For anybody who was invested in this story 2 years ago, I'd like to apologise for leaving you hanging so long. If it hadn't been for a recent review turning up in my e-mails this past week I probably wouldn't have come back to this but here I am, so thank you for reminding me to finish what I started. Not that we haven't all been having just the strangest time lately watching the world go to pieces, but I have been at the beginning the middle and the end of a whole crock of shit for these 2 years, and finishing a fanfic I started in highschool was less important to me than having leukemia was. If that gives me away to somebody reading this who knows me then I apologise.
I was embarrassed at first to be publishing a fanfic because writing is very personal to me, but then I realised the only thing more embarrassing than writing a fanfic is not finishing it, so even if I never accomplish anything else, I will accomplish this - I think - don't hold me to it.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed while I was on hiatus, thanks to the commenter who jogged my conscience, and thanks to those who take the time to comment on this new chapter - I am unbelievably grateful to be back.
People have been listening to dead men sing for generations.
It's maybe not so much a reverence, but the feeling that, from beyond the grave, one can still have his voice heard resonating across the galaxy.
Frank Sinatra dreamed of the stars, but never once did he dream they were so full, that they now respire to the sound of his voice, along with a million others.
And Cash thought that God would damn him and everybody else, just wanted to be wherever his love was, wherever she had gone he was happy to follow. Now they both may as well be stars themselves, for all the words they left behind in their wake; and dead men will continue to sing until there is nobody left to listen.
And then I see a darkness.
This melancholy that has drawn its velvet cloak around him seems to have come from nowhere, and he himself is resounding with the words of dead men, and the darkness they heed.
Deanna must be sleeping by now, it cannot be her.
And never, ever think of counting sheep.
A sting in the pad of his thumb, and he pulls it away shocked, looking down to where a fresh mug of tea sits balanced on his crossed knee.
There is something foreboding in the air, something more than melancholy, something that hadn't even been inside him an hour ago.
Deanna must be sleeping, she had rocked herself into oblivion by the time they said goodnight, her eyelids drooping so heavily that the others had already snook away. He tucked a blanket around her himself, there is no way she has resurrected herself and fills her mind now with all these things his is filled with too.
No, whatever this is, it is his alone.
He stands, sucking briefly on his thumb with the mug in his other hand, pacing to face out of the window at where the stars have ceased to blur past them.
The shining tail end of the Tiberius' port nacelle swims at the very edge of his vision, perfectly suspended, and he wonders who there is still awake, who else there is up at this ungodly hour.
Maybe Will, or maybe he has passed out on top of a woman who's never had the pleasure before, maybe she is on top of him.
He rubs the old age on his head, and when did he become so cynical?
My poor old heart ain't gaining any -
The computer silences his music, and dead men don't sing anymore.
A chiming at his desk terminal takes over the new silence.
"Incoming communique from the Consulate of Betazed,"
He is told, and the voice is enough to startle him into moving over to silence it.
Betazed?
The consulate?
And he reaches the desk, drops down his mug, the realisation railing into him like the palm that he drags across his face in horror.
Strange urgency has him accepting the call before he can run.
"Jean-luc, oh dear is that you? I just have no idea how these darned things work - helloo, Jean-luc?"
Her voice is a song that Deanna has never sung before, and he swallows, removing the hand to reveal his face, wondering how in all the heavens someone so reserved was raised by -
"Lwaxana!"
Picard calls back, the thought petering away into nothing but the sight of the woman's face on such a small screen, nose pressed tight to the frame, with hair spilling out all around her head like a halo.
There is a fresh morning sun glowing in the back of her eyes, lighting up her whole face.
"To what do I owe this pleasure?"
He goes on, and a breeze picks up the jewels around Lwaxana's neck, chiming as if they were meant to make no other sound.
She pulls back, squinting into the lens as if she is staring directly into his eyes, as if there are not millions of lightyears separating them.
"Jean-luc!"
Lwaxana exclaims, his name sickly sweet from her mouth; a sternness then takes over her face, changing her in one stomach turning instant.
"You've been in my house,"
She tells him shrewdly, narrowed eyes and pursed lips that threaten to spill into that friendly smile she enjoys so much of her own expression.
"I'm not sure I, uh -"
Picard struggles to respond, unaware of how much she knows, reaching out behind him deftly to draw the desk chair closer in order for him to sit down.
Their stare never breaks.
"That wasn't a question Jean-luc, my sofa just reeks of your cologne,"
Lwaxana exaggerates, flitting her lashes at him.
"Cologne? I -"
He stutters, blinking to break the contact for a second of thought.
"I don't wear cologne."
Another breeze picks up the lightest of her necklaces, plays it's music again, and the woman tips her head, disappointed that he won't play along.
"Well, then it must be your natural scent,"
She starts, reaching a long finger to twist the thick chain back into place against her collarbone.
"That or fear - did my wayward daughter not make you feel welcome?"
Picard chokes on the sip of tea he had brought to his lips, and steadies the mug between both his hands to regard her from above it, clearing his throat before he responds.
