Chapter Text
The Price We Pay
Will
‘Grief is the price we pay for love.’ – Queen Elizabeth II
It is sunset and they are walking down a familiar forested track on the south side of the house, towards the lake. He’s stopped noticing the lay of the land and even though he’s walked these tracks a thousand times, he doesn’t really know how far they’ve come, just that it’s away from the house and the effort to be as he was before his world changed. The sun is still hot and beside him, her feet are scuffing slightly in the dust of the path, worn dry by weeks without rain and the short, blaring summer typical of Nepenthe.
But, for the first time in days, there’s a slight breeze and it lifts Will’s hair and swirls the long, yellow grass on either side of them. The horizon is tinted orange and the sun bleeds red into a shimmering, hazy sky. Taking his hand, Deanna leads him over a fallen tree and down to the water, where the ground is spongy beneath their feet and insects flit like tiny specks of light. And there, on the bank, the cairn of white river stones crouches low and out of place beneath the spreading boughs of an ancient tree.
Thad.
His heart clenches.
His son is six feet beneath the ground beneath those stones and he still cannot bear the thought of it.
It’s been a year to the day since their world turned upside down and the date is indelibly etched on his brain. On the day he dies, he will still remember it. It’s why they are here, now, on this hot evening, and not back at the house with Kestra and Lwaxana.
Deanna has a bunch of replicated tulips in her hand, the kind Thad loved, with their split-colours and broad, curved petals, and she goes to the cairn and lays them on top of the stones. She says a few words in Betazin.
Perhaps he should go and say something too? He swallows, hard.
But what to say? What is there left to say? Thad cannot hear him… cannot see him or know of his presence here beside what is no more than a pile of rocks and a coffin buried deep below the ground.
People keep telling him that it will get easier, but he doesn’t know how it can. It feels like there is nothing else but this chasm that is hollowing ever deeper inside him, tunnelling into his very bones. In times gone by, he’d turn to her to guide him out but she is as lost as he is. He feels that much.
No doubt sensing his distress, Deanna turns away from the grave and comes back to where he is standing, mute and remote. She tilts her face towards the sunset and sinks to the ground, gesturing for him to join her.
They sit perfectly still for the longest time, staring at the sky and the clouds twisting and turning through a hundred different shapes before they settle down for the night. He breathes in deeply, trying to stop the blanket of sadness that is sweeping over him but it’s like standing against the tide with only a bucket in hand.
Deanna leans back onto her hands and turns to look at him. “Are you all right now?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “I’m fine.”
It is an easy lie, one that propagates itself for all these milestone moments there have been between then and now. They are always fine because it hurts too much to have to wade through the feelings each time that question is asked.
She nods. He knows she doesn’t believe him. She didn’t get to be so good at her job without being able to spot when someone is in denial.
“I’m sorry,” he says, at length. “I couldn’t…” His voice cracks and he shakes his head.
“It’s fine, Will,” she replies in another lie as casual as a heartbeat. She reaches up and runs her fingers along his jawline, over the softness of his beard. It is a gentle, tender touch but it feels like she is running a blade across his skin and he can’t help but shiver.
They are drawing away from each other, he knows. He can’t read her thoughts any more. Hasn’t been able to for some time, though he’s hidden the fact with a deal of acting and a parody of his usual charm. Some part of him wants her to realise and confront him, but she has said nothing and her silence simply makes him feel more adrift.
Before them, the clouds are layering up, growing darker and more dense along the horizon. It won’t be long before the red ball of the sun dips from sight. “We should head back,” he says, moving to get to his feet, but she stops him and looks into his eyes, studying him.
For a moment he thinks she is going to say something, then she shakes her head and stands. “Come on then,” she agrees.
He takes one last look at the cairn then turns his back on it and leads the way down the track toward the house.
***
That night, Deanna goes to bed early and he is left alone downstairs, sitting with a glass of Saurian brandy in his easy chair. The house is quiet. The doors to the porch are wide open still and he can hear the never-ending chorus of night-time bugs in the garden. He thinks of Jessamine Renard, his neighbour growing up, who was widowed in the summer of '43. Three years went by without anyone seeing her until one morning, there she was on her porch, feeding the birds as if nothing had happened and the three years of solitude hadn’t occurred. When he asked her where she’d been, she’d frowned and shaken her head and murmured that she couldn’t quite recall.
He wonders if he is turning into Jessamine Renard, locked away on this planet like an eremite. He wonders if he even cares.
He hears Deanna crying in the night, when she thinks she is alone, and knows he should feel something. He needs to cry too, but he is too weak, too strong, to do it. Slowly, he finishes his brandy and climbs the stairs to their bedroom.
She is there, in the darkness, a curved shape beneath the blankets, the cloud of her hair fanning out across the pillow. She seems so small. With a sigh, he strips off and slides in beside her, turning onto his back and staring up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. Sleep will come, eventually, when he is so tired that his body simply gives up. Until then, he will wait and listen and try not to think.
But tonight, she turns to him and pulls him into her arms, holding him against her like a child at her breast. In silence, he lets her, knowing she wants more from him but unable to give it. He feels her slip into his mind in a last, hopeful gesture.
“Imzadi,” she whispers.
He closes his eyes.