Work Text:
Your earliest memory is of him dancing — Zhaban, perhaps four years old, arms aloft, legs leaping, head thrown back in laughter. Music played for the Eitreih'hveinn, the Farmer's Festival, and Zhaban danced with other children in the high grasses of a fallow field under a sun that hadn’t yet gone supernova, hadn’t blistered and burst, a source of life that became a source of death. No, not yet. Then, there was Zhaban and dancing and your father picked you up and his mustache tickled your ear as he told you how fortunate you were to be promised to this little boy from a good family who danced so beautifully.
He was always there, Zhaban, his place not far from yours in school, your chest swelling as you stood side by side each year to receive academic and physical achievement awards, your stomach fluttering as his thoughtful eyes met yours more and more. And it was easy to fall in love with this man of contradictions, this man whose mother taught you the ways of the Tal Shiar, this man whose gentle hands could break the neck of an enemy of the Romulan Empire.
Humans seem to think widowhood is sudden, alighting as death steals away a marriage. Perhaps that’s true for some, but your widowhood tiptoed in, its first chill to your spine at the diagnosis, Zhaban seeming to shrink, to fade, to wane even as he asked the doctor questions and wrong answers — only wrong answers — came from the doctor’s mouth about treatments and plans and prognoses.
“Take all the time you need,” Jean-Luc told you and Zhaban.
But there wasn’t much time, and most of it was spent learning.
Learning to dose out hyposprays.
Learning to let your eyes leak, silent tears so Zhaban could rest, the soon-to-be choking you from the inside, impending grief suffocating the present in agony of the future.
Learning to let Zhaban have his last wish, the bedroom you shared in the chateau transformed by holo-imagery into the bedroom you shared on Romulus, his hand trembling on your back for a last dance together, the boy who leaped in the high grasses slipping, slipping, slipping from this world to the next.
Then he was gone.
And you could cry as loudly as you wanted.
So you did.
Your whole life, there had been the certainty of Zhaban. Even when you both lost Romulus, you had never known loneliness. Then loneliness was everywhere — in the chateau, in your memories, in your body and mind attuned to Zhaban since before you fully knew yourself.
Late nights and early mornings, you would walk the vineyards, an escape from cold bedsheets in a too-big bed. And as you walked, your mind trod the paths of memories. Zhaban’s arm around your shoulders watching the nightly news holo, Zhaban’s voice shouting over the sonic waves of your shower to share something important, Zhaban’s hand resting on yours for strength when you would curl in on yourself for want of a planet and too many of its people gone. But like the vineyard dirt your footsteps stirred into dust, the memories began to billow, to re-form over weeks and months to settle into something new.
Hope.
And in that hope emerged outlines of possibility for a new love. Someone with Zhaban’s complexity, yet also his wisdom, stability, and kindness. Someone who would listen when you talk about Romulus, about Zhaban. Someone who would understand that the arc of your life led you to where you are. Someone with interests that overlap and also differ from yours. Someone who would thrill you, body and mind.
The humans have a custom — “dating,” a process by which one person interviews another as a potential mate through focused time together, usually entertainments such as dinners, theatrical performances, and visits to museums.
Such a strange custom, to try to fall in love with a stranger.
The Romulan way brought you peace — Zhaban, always part of the rhythms of your life. Like the predictable seasons here on Earth.
It was not yet harvest season when the sun rose as you stepped into the chateau, your willingness to find love again, to honor Zhaban in the ways his hand would forever rest on yours, a puzzle for which a solution was close, you could feel it.
“Laris,” Jean-Luc greeted you at the door, his forehead furrowed, “I wonder if you might know where my Shakespeare book might be.”
“The Globe Illustrated, the Complete Works, or the separate editions for sonnets or plays?” You draped your sweater on your hook next to Jean-Luc’s jacket.
“The Complete Works.” His lips lifted ever so slightly in his smile of distraction, his mind half lost in wherever it goes — to the stars, you supposed.
“Third shelf from the bottom, middle-left side.”
“Thank you.” Jean-Luc’s head dipped in gratitude.
He walked away, his steps lightening as he neared his precious books.
Take all the time you need.
Jean-Luc’s words echoed in your mind but it was as if Zhaban was talking to you, whispering the answer to your puzzle, your hopes, the hazy outlines of your someone coming into focus.
Your throat ached and your eyes pricked with tears. Could it be that easy? Could familiarity blossom into love yet again, no “dating” or other foolishness?
You knew Jean-Luc Picard. You knew his forgetfulness, his stubbornness, his ironclad morality. You knew the wistful look of his eyes searching the night sky and you knew the straightening of his spine and deepening of his voice for comm calls with Geordi or Worf. And you knew Jean-Luc was practiced at protecting his heart — artificial the entire time you’d known him, as if the loss of the biological one had led him to choose only the types of courage that couldn’t truly harm him.
But Jean-Luc cared for you, you were sure of it, and perhaps he, like you, needed the invitation of everyday intimacies to discover love.
You asked him to join you on your walks.
With Number One, the three of you trod the paths between vines, paths older than you all, and Jean-Luc’s arm would arc as he reached for the plants, his fingertips tracing rounded leaves with a tenderness he never could have felt for the stars, a tenderness almost as if the plants were children in need of soothing for fear of monsters.
What monsters could this man fear?
He asked if you might join him on the sofa in the evenings when he read, all lamplight and pages turning, Number One at your feet and Jean-Luc’s murmured, “Oh bravo,” at a literary turn of phrase. You would ask and he would share snippets of sonnets, fragments of fiction, bits of biographies. And in the warmth of your care — had no one ever talked with Jean-Luc about his precious literature? — he turned toward you, at first with a shyly read line or two, then with increasing fervor, insights to explain why the words mattered, truly mattered, to him.
There were dinners together and more conversation — galactic news, vineyard business, reminiscences of his missions for Starfleet and yours for the Tal Shiar. There was wine with dinner, of course, but Jean-Luc doesn’t savor a vintage as might be expected from a winemaker. He takes the drink quickly, vigorously, a sure hand on a fragile glass.
Possible implications of that propensity set an ache low in your stomach.
You’d never chosen a mate, never tried to signal desire with lingering glances or a lowered voice. You’re a quick study, though — always have been — and Jean-Luc was interested, you were sure of it. His eyes glinted. His breaths quickened. His fingers fluttered as if he wanted to reach for you, to touch you with the tenderness he only trusted himself to share with grape leaves.
But you pushed too hard, didn’t let him heed the advice that helped you.
Take all the time you need.
So he pulled away, your pride wounded and cheeks surely flushed bright green with embarrassment. Pinpricks of long-ago tears threatened to mock you, too, for here was a man who gazed at you with love, but flinched when you met his eyes.
Then his shuttle lifted away into the stars.
And as you looked up, your frustration ebbed into a moment of perfect clarity, finally understanding what Jean-Luc searches for in the night sky, wistful for a life he no longer has and people he no longer sees every day.
He’s not an easy man to love, Jean-Luc Picard. His monsters are ghosts, alive and dead, and his ability to offer tenderness has been buried with too many of them. But when he returns — he always does — you will let his heart, his cautious, artificial heart, find the courage your biological one already has, the courage to love in the wake of loss, and you murmur as if he can hear you, “Take all the time you need.”