Chapter Text
Something has happened.
Her body is frozen beneath the feeling of another person in the room with her, frozen beneath her blankets, frozen beneath a sheen of terror sweat. She cannot even blink away the clouds from her eyes.
Her lungs refuse her demands for oxygen, all the air remains still and undisturbed, but somebody has been here.
Somebody is still here.
A professional emerges in her mind, sleepy and horribly out of practice, throwing around terms like sleep paralysis, and meditation techniques. Her patients must hate her. Because meditation isn't working, she just can't move herself to follow along with what her brain tells her to do - and nothing is working at all.
A light appears, and it is all she can do to focus on it, her pulse rising harshly at her neck, her wrists.
It is alive.
She does not want to think too hard about what's happening, she wants to believe this is a nightmare she will soon wake from, a story she will tell somebody in the morning.
The light is full of depth, it has emotion, it is not flat and unanimated as all those images she sees in sleep.
It is curious, it is real.
Trying to move away is a hollow pursuit, and, as a floating sphere, it approaches her body on the bed where she lies, so exposed without defence. Her mind tries to fend it off, but there is something within the presence that makes her recoil, something of innocence, of a child.
She cannot move away when it comes so close to her that is skims the surface of her bed sheets. Her heart thuds now, unchecked and frantic, the pulse throbbing in her neck. The light, in one harsh moment, disappears into her, the feeling like nothing she has experienced before - terrifying, alien. And in that same moment she is reanimated, a puppet with the strings pulled too tight, launching all her limbs up and off the bed to sit shaking, her lungs struggling to provide her the energy to stay that way.
There is no power to any of her movements, her eyes darting back and forth in the darkness with creased brows, searching for where the presence has gone in her mind, a tiny light now amongst all of the parts of herself, inscrutable almost.
She breathes so heavily that her throat burns, but she is a particular woman, and composure is never too far away from her fingertips, as they reach across to her nightstand, grasping at that one piece of cool metal.
"Beverly?"
Her voice, shaking and filled with no kind of conviction at all, slices the silence of night-things, and the lights that she tries to see by are dim and pink, glowing in reflection of all the surfaces around her.
The response is not immediate, and it comes with confusion, soft and sleepy, the woman yawning away her fatigue before she speaks, not needing empathy to know a terrible thing has happened.
"Deanna, are you okay? Is something wrong?"
And there is no answer short enough that doesn't sound insane:
A presence
A being
A bright light that is gone now
A duality without name
So she has no answer, her body all slick with sweat and her brow furrowed as she tries to centre herself, to gather together all the sleeping emotions that her world is filled with; her mind, in its confusion, reaches out for him, sleeping in the way he always did, glowing in colours green and yellow.
"Deanna, are you there?"
She feels the concern so keenly, and then swallows with harshness, lapping her tongue against the roof of her mouth, dry and thoughtful. There is somebody in the room with her, she is double, duplicated; she is so intimately not alone.
"Beverly? Something has happened."
There is a whole half hour of time that seems to pass her by in a whirlwind, dressing and moving through 3am corridors to sickbay, and at some point she disappears behind her own eyes, trying just so hard to black out all the confusion, the terror, the curiosity of scientists. Somehow she finds Will again, and his sleep has become restless, disrupted, and she wonders maybe how many times she can reach for his peace before she just takes it away.
So she pulls further back, until she hears Beverly tell her sorry, and all of a sudden the whole universe comes screaming towards her at once.
There are hands on her shoulder where she lies back against a biobed, the scanning arches pinning her down.
"Deanna, I'm done."
The arches pull away, and the doctor helps her sit up slowly; immediately Deanna's hands come up to press against her temples.
"Oh Deanna, am I -?."
Beverly fusses, but the girl is already moving her hands to wave away the concern, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, short and slender. When she tries to push herself to stand though, she is dizzy, unfathomably so, and she cannot understand why she suddenly feels faint. Beverly tells her she should sit back down, that there's something important, something serious that they need to talk about.
