Chapter Text
It never gets old– watching another being experience the wonder of space for the first time. While she’s sure it wasn’t the first time, Deanna Troi remembers being five years old and enthralled with the view of her home world falling away from her, even as her mother tutted at her for smudging the port and cautioned of how dirty it must be.
But as much as she wants to vicariously absorb this joy. The euphoria. But everything in her is desperate to know if this person has seen Will. Knows where he is. If she can bring Will back to her. To them.
It feels far too calm to sit in Ten Forward– at the tables where she and Will have spent hundreds of hours. And Deanna is grasping for all of her training, for every calming technique she knows. Whatever has happened, something is wrong.
At first, she had been excited about the assignment– the opportunity for first contact, to grow further in her skills as a diplomat. Her mother’s legacy was a behemoth to live up to, but she had loved the idea of getting to meet new people, see new worlds. And it was a way for her to forge her own way– as Lwaxana excelled in federation alliances, maybe she could make her own path in first contact.
“There’s still time,” Will rumbled, tracing idle patterns across the bare expanse of her back. They both had so many things they should be doing to prepare for this mission, but it was their last night together before Will was to be sent plant-side for a week. So they shrank their world to the two of them, and Deanna prayed to any deities that might be listening to keep any mental health emergencies at bay for this one night. “We could play house Malcorian style.”
She chuckled softly and turned her head to regard him. “Tempting as that is,” Deanna began drolly, “it would upend your cover story– lone wanderer from a distant city.”
“Mmm, if I were a Vulcan, I’d swoon over that logic,” he teased.
“I like you much better as a human.” She shifted to her side now, fingers sliding in a familiar path across his chest. She rose now, disentangling herself from sheets, and settled herself across his lap, knees on either side of his thighs. Her eyes searched his for a long moment, memorizing their shade in the dim light of their cabin. “It’s only for a week.”
“Only a week,” he repeated before ducking down to claim her lips.
She hadn’t been sure what time it was when they were both too tired and worn out to resist sleep. And she felt guilty the next morning when he woke her briefly before zero six hundred hours with several soft kisses and an ‘I love you.’ They would see each other at a briefing mid-morning, but he would be leaving almost immediately after it, and they would both be on duty, so they preferred this goodbye in private.
Unfortunately, things feel like they have gone from bad to worse as she listens to this scientist and her grim prediction of what might happen if Will were found out. It’s taking all of her training to listen, to wait, and not to scare off the one link she has right now to finding Will. A wild, irrational part of her wants to run to Beverly and demand to be surgically modified so she can go on her own search. And part of her wonders if she’d given into Will’s fanciful scheme in the first place, maybe he would be fine right now.
That line of thinking ends quickly. She has a city, but it’s a heavily populated city. A capital city. And she may be skilled at adapting, but even she would be arrogant and rash to think she could pass for a Malcorian on whim. For all she knows, by the time Beverly even had time to do the modifications, Will may very well reappear. He could be hiding, biding his time until it’s safe to step out. Even if she went down to the planet and managed to blend, how could she possibly hope to find him? There were things she could sense, yes. And her connection to Will had only grown over the last months… but it wasn’t a homing beacon. The very last thing she needs– that the mission needs– is for a partner to be driven by emotional reasoning. So she does her best to focus, reminds herself to let the captain be the captain.
The dire predictions sit like a rock in her belly, and Deanna is fighting the urge to explain to this person that Will is her partner. Her mate. She’s not even sure what the Malcorian equivalent would be. And, truth be told, she’s not even sure what mating dynamics are on Malcor III, but even if she knew, it could never be enough to explain what Will is to her. To begin to explain imzadi.
She grew up on Betazed, as a daughter of the Fifth House. And even she hadn’t really been sure it was real. Until Will, she’d believed it to be a romantic idea– beautiful and moving, but probably not truly attainable. The writing on it tended toward poetry and myth, with a few dashes of historical record but no research had followed.
In the end, Deanna couldn’t bring herself to go with Picard to see off Mirasta Yale. She simply couldn’t stomach the idea of making small talk, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything else right now that would make her more concerned for Will’s welfare than she already was. Even moving from her seat in Ten Forward felt like too much at the moment. Moreover, where was she going to go?
To her office? She wasn’t seeing patients today, and she was far too distracted to be of use to anyone.
And their cabin was out of the question. There were reminders everywhere, and she kept expecting him to stroll through the door at any moment with a joke and a hug.
It was less the movement nearby and more the soft, “Counselor?” that caught her attention.
Deanna blinked up in confusion, for a moment losing track altogether of where she was. It was Guinan, offering a tight smile and setting a glass dish full of chocolate ice cream with chunks of dark chocolate and syrup on top. Her eyes watered, and she quickly blinked them back and swallowed hard.
A warm hand squeezed her arm lightly. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”
Her lips press hard against each other, and Deanna takes a slow breath, trying to gain control. She is not going to cry in the middle of Ten Forward. “Beverly,” she answers, her voice tight. Despite the fact that Guinan herself is excellent company, Deanna needs someone who knows her right now. And who knows what it’s like…
Breath catching, she swallows hard and reaches for the spoon in front of her, not even tasting the first bite. But the cold enough is enough to bring her back to the moment.