NOTE: THIS is an alternate Ending...it starts as a flashpoint which began in chapter 7. Tread carefully. Do not read if you do not want Wesley to live.

Title: A Beat In My Heart

Summary: Fate intervenes...

Chapter 13 - Journey's End - Alternate Ending

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Beverly counted the number of injured crew men as she skirted across the sandy ground. Tricorder in hand she dodged phaser blasts as she tended to the injured.

"Where the hell is the ship? They should be back by now."

An Ambush.

They'd been lured here on a mission of discovery and attacked as soon as the Enterprise had gone on a mission of distress.

"A ruse." she contemplated looking at the ground now littered with seven Enterprise crew members including two of her medical staff. They lay injured, bleeding.

She glanced in the direction of Will Riker, the Enterprise's second in command. Where his once proud chest was, now there was a large disruptor burn, a wide eyed expression of horror and surprise across his face. She tried to shake the image from her mind. She'd seen enough death to last a lifetime.

As Beverly ran to try to find a hiding place she tripped and fell, her locket catching on her jacket as it was ripped from her neck and tossed into the sand.

A phaser blast whooshed past her head mere seconds before she fell.

"Dr. Crusher we have a lock on your location, prepare to beam up."

Her breath caught in her throat as she ignored Picard's calls of her name and searched the sand for the locket frantically. As her hand hit pay dirt she didn't feel the first shot graze her arm but she felt the second disruptor blast. A white hot agony stung her chest as a scream was stolen from her lips and she collapsed into the sand.

Time, which stops for no mere mortal... took a deep breath...and paused.

The tall man with shimmering white skin stared at the young man. He had hoped that he would be able to resist his human emotion and continue his studies. There were so few beings, and he was the only one of his species that had shown such amazing promise.

The young man sat perched at the edge of the heavens and had watched as the events before him unfolded.

"I can't believe this has happened...just from a chance meeting."

"You are just beginning to understand how numbers and patterns run the universe..."

"I have to fix this."

"You would choose this, already knowing what pain, grief, dishonor and torture lies ahead in the decisions you will make? You will give up all the knowledge of what you have seen, felt, experienced?"

"I can't give up the human experience either. I can't; not knowing there's a chance. I know that this breaks your rules of altering lives...but technically I am not, I am just giving up mine...I have no one to go back to, well except you and the others. "

"Your friends will wonder what became of you... the Captain, the Android, the Counselor..."

"They knew that I might not be back..."the young man sighed. This decision was getting harder by the minute.

"I know of this future, when that one event occurred a chain of events was set in motion which changed the future in this reality. He was not supposed to perish, not like this."

"But he did..."

"I can fix this."

"You alter this path and you may perish too. If you would just finish what you have started you will see that it will all work out."

"But now it doesn't. You've shown me my friend! She will die too. Please! I must intervene. I know that as sentient beings we don't get hurt, or sick...but I am also human, eventually I will die. If I must die in an existence, it would be nice to live in one where I am needed."

The young man stared at the scene before him as time stood still. The stars, space, and time still moved around him but the fabric of life in this universe was now under his control, virtually at the snap of his fingertips. He'd seen amazing things in his time with this amazing being, months in the passage of normal time had passed in space time in a blink of an eye. He had the ability to change his form to blend in almost anywhere, and do anything. He would be giving up immense power and with it the responsibility of the continuity of infinite universes.

"I feel like such a disappointment to you...the others."

"You know that could never be true. It is your choice...your path. Your counterpart as you have seen, chose many different paths, different lives. If you go, you must follow this existence to its end without prior knowledge. Your memories of what you've seen of his future will be gone..., everything you've experienced will be gone, but you know that in your heart already."

"Maybe I'll see you again someday...we know that "he" has called upon you for help too...maybe I'll remember."

"Then you've made your decision."

"The humanity in me can't stop wanting to rejoin the human race...I have to go back to her. "

"She is not 'her'."

"I know, and I am not "him" I cannot take his place...but together we will be fine."

The young man smiled brightly and began to concentrate deeply. He would need every ounce of power he had to complete his task. He wasn't even sure he could do this alone. He then realized he wouldn't have to. The alien being suddenly filled himself with light and reached out his hand towards the young man as he closed his eyes. The young man slowly disappeared in a brilliant white light as time shifted and the stars in the sky seemed to twinkle again.

"Good bye young one."
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Did he go back?...forward?...change the future? present? or past? Hmmmmm...one last chapter to find out. Please Review.