Fic: Fair Trade part 2
Feb. 26th, 2009 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
so_jangTitle: Fair Trade
Author: me!
Rating:PG-13, technobabble, blood, angst
Notes: Remember that clip I was obsessed with? The one with Beverly's crazy hat? Yes, well... Link to TNG clip
Betaing & thanks:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
miriel helped me with the idea and gave me happy thoughts when I got stuck. **lanna_kitty** the hallowed and loved, betaed this like there was nothing else going on in her crazy life. She helped with characters, plot, grammar...everything!!! She rocks. (she really does)
Summary: When Captain Picard disappears on a shore leave on a nonaligned world, the away team goes under cover to try and find him. Worf uses an unorthodox cover story and it spirals out of control. Crusher/Picard with significant Riker/Troi leanings. (yes, I wrote another damn babyfic...)
part one
Beverly Crusher knew she should have gone to sleep when she got to her quarters. Instead, she found herself pouring over her old medical texts. Something nagged her, she knew she’d read it once a lifetime ago. She wasn’t entirely sure why the thought was relevant to the situation but it dug so viciously into her mind that she had to know.
Tossing aside the padd containing her first year medical studies of eugenics, she reached for the next volume. Scanning through the history of Khan Noonien Signh, she finally found the words she wanted. It only took three paragraphs to neatly outline what had taken the most dangerous scientists of the twentieth century nearly fifty years to create.
Beverly read those three paragraphs until all of it was seared into her mind. After that, she had to log into the Federation database on a subspace uplink. The necessary information wasn’t stored on the Enterprise’s computer with enough detail. Luckily, they were still in stationary orbit over the planet and the damn ruins Jean-Luc had been so excited to study.
Her computer clock chimed oh-one-hundred hours and pulled her away from her ill-tempered wishing that Jean-Luc had a hobby that kept him safe on the ship. Tapping the hypospray once on the table out of habit, Beverly shot the third dose of the complicated drug cocktail into her arm. Will and Deanna would probably tell her she didn’t need it, no part of their farce required her to pass a blood test, but if anything happened to call their bluff, she had to be ready.
She’d already taken the liberty of darkening her hair, not all the way to brunette, but something closer to Will’s. Combined with her hat, the lighting in the bar had been weak enough to hide her red hair enough that no one would noticed the difference. Their eyes were both blue, and the skin tone was close enough, most non-humans wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The hyposprays were her own design. A cocktail of hormones and tissue stimulants, taken one an hour for the last four hours with three remaining, was working her body into a state it hadn’t been in for a very long time. It had been just under twenty years since she’d been pregnant with Wesley. Jack had been with her, she’d been incredibly happy and she had her whole life in front of her. Back then it certainly hadn’t felt like her head had been impaled on a hot metal stake.
Dropping the padd of barely legal medical information on the table with a clunk, she returned the empty hypospray container to the replicator and ordered a cup of tea. The computer beeped patiently and prompted her to be more specific. What did it matter what kind of tea it was? She just needed something to distract her stomach from the way it was rolling beneath her chest.
The replicator materialized the ginger tea she must have ordered half a moment before the room started to grey out. Sliding down the wall to the floor of her quarters kept the room from fading from greyscale to black. With her head between her knees, she inventoried her symptoms. Apart from a strange, almost painful kind of nausea, she had a headache was nearly a living thing, her breasts ached as if they’d suddenly doubled in weight and her back stung. No part pregnancy in her memory had been like this.
Being pregnant with Wesley had been pleasant, uncomfortable at times, but one of the better periods of her life. Focusing on her memories drew her away from the cold sweat starting to break out on her body. She’d had a few miserable pre-labor days right before Wesley was born. Jack had been on a black ops-mission, dealing with the Cardassians, and though he and his team had brilliant avoided capture, they were stuck behind enemy lines on a warp two freighter. Jean-Luc had been the one dealing with her irascible temper and barely contained frustration at the situation.
