AN: Just so you know, this is the second piece today. Please be sure to read Chapter 9 before reading this one.
I hope you enjoy! If you do, please do let me know!
111
Beverly walked through the kitchen and found it empty. She helped herself to one glass of water, drank it down without stopping, and then drank a second glass more slowly.
It was a beautiful day, and everyone in the Château had parted company after breakfast. Beverly had gone to work on the Eleos, considering that she might like to go ahead and make all the repairs that she wanted to make so that it was ready to fly when they were ready to leave, and she assumed that Jean-Luc and Laris had gone their separate ways to find activities that interested them, as well.
Beverly had specifically asked Laris not to accompany her to work on the ship, sure that the heat outside and the frustration with the ship might make her say or do something she'd regret, and the last thing she wanted was anything to happen that might taint the absolute bliss that she felt.
For the past few days, since a scan had proven that Laris's baby girl was everything they wanted her to be, things had simply been pleasant. Laris was still anxious, some of her past having been brought to the forefront of her mind, and Beverly knew that would never entirely change. Still, Beverly didn't mind occasionally noticing a furrowed brow and soothing it with the promise that their family wasn't a Romulan family. They could make their own rules—and the first of those rules was that nobody would touch their baby girl so as to harm her in any way.
Reassuring Laris had done a lot, really, to simply keep Beverly feeling rather calm, too. Still, she knew there was a lot to prepare for—and one of those things was the fact that they would eventually leave. Working on the ship gave Beverly the chance to think, too.
And she was glad that nobody could possibly know what it was she thought about because, for all the time her mind spent thinking about her future with Laris, it spent a great deal of time drifting to Jean-Luc and the fact that the past few days with him had been immensely pleasant, especially since they'd decided to rekindle their friendship.
Beverly needed only to remind herself that friendship was friendship. She loved Laris dearly. She would do nothing in the world to compromise that in any way.
Her mind kept drifting, though, to the fact that she still hadn't figured out exactly what would be the perfect way to reveal to Jean-Luc that, if they stayed for Laris to deliver at the Château, they might very well find that they needed to stay for Beverly to deliver the child that Jean-Luc didn't yet know was, in some way, residing in his home.
Jean-Luc still didn't know that he was, at the very least, to be a biological father—whether or not he wanted anything more with the child.
Laris kept nudging Beverly to tell him, but she hadn't found the perfect moment just yet. She hadn't found the right way. She would find it, though, before the baby had a chance to come and make the announcement itself, as Laris was fond of teasing her was bound to happen if she didn't act soon.
After drinking down her two glasses of water, Beverly made her way to the bedroom. Immediately, she realized that Laris was sleeping. She didn't want to wake her, and she knew that any amount of time spent wandering around the room would do so, so she stepped quietly back out of the room and decided to pay a visit to another replicator for a change of clothes before slipping into the guest bathroom for a quick shower.
111
Jean-Luc came in from the patio where he'd been reading and, if he were honest, dozing at least a little. He meant to go back out. It was a nice day, really. It was an unseasonably hot day, especially for La Barre, and the sun felt almost therapeutic. He thought about waking Laris, who he knew was sleeping, to see if she might want to lounge on the patio with him and doze out there. She was often cold, and he thought she would truly enjoy the chance to nap in the sun and the warmth.
He determined that he would take water out for the both of them, and then simply insist to her that she wake only long enough to move outside, where she could promptly resume her slumbers in what he imagined might be a comfortable place in its own right.
But, first, Nature was calling, and Jean-Luc had to answer. That was, after all, what had finally driven him inside in the first place.
When Mirah had contacted Jean-Luc that one of her Mariposa connections was taking care of a critically injured Romulan woman who would likely be killed by the Tal Shiar, should she go to one of the forming colonies, and required a safe haven just long enough to get back on her feet, Jean-Luc had immediately told her that his home was available, and he'd moved out of the master bedroom. It was larger, the bed was large and comfortable, and the connected bathroom made it much easier for a caretaker to move someone around. It also afforded the resident of the room some privacy, and Jean-Luc knew that Romulans were notoriously private.
He didn't regret giving up his room for even a moment. Since moving out of his room, though, and taking over one of the smaller rooms now reserved for guests—which was actually his boyhood bedroom—Jean-Luc used what he referred to as a guest bathroom. It was, as well, the same bathroom that he and his brother had shared as boys.
Since he was the only one that regularly used the bathroom, and since the knob offered no resistance when he turned it, Jean-Luc opened the door and stepped inside in one fluid motion.
And, then, he froze.
She froze, too, and for a moment they stayed that way—him, unable to back out of the bathroom and give her the privacy that he knew she deserved, and her, naked and semi-frozen in the act of toweling off her still-dripping form after what had obviously been a shower.
Jean-Luc had seen Beverly naked many times. Arguably, he had never seen her enough, because he delighted in her form, but he had seen her enough…and touched her enough…that he had practically memorized the lines of her body and the curves of her shape.
What he saw now was quite different than the shape he'd known before. He had noticed it, perhaps, here or there, but always in a way that he could excuse it as some trick of the light or a flash of something in his eye—some figment of his imagination. Now, though, he couldn't dismiss it.
And, though he might have once failed to recognize it for what it was, the fact that he'd recently seen such a similar shape clearly explained to him, and the fact that he'd become accustomed to seeing that shape so commonly around his home now, made it so that Jean-Luc had only a breath of doubt before he settled on the fact that he was absolutely certain of what he saw.
