"It looks worse than it really is,"
She hears herself say, and even she doesn't believe it.
"Worse than it really is?"
He echoes, far too much depth to the man for her to able to know where this is heading.
"It looked fairly awful to me Doctor!"
Through the glass behind him, a few members of her staff turn their heads from their work at the sound, including the one doctor who checks on Deanna's vitals at the far wall.
Beverly stands abruptly, pointing accusation at him, then walks to the door to her office, entering several commands until the windows have tinted themselves a shield around the room, and the door has puffed itself shut. Their view now of the Sickbay floor is slightly clouded, and the view in is completely obscured from prying eyes; she sits heavily back in her seat.
"Please, just calm down, it's not me you're angry at okay?"
He nods back like a scolded schoolboy, rubs out the palms of his hands on his knees, tries not to physically shake his head against whatever he feels.
Beverly lets out a shaking breath, because she is not his sounding board anymore, and she cannot know what pulls at him this way.
"I just wanted to talk with her,"
He tells her lowly, swallowing.
"And then I turn a corner along some corridor in my ship, to find her being threatened by a member of my crew, and I couldn't do anything at all,"
Something stirs in her of sympathy, and she leans forward over her desk.
"You can't blame yourself for things out of your control, Jean-luc, she's never been controllable, and that hasn't changed now,"
"No, you don't understand,"
Picards responds harshly, as if Deanna would, but she can see in his expression that maybe this was not his intention, and she tries not to take it personally.
"I didn't help her, I couldn't I was frozen,"
Beverly sits back, tips her head to the side as she attempts to find the place he is coming from, though this is an impossible thing to achieve.
"It's perfectly normal, under that kind of stress, that you're body would begin to-"
"No,"
She is cut off again, and he rubs a hand over the top of his head now, a though he cannot himself believe what he's about to say.
"I was frozen,"
A single heartbeat.
"She froze me,"
This statement hangs weighted in the air, holding onto a name and all its connotations, until they are the same, and it all comes crashing down with one clarification.
"Deanna?"
Shock registers, but he is much calmer now that he has expressed what burns in him.
"I was in a position to disarm him, and she stopped me from doing that,"
Beverly frowns, then takes a brief glance past his head and towards Deanna's sleeping form, rolled now onto her other side and most obscured by the half closed curtain, completely by the blanket she still is swaddled in.
"I wanted to talk to her about seeing somebody - another counselor - I wanted to tell her she needs help with this,"
He goes on, drawing her attention back to his face.
"I can't be the only one to see that she's not herself, but I'd hoped we weren't here yet,"
They eye each other warily, and she almost wants to dare him to go there, dare him to say something that she will be forced to hold in her confidence, along with so many other terrible things.
"I watched her look at that scalpel Bev, and she wasn't scared, she just didn't care at all,"
Beverly lets her head go for a moment, and it drops between her shoulders to shake back and forth, disappointed, burdened now with knowledge confirmed, that she would be derelict to ignore.
After a silence, she finally speaks.
"What you're saying Jean-luc, that just can't be possible,"
She breathes deeply.
"Frozen? No, she's empathic not telekinetic, no Betazoid is that powerful,"
"That we know of,"
He counters her denial sharply, working on a conspiracy he isn't sure he even believes in. At her incredulous gaze, he elaborates, hands now flat out on the desk before him.
"Data was only given access to their library because he swore not to share that information with anybody, because he was a friend of Deanna's,"
Beverly nods slowly.
"And what our guests said, about the Troi's being myth, that there are stories about what they've done all across the galaxy,"
He leans forward further, conspiratorial.
"I've never heard any stores, never even of the Fifth House, until she came aboard,"
"Jean-luc,"
Beverly raises a hand to halt him, blinking profusely against the trepidation.
"This is Deanna we're talking about, what exactly are you trying to say?"
Something uneasy makes a crisis of her, and maybe he isn't even sure what he means; he shift in his seat, tries for another angle.
"Do you remember when Wesley was a boy, and he wanted to be a superhero?"
She nods.
"He thought he could turn invisible,"
She clarifies, sighing the wistful memory within her, confusion forgotten for just one moment.
