Hi all, a huge thank you for the lovely reviews coming in. Someone suggested they would need 2 squares of chocolate to cope with the emotional content... well my friend, 2 squares is never enough ;)

I have also just read through this whole story... I can only apologise for the errors I spotted a few chapters back. I'm riding solo on this one. I will get around to fixing them soon. Oops!

So, onwards. Just a shorty this time :)

Having asked the computer for his location the minute she had beamed back aboard, Beverly waited outside the Captain's quarters. When he didn't appear at his door, she used her medical override and called his name. When that didn't raise him, she started to worry.

The rooms were dark, his boots lay discarded next to the coffee table but other than that, there were no signs of life.

"Jean-Luc?" she called again heading toward his bedroom.

As she crossed the threshold, she could just about make out his form under the bedclothes. She found him on his side, turned away from her toward his bathroom. She sat down on the edge of his bed and took the opportunity to examine his face.

"Hey, I was worried about you." She said, relieved.

His eyes were open, unseeing and he looked terrible. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes almost lifeless.

"I'm not feeling terribly well…" he began robotically.

Surprised by the admission and immediately discounting it for subterfuge to cover his emotional state she was, nevertheless, concerned. In a second, she was scanning him with her ever-present tricorder but he batted it away when she got to his head.

"I'm fine." He said flatly.

"Jean-Luc…" she began but didn't really know what to say next. "What happened at the memorial… was-"

He interrupted her, "I don't want to talk about it."

"I don't want to leave you like this."

"Please Beverly, I don't want to talk. I'm fine. Please just leave me."

"Jean-Luc…"

"Perhaps tomorrow, after some sleep, I might…speak to Deanna" he offered. Anything to get her to leave him alone.

Against her better judgement, she decided to allow him the time and space to lick his wounds in peace. She needed to speak to Deanna herself, she wasn't entirely sure what the next plan of attack should be.

The memorial had been as horrendous as she had expected. She'd objected when told of his invitation. She'd known it was too soon for him to have to face the true horror of what had happened. She had watched, helplessly as he had sat up there on the stage, alone, scared. A lamb to the slaughter.

She wasn't sure what the Brass had intended. Was he supposed to have returned from the unreturnable? The brave captain who had defeated assimilation? Lived to tell the tale? Or was it something far more sinister, a ploy to make him face up to his crime, atone for his own abduction?

And she'd heard the whispers, knew almost everyone there had been looking at him and that more than a fair share held him to blame. But then, they'd started to read out the names and she had been shocked to hear the names of old friends, distant friends, colleagues from the past… and she had lost her focus, turned to her own grief. Starfleet had been brought to its knees and she'd been so busy dealing with Jean-Luc that she hadn't really taken any time to work out her own feelings. This was so overwhelming; she couldn't even begin to imagine how he felt.

So, she'd left him. Patted him on the shoulder then replicated him a plate of sandwiches and a pitcher of water and left it on the night-stand.

He had stayed exactly where he was. He didn't want to think, feel. He just wanted to disappear, not have to deal with this anymore. It had been a month since he'd been taken. A month of endless terrible days, being poked, scanned, forced to reconnect with the weight of human expectation, the weight of Starfleet's expectations of him, the Captain of the federation flagship. And he was so tired. So broken.

He wasn't sure he could do it anymore.