There were methods, he knew, of making things happen—though he might not understand, or even want to understand, all the details—and Beverly was wholly dedicated to Laris and the "family" she referenced them building. It was only that, until now, Jean-Luc had assumed that the tiny Romulan that Laris carried would be the only one.
Jean-Luc hadn't really planned to say as much, but he practically found the words escaping him before his brain had fully formed the thoughts behind them.
"You didn't tell me…"
His words seemed to unfreeze Beverly, but not entirely. She mostly covered herself with the towel held loosely in front of her.
"Jean-Luc…I…"
"If you and Laris were having another baby, and I was going to be ass-deep in Romulans, as Will suggested I was certainly on my way to being, the least you could have done was tell me that I was about to be overwhelmed with them," Jean-Luc said.
Beverly immediately looked angry.
"What would it matter, Jean-Luc, if there were to be another Romulan?" She shook her head and sighed, just as Jean-Luc realized that he'd accidentally offended her in quoting the joke that Will had made when he'd heard about Jean-Luc's dedication to the Romulans and their plight with the supernova. "You don't have to worry about that," Beverly said. "This baby is entirely human."
Jean-Luc's internal organs felt odd…all of them.
"The baby is human?" He asked.
Beverly sighed again and seemed less angry than before.
"Of course, it is," she said. "I haven't known Laris long enough for this to be hers."
Jean-Luc's internal organs continued what felt faintly like folding themselves into some kind of internal origami structures.
"Beverly…I don't understand," he said, even as part of him thought that it was beginning to understand a great deal more than it had.
Beverly frowned. He thought, perhaps, he even saw her chin quiver.
"I was going to tell you," she said.
Suddenly, Jean-Luc knew. Everything within him knew, and the origami feeling was replaced with a more sincere pain.
"Tell me what?" He asked. He knew the answer. He wanted to hear it, though, from her. Beverly didn't say anything, but he did see her face contort. He saw her mouth open, like she considered speaking, and then she closed it again. "Tell me what, Beverly?" Jean-Luc pressed.
"When it was the right time…"
"When would it be the right time, Beverly?" Jean-Luc asked. His chest felt unbearably tight. His throat ached. He felt angry and…and yet, he felt so many other things, too, that it would have been impossible to pinpoint any one feeling as being the greatest of them all. "When? At birth, Beverly? When the child graduates high school or, perhaps, the Academy? In their twenties…or thirties?"
"Jean-Luc, I…" Beverly said, her words coming out with a more-than-slightly damp quality.
Jean-Luc felt for her. His heart ached for her. He loved her, and he never wanted her to know pain, but he felt pain—he felt his pain and hers.
"What would you tell me then, Beverly, that you couldn't tell me before? What would you tell me then—after I lost so much time?"
Beverly covered her mouth with her hand when a sob exploded out of her, her wide eyes suggesting that she hadn't expected it. She closed her eyes to the tears for a moment and moved toward him.
"Jean-Luc…it's yours," she managed. He knew, of course, by the time that he heard the words, and she knew that he knew. Still, he had needed to hear them, whether or not she'd needed to say them.
He felt like his body was trying to turn inside out.
That was when his own tears came, hot with anger, and he was helpless to stop them.
"What did I do, Beverly?" Jean-Luc asked, his voice coming out loudly enough to practically echo in the bathroom. "What kind of monster must I have been to not deserve my own child?"
"It wasn't that, Jean-Luc," Beverly yelled back, her own voice echoing, too. He imagined her loudness came from the fact that her words were shaking with the sound of her sobs. "It was never that!"
Before Jean-Luc could demand an explanation, and before she could offer anything more, he felt hands on his sides. The hands suggested he move and, honestly did so with such a striking amount of understated strength—like he would be moved, against his will, if he chose not to follow the somewhat gentle suggestion—that Jean-Luc made room for Laris as she pushed past him and put herself between them in the cramped space.
"Well, then…I suppose we knew this was inevitable," Laris said, looking from one of them to the other. There was no need for Jean-Luc to ask her if she knew. She looked directly at Beverly. "I did warn you to tell him, didn't I?" She looked back at Jean-Luc. "You have every right to be angry, or to feel whatever it is you're feeling, but a shouting match in these circumstances won't do anyone any good. Go in there and tend to your blood pressure—have a glass of water. Give us a minute here."
"I wasn't told!" Jean-Luc barked. Those seemed to be the only words that he could find, and they came out whether or not he really thought they were the best to say.
"And another moment without an explanation won't do you any significant harm," Laris said. "But all this negativity is bad for everyone…babies included. Give us a minute, Jean-Luc. That's all I'm asking."
The way she stood, between Jean-Luc and Beverly, he could sense that she wasn't going to back down. Her tone, too, made that clear.
Besides that, what did it matter? She was right. They both needed a moment to calm down. Nothing that could be dealt with like this couldn't be better dealt with after a moment of everyone collecting themselves.
And Jean-Luc needed a moment to simply come to terms with the fact that what he'd seen, and what he'd come to know, was actually real, and not simply some creation of an over-tired imagination.
Laris held Jean-Luc's eyes, and he held hers back. Without glancing at Beverly, he simply nodded.
"You're right," he said. "Everyone needs a chance to calm down. Myself included. I will be in the living room."
And, then, he turned and left them to do what they needed to do, while he went to serve himself a glass of wine—thinking only briefly that he didn't know the hour of the day.
The hour be damned. He was going to be a father—not that anyone had told him before.
