They are arm in arm, the feel of her there is terribly endearing. It could even make him forget his crusade, if only for a moment of morosity he's sure she must feel in him.

The ship has gone dark. Not in the sense that he cannot see what's in front of him, but rather that another evening has it's light mimicked across the systems, so that every panel throughout the corridors is dim and pulsing the mood of the hour.

She wears now a long gown in place of her ruined uniform, in colours cream and brown, loose over her stomach where he knows there is a salve still soothing the unhealed skin, and so she flows beside him like water.

Beverly had stopped him, in the end, told him to just breathe while she went to check on the girl, and he had breathed so deeply that he had to sit back down for a few rapid heartbeats, willing the whole thing to slow down.

Deanna must have fallen back asleep, because he was told to go to lunch, to do more thinking before he came back for her. She had said she'd call him when she was ready to discharge.

And that had been 10 minutes ago, with him already sailing on anxious legs to Sickbay anyway, before he could be told she'd changed her mind, and it was best that Deanna stay the night instead. The Doctor had looked at them both with fear, as she refused his help down from the bed, as though they two together made up a bomb, or maybe just a picture so disturbing of domesticity, that everything to follow would just destroy them anyway.

They walk arm in arm now, the Captain and the Counselor; to anybody that passess they are just friends, he is just being gentlemanly, she is just tired. But the truth is that they are much more damaged than just friends, and his hold on her is a gesture of necessity, the fatigue of her is pallor that speaks of things worse than just tired.

Deanna has yet to say more than two words to him, and they had been simply thank you, repeated over and over with each gesture he afforded her. She has a strange air to her, though her face is largely expressionless, and instead she seems to have readied herself, to be walking slowly in her anticipation.

He hadn't made his offer optional, and though Beverly was wary, she had supported him when he insisted it was the least he could do - to see her home safe.

And as they arrive at her door, slowing to a halt, he turns to her, still not letting go of her arm, and breaks this dreadful silence.

"Mademoiselle,"

He inclines his head, dips his knees a little, humour being the only sword left for him to fall back on.

She does not seem to change her expression even a little in response, and he might be fooled into believing she hadn't even noticed the event. A short arm peels away from her other side, and she leans into the door panel, running her palm over one of the newer scanners to afford them entrance; he thinks it strange that she has changed the authentication method, that it will not just open up when her badge is nearby.

But then, maybe that is smart, and maybe it will change nothing at all.

"You did not walk with me just to drop me off did you?"

Deanna's voice is strangely raspy, but she clears her throat before turning up to regard his face, and he cannot be sure what is real of her, and what is a guise. Like a black hole, her quarters gape out in front of them, and they stand dumply at its entrance looking only into each other, and not at what has opened with threats to consume them.

"You wanted to talk,"

She tells him bluntly, and he is nodding before he even knows what she's said, seeing in her eyes that she has him figured out already. And before he finishes nodding, she is stepping out of his side, and his arm has lost all consideration, letting her go without holding on too tightly.

He hears her call for lights up, and then he follows behind her.

"Tea?"

Deanna has disappeared, and he cannot see her at all but for the sound of her voice calling to him, his eyes fix on all the desolation he has come upon.

"No, thank you,"

He calls back distractedly, and the doors shut behind him as he regards the plates, pads and various articles of clothing strewn about the place. There are books piled up on the single armchair facing away from him, and to his right her desk is almost completely hidden beneath a stack of unassembled bits of furniture; nothing is the same balance of energy as it was before.

A deep sigh escapes him at the state of it all, confused as to why Beverly had not mentioned this to him, or why Deanna herself has not considered to apologise for it in the way he might have expected from her.

She reemerges to find him frozen there, and she had been in the bathroom by the sound of the flushing system and her wringing hands.

"A seat then?"

Deanna moves to lift the stack of books, and he just now can move in haste, seeing that she struggles to hold them out in front of her stomach. A quiet noise of protest goes unheeded as he takes the stack from her and drops it down to the floor beside the chair, standing now between two sofas, one presumably laid out in a spot she sits in often, the cushions built up and a woven blanket laid out along its length.