"Okay, and now that he is grown, he knows that his superpower is his intellect, and that being invisible is the dream of a child - it doesn't exist?"
Beverly nods again.
"But that doesn't mean he gives up on his invisibility, it just means he has the knowledge now to make it happen, that one power could lead to another - do you understand?"
Picard frowns at her, and she nods a third time, her eyes wide with anticipation at where this is all heading.
He clears his throat.
"Well imagine that telekinesis is Deanna's invisibility, and her real power maybe lies in persuasion, or permission, these things children never consider to ask for,"
He finds himself becoming too suspicious of her, in talking this way, and he turns briefly to look over his shoulder at her, maybe just to check that she is still sleeping, and not listening to him draw up conspiracies about her mind.
"Doesn't that mean that she could use her empathy to achieve any one of these means, if she can give emotion in the same way as she receives it? Wouldn't that mean she could manipulate the way a person feels, to such extent that they were rendered motionless?"
A dawning realisation comes over Beverly, and she leans forward too, the both of them becoming twisted in what they hold now to be truthful.
"You think she gave you her fear, so that you were unable to help?"
He nods, and she huffs out the awe.
"I don't even know that that's possible, and if it is, who's to say she did it on purpose, it could be a defence mechanism that even she doesn't know about,"
Picard shakes his head.
"You know I've grown closer to her than I'm comfortable with, and I want the best for her really, you know that?"
"Of course I do."
They are wrapped up in sympathy and terror.
"Then what if this is because of the child?"
The breath catches in Beverly's throat, because here is something she hasn't once considered since hearing its steady heartbeat.
"What if it has enhanced her abilities, and she's being reckless with them because she doesn't care about herself anymore?"
And it always comes back to this.
"You should have seen her Bev, mon dieu, she was in his head,"
Picards voice is low and fast, as though he is talking only to himself about these things that he cannot be sure of, and she has no way to pull him back from it.
"I don't know what's going on with her, but I can't ignore what I've seen, call it whatever makes sense to you, a genetic mutation whatever, but if this makes her a danger to herself, then we have a duty to call her out."
His connotation becomes more, and Beverly suddenly is standing from her seat, no idea how she caused the movement, and she cannot even breathe for what she is hearing.
"Wait, wait, Jean-luc listen to yourself, you're telling me to go on a witch hunt because of her biology, something beyond her control!"
A horrible silence fills the space between her words, and she smacks her lips in the moment that she has to think, before she simply yells at him without reason, always rushing to the defence another woman who will not be understood by a man - even him.
"You want me to throw around accusations, to confront her just because we don't understand her?"
Beverly runs her hands through her hair, pulls it up to the back of her head then lets it fall down in her frustration; he still has yet to meet her stare.
"She has always been a mystery to us Jean-luc, but you have trusted her judgement from the moment she stepped on your bridge, whatever reach she has and however it comes into play here, that is not for you to start persecuting her for."
He looks up in the moment that she turns herself around in a whip of blue fabric, holding her hands up to her hips and dropping her head down again to gaze at the floor, furious at how they have allowed this thing to change them all.
"Do you hear yourself? My God Jean-luc you sound just like those crewmen who would have her jettisoned,"
Beverly whispers now, fast and holding onto her fire so as not to burn these bridges between them, so as not to let it change her too.
"You're right -"
From behind her, his voice rises lowly to match, and they are both whispering as if this is some terrible secret they wish to keep from even themselves.
"- you're right, I'm just as bad as they are."
He breathes.
"She would tell me I reacted with fear, that fear can be forgiven but ignorance cannot."
He stands too, and Beverly turns around to face him, having heard Deanna tell her that same thing before, and now that she sees the window once again, she watched how the girl has come alive in her bed, legs moving quick, her eyes struggling against reluctant sedation to wake to the emotion.
"I need to understand."
He follows where her eyes have wandered off to, and turns his body in a mirror to her own, sees Deanna try to sit herself up against the wall, being pushed back down by another Doctors hands.
"I'm sorry Bev."
And not for the first time today, he is filled with the same urgency.
"I have to talk to her."