Jack had no business going on that mission and everyone it seemed but him had been fully aware of that fact. Jean-Luc had been her saviour after a particularly desperate late night subspace message of hers. Taking an entire month of leave and letting the Stargazer be used to train cadets until he and Jack returned. He’d been the one to read plays to her when her back felt like someone had torn her spine out with pruning shears. Jean-Luc had sat on the floor by her bed, the sofa, and the grass on Copernica City and just talked to her.
She wasn’t even sure they’d ever spent as much time alone together before or since. When Wesley arrived, wet and screaming into the Lunar night, Jean-Luc’s hands and been the ones on her shoulders and his gentle, patient voice had been the one in her ear. Will and Deanna had never heard that story. She couldn’t even remember if she’d told Wesley.
In a way, talking about it seemed to take away from the moment. Jack had come home when Wesley was a few hours old. Jean-Luc had faded into the background, emerging from his studies of archeology and his duties as captain just long enough to share a meal or take Wesley off their hands so they could be adults for a night.
Jean-Luc may have had trouble with children later, but he was a natural with Wesley when he was a baby. He moved slowly, spoke softly and could contentedly spend hours reading to him while Wesley slept on his chest. As Wesley got older, Jean-Luc’s visits became less frequent.
Deanna would say she was bargaining. Grasping at old memories and trying to find peace with herself. The nausea started to fade back into something manageable and she dragged herself to her feet. Leaning on the wall was still necessary but she could keep her head up. Why was Deanna on her mind? Why was Deanna important? What was it about her that itched at her mind?
The leftover genetic texts of the Eugenics Wars weren’t enough. Most of those methods would kill her or at the very least, make her too ill to leave the ship until she lost the unnatural pregnancy she was forcing on herself. Twelve hours wasn’t enough time, not for drugs or any kind of tissue growth stimulation she could force on herself.
Worf’s words were resonating in her mind when she returned to sickbay in the middle of the night. Beverly had planned to twist her body into a hormonal state that would appear pregnant to whatever incompetent, poorly trained physician the smugglers had at their disposal. Now she had a reclusive and poorly organized planetary government to deal with. Worf’s little con was quickly spiraling out of control.
Being outside of Federation jurisdiction meant Jean-Luc had none of the protections normally offered Federation citizens. For all she knew, he might be worse off at the hands of the Suuka than at a Cardassian trial.
“Computer, seal the lab,” she ordered. ”Begin constructing DNA and RNA profile from sample in record Picard, Jean-Luc, stardate 47122.6”
“Working,” the computer reported.
While the results began to appear on the wall terminal, she turned to the other half of her mission. Running the medical tricorder down her abdomen she checked the screen before the cold sweat started on her hands. Even with her nerves screaming her hands still worked perfectly, a lifetime of training had taught her that skill. With the laser scalpel set to the narrowest beam, she would be able to remove what she needed with a biopsy needle.
Realizing she probably shouldn’t be doing it herself, Beverly bit her lip and spent a moment trying to ask herself just what she thought she was doing. Her hunch told her this was important and playing it out couldn’t hurt anything.
Filling a hypospray with a local anesthetic, she felt the sensation vanish from her abdomen almost instantly when the drug was injected. “Computer, display my left ovary.” Instantly, the image filled the viewer. Deep in the fascia tissues of her abdomen, the small pink structure seemed to be waiting. No matter how steady her hands were, it was too risky to perform microsurgery standing up.
“Angle viewer ninety degrees, make it perpendicular to the floor,” Beverly told the computer as she lay down on the floor of her lab. Activating the biopsy needle, she opted not to give herself time to second guess. The needle sank smoothly and painlessly into her flesh. Due to the laser cauterization process, there was no blood on the surface and no bleeding internally. The nearly ripe egg was visible under magnification and held in a cyst on the surface of her ovary.
She’d performed the procedure at least a dozen times but Beverly wasn’t prepared for the shiver that ran up her spine as she performed it on herself. Tapping the control on the biopsy needle, she sealed her sample and watched the needle disappear from the viewer. No blossoms of blood gave away any internal damage. Sighing in relief, she left the floor.
Standing in front of the workbench, she deposited the egg, it was too disconcerting to think of it as her own, into the waiting petri dish.
“DNA construction complete,” the computer reported with a gentle chime.
