Authors Note:
I'm so sorry to see that there are people not enjoying the turn this story has taken. I'll be honest, these latest chapters are not new material, and have been quite solidly finished for a while now, so I guess I could have warned you ahead of time. That's not to say that the ending is fixed, I don't actually have one word written on it at the moment, but in my mind, this story has never been about the Will/Deanna dynamic, rather how the story should have been written, and how to stay true to the characters, whilst remaining realist. Realistically, I don't think, with the characters where they were literally at the beginning of season 2, either of them could have been expected to be so compassionate or so selfless in response to what happened. Similarly, the one aspect of the original episode that I could see some thought in, was actually the thoughtlessness of Riker himself; I guess it's a lot easier to say what we would do in any given scenario, as opposed to the truth. This story, I hope, is erring on the side of truth that episode managed to squeeze in, and not the fantasy.
All that being said though, I don't want to deter any readers from coming along the rest of the way with me, I swear it gets so much better, and it might seem like we're hating on Riker - maybe you aren't here for that - but it won't be this way for the rest of the story. If you have any suggestions for me, or just want to tell me I'm a monster for keeping these two apart, then absolutely feel free to do so, it's going a long way to shaping the writing of my later chapters.
Needless to say, I walked into this with my angst hat firmly on, it'll be at least a few more chapters until I finally get it ripped off my head by the hands of true love. I shudder at the thought.
The Enterprise is a marvellous feat of engineering, glorious even, her size and host unrivalled by any other ship in the federation. She is sleek in the sphere of outer space, and her internal systems are some of the most coveted in the galaxy. Even when compared side by side with a Romulan cruiser, asides from the cloaking technology that continues to elude the federation, she can far outmatch them in sheer firepower. And that's not to say that she's a warship by any means, but she is more than prepared to fight if the need arises, for protection purposes but never as a simple offensive. The lady can sprint across space, and yet she can sneak at speeds so minuscule a man could walk faster - she is unsinkable, titanic.
And at her heart, beats the warp core, solid and blue like a pure ocean, supercooled to the point it is always moments away from freezing over; a perfect balance of matter and antimatter, dreadful dichotomy. Her veins are far reaching, and they spread across all of her body through conduits that soar with energy, fuelling all of her vital organs: engineering, transport, weapons, life support.
Her blood cells are the crew, in a most peculiar way, and so they can be infected, they can be infiltrated by disease and viruses until she is feeling the sting. The crew are integral, and they are flooded throughout her systems, they flock, occasionally they haemorrhage and she screams their loss through open wounds, but usually, they are what animates her, gives her life.
And so she buzzes with the activity, she hums the sound of her heartbeat, her pulse quickens at the wrists of her bridge, her blood rushes back and forth with urgency: she is a feat of engineering so great that demons would run, but her machinery is not what makes her exceptional.
Her host, plucky and dedicated, from all across the galaxy, in colours and creeds that encompass more than just simple humanity, are her lifeblood - but there is a virus onboard, and it is spreading.
The Enterprise can feel that her crew is less than it ordinarily is, that there is something aboard which threatens the balance, something which affects them all. And she can see who it is, distinctly, the feeling one.
The one who heals others has within herself something which needs healing, an atrophy that she can feel across the whole crew, in varying degrees of strength, that finds root with the one who feels.
This one is not well, she can tell in the way they have returned to her much more slowly than before, and the illness is contagious, though she has no idea how. Other ones can feel it, and they themselves have become slow too, and so her blood is not rushing anymore, it is heavy, it clots, it hemorrhages.
There is something spreading in her blood, something peculiar, something not physically detectable, something so intangible that they themselves have not noticed, but she has, she can feel, with almost as much conviction as the feeling one, that there is sickness aboard.
There is a sickness aboard, and it has no name.
The zebra fish is watching him.
Everybody is watching him - Picard and Crusher - and he has nothing at all to say for himself.
They aren't even supposed to be there to discuss him, and somehow, he is terrified that is what it will turn into - because he has flown too close to the sun.
"How's your head today Commander?"
Beverly asks, beside him in the other seat at the Captain's desk, her eyes frowning into pinched edges; she is only really formally concerned.
"Uh, yeah, better thanks,"
And that is a lie, because he had slept the whole night without once shutting his eyes, if only to hold on to the phantom of Deanna a little longer. Whatever it is she did to him, she left something of herself behind, knowingly he cannot be sure, and she now walks by his side, a reminder of what he has done.
"Good to hear Number One,"
Captain Picard interjects, a mug of tea customarily clasped between his fingers.
"I trust you learnt your lesson this time?"
He is not really asking a question - the guards outside his Quarters speak for themselves.
Will nods anyway.
