Chapter Text
Enterprise-E
Deck Eight, Officer’s Quarters
Stardate 58218.3 (Year 2380)
The lights in Beverly Crusher’s quarters were dimmed to twilight, a soft command given hours ago and never rescinded. It was the kind of low, half-hollow light that hugged corners and left shadows on walls—gentle, but not comforting. Nothing was comforting anymore.
She sat curled on the edge of her couch, her knees drawn up, spine bowed as though the news pressed down with gravitational force. Her medical tricorder lay open on the low table in front of her, its readings still glowing silently. Evidence. Truth. Her truth. Irrefutable.
Pregnant.
The word didn’t fit in her mouth yet, let alone her mind. It felt alien—impossible. Unfair.
Beverly pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth, trying to regulate the breath that had started to come in short, shallow gasps. Her chest hurt. The air was too thin. Her quarters too close. She stood up quickly, knocking the tricorder to the floor with a sharp clatter that sounded far too loud. Her hands trembled as she pressed them to her temples, squeezing.
This isn’t happening.
She had just—just—finished patching Jean-Luc up in Sickbay. He was bruised, dehydrated, lacerated, and gaunt from nine days in a cold cell on Colora V, taken by desperate refugees who had nearly broken him in the name of politics she couldn’t even begin to process yet. He had looked at her with hollow eyes when they brought him in. Not afraid. Not even in pain. Just... gone.
She’d stitched his body back together. But not his heart. Not hers.
Because four weeks ago, she had given him everything she had. On Casperia Prime, with the ocean just outside their villa window and the sunlight golden on his skin, she had let herself hope that maybe—maybe—this time, they could get it right.
“Dammit!” Beverly hissed the word as she staggered backward into the wall, the panic rising like a tide she couldn’t hold back. Her breath hitched again, too sharp, too fast. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t—
Her legs gave way, and she sank to the floor, one hand bracing her on the carpet. A sob escaped her before she could stop it—raw, involuntary, broken. She curled in on herself, clutching her middle as though she could press the truth out of her body.
She was too old for this. Too alone. Too angry. Too tired.
She couldn’t do this again. Not like this. Not with him. Not with Jean-Luc Picard, who had kissed her like he meant forever one night and left her without a word the next morning. Not when he barely made it back from a mission that might still kill him, one infection at a time. Not when she had just ended it for good.
She didn’t move. Couldn’t. She forced a slow inhale—ragged, shallow—only for her lungs to seize halfway through. The next breath was worse. And the next.
Her body wasn’t listening.
Hyperventilating. That’s what this was. She could diagnose herself clinically, could list the symptoms in order and tell you what she’d tell a patient: breathe into your hands, slow your exhale, focus on a fixed point. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t find stillness. Couldn’t find herself.
She pressed her back to the wall, fingers clawing at the carpet as though anchoring herself would make the wave recede. It didn’t.
Heavens, I’m really pregnant. Me, poor, old, me.
Her mind shouted it. Over and over. Each repetition tore through her chest like glass.
And she was thoroughly alone.
She’d made sure of that, hadn’t she?
Casperia Prime had been beautiful. That fleeting kind of beautiful that made you forget you had a ship and a rank and decades of shared failure with the man beside you. There had been music. Laughter. Skin warmed by sunlight and whispers exchanged in a bed that smelled of sea air and citrus. She had looked into his eyes and seen a version of him that belonged only to her—unguarded, vulnerable, soft.
And then the call had come. Emergency re-route. Priority one. He hadn’t even woken her before he left. Just a hastily written message on an old-fashioned sheet of paper. So much like him.
But no I’m sorry. No I’ll come back for you. Just orders. Just duty.
That had been the last straw.
She’d ended it when they finally spoke - really ended it. There was a finality in her voice she hadn’t used the four other times before. A kind of cold fury born of years of waiting. Of trying. Of hoping. He’d accepted it with that same distant stoicism he wore like a second skin. Like armor. He hadn’t fought for her. Not really.