"I am pregnant, aren't I?"
It's not a question that either of them can sense for sure, and the Doctor's eyebrows arch upwards, impressed, yet her voice remains soft as she drags a stool to the edge of the bed, and sits opposite her to speak.
"You are, yes - it doesn't seem like this is good news for you?"
"I'm not sure, I know I am because I can feel it, but I do not know how."
Beverly's eyebrows settle back into sympathy, and she looks down at the data pad in her hand.
"You said there was a 'presence', in your quarters? The ship's log shows a minor energy disruption around the same time, but there was nothing more noted about it. I wonder if they're connected?"
"They are,"
Deanna's voice has taken on the quality of a machine's, and in her recollection, she is without emotion.
"There was a being with me, in my quarters as I slept, I could not move at all but I saw a ball of light above me. And then -"
She frowns, her eyes fixed to one spot on the carpeted deck.
"I do not know."
"Deanna?"
The young woman is pulled back into the room, and all of a sudden she can feel that Beverly is staring intently at her, and she looks up, raw with honesty, like an exposed wire.
"The light...entered my body. And I do not know why, or how, but I felt it."
She explains, and Beverly is fast-typing some notes down, trying to piece together her version of events without even understanding what she's trying to say, a sensation she is unable to describe.
"Until I get the genetic sample back I honestly couldn't tell you the exact composition of the fetus. But all my scans for the moment are indicating to me a healthy embryo, already a few days into development."
"Days?"
Deanna echoes, a slender, long fingered hand sprawls against the fabric of her nightgown against her centre, and she is shocked, so rattled that finally some emotion shows in her.
"I have no idea how or why, and there's no easy way to say it, but this pregnancy is too fast, it's accelerating at a rate that is completely unheard of. I've got some numbers running at the moment, but it looks to me that there was no period of extended fertilisation, with a... a jump to immediate fertilised implantation."
The Doctor tries to explain, and Deanna does her best to nod along, having had to take extensive classes in medicine to gain her psychology degree, but here, now, with a tired and clouded mind, she is confused.
"This is incredible... it - it should be impossible… but the rate of development at the moment would suggest you're going to be at full term in approximately 6 weeks,"
Beverly goes on, awed.
Deanna swallows hard, takes a look down at her own body, and Beverly follows her survey, the girl simply too young, too small even to accommodate a second helping of dessert, let alone a baby.
"Six weeks,"
She echoes, nothing more than a whisper, and the older woman dips her head so that their eyes will meet, forcefully, genuinely. And she wishes they had known each other for longer than a year, wishes they could be close enough that Deanna would just let herself be weak in her presence.
"This is really something you need to let sink in, Deanna, you should try to get some sleep, I'm going to have to stay and run some more sample analysis' anyway, and you won't have to worry about informing the Captain, I can do that for you."
Deanna nods numbly, stands now a little stronger on her legs, her arms falling limply down at her sides as she leaves, words failing to say anything more than thank you.
It is possible to feel the exact moment that Beverly tells him about her, to discern the complete change that occurs within him, a kind of terror that grips his heart in silence.
She can imagine that his face must be nothing but that same terrible command facade he holds up infallibly, regardless of what he truly feels. And still, she knows what is inside him as keenly as though the sensation is her own; she can feel that he has allowed only a small sadness to permeate his awareness, yet there is something which she knows is beginning to rise in him like the swell of a wave.
He is angry. Angry, maybe, because she is his counselor, his to watch over as Captain, because after Tasha, people keeping taking his crew away from him and beating them down into the ground.
He is angry, yes, terribly angry, because isn't this supposed to be his ship? And wasn't he promised control?
It is impossible to sleep, impossible because of what she feels inside herself too, not sure if even she is angry, or scared, or perhaps just too tired to sleep, in that terrible way she often is.
Her quarters are gradually becoming lighter along with the changing time, and the walls are soaked in his anger, her confusion, all the uncertainties that have been holding her in suspension.
Her tea has gone cold in the palm of her hand, the mug now just like ice and cold ceramic and filled almost to the top with a rich red liquid.
