Authors Note:

Sorry for the delay in getting this one up, but with some things going on in the world at the moment, it made me wonder if I should keep writing on this one. It was pointed out to me recently that it could seem as though I'm monopolising on an experience I don't really have a right to, considering the quite heavy subject matter this fic delves into.

I'm a boy, so for me to be assuming the responsibility of this kind of experience in this way without really addressing it has been entirely remiss of me and I'd like to apologise.

I'm in complete awe constantly of all the women in my life, and I wouldn't be half the person I am today without them.

So with that, I'd like to say that rape, abortion and motherhood are all incredibly serious topics, none of them nearly as fictional as I've made them seem and as I wish certainly that some were.

If you've read my story and feel affected by it, or if you feel isolated because of any experience you've had in common with any of the characters written about, then please reach out to the people close to you, reach out to the helplines and the refuge's that exist in your areas, reach out and do not recede, I'm certain you're absolutely more capable of rising above than you think.

And now on with the story, my usual thanks to the people out there willing to read, your reviews are as always greatly appreciated.


She wakes with no recollection of how she ever could have fallen asleep, or really what she has done with the memory of yesterday.

It has disappeared into that ever growing black-hole.

Her body is sore somehow, and her eyes feel puffy when she tries to blink them open and alert, something caught over the eyelid of her left.

She sniffs, and her nose is sore too, turns her head to the side in search of the time, and even her skull throbs against the movement.

Something must have left her body last night that she cannot define, but the loss does not seem to have made her any lighter than before, instead, it is as though all the energy simply drained out from her body.

The clock tells her it's almost midday, and if she knew what time she had fallen asleep, then this maybe would be more shocking, but for all she can recall she might only have been asleep for 20 minutes.

By the way her mind is so foggy, it is probably much longer.

Beside the clock she notices a stack of pads that had not been there before - she thinks but cannot be sure - and a gentle curiosity has her trying to resurrect herself, untangling all her heavy limbs from the blankets and the pillows she is cradled by.

She sits up to a sharp pain in her stomach, a hazy memory of some injury there that she cannot yet recall, and a tired hiss escapes her clenched teeth.

A hand reaches cautiously for the pads, and there are four all in a stack that fits just barely between her thumb and forefinger as she tries to lift them over to her. They sprawl out beside her on the mattress, and one of them is lit up more brightly than the others, so she brings it up to her face to read.

Deanna,

It says, in bold letters along the header:

I hope you're feeling better today. I apologise for my intrusion last night, and trust this message will find you well. Please don't feel embarrassed for what happened, I'm glad at least I was able to be there.

Consider these amendments a form of reparation for how I have been misunderstanding, but do not attempt to argue they aren't necessary, I have already made my decisions.

She frowns and scrolls further down the page.

Be sure to visit Beverly when you wake, I've asked her not to come by so early where she can avoid it, you seem like you need the extra rest.

Also, Mr Data and I will be visiting you this evening to help with cleaning up and putting together the furniture you've been struggling with - no arguments, it's the Captain's prerogative.

A lazy, suspicious smile comes upon her face, and she scrolls the rest of the way to the bottom of the page, his signature clear and crisp on the light background. His handwriting is delightful, and terribly French of him, the name Jean-Luc written in sweeping and tightly curled lettering, followed by a large P and a flow of rushing ink in slanted mountain range peaks.

She sets the pad to her left side, then reaches for the first of the three remaining on her right, sceptical now of what these others might hold.

It lights up in all the same shades of a very official looking document.

Under special permission from Ship's Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Counselor Deanna Inara Troi, Rank: Lieutenant Commander, is granted indefinite release from adherence to Starfleet Uniform Standards as outlined in protocol 61B, on account of exceptional medical circumstances, effective immediately.

The memory of her melted uniform tunic, and the smell of the flesh that had melted too rapidly overcomes her senses, a piece of the puzzle returned to her. Maybe he does not want to relive this either.

She sighs, he's never really been strict about her uniform anyway, after seeing how that standard mini dress was far too revealing of any starfleet officer, especially when it hindered her in the way those kinds of garments do, and how distracted not only most of the male staff were, but the majority of the female too. It had only taken one conversation with him to have his agreement that maybe she ought to dictate her own uniform from then on, though maybe her choices had not been what he had in mind.