Reading his DNA pattern wasn’t as good as touching his hand but Beverly could almost feel Jean-Luc’s presence. He’d hate what she was doing but she needed the back-up plan.
“Open the sequence and begin chromosome pair construction.”
The embryo itself was easy enough to create. Now it waited, hanging in a special stasis field in the back of her laboratory and waiting for her to know what to do. Something about Deanna held the answer but her exhausted mind couldn’t put the puzzle together. What was she trying to remember? What secret was her mind holding on to?
Drumming her fingers on her desk in her office, Beverly glanced at the viral containment units and her memory suddenly gave up what she so desperately needed.
The Enterprise was transporting samples of plasma plague. The samples had been contaminated with Eichtner radiation and nearly destroyed the ship. The radiation ended up being part of a hyper-accelerated pregnancy of Deanna’s that had happened in the year she was away. Kate Pulaski’s notes were well-thought out and complete. She hadn’t understood what was happening to Deanna, no one had, but the answer was there. Something in the Eichtner radiation had kept Ian’s physiology stable as he’d gestated within Deanna. Her entire pregnancy had taken just over thirty-six hours.
Beverly didn’t need that level of acceleration. She didn’t need to accelerate the entire pregnancy. She just needed to guide an embryo through the first trimester. She could deal with it after that. It might not even survive the process but it would be enough. After implantation, she deal with the problem. It, she couldn’t really think of it as anything else, would most likely die after a few days of aging at a normal rate.
It would have served its purpose and lived a full life if it brought the captain home. Her conscience could live with that. Everything in her mind was functioning in a grey area and the sobering reality was that she didn’t care.
If Jean-Luc came back, she’d deal with her situation. She’d find a way to make things plausible, functional, somehow. Even if she took her child and raised it on Caldos alone with her work, like her grandmother, she would find a way as long as she knew somewhere out in the stars, Jean-Luc Picard went on. She wasn’t ready to loose him nor did she have the strength to face a starry night without Jean-Luc Picard in it. She didn’t know how to explain it to herself any differently than that.
Two hours later, the last of her hypospray cocktails lay empty on her desk in front of her in her office in sickbay. Beverly’s head was spinning again, rife with the nausea and the blinding, stabbing pain that seemed to be a side effect of the sudden increase in blood pressure. She’d already gained five kilos from the weight of the extra fluids filling her swollen tissues. She put on that weight before and her height hid most of it but her uniform was now tight across her stomach, hips and breasts. It was still wearable, but it gave too much away. Her lab coat provided some protection, but Doctor Selar would definitely notice the difference when she arrived to begin the Alpha shift.
“Doctor Crusher?” The tentative voice was Alyssa Ogawa’s, Beverly knew without opening her eyes. “I thought you would be getting ready to leave on the runabout.”
“I am,” she began pathetically hoping it wasn’t entirely obvious that she hadn’t slept. Beverly opened her eyes to the empty cups littering the desk and realized it was a lost cause. “Busted?” she asked softly.
“I miss the captain too,” Alyssa offered sympathetically. “Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about sickbay either, Doctor Selar’s taking care of the paperwork and the nurses, well, we just do what we always do.”
“And you do it very well,” Beverly agreed. Closing her eyes against the onslaught of the brightening internal lights of the ship, she sighed and rubbed the center of her forehead.
“Are you all right doctor?”
“Yes,” Beverly lied reflexively. When her stomach twisted, changing the slow simmer of nausea into an all out war against her self control, she found herself shaking her head. “No. I’m sorry. Not really.”
Alyssa’s hand on her shoulder nearly made her jump out of her skin. “Can I help you?”
“No, no I’m afraid not,” she replied. She didn’t know what to say. Words barely seemed accurate. “But thank you.”
Alyssa’s dark eyes were deeply sympathetic. After a moment, she guessed; “I’ll feel better with the captain back. I think the whole ship will.”
Speaking was tenuous at best so she only nodded. Her programming of the radiation emitter, usually only used to treat persistent local infections, was done. Beverly rechecked her work as Alyssa disappeared to make the rounds in sickbay. She didn’t remember imputing the specifications, but the program was there. Holding it in her hand as if moving too quickly would cause it too explode, Beverly activated the emitter.
