To The Journey
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This is an AU story.
Chapter Forty-Three: A Special One
Jake Sisko was a cornerstone of Tasha's plan, but she needed more than just him to make it work. It was for this reason that she approached a few members of her crew, a little hesitantly. Data wouldn't be able to help in this case, he was too recognizable, and the only other crewmember who she had confided in was on Betazed with her mother. Picard was out for the same reason as Data, which meant that Will and Geordi were the next steps. Unfortunately, that meant opening up about one of the few things she still had yet to tell most of the people around her.
She paced Will Riker's quarters for several minutes as he watched in concern before finally turning to him and blurting the whole thing out at once. Her control surprised even her; she didn't falter, didn't cry, just laid it all out there. He looked shocked, and she didn't blame him. If she hadn't known for herself that such a thing existed, she would have been shocked too. But he quickly hugged her, told her how sorry he was about what had happened, and then asked what he could do.
Geordi had been a slightly different story. Even though it had been well over a decade since they'd broken off their relationship, they couldn't forget that they had practically breathed in sync for several years, and the trust that had created between them wouldn't be broken by anything short of catastrophic change. It was easier to confide in him, harder to deal with his disappointment in the fact that she'd never told him, much as he'd tried to hide it. But he too had agreed eagerly to be in on the plan.
Tasha stared at the tall building that had once been called her home, that had truly been little more than a prison, feeling the irrational urge to run. Geordi seemed to notice and slipped his hand into hers. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"I have to do this, Geordi. The fact that I'm unsettled just solidifies that for me."
He looked up at it, and then back at her. "If this was your first home on Earth, after where you came from, I'm surprised you didn't give up on humanity altogether. Couldn't have blamed you if you did."
She shrugged a little. "Guess I'm lucky in some ways. I remember enough from the years before Turkana imploded that I still remembered human kindness, not just the cruelty. Maybe that's why Ishara and I turned out so differently. Although there was a time I was convinced that Starfleet people were different than all other people. At least the professionals, anyway."
"Really?"
She shrugged. "I didn't have a whole lot of context. As far as I knew, this," she gestured to the building, "was how normal civilian humans were. Took me a while to realize that this was the aberration."
A woman stepped out onto the front steps, and Tasha was relieved that at least it wasn't anyone she knew. "I apologize for keeping you waiting."
"No, not at all," Will replied smoothly. "The work you're doing is so important and must be so time-consuming. I'm just glad you took the time out to meet with us."
His poker experience serves him well, Tasha thought, and the thought made her smile a little inside. He did most of the talking, playing the role of a curious reporter, with Geordi, as his assistant, chiming in just right from time to time. She knew she should keep her questions to a minimum lest she accidentally say something to reveal she knew more than they'd been told. Her moment was coming soon anyway.
Right on cue, Will's communicator beeped. He stepped aside to answer it, and returned grim-faced. "I'm afraid I'm needed back at the office. I'm sorry, I'd really like to stay -"
"Oh, you shouldn't have to go!" Tasha chimed in, just as they'd practiced. While Beverly hadn't come along on the mission, she'd been more than happy to direct a sort of real-life play. "I'll go, and you can finish your interview!"
Will's face creased in a deep frown. "Are you sure? You haven't been doing this that long, and this is a pretty big problem."
"Oh, come on," Geordi interjected. "How bad can it be? I'm sure she can handle whatever it is."
"Oh, yes, sir, I can!" Tasha insisted. "I'm sure I can."
He sighed loudly. "All right, I suppose you're probably ready to tackle something like this. But if you come across something you're not sure about, call me or ask someone in the office for help. Don't guess!"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," she said, pretending to sulk at the rebuke. "I'll show myself out. I suppose even you will admit that I can do that on my own without screwing it up?"
She walked off the way they'd come, still pretending a mixture of excitement and frustration. Once she had turned a few corners, she subtly glanced behind her to make sure she hadn't been followed and that no one happened to be there to observe, and then turned off the path they had walked for where she knew a back flight of stairs existed. The back door was difficult to locate from the outside unless one knew where it was, but Tasha had found it from the inside within her first week. She had used it to sneak out to make her last-ditch effort to find a way to get into Starfleet Academy, and now she would use it to defy them even more than she had that time. And this time, they couldn't touch her for it.
