Chapter Text
The air felt extra warm that morning.
Beverly sat just outside the shell of what was left of the shuttle’s hull and leaned her back against the metal.
She had propped the bent panel as much as she could so it caught the light at just the right angle, enough to keep the small clearing warm without making it unbearable.
Beyond it, was forest as far as the eye could see, and as far as her legs had been able to explore. But she had at least learned its rhythms now.
When the winds would shift in from the east, and when the birds, or something close enough to birds, would start shrieking, usually just before midday, which meant she had a couple of hours still before they would start up.
Not that she really felt she needed more quiet.
She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
Some days, it was almost easy to pretend this was just a camping trip… or even Kes-Prytt. That the shuttle had set down there on purpose. That her communicator still had a signal. That he might call her at any moment, sounding all sour that she hadn’t followed protocol.
He had been testier than usual after Shinzon, and Data. Not that she really blamed him for that. Perhaps she had been, too.
Her breath hitched. Somehow, even thinking of him still hurt sharply, just as much as it made her feel calmer.
But she couldn’t quite forget the look on his face the day he had ordered her to take that mission. How careful and professional his voice had sounded. How formal.
“Doctor Cr … “ He had started, then stopped himself. “Beverly…I need you on Sixtus Minor. It is, after all, a situation that requires a certain level of experience…” He had kept on talking after that, but she hadn’t really listened.
The words she had heard, would have sounded like a compliment, a vote of confidence, to most, but she had heard the rest anyway …
I can’t do this right now.
So she had gone, of course. Followed her Captain’s orders. And then… the shuttle had burned through the atmosphere so fast, and broken apart before she could even get to the main console.
She still dreamed about it sometimes, the sudden lights on the console, the slinging out of warp for no apparent reason, the smell of scorched plating, and the way time had slowed just long enough for her to think… Well, this is it then.
But it hadn’t been.
She had woken in an M-Class environment in the wreckage of half a shuttle, bruised and bloodied, but alive.
For weeks, she had thought about whether she should be grateful for that.
A breeze picked up then and made her hair turn chaotic. She twisted the strands absently around one finger and let her mind wander back to the ship, to the people who were sure to believe she was dead. And to the man who, if she knew him at all, was burying himself even deeper in duty now.
Some days, that almost felt like the cruelest part… that she couldn’t even be angry at him.
She opened her eyes and stood, brushing dirt from her trousers that were worn thin at this point.
She had salvaged what little was in the wreckage during the first months there, a few intact storage crates, half a contaminated medkit, some emergency rations, and a cracked environmental generator she had somehow coaxed back to life.
The first weeks had been nothing but hauling, prying, cutting, until her palms were blistered and her shoulders ached every night.
She had dug trenches to divert rainwater, dragged pieces of hull plating one by one to form a windbreak, and climbed into the shuttle’s ruined guts more times than she could count, stripping wiring and repurposing what she could.
The clearing looked almost civilized now. A few scavenged panels leaned against each other to form a makeshift shelter. A firepit, carefully ringed with stones. A crate of salvaged rations pushed neatly against the wall, and the shuttle itself serving as a form of bedroom.
And then what had become the most important thing, had made the silence bearable, and made her relieved she had survived … a small, careful crib built from shuttle struts and soft packing foam, tucked into the shadowed corner where the light would never fall too harshly.
She crossed to it, and exhaled softly.
He was awake. Clear, blue eyes blinked up at her. A fist waved in the air.
In the beginning, she had blamed the exhaustion on the sheer amount of work, or the careful rationing that had left her always a little too hungry.
She had been testing local plants one at a time, waiting days for adverse reactions, letting herself taste only what she had been sure was safe.
But when the dizziness hadn’t gone away, and when she had found herself pressing a hand over her stomach without thinking … Her first thought had been that it was impossible… she was too old, the odds too slim, and the timing too cruel.
Her second thought had been darker still…
Wesley’s birth had been difficult, despite her being young, and Wesley rather small. She could easily recall how not one, but two midwives and an assistant doctor had ultimately been there holding her legs apart and pressing down on her belly in those final moments before he was finally born.