"Well, Mr Worf is requesting his personnel back now we're underway again, so your detail is being reassigned,"
Picard sighs, reluctant.
"Try to allow her some space, Will,"
He is softer than before, perhaps for the presence of Beverly.
The doctor shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.
"Surely she should be here for this, it's not right to discuss her wellbeing behind her back,"
"If it were anybody else, I might agree with you,"
He responds, ignoring Will's presence altogether, bringing the mug to his lips before speaking again.
"But I would imagine she will likely be following along anyway,"
Beverly frowns at him as he takes a sip of tea, then throws a sidelong glance at Riker, who just shrugs, glad that she's finally paid him one look that doesn't scream murder.
"Will, you've be living with her, do you have an assessment of her current state of mind?"
Picard asks around the steam, terribly desperate to turn this into something a little more productive than simple speculation.
"I'm not a professional but -"
He pauses his indecision.
"Well, this past week she's been… different,"
Blind in every other eye, he has very little comment to add, so terrified of causing her more harm than he already has, of turning her in based on a gut feeling he has little evidence to support.
"I've noticed it too,"
Beverly adds, swapping over her legs where they are crossed.
"I tried to suggest she see one of her own staff, but she wouldn't listen,"
"Could she be suffering with depression?"
The captain queries, disappointed in himself for not knowing the answer.
"Sadly, she might be the only one qualified to tell you,"
Will tries not say anything, he really does, but the phantom at his back has told him time and time again that they are wrong, that he is wrong.
"I think -"
He starts, unable to stop himself.
"She seems, uh, traumatised, more than anything,"
His inflection is sheepish, and two sets of eyes land firmly on him - dubious.
"Traumatised?"
The captain echoes, taking another alarmingly casual sip of his tea.
"I hate that it needs to be said, Jean-Luc,"
Beverly interjects, forgetting herself in the moment.
"But what happened to Deanna,"
Finally, someone has had the guts to say her name.
"That was rape,"
And this feels like some kind of breach of confidence, but to anybody with half a brain, it should have been obvious.
The two men cannot look at eachother, or even really themselves, no matter the century they live in, this will always be a topic they neither can stomach.
It is sexism in its most squeamish form.
"She knows that, but she's definitely not dealing with it,"
"You're right,"
Will blurts urgently, trampling over the woman's compassion, her delicacy.
"I was trying to help her make a decision, but she couldn't listen - she knew how I felt about it,"
He breathes deeply.
"I thought about her like she had been violated, I never said a word but she knew it and she shut me down,"
He turns sadly to look Beverly in the eyes.
"She refuses to be thought of that way,"
"Hold on a minute,"
Picard interjects, trying to break the understanding of his two officers.
"Are we suggesting she has PTSD?"
Beverly shakes her head, the gaze broken, and tries not to go any further down a rabbit-hole of broken confidentiality; Picard is probably right, whether Deanna can help it or not, she will be listening.
"Again, she's the counselor, and unless she appears derelict in her duties I can't order her to speak to someone, and neither can you,"
A peculiar and low growl leaves the root of the Captain's tongue, and he rubs at the rough hair that regrows atop his head, the palm of his hand grating the motion.
"This is an impossible situation,"
He comments, and there is another sentiment which brews within him.
"I can't help but feel we made the wrong decision,"
"We?"
Beverly digs, but there is a look in her eyes that wants to tell him more, wants to speak of a conversation she mustn't speak of - confidentiality riddles her. She fidgets the hands in her lap, and Will looks sidelong over at her again, his attention divided between the two.
"Doctor?"
He says, a question rising of him, completely missing what it is she's trying to say, or maybe just refusing to consider that of Deanna.
"I'm just saying, I don't get the impression our input would have made much of a difference,"
She replies, a poor excuse of saving herself, but the Captain thinks he might already understand, and Will refuses to alter his perception, to accept that he maybe doesn't know her as well as he used to.
Or maybe that he never knew her at all.
"This situation was always going to be impossible,"
She says now more to Picard, her eyes falling into sympathy and regret, but there is understanding between them, and it does not take him another sip of tea to decide to move on.
"There's no point in dwelling on it then,"
The Captain begins, setting down the mug on the surface of his desk; he starts to rub at his temples.
"How is she managing medically?"
Beverly has to resist the urge to cast a final murderous glance in Rikers direction, but she knows it will be counterproductive.
"I'm reluctant to give her an all clear on account of the fact that we just can't know what will happen on any given day,"
It is clear to which event she is alluding, and Will returns to his shame.
"But the antibiotics are working so her kidneys seem to be clear, and her silosynene levels are returning to normal, I still have some concerns about how much more her biology can accommodate though,"
The Doctor has to pause, breathe, calm herself a little to the sound of hard science.