The silence of her office was only filled with the gentle beeping of monitors in sickbay and the gentle, omnipresent hum of the ship breathing. The tiny emitter made no sound as she clipped on her stomach just beneath her navel. Her uterus was ready and the rest of her body was as prepared as it was ever going to be.
A slow, measured dose of Eichtner radiation would morph and change the tissues growing within her until the embryo matched the level of change already in her body. Then she could halt the process and hope for the best. Leaving the relative safety of her desk for her lab in the back of sickbay, she deactivated the emitter and allowed herself the moment it took to bring the room back into focus.
It certainly was less romantic than any of the places Wesley could have been conceived. Thinking it was not much at all like making love, she rolled back her head and sighed as she stared at the ceiling of her lab. After implantation, the zygote was a ball of cells, barely more than a white blotch on the wall of her uterus. It didn’t hurt, there was no pain at all because of the local anesthetic. Beverly only felt the soft carpet of the laboratory and the strange pressure for an instant as she injected the zygote into her body.
The child was something she could contend with if it survived. Her mind barely comprehended its fragile life, though its death would leave a stain in her memories, she’d go on without it. The real change was more subtle, something insidiously buried within her as she pulled back on her uniform and activated the tiny radiation generator before hiding it beneath her lab coat.
She had thirty-two minutes before Will would arrive on the bridge. He might even be in the captain’s ready room. If she caught him early, she might be able to get him to understand. Deanna would tell her she was insane but Will would understand. He was the man who had lurked in sickbay, unable to leave Deanna’s side when Ves Alkar was killing her. He was more romantic, more foolish and ultimately more like herself.
The local anesthetic started to wear off and Beverly was stricken with a new sensation, something she hadn’t remembered. As shaky and uncertain as her hold on her body was at the moment, she suddenly realized she was inhabited. For the second time in her life, she was the protective shell of something small, fragile and completely dependent on her for survival.
Picking up the data padds she’d brought to her office, she sighed and carried the bundle towards her quarters. With the impending shift change, the corridors held a steady trickle of people. Some on the way back from the gym, a few headed home after a night in someone else’s quarters. On another morning, she would have smiled at the ensign wearing last night’s uniform who was already in the turbolift.
The anesthetic faded further, something that wasn’t quite pain tugged at her stomach. Trying to ignore it, Beverly closed her eyes. “Deck eight,” she asked the turbolift. Due to her rank, her request overrode the ensign’s and the lift proceeded to deck eight. Clutching the stack of information to her stomach, she tried to act nonchalant.
Leaving the lift gratefully, she kept her eyes downward until she reached her quarters. When the door shut behind her, Beverly turned and leaned against the wall. Pressing her hands into her stomach alleviated the discomfort for a moment. Reaching around to the zipper in the back of her uniform, she let the familiar fabric slide off her shoulders.
Replicating her costume for the planet, she reminded herself to order her bra one size larger than the one she was wearing. Dropping her uniform into the laundry slot, Beverly sighed and sent her bra into the reclamation slot instead. Even though Starfleet had designed their uniforms to be comfortable for as long as an officer might be forced to wear one, in the last twelve hours her bra had become too small. She tried to change herself as gently as she could, but even in the weak light of her quarters, she could see the marks of what she’d done on her skin.
In the mirror by her sink, the skin of her breasts was too pink, as if they’d been bruised. Her stomach was the same. The skin was too pink, as if it had taken a heavy blow. Darker marks represented the damaged collagen beneath her skin. She could heal them, but she didn’t have the time. Clipping the radiation stimulator back on her stomach through the fabric of her jumpsuit, she hoped it would be hidden enough by her coat not to cause suspicion.
Clipping her comm badge over her breast where it belonged, she straightened up and pulled on the copper colored overcoat. She’d picked it because a phaser and a tricorder could be easily concealed in the pockets. She’d need to carry a few hyposprays and have her staff stock the runabout with additional supplies. Tapping her comm badge, she made the thought an order.
