Note:

I hate cliffhangers as much as the next guy, and I'm gonna be busy over the rest of the weekend, so here's me just twisting the knife a little bit. It's worth saying actually that I'm a big ancient history buff, and it kind of bugs me that Betazed just seems to have nothing at all. They can't always have been so perfect. To remedy this I've tried to put my own little vein of mythology in there, maybe it misses the mark, but I enjoyed building it up as headcanon nonetheless.

Also, based on an interview Marina Sirtis did on the origin of Deanna's accent, some of the Betazoid words that have been popping up have been Hebrew, because no way am I clever enough to write my own language, and Hebrew literally has me melting with how beautiful a language it is. Also, I solved the problem of why Lwaxana doesn't have an accent and Deanna does, just for my own peace of mind to be honest. If you missed that then it's only a minor detail, it'll probably turn up in later chapters.

So for now, enjoy, and I'm going to issue another Imzadi apology for this one, I guess even if true love exists, some people just weren't meant for it?


She is 5 years old, and the bed's too large for her tiny little arms to reach from one end to the other; her toes will not reach its end.

The blankets are really too large for her, and a little too heavy for her sleeping limbs to lift, so she rolls onto her side.

A hand that is not her mother's reaches for her shoulder to stop her.

"No, Deanna, you need to lie still,"

A voice that is not her fathers tells her.

She tries to reach up to rub sleep from her eyes, but her hands won't even roll into fists, won't even respond a little to her call.

Her body attempts to roll again.

"Deanna, careful,"

There is something cold on her left temple, vibrating ever so slightly that it's like a dragonfly has landed on her with beating wings.

Whatever holds her down is not a blanket, as she had thought, and it shifts away at the response to somebodies moving hands, and suddenly she feels cold.

She wonders where her rabbit is, why it is not tucked beneath her chin, why she has a horribly aching tummy.

"Deanna?"

Her name is said for a third time by that same voice, neither mother nor father - she tries not to listen.

Why is there not a lullaby singing in her mind?

Colder air, still, reaches her skin, and she can feel how the tiny hairs all over her are sticking on end, prickling the exposure of her bare stomach, though why it is exposed she has no idea. Maybe she has the pox again?

"Deanna?"

Again, that voice calls her, but there is something so heavy in her mind, deep and dark and scarier than any ocean she has ever seen, eyes that float in the empty space, and a feeling of terrible physical fullness, mental emptiness.

She takes a look inside the void, tries to meet those eyes that are as familiar as her own, and, reaching a hand up to the surface of the pool, she finds them gazing back, older and hers.

They look into one another, hands pressed up against some kind of veil that is collapsing inwards, the younger self shuts her eyes to rest again, too tired to want to leave.

Older eyes open.

"Deanna, finally,"

Beverly's face is inches from her own, crouched at the bedside in a room she had not before seen. It comes into focus slowly, as Deanna's eyes try to adjust to the daylight that continues to filter in through the open windows; there is a draft blowing beyond a swinging silken curtain.

She blinks several times, in blurry slow motion, and her mind too is returning to her just as slowly.

Her body is exposed from the waist up, and she hadn't been wearing pants before, but somehow she finds herself dressed in the same sweats she had worn yesterday - her mother would think it awfully improper of a daughter of the fifth house.

The skin at her stomach is cold because the jumper has been folded over beneath her ribcage, and she does not yet know why.

Deanna groans, groggy, tries to reach again for the metal against her head, tries to roll her body over.

"No, you need to lie still,"

Beverly reiterates, and suddenly she can feel a hand on her shoulder holding her still, and another over her stomach, pushing down firmly at her sternum.

She yelps, her eyes open now widely.

"Sorry,"

It does not seem as though she means it.

The doctors one hand joins the other at her centre, until 10 fingers are less than gently pushing down at the bump that has grown there, becoming more pronounced with each passing day.

She wishes she could make her lungs do anything other than respire, and let off the occasional hiss of pain, to maybe ask why this is necessary, but her head still throbs so much that her attention is divided between two tasks.

"When did the baby last move?"

Beverly's hands stop, and she is looking down at the girl all propped up on pillows, as though the answer is an easy thing to find.

"I do not -"

Deanna's voice breaks as she murmurs.

"Why?"

