can almost tell when he is near to her, and so it is getting much harder for the android to catch her off-guard, his creeping presence like a dim golden light in her mind.

He has taken Picards seat with gentle solidarity, moving on to the books at the ground level, still with many more in front of him than behind. He does not mind that she is sleeping, and from what he has been told by Dr Crusher and Captain Picard, it is rather necessary, though he does not possess adequate information on the gestational process of Betazoids to make any clear personal judgements as to why.

Through his sensory periphery he notices that her heart rate has increased from her resting baseline, her core temperature has experienced a slight rise also, and her breathing rate is elevated to match both of these things. These biological functions are logged in a separate set of data entry he has allocated to her care, before he turns upwards to regard her facial expression.

The Counselor appears distressed, her face is pinched into pursed lips and creased brows, her eyes are clenched shut. One slight groan escapes her as she shifts hastily about in her seat, and he works to determine what his response should be.

"Counselor Troi,"

His voice calls out, raised to a level that he is informed will wake her, and it almost shocks her into waking in a way he had not anticipated.

She takes in a sharp breath, her eyes break open and she searches out his face, having trouble focusing her attention for a few seconds.

"I believe you have experienced a night terror, Counselor,"

Data explains, and she pulls herself upwards in her seat to sit not so slumped, drawing breath in a learned and immediate relaxation technique; she is glad for his presence.

"You are safe and well,"

He adds after a brief mechanical moment of searching his data banks, but the gesture is comforting despite its origins, just as he had hoped it would be, and this elicits a smile from her, small and tired.

"Thank you Data,"

Deanna says through a stifled yawn, and he notes how one of her hands travels without thought to the cover of that same book, and the other in much the same way, to her stomach, two fingers exerting more pressure than the rest over one particular spot. He chooses not to comment on the latter.

He observes how her hands join together deliberately, after approximately 27.9 seconds, to open out the book, and on this he chooses to comment.

"Counselor?"

"Yes Data?"

She turns her eyes upwards to regard him with affection.

"Is there a passage in your book that you are struggling with?"

Data asks innocently, and she is almost certain he is not trying to be offensive.

"Not at all, why do you ask?"

She responds, shutting over the cover as soon as she has opened it; he turns his head to the side in question, a gesture she recognises of Lieutenant Alabed in Engineering - and it is very endearing indeed.

"I have noted this to be the fifth time you have begun to read The Velveteen Rabbit in the past 247 minutes, I was wondering why you continue to reread the text when the outcome is fixed?"

His question is a delightfully pure one, and it draws a pleasant and genuine smile to her face, though with it comes the memory of a time she had tried to ask the same question of herself.

"You're awake,"

She turns away from the end of the bed, where she is reaching down to zip on her boots, and cranes to look back at him where he lies still beneath the sheets.

"I am,"

Will sighs at her shortness, but he couldn't really have expected much else, could he?

She has no real idea why she is there at all, whether the night they spent was as much for him as it was for her; maybe it wasn't a great idea to let him talk her into coming over to his quarters after Tasha's memorial.

But dammit she needed some distraction from all the pain the crew was working through, she needed to breathe.

She sighs, and stands, his eyes following her though she has turned back away from him.

"You're leaving,"

The man states, not even a hint of question to him, and it saddens her that she cannot feel a particularly strong sense of upset from him - that she is leaving.

He got what he wanted after all.

"I am,"

She finds herself stood with her back to him in the doorway, thinking of Tasha, and of how foolish she is to even be here, how shallow of him to use the memory of a friend to finally get her back into bed, after months of being told no.

She turns around:

"I do not know why I thought this would be a good idea,"

She questions herself aloud, and he is already falling back asleep lightly, not trying terribly hard to listen to her anymore.

"You are not my favourite book Will,"

Her hands graze the surface of the only book he possesses, the biography of a Jazz musician he admires greatly, as she moves further away from him.

"So why do I continue to read you over and over again?"

Will looks up before he can drop off, his head cranes a little upwards to watch as she goes, something in the sound of her voice telling him he maybe has made a mistake, but it is too late to take very much of it back now.

"The ending will never change,"

"It's comforting, Data,"

"Comforting?"

The man's eyes are starkly golden, and she is sucked back into the present where they are boring into her, scrutinising her absence in the second that she was gone.

"There is...permanency, to the words - they are fixed, they do not change,"

Deanna tells him, unsure if she is really saying much of anything at all, but he nods, seems to be following, and so she goes on.

"We can find comfort in consistency, when so many things are always changing around us, it can be therapeutic to reread things we have read before, and the ending ceases to matter so much as the meaning,"

She reaches back for the book, turns over the cover, feels herself in her youth as she was the velveteen rabbit, desiring always to be real, to be able to hop like the other rabbits could. Her father said hopping would not matter so much once she had shown them she could fly.

Data nods, satisfied with her explanation, but there is one more question lingering in his neural net.

"Are you feeling the therapeutic benefits then Counselor?"

Here was once a velveteen rabbit -

"Not yet, Data…"


She finishes the book a few more times, reading very slowly, and aloud in her mind, so that anybody who tries to find her will be met only with her story. And for the child, in a peculiar way that she cannot explain, hoping somehow it will be kinder to her.

Data, of course, has finished all the books of the first Age of Contemporary Betazed - ancient but not so far removed from modern day as to be unrecognisable. He disappeared moments ago, to sort away what he had taken out, but he has been gone for much longer than she might expect.

Through the house, she all of a sudden hears his footsteps.

"Commander Riker, you are not permitted to enter,"

She loses all the air from her lungs, because she cannot feel him at all, there is a clean wall of slate up around her mind, between the two. Deanna shuts her eyes, remembers how a moment ago she had flinched, without realising really why, and around the feeling a shield had erected like second nature, the same as before.

"Where is she, I need to speak to her,"

Will's voice is frantic by the time it reaches her, and she is fortunate that she cannot feel what is inside of him. She follows the sound of Data as he relinquishes his grip slightly on the front door, opens it a little to speak with him.

She feels a heavy weight slam into her chest, and lunges forwards in her chair, the blanket, book and pillows falling loudly from her lap. The feeling is there again, like someone walking into her body over and over, a heavy entity that will not cease. A hand moves to scratch at her chest, a different, peculiar feeling of breathlessness in her heart.

Pain rises in her head.

"Commander Riker?"

Data's voice is becoming concerned in its synthesis, and there is a sound like energy diffusing across a shield, in time with the new beating of her chest.

"What the hell is this?"

Will yells, clearly feeling an injury that she can feel too, and yet he continues to try to push inside, the pressure in her head rising to the point that she yells out herself, bundles the pain into a great orb of red light, then forces it outwards from her.

Deanna screams, Will roars, the two flying in opposite directions, one before the eyes of an android, backfiring across the lawn, and the other with no witness at all.

In one instant her consciousness is without her, and she can hear how Data calls for him to be beamed off the planet surface as he himself moves towards her, reacting to her scream.

"Counselor Troi are y-"

Her consciousness does not linger.