Work Text:
“And when hope was returned to me
it was another hope entirely."
Louise Glück, The Garment
—
“Come.”
Picard squints in the dark as he steps inside, wondering if he arrived at the correct guest quarters that were assigned to Beverly. He had lost her after the briefing in the observation lounge, and thought he might find her in sickbay helping Dr. Ohk patch up the crew. He learns that she’s been relieved and gently coaxed by Deanna to find some rest before seeing to Jack.
“Beverly?” He probes towards the silhouette standing by the viewport, the vastness of space in its backdrop. “Might I turn on the lights?”
Beverly looks over her shoulder in acknowledgement, and the lights increase to envelope them in a soft glow, yet dim enough to hide in the shadows.
The bed remains untouched, and he doubts it was ever used.
“Was there something you needed, Jean-Luc?” Beverly asks, voice a hollow strain, as if she had been crying before he arrived.
He thinks of only one thing to comfort her. He discards his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, crossing the room to stand in front of the replicator. “Milk, warm. A dash of nutmeg.” The replicator hums as it materializes.
“Did Deanna send you?” Beverly's face flashes between irritation and bemusement, arching her brow at Picard’s approaching form.
Picard holds a hand in surrender, and with his other offers her the glass of milk.
“I come as a concerned friend.”
“You should have come with something stronger," she says, while dutifully accepting the cup from his hand.
It did cross his mind, but the holodeck was rather preoccupied with a gathering of the Titan's crew to remember Lieutenant T'Veen. And he would not begrudge them a moment of camaraderie to honour their colleague and friend.
They shuffle awkwardly to different corners of the room, and he hovers on the edge of saying something more, but the silence stretches out between them.
Picard settles for the plain truth. “You are under an unimaginable amount of stress… I thought it might help you sleep.”
Beverly leans against the small dining table, and he makes himself comfortable on the sofa so it might entice Beverly to do the same.
The dissolution of what they were has left them floundering between estrangement to tentative reconciliation. As the week drew on he found the sharp and bitter stab of regret turn into a dull throb of guilt and tenderness in its place. He could never truly be angry with Beverly for very long.
“I don’t think I’ve slept properly since Jack was born,” Beverly shares, staring intently at the cup of warm milk cradled in her hands, the weariness bowing her down.
“Jack is in good hands. Let Deanna do what she does best.”
"She already has. I could feel her reaching to comfort Jack — to comfort me," Beverly remarks gratefully. She takes a sip and a spark of recognition belays her words. The rigidity in her posture eases a little. "I thought she'd never forgive me..."
He tilts his head thoughtfully. "I don’t believe Deanna is capable of holding such a grudge, you are bound together by friendship."
Beverly nods her head, swirling the cup in her hand, not daring to look at him just yet.
"Of course, I could feel the sincerity in her words, but the experience of motherhood that I hadn't shared with her until now was profoundly different, moving." Beverly wonders aloud, painting a deeply moving picture of her connection with Deanna. "Joy and sorrow and pride."
She lifts her gaze towards Picard, and he sees for a moment the depth of her sadness — her isolation from everyone magnified tenfold.
"Beverly—"
"I didn't want to give them false hope." She cuts him off, has more to say, and intends to be heard. "I burned through research and contacts to find a cure for Thad, but nothing that would truly extend his life beyond a few years. But I should have been there, not just a conjured facsimile from Deanna's imagination…" Beverly pauses in reflection before concluding. "Yet here you all are, even Data returned to us, like time has shifted and we’re back on the Enterprise."
In reality, they have all lived a lifetime scattered across the galaxy, a fractured family hobbling through the years since Data's death. He recognizes the shared experience of grief. Data was a conduit that passed through each of them and pulled them into his quest to understand the very best of humanity.
"We are family. Always." Picard reassures, as though it wasn't plain to anyone aboard the Titan. "Any one of us would have come to your aid."
Beverly hums, placing the cup down, and licking her upper lip with remnants of milk. It pleases him inordinately that Beverly's taken his prescription, perhaps she might heed Deanna's suggestion after all.
"I'd like to think so, but children make us fearful of the unknown. There was good reason for Geordie to be wary when we sought his help. He was only protecting his family.” Beverly rubs the bridge of her nose. He watches her weigh the next words carefully, and remove her jacket to place it on the bed beside his own. “After all that we survived, after Data, after Will and Deanna embarked on their own journeys — Geordie and I were the last to leave the Enterprise, and he was the only shoulder I could lean on when I watched you throw yourself recklessly into danger.”