He turns to sit down himself, and can only assume she does the same as he hears her hiss softly, stifle a groan, and when he is situated and facing her again, he sees that same discomfort on her face as she shuffles a pillow at her back.

Her legs are tucked beneath her, and she reaches now to cover them up with the blanket.

A shiver chases along her spine.

"I take it you want to ask me about Ensign Tralk?"

She opens diplomatically, and if he were any less of a man then he might finding himself cursing the bluntness of her, when she used to be such a sharpened tack to him.

"Why I stopped you from helping?"

Shock registers on his face, but she only looks tired.

"I'm right then, you did stop me?"

She nods back, gazes into him as though he isn't even there at all - and at the look in her eyes, she might not be either.

"I did, yes,"

Deanna tells him calmly.

"But you do not know how?"

She dips her head.

"You think that I'm keeping something from you?"

"I'm not proud of it Counselor, but I do, I have concerns,"

Picard responds just as calmly, and still ashamed of the thought that he is losing his confidence in her trust of him, that maybe she does not think of him anymore.

"I am nothing special, Captain,"

She breathes.

"Nothing has changed,"

Certainty leaves her, but refuses to find rest in his stomach, churning round and round her emphasis.

"But how?"

He still pushes at the point, and she smiles now briefly for the sight of an impatient child within him.

"I had fear, and I gave it you,"

The emphasis is plain, and it still refuses to work with him.

"How?"

Suspicion reiterates. The smile falls away from her gently.

"In the same way that I have to shield myself from others, I am shielding them also,"

Picard frowns.

"On Betazed, minds are free to wander, but Humans are not so free, and I must have caution - it would be too easy to hurt another just as I can be hurt by them,"

"You never said,"

"I thought it would be obvious,"

He has not lessened his frown, but a sadness accompanies it now, and he is not so much indignant as he had been before coming upon her. It seems she has this way to her, that means he never can be mad for long before she turns his perception around; he can't be sure if she does this on purpose to save herself, or by nature to save him.

"Every action,"

Deanna states wistfully, and the crease in his brow lifts as he understands finally what she means, though maybe this makes nothing better at all.

"But it was like a wall, for me and for Tralk, I saw it,"

He works out aloud, sorting the memory now in regards to the physicality, removed from the feeling.

"You did something to him too,"

And that feels too much like an accusation, even to him.

Deanna moves her legs a little beneath her body, and holds her hands steady, at a loss for where to rest them, until something in her finally gives in and they fall against her stomach.

Her reluctance brings him back to why he first wanted to find her.

"I warned him about that, and I apologised for my actions, but that was warranted in the situation,"

She tells him, defensively almost.

"What was?"

Picard shuffles forward in his seat, nervous, holding his arms out straight between his open legs, itching to get out of this uniform after such a long day.

"You saw me put myself in his mind,"

She sniffs, no emotion behind her tired eyes.

"I had been taking his mania for him, so that he had clarity, but it was too much and I lost my hold on him,"

With a brief and perhaps fearful hand, she runs fingers past where she had been injured, not even daring to put pressure on the area, and the hand comes to rest in her lap, supporting the underside of her stomach.

"That was when he hurt me, but it wasn't his fault,"

"And then?"

The Captain pushes, ignorant now in his curiosity to how she is uncomfortable talking about her mind, explaining herself to somebody who's biology will never understand what it is to be so open, to constantly need control.

"Then? I gave him words, I do not think I could do it again,"

She is softly shaking her head.

"So that was you who told me to call security?"

He asks, but really, he already knows the answer.

Deanna nods thoughtfully, the direction of her shaking head now changed, and he watches how all the low light gets caught up in her hair, then thrown out in a million different directions.

But he is still not satisfied.

"This will all be in the report Captain,"

She begins, almost as though she is chiding him for focusing on these things he maybe doesn't care so strongly about anymore. Of course she had felt him, his conspiracy, when he had spoken earlier with Beverly; so usually calm, she had been woken abruptly by his outburst, like waking from a nightmare that hadn't ended.

"You wanted something else,"

Picard sighs in frustration, that she knows how he feels better than even he does, but he has to wonder now if she actually desires the talent, or seeks to know him, or rather that his feelings are something that he has a duty to shield her from, but is too crude to know how.