"You've been under unusual stress lately, I want to make sure this is just a temporary reaction to the increased levels of adrenaline and not an ongoing issue,"

Beverly is very quick in her response, and even as she speaks there is some sharp feeling deep within her stomach, but it does not seem to be a movement of any kind. Again, Deanna moans softly at the sensation.

"The baby is fine, I know,"

She responds sagely, gesturing with the fingers of one frozen hand in the direction of her head, and so Crusher nods her understanding.

"You have a kidney infection too, I knew letting you leave the ship was a bad idea,"

Deanna does not dignify this with a response, the pressure behind her eyes building again for a moment until she squeezes them tightly shut; this does not go unnoticed.

"And however impressive it is to see you incapacitate Commander Riker, that shouldn't be at the expensive of your health,"

Beverly chides, but already her voice is softening as she moves to sit beside her on the big queen size bed, perched just upon the edge next to her head.

"What are you doing to yourself Deanna?"

The girl tries to centre herself, to draw her breathing inwards and into something steadier than the shallow sleeping sounds she had been making. The pain in her head appears to quiet, to dull and slip back into the recesses of her mind, to fall down into that black hole she has now within her.

"I have never done that before,"

Deanna utters, more shame than awe at her own strength, because it must have come from a place of ugly emotion, of such pent up agony that the power of her mind surpassed what she could control.

Her mother has only done it once - the day her father died.

"Why did you, was he hurting you?"

Beverly cannot control her own curiosity, but she continues to keep her voice low, and one hand moves to hold the back against Deanna's clammy head, smoothing away the sticky hair there.

"No,"

The woman is relieved, until she speaks again.

"But he would have,"

"What?!"

Crusher's voice rises slightly in her concern, her hand freezing and pulling away so that she can regard the expression on her face with surprise.

"I should know better than to trust my heart to him by now,"

Deanna sighs, and she pauses for a beat, listening to the sound of fluttering fabric.

"I do not have it in me to be hurt by him when I am dealing with this,"

She gestures down at her stomach, the skin still prickling and raised up with goosebumps; the feeling returns to her arms enough that she can push her jumper back down and conceal what truly hurts her.

"Not again,"

She finally rolls over without resistance, away from Beverly and towards the open window, onto her left side where the baby chooses to come alive with a flurry of tiny kicks.

One against her kidneys and she has to take in a sharp breath.

Beverly watches her back for a second, perpetually wondering what there is between the Counselor and Commander Riker, but maybe it is better that they are apart, if what happened earlier is any indication of the damage they can cause each other.

"Captain Picard is furious with him, as soon as he woke up he -"

"Woke up?"

Deanna interrupts, turning her head slightly to look over her shoulder at where Beverly is silenced, face a little stunned at her uncharacteristic behaviour.

"You knocked him unconscious, Deanna,"

She explains gently, a little confused that she hadn't even realised what she'd done to him.

The girl closes her eyes tight shut and moves her head back to face the window, nuzzling down into one of the pillows she is propped up on, all the lights around her suddenly too bright.

"Oh,"

She breathes, barely audibly, and Beverly herself lets out a little sigh of pity maybe, but she can't be quite sure how she feels towards her, at least as a doctor she knows where she stands.

"He's fine now though, and he won't be back down to the planet while you're here, the Captain has confined him to his quarters on account of your condition,"

"My condition?"

Deanna still does not understand what she's done.

"Yes, you almost gave yourself brain damage keeping that shield up, and we don't know enough about this kind of technology to say what it's effects are in pregnancy,"

Beverly stands from the bed as she speaks, then walks around the edge of it to crouch in front of her face, chasing down her attention just so she knows she has it.

"The baby is fine, I know,"

The girl repeats what she said before, but now with the inflection that says she is irritated at having to say it again, the feeling that Beverly isn't listening.

"That may be, but you aren't, you're running a temperature, your kidneys are trying to shut down,"

Beverly impresses upon her, the two of them trying to make the other understand something they neither can't - it is a hollow pursuit.

"That is not the fault of my planet though, of being away from you, it would have happened regardless,"

"But at least I wouldn't have to worry about what's going on in your head as well as your body,"

A beat.