Settling the strange dark hat over her bizarrely dark hair, Beverly dropped her hand to her stomach and told herself she was only checking the monitor. She couldn’t afford the emotional attachment by acknowledging what was inside of her. She couldn’t worry for Jean-Luc and it at the same time. Was it really still an it? One tricorder swipe and she’d have to admit it had a gender. Gender was a few steps from a name and all the heavy responsibilities that went with it. Smiling ironically at herself before she left her quarters, she let a tiny part of herself decide that not wanting to know, wasn’t really a bad thing.
Author: me!
Rating:PG-13, technobabble, blood, angst
Notes: Remember that clip I was obsessed with? The one with Beverly's crazy hat? Yes, well... Link to TNG clip
Betaing & thanks:
miriel helped me with the idea and gave me happy thoughts when I got stuck. **lanna_kitty** the hallowed and loved, betaed this like there was nothing else going on in her crazy life. She helped with characters, plot, grammar...everything!!! She rocks. (she really does)Summary: When Captain Picard disappears on a shore leave on a nonaligned world, the away team goes under cover to try and find him. Worf uses an unorthodox cover story and it spirals out of control. Crusher/Picard with significant Riker/Troi leanings. (yes, I wrote another damn babyfic...)
part one
Beverly Crusher knew she should have gone to sleep when she got to her quarters. Instead, she found herself pouring over her old medical texts. Something nagged her, she knew she’d read it once a lifetime ago. She wasn’t entirely sure why the thought was relevant to the situation but it dug so viciously into her mind that she had to know.
Tossing aside the padd containing her first year medical studies of eugenics, she reached for the next volume. Scanning through the history of Khan Noonien Signh, she finally found the words she wanted. It only took three paragraphs to neatly outline what had taken the most dangerous scientists of the twentieth century nearly fifty years to create.
Beverly read those three paragraphs until all of it was seared into her mind. After that, she had to log into the Federation database on a subspace uplink. The necessary information wasn’t stored on the Enterprise’s computer with enough detail. Luckily, they were still in stationary orbit over the planet and the damn ruins Jean-Luc had been so excited to study.
Her computer clock chimed oh-one-hundred hours and pulled her away from her ill-tempered wishing that Jean-Luc had a hobby that kept him safe on the ship. Tapping the hypospray once on the table out of habit, Beverly shot the third dose of the complicated drug cocktail into her arm. Will and Deanna would probably tell her she didn’t need it, no part of their farce required her to pass a blood test, but if anything happened to call their bluff, she had to be ready.
She’d already taken the liberty of darkening her hair, not all the way to brunette, but something closer to Will’s. Combined with her hat, the lighting in the bar had been weak enough to hide her red hair enough that no one would noticed the difference. Their eyes were both blue, and the skin tone was close enough, most non-humans wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The hyposprays were her own design. A cocktail of hormones and tissue stimulants, taken one an hour for the last four hours with three remaining, was working her body into a state it hadn’t been in for a very long time. It had been just under twenty years since she’d been pregnant with Wesley. Jack had been with her, she’d been incredibly happy and she had her whole life in front of her. Back then it certainly hadn’t felt like her head had been impaled on a hot metal stake.
Dropping the padd of barely legal medical information on the table with a clunk, she returned the empty hypospray container to the replicator and ordered a cup of tea. The computer beeped patiently and prompted her to be more specific. What did it matter what kind of tea it was? She just needed something to distract her stomach from the way it was rolling beneath her chest.
The replicator materialized the ginger tea she must have ordered half a moment before the room started to grey out. Sliding down the wall to the floor of her quarters kept the room from fading from greyscale to black. With her head between her knees, she inventoried her symptoms. Apart from a strange, almost painful kind of nausea, she had a headache was nearly a living thing, her breasts ached as if they’d suddenly doubled in weight and her back stung. No part pregnancy in her memory had been like this.
