A/N: It's been so long since I uploaded anything I actually forgot how to do it. Super big shout out to Pokey314 whose message reached me at just the right time.
The Louvre
Trouble stood at Riker's door. When he opened it, Troi waited on the threshold. She hadn't touched the chime and she hadn't spoken to his mind (as she hadn't done for years). He just knew.
He stepped aside to let her in, wondering if she'd enter. Her reluctance could be measured in her slowness. She'd been there for a good fifteen seconds before he opened the door. He knew that too, the same way he'd known when she beamed off the Enterprise three hours ago.
Seeing him forced her into action.
"I don't know if I've done the right thing," she said as she walked in, heading straight to a chair. She sat, not waiting for his invitation.
"You've spoken with Federation Security?"
Riker shifted his trombone and took a seat opposite her. Federation Security had asked Troi to attend an interview in person to recount her attack. It should have been straightforward. Should have been.
"You withheld information." Riker didn't need to see her nod of confirmation. "Information you learned in Ten Forward."
"I couldn't say anything to the FS agent. I'm not sure I understand it properly."
Troi's discovery in Ten Forward had left her reeling. She was having trouble, hours later, making sense of it. "I've never experienced anything like it."
"Can you tell me?" Riker had his own revelation to relay after his latest unwelcome dream, but he wanted to hear from her first. He had been waiting for Troi's return. Beyond certain that an unexpected truth had unsettled her. That's why she was here.
She centered herself with a deep breath.
"It started not long after we stopped for Data's investigation. Just after we left Starbase 313. I wasn't aware of it at first. It was background noise. If I had to describe it, I'd call it an emotional disturbance. It got louder and clearer the more I focused on it. I thought it was you." She reached out and touched his hand. "I could tell you weren't happy. I felt so guilty for missing–"
"I didn't want you to worry." Riker quelled his own rising guilt. He'd been holding her at bay for weeks, developing his mental guards, thinking he was so clever. Never thinking that might cause pain to her.
Her hand still lay on his.
"You were so restless that evening I couldn't stand it any longer. I tried to find you but I got disoriented. That's when Sem found me. I still don't know why he struck me."
"Did you tell any of this to the FS?"
"I told them that I was looking for you when Sem found me. Not why."
It was personal information irrelevant to the situation. Wasn't it?
Why is Deanna so agitated?
"After I lost my empathic ability, the background noise vanished – and I didn't remember it. When my sense came back, it went through me like a sonic wave, bombarding me with all the emotions and memories I'd lost." She shuddered.
"This time it was more distinct, and I could tell it wasn't you at all. You were still there. You were still upset – you still are – please, don't feel you have to shield yourself from me, Will." She squeezed his hand. "But the disturbance was also there again. Louder than anything I could have imagined."
"Did you have any idea what it was?"
"I knew it was someone in pain, but it was unlike any pain I've ever felt before. I tracked it through the ship – this time I didn't get disoriented. I felt it clearly and it called to me. When I arrived at Ten Forward, I saw Sudamen first. He's got his own issues – but it wasn't him. It was her. It was the woman, Lark, all along."
Troi looked at Riker, her large eyes full of concern. "On the surface – in her own mind – nothing is wrong. She's genuine. But underneath she's two people. A chimera. Within her, something is screaming in pain in a way that's not natural at all. I've never felt anything like it."
"Can you think of anything that would cause what you've described?"
Troi shrugged. "A transporter accident? A genetic disorder? A virus that attacks the mind, maybe? There's nothing in the literature. But here's my other problem, Will. Even if I could help her, she's not my client. She's not in my care. I have no pastoral responsibility for her. She's no longer on the ship. It's not a crime to have an illness. And there's no suggestion of her being tied to any crime. I can't force her to seek counselling. And she may resent any offer I make."
Being an empath had its challenges. Troi could control her natural inclination to read people – no one would ever trust her in a poker match otherwise – but it took effort and couldn't be kept up continuously. It was like closing your eyes. Easy enough. Keeping them closed when you were startled or distracted was the real trick. No one expected an empath to suppress their natural abilities, but they needed a certain amount of discretion to build trust with their colleagues. Forcing a read on someone required consideration.
Riker knew she hated seeing people suffer when she could help. "Do you think counselling could help?"
"Maybe not counselling." Troi paused and Riker had to check himself from pushing her for more. "There might be some psionic techniques I could try. I'd suggest Beverly run some tests – except I don't think there's a scan precise enough to pick up the split. And that's another problem – I'm not sure I'd know the best way ethically to treat her. The techniques I'm thinking of aren't traditional therapeutic methods."
"Say all that's true – but her condition is the result of a crime? Perhaps an experiment?"
"It would still have to be her choice. You can't force a treatment on anyone. As for investigating a crime? If she doesn't know herself, and we have no evidence of the type of crime, we may end up doing more bad than good. I mentioned none of this to the FS. It's highly co-incidental and it's privileged information."
Riker was silent for a moment. "I'm not so sure a crime hasn't been committed."