"I thought you were in a good space with Will, I just can't understand why you're pushing him away,"

Deanna feels in her an irrational surge of anger, strong and nauseating - she can barely control it.

"You do not need to understand to hear me when I say, that I do not want to give myself to him just to satisfy his guilt, when I have spent so long rebuilding myself in his wake,"

She takes a deep, ghastly breath.

"He does not get to keep changing his mind about what he wants - if I was not enough for him when we were to be wed, then I will never be enough,"

Beverly squints at her, wondering if she's heard this correctly, but there is nowhere to look of Deanna's emotions, because her eyes have turned dark and empty - deep like the vacuum of space.

"Married?"

She echoes, pinpointing finally where she had stumbled, wondering if at last she might understand the magnitude of their relationship. It is clear that Deanna does not want to answer.

"We were meant to marry on Risa, years ago, but he never came, he chose his career instead of me and left me there alone. I wanted to believe the best of him, but I could only wait so long,"

"Deanna, you never said,"

Beverly is brimming with pity, uncomfortable and terrifying in it's sudden force.

"It did not matter,"

The girl responds, as if she believes herself that it really didn't, as if she's been telling herself the same lie over and over until it feels like the truth. Beverly can feel that it is not, it must not be, she cannot possibly be saying something which is true.

And there isn't really anything she can say to that, to console her or to make her feel as though this is ordinary, as though everybody gets left at the altar at least once. Maybe hundreds of years ago, in terrible television soap operas, but not in a century of heroics, and science, and noble men.

All this time she has believed with vehemence that Will Riker is a good man.

Deanna shuts her eyes against the memories, the pain.


Will Riker is not a noble man.

In his bedroom, after the war, the world has fallen silent.

His head hurts more than he can remember it ever hurting before; it is because of her.

And the door is locked behind him, a no-name security guard at it's panel to prevent entrance or exit; the Captain did not state for how long.

Shoes, pants, his uniform tunic are all in a trail behind him, leading up to the foot of his bed, and he is standing almost naked - met with a terrible fate.

All he wanted to do was talk to her, and hope that maybe he would have words enough to explain, but even before he had fully materialised on the planet's surface he could feel that there was something amiss. Even the air had tasted different - it's bitterness still lingers in the back of his throat.

Beverly had given him such a look of faith, that he was sure she would never be able to believe this of him, that he had hurt Deanna, when he had been entrusted with her care. Removed of whatever romantic attachment there may be between them, as an officer it was his duty to care for her in the wake of her pregnancy, and he had failed.

The good doctor will never be able to look at him again.

He cannot even look at himself.

And however disgusted he is at how this has played out, he is still confused, still self-righteous. He stares down at the sheets he had been unable to sleep in last night as their conversation played through his mind over and over.

The look in her eyes, as though she was haunted simply by the presence of him, and he cannot fathom still what he did wrong this time. He has treated her with such care that she may as well be made from glass, he had only slept with her because she needed it, as keenly as any of them need oxygen.

He cannot understand.

They dreamt together of a baby bird, and he wonders now if that maybe meant more than he considered at the time, more than just the machination of a terrified mind. Maybe he didn't give her terror enough credit.

The world swims for a second, and the room is just another of these illusions he has no control of; his brain feels all of a sudden much too full.

Deanna is lying naked, wrapped up in his sheets, her head cradled soundly by his own pillow.

He blinks, but she does not leave him.

"Imzadi?"

His mouth moves around the word noiselessly, and he can't hear a single thing.

"What has become of you William?"

She asks him, but she has not even moved a single millimeter - the sound leaks in through the very walls.

"You used to be better,"

He shuts his eyes, but there is no escape, instead he is thrust into the image of a formless woman writhing above him, her face cycling through a thousand expressions of pleasure, a thousand different women he has had so many times before.

A breathe forces itself into him, his eyes break open, and Deanna is now only inches from his face, her fingers ghosting the surface of his skin.

"I could not have been enough for you,"

She's crying, and he wonders if he has put those tears there.

"You are just like your father: restless, unsatisfied, greedy,"

Her voice is so bitter, he must have made her this way, because her tongue has come out in barbs that are laced in venom - he stumbles backwards, stabbed.

"I forgave you my conquest, a wager made in youth ought not determine the course of a fated relationship, but I cannot forgive you this,"

"What -"

Will manages to choke out, her phantom descending upon him again, no matter how he continues to scramble away from her.

