AN: Here we are, another piece to this one! I have, hopefully, gotten the swing of things back, and I hope to be updating with more regularity than before.
I hope you enjoy! If you do, please do consider leaving a comment to let me know!
111
"That's not bad," Beverly said, leaning over Jean-Luc's arm to see his work. "That's really quite good."
"I am not entirely inept," Jean-Luc said. "I am simply—not as skilled as some."
"Well," Beverly said, settling back into a more comfortable position beside him, with both of them somewhat huddled around the lamp that provided them with the best light for working in the evening, "it's not really fair to compare some things. I've had a lot more practice than you have, after all. It's something of a required part of my job."
"Do you feel that—you used the skill often?" Jean-Luc asked. "You are, of course, quite talented in the skill, I only ask out of curiosity. I often feel that so many skills have been nearly abandoned, even within my lifetime."
Beverly smiled to herself and settled into her spot a bit more comfortably. She hummed her agreement with what Jean-Luc had said.
"The skill of conversation, for instance," Beverly said. "That one has often been abandoned."
"Thanks to a million distractions," Jean-Luc said. "There's always something to do. Something to fill the silence and occupy the mind."
"Not here," Beverly said with a laugh.
"I'm finding that…I enjoy that," Jean-Luc said. "I'm enjoying it a great deal more than I might have imagined."
"Me, too," Beverly said, sincerely. "To answer your question…I sewed a lot when I was a child. My grandmother believed in keeping all the old skills alive. I guess—so did most of the people who lived around us. It was normal, to me, to practice all these skills that I learned, especially upon enrolling in the Academy, that so many people hadn't ever learned. Still—I can tell that I'm rusty now. I'm used to dermal regenerators, and…well…any number of regenerators. I hardly ever do manual stitches unless it's an emergency situation. I'm certainly practicing and improving now, though. I'm enjoying it. It makes me think of Nana. A lot of those skills I learned as a child are coming back to me."
"And we are certainly fortunate that they are," Jean-Luc said. "Without them, there's little telling what might have become of us."
"Now you're just being falsely modest," Beverly said. "I know your parents preferred to raise you and your brother in a more traditional way."
"Traditional, yes," Jean-Luc said. "Overly traditional, perhaps, in some ways."
Beverly knew a great deal about Jean-Luc's life and upbringing, just as she knew that he knew a great deal about hers. They may not have talked as much, before, as they talked now—simply because, now, they had a great deal of time and silence to fill—but they had cared for each other a long time, and that meant that they had shared pieces of themselves along the way.
Still, Beverly wanted to give him space and time to talk—to repeat his memories for her as often as he might like. He did the same for her. After all, she knew that he knew the answers to some of his questions about her life, even before he asked them. He asked them for the sake of conversation. He asked them to give her an excuse to relive her memories.
Memories, now, were all they had of a life beyond the one that they were currently sharing together.
"Certainly—my mother believed in doing her chores the old-fashioned way. Though—I sometimes wonder if she wouldn't have preferred to have a few more pieces of technology in our home. She certainly had some of the same interests as my father in preserving traditions and what have you, but…I'm not certain that she didn't simply choose to let him have what he wanted, even when she might have preferred more."
"Sometimes, those are the sacrifices we make for love," Beverly said.
Jean-Luc looked at her for a long moment—the kind of moment that made her chest tighten slightly. He held her eyes, and she held his.
Jean-Luc was a man who struggled, often, to say things, even in the moments when there was precious little else to do than speak.
He could, at times, pontificate for hours on some interest or another that he had, but when it came to matters of feelings, he would suddenly be unable to manage even a few sentences of any real substance.
He dropped his eyes away from Beverly's after a long moment.
"I suppose you're right," Jean-Luc said. "Love requires sacrifices."
"But, often, we make them gladly," Beverly said.
Jean-Luc nodded.
"Gladly or otherwise, my mother let my father have his way a great deal of the time," Jean-Luc said. "Robert and I were raised according to the traditions that my father most favored. Of course, much like you, I was made very aware of the differences in my raising and that of others, when I entered the Academy. For one, my father was particularly traditional, at times, when it came to what he saw as labor roles in the household."