It's the collarbones, she thinks, but that is a Betazoid thing, after all.

This pad is discarded also, a kind gesture, but maybe just a gesture. The next she picks up appears perhaps more official, if it is possible, and at its header it is emblazoned with the starfleet seal; it even feels somehow heavier in her hand.

Alterations to the duty schedule of Counselor Deanna Inara Troi, rank: Lieutenant Commander, are as follows, by order of the Captain:

She raises her eyebrows in shock, to nobody in particular, and wonders again just what must have occurred between them last night for him to start leaving concessions for her to wake up to - was he even here at all?

She shakes her head, scrolls down to the list of points, where the first reads:

The required minimum number of duty hours served weekly as sitting member of Bridge Staff is lifted, with attendance at the Counselor's own discretion.

A feeling emerges in her gut, but it is not strong enough to speak to how she really feels about this, so she considers that maybe it is a good thing, and moves further down the list.

Deadline extensions of up to 24 hours are added to the submission of staff, evaluatory, and incident reports, including special permissions in dictation of reports, as well as reports submitted up to 100 characters beneath standard requirements.

Again, she swallows, and has to admit that perhaps this is a good thing, being that her paperwork has been starting to pile up lately with how very little she seems to be able to bring herself to care.

There is one final point listed:

Upcoming crew evaluations are to be conducted between Captain Picard and Counselor Troi with regards to senior crewmen only, and between Commander Riker and Counselor Moore with regards to those of Lieutenant grades or less.

A genuine smile comes upon her a second time, that he has considered how much of her time she truly has to spend with Will, in their duties as first officer and counselor. Then the smile falls away, that he believes she cannot continue normal duties because of a something so trivial as a broken heart.

She thinks maybe he had said something about this last night, but there is no sound of his voice there in her memory to tell her if this is the truth or not.

With tiring hands, she pushes this third pad onto the mattress on her left, joining the other two in a casual scattering, and she's almost certain she won't find a better place for them, let alone consider to recycle them later.

The final pad stares up at her, and she has to wonder what on Betazed is left for him to try to control of her life, what on Earth he could have thought of that will make her life better. Here is a word she can hear him say very clearly in her memory, along with the image of his sorrowful face.

She refocuses her eyes on the screen now in her hand.

Special Permission has been granted to Counselor Deanna Inara Troi, at the request of Captain Picard and Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher MD, that she be permitted a further 20 credits weekly for usage in the Deck 5 Crew Gymnasium swimming pool and Anti-Gravity Chamber, for reasons relating to personal health.

Anti-Gravity? She had not considered it before. Swimming yes, but she has yet to actually go, being that her body is so alien to her now she's no idea how to dress for it, or to reveal so much of herself when she is not confident in it.

It is a fair suggestion of the Captain though, that she spend time in zero gravity for the benefit of all these muscles that ache without end, and the alien itself, that has swallowed her centre so wholly that to hold it up is a painful task. But she hasn't told anybody this, surely, so how does he know?

What the God's had she said last night?

Slowly, she engages her legs to stand, and the sudden pressure almost takes the air from her lungs, pushing down on her hips in such a way that gravity is now far too strong to battle against. She tilts forwards, blowing out a breath, then dips back upright again, flexing out her arms at her sides so that they come alive in the way that her legs struggle to.

Her bladder is suddenly very full, her body moving sluggishly through the space and towards the bathroom, scratching absentmindedly at the skin of her stomach.

She is clumsier than usual, taking longer than she used to, and she has not yet had enough time to get accustomed to this new routine, moving to wash her hands at the basin while she listens to the sound of rushing water as if it will lull her into a trance.

Then, she entertains a single moment of blank mindedness, and rubs away at her eyes with still wet hands, tries to clear the fog until she finally remembers the washcloth on the side of the basin and begins rubbing more purposefully at her whole face.

The reflection tells her she isn't who she used to be, tells her she's likely just as tired as she looks, tells her that even her usually red lips will not distract from how hollow she's become.

It is as if her body is not alive at all.

One arm reaches up to push a finger into the puffy skin beneath one of her eyes, then travels along and up to it's swollen lid, finding a sore growing along the inner line of her lashes.