A strained silence blankets them. If he thought she might be open to a warm hug he would gladly give it, but Beverly remains distant, out of reach, as though they were eternally condemned to orbit each other.
It seems he didn't truly know much of anything that transpired in the wake of Beverly's departure.
“I didn’t know.”
And saying it out loud sounds just as foolish.
"How could you?" Beverly’s voice wobbles, lips screwed into a frown. "You were wrapped up in guilt and mourning, a baby wasn't going to magically fix it."
"I'm sorry, Beverly. That we can't go back and fix it." Picard slumps his shoulders, he musters the only promise he can make out of the rubble. "I want to fix it."
They argued, they made up, and they tried. The love was always in trying, as though it would be much more devastating to learn they had waited years to be together only to admit defeat. The last twenty-four years have felt like a slow surrender until a communiqué from across the galaxy flickered into a flame.
Beverly's demeanour turns grim, pacing the length of the sofa in front of him. "I could brave an army of foot soldiers at my doorstep, or give my life to whatever ancient entity in exchange for Jack, but Sidney and Alandra and Kestra? It causes me grief that we are putting our friends’ children in the line of fire."
"Beverly,” he wells up with unexpected emotions, his voice sounding almost desperate when he added, “I will not allow it to come to that."
"I'm not asking for your permission, Jean Luc." Beverly voices fiercely, determination fueling her fire. "When the time comes we must act in their best interest."
"You never do, too stubborn and brilliant to listen to reason."
"Reason!" Beverly laughs in the face of his limited experience in parenthood. "That boy is as foolhardy and self-sacrificing as we are. If Sidney hadn't thought of that force field bubble he would have walked Vadic back to her ship."
Jean-Luc gave in to impulse, remembering the way he shied from Beverly in sickbay after their row when every atom of him longed to reach out and hold her. He reaches out to her now and takes her bare hand in his, squeezing her fingers with gentle support.
Beverly’s eyes close at the contact, an expression of acute dread lingering on her lined face. “When I fled,” Beverly begins haltingly. “I knew this day would come. That there was only so far we could run before your enemies would learn the truth about Jack. I only wanted to protect everyone from being collateral damage.”
He tugs at her hand and pulls her down to sit on the sofa next to him. To settle her spirit for a brief moment of respite.
“I know that you are terrified,” Picard acknowledges his growing concern. ”I want to help you, Beverly. Please.” He implores, trying to ignore the pang of helplessness.
The last week has given him a taste, a fraction of all that Beverly has endured alone, and he wishes that burden to be lifted off her shoulders. He's aware the complexity of the situation will only grow as Frontier Day draws nearer.
Beverly grips his hands tightly, almost unexpectedly now. "Lieutenant T'Veen lost her life and countless others because we invited death onto this ship, Jean-Luc."
Jean-Luc shakes his head, unwilling to let Beverly lay blame for the actions of a vengeful executioner. "What's done is done. We will honour the fallen, we will do what is right by their families.”
Beverly lets go of his hand to fold her arms, closing herself off again. "Because I wanted to keep my baby. Selfishly, I couldn't - I had already lost one son, Jean-Luc—" she stops abruptly, the rest of her sentence dying on her lips. Beverly's head tilts back, swallowing a lump in her throat, eyes shut tight in anguish. She speaks around the painful memory, “Jack was the only thing that kept me alive, a bit of hope after I left the Enterprise. Starfleet… you.”
There is a blackhole expanding at the core of Beverly's heart, a grief that engulfs her and feeds into her desire to run as if she could compete with the universe's designs for Wesley Crusher. He fears what might become of Beverly if their son is lost to the stars too.
“And for that I'm grateful. But we have always been better together than apart. Need I remind you what we have survived.”
Perhaps he did, the future is not yet written in stone, but the past cannot be denied. The experience of serving together tends to forge strong partnerships and stronger trust between the crew, but nowhere is it more faithful than with the people he calls family. Time and again they throw themselves into unimaginable odds in a frantic medley of victory and tragedy with an unassailable belief in each other.
"Hope, in lieu of wine and roses." Beverly remarks, blue eyes searching his. "Is that what you're offering?"
Beverly had thought of a plan to escape the nebula, he knows with certainty there is a part of her that latches onto hope at the end of a tightrope.
Their enemies would do well not to count them out.
"I didn't come all this way to let you go, Beverly." Picard edges closer on the sofa, taking up space, and offering an upturned palm. Beverly lays a hand in his and he encased his other hand over hers. Safe and secure. His heart beats wildly in his chest, and he opens himself up so Beverly may receive him. "You are the mother of my child, but you are also my dearest friend. I am not giving up."
