Have We Met Before?

By laura Schiller

Based on: Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Picard

Copyright: Paramount +

/

"Have we met before?
Maybe in another life I knew you
Maybe if I try I'll see right through you
And I'll remember who we were
Have we met before?
Maybe in another time I loved you
Maybe you're the one that I would run to
Don't know why it's all a blur"

- Eric Nam & Sarah Barrios, "Have We Met Before?"

/

It was 2024, and Guinan had had just about enough of this nosy, stubborn old man following her around.

Why should she trust him? He was clearly desperate for her help, but she had seen so much desperation over the centuries that she'd learned not to let it move her. The fact that he knew things about her, like the name of her species or that she knew where to find the Watcher, only made her more suspicious, not less. The timeline damage he talked about was something she could feel in her own body, but she had only this stranger's word that he was trying to fix it. For all she knew, he might be responsible for the damage.

He seemed so familiar, though. He gave her an uncanny sense of what his people called déja vu every time their eyes met, but how was that possible?

She already had her back to him and was about to drive away when he spoke to her one last time.

"My name is Jean-Luc Picard," said the stranger.

Just like that, Guinan felt time unravel inside her head.

/

It was 1893, and Jean-Luc Picard was holding her.

There had been a fight. They'd confronted aliens who were feeding off human neural energy. Guinan had been knocked down by an explosion as the aliens escaped. She was lying on a cold cave floor, half sitting up, with his arm around her waist and her head leaning against his chest. The back of her skull throbbed with pain.

"Hold still," he said, pulling a scanning device out of his pocket.

"That's not from this time."

"No." He smiled. "And neither is this. Our doctor insisted." He took out another device. "You're bleeding. Come here, let me fix it."

He moved her braided hair aside to heal the cut. Her skin burned as it sterilized, then itched as it knit itself back together, but she held perfectly still.

"Where are the others?" She glanced around the empty cave. "Your crew?"

"Back in the twenty-fourth century."

"You … stayed?"

"You're hurt. I couldn't just leave you here alone."

He said this with a quiet, unshakeable certainty, the same way he had told her that they knew each other in the future. As if their friendship were a law of physics, a universal constant, like gravity. As if it were self-evident that he cared.

She'd only met this man a few days ago, but every instinct told her he could be trusted. When she lost consciousness again as he was signaling to his crew, it was with the sure belief that she was safe.

/

One hundred and twenty-seven Earth years later, time-sickness made Guinan's stomach cramp and her head spin. She cursed as two alternate versions of the same week unspooled in her mind's eye. In one, she'd run her literary salon and chatted with Sam Clemens just as usual; in the other, she'd met a starship captain and his shipmates from the 24th century and helped them save Earth from parasitic aliens.

She could remember Picard taking off his hat to her in greeting, looking at her with soft gray eyes as if she were his dearest friend in the galaxy, even though she'd never seen him before.

He was looking at her that way right now. He was older, but those eyes hadn't changed. He'd saved her life in that cave, and she hadn't even recognized him.

What the hell was wrong with this timeline? But whatever it was, if Picard talking to the Watcher could help, the least she could do was give him a ride.

"Get in," she ordered, swinging the car door open.

He climbed inside without another word.