"Betazoid women have been having babies for millions of years - there's a reason it's supposed to take ten months,"
She says sadly, matter-of-factly, and yet there still remains a kind of resolve within her - that she will do her best to keep Deanna safe.
And this is a promise people continue to make, but break all the same.
"Is there anything more I can be doing?"
Picard asks of her, concerned as he has been from the beginning that he is what holds her back, that he is not fulfilling his duty of care to her in the way that a Captain should.
He is worried that he is simply being a bad friend.
"I don't think there's much any of us could do, just keep an eye on her, look out for her,"
Beverly swallows her pride, and addresses Will also, begrudgingly accepting of the fact that he is the first officer, and whatever he may have done to Deanna, he is still in charge of issues with personnel.
"Deanna hates to seem incapable, we know that, I think we should just take the lead from her - for now,"
"Thank you Doctor, you're doing a brilliant job,"
Picard praises her with a slight twinkle in his eye, wanting to be the one person at least to acknowledge that she has been doing good work, and that even though Deanna is the one to be looked after, the task of doing this is often a thankless one.
Her quarters still smell of him, and it has been 3 days since she's been back, she's had three days to try to rid herself of it but she still can't. When she beamed back aboard it was clear that he'd taken all of his things out of her space, but he had made no effort to tidy the tornado that left behind, and so she has made no effort either.
The whole place is a mess, the lights unbalanced, her own clothes strewn about in a daily effort to find something that fits.
She cannot even recognise her own body.
And there are memories that continue to replay in her mind that she has no idea how to stop, can't pinpoint their origin and cut the power, and so these images are always grinding away until at once, they rush back.
"It's sad,"
"What?"
He pulls her in closer to his chest, kisses the side of her neck where the hair falls away. A log fire is burning lowly in the hearth before them.
"That you ask about love, and people can speak only of heartbreak,"
She has in her arms a roll of fabric that is suddenly very heavy, and though she is technically no longer ill, she is still weak - weak with no clear reason why.
A lie has crept into existence that does not fit in.
That she will be fine, that life is going to continue on as normal, that already there is nothing peculiar about what happens within her.
Nothing is fine.
A lie has crept into existence, a black hole that is inside her which contains no feeling at all, one which is consuming her slowly, that cannot be seen, that cannot be felt. But she knows it is there, because nothing has balance anymore, nothing is quite as easy as it used to be - all the lights of her big big starship have dimmed and she can see nothing of her future at all.
The mornings are becoming harder to fight against, and they are monsters which taunt her and dare her to wake once more, dare her to stand up to the rest of the day and to just wait and see what happens.
Light duty doesn't help, it maybe makes it worse even, leaving her with too much time on her hands to slip into the abyss and try to examine its walls, to analyse herself from within as if she is not herself anymore. It is a strange feeling, and so subtly she is stealing the emotions of others to try to feel something herself; she goes into the joy of the children and pulls away just a little from each to piece together herself a patchwork of borrowed emotions - a captain's duty, a child's joy, a lover's delight.
They are starting to feel it, though they have no clue what it is and that it stems from her, so she continues to try to make herself a jigsaw puzzle of other people, hoping she can forget who she herself is.
She has never felt this way before, so incapable, so helpless. If this were anyone else then she would throw around the word depression like it is obvious, like it is a diagnosis and not a symptom of something more. She worries constantly that there is more coming - worse.
"He is not good enough for you, little one,"
"Mother!"
The two lock eyes across the kitchen counter, in the silence of the whole house, a voice each in the others mind.
"What? I'm not allowed to express concern for my daughter?"
There is an audible sigh.
"Of course you are mother, but we are in love, we are Imzadi,"
Lwaxana attempts to conceal her jealousy, turning away and back towards the pot of tea she is busying herself with.
"He is a human, he'll take advantage of that bond,"
There is a silence of avoiding minds, a cloud of steam that rises into the air.
"I just don't want to see you hurt,"
She takes a large gulp of her tea, valerian root, and prays to the gods that tonight she will sleep for the first time since coming away from home, that her mind will not keep her awake thinking of terrible things, of Will, of a child, of rape.
She hates this word, she does not believe it applies to her, but somehow that is what is written on her medical file in the report to starfleet, the one Beverly asked her to authorise two days ago. It has been sent off, along with all kinds of information about her body that she doesn't care to know: her exact minute to minute blood pressure, her weight, the size of her belly, the growth rate and current size of the child - it's gender.
They call it rape because it is easier than the alternative, and because maybe it is simply the truth.
"We do not get to choose what is done to us,"
The young woman across from her curls her fingers into fists in her lap, the memory of a terrible time pungent in her emotion.
"But we can choose for how long it is done,"
She looks up in anger, thinking maybe there is an insinuation.
