After only a few moments, the stylized Starfleet insignia blinked off Deanna's holoprojected computer screen to be replaced by her best friend's familiar face. Long, styled red hair—she'd never conceded to gray—fell over the crimson-accented shoulders of a Starfleet captain's uniform as Beverly Crusher leaned forward and beamed. "Deanna!"

"Hello, Beverly. Is this a good time to call?"

"Yes, it's perfect, I've just come off shift. What's going on?" The doctor's smile faded as she took in Deanna's serious expression, and she set down the tea mug she'd been holding. Unbidden, her mind leapt to the worst. "Is Kestra—"

"Hi, Aunt Beverly." Before Deanna could reply, the towheaded teen, munching an apple, popped her head into view and dropped into the seat next to her mother. There wasn't a direct familial relationship there, of course, and the truth was—though she'd be loath to admit it—Beverly was old enough to be Kestra's grandmother. But as she was the closest thing either of Kestra's parents had ever really known to a sister, the honorific had been bestowed more or less immediately upon Thad's birth, and stuck. "Are you still in the Beta Maris sector on that Hranayan relief effort?"

Beverly relaxed again. "Yes, but not for much longer. I'll have to fill you in when I come visit, but we've got the situation under control now." She raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of herbal tea. "You are quite well informed on the Gregor Mendel's mission profile, young lady."

Kestra grinned knowingly, taking another bite of her apple. "I have my sources."

"I'm sure you do," Beverly said dryly, exchanging an amused look with Deanna. "Well, it's wonderful to hear from you. How's my favorite Wild Girl doing with her hunting?"

"Good." Her blue eyes widened with sudden eagerness. "Oh! The other day I got a bunnicorn for Dad to make sausage for our pizza with—" She stopped, catching a strong warning sense from her mother that matched her pointed look. "What?"

"Kestra, we—Aunt Beverly and I—need to talk by ourselves. Go on outside, maybe you can find something else for us for dinner tonight."

"But, Mom." Kestra was indignant. "Deldeth m'rant! Eleth kedar."

Deanna folded her arms, unmoved. "Go," she repeated patiently, in the same invented tongue. With a grudging huff of protest, the teen crossed the room, grabbed her bow from a corner and slung a quiver of arrows over one shoulder. Deanna watched until she was out of sight in the yard, then turned back to the screen. Even as they shared another look of wry understanding, she could see renewed wariness in Beverly's posture.

She braced herself and dove right in. "It's Jean-Luc."

The fine lines around the doctor's eyes tightened, just a bit.

Jean-Luc...

He'd said goodbye over subspace. For the briefest moment, as he'd told her of his promotion, his new mission, she had thought he would ask her to come with him…

And then the moment was gone, and he was gone.

Off the ship.

Out of her life.

These things happened, of course. Transfers. Moves. Retirements. Breakups. It wasn't uncommon; it was the most common thing in the galaxy, really. Out of sight, out of mind. Relationships of all kinds—professional, friendly, platonic, romantic—were easy to form and nurture when you could meet or talk daily. But cultivating them in absentia took effort, and effort was a hard thing for most people to sustain even with the best of intentions. With time and distance, they tended to fade and wither like unwatered vines.

If the best of intentions weren't present to begin with, then the end of a relationship could be quite abrupt indeed. And while one might expect this with mere acquaintances or colleagues, one might reasonably not expect this from one's closest friend of thirty-five years.

She had tried, for awhile, to stay in touch, but it became painfully clear that Jean-Luc, for whatever his reasons, had moved on, had decided he no longer cared to expend any effort to keep her in his life. So she moved on as well. Kept tabs on him from afar, occasionally, through the years of the Romulan rescue efforts through to the Mars catastrophe and his retreat home to Earth; but she respected his evident wishes.

And she was fine—more than fine. She had friends. Adopted family. Command of her own ship. Professional respect. She had fulfillment.

But what she never had—what still provoked a blunted stab of bitterness every time an old memory floated to mind—was any reason why she no longer had any relationship of any kind with Jean-Luc Picard. Because aside from her son, he had been the most important person in her life for decades.

And then he wasn't.

Beverly laced her fingers together on her lap and kept her voice even. "You've heard from him recently?"

The counselor nodded, her heart aching as it did every time she reflected on her friend's hurt, no matter how old, or how carefully controlled. "He came here, actually, two days ago."