He tapped the curve of the tuning slide on his trombone, putting his thoughts into words. "I swear Sudamen was trying to tell me something. Something he couldn't say out loud."
"What are you talking about?"
Riker described what he had seen in Ten Forward. He showed her the fist to chest motion Sudamen had made.
"What do you think it means?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. "I've thought about other things he said. He was concerned about the Bounty. Enough to ask about it. None of the other passengers did that." He stared at his trombone, looking for inspiration. "Computer – what song did Sudamen request from Lark in Ten Forward?"
"Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead."
He tapped his padd to bring up lyrics. "Maybe the song is a clue?"
Troi scanned the words, her eyes widening as she read. "If I'm reading this right, it's about authenticity. About a relationship that lacks authenticity. Is that what you get?"
"That's plausible."
A stray curl fell across Troi's face and she flicked it aside. Riker guessed the humidity on Ark11 had played havoc with her hair. She wore it straight a lot these days. Seeing it fight to escape the style she had imposed on it made Riker smile. The range of styles she had always intrigued him, yet he took secret delight in her curls in particular. Not that he'd tell her that.
"It's really quite sad, isn't it?" Troi said. "Can you believe how cavalier they were about plastics back then."
"Tossing it away like that." Riker agreed with a shake of his head. They both frowned at the thought.
"But it has to be more," Riker said. "Sudamen wasn't using a song about plastic to communicate a relationship problem."
"Wasn't he? Couldn't it be that simple?"
They stared at each other, ideas bouncing off each other. They were getting to the truth – Riker was sure.
"Could Lark have a symbiont?" he asked.
"She's not Trill, but I can't rule it out – it just doesn't feel the same to me. What if … what if Sudamen is trying to tell us about her? What do we know about them? What if everything we think we know about them is fake?"
"That would be incredibly hard to pull off. If they were working together – perhaps – but what about their companions? The Dunedin Institute checks out. Sudamen's employment record seems watertight. The number of people who would need to be in on the ruse makes it highly unlikely."
"What about Lark's employment record?"
Riker swiped some more at his padd. "Unremarkable. Nothing before her tenure at the Institute a year and a half ago except an academic transcript."
"Any publications?"
"Nothing before the Institute. That means nothing. Sudamen did say she was young."
Troi let the facts percolate. At the mention of Sudamen, she brought up his faculty page. It triggered nothing for her.
She turned the padd over in frustration.
"I did the right thing, didn't I? We don't have anything tying Sudamen or Lark to the attack on me or to the death of Festa Sem."
"You did the right thing," Riker said. "You're bound by ethics–"
"Which I'm violating by talking to you," she pointed out.
"You have suspicions. You're not precisely breaching any confidentiality."
"That doesn't make me feel better."
What she chose to do with her unique insight was up to her. She was the best one to know how to proceed. All he could offer was a promise. "Everything you tell me will stay with me."
She gave him a grateful look.
"But there is one thing we've overlooked," he said, remembering the final image from his nightmare after he had accidentally fallen asleep waiting for her. The glint of light striking the barb Sudamen had picked out of the ashes. Her ashes. "One thing that may tie everything together."
"What?"
"We're going to a museum planet. The Bounty and the Fleur-de-lys were transporting artifacts. Data finds evidence of a tritium nuclear explosion – that just shouldn't happen. Lark brought a millennial craze on board. Sem's barb and earring are historic. Damn, even Sem's suboptimal health and the manner of his death point to the past."
"The past is the one thing that ties everything together," she said cautiously. "But it's a loose tie, and these are coincidences that have easy explanations."
He nodded, knowing she was right. "We just have to find the thread that pulls them all together. And I'm sure something's not right about the whole thing. If we investigate this properly, we might find something that gives us a way to solve the problem without you revealing what you know."
"Considering I don't really know what it means yet, there's not a lot I can reveal, thank goodness."
Troi needed to find Lark; Riker wanted to find a way to communicate with Sudamen. They would need the help of their colleagues to pull it off.
When they finished devising their plan, Riker broached the topic they'd been avoiding for days.
"Now that we've settled that I guess that brings us to the other reason you're here?"
"Are you going to make me drag it out of you?" An edge crept into Troi's voice. The concern she had been feeling was replaced by traces of anger – or irritation.
He shook his head. "I know the futility of that."
"Why did you try to shut me out? Now, of all times?"
There was little point lying to her – or lying by omission. It was time to come clean.
"What happened on Betazed was traumatizing. After you returned, I nearly ordered you on sabbatical until Beverly told me not to interfere. I didn't want to add to your stress, so when mine started rising I thought I could shield you from it. I–I took a few training sessions in mental defences. I tried the advanced program. The instructor was surprised when I showed some aptitude... "
There was a new sort of sadness in Troi's eyes. "Learning how to build mental shields is useful–"
"But?"
She turned the question back on him. "But what made you feel you had to?"
"I was worried about you. I didn't want you to know I was trying to protect you. I didn't want you to think I was interfering."
"Much good it did you–" The edge in her voice took on a little bit of satisfaction.
"No one told me what could happen," he cut in. "I didn't realise there could be consequences."
