It was an eerie tableau, set in the middle of a sun-drenched courtyard in front of a whitewashed building: a small crowd, frozen in evident shock, posed around two figures at the center arranged in a pietà. Jean-Luc Picard lay collapsed on the ground, his body stretched out, his head cradled in the lap of a slender woman whose dyed-golden hair spilled in a waterfall around her tear-streaked face.

In the stillness, Beverly Crusher was purposeful motion. She cut through the crowd in an instant, issuing the order to give him space with unmistakable authority. Shaken out of its collective paralysis, the crowd shuffled back automatically, some heads turning in surprise at the Starfleet captain's arrival.

As she dropped to one knee and bent over his prone figure, scanning for his vital signs, rapidly processing the readouts, a strange sense of déjà vu swept over her. Haven't we been here before, you and I? How many times in the past had he ended up on her operating table, fighting for his life, depending on her training, her skill, her ingenuity—depending on her—to bring him back from the brink? And she always had. Someday, inevitably, death would have his day.

But it wouldn't be today.

"Beverly?"

His vision, like everything else, was failing him, and Picard frowned, trying to focus on the new face that had appeared above him. Data wasn't real, he knew. Data was an illusion, a dream, an abstract imagining of a mind all too rapidly slipping its tethers to reality. Surely, she was also a dream. Wasn't she? "This isn't real," he murmured to himself. Their eyes met for an instant, and the dream felt real, but the blinding sunlight from above cast her figure in obscuring shadows. "Beverly. But you're not here."

"Oh, I very much am," she countered grimly, trying to ignore the flare of emotion at his words, focusing back on the holodisplay. This doesn't make sense, he's declining too fast. Swearing mentally at the cascading neurosynaptic failure evident from the readouts, Beverly looked up, seeking out the pale, round-faced woman with short blonde hair she'd seen with him on his ship. "You're—?"

"Agnes. Doctor Agnes Jurati," the woman stammered, wiping tears from her eyes as she stepped forward. "I've—been treating him the past week. But there isn't anything to be done."

Like hell. "What did you give him?" she demanded, tricorder clattering back into the medkit as she located and calibrated the neural stimulators, pressed them to Picard's forehead.

Jurati recovered some of her composure, answering clearly even as her eyes stayed locked in dismay on Picard's face. "Polisinephrine. Twenty cc's."

Beverly's eyes blazed. "Twenty—were you trying to kill him?"

"He ordered me to do it," Jurati said, a bit defensively, and repeated, "There wasn't anything else I could do."

You could have said no. But understanding that Jurati wasn't really to blame, Beverly swallowed the angry retort, silently grabbing a hypo to administer a counteragent for the worst of the effects. Jean-Luc, you self-sacrificing fool. Not many people ever did say no to Jean-Luc Picard, did they? Not many. Just the ones who cared enough to stand in the way of his damned stubbornness. She'd been one of them, once.

She still was.

The voices were arguing, but Picard wasn't convinced they were real, still less that they mattered, in the end. All these years he'd been biding his time, listlessly waiting for death, and yet now that death finally appeared to have come for him, he felt not peace and acquiescence, but fear—fear that he wasn't ready after all. Not yet. Not yet. He could no longer move his body, but his eyes sought the other, familiar face he knew was there. "Raffi," he whispered.

"I'm here, JL." His old friend's voice was choked with tears, and he felt her squeeze his hand tightly. "Hang in there, all right?"

Yes, Raffi was there. But he hadn't been, had he? All that time, he hadn't been there for her. It was important that he tell her, he thought distantly, as regret swirled in him and darkness beckoned. Because it was too late. Not yet… "Raffi, I'm sorry."

"I know," she said soothingly, trying to smile for him. So kind, he thought, and he tried to thank her, but there were no more words. "Stay with me, JL. All right? Help is here."

Help...Beverly, he understood. His lips moved soundlessly, and as the sun flashed through the strands of long red hair framing the face of the dream, he finally felt certain it was real.

The regret remained. But the fear began to fade, just a little, with the light.

Come on, come on. Throat tightening as she felt time running out, Beverly snapped the second, stabilizing compound, the updated peridaxon formulation she'd derived on the journey here, into her hypospray and pressed the injector to the side of his neck again. With the hiss of the medicine, Picard's eyes fluttered closed, and he finally relaxed into unconsciousness. She scanned him again, confirmed she had arrested the synaptic collapse and his pulse and respiration were now holding steady.