"Yes,"

He responds bluntly, looking around to distract himself with how little of the floor he can see, how it smells like some kind of antiseptic cream he might have used once, how there is an accumulation of stuff that cannot have taken long to build up. It mustn't have done, Will would have cleaned before he moved back to his own quarters.

"I just,"

His eyes focus back on her.

"I had no idea you were living this way,"

Softness has become of his voice, and he wants to be whispering, feels like it's necessary now that he's maybe taking himself beyond his purview. But he could curse aloud again, because isn't this just his duty too? And maybe this is just what he owes her.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He asks her, suddenly hurt that she has been keeping her pain from the people who care for her, when the whole point of her remaining on board was to be with them. Second thoughts come at him for not the second time, hurling all the words he dare not say aloud, right back into his face, like they are poison

"Because there is nothing to tell,"

Deanna refuses to look around the space too, knowing she lies, and so she fixes him with such a look that says she knows of these thoughts he has, hopes to distract him in them.

He huffs at her, rolls his eyes even though he doesn't want to; a child's terror is made of him.

"You can't really believe that,"

His voice levels in sympathy.

"You know better than me that this isn't the mark of a healthy mind,"

Arms lift to gesture at the space around him, and he regards it once more, leaving where her eyes continue to penetrate his own; still the girl says nothing at all.

"You're withdrawing from your friends Deanna, since Will, you're not looking after yourself, you won't talk to Beverly or myself, Data says you haven't been to a poker night in weeks,"

Picard says emphatically, drawing his hands in and counting up on his fingers the points he makes, letting them stretch back as a silence stretches on that she does not have words to fill. All of a sudden, after everything, after all this time, for just one moment, she is graceless.

"This is more than just a broken heart isn't it, it's more than Will?"

Deanna manages a slight nod in response, but it is weak, and tired, and speaks of a warning that he should not go there. There are fireworks in her heart, because she is so very far from home.

"Please,"

He says, and leans forward as though he is praying to her, hands now palmed together in front of his face.

"Tell me how to help you,"

Her eyes shut over from him, and her hair mussess about her face as she starts to gently shake her head again, unable to backtrack far enough.

"I am fine Captain, really,"

And her voice is so convincing, the look in her eyes when she opens them back up so honest, that he is lost there, moments from caving in to her will. But he is just strong enough to stand up to it, and he refocuses back on what he had wanted to say, unmoving in his seat.

"You know I don't believe that,"

He says, breathes to steady himself.

"Beverly calls it rape, Deanna, and I know you must too,"

The words are terribly risky, and they are raw, full of an unsavoury taste. He has never had to say the word aloud before, never had a reason to really mean it, thinking that the world had come so far as to remove the act completely. But he'd been naive, and he knows it; of all the times he's thought about what he would do if it happened to one of his crew, he never even considered it would happen to her.

"Please - do not,"

Deanna begs, but he will not hear it.

"And Will, he says you're traumatised, that he's seen it too,"

The girls squirms in her seat, uncomfortable in her mind now, feeling that it has turned against her too. No matter how she tries to signal for him to stop, he cannot, and so she pulls her eyes from his and focuses on the one cleared space of floor beneath the coffee table, intent that a black hole will open there and finally swallow her up - a perfect mirror to what swallows her inside.

"Me? I think I call this depression Deanna, and you're really starting to scare me,"

Picard tells her, vulnerable, a waver barely detectable in his voice.

Writing her story is not at all like people would think, it is not about a woman who loves deeply and profoundly, even when it is hard: it is a story about a girl who finds it hard now to reconcile love with anything, one who wants people to think the best in her, even if it is not true.

He listens to what people say, and they have their expectations of her, they talk about how forgiving it is to carry the child, how they would expect nothing less of her. They have it all wrong, of course, and looking at her now, he knows that this is an appearance that she is struggling against, struggling to maintain. She is trying hard to make them believe it, but she does not have it in her to try too hard.

"Please say something,"

Deanna blinks, her eyes are shining and he wonders if this is because he is awash in terrible sadness, as though it simply lives now in the very walls.