"That's because normally there aren't," Troi said. "What were they – the consequences?"
"Visions."
She compelled him to answer, drawing the answers out of him with the strength of her gaze.
"Nightmares. About losing you – forever. In the most horrible ways possible. Every night. I started trying to avoid sleep just to stop them. I just never knew the bond could do that."
"It didn't," she said a little harshly. "Whatever you saw, that was all you."
"What does that mean?" he asked, stricken.
If she had any answers for him, she held them back. This was something he had to come to terms with himself.
"Deanna?"
"Hey," she said, taking his hand and putting her anger aside. "I'm not going anywhere. I promise."
"Any surveillance we put on Sudamen will have to be done sensitively – but we can handle it. If we discover anything, we'll inform Federation Security as soon as practicable, yes?"
Troi tried to focus on Christine Vale as the security chief suggested an approach for deploying security personnel, but her thoughts kept drifting to her conversation with Riker.
It wasn't quite the heart-to-heart she had been expecting. Riker's concern and subsequent attempts to shelter her hadn't surprised her, but his growing mental defences had. He'd never shown any interest before in the possibility of shutting her out. More surprising, though, was his body's own reaction to his defence mechanism. Shutting her out had come at a considerable cost – one he didn't realize he'd have to pay.
They hadn't said much more on the topic once the truth had tumbled out of him. There didn't seem to be much to say.
She had an idea why Riker had the reaction. She also had an idea Riker would need to work this out himself before he'd be ready to accept it.
Riker had called the meeting to discuss his tenuous theory that the past was the magic ingredient that somehow pulled the events of the last week together, while Troi announced the return of her empathic sense. Riker emphasized Sudamen's peculiar actions in Ten Forward; they both glossed over Troi's encounter with Lark.
Nor did they share why Troi planned to approach the millennial anthropologist travelling with Sudamen. It made sense that Troi would talk to the woman and other members of the Dunedin Institute. Now that her sense was back, she could glean more from interviewing people. Troi stayed quiet about her ulterior motive. She and Riker would gauge their next steps after that.
Earlier that morning everyone had seemed happy to hand this case over to Federation Security. Perhaps they were all having second thoughts. Maybe giving up so easily hadn't sat well with any of them.
Riker's theory was met with more acceptance than Troi had anticipated.
"The link you have drawn between events and people is intriguing," Data said. "Perhaps there is another lens I can apply to my previous analysis."
Doctor Crusher was relieved to hear Troi's empathic sense was back. She had been doing her own research.
"It's been bothering me," she admitted. "I didn't want to unduly worry you at the time. Empathic sensory loss is very rare. For you to have suffered twice – it bore more research."
Troi started. Should I be worried about everyone else worrying about me? First Will, now Beverly?
Aloud she said, "Did you find anything?"
"Given Commander Riker's observation about the common theme running through everything that's happened, this may come as no surprise. Do you remember feeling sick?"
Heat rushed into Troi's cheeks. She remembered vomiting. "I thought that was just the concussion."
"Maybe partly. But there's another possibility – one we didn't consider because it's an outdated treatment method.
"I think it's possible you were given a dose of an aerially administered neurodisrupter. One with no detectable scent but effective all the same."
"One that could interfere with my empathic ability? Wouldn't I have heard about this?"
"About a hundred years ago some pretty unsavory experiments were conducted on Tantalus Penal Colony. It's pretty hard to find information on – a lot of it was classified. It's possible empaths were subjected to tests designed to modify their abilities. There's nothing concrete in the records, but there is some suggestion the experiments were testing neurodisrupters.
"Why didn't the ship's sensor's pick up on this?"
"The diagnostic sensors can't detect everything, Deanna," the doctor said smoothly. She refrained from stating the obvious and Troi bit her lip.
"I'm sorry, Beverly. You're right, of course."
"We found nothing when we examined you three nights ago. I'd like to run another test – if you'll agree – but I'm not confident we'll find anything a second time around."
Picard had let his senior officers do all the talking up until this point.
"I don't like this, Number One. Nuclear detonations. Classified experiments and outlawed drugs. Someone's playing with things from the past that would have been better left in the past. Who?"
It was a simple reframing – but a powerful one. They all shared a look.
"An historian?" asked Crusher.
"An archeologist?" LaForge offered.
"A collector," said Vale.
"Someone with an interest in – no, a deep fascination with history," Riker said.
"Not just any type of history." Troi swallowed. "Dangerous history."
Picard nodded. "I hope it isn't so.
"Tell me again why we're not working with FS on this?" Vale asked. She looked from Riker to Troi, and Troi flinched.
Riker jumped in. "They need to hear these ideas – absolutely. But I have no way of knowing if Sudamen's actions relate to Festa Sem – or anything else. If he is in some sort of trouble, getting FS involved may create a risk for him or his party. Until we understand the situation better, I think we should be careful."
Riker didn't like concealing information but he had to respect Troi's position. The sooner they could get a clear idea of what was going on from Lark, the sooner they could share vital clues with their colleagues.
The Louvre, by Lorde