Being pregnant with Wesley had been pleasant, uncomfortable at times, but one of the better periods of her life. Focusing on her memories drew her away from the cold sweat starting to break out on her body. She’d had a few miserable pre-labor days right before Wesley was born. Jack had been on a black ops-mission, dealing with the Cardassians, and though he and his team had brilliant avoided capture, they were stuck behind enemy lines on a warp two freighter. Jean-Luc had been the one dealing with her irascible temper and barely contained frustration at the situation.
Jack had no business going on that mission and everyone it seemed but him had been fully aware of that fact. Jean-Luc had been her saviour after a particularly desperate late night subspace message of hers. Taking an entire month of leave and letting the Stargazer be used to train cadets until he and Jack returned. He’d been the one to read plays to her when her back felt like someone had torn her spine out with pruning shears. Jean-Luc had sat on the floor by her bed, the sofa, and the grass on Copernica City and just talked to her.
She wasn’t even sure they’d ever spent as much time alone together before or since. When Wesley arrived, wet and screaming into the Lunar night, Jean-Luc’s hands and been the ones on her shoulders and his gentle, patient voice had been the one in her ear. Will and Deanna had never heard that story. She couldn’t even remember if she’d told Wesley.
In a way, talking about it seemed to take away from the moment. Jack had come home when Wesley was a few hours old. Jean-Luc had faded into the background, emerging from his studies of archeology and his duties as captain just long enough to share a meal or take Wesley off their hands so they could be adults for a night.
Jean-Luc may have had trouble with children later, but he was a natural with Wesley when he was a baby. He moved slowly, spoke softly and could contentedly spend hours reading to him while Wesley slept on his chest. As Wesley got older, Jean-Luc’s visits became less frequent.
Deanna would say she was bargaining. Grasping at old memories and trying to find peace with herself. The nausea started to fade back into something manageable and she dragged herself to her feet. Leaning on the wall was still necessary but she could keep her head up. Why was Deanna on her mind? Why was Deanna important? What was it about her that itched at her mind?
The leftover genetic texts of the Eugenics Wars weren’t enough. Most of those methods would kill her or at the very least, make her too ill to leave the ship until she lost the unnatural pregnancy she was forcing on herself. Twelve hours wasn’t enough time, not for drugs or any kind of tissue growth stimulation she could force on herself.
Worf’s words were resonating in her mind when she returned to sickbay in the middle of the night. Beverly had planned to twist her body into a hormonal state that would appear pregnant to whatever incompetent, poorly trained physician the smugglers had at their disposal. Now she had a reclusive and poorly organized planetary government to deal with. Worf’s little con was quickly spiraling out of control.
Being outside of Federation jurisdiction meant Jean-Luc had none of the protections normally offered Federation citizens. For all she knew, he might be worse off at the hands of the Suuka than at a Cardassian trial.
“Computer, seal the lab,” she ordered. ”Begin constructing DNA and RNA profile from sample in record Picard, Jean-Luc, stardate 47122.6”
“Working,” the computer reported.
While the results began to appear on the wall terminal, she turned to the other half of her mission. Running the medical tricorder down her abdomen she checked the screen before the cold sweat started on her hands. Even with her nerves screaming her hands still worked perfectly, a lifetime of training had taught her that skill. With the laser scalpel set to the narrowest beam, she would be able to remove what she needed with a biopsy needle.
Realizing she probably shouldn’t be doing it herself, Beverly bit her lip and spent a moment trying to ask herself just what she thought she was doing. Her hunch told her this was important and playing it out couldn’t hurt anything.
Filling a hypospray with a local anesthetic, she felt the sensation vanish from her abdomen almost instantly when the drug was injected. “Computer, display my left ovary.” Instantly, the image filled the viewer. Deep in the fascia tissues of her abdomen, the small pink structure seemed to be waiting. No matter how steady her hands were, it was too risky to perform microsurgery standing up.
“Angle viewer ninety degrees, make it perpendicular to the floor,” Beverly told the computer as she lay down on the floor of her lab. Activating the biopsy needle, she opted not to give herself time to second guess. The needle sank smoothly and painlessly into her flesh. Due to the laser cauterization process, there was no blood on the surface and no bleeding internally. The nearly ripe egg was visible under magnification and held in a cyst on the surface of her ovary.