"What have I done, I wanted to be there for you, I was going to care for you,"

"So you could feel absolved?"

Somewhere beyond himself, he can see that the room is too dark to see anything at all, and yet somehow he finds her ghost there like an ethereal light, casting flames into every corner, every crevice where the darkness could hide.

He wonders if he is not in his room at all, if maybe he is stuck inside his mind.

"You sleep with me, hold me, care for me,"

She is not crying at all.

"And you forget that I can feel you -"

A banshee wail now, and if she were not naked still, rags would be flowing about her in tatters, her arms reaching from their confines and out to where her image attempts to swat at his face.

But it is not even her at all.

"I can feel when you fuck another woman,"

The ghost spits, and he shuts his eyes in shock, knowing it is not even the phantom of Deanna who speaks, the words so deeply ingrained in him that he can know only that he has done this to himself. A nameless woman's face appears above his own, in the memory of his bedroom, after the war, and she is growling an ecstasy that they share, forgetting even her name for the pleasure of him.

Will's eyes disappear in front of him, and he is not seeing anything at all.

He groans, and the sound is absorbed by whatever is beneath him - a mattress, God knows how.

Eyes return to him, and he opens them to abject, consuming darkness, the world appearing like a horizon in his vision. Beneath his leaden body, his hands clench their waking, and he tries to wriggle them free, exhausting in waking from whatever phantom he had seen.

It had not been real, in any sense. It hadn't even been her.

And he is just a deadweight on velveteen.


The sun is gone from the veiled windows when she opens her eyes again, and it hangs now more highly in the sky, centred at the top-most point of the house, so that all the air is warm and comforting. It is a unique kind of technology, one which concentrates the energy of the sun at one point of divinity, channeling it into the elements which heat the house.

The familiarity of it is almost painful.

She is acutely aware that she shares the room with another, and as her mind adjusts fully to this waking world, it does not take long to feel who it is.

The woman's thoughts are like a bolt of lightning through her spine.

Outside her periphery, the faint sound of a chair rocking back and forth attempts to divide her attention, but does not succeed.

"Doctor, I am fine,"

Deanna mumbles into the pillow, her mouth turned inwards towards it, and sleep lacing her voice with brittality.

The rocking stops, and feet fall heavily against the wooden floor. All of a sudden, a face blocks her vision.

"Did you call me, are you in pain?"

Beverly asks, crouching beside the bed, her whole body leaning in against the girls so that their faces are mere inches apart.

Once again, Deanna shakes her head against the cushion, tries to angle a little out so that her words are not so muffled.

"I said, I am fine, you can stop worrying now,"

Beverly's expression does not even soften a little, her eyes, if possible, draw even more tightly together at their centre.

"If I could stop worrying then I wouldn't be sitting down here watching you,"

She chastises, reaching out the palm of her hand against Deanna's forehead, and maybe her agitation would be more genuine if there was any emotion behind it, but the whole thing is terribly staged.

"You do not really feel that way, if you wanted to you would have a nurse watch me instead,"

"You know I care about you though,"

"I know you feel responsible,"

Their eyes meet, and words that have never been said are suddenly too difficult to hear; Beverly, in this moment, resents her for being so damn intuitive, for pushing so hard.

"You - you're my patient...why wouldn't - of course I feel…"

She is floundering, feeling all of a sudden that she is sitting in therapy, and she has always found it to be helpful, but now - she cannot tell if this is chaos, or if it is catharsis.

"Beverly,"

Deanna responds, still looking up out of the corners of her eyes, sleepy and squashed in to the side of the pillow, and somehow still counselling her way through her own problems.

"You feel responsible,"

From anybody else this would be agonising, just another somebody telling her how she feels, but again, there is that strangeness to the girl, that she is otherworldly, and Beverly cannot help but be caught in the trance.

There are too many moments of silence that follow, and in one final sweep of waking, Deanna is dragging her body up against the headboard, pulling the sheets with her to cover her up to her shoulders, and coming to settle further from the face that still has not moved.

"Please just say it,"

Deanna asks, and deep inside the doctors mind she is cowering behind a cloak that is transparent, hoping beyond hope that she will not have to say it.