She blinks at the reflection, then stares back down into the basin, moving routinely to set the cold water rushing and start wringing the washcloth in its flow. With more precision and pressure over the eye, she wipes at her face again, trying to cool the heat of the swelling skin while her other hand reaches above her head to open up the right side of the mirrored cabinet.

She finds what she is looking for quickly, a small tube of medicated eye drops on the lower shelf tucked right at the back, and she stretches up on her tiptoes to grab it, shutting over the cabinet again when she's done.

And here is another thing she can barely recall: how or why she even has the drops, when she ever needed them before now, who even gave them to her?

She imagines at least it must be have been Beverly, as she raises her head back and lets three drops loose into an eye she struggles to hold open - but when had she seen Beverly about her eyes?

Tipping her head forward causes a sudden and blinding dizziness to take her, and she reaches out to grip the basin again, dropping the bottle along with the movement.

She breathes deeply.

Perhaps it is best not to dwell on these things that she cannot recall.

Sickness then takes her, and almost as though it is routine too, she free's up the hand holding a cloth to her eye by dropping it to the floor too and hunches forward over the basin. She gives a meal up to it that she doesn't remember, with practiced control that stops her from spending too long coughing over the gag in her throat, and has her pulling her hair into a fist at the back of her head with one balled up hand.

It does not last for long, and soon enough she is able to stand firm and release the curls to fall along her back, running more water to start rinsing out her mouth with, reaching out again for her toothbrush.

She considers only briefly that maybe she ought to collect what she dropped, but bending down doesn't seem like too good an idea, and her protruding stomach stops her from even seeing where they have landed about her feet.

The morning then goes on ahead of her, following much the same routine as any other morning, even knowing how the hour must by now have crept past midday.

The computer tells her she has no appointments scheduled until the evenings restorative justice session - already? - and then goes on to issue her three different report deadlines, including something about an incident report, though she isn't entirely sure what on.

She's pulling her dress off over her head when the image comes to her, with her eyes scrunched tight, of a blazing scalpel, and the feel of the Captain's mind straining against her own. It is not terribly clear, and the dress falls to the floor at the foot of her bed when she sees the bandaging taped over a spot on her stomach.

She must have been hurt worse than she remembers.

In only her underwear, she looks up and around, bewildered, trying to remember where her closet is. Something awful must have happened to have her brain this unresponsive.

Gracefully, somehow, she manages to undress completely as she walks to where she thinks there will be clothes, and opens up a door to find a chest of drawers beside a hanging rail adorned in all number of colourful gowns.

These she remembers well, each speaking to an occasion of its own. She cannot smile her fondness though, in the search for something to wear, because they would not fit her body as it is this way, and she is resigned to wearing things because they are comfortable, and not because they are beautiful.

Drown oceans, Deanna

She hears her father's voice echoing without her, somewhere in the distant past, so far away it could just be a dream.

If anyone can, it's you

And she sighs, slipping a loose fitting shift over her head, because she never looked at any ocean she couldn't outrun until she saw herself like this.

She forgoes underwear, because she is Betazoid after all, the dress flowing almost down to her feet with really no need, given that her body is young and pert and sore, and largely without need for support, the only exception being her stomach.

Somewhere in her quarters, discarded on the floor, she is almost certain there is some kind of band that is designed to solve that problem, but she had too much trouble trying to work the thing out on her own that it had been forgotten very quickly.

Deanna breezes through the space, and it smells like her own body, naturally fragrant and yet antiseptic of late, but there is a must lingering by the sofa as she passes it by, and the scent of recollection catches her off-guard. Picard is suddenly sitting like a ghost on the cushions, leaning into the table as if he is saying a prayer, completely translucent, full of all the feelings and none of the body, not so much himself as he is a fingerprint.

The image comes and goes in less than a second, and she breathes deeply again - so he must have been here last night.

She finds herself turning to her desk monitor, where it is just barely visible behind a stack of furniture pieces, and switching it into life, unable to take a seat because it is overrun in discarded clothes. The time glares at her in the unchanged light of her quarters, and only now does she consider turning them brighter, if only to startle her sore eyes into staying awake.

She takes an absent moment to wonder if they are still as swollen as when she had woken.