And now she was carrying his child.
Beverly let her head thud back against the wall, her eyes squeezed shut. Another breath caught in her throat, this one hitching violently. She was shaking all over. Her hands, her ribs, her legs.
You are not safe, her body screamed. Fix it. Escape. Move.
She couldn’t.
What would she say to him? How could she even begin?
Jean-Luc, I’m pregnant.
The words wouldn’t form. They felt radioactive.
He had told her once—ages ago, long after KesPrytt, long after that broken mind-meld exposed their truths—why he had never wanted children. She remembered the dim light of his ready room, the silence after she’d teased him about the idea of retirement, a real home and kids. He hadn’t laughed. His voice had gone quiet.
My father was... not a man I wish to become.
It was the only time she had heard him say it aloud. And it had chilled her, the way he stared past her then, not angry or regretful - just terribly afraid.
Jean-Luc Picard, afraid.
And now she had to tell him he was going to be a father.
Not hypothetically. Not someday.
Now. Here. After everything.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, the words cracked and hoarse. “I can’t—”
Her body convulsed again, her breath turning into a wheeze. Panic pressed on her like gravity. Her heart pounded against her ribs with desperate, painful urgency.
This is too late. I’m too old. We’re too broken. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want me. Not as his first priority – it was always like that, you fool. I had his love, but never his commitment.
The fear consumed her.
She curled tighter, tears breaking loose and sliding unchecked down her cheeks, mixing with sweat. Her palms pressed against her stomach - flat, silent, four weeks into a future she hadn’t planned and couldn’t control.
Alone. Always alone.
Her breathing didn’t steady, but the panic started to shift—boiling into something hotter, darker. Not calmer. Just changed.
Resolve, maybe. Or the closest thing to it when your body is trembling and your future is unraveling one heartbeat at a time.
She was going to have to tell him.
There was no escape hatch from this. No clever medical workaround, no delay button, no running to another star system. She knew herself too well. She wouldn’t lie. She couldn’t bury it. And whatever else she felt—betrayal, grief, exhaustion - she knew he had a right to know.
She would tell him.
The thought settled like ice in her lungs.
He would listen. He would nod. He would go still the way he always did when something cracked him inside. Then he would make it clinical. Practical. Measured. A conversation with no color. Just options. Just outcomes.
And then - distance.
She knew how he would look at her. Like someone he used to love but didn’t know how to reach anymore. Like she had detonated something between them.
And she would have.
Beverly’s teeth clenched, a sob catching behind them like a scream choked off at the last second. The tears came again, hot and silent, even as fury twisted through her like wire.
He had left her. Again.
And now she was the one left holding a future he didn’t ask for.
Her hand shot out without thinking. It connected with the nearest object - her cup of coffee, long cold on the side table - and hurled it across the room.
It struck the far wall with a sharp, ceramic crack. The pieces exploded in a burst of sound, shards raining to the floor, scattering like her thoughts.
She didn’t flinch.
Her chest heaved.
You have to tell him.
She stayed on the floor, knees drawn up, heart pounding.
And somewhere in the quiet aftermath, the weight of the future pressed in.
*~*
The doors of the Observation Lounge slid open with their signature whisper. Beverly Crusher stepped through last, her stride practiced but a half-beat slower than usual, as if every step was pulled from her rather than taken with intent.
She was late. Again. The days of his late abduction and rescue still clinging to her bones like a shadow.
Not enough to draw comment—not in a post-crisis debrief where everyone had limped into the room with their own scars—but enough that they noticed. Enough that he noticed.
Jean-Luc Picard looked up from his place at the head of the table. The others were already seated: Worf, arms crossed with his usual immovable presence; Lieutenant Kellin, back in his uniform after months in medical care, her eyes somehow more searching than before; and Geordi, posture relaxed but sharp-eyed, the ever-steady center of engineering calm.