In one moment, it reminds her of the thickness of blood, and in another, of nothing at all.
There is a presence that hasn't left her since she first felt it, and how naive of Beverly to think she could just tell her to sleep and it would happen, how hideously unprofessional to just send her away. But of course the woman is not a therapist, she is a Doctor, and so she had presented her patient with a diagnosis, with facts - if such a thing they could be considered - and sent her on her way.
Hideously professional.
She wants to know why there had been a tiny light of confidence in the woman when she spoke of a child, as though she believed if anyone could raise a child it would be her.
Eyes, dark and heavy lidded, scan the room around her, everything red like tea, and assess how her life is going to change if she lets it, how she is probably the least capable person to raise a child on a moments notice, how even the space she lives in has only just developed a sense of order and normalcy. Beverly must have been deluding herself, trying to find some way to make this situation into something just bearable enough to continue through, and 3 hours 27 minutes and 4 seconds is not enough time to come to terms with this news.
Six weeks is not enough time.
Yet somehow Beverly believes she can do it, even if only with a small part of herself, she believes it nonetheless. She wishes she could be so confident herself - but where is she to put a crib, to find childcare, to continue on in her duties, to relinquish a small part of what she loves?
At one point, she had desired children more than anything, she had burned with a desire to have the life her parents had, so comfortable, so domestic.
"I'm going to be a mama someday, mama,"
She states matter-of-factly, small feet skipping around on the grass and hands clutching to a floppy eared plush bunny.
Her mother smiles up at her from atop a blanket, her face young and free of the concerns of her work for a few minutes of time.
~You will need a husband first, little one~
A voice appears in her mind, and the little girl pouts, her bottom lip thrust forward and shining pink, furrowing her brows in response.
~Why?~
Deanna whines back, and her mother's face lights further in an impressed, beaming smile, proud that she is finally beginning to show considerable talent for telepathy, in spite of her disabi-
"What lies is she feeding you now, princess?"
Her father is climbing towards them up the grassy bank, his palm opened out in a handful of picked fruits; he kisses Lwaxana on the cheek as he passes her.
"Daddy!"
Deanna exclaims, aloud startling a brooding clutch of fowl from the surface of the water, and up into the air in a flurry of frantic motions. They disappear behind the line of forest trees.
In a movement much the same, she is swept into his arms and up onto her father's hip, reaching to cling onto his neck with her small, grabbing hands. He pops a piece of fruit into her mouth, and then one into his own, and the two of them are a picture of joy.
"Mama says I have to be married before I can have a baby,"
She complains with lips that spill red juice as she speaks, and her mother tries not to say anything about talking with your mouth full, if only for Ian's benefit of actually hearing his daughters voice.
"Married?"
The man exclaims with a deep chuckle, and he turns an incredulous look upon his wife, who tries her best to appear innocent - he has always known better.
"She's only four, love."
"Nearly five!"
Both parents turn to laugh at their daughter, protesting from in his arms still, already a picture of what is best in them, black eyes and thick black hair, but with soft features and her father's nose - a smile they share.
"Well, of course, how could I forget!"
Ian responds, seeing how she has already eaten all the fruit from his hand, and has it artfully smeared across her face; he is speaking aloud in Betazoid for the benefit of his wife, the unspoken considerations between them what makes their relationship work.
"Why do you want a baby now then, you're still our baby?"
She giggles and squashes her little fist against his neck more tightly.
"Not now, silly!"
Deanna squeals.
"And you certainly don't have to be married if you don't want to be, you might even want a wife instead,"
He tells her, earning a narrowed gaze from Lwaxana, though she has never questioned his parenting before.
"Like Chandra's mamas?"
"Exactly,"
Deanna's face creases in concentration for a moment, looking over and down at her mother and remembering their conversation.
"But mama says-"
"Ignore mama, she's old-fashioned,"
He cuts off her speech, only a little concerned over how Lwaxana tries to model the girl - children so often are like wet cement. A quick movement, and he has dropped Deanna onto her feet again, kneeling in front of her and pulling down the creased hem of her dress to level out at her knobbly knees.
