Consciousness returned like an awakening from restful sleep, with dreams dancing away from the edge of remembrance. Jean-Luc Picard blinked a few times to clear his vision, taking in the clean, brightly-lit surroundings that recalled the room he'd been—recently?—confined to on Ghulion IV, in Coppelius Station. This room was slightly different, though, with a faintly antiseptic smell and computer monitors humming; and the partially inclined bed was designed not for comfort but utilitarian functionality. Medical, then. Still, the air was comfortably warm from the sun and the space was calming. Aware of a whisper of movement, he turned his head carefully—

And there, sitting beside the bed, hands folded over the closed tricorder on her lap, was Beverly Crusher.

A minor jolt passed through him as their eyes met. Of all the faces from his past he'd encountered over these last weeks, surely hers was the most unlikely? He hadn't seen or even spoken much to her, really, in perhaps a dozen years, yet here she was. Her clear blue eyes were as captivating as he'd always found them.

But her expression, as she regarded him, was inscrutable.

"Hello, Jean-Luc," she said quietly. "The others will be here soon. How do you feel?"

Taking his cue from her demeanor, choosing not to question her presence for the moment, he took stock, flexed his hands and feet, breathed in deeply. "Like myself again. Perhaps—improved."

"Now that remains to be seen," she said, with a faintly amused tug at one corner of her mouth.

"It's a relative assessment," he acknowledged dryly, then cautiously pressed further. "I'm still on Coppelius? And the Zhat Vash—?"

"Yes. And they're gone. You persuaded Soji to make the right choice and the Romulans stood down."

"But then I collapsed," he remembered, raising a hand to the back of his smooth head, where the pain had been staggering. "My condition—"

"—is cured," she said simply. "You are now in excellent condition for a fit, healthy man of your age, with another good twenty-five years ahead of you."

They fell silent, eyes locked together. Stunned by her words, Picard searched her face for a hint of how she felt, but she was unreadable to him. It was unsettling, he reflected, because he'd once known her better than anyone else in his life. But that hadn't been the case for a very long time, had it? And though she appeared to have no interest in casting blame at present, he knew that, as with so much else in recent years, the fault lay with no one so much as himself. "I have you to thank, I presume," he managed, his mouth suddenly dry.

She nodded. "And Geordi."

"How…" He swallowed, settling on the foremost question that came to mind. "How did you know?"

"Well, it wasn't because you told me." There was an edge, now, to her voice, a brittleness that shamed him, and he looked away. No, he hadn't told her, had he. Had very specifically sought out another old physician friend so as definitely not to involve her, because she would never have cleared him for his mission. But even later, he hadn't intended to say anything. The more fool I.

"Will and Deanna," he murmured.

"Yes. They thought I would care to know. And damn it, in spite of everything, Jean-Luc, they were right."

He met her gaze again and saw old pain there, knew he had caused it. In spite of everything: in spite of the way he'd abruptly ended their decades-long friendship, divorced himself from her life, neglected even the social niceties that could sometimes nurture a fallow acquaintance. He hadn't meant to. Not consciously. Not at first. It never entirely made sense even to himself. Why should one end the most important relationship in one's life, for no cause at all? But he'd been stricken with cowardice at a pivotal, uncertain moment in his life, and had never quite been able to find his way back from it, even before the Romulan sun exploded and everything else in his life fell apart. Whether from embarrassment, from fear, from contemptible weakness...when it came to Beverly Crusher, he couldn't see any way to undo what he had done, and convinced himself it was simply better not to think on it.

Because if he did think on it, he would feel the same hurt he saw reflected in her now.

And yet, in spite of everything, she had come.

And saved his life.

As if bothered by the unintended lapse in her composure, Beverly squeezed her hands together on her lap and then continued in the even, calm tone she'd taken before. "So. Here we are, and here you are. I was able to repair the advanced damage to your neurosynaptic pathways with new treatments, and based on our old research, Geordi successfully synthesized novel positronic neural circuitry that we transplanted into your parietal lobe. Doctor Soong and Doctor Jurati did help, too. I had to wait to wake you to make sure everything had healed and integrated properly. But it did, and it should function perfectly for the rest of your life."

"I don't know what to say," he admitted. He remembered now how he'd seen her, in those last moments, working feverishly to save him. Remembered how, even at a place almost beyond rational thought, he'd taken instinctive comfort in her presence, in the knowledge that she would be with him at the end. As she was now. "Beverly...thank you."

She looked at him, gave a small smile, and for a fraction of a second there was a connection, a slender thread that seemed to stretch across the years and the distance to the here and now. "You're welcome." She glanced past him at the faint noise of footsteps coming from outside the room, and stood gracefully, setting the tricorder to one side.

"You're leaving?" He felt strangely bereft at the notion.

"Not immediately. My ship and crew are helping Geordi and Seven with the survivors of the Artifact, now that the Romulans no longer control access to it. The Enterprise may stay longer than us as Captain Carrasco is still working on the diplomatic negotiations, but we'll still be here a bit before we leave."

"Beverly." He hesitated, lifting a hand before lowering it again to his side. "May I see you again?"

The question seemed to catch her off guard, and she dropped her gaze. "I...I don't know." After a moment she glanced back up, blue eyes unexpectedly bright. "Then again, I suppose—well, a lot of things can happen in twenty-five years."

He felt the words as a distant echo of another time that had never come to pass, and they raised gooseflesh on his skin. He opened his mouth to reply, but there was no time left—

Picard!

Admiral?

Oh, JL, you're awake!

Voices and people cascaded into the room all at once, and Picard suddenly found himself shaking Geordi La Forge's hand and being swept up into a fierce hug by Raffi Musiker. The relief—at survival, at being given a second lease on life, at the humbling sight of friends glad to see him—was surpassing, and he grinned at Agnes, Rios, and the others, returning Raffi's embrace, thanking Geordi in turn.

But his eyes followed the slender, black-clad figure with the long auburn hair slipping out of the room, until she disappeared from sight down the hall.