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When he wakes in the middle of the night, Laren is sleeping soundly. Jean-Luc watches her for a long moment, struck as always by her loveliness. Laren's skin is smooth and unmarked; her rest is truly peaceful. They are travelling in a ship that is both shielded and armed; they have both known conflict. Yet Laren sleeps with the comfort of one who believes the world is inherently just. He always finds that remarkable. Yes, she is younger than him; the difference is great enough that it caused some gossip when they first fell in love, though the years have proved the naysayers wrong. But by the time nearly all humans are even half Laren's age, they have scars on their minds and on their souls. Jean-Luc has never met a human woman who can sleep as deeply and peacefully as Ro Laren does; her nights undisturbed by the fear of a Cardassian shaking her awake for any number of horrors. There is never a moment when he is not attracted to Laren; it has been that way from the moment that they met. But she is never more beautiful than when she is sleeping, and the urge to simply lay beside her until morning is as strong as anything he has ever known.
But the past whispers insistently in his mind, and he can only ignore it for so long. So he rises, careful not to disturb his lover, and moves to the sitting room.
As always, calling up the news on his PADD brings up a physical sensation of falling, and he lets it take him. The news from Earth is usually spotty at best. There are few Federation reporters stationed there able to get enough access to what truly happens to generate many news stories worth reporting. And everything is tainted by the Cardassian propaganda operation, a well-oiled machine that casts doubt over the veracity of their worst atrocities. Jean-Luc, having grown up seeing first-hand how this works, is capable of looking past the obstructions and can usually work out the truth. But this time, there is no need. On this particular occasion, the Cardassians want everyone to know exactly what's going on.
They have Kira.
Kira Nerys's defection, if that truly is the correct word for what she had done, had been a major scandal in the Federation. She had been a rising star in Starfleet once, expected to make captain before age forty. And then it had been discovered that she had been smuggling arms and medical supplies to Benjamin Sisko's human Resistance cell. The Cardassians had demanded her extradition to them for trial while the Federation had agreed that she would need to face justice but insisted on the right to try her themselves as their own citizen. And somehow, in the midst of all that chaos, Kira had escaped to Earth, to join in the fighting herself. Jean-Luc, only a few years free of that conflict himself at the time, had watched it all in rapt fascination, torn between admiration for her daring and confusion over how anyone who had grown up on the safety and beauty of Bajor could choose to leave that all for the nightmare of his own home.
Though he remembers it all more vividly than any actual nightmare. Himself as a frightened child, running though the streets of the place that had once between known as France as flames consumed the buildings behind him. The shaking of his fourteen year old hands as he had assembled his weapon, desperately wanting to be fast enough and good enough for the Resistance leaders to agree to take him with them. The rattle in the lungs of the first Cardassian he had ever killed, the ridges of his neck hard and slick against Jean-Luc's palms. Missions that had succeeded with Cardassian body counts in the triple digits and missions that had failed horribly, costing him friends and lovers and hope. Until the day that Jack had died in his arms, calling out for Beverly even though the Cardassians must already have had her, and he realized that he couldn't keep doing this; he couldn't keep throwing his life into this useless, hopeless fight. He had contacted that Betazoid aid worker, Lwaxana, and he'd got himself out.
Got himself here. To his safe quarters on the Kejal, the esteemed flagship of Starfleet, where he holds a prestigious position as tactical officer and where the love of his life sleeps in the next room. To a place where, with torturous deliberateness, he sits and reads about what the Cardassians will do to a woman far braver than he had turned out to be.
Kira has already been found guilty, of course; the trial will be like every other Cardassian trial in that regard. It will be a show of strength and triumph by the state, designed to humiliate the accused before punishment is handed down. But there is one difference from other Cardassian trials, and when his eyes find that detail he gasps out loud. The cold finger of the past presses hard against his spine.
The Cardassians are willing to trade. They are offering Kira Nerys's release back to the Federation in exchange for verifiable information about the location of certain human Resistance cells. This is unheard of, and Jean-Luc wonders, insanely, if they might be scared of something. Has he missed, in his attempts to decode what news he can get, some hint that the Cardassian Occupation is losing its grip on Earth? Could the little bands of ragtag fighters who he had to leave behind actually be achieving something with their smashing and grabbing, their fighting and dying? It seems impossible, but why else would the Cardassians offer this? Perhaps they just want to be able to lay the blame at the feet of the Federation when they execute their citizen - you could have saved her; you chose not to. But then surely they would have offered a prisoner exchange instead. That was something the Federation could have actually done, a offer they would have been forced to actually consider. This is a red herring; there is no one in the Federation who knows enough about the organization of human Resistance cells to take up this offer, no Starfleet officer who will lose sleep over not being able to fulfill their demands and condemning Kira Nerys to execution.
Except for him.
The realization hits him with the force of a disruptor blast, and in that moment he knows what this is. It is a taunt to himself to to those other few humans who have managed to find safety in Starfleet. They can save one of the few off-worlders who actually gives a damn about their struggle; they can send the message to the world that they have retained their humanity despite everything. And all they have to do is betray both of their homes.
For years, he has consoled himself with the knowledge that although he left the Resistance, he never harmed it. His passage away from Earth would have been much smoother if he had cooperated with the Cardassians; even Lwaxana had urged him to do so, but he never had. But this, this would be something different. If he does this, he can never go back.
He has promised Laren that he will take her to the place where the Eiffel Tower once stood, as soon as it is safe to do so. They have dreams of clearing the debris away from what used to be the Picard familiy vineyards, making the soil fertile again. He wants to toast to her with wine made from the grapes his family cultivated for generations. All of that would be lost.
And he stands to lose far more still. Starfleet would see cooperating with the Cardassians on this as a court-martial offense. They have a firm policy of noninterference when it comes to the Cardassians and Earth. That means no aiding and abetting either side. He wouldn't lose his Federation citizenship; one granted, possession of that becomes an inalienable right. But he would lose his place in Starfleet, his vocation and his home. He could lose his freedom.
He could very well lose Laren.
This should be an easy decision, and he knows it. He has never met Kira Nerys and he owes her nothing. What will happen to her if he does the sensible thing and stays well away will be horrible, but it will be no less horrible than what scores of other lower-profile prisoners of the Cardassians endure every day. She must be an intelligent woman; she was educated at some of the finest schools on Bajor and was a ranking Starfleet officer. She had known what she was getting into.
And yet he still sits there, PADD in hand, frozen with indecision. Until inspiration strikes him, and he follows its lead.
Laren does not wake up when he crouches by the bed at her head. She knows she is safe; no fear spurs her from her rest. He envies her that so deeply, even as he chases her sleep away, stroking her cheek until she awakens and giving her a light kiss in apology.
"What is it?" Confusion is replacing the peace on her face as she reaches for him, and he regrets that so deeply. She rolls over, drawing him up into the bed beside her. "Jean-Luc, what's the matter?"
There is no way to summarize what he has realized tonight, what he is feeling now. So he starts at the beginning, and lays all his fears at her feet.
When he is finished, she pulls him close. He lays his head on her breast like that is where he was always meant to be, and wonders how he can feel so safe in the middle of so much upheaval.
"What do you want to do?", Laren asks. And he understands that she isn't going to make this decision for him. The choice is his alone, his burden and his freedom.
"I don't know. Talk more for now, I suppose." Even that lack of response is a heavy rock thrown into the peaceful waters of the life that they share. He has offered no reassurance; he very well may choose chaos.
Laren absorbs the weight of that with admirable calm. "I'm listening." Her voice is as steady as her arms around him as his words spill out, carrying with them the broken past and the possible future.