"I do not know what you want me to say, sir,"

She responds, breaking herself off from the compassion he holds, alienating herself further for the sake of keeping a hold on her sanity, the things which force her to move forward. If she was to tell him anything now, it's likely she would stand still for the rest of her life, caught up in the shock.

"Dammit Deanna! Why are you doing this to yourself, why won't you let me talk to you?"

He bursts out, but she remains hauntingly silent, professional despite the hour and the location and the shiver that is creeping again up her spine.

"Please, just stop,"

Deanna asks him, a break in her voice.

"No, I will not! I care for you more than I think is normal, and I don't want to let this happen to you, so tell me that you're traumatised, or depressed, or even just scared to death and I will do everything I can to help you, but do not shut me out, not now,"

Picard tells her passionately, shuffling further to the edge of his seat, closing the gap so that he is suspended, almost, over the centre of the coffee table, willing her to say anything at all.

"Am I underperforming in my duties?"

She asks calmly, numbly even.

"Am I a discredit?"

Confusion renders him unable, for just a moment, to respond.

"Because unless you have reason to believe that I have become ineffective, then I really don't believe-"

"Mierde Deanna!"

HIs voice comes out much more explosively than he had intended, and even she seems to become startled by the intrusion.

"Why aren't you angry? Why won't you fight back?"

Picards asks her in the same way; a change occurs of the space.

In a whole series of movements, she is standing up in front of him, body swaying only a little in fabric that is now like a veil which conceals her from him, not quite angelic.

"I do not want to fight with you Captain, please,"

She fixes him with a look that says enough.

"I think you should leave,"

The fabric billows when she moves from the sofa and slowly across the room, picking unsteadily through the mess of floor until she reaches the replicator, and stops.

"I'm not leaving, not until you talk to me about this, not until I know you're safe on your own, otherwise I would be derelict in my duties,"

Picard says, standing too to face where she has turned her back on him, so that he cannot see her face at all, he has no idea what emotion -if any - is there.

"I am fine Captain, please just go,"

There are tears in her voice, somehow, after all this time.

"You were raped Deanna, I see that now, I know you're not fine,"

"Please,"

She whines, like a child come from nowhere, a dragged out word which speaks volumes more than any hundred others could ever.

"I do not want to talk about that,"

The Captain then moves more closely towards her figure, and she is hunched slightly by the wall, arms ending in petite fists at her sides.

"You have to, you aren't well and you need to talk about it before this gets any worse,"

"No!"

She snaps.

"Stop it, please, just stoh-"

The breath gets caught right in her throat, and she bucks forward, one hand rushing to hold flat-palmed against the wall to support her.

"Deanna?"

Picard calls to her, almost by her side now, and the sound of her breathing deeply is burning in his own chest as if the air were his own.

The girl's other hand is gripping the underside of her stomach, and she is leaning forward around it, hair obscuring her face as she turns down to stare at the floor.

"Nothing,"

She shakes her head and looks sideways and up at him, from beyond all that hair; her eyes are red now with tears.

"It is nothing, I'm fine,"

Deanna offers, flushed and low voiced, telling a lie he is growing tired of hearing.

Still, her grips appears iron, and the wall is holding her up where she pushes her body straight armed out from her, eyes turning back to the ground and scrunching tightly.

She swallows.

"You're in pain,"

Picard states dumbly, dipping his head to look through all those curls and to her face, creasing himself up in concern.

"Do I call Beverly?"

He asks desperately, but she shakes her head along with the swaying of her hips, so that she is in motion like an ebbing tide.

"No,"

Deanna looks back to him, fixes him with one solid look of crying eyes, and a moan leaves her, knees buckling one drop beneath her, and she is tense all over.

"I am always in pain, Captain,"

She is lit up with rare honesty, and this might be the only answer he can get out of her tonight. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, unafraid now after how closely they have joined their bodies all day, how often he has had a hand on her and not felt like an intrusion.

"You can leave now,"

Deanna tells him, still looking up, still breathing steady and swaying, grimacing a pain he cannot fathom the source of - though he has his suspicions.

He says nothing, because there are no words to express how much he doesn't want to leave that don't express how much he does at the same time, a terrible nobility he is caught between.