The door was as she remembered it; only locked from the outside. One press of a button, and it opened to reveal Jake Sisko hunkered down outside. He looked up to make sure it was her and then quickly slid inside. "Don't worry, I had a cover ready if anyone else had opened that."
"I wasn't worried. Come on, let's go. Stick with me. And remember, no matter what we see, this is not the time to intervene. We have to take the whole organization down at once, and that won't happen if we try to bring down one or two of them. The organization will sacrifice them on the altar of their greater good and then they'll keep on going like they have been."
"I remember. I did hear you the first five times."
She let out a slow breath. "I know. I just don't think you have any concept of what you're about to see."
"If you say so. How do you know about this place, anyway?"
"I'll tell you later," she replied shortly. "Come on."
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Two hours later, the pair exited and beamed back to the ship, Tasha with her hand on Jake's arm to stop him from falling over. "My God," he whispered. "You were right when you said I had no idea. How did you - did you live here?"
Tasha nodded slowly. "For a little more than two years. I'll write some stuff up for you about it to include in your article. And I put Data to work searching for other complaints. I'm hoping we can get a few interviews."
"Quite possibly."
Tasha jumped a foot in the air as she turned. "Damn it, Data! Don't sneak up on me like that!"
"Sorry."
"It's okay." She placed a light kiss on his lips. "I forgive you. What do you have?"
"Several promising complaints, however, one in particular caught my attention."
"Who and what?" Jake pressed, pulling his PADD out of his pocket and starting a new file.
"A Ms. Elizabeth Marinette. She adopted a child from the center two months ago. She filed a detailed complaint."
"Can you summarize it?" Jake asked eagerly.
"She adopted seven-year-old Robert Becker - now legally Robert Marinette. He had been classified as special needs due to extensive emotional trauma - both of his parents died in the Breen attack on Earth. He was a witness."
Jake flinched a little. "Poor kid. So what happened?"
"Ms. Marinette is a trained child psychologist. She convinced the case workers that she could provide the care Robert needed, and so the adoption was filed. She suspected child abuse immediately, despite the fact that there was no notation in the file. She believed he might have been too traumatized to speak of it. The complaint says that she and her oldest daughter were able to convince him to speak, and he told them that the abusive party had been the center, not his biological parents. She promptly filed a complaint; it is under investigation."
Jake was typing at warp speed. "Any chance of an interview?"
"I already contacted her. She was more than willing. She said she 'wants the world to know what they do to innocent children in that awful place.' I told her you could see her tomorrow afternoon."
Jake finally stopped typing and looked up with a smile on his face. "If you ever get tired of working for Starfleet, I could more than use you on an investigative reporting team. Confirm that appointment. I'll be there."
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The Marinette home in Oregon was large but not particularly distinctive on the street. Tasha and Data hung back a bit, letting Jake take the lead. He rang the bell and waited.
A blonde woman apparently in her mid-twenties answered, and Tasha realized with a start that she recognized her. "Of course," she mumbled to no one in particular. "I thought the name sounded familiar."
Jake, meanwhile, was kind of staring at her. "Y-you're Elizabeth Marinette?" he asked in disbelief. "Forgive me, I was expecting someone a little, you know, older."
She laughed. "You still are. Elizabeth's my mother; I'm Jess. You must be the reporter she told me about. Come in, she's just sorting out a squabble between my sisters."
"How many of you are there?" Jake asked as she opened the door all the way.
"Four altogether. Me, Danni, Chloe, and Bobby."
"Three against one," Jake commented.
She shrugged, but her face was serious when she responded. "We don't consider ourselves 'against' anybody. Especially not Bobby, enough things in his life have been against him. It's mostly Danni and Chloe who fight each other, and it's never that serious even then."
"This must be all of you," Data commented, picking up a photo on a shelf. It depicted the woman before them with a tall, dark-haired woman, two girls with reddish-brown hair who looked a lot alike, and a little boy with light brown curls.
Jess nodded. "We had that taken just after Bobby was adopted. We wanted to show him he was part of this family."
"You're all adopted?" Jake asked, then blushed. "I didn't mean... I just meant, only your sisters look like each other."
"Yes, we're all adopted," Jess replied matter-of-factly. Clearly, the question didn't bother her. "Danni and Chloe are biological sisters; they were adopted together."
"So, you helped your mom figure out what happened to your brother?" Jake asked, falling into reporter mode.