"You can do and be whatever you want, so long as it makes you happy,"
His smile, kind and wise, is what remains in her mind for longer than it stays on his face, and behind him, she regards her mother with apprehension.
"I don't need to be married?"
"Nope," Ian tells her, something of mischief rising in his eyes.
"But you do need to run!"
He exclaims, all of a sudden on his feet and reaching down to tickle along the sides of her ribs, a delightful squeal of joy leaving her in that one instant. Deanna runs from his grabbing hands, all the movements exaggerated, her bare feet tripping up in the long, green, summer grass. The sun is alight in the back of her eyes.
There is no sun in her quarters, and she is not four years old anymore, her father cannot speak with her as he used to, though she is almost certain that he has been carrying her still, this whole time.
She cannot raise a child in the grass, or the sunlight, or even with a father like her own - she isn't sure if she will keep it at all, isn't sure if that's possible.
But Picard is still angry, near enough to a father as she has anymore, someone to watch over her, to be outraged on her behalf, someone who she hopes she can rely on for support.
The sun is not coming up, but the ship is coming alive slowly, and Beverly has left the Captains company to return to sickbay, to maybe try and eat some breakfast like any normal person who is just now waking.
Her quarters are dim, and she is pregnant, fatherless, full of a fatherless child and the fear for what her life is becoming - fearful for what is becoming of her.
It's 7:30 am, and she remembers a time when she thought she could do anything she wanted to, not needing to be married, not needing to make plans or preparations a whole hundred years in advance. She remembers running on blades of grass in bare feet and being free, loved.
A light flashes on the monitor at her desk, she does not have to squint to read what it says.
The ship is stationary, suspended in space at the very edge of a nebula cloud, investigating, but for the moment, maybe just witnessing.
Beyond the viewport, the patterns of space are beautiful, truly, but there is not room enough in her eyes for much of beauty.
She is trying hard not to cry, before even a word has been spoken.
The Captain emerges at her shoulders, and she had not felt him coming.
"Counselor I -"
His words fall away from him, unsavoury, and now that he is near, a short burst of agitation erupts within him - it is gone just as soon.
"Doctor Crusher tells me something has happened."
In the reflection of the window, he watches how her face falls further into thought.
"Something which she cannot medically explain,"
He adds, still a hand over one of her shoulders, the fingers burning with a desire to pull away from her.
"How are you?"
There is silence with no lease, rampant, her reflection still unmoving, unfeeling perhaps.
"There is-"
Low and timid, she starts to say, turning around, and his arms fall away to his sides to allow himself to just look down into her deep eyes, wondering where it is they might end.
"I-"
Still, there are no words which can leave her with any kind of conviction, and she's no clear idea of where to go next: she is without direction not for the first time.
"I do not know how I feel,"
She says finally, firmly, carefully.
"There is something which I can hardly sense,"
She swallows, her eyes leaving his to scan the ceiling, the walls.
"And it will not leave me,"
A hitch in her voice, and she cannot now look at him directly, everything starting to cloud over in the way that she had hoped it wouldn't.
"Deanna,"
Picard sighs emphatically, and somehow she has turned all the air electric with what she feels, what she is not allowing herself to feel, projecting it instead onto any living thing nearby. He understands now why she has isolated herself; his mind is starting to spin.
The slender arms she holds onto herself with tighten against her skin, tense up, and it is clear now to him that, in this light, she is truly terrified, paranoid, grappling with the feeling of not being alone even when she is, of being two.
"Jean,"
Her voice, soft like french rain, and fine like vineyard wine - his heart misses several beats.
Today, she is blue, allover blue: her dress, her shoes, her tights - her mood.
She has folded herself into something familiar on his ready room sofa, and for just one moment more than he has to, he is looking at her.
"Tea?"
He offers, already removing his own from the replicator and delighting in the smell of it, regarding her as though she is now a permanent fixture - how far they have come.