"Deanna made me feel perfectly welcome, there was no fear,"
He tells her somewhat indignantly, wondering if she even knows her daughter at all, calling her wayward when she is merely wilful.
"Well I just thought given how William has stunk up the place too, maybe she was in no mood to entertain,"
Lwaxana babbles on, brushing her hand up along her neck, behind her hairline and through to the end of one ringlet of hair, twirling it thoughtfully in her fingers.
He has to blink again, do a double take almost, wondering how much she knows of what has happened.
"She's spoken to you about him?"
"Not a word,"
She responds fast, a smug smile now made of shallow thought.
"Where William goes, my daughter's broken heart usually follows - what has the commander done this time?"
Picard swallows, frees one hand to run over his head again, scratching right at the swell just to occupy his time, with no idea at all what he should say.
What has he done?
The truth is they've no idea.
"Maybe you should be having this conversation with Deanna instead, I'm really not the person to ask,"
He tells her helplessly, knowing it's futile to bother trying to get her to leave him alone; he lifts the mug to his lips, and the hand drops down to join it again.
"You know her mind much better than me, after all,"
He adds once he's swallowed, and there has been no further sound from the woman. From the meter away from her face he sits, and the millions of lightyears away her body is from his, he can see that Lwaxana's face has drawn into more than just a few tight lines at her temples, though he's no idea what this means for him.
"Jean-luc,"
The woman says at last, chiming his name in the way one would call a small child.
"You know very well that my daughter is not the most willing to speak with her mother about these things,"
She admonishes, then a lighter sense takes over her, never one to dwell in these darker thoughts that seem to swallow Deanna so readily lately.
"Oh that girl,"
Lwaxana breezes out.
"She's always scribbling away."
He frowns, and so she goes on, as if it's obvious.
"I don't need her mind, Captain, it's written all over my house."
The wind steals her jewels again, and this time she does not bother holding them down, let's them tinkle instead like the sound is precious music. Her hair lifts too, but her expression remains one of humoured disappointment, knowing there is not much now she can do to change who Deanna has become.
"I don't understand,"
Picard responds, knowing nothing of scribbling, or these things that have been written down, never having seen something so overt of the girl before.
Her mother sighs.
"I don't suppose she gave you a tour then, the silly girl."
"Well actually she was -"
Picard tries to defend her, but gets cut off anyway.
"I imagine then you would have seen her 'studio', she's always up in that room whenever something has happened, painting,"
She despairs, believing he had said nothing at all.
"Oh, and there are little scraps of paper all tucked into the back of that book she loves so much,"
Lwaxana goes on, squinting.
"What is it called again, oh I just have no clue, something human anyway."
"The Velveteen Rabbit,"
Picard tells her, reverently, the memory of her nose tucked tightly to its pages firm in his mind, it's title never far from recollection.
He takes another sip of tea as she continues rambling.
"Something like that, yes, full it is, I'm surprised there's any room left for any more of her little poems."
The woman purses her lips and tilts her head slightly, the breeze calmed now into nought more than the gentle rustling of leaves beyond her.
"They mean nothing much to me, Jean-luc, but the man's eyes are everywhere, I know he did something,"
Lwaxana concludes, looking briefly over the top of his head and to the dark quarters behind him, reserving comment on his loneliness.
"I still don't understand why you're calling me, you think I might know?"
The captain asks, confused still, reserving the knowledge he does have for a time when Deanna chooses to tell her mother herself, and not for this gossiping he has been called upon to do.
"I'm worried about my daughter, Jean-luc, is that such a bad thing, she won't return my calls and I know you and I have an understanding,"
She croons, and he shrinks a little at the thought of just what understanding it is they have, if any at all.
"My daughter can be such a heavy cloud, Captain, you must have felt something by now?"
He frowns, takes another drink of tea, wonders why people keep speaking of her like she is more than just a girl, like she's an ocean, a heavy cloud.
"I suppose,"
He begins, swallowing.
"She has been different lately, a little more reserved than usual."
A frown takes his lips and drags them down with his eyes.
He mumbles:
"It's harder to make her smile."
Beyond the camera angle, a cloud passes in front of the morning sun, and Lwaxana's face grows dark.
"Perhaps that has to do with what else is being kept from me,"
She muses, more reserved herself now, a calmness to her voice, even in it's translation.
"You wouldn't happen to know what that is, now would you, Jean-luc?"
Picard gulps, as if she knows that he does, knows that there is something much more terrible than Will going on here.
Something much more sinister.
"Ambassador Troi,"
He states emphatically, his turn now to voice disdain.
"Whatever I know is not mine to tell, and if you respect Deanna at all then you'll stop trying to pry it out of me, and go to her yourself."
His bluntness shocks even him, and Lwaxana pulls back from the screen, disgruntled, unused to people saying no to her, and unable to reach from this distance to just take what she wants from his mind.
The woman licks her lips, a glimmer of greed there.
"My daughter was not born with half a heart, Captain Picard,"
She tells him sadly, as if this is a fact.
"She is stubborn."