"Computer, lights to 50 percent,"

And even her own voice shocks her a little, because this is the first and only sound she has really paid attention to in the space, harsher and rougher - maybe for the same reason as her eyes are so sore.

The room lights up, and she has to squint against it before refocusing on reading through her messages. There are the usual patient reports sent in by her staff that take up the first two pages, then there is a ship's status update that calls her attention.

Crewmen be informed that, upon departing company with friendly Klingon Vessel, Enterprise enters a course of return to the USS Tiberius, following which the mission of patrol along the Neutral Zone is resumed. Arrival to Tiberius in: 0 hrs and 13 mins.

Somersaults suddenly take over her stomach - transfer anxiety - and she takes a second to remember why this alarms her.

Will.

Her mind lands on his name like a deadweight, though she tries her hardest not to dwell, not to open herself out and reach for him now that he is much nearer than before. She closes the message, tries to focus instead on remembering who their visitors had been, sure that she can remember her entire life with complete clarity up until that point.

I wish to tell you something Deanna, something which I tell my son

She can hear him speaking to her as though he is at her back, but knows this is now impossible.

Do not live your life with one foot in the ocean, and the other on dry land, constant to neither

And there is talk of the ocean again, and she lets a shiver take her spine as she turns off the terminal, wondering if she has begun to fixate on these things that carry her away in the way the ocean does too. She cannot be sure, but the memory of her father telling her to drown it, and somebody else's telling her not to, surely cannot be a coincidence.

Her feet pick carefully over to the replicator, full of mixed signals, and maybe this is just a reflection of her own indecision. Something tells her that maybe she does want the child, as if out of nowhere, and she shuts it down with an immediate second thought, unsure if this is the message she is being sent.

Without real thought or appetite, she scrolls down the breakfast selection, remembering how all those weeks ago she had no indecision at all.

She had lied openly to Beverly, to Will and to the Captain, telling them she had made her decision when she had not, hours after sitting alone with a mug of tea as Will slept in her bed for the first time in years, meditating over the skill she knew she possessed. It does not bear thinking about now, not when the child is large and moving and impossible to consider removing any other way than alive.

It kicks her sharply in the ribs, and she considers instead that maybe it is made from blades, giving in and picking out an old Betazoid breakfast that is usually for children - she is in the mood for something which will bring her back more fond memories than she has.

A plate materialises, and it is something that has been beyond Beverly's reach, something which tastes almost exactly as if it was home cooked, and not of all the individual atoms it is compiled of.

Really, it is too much to ask of herself to partake with joy, anymore, when she spears the top of a pastry dome with her fork, spearing another memory along with it. This time, she is just a girl, and it is exactly what she had hoped for.

She's walking away from the replicator when she freezes in one spot, becomes herself another memory of more forgotten things.

There are arms keeping her up, for a split second, and suddenly the stinging in her eyes makes more sense, the sound of her own tears garbled in her ears. It leaves before she can find any one single voice, and she has to sit down lest she fall.

The armchair that smells like him is closest, and she lowers herself down with one hand on its arm and the other holding the plate level in front of her, trying to remain steady when it is an impossibility.

Cushions welcome her, but they are not nearly enough support to lean back on, so she finds herself sitting more squarely on its edge with the plate now resting over her middle, where the child crests.

Taking a bite from the centre of the pastry, the memory at last leaves her completely until she is steady, and more able to focus on the way ooda berry jam explodes into her mouth, along with chips of chalav and ripe shezif, all the flavours of a childhood much missed.

Children like it because it is sweet, and she swallows down, appreciating it now as an adult, because it is tart - such is the nature of perception.

She looks around herself now, expecting maybe to see a picnic blanket and a rolling field, but instead it is only the desolation of her own quarters, where the floor is overrun in things she cannot recall leaving there. She cannot even consider how she had ever let it get on top of her this way, being so usually neat.

Is this the mark of a healthy mind?

She swallows tightly again, having forgotten to replicate a drink, because this is not her question. A hand balances the plate while her other rubs harshly against her eyes again, where they itch a little still but are not quite so puffy as before.

There isn't an answer to this question that she can think of now that she couldn't think of when she was first asked.