Her eyes widened slightly at the unexpected reply. "To Nepenthe?" He hadn't even come for the funeral, only sent condolences. As far as she knew, he hadn't left Earth since his retirement.

"Yes." Deanna quickly filled her in on Soji's story and the threat to her homeworld, how Picard had managed to escape here from the Borg cube, and the ship-for-hire that was taking them the rest of the way. "It truly was wonderful to see him again—for Kestra to see him, too," she admitted, with a wistful smile.

"Oh, Deanna. I'm so glad he came to you," Beverly told her, sincerely. She knew Jean-Luc had kept in touch at least occasionally over subspace with Deanna and Will, even Geordi and Worf to an extent, over the years, and she'd never begrudged them that. Deanna knew how she felt and was always sensitive—of course she was—if the subject happened to come up.

But this wasn't about her, of course, and if Deanna was calling to tell her this now… "There's something else," she realized.

The empath hesitated. "Beverly, I sensed it when he arrived," she said gently. "He's not well. He protested, of course, and in many, even most ways, he seems fine. But he's—declining—and I don't think he has much time left."

Beverly's heart stopped in her chest for a moment, and a cold feeling expanded outward as it began to beat again. "What's the diagnosis?" she asked, mildly surprised, though maybe she shouldn't have been, at how clinical, detached, her own voice sounded.

"Not confirmed, but it's neurological, probably Irumodic syndrome."

"My God," she murmured. So it had finally happened—the parietal lobe defect she'd found in her neural scans, all those years ago on the Enterprise. There had always been a chance nothing serious would come of it, and a part of her must have believed that nothing ever would. The future Q had shown Jean-Luc had never come to pass, after all, so there was no reason to expect the worst. But she'd always known it was more probable than not.

"Will's working on getting Starfleet to provide assistance now. I don't know that there's anything we can do for him, but Will and I wanted to call you, at least, because..."

Because Jean-Luc would never have said anything himself, Beverly completed the thought silently. He had said goodbye all those years ago and aside from a handful of cordial interactions thereafter, that was apparently good enough for him.

But a part of her had never really said goodbye in return. Had that part of her still held out hope that someday there might be a reconciliation of sorts, a rekindling of the deep friendship—the occasional flirting with more—they'd shared for half her lifetime? Perhaps it had been foolish. Perhaps not. Either way, the end of the wondering, of the hope, of the disappointment, of all of it, appeared to be at hand.

The end.

Beverly fiddled with the tea mug in her hands for a long moment, then lifted her gaze, gave a brittle smile. "You know, Deanna, after all this time, I wouldn't have expected to feel so much—whatever this is," she admitted. "Damn."

"It's only natural," Deanna said softly. "You had something very special, for a long time."

"But it wasn't enough, was it?" They'd had this conversation more than a handful of times over the years, and Beverly shook her head, frustrated. "Still, I never thought he'd actually—not this way…"

She was about to ask if Deanna thought it would be wise, or welcome, to try to talk to Jean-Luc herself somehow, when a motion over Deanna's shoulder caught her eye. Both women looked back to see the tall figure entering the room.

Will Riker dropped a kiss on his wife's forehead as he settled into the chair next to her, then smiled a bit wearily at his friend on the screen. "Beverly, so glad to see you. Deanna filled you in?"

"You too, Will." Her tight smile answered his question without words.

Deanna cast another sympathetic glance at her friend and then turned her focus to Will. "Did you get through to the admiral? What did she say?"

Riker nodded and cocked his head to one side. "She said, and I quote, that Jean-Luc is a 'pain in the ass.'"

"She probably said more than that," Beverly muttered. Kirsten Clancy had been a thorn in her own side for years, and occasionally she suspected part of it—aside from Beverly's admitted tendency to be a rather strident advocate for her crew and her patients, politics be damned—was driven by her own past close association with Jean-Luc, whom she held in evident contempt.

Will shot her a darkly amused look. "All right, I may have edited that a little," he conceded. "But she agreed his evidence for the Romulan threat was worrying, so she was planning on sending a fleet to Deep Space Twelve." Leaning against the arm of his chair, he looked at Deanna, blue eyes intense. "I think we need to jump the gun and head to the Ghulion system instead. If Kestra could find the right system so quickly, the Tal Shiar will too."

We… "You're going to go," Deanna realized.