Lwaxana sits forward, the sun slowly crests her alabaster skin again, and the lines around her eyes that give her age away, rear with ugly heads.
"And she still believes in terribly silly things like love,"
She goes on, spite around the sentiment, that maybe she herself has not believed in love for such a very long time, that for Deanna to believe in it is unthinkable, silly.
"She still hasn't learnt that love is only for children, and fairytales, but never for her, not with this life she has chosen,"
The mother laments, and he could be fooled into thinking she doesn't care for her daughter at all, as he adjusts in his seat, swallowing another, much cooler mouthful of tea, wondering when everything became so cold.
Picard then opens his mouth like a fish caught up on dry land, no idea what more he can say to try to remedy this, as if his words mean nothing at all when she refuses to hear them.
"Lwaxana?"
He manages to call out at last, and her eyes glow a little against the sun where it shifts once more in shadow.
"Is there something I don't know - about Deanna?"
The words come slowly, unsure, and he shifts his feet beneath the desk to cross over one another, shoes rubbing against the deck in a sound he can barely hear.
"Is she special?"
He asks again, when it's clear that the woman's blinking eyes are not yet working around any kind of answer. Hell, he isn't even sure himself what he really means to ask, doesn't know where this creeping suspicion has come from.
Lwaxana promptly sits a little further back in her seat, blinking ceased, licking her lips again in some kind of smug glee that does not find expression in her; she is a frightfully difficult woman to read.
"Oh ho, we're all special in a way, Jean-luc,"
She tells him in measures of patronisation, nothing more than a human, and a child.
"No,"
He asserts, frowning.
"Is she different, can she do things?"
Lwaxana then frowns too, bringing a sweeping arm of fabric up to swipe a loose strand of hair from her eyes, every movement exaggerated.
"I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to insinuate,"
She tells him diplomatically, reaching to rest that same arm out along the top of the bench she reclines on, forced now to use body language to manipulate the man, when she cannot reach his mind.
Picard forces a languid smile onto his face, not one to be easily manipulated, knowing plenty about body language too.
"I've learnt a few things in the past weeks, some things have happened and they can't all be coincidence,"
He begins, smile settling into one thin grim line, forgetting these games she has him playing.
"I'm asking you: is there something about Deanna that's not like other Betazoids, is there something in your history that explains her?"
Lwaxana's face grows weary, understanding yet cautious, as if she hadn't quite expected this conversation to come back on her, always seeking out control. Then, like nothing has happened at all, that same tightness pulls weariness into something slightly more coy, pursed and withholding.
"History is a tricky thing now Jean-luc, I can't be the first to tell you that it's doomed to repeat."
There is a beat, another huffing wind, another passing shadow that takes her face for a second.
He runs his own hand over his face, setting aside the mug now almost empty, and drags a palm over the roughness of his cheeks, his sunken eyes, his pointing chin.
When did he get so old?
The late hour creeps up to him, his questions beginning to leave him drained. People keep talking to him in riddles, in half meanings, in fate and history and myth - they keep telling him things he's been told before.
"But what does that mean?"
Picard hisses, exasperated, his hands joining now in a knot of fists over his mouth, elbows planted firmly on the desktop.
The woman rolls her eyes, nothing more than a child herself, everyone just children in the end.
"It means -"
Lwaxana begins, sitting forward again, unable to stay too still, her extended arm reaching now to grasp for something beyond frame.
" - well, that whatever you've heard about the Troi's is probably true,"
She takes a breath.
"And if you think you've some idea about what my daughter can do, then that is probably true as well."
Another breeze catches her hair again, and it spirals upwards a little into fragments of caught light, as she pulls a glass of her own up to her lips, the liquid a deep and unfathomable colour.
Picard lets all the air go from his lungs in one moment, burning the fact that he had been holding it in just in case it would spoil the moment, and she would tell him nothing at all.
He blinks at her image on the viewscreen.
"I don't know if Deanna is different, even if she is special, all I do know is that my house smells of death since she's been around,"
Lwaxana states solemnly, and they are not dancing anymore, not holding on to any one expression or other that might keep this game going on.
It is not a game anymore, and she is serious when she considers how the distinct scent of death has brought her to him in veiled desperation.
"Will you tell me that she's okay, Jean-luc, even if it isn't true?"
She asks him, placing down the glass and pushing her face in tight to the frame, looking for intensity across all these light years of distance.
"Will you just promise me you're keeping watch over her?"
The mother goes on in masked desperation, and he finds himself caught up in just how raw she has become so quickly. Yes, maybe she hasn't been the most attentive, or supportive of Deanna, but she is still her mother, and somewhere in the back of her eyes there is more than simple concern, more than just love.
Lwaxana knows something, he can see it in the way her body has stopped moving in shapes to fool him, in the pitch of her voice when she speaks from honesty and not fallacy; the woman is terrified.
"Yes,"
Picard responds, meaning it more than he has done any number of promises before, meaning it so much that his hand shakes as he moves to hover over the cancel button at his console.
He gulps, fixes her with one last look.
"Yes, always, I promise."