Her hand travels back to take another forkful of food, and already the sight of it has begun to trouble her, already it is filling her stomach where its capacity is diminished. She chews and swallows anyway, listening to a thousand different times her own mouth has told another about the importance of having a good relationship with food, about how simple it is to slip into a neurosis without noticing.

She swallows a second time, then sets the plate down on the table, thinking maybe it is too late to try to stop.

Then, she is confronted with a decision she isn't sure how to make, being that she has nowhere to be for a while: what is she to do with her day? If she stays in her quarters then she'll only stew here, only end up being accused of retreating again, and this time she hears Picard's voice accusing her of the same thing.

Sitting becomes tiresome, so she stands abruptly and looks around, nothing to really do here anyway, her eyes searching the space for that comm badge she never can recall taking off.

Something gleams at her across the room, from the bench beneath the viewport, behind a scattered cushion and a sheet of flat pack instructions she never bothered to read. A strange place for it to end up, she thinks, but does not dwell.

It chirrups just as she reaches out to grab it up, after crossing the room, and she hears a familiar voice in the space.

"Crusher to Troi,"

She hesitates.

"Deanna are you there?"

A jittery finger pushes down on the metal.

"Yes, Beverly, hello,"

Even to herself her voice sounds strained still, hurried and distracted all in one space.

"Sorry am I interrupting something?"

The doctor sounds concerned, the voice growing louder as she pins the badge gently to the thicker fabric over her chest.

"No not at all, I was just - eating,"

Deanna reasons aloud, throwing a guilty look back at the rest of her breakfast, self-conscious all of a sudden that she is policed, even in her own quarters. It is likely that the Doctor was sent an alert the second her replicator whirred into motion, such is the concern.

"Is everything okay, you were supposed to come back into sickbay this morning?"

The voice is a further extension of this concern, and it is harder to hide than she thinks. All it takes is a moment of no response for Beverly to go on asking questions.

"Did you only just get up?"

Deanna makes a fast decision about what is healthy.

"I'm sorry, I should have called you, I've had so many reports to approve and send off, I must have let time get away from me."

The lie is unusually crisp, and flows much better than her voice had before, not so harsh now, more purposeful.

She feels immediately that Beverly believes it, but there is another issue at hand.

"Well, I'm getting a request through from a Doctor Schreiber aboard the Tiberius, he's… he's heard about you Deanna, says he can help."

The girl has to take a sharp breath, unsteady, not having realised they were here, that the Enterprise had yet dropped out of warp. Outside the viewport window, though, the stars are standing still.

"Help?"

She echoes.

"He's an research focused OB-GYN, he specialises in -"

On the end of the line she hears Beverly pause, then there is a noise like shuffling feet and voices becoming distant, until a door shuts closeby.

"- in inter-species fetal development."

Deanna sighs aloud, knowing that the woman will hear, waiting for a thought to occur to her that is not coloured white hot in sudden and blinding rage.

"You know that I do not want to become a spectacle, Doctor,"

She says at last, rubbing a hand over her forehead for the ever-changing mood of this strange day, then she turns to walk over to the replicator for some water at last, now that there is an ache behind her eyes.

"He really seems like he can help me out here, Deanna,"

Beverly says hopefully, and there is another pause as the replicator whirrs into existence a tall glass, and somebody else's voice speaks, much further away.

Please, tell me how to help you,

But still, she isn't sure that it really belongs to him.

"Yes - yes, fine,"

Deanna blurts finally, just as she feels the Doctor is about to send another - weaker - argument. She picks up the certain rush of joy, though it is coloured with dread.

"But I am not a rat, Beverly, please make sure he knows this,"

She adds, taking a sip from the top of her glass, using the time to wonder for a moment how this new Doctor has heard about her.

Whatever she may feel towards the man, she doubts very much it was Will.

"Excellent,"

Crusher responds, ignoring her comment so brusquely, a relieved smile quite clearly in her voice.

"I'll let him know he's free to beam aboard anytime, make sure you come in this afternoon, Crusher out,"

She rambles, in a hurry to make preparations, to show off - perhaps he is an important man, and Deanna just has no idea.