"You can choose to let this define you, you can choose to wither,"
Deanna fills herself up with a conviction she believes, and turns her gaze upon the young student, a woman in the class below her, attacked on campus - someone who could easily have been her.
"Or you can choose to move forward,"
She reaches a hand towards her knee, across the gap between chairs; the woman doesn't flinch.
"Choose to grow,"
The steam sticks in her nostrils, only the dregs of a crushed root left behind in her mug.
Inside her, the child squirms - the boy squirms.
And he is just the same as her really, a completely perfect genetic clone, only somehow not. Beverly tells her that they are made up of the same two halves, but that he is not a male version of herself, he is instead a rewrite of her own genetic makeup, similar in most ways, but different in a few. He is made from her, she is his mother, and not his counterpart, but there is a small sleight of DNA which is illusive, paternal.
And this is the terrifying thought she returns to.
She desires more tea, but her body will not listen to her when she commands it to move, it will not comply to her demands and she is incapable of doing very much at all. Her mind has caught her on the inside, trapped her.
But she wants more, because she isn't at all tired yet, and it's so late in the night that it's almost morning. Valerian root is the only piece of Earth that has ever brought her any comfort since her father's death: an insomniac child, her grandmother had suggested it on a communique from Earth, to the despair of her mother, but there was nothing she could do for her and so they had tried it.
Ever since it has been necessary in dark times, to combat the insomnia that she has battled all her life, a technical benzodiazepine, a sedative, the herbal remedy really had worked, but there is something about the replicators that dilutes its effect. Or maybe it is Beverly, tampering with the dietary parameters of her replicator to try to help her gain weight, to maybe even just stop her from losing it.
Perhaps that would work if she could bring herself to eat anything, but she is caught between a food aversion and a shrinking stomach, and so there really isn't anything much that she desires enough to expend the energy in replicating.
"I think you should speak to another counselor, Deanna, there's something different about you,"
Beverly is concerned, but it does not seem to matter.
"Am I physically well?"
The doctor sighs, it is evasion.
"The infection is cleared, you're just over two weeks away from delivering, you're considerably underweight but otherwise I'd say you're well enough,"
Deanna moves to simply walk away without another word, but she is stopped.
"Please Deanna, this isn't like you, you need to talk to someone,"
"And I suppose you know exactly what I need,"
She leaves, and Beverly is too stunned to say much of anything to stop her.
Her bed is lovely, and lonely, and though she's changed the sheets and washed her own blanket gently, it still smells of him, maybe even just of the trace of his mind, their passion. She tries to close her eyes but they keep on cracking in two again, glassy and staring through the darkness she sees ahead of her, trying to picture all the words in her mind as text in front of her.
Maybe Beverly had a point, and maybe she didn't deserve to have her head bitten off just for being concerned; but how does she maintain her professionalism when her staff begin to think her weak, seeking help from those less qualified than her?
Maybe that is a shallow thought.
She closes her eyes tightly, counts through all the numbers of rape cases she has dealt with, the number of manic depressives, of severe anxiety and insomnia. Their names are still inside her mind, because very little ever leaves, and she wants to know exactly what it was she said that helped them to move forward.
But nothing is ever so simple as a few words spoken aloud.
She digs her head down into the pillow when her eyes break open again, overwhelmed by her own sad truth: that she has been fixing other people just to avoid what is broken within herself, that she has not the strength within herself to be fixed.
The counselor within her reminds her to be gentle with herself, but when has anyone ever been gentle before; the pillow smells of him too.
"Slowly, please,"
His bed smells of sweat, and her tears, and the residue of a memorial service, and all the grief it bred.
"I forgot,"
Will is on top of her, not wasting his time on chaste kisses, focused on something else entirely, trying to steady his body to enter her. He is going too fast, forgetting how they were always a little incompatible.
She is so tiny beneath him, one slip of an elbow and he will crush her.
"Imzadi,"
He breathes into her, pushing against her with force now.
She winces, grabs a hold of his face to try to bring him into the moment, but it is clear he has decided on his goal, and this was clearly a bad idea.
In one movement she is too full, in pain, and her yelp is silenced by his mouth over hers, a dirty kiss she cannot recall.
He used to be so gentle with her, but his casual encounters have made him forget that she is not just any other woman, and he is bigger, clumsier than he thinks.
He pulls away from their kiss, and he groans the feel of her.
A tear gets caught on one side of her nose before falling into the other eye, and she inhales deeply, grief for what they used to have and what time has made of them instead taking its grip on her. The memory is painful, the baby is squirming its protest.
The night, again, is far too much.
Her black hole expands, and into it she throws these emotions she has no room for, one by one like gravel over a coffin top, until she is feeling nothing.
Before, she was sad, but now she is just numb, and somewhere inside herself, she knows that is much worse.