She closed her eyes and swallowed as she folded her tricorder shut. She'd bought him a little more time. Whether it would be enough…

"Is he—?"

Beverly met the tearful gaze of the woman—Raffi—still holding Jean-Luc, and managed a mute nod of reassurance.

There was a whisper of air as someone new crouched beside them and a strong hand squeezed her arm. She turned her head to meet familiar, artificial blue eyes, and gave a shaky exhalation of relief. She could have hugged him then and there. "Geordi."

"Hey, Doc," Geordi La Forge murmured, warm but serious, nodding at Picard. "All right now? Step two?"

"Step two," she affirmed, and admitted, "I wasn't expecting step one to go like this."

"Looks like you did just fine."

Beverly accepted his hand up as she pulled to a stand. Ignoring her protesting muscles, she looked at the crowd, found her command voice again. "I need to get the admiral to a medical facility, and he's not stable enough for transport to my ship," she announced firmly. "Are there facilities here?"

A few people stepped forward, one a young woman whose human appearance, Beverly realized with some unease, was belied by the ever-so-subtly synthetic look of those who surrounded her. Soji, she surmised. "We have a medbay. Who are you?" Though she looked shaken by all that had just transpired, there was a clear challenge in the woman's demeanor as she glanced between them and Picard, and Beverly was reminded this was still a first contact situation—which she just happened to have completely circumvented the protocol for. Well, Clancy won't be happy with me. Again.

"I'm Captain Beverly Crusher of the Federation starship Gregor Mendel," she said, holding her hands open at her side, careful to keep her tone and posture calm and unthreatening. She gave a tiny shake of her head to her alert security chief, Kolbe, standing behind the group, and he relaxed too. "I'm a medical doctor. This is Commander Geordi La Forge of the Enterprise."

Soji tilted her head in a brief, distinctive motion that immediately put Beverly in mind of what Deanna had told her of Soji's provenance. "You were Data's friends."

"That's right," Geordi said easily, exchanging a quick glance with Beverly, seemingly unfazed by the young android's recognition of them. "And we're Admiral Picard's friends, too. We're sorry for the abruptness of our arrival, but we think we can treat him, and we need your help."

"We find ourselves in the Federation's debt, Commander. And Picard's, too. We'll be happy to help however we can." With a firm look at Soji, a white-haired man stepped in front of her to take charge, extending one hand to La Forge.

As they shook his hand, the Starfleet officers tried to conceal their surprise. The older man's skin and eyes were human-toned, not pale yellow, and the face weathered with age rather than smooth, but he looked like no one so much as—

"No, not Data. Doctor Altan Soong," he said, with a lopsided smile that acknowledged their reactions. "It looks like I just keep making the acquaintance of my 'brother's' old crewmates, doesn't it? Ah, well. I'm the...administrator here on Coppelius. I'm sure we have much to discuss, but in the meantime, you can use our medbay." He held out an arm. "Please, this way."

With a relieved glance at Geordi, Beverly bent to pick up her tricorder, checking Jean-Luc's vitals one more time and making a slight adjustment to the stabilizers.

"Elnor?" Raffi called, motioning for help as she eased Picard to the ground, stroking his arm comfortingly. A striking young Romulan with upswept eyebrows and long hair tied back in a formal knot appeared.

"I will carry him," he declared, lifting Picard's frail figure with surprising strength and care.

Beverly nodded her thanks, falling into step behind them as Soong, Soji, and Jurati led the way inside the Coppelius main compound. While Geordi took the lead on speaking with Soong, her eyes stayed fixed on Jean-Luc, breathing steadily in the Romulan's arms, and her stomach tightened. For all the times she'd seen him like this in the past, for all that she hadn't really seen him at all in a decade, she found she couldn't shake an inexplicable, elemental fear at the thought of losing him. It wasn't rational. In every meaningful sense she'd lost him a long time ago—because he walked away from her. But when she'd heard him say her name in that fragile, even frightened, murmur, something inside her had cracked, and the fear flooded in. No, it wasn't rational, but she wasn't ready for this—this—to be the final ending, and she was going to do everything in her power to make it not be so.

And if she could save him now...maybe then she could finally let him go.