The connection cuts off, and she has no chance to say anything back, to maybe remind her again that she is not to be experimented on, and nor is this new Doctor to take over her care, now that she is comfortable with Beverly finally.

She breathes out harshly, these four walls just about the only space where she trusts herself to do so, her knees feeling weak again; she thinks she may never get the balance right.

Will has not returned to the ship yet, and for this she is thankful, taking another drink of water to quell the rising pressure in her head after having opened out her mind to find him.

After all this time, she still can't seem to let go of him, she's never been able to even when it is just so easy for him to do. She had been warned - her mother, even Mr Homm, and gods, she ought to have listened when they told her it was a burden - to be Imzadi.

But at the time, she had thought finally that there was something special inside her, something that wasn't another handicap, something that the rest of Betazed could look up at her for, and not down.

She doesn't hate her home, but they never had much love for her blood.

Being Imzadi, she understands now, does not make her special, if anything it invites pity, for how little control fate has given her over her heart.

And at least she can control her mind.

She takes another gulp of water, then lets the glass down heavily back in the replicator shelf, the only spare surface left anymore, closing up her mind like it is a glass dome - she can see out so clearly to who is there, but she cannot hear a single word they say.

Everybody is no longer three dimensional, they are flat faces with barely any colour to tell them apart, and she hates to have to do it to herself, but lately, it is necessary.

A thought takes her, that maybe this Schreiber will be able to help her after all, just as a sudden spasm sends a stab of pain in the right side of her stomach, and she is forced to double against the wall for support.

She winces, and suddenly, her stinging eyes make sense.

I'm scared, I'm so scared,

The sound is stuck in her throat along with a cry that she has been holding in for the sake of nobody at all. A hand reaches for beneath her stomach, and that stabbing pain returns, catches her off-guard, and the cry dislodges.

Tell me how to make it okay,

She takes a deep breath in through her nose as she has been taught to do, holds it until there is not so much pain as before, then lets it out slowly when she is stabbed for a third time. This pattern goes on for a little while longer, a few minutes, she loses track of time, trying to follow along with this pattern whilst holding back the full force of recall.

I never leave a crying woman Counselor,

And she is sure now of exactly what had transpired of the night before she woke, how each of the words he had said had been so poorly aimed, how she had been absent until she wasn't, how everything beyond that is not worth remembering. She still cannot quite recall what had happened to lead her from his arms and into her own bed, but something tells her that this is a memory she will never get back at all.

Picard had been all that she has missed in Will, and none of it all, for at least 3 seconds she had felt completely secure, and then adrift, like something of emotional whiplash she has never felt within her own mind before.

Finally, she is able to breathe deeply one last steadying time, and push herself away from the wall to stand straight, the pain forgotten in all this pensive thought.

I am always in pain Captain,

She swallows, blinks her opening eyes, then tries to remember what it was she was thinking about all those minutes ago. There is a sting in the skin on the other side of her stomach.

Sickbay.

Reluctantly, she goes in search of underwear, bothering only for the sake of a stranger who she does not know, a man, even, who her gut is telling her she ought be wary of.

For all the mess on the floor, she can say one thing, and that is that there is no single pair of stray panties anywhere, given that she has had to replicate some for the first time, now that all she seems to do is spend time in the company of doctors, and people of very different customs.

Her mother would be aghast, she's sure, to find her now concealing herself in this way, given that it perhaps remains as her final form of liberation - though maybe that is going too far.

On her way back from the closet, she does a double take of her reflection, only now considering that she ought to do something about her eyes. They are now only perhaps a little bloodshot, and itching still, but the swelling is down to nought but a puffiness that hangs a crescent moon of fatigue beneath them both, and she is satisfied that she looks just about as casual as she always does.

A red lipstick tube stares at her - she has not worn any for a long time.

She does not intend to start again now.

By the sound of her bare feet slapping against one exposed tile on the bathroom floor, she is forgetting something crucial, and it takes her until she is nearly to the corridor, to land on shoes.

No idea when she became so scattered, she backtracks to the living room to root out a pair of sandals that hide behind a sofa cushion, fairly certain she will be unable to accommodate heels any longer.

Then, finally, with shoes and her comm badge and only some of her faculties, she is at last leaving the safety that is her quarters, and out into an unknown that is now just a little scarier than before.