"Yes, that's right. Please, sit. Mom and I knew something was off right away, and it wasn't just the trauma of what he saw."
"How did you know?"
"The sort of trauma that comes from witnessing a frightening or disturbing event leaves different traces than the sort of trauma that comes from being an abuse victim," said a voice, and they all turned to see the woman from the photograph. "Elizabeth Marinette," she said as she shook Jake's hand.
"Jake Sisko," he replied. "This is part of my investigative team. Tasha Yar, and Data."
She shook both of their hands as well before taking a seat. "I've heard of you," she said to Data. "You're a fascinating case study."
"Of what?" he asked interestedly.
"In my field, mostly the development of emotions and reactions as they relate to experiences lived. Most children develop those sorts of things before they're old enough to really relate them to experiences, but you -"
Jake cleared his throat. "Uh, as fascinating as this is..."
"Right. Sorry." She laughed a little but it was tempered. "You're here about Bobby."
Jake nodded. "You mentioned the traces left by abuse. You mean scars?"
"Not physical scars, at least not necessarily. He was afraid to be touched, terrified at the thought that he might do something wrong. None of that can be explained by what he witnessed; in most victims, but especially children, specific symptoms are linked to specific events. His parents' death would have no connection with misbehavior or getting someone angry at him in his mind; I checked the incident report of his parents' death to be sure. For weeks, he wouldn't tell us anything. We finally convinced him we wanted to help him..."
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An hour later, Jake had enough material for three stories, and he stood. "Thank you for your time," he said softly.
"You're welcome," Elizabeth replied. "Thank you for doing this."
As they finished up, Jess pulled Data aside; Tasha followed almost out of habit. "Listen, I was wondering if you'd be able to do a favor for me."
"What would you like me to do?"
"I'm trying to find a Starfleet officer. You'd have access to the entire database and be able to work through it better than I can do with a computer."
Data smiled, and Tasha knew why. She had just, however unintentionally, differentiated him from a computer.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"That's just the thing - I don't know."
Data raised an eyebrow. "This is a specific person?"
"Yes. I just don't know his full name. It's been a long time, and I only heard his full name once."
"What information can you give me?"
"I called him Johnny," she said softly. "But his real name wasn't John; it was something else, something longer. He was on Earth, in San Francisco in 2361. I think - I think he was a Captain. I know he was Starfleet."
"Anything else?"
Jess shook her head, but Tasha's gaze was fixated on her eyes. The woman had looked familiar months ago in Starfleet Medical, and Tasha had had an odd sense that that familiarity centered around her deep, soulful blue-green eyes. And now it all clicked into place.
"You are aware," Data was saying, "that many Starfleet officers were killed at Wolf 359 and in the Dominion War, both of which took place after the date you specified."
"I know. But I need to know. This person was special to me. If he's alive, I want to see him again, and if he is dead - at least I'll know for sure."
"Do you have a computer console here?" Tasha asked her.
She seemed surprised but replied. "Of course. It's over here."
Tasha quickly pressed a few buttons, calling up a familiar personnel file. "Come here." She pointed to the picture on the screen. "Take a look at this."
Jess did, and her eyes went wide. "My God, that's him! How - how did you know?"
"He's looking for you too. He told me he tried to get into the sealed files, but whoever sealed them knew more about computers than he did. He misses you."
"You know him?" she asked excitedly. "I mean, on a personal level?"
Data leaned over to see what she had pulled up. "Captain Picard?" he asked in surprise, and Jess reeled back a step.
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "I - I had no idea - my Johnny is Captain Picard? I'd never seen a photo, just read his name in half a dozen books and countless news articles." She turned to Tasha. "And you know him too. You serve under him?"
"That's right."
She swallowed. "When will you see him next?"
"Probably today or tomorrow. We're still staying aboard our ship for the time being."
"When you see him, can you tell him - tell him Jessie wants to see him again?"
"I can do better than that. What are you doing for the rest of the day?"
"I don't have anything planned."
"Then why don't you come back to our ship with us? Pay a certain Captain a little surprise visit."
She hesitated. "I'm sure the Captain has better things to do than meet with someone he hasn't seen in over a decade."
"Are you kidding? We're dry-docked. No one's doing anything. Why do you think we have the time to do this investigation?"
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As soon as they'd beamed back to the ship, Jake bolted for his guest quarters to write up his story, and Tasha guided the younger girl to the Enterprise's bridge. Her eyes were wide as she took in the Federation flagship.