So her thoughts, stranded as she was, had been that there was no way they could survive this, if she could even get through the pregnancy at her age, not there, not with nothing but a half-broken medkit and a gutted shuttle.
Had they known to find her, they would have already.
And the way she remembered it, she had almost given up then. Almost let herself stop eating altogether, stop fighting to make the place livable.
She had thought, bitterly, that it might be kinder for both of them if nature had simply taken its course.
But the weeks had passed, and nature perhaps had taken its course, but not in the way she had thought it would.
Her belly had begun to grow, and the more she had felt him move, the more she had also found herself building not just to survive, but to somehow… prepare.
The second trimester had almost felt like a reprieve at first. Her nausea had faded, her appetite returned, and she had been able to walk the woods and gather supplies without feeling like her legs might buckle beneath her.
For a month at least, she had almost felt like herself again, even catching herself humming while she had gathered firewood or stripped vines for rope.
But then one morning there had been bleeding.
It had been just after sunrise, when she had been crouched near the ridge checking a water trap.
For several hours she had stayed seated on the ground, too afraid to move, convinced that it had been over, that this had been the end before there had even been a beginning.
But the bleeding had stopped as quickly as it had started. No cramping, no contractions. Just a hollow, shaking fear that had not left her for days, though she knew it wasn’t that uncommon.
After that, she had become almost obsessive about watching her body. She had used the barely functioning tricorder every day, even when it had meant draining power from other systems, running her hands over her abdomen in search of any sign of trouble.
She had counted kicks and shifts, scratching tally marks inside a shuttle panel to measure her days.
And still, she had never escaped the feeling that she had very little control over any of it.
Her back had ached constantly during the last few months, her ankles had swelled until her boots no longer fit, and more than once she had found herself gripping the edge of the shuttle doorway, breathing through scattered cramping.
It had been in those moments that she had thought of Jean-Luc most.
Not just the man who had sent her away, but the man who would look at her so gently that she had forgiven him for every time they had tried. But, he had never wanted a child, not for himself, and not with her.
And yet, every time the baby had kicked she could almost hear his voice in her mind, soft and astonished, saying Beverly… as if it had been the only word left in the world.
She had told herself over and over that he would never know, that there was no point imagining what he might say or do, because she had not believed she would make it that far.
But still, she had kept preparing.
She had reinforced the shelter, stockpiled dried roots and berries, and gathered soft moss to line a makeshift bed.
She had spoken to little Jack, sometimes almost angrily, sometimes with a kind of wonder, telling him about the stars he might never see, about the waterfalls where he had been conceived, about the man who had loved her enough to give her this last impossible thing.
By what she had calculated as the last month, she had rehearsed every scenario, knowing full well that there had been only so much she could do.
At around 36 weeks, she had contemplated breaking her waters to start the labor early so the baby would be smaller and perhaps better fit through the birth canal.
But, she hadn’t dared risking doing it on herself. So in stead she had tried to exert herself in the hopes that that would bring on labor.
Instead all it did was bring on an endless wave of Braxton hicks contractions that had stopped her in her tracks wherever she had trailed.
When her due date had passed, she had paced the clearing for days and days, too anxious to sit still, half convinced her body had given up in advance. Of course, she had thought bitterly. She had felt so huge and had very little confidence that she could do this.
And then… It had all started two weeks late at dawn, as a slow pain in her lower back, so faint she had barely noticed at first.
She had told herself how natural it all was, had forced herself to drink water, to eat something, to breathe through it, and cursed at Jean-Luc Picard.
The contractions had come and then gone, mild enough at first that she had almost laughed in relief. This, she had told herself, perhaps I can manage.
But as the day had worn on, they had deepened, sharpened, and she had found herself crawling into the shuttle to brace against its walls, to pace the narrow floor between waves.
By nightfall, she had been on her knees in the dirt, gripping the edge of a crate until her knuckles had been white, and she was screaming into the trees.