"Oh, Jean-Luc…" Beverly's chin quivers and she takes a shallow breath. "Twenty-five years is an awfully long time to wait."
Unconsciously, he runs his thumb over Beverly’s hand in a gentle caress to soothe them both.
Beverly doesn’t pull away.
"And I have loved you in one shape or form for over fifty years." He can't deny it now. Beverly has heard it spoken in the night before sleep and dreaming when their relationship would sour and sweeten for the fourth and fifth time. And in their slumber, they would find the other in a tangle of limbs reaching for warmth and closeness. "I think we owe it to ourselves to face this one last fight together. And mayhaps the universe will allow us one brief moment to ponder the future over breakfast, without all of Starfleet's problems barreling through the door."
"Coffee and croissants?"
Beverly dares him with a hopeful smile.
Picard nods, as though she read his mind. "It's tradition, after all."
"Oh, I forgot how good you were at that. Speeching." Beverly jests good-naturedly, and a glimmer of mischief swirls in her deep blue eyes, erasing some of the melancholy there. "Jack does it too. Administers vaccines and rallies a band of Kemiyan freedom fighters through a rousing rendition of a folk song. A diplomat by some standard. It's uncanny, sometimes, to watch him stumble into manhood.”
He’s not sure what they are to each other, but there is an undercurrent of love in her teasing that is unmistakable, familiar, like a worn book or a pair of old slippers.
Jean-Luc shrugs. He and Jack are a long way from being father and son, but he is learning to be present. To lean into his experience with Wesley and Elnor and Soji to navigate their burgeoning relationship.
"I think the theatrics are entirely your influence, Dr. Crusher."
“He was very much like you were, Jean-Luc.” Beverly gauges his reaction with a cursory glance, a kind of reassurance that echoes what she said to him many moons ago.
The words wash over him and take root in his heart. Jack, much like his namesake, was a mediator, bringing them together to find common ground.
Everything he thought he knew about himself pales in comparison to the calling of parenthood, the moments of doubt — of questioning the very principles he's held with conviction, against the love for one's child cannot be explained or even quantified. He once told Wesley that there was only one vocation that suited him and it had been Starfleet. Oh, how very wrong he was.
"In another life, what might have been different," Jean-Luc muses for a moment of light-hearted banter, striking a balance between the complicated and the obvious. "Jack and Thad. Playmates, do you think?"
There is a deep longing to know the life and story he’s missed, to hear mother and son regale him with tales of triumphs and hard-won battles on backwater planets that Starfleet has forgotten. Doesn’t he deserve a chance to get to know this woman too? A chance to complain about their bones aching and tired muscles as she administers a hypospray into his neck. He would like to be part of the excitement and the mundanity of their ordinary lives.
Beverly gently slips her hands away to lean back in a relaxed posture, following his train of thought she's quick to deduce the pair as: "troublemakers, after their fathers."
"Or far more cunning and crafty, after their mothers," he chuckles a riposte.
Beverly endears him with a smirk and the years between them melt away to reveal his oldest friend, like a distant star looking back in time.
Perhaps they could spend their last moments trying to recapture the past, to measure Beverly against the version of herself in his memory — flame-red hair and an honest face perched on his desk. But instead, he is quite taken with Beverly before him now with a shock of white streaks in her curls, hardened by a lifetime of danger lurking at every dark corner, yet in a rare glimpse of levity she's just as easy with affection and a catch of laughter.
"Hush, Captain," she counters back and takes off her shoes to tuck her feet under herself. "If you don't mind I'd like to close my eyes for ten minutes."
Without much thought Jean-Luc lifts his arm as though they were back on the Enterprise.
Beverly hesitates only a moment before she crawls closer to his side of the sofa. She finds a comfortable position to rest her head against Picard's shoulder, to press her nose so achingly close to his neck he could feel her breath tickle as she exhales.
"Thank you, Jean-Luc."
"Anytime… I think we ought to take advantage of Jack's ‘aunt and uncles’ on board, he's about as safe as we can hope for." No sooner had he finished saying it does he feel Beverly sag.
He reaches out to gently brush a strand of hair from her cheek and she resettles with a sigh of contentment. Her hand over his heart fists a handful of his jumper. It pulls him into a similar state of rest, weightless and grounded beneath her. A peace he hadn't quite known for a while takes a hold of him.
Love is as ancient as the stars and there is nary a more vital force than the bond between their souls.
He kisses the top of Beverly’s head and the lights dim.
Starfleet can wait.