"Go,"

She draws out, desperation in her voice, and she jogs her legs to bounce a little at the knees, wanting more than anything to be alone with this again. But he is looking at her so intensely, noticing more of her eyes than just their colour, but the anxious creases around them, the purplish hue beneath, the shining trails of tears, like glitter, that refract all the light as they trace a path to her chin.

There is something black and smudged at the corner of her left eye.

"I never leave a crying woman Counselor, not when she's hurting,"

Picard tells her softly, and he hears her sniff around her tears, watches another grimace where her knees continue to dip a rhythm he can't follow; she does too much for him to possibly follow, but moves very little at all.

And then, she has nothing left in her to plead with him, or to give him any kind of answer at all, no idea if he wants the truth or something beautiful instead; she has neither inside her to give.

She is both vulnerable, and invincible, and nothing of either at all.

The Captain moves up closer to her body, peeling her hand away from the wall and holding it instead against his uniformed chest, like it is his feather crest, letting her lean her weight on him instead, so that there is something there at last with the ability to ground her. Deanna's body is more malleable than he imagines it ought be, and she does not protest the move at all, just allows herself like a ragdoll to be positioned into him, as if he is more than all the words he had said minutes ago.

He holds both of his hands over her own against him, so that she cannot pull away, and it's like he's saying grace - praying to her as though she is his own personal messiah.

When she looks up again, and now into his eyes, her hair falls away down her back along with the gravity that manipulates it; they are puffy, red and bruised, and terribly empty of anything he might call emotion.

The sight is an iron fist that holds his stomach tightly in suspension.

She wants to straighten out her body, but this stoop she holds up herself with is the only way to breathe, to carry her stomach like it is a separate entity, to lift to weight from her back for just a little while without having to lie down and leave her legs like electric wires, jumping the current that animates them.

The tip of her nose is red too, a drop at it's end, and she sniffs harshly again, not able to look anywhere but in his eyes.

"Please,"

Picard says, finally, removing a hand from above her own to run the back of his first two fingers over the apple of her cheek, and it is not hot at all.

"I just want to make it okay,"

And he's just a child who cares too deeply for one who he cannot understand anymore now than the day they met, who tries so hard and not hard enough, who is constantly collecting the flowers at her feet, then throwing them back at her face.

Her response is something guttural, a cry or a groan or even something that was intended as a scream but leaves more like something of loss, a sound that is broken and crackling like it has been lost in translation, like it means less than it was meant to.

It is followed by a complete reversal of what has been holding her away from him, and she collapses along with the loss, into his arms now, with one pressed up between their bodies, and the other hanging around his neck, just trying to keep herself on her feet and not lost beneath this ocean that laps around her ankles.

It is not a struggle to hold her up, but it knocks the breath out of him with how suddenly she has sunk into his body, so he wriggles free his arm and wraps them both securely around her back, lifting just slightly to stop her sinking any further. And her stomach is this obtrusion between them, hard and pushing into his own so that he can feel the movements, as if they were his own, when the child kicks out in protest of all the things it cannot control.

He tries to adjust her, to not allow himself to push with such force that she is in pain, but it is impossible without letting her simply fall down, and all he can do is hold on with the hope that it is enough.

There is a murmuring in his neck, and it takes him too long to realise that she is trying to tell him something, trying to reiterate the very reason that her knees are too weak to hold her up alone.

"Please, help me,"

He hears her say, and feels it more so in the vibration of her body against his.

"I'm scared, I'm so scared,"

She repeats then, again and again until he isn't sure if it's just his imagination thinking she has finally given up on her rhetoric, or the more terrifying outcome that he had wanted but been unprepared for - that she is done with it too.

"Tell me how to make it okay?"

Picard asks her again, his voice more clear from above her head where his own chin rests, and he is desperate to be given an answer.

But she doesn't have one, not for herself and not for him, shaking her head against him like it will shake away the desperation, even when she knows it will not.

Then, he swears he hears her voice, but there is no vibration and no disturbance in the room, no uttering in his ears where he strains to listen. Somehow, her voice is in the walls, and in her body just as it is in his own, a final thought, a final passing effort to make him hear her, a swan song.

You cannot.