Those hours had turned into the next day. The contractions had built, then faded again until she had thought she might have imagined them.
At one point, she had collapsed against the side of the hull, half asleep, and had woken only because a contraction had physically forced her to move and her waters had broken in a gush after which the pain had intensified even further in a storm of contractions that had seemed to be on top of each other without really achieving much.
She had tried to be clinical about it at first, had tried to measure her progress, to time each contraction as if logic might have given her control.
But by that second day she had stopped pretending. There had been no control and no hand to hold.
When at last she had felt him descending, she had borne down panting. The air around her had felt too thin, too hot, too useless.
She had tried to stay upright, braced against a crate, but the next contraction had folded her in half and driven her to her hands and knees at which point she had a memory of having called for Jean-Luc over and over.
When there was a sudden and unexpected break, she had once again crawled back toward the shuttle to brace against the wall.
Hours had passed like this, swearing through clenched teeth, then slumping to her side in the dirt and weeping into her arm until the next contraction had forced her upright again.
The sun had risen and fallen and risen again, and still she had been there, gripping anything she could reach, a tree root, a panel edge, the firepit stones …
She had cursed Jean-Luc by name more times than she thought he would care for, then apologized aloud to no one while trying to do what it had taken there medical professionals to achieve the first time around.
And then, at last, she had felt that stretching burn that had told her the head was there.
She had reached down and felt the top of his head small and impossibly large all at once. She pushed, but whenever the contraction had stopped, she had felt how the head went back where it had been.
She hadn’t felt like she had had a clear thought at any point then, but had somehow still managed to grip the back of her legs and twist her hips while pushing so hard she had seen black at the edges of her vision.
And then very suddenly after what felt like endless repetitions, he had simply slid free into her hands in a rush so quick she had almost dropped him.
She had nearly fainted right there, but the tiny body in her arms had made a sound, sharp and indignant, which had willed her to stay awake.
She remembered having checked his breathing, and the color of his lips.
Now, four months later, she still had no memory of cutting the cord, but nevertheless thought about that moment often, how accurately, or not, she even remembered any of it.
“Look, who’s up…” she whispered, lowering herself to sit beside the makeshift cradle.
Jack gurgled, kicking once in reply, and she smiled despite herself.
“Alright, alright,” she said, lifting him gently into her arms. “I know, baby. Brunch first, then we’ll work on the transponder again. The tenth time is the charm, perhaps.”
He settled against her shoulder, warm and less small than he had been, and she felt that strange, grounding calm that came every time she held him, while also always wondering if he would ever get to meet anyone but her.
When he quickly drifted back to sleep, she eased him into the crib and crossed to the far corner of the shuttle, where the transponder lay in pieces.
She had taken it apart a dozen times now, stripping the circuits, cleaning contacts with scraps of cloth, reassembling and testing and tearing it down again when all she got was silence.
She knew it was hopeless. The crash had shattered it beyond anything short of a starship repair bay. But she kept trying, if only because it gave her something to do while Jack slept and some small way of telling him that she hadn’t given up.
Sometimes she found herself staring at the sky, calculating vectors in her head, wondering just how far off course they had been thrown when the shuttle broke apart.
Were they a few light-days from the intended colony? A few light-years? She felt certain that the debris suggested that there hadn’t been enough left of her to find?
And those thoughts always sent her back to Jean-Luc.
She pictured him at his desk in the ready room with his head bowed and deeper lines on his face … She trusted his love well enough to know that … some part of him would have gone with her into … her presumed death.
She could see him there, staring at the same PADD for hours without reading a word, replaying the order he had given her until it became a kind of self-inflicted punishment.
And then, because he was who he was, he would have buried himself in duty, consumed by reports and patrol schedules and diplomatic briefings, using them like armor until there had been nothing left of him but the captain of the Enterprise.
And, she thought bitterly, he would be that… while believing he had sent her to her death, when in truth she was still here, alive, breathing, building a life out of scrap for the child he would never meet.