He knew she had already sensed his resolve, and hoped she would understand. "The Hood is in our system and can get me to the fleet by tomorrow. Clancy will give me the Zheng He for the duration."

There was a time, not long ago, when she—as a ship's counselor, as a full Starfleet commander—would never have hesitated to take on a new mission, especially alongside her imzadi...but that time was past. But while part of her wished he would stay home, she knew better than anyone why it was impossible. The Romulans represented a threat to innocent beings, to the entire Federation, and Will needed to be there to confront it. What was it he'd told her he said to Jean-Luc the other day? If only ignorance of danger was all it took to keep it away from the people we love. Their home here was a kind of paradise, but from the beginning, it had never been unsullied. So she could pretend all would be well if he stayed here, but it wouldn't be true. And Deanna Troi had never been one to shy away from the truth, no matter how hard.

She took a deep breath and looked at Will steadily. "Then you'd better get ready, Captain Riker."

Riker squeezed her arm in silent thanks, then turned to the screen. "We could use your help too, Beverly."

Beverly drew back in some surprise. "Will, the Gregor Mendel is hardly a combat-ready vessel," she protested.

"We need to make a show of force, but you wouldn't need to fight," he insisted. "The Romulans aren't really going to incite all-out war with the Federation. You know they're many things, but they're not insane."

"Let's all hope not, at any rate. Well, if things do go south, you could use a medical ship." She pressed her lips together, considering, then had to ask another question first: "Did Jean-Luc tell you anything about his prognosis?"

Bemused, Deanna frowned. "No. But he believes it's incurable, so it's what he must have been told. It just seemed to be advancing quickly." She tilted her head. "Weren't you researching therapies and cures for Irumodic and related syndromes for a time?"

"Yes, but the most promising avenues of research—particular cybernetic interventions—dried up a long time ago, after Mars," Beverly said, tapping a finger on her desk as she remembered. "Because of the synth ban…" Her eyes flicked between Deanna and Will, a sudden sinking feeling in her chest. "This home planet of Soji's...she's a Soong-type android? There are others?"

Deanna bit the inside of her cheek to keep her emotions contained as she understood Beverly's question. The implications had already hit her and Will before Soji's departure. "I'm not entirely clear whether Maddox had a different method of creating her, but yes, it's possible."

"I'm sorry," Beverly murmured, cursing the cosmic unfairness of the universe and wishing she could reach out through subspace and wrap her friend in an embrace. Damn it. A whole planet full of artificial beings with exactly the type of positronic matrices that could possibly have saved Deanna and Will's beloved son, and none of them had even known.

Deanna shrugged and smiled bravely. "Maddox was working illegally, and in secret. There's no way we, or you, could ever have known about it. We can't change the past." But as it so often did, her heart felt like it would explode in her chest. Her sweet, brilliant boy...he should have had so much more time.

Riker swallowed hard and tried to stay focused on Beverly's earlier train of thought. "How close were you? Maybe something on Soji's planet could still be useful to treating Jean-Luc," he offered.

"It's possible," Beverly said slowly, mind racing as she thought back. Actually, it was more than possible. She'd been his physician as long, or longer, than anyone; she knew the defect that had led to this point, knew where she'd left off in her research. It might be irrational to drop everything and rush to help her old friends—help Jean-Luc—like this, but she knew, with sudden certainty, that like Will, she couldn't do anything else.

She straightened up, steely resolve setting in. "I'll wind up our mission here immediately. Send me the coordinates for the rendezvous as soon as you have them, and the Gregor Mendel will join the fleet as soon as we can get there," she promised.

Riker met her determined gaze, a ghost of a smile crossing his face. "Thank you, Captain," he said. "We'll be glad to have you."

Beverly nodded once, decisively, then let affection slip into her voice as she glanced her friend up and down. Not that she didn't enjoy Will's culinary offerings whenever she visited, but those flour and grease stains... "Of course, that apron isn't exactly regulation," she advised.

A small laugh escaped Deanna in spite of herself as she assessed her husband's typically scruffy attire, not to mention unkempt, more-salt-than-pepper hair and beard; Will in retirement was rather a bit less...polished...than Will in command of a starship.

Riker pretended offense at both women's skeptical looks for a moment, before giving in and shooting Beverly a mock salute. "Duly noted, ma'am."

Beverly smiled, mind already turning towards the mission ahead of them. "Then I'll see you soon. Crusher out."