"And, for that reason," Beverly said with a smile, "your stitching is…adequate…"
"But certainly not skilled," he said, laughing quietly. He turned what he'd been half-heartedly working on so that she could see it. With that, he turned his body a little more in her direction. She could feel his breath—a simple thing, really, but it sent a shiver up her spine that she hoped was undetectable.
Her pulse quickened, and she sensed her breath growing shallower, all from simply being in his presence—close to him. The fact that they were comfortable helped a great deal. The fact, too, that she felt that they'd spent all of these days simply growing closer couldn't be ignored, either.
She forced herself to focus on his stitches.
"You are improving a great deal," Beverly said.
"They are much neater," he said. "And straighter, I believe, than when we first started."
"I would say—you're improving in every way," Beverly offered.
He smiled at the compliment, but Beverly wasn't sure that he realized that she meant it, honestly, in regard to much more than his sewing skills. She wondered if she should say more. Before she could, though, Jean-Luc turned back to his work and started speaking again.
"I remember one of our classes required a three-day survival simulation," Jean-Luc said.
"Which one?" Beverly asked with a laugh. "I must have done at least a dozen of those."
Jean-Luc hummed and nodded.
"This one, in particular, was the mystery location."
"I remember those!" Beverly said. "Basic gear, an unknown location, and a task to complete."
"Indeed," Jean-Luc confirmed. "No technology beyond the one tricorder, the pre-programmed padds, communicators, and the emergency beam-out spot."
"That's a wealth of technology, now," Beverly said. "I haven't turned the tricorder on in a while, but…I doubt that there's any power remaining. And the ship is entirely drained."
"At the time, it felt very daunting," Jean-Luc said. "I was paired with Jack. I know, now, that we were beamed to the practice facility on Chavis III. Have you ever been to that one?"
Beverly thought about it and shook her head, half-shrugging her shoulders.
"I can't recall," she said. "I had to do so many emergency simulations. I think they required us to set up an emergency mobile medical unit on nearly every planet that has a practice facility."
"This particular area was very dry," Jean-Luc said. "We thought, honestly, that we'd been sent to Vulcan, except for the fact that the sun wasn't quite as harsh as we believed it ought to be, and the temperature was cooler than Vulcan during that season. The practice facility is designed, of course, to aid us a great deal more than the actual wilderness, so we found our water supply with relative ease. Everything else, however, was left up to skill and acquired knowledge. We had our list of tasks—all command related, hands-on and requiring us to provide for a small, imaginary crew that would be in our care if the simulation were real."
"I'm certain that you did exceptionally well," Beverly said.
Jean-Luc laughed.
"Actually, we failed."
"You failed?" Beverly asked. "Jack never told me about this…"
"No," Jean-Luc said. "I don't imagine that he would have. He wouldn't have wanted you to think less of him. Your marks were always so high—and he was quite impressed with that. He wouldn't have wanted to risk your interest in him."
"Did he think I was so shallow?" Beverly asked.
"You have to recall, we were quite young—all of us—and he was entirely smitten," Jean-Luc said. "A man, overcome with just about any emotion, tends to be a man who is not entirely in control of all of his senses and faculties."
Beverly relaxed a little, Jean-Luc's earlier statement having made her tense without a clear reason.
"Why did you fail?" She asked. "It's been years—certainly you can tell me now."
"Oh—it wasn't all that serious," Jean-Luc said. "I can be honest, now, and admit that it was mostly my fault. At first, it was a difference of opinion. I don't recall the exact details, but…Jack thought one thing was best to accomplish first. I was more focused on something else. We argued—the number one thing that you should avoid, as much as possible, in situations of emergency, whether they're simulated or not. Then, most of our tasks involved skills such as sewing." He held up what he was working on—a piece Beverly had pretended to need, simply to give him practice before she gave him something of which she was a much fonder—as a demonstration of the required skill. "Jack was a great deal better at it than I was. These were those skills, after all, that my father had somewhat seen as unnecessary for Robert and I."
"So, you and Jack—divided the tasks?" Beverly asked.