Beverly took her seat without looking at anyone. Her uniform was perfect, but she looked frayed at the edges—eyes shadowed, skin too pale, a tightness in her jaw that hadn’t been there before.
Picard didn’t speak as she sat. He simply nodded once, sharply, as if the sight of her momentarily disrupted whatever thoughts had been looping in his head. He swallowed, an unconscious motion, and turned his eyes back to the display.
No one else said a word.
“Let’s begin,” he said, voice even but lower than usual. “As you’re all aware, the incident on Colora V was not a sanctioned act of war, but the fallout may well be indistinguishable from one.”
The holographic display illuminated above the table, a three-dimensional projection of the Romulan Neutral Zone flaring into light, the planet Colora V pulsing in red on its edge. Several Reman colonies blinked on the periphery, tagged with recent Starfleet intelligence.
“The refugees who took me were acting without formal Reman backing. However, factions within their exile fleets have begun pushing for recognition—not just as a people displaced by war, but as a political force in their own right.”
Worf spoke first, as expected. “They will not be satisfied with recognition. Not if they see Romulan weakness. They will move. And the Empire will answer.”
Kellin nodded. “It is also likely that the Federation’s failure to intervene post-Shinzon created a power vacuum. The Remans are attempting to fill it.”
Geordi leaned forward, arms on the table. “And they’re using us to do it. Using you, sir.”
Picard didn’t answer right away. His eyes flicked back to the red pulse of Colora V on the display. “Yes.”
The silence hung.
“And we’ll be pulled into the fire, again,” Geordi added, quieter.
He didn’t mean it as a slight. Just truth. But it was the kind that scraped.
Beverly hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t looked at anyone since sitting down. Her hands were clenched beneath the table, fingers digging into the fabric of her uniform trousers so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Her heart was beating too fast.
They were talking about galactic borders, military strategy, diplomatic collapse.
All she could think about was her body. Her betrayal. Their child. His child.
Every time Picard’s voice rolled through the room—measured, strong, still recovering—she flinched inward. Not visibly. But enough. Enough that her breath came too shallow. Enough that the walls of the room felt too close.
He wasn’t looking at her now.
He had looked when she walked in, though. That nod. That pause.
He knew something was wrong.
But not this.
She heard his voice in her head, like an echo from a lifetime ago.
My father was not a man I wish to become.
She blinked. Forced herself to focus.
Kellin was speaking now. “The concern is not only the Reman aggression but what Romulan factions will do in retaliation. We have incomplete intelligence on the Tal Shiar’s movements, and several operatives have gone dark in the last week.”
Picard nodded, steepling his fingers. “Which is why we must proceed with caution. No heroic overtures. No Federation overreach. We maintain observation and prepare contingencies.”
Worf gave a short, approving grunt. “Caution is honorable. But we should also prepare to strike, should diplomacy fail.”
Another nod.
And then silence.
Picard’s eyes returned to the table. “That’s all for now. We reconvene at 1800 hours. Dismissed.”
Chairs shifted. Footsteps sounded. Worf was the first to leave, followed by Kellin in quiet contemplation and Geordi with a quick glance toward Beverly that almost—almost—asked if she was all right. But he didn’t ask. Not yet.
And then it was just the two of them.
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
The silence hurt more than they would ever admit. They weren’t done and yet – they were.
All so softly, he said her name. “Beverly.”
Her spine went rigid.
But she didn’t dare to look up.
“I—” he began, voice hushed, uncertain, searching for the right words to start some sort of talk.
But she stood, quickly, too quickly, panic gripping her with sheer force. Her chair scraped hard against the floor. “I need to be in Sickbay,” she said, barely audible. “Excuse me.”
And she left before he could finish his thought.
Before he could see that she was about to shatter.
*
The doors slid shut behind her, and silence descended once more.