"No, thank you,"
She declines, polite, peculiar, but he does not allow this to perturb him. A few moments follow when neither has very much more to say, each daring the other to start a conversation in the midst of all the silence, so companionable as it is.
He sits heavily behind his desk.
"How are we?"
He asks, looking around at all the corners of the room, wanting to emphasise more than his words could ever do.
"The crew?"
Deanna clarifies; they both know she does not need an answer.
"There is grief - as in all things - but I believe people are growing in her memory,"
A beat.
"Tasha should be proud of the legacy she leaves behind her."
Contemplative silence follows, and he looks deeply into her eyes where she guards her own emotions closely, wondering if she is concealing feelings that she has not yet shared in the way that others share them with her.
"How are we?"
She asks him in kind, and the trance is broken.
"Me?"
A beat.
"I was hoping you might tell me?"
He responds, helpless like a child, but then, maybe he is asking too much of her, for she is just a child too.
"You no longer feel responsible, I can tell, but you are worried about something else now,"
Deanna states, crossing her legs and leaning herself a little further back against the cushions, one hand travelling to rub once across her forehead, and then to rest gently back in her lap. He takes a moment to revise his thoughts, scared for a moment that he has been caught fretting over her.
"You helped me to come to terms with the senselessness of her passing, that's true,"
He takes a quick sip from the top of his teacup.
"I know now that there was nothing I could have done to stop it, to save her,"
Deanna's eyes narrow slightly at him, pensive in her assessment.
"But you worry now for another?"
She asks - another non-question. Easier than speaking, he nods, and she begins to smile softly, knowingly.
"Me?"
It seems she has all the answers that he cannot provide, and so he smiles back at her, watching how the expression is not so genuine upon her face as he would like to see, and very soon she has returned to something more neutral. It is unnerving to say the least.
"I worry for you Counselor."
"Please,"
And it really seems as though she is pleading.
"Call me Deanna,"
She tells him gently, and his eyes soften for her.
"Deanna,"
He echoes.
"I worry because you're so young, and you take on so much."
Arms, long and sweeping, motion upwards and above himself.
"You feel the whole ship when she grieves, you're our counsel, but who's yours?"
Deep in his chest, his heart forgets to beat.
"I am fine Captain,"
She tells him, and it is not a secret to either of them that she is lying.
"Deanna,"
He echoes once more, chides her in that way he does, tries not to make her feel wrong for trying to save him from her truth.
"How often have we met like this?"
"Hm?"
The mood changes just slightly, and she is caught off guard.
"How often have we had tea together, given advice to one another as confidants, and not as colleagues?"
And he truly is asking her a question.
"I am not sure,"
A beat.
"Time enough that you should not be calling me Counselor."
"But not enough for you to stop calling me Captain,"
He responds quickly, a quip maybe, if he weren't being so serious.
Deanna swaps over her crossed legs, busying her hands with rearranging the pleat in her skirt.
"Your mother has no trouble calling me by name,"
The memory of Lwaxana and all her intimacy surfaces in the inflection of each of his words, and somehow a fond, albeit tight smile, emerges from her morosity.
"My mother is not your subordinate,"
She tells him, and he is sad that she thinks of their conversations this way, where rank ought not matter.
"Besides,"
The girl adds.
"I know how that makes you uncomfortable."
A brighter, freer smile comes upon her.
"And so does my mother,"
Deanna scoffs, and without check, a laugh escapes him, hot and short and joyful enough to set her into a tinkle of laughter also, brief and delightful.
"You're right that being called Jean-luc makes me uncomfortable,"
He swallows, shudders.
"That reminds me of my mother,"
They trade in quick laughs again, the lingering fear of a young boy lighting them both up.
"But for my friends, Deanna, I like to be called Jean,"
She affords him a slight nod, something serious blanketed over them suddenly.
"We're friends aren't we,"
He pauses.
"You're not here now because you are obliged to be?"
Deanna nods again.