"If we had, we would have likely passed the simulation," Jean-Luc said. "I'm ashamed to say that I acted quite badly during the whole thing. I was irritated—angry, even—that Jack could do things that I couldn't…or, at the very least, he could do them with a great deal more skill than I could. Rather than accept that we each had our strengths and our weaknesses, I set out to prove myself, I guess you could say."
"You were embarrassed," Beverly offered gently, trying to soften the situation a little.
He hummed.
"I fought against him the whole time," Jean-Luc said. "Without me, Jack wouldn't have failed the simulation. Still, when we returned, and we were asked to…to discuss our experiences, Jack could have told them that I was the cause of it all, but he didn't. He simply said…we had failed to learn some of the skills that the simulation was meant to teach us, but we'd learned a great deal more. He was right. I think the skills we learned were, possibly, more valuable than the ones that we failed at during the simulation—at least for what we faced after leaving the Academy."
"Then, it wasn't a failure," Beverly said. "Not really."
"Perhaps not," Jean-Luc said.
"And—it's natural to feel competitive," Beverly said. "And to feel…embarrassed. Especially when you're someone who tries so hard to be the best."
Jean-Luc smiled at her.
"I can admit that—I was likely also a difficult partner to have because I was jealous," Jean-Luc said.
"Of Jack's skills?"
"More than that, I was jealous because—he kept talking about his girlfriend…no…his fiancé, by then, it was. You see—they were engaged to be married, and I was…already jealous that she was his."
Beverly drew in a breath. She accepted Jean-Luc's truth. She welcomed it. He was being open and honest, and that was a great deal more than she could say about the way he'd been in the past. She didn't have to like everything he said, but she could hear it, and she could accept it. She could accept how it had shaped who he was then, and who he was now.
The past was the past, and discussing it wouldn't hurt anyone—not if they chose not to take what was done too personally.
"I was attracted to you," Beverly said. "From the very moment that I first saw you."
Jean-Luc looked at her with a glimmer of something like panic in his eyes.
"I was immediately attracted to you," he confessed.
"I…came to care for you, deeply, as a friend," Beverly said.
"That was why I had to distance myself," Jean-Luc said.
Beverly nodded her understanding.
"So, you've said," she said. "But—Jean-Luc…make no mistake…I loved Jack. I would have never hurt him, and I would have never been unfaithful to him. Not even for you. I cared for you, but…I loved him, and he was my husband."
Jean-Luc looked away from her. Perhaps, she thought, he was digesting what she had said. He was accepting that he'd taken on some false-burden for all those years. She would not have been unfaithful to Jack. Not even Jean-Luc could have made her be so.
"He loved you immensely," Jean-Luc said, after a moment.
Beverly smiled. She believed him.
"And I loved him just as much," Beverly said.
"I was always so…jealous," Jean-Luc confessed. "I was never jealous of…possessions or anything as shallow as that, but…" He stopped and shook his head. "I have always lived with the worry that, perhaps, I wasn't honest, even with myself. When I made that choice…when I chose to save him last, and last turned out to be too late, what if I made that choice, subconsciously, because I knew it would…remove Jack from the scenario?"
"Did you make the choice with that in mind?" Beverly asked.
"Not consciously," Jean-Luc said. "But—one does always wonder…"
"It's foolish to waste your life wondering if you might have done something that you aren't aware of doing," Beverly said. "In the aftermath of all of it—I could have used a friend."
"I was afraid of myself," Jean-Luc said. "I was afraid of the possibility of what I had one. I thought—if I allowed myself to be around you…and if anything came of that…what would Jack think?"
"Jack always wanted me to be happy," Beverly said. "You were his best friend. He always wanted you to be happy. I think—he would have preferred to know that we had each other, rather than to think that we were both trying to navigate everything alone."
"I felt like…I ruined your marriage. Maybe…even…your life."
"I think you give yourself too much credit," Beverly said. "My life is hardly ruined. I loved Jack, but we both knew what the career choices we made meant…what they might mean. I'm a widow, Jean-Luc, but…that doesn't mean I'm married to my grief forever. Maybe you should consider trying not to be quite so married to your guilt. It doesn't leave much room for anything else."