"Thinking you want to serve on this ship someday?" Tasha asked.
"Or something like it," she replied. "I am Starfleet Med, after all, and I never wanted to serve planetside. Guess I picked that up from him. He was always talking about space; careful not to scare the six-year-old, of course, but he had me dreaming of strange archeological finds and seeing famous constellations up close."
"What about med school?"
"Some of it's just what I'm good at. I'm much better at the things it takes to make a good doctor than at the kinds of knowledge I'd need for command or operations or security. And there's always been something - doctors are the people that other people put their faith in when they're having the worst days of their lives and the ones who get to be there to give the good news too. Other people can be, like he was for me, but doctors are in the spot to be that every day."
The door opened to the bridge, and Jess sucked in a breath. "Wow."
"Yeah, that was my first reaction too." Tasha walked the momentarily stunned speechless girl out of the lift. "Come on."
She walked to the Captain's ready room and rang the bell. His voice rang out. "Come in!"
Tasha definitely heard the younger woman draw in another sharp breath as the door opened. "Captain."
"How did it go?"
"Fine. I think we've got some good stuff. Captain, there's someone here who'd like to see you."
He looked up. "I don't see anyone."
Tasha turned to Jess, who was standing, frozen, just out of his range of sight. "Come on," she urged again, taking the young woman by the shoulders and bringing her in just through the doorway. Then she turned without a word and left, letting the doors hiss closed.
Jess stared at him for the longest time, not saying a word. She finally forced one out, a solitary word through vocal cords that felt suddenly paralyzed. "Captain."
"Well, don't just -" he began, but as he spoke, he looked up again, and as soon as his eyes met hers, the sentence died away. "My God," he whispered. "It can't be."
"It's me," she whispered back. "It's Jessie."
He just stared, and for a moment she wasn't sure what to make of it. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come," she said softly, choking back her tears. "I'll leave."
"No," he replied, and even at a whisper the intensity of his voice froze her in her tracks. "Please don't."
He was standing now, and he approached her slowly, reaching one hand out to touch her face. "My little girl. My Jessie. I've missed you so much."
And then she wasn't looking at Starfleet's top Captain anymore. She was looking at Johnny.
She closed the gap between them, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, noticing with a little surprise that he wasn't much taller than her, even short as she was. When she'd been a little girl, he'd seemed huge to her, a larger-than-life protector from the pain of her life to that point.
"I missed you," she whispered. "I tried to find you, but without even a real first name -"
"I tried to find you too," he replied, holding her tightly in his arms. "But they were a few steps ahead of me. I couldn't find a single record of a Rachel Jessica."
She smiled. "There's a reason for that. That's not my name anymore. When I was adopted, they changed my legal first name to Jessica. I was used to being called Jessie anyway, and it made me harder to find, as you learned by experience. Although I wouldn't have minded if you found me."
"How have you been?" He pulled back a little to really take in the sight of her. "You look wonderful."
"I've been all right. It hasn't been bad, except for missing you. I have a family, and I'm happy with them. I only wish you could have been a part of it too."
"So do I, ma cherie. So do I."
Tears filled her eyes. She'd remembered that little French expression that he'd told her meant "my darling", the one he'd used so often in the few months she'd known him.
"I half-expected you to still be a little girl," he said, with a hint of a laugh in his voice. "But you've grown up. You're what, twenty now? Are you in college?"
She half-laughed as well. "I'm Starfleet pre-med." Then she really laughed at the look on his face. "What? You told me constantly about space travel. Did you really think I wouldn't want to fly among the stars for myself?"
"I was just telling stories to make you smile and help you fall asleep," he replied. "I didn't expect you to take them as career advice."
She reluctantly broke the embrace and then walked to the window in the ready room, fully aware of him as he stepped up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder, as if afraid to lose contact with her for too long. "You love this, don't you?"
"Yes, I do." He regarded the same stars she was staring at. "But even more, I love to stand at this same window and see systems I've never seen before - systems no one's ever seen before. I've missed that, with the war."
She covered his hand with hers. "That love is what you gave me. You passed it to me in every single story." She turned and embraced him again. "Thank you. For everything."
The article will be in the next chapter, otherwise this one would go on forever and it would take that much longer to get it out to you!
Jessie does still have a role to play in the story, but not for awhile yet.
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