"So, if I am allowed to call you Deanna, then why can't you call me Jean?"
"Jean,"
She echoes.
Her tongue laps against the roof of her mouth, and there is something terribly endearing about how her voice works around his name, her accent turning it into something unique to only her.
"See, it's not so difficult for me to be just a man, and not the Captain,"
She nods for a third time.
"And you can be just Deanna, if you ever need to not be the Counselor."
"I told you I am fine,"
Her voice, this time, comes with no conviction at all.
"I don't believe that,"
Now a little cooler, he takes another sip of tea.
"You were right there when she was killed, you must have felt it happen,"
He sighs.
"I would not be so fine if I was trapped in a shuttlecraft while my friend was killed for my sake,"
The words are purposefully abrasive, but he fails to gain any kind of reaction from her, those eyes remain as elusive as they have ever been.
"And then, to have to listen to the grief of the crew, to feel it with the gift that you have -"
Another sip.
"I could not imagine."
Deanna meets his gaze, unrattled by him trying to coax something out of her - it is clear that there is much more skill required in therapy than he gives her credit for.
"It is my job,"
She states, and for the first time in weeks, she looks tired.
In a flurry of blue fabric, and black, flashing hair, she stands.
"But if for any reason I find myself in need of a conversation,"
She tips her head towards the mug between his palms.
"And a good cup of tea, then I know where I can find you,"
Just an inch before she hits the sensor for the door panel, she turns to fix him with a coy smile, wry even.
" Jean,"
She is gone.
"Jean,"
She whispers again, trying to save face by holding tightly onto herself still, that she may not tremble too violently.
Again, his heart tightens in his chest, and this would be so much easier for him if she were calling on him as a Captain, and not as a friend - but he had been the one to lay the boundary.
"How-"
A breath.
"How can I make this better?"
He asks, so sincerely that the lights dim around them, paled in comparison to the morning sky in his own eyes.
"I don't know what to do,"
She whispers, barely audibly, but he does not have to strain to hear her, because there is much less of a tragedy to her than perhaps there ought to be. There is the sound of scuffing feet, and he glances down to see how she rearranges herself slowly.
"Are we friends?"
She asks him now, poignantly, a perfect mirror to the memory he has tried not to get too swept up in.
"I like to think so, yes."
"Are you my friend for this?"
Deanna asks; a hand ghosts past her middle.
"Or do you have to be my Captain?"
Nobody is breathing, and it is not a terribly charged question, but somehow there is something there, only one year old, not worth disturbing.
"I was hoping - I think - I'd like to be both,"
Picard tells her, tripping over all of his words.
"If I can?"
An emotion wells in her, and she's not sure if it is even her own, something which she has not sensed in an achingly long time, directed towards her. Something paternal. So she nods to him, vigorously, hair bouncing upwards and eyes gleaming a few unshed tears - the face of a child, of a woman terrified.
In a moment he hopes not to regret, Picard moves towards her even closer, his arms opening around her frame to embrace her, to hold onto her tightly enough that he might hold her together. It lasts only a few seconds. Somehow, that is enough.
When he pulls away, there is a brief sound of loss that leaves them both, of the effort expended in being such different versions of themselves - the roles almost reversed. He steps much further away than before, and further back into the room, away from the viewport where that same nebula continues to respire, to breath and grow in great sweeping motions of gas and rock.
"The others,"
He blurts, the realisation coming to him as he remembers finally where they are and what they do.
"The meeting doesn't start for another 15 minutes, why don't you take a seat?"
Deanna nods again in response, more placidly this time, and he wishes he were not needed on the bridge in that brief time, that maybe he could watch over her in-case she is not built to survive what will come.
There is very little behind her eyes, and they cannot tell him anything he hasn't heard before.
So he leaves, with little else he can do, and fills his mind with all the things that calm him, hoping she may be calm too.
He disappears, and so too does she: behind her eyes, behind a window into space, behind the walls, gleaming white around herself, deep in her mind, until she cannot feel anything of anyone at all.