Jean-Luc Picard stood at the head of the table, unmoving, eyes fixed on the space where Beverly had just been. The echo of her voice still lingered in the air—clipped, brittle. Not the woman who had once laughed beside him under the falls of Casperia Prime, barefoot, sunlit and thoroughly drenched. This Beverly was... withdrawn. Frayed. Hiding.
And visibly emotional. In front of the crew.
It wasn’t like her.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, jaw tight. His hands clenched behind his back, fingers twitching with the restraint he was barely holding onto.
What is going on with her?
This had started weeks ago. The moment she’d told him—precisely, devastatingly - that it was over. Again. Her voice had been so sharp, her words deliberate, each one thrown like a blade. “I’m tired of waiting for you to choose me, Jean-Luc. You always choose the stars instead.”
As if it had been a choice.
As if he was responsible for political fallouts.
As if he could have done anything differently.
He had chosen her. He had taken the risk - Casperia Prime, that fleeting week of peace in between these dangerous times, a calm moment of skin and silence and mornings with her hair still tangled from sleep. He had opened himself to her in ways he hadn’t thought he still could. And she had smiled, touched his face with both hands, and told him he was hers.
And then the call came. Orders. Emergency protocol. The mission wasn’t optional. He hadn’t hesitated - he couldn’t afford to. Not when every minute mattered.
She hadn’t even waited for an explanation. She’d packed her things and left before he could return.
He told himself she was overreacting.
Now? He wasn’t sure.
He stepped toward the viewport, hands still behind his back, watching the stars streak silently past.
This wasn’t like her. Beverly was disciplined. Professional. Private, especially with emotion. But in that meeting… he’d seen it. The dark circles beneath her sapphire eyes. The way she flinched every time someone spoke too loudly. The absolute absence of her voice.
Something was wrong above her usual anger at him for being him. But if she expected him to come crawling after her—to undo the breakup she had chosen—then she was the one being unfair. Utterly unreasonable.
A quiet, bitter laugh escaped him.
“You ended it,” he muttered aloud, the words tasting like ash. “Now live with it.”
He hadn’t wanted it to end. He had fought wars with less personal cost than that conversation in her quarters. And now she was crumbling before his eyes, and he wasn’t allowed to ask why. Pride, that old vice, rose again - shielding him, guiding him. She had broken it. Not him.
But God, he missed her.
He missed her laugh. Her hands. The way she challenged him without fear, without reverence. He missed the sound of her voice in the morning, the way she called him Jean-Luc with warmth or fire or both. The way she saw through him and held his faults like something human instead of shameful. Maybe he missed her even more, because he felt his world falling apart. With Will and Deanna gone… he didn’t even want to begin to think about Data’s recent death.
And now?
Now the only human being in his life he loved more than anything else in his world wouldn’t even look at him.
He turned sharply, crossing the room without quite realizing he’d moved. The lights shifted as the doors closed behind him, and he stood in the corridor, staring at the wall like it might offer answers. It didn’t.
His reflection in the blank console screen stared back—older than he felt, more tired than he would admit.
She had ended things with such fire. Wit. Precision. Like she’d planned it.
Like she’d finally wanted out.
And yet, that woman in the Observation Lounge didn’t look victorious. She looked like she was bleeding on the inside.
Is this about us? Did she already regret acting rash? It hadn’t been the first time she’d let him down since they’d started trying a romantic relationship.
Because of her constant second-place status in his life? Beverly had told him exactly that, yelled actually. He’d never heard her yell at anyone.
The thought struck him like static.
Was she… eventually… right?
A flicker of guilt pierced through the storm in his mind. He hadn’t asked her how she was. Not since he was rescued from Colora V. She’d been there - of course. Her gentle hands and exemplary skills had tended his wounds. Her voice had been clinical, controlled. But cold.
He hadn’t said thank you, because he was simply accustomed to her never-ending care.
He hadn’t said anything. He never did.
And now… now she was falling apart in plain view, and he didn’t even begin to understand how to reach her.
Or whether he even had the right to try.