But there is a look in the girl's eyes, one which if tasked, she would not be able to replicate, one of a deep need, and maybe this is no kind of therapy at all - and so Beverly unfreezes, and tells her.

"I should have advised termination,"

She blurts, her body animated in one moment so that she can turn to face Deanna, all kinds of sincerity burning up her skin.

"I made an error in judgement and I'm sorry,"

Deanna's eyes track the doctor's movements as she goes to stand, but does not quite get so far as to kneel further up on her haunches, arms rested atop her thighs, drained of whatever energy she once had in her.

"I'm your physician, you should be able to trust me and I gave you bad advice,"

She adds finally, so disappointed in herself that it shows more on her face than even inside her mind, and a spidery hand reaches itself into her hair, where it has unloosed from a bun at the nape of her neck.

Deanna wants to say something that will help, but maybe this has been what she's thought all along, and now that it's been voiced for her, it's as though she cannot even bring herself to object. But then, as with all things, she remembers she has a job to do, and she is so used to being a sounding board that there is little else she can do but heal.

"You gave me the advice you thought I needed to hear, it was the best anybody could have made of the situation,"

She tells her, really tries to mean it, beyond the fatigue, beyond whatever pain may still be looming behind her eyelids; she tries to mean it, but she is not sure that she does.

Beverly can only blink in muted response, shocked even that a Counselor never stops counseling, and yet she herself had taken the license to stop doctoring.

It is a sorry state of affairs.

"No,"

The doctor responds, indignant almost.

"I should've done it differently - more than that, I could have, but I chose not to,"

A beat.

"When you said innocence, I gave in, I took your word for it when really it was my duty to challenge that belief with medicine, and hard facts,"

Her hands pull out of her hair, down to rest on the edge of the mattress to push her body up in a motion that is abrupt. She walks 3 paces away towards the window, and then sweeps around in thought.

"Innocence, Deanna, is not enough to risk your life on - and I should have told you that,"

Beverly says, not even looking into the girls eyes anymore, fear that she will be unable to speak any words at all clouding over her vision until the room is nothing but clouds.

They might as well be halfway towards space.

Much more slowly, more contemplatively, Deanna's own hands push away the small hairs that scratch her face, push at the tight skin around her temples; she is caught between two halves of herself.

"On my planet,"

She begins softly, terrified that they have landed here.

"The children are all loved,"

Her fingers play lightly back in her lap.

"Nobody is unwanted,"

Beverly flares up in an attempt at apology, but it seems she cannot be heard at all.

"I understand that - on other worlds - women are not always afforded complete dominion of their bodies,"

Deanna sounds out, staring now straight into the Doctor's eyes, but seeing nothing really of her at all.

"I understand that is normal, for Human's,"

She takes a single, shallow breath.

"But for Betazoid women, a child has never been had that was not wanted - a woman's mind is capable of much love, but love cannot be fabricated - it is possible decide, "

Beverly starts to shake her head - she is making little sense.

"Imagine I do not want this child - would you not expect it now to be gone?"

Deanna poses, frankly, and it takes more than a few seconds for the Doctor to think she has caught the meaning.

"Deanna,"

There is a terrible moment of trepidation.

"You didn't…?"

Beverly shakes her head more firmly now, trying not to jump ahead of herself, hoping she is mistaken.

All of a sudden, Deanna looks too small amongst the sheets.

"It is not cruel, but cruel actions make it possible,"

She states, desiring something more adequate which she knows she does not possess.

"For me, it has not worked,"

"You're telling me there's a way that Betazoid women can..."

Deanna nods her head solemnly; all the air is now stale and full of a topic the human in them both finds hard to stomach, no matter how far they profess to have come.

"Maybe, because you're only half -"

"No,"

She is strangely certain, and Beverly has to squint through the fog to get to her.

"Then that must mean on some level, you... want it?"

Again, the girl shakes her head, tragically resolved; her mind made up a long time ago.

"I made a choice not to let you try, because it was easier than trying to help you understand,"

A beat.

"I made a choice, because I did not want it to be your fault,"

Deanna smiles, a terribly weak and unfunny thing.

"I wanted to feel as though I had a choice,"

And Beverly finds herself breathing in so deeply that it burns, because they both know, that was no choice at all.