She’d performed the procedure at least a dozen times but Beverly wasn’t prepared for the shiver that ran up her spine as she performed it on herself. Tapping the control on the biopsy needle, she sealed her sample and watched the needle disappear from the viewer. No blossoms of blood gave away any internal damage. Sighing in relief, she left the floor.
Standing in front of the workbench, she deposited the egg, it was too disconcerting to think of it as her own, into the waiting petri dish.
“DNA construction complete,” the computer reported with a gentle chime.
Reading his DNA pattern wasn’t as good as touching his hand but Beverly could almost feel Jean-Luc’s presence. He’d hate what she was doing but she needed the back-up plan.
“Open the sequence and begin chromosome pair construction.”
The embryo itself was easy enough to create. Now it waited, hanging in a special stasis field in the back of her laboratory and waiting for her to know what to do. Something about Deanna held the answer but her exhausted mind couldn’t put the puzzle together. What was she trying to remember? What secret was her mind holding on to?
Drumming her fingers on her desk in her office, Beverly glanced at the viral containment units and her memory suddenly gave up what she so desperately needed.
The Enterprise was transporting samples of plasma plague. The samples had been contaminated with Eichtner radiation and nearly destroyed the ship. The radiation ended up being part of a hyper-accelerated pregnancy of Deanna’s that had happened in the year she was away. Kate Pulaski’s notes were well-thought out and complete. She hadn’t understood what was happening to Deanna, no one had, but the answer was there. Something in the Eichtner radiation had kept Ian’s physiology stable as he’d gestated within Deanna. Her entire pregnancy had taken just over thirty-six hours.
Beverly didn’t need that level of acceleration. She didn’t need to accelerate the entire pregnancy. She just needed to guide an embryo through the first trimester. She could deal with it after that. It might not even survive the process but it would be enough. After implantation, she deal with the problem. It, she couldn’t really think of it as anything else, would most likely die after a few days of aging at a normal rate.
It would have served its purpose and lived a full life if it brought the captain home. Her conscience could live with that. Everything in her mind was functioning in a grey area and the sobering reality was that she didn’t care.
If Jean-Luc came back, she’d deal with her situation. She’d find a way to make things plausible, functional, somehow. Even if she took her child and raised it on Caldos alone with her work, like her grandmother, she would find a way as long as she knew somewhere out in the stars, Jean-Luc Picard went on. She wasn’t ready to loose him nor did she have the strength to face a starry night without Jean-Luc Picard in it. She didn’t know how to explain it to herself any differently than that.
Two hours later, the last of her hypospray cocktails lay empty on her desk in front of her in her office in sickbay. Beverly’s head was spinning again, rife with the nausea and the blinding, stabbing pain that seemed to be a side effect of the sudden increase in blood pressure. She’d already gained five kilos from the weight of the extra fluids filling her swollen tissues. She put on that weight before and her height hid most of it but her uniform was now tight across her stomach, hips and breasts. It was still wearable, but it gave too much away. Her lab coat provided some protection, but Doctor Selar would definitely notice the difference when she arrived to begin the Alpha shift.
“Doctor Crusher?” The tentative voice was Alyssa Ogawa’s, Beverly knew without opening her eyes. “I thought you would be getting ready to leave on the runabout.”
“I am,” she began pathetically hoping it wasn’t entirely obvious that she hadn’t slept. Beverly opened her eyes to the empty cups littering the desk and realized it was a lost cause. “Busted?” she asked softly.
“I miss the captain too,” Alyssa offered sympathetically. “Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about sickbay either, Doctor Selar’s taking care of the paperwork and the nurses, well, we just do what we always do.”
“And you do it very well,” Beverly agreed. Closing her eyes against the onslaught of the brightening internal lights of the ship, she sighed and rubbed the center of her forehead.
“Are you all right doctor?”
“Yes,” Beverly lied reflexively. When her stomach twisted, changing the slow simmer of nausea into an all out war against her self control, she found herself shaking her head. “No. I’m sorry. Not really.”
Alyssa’s hand on her shoulder nearly made her jump out of her skin. “Can I help you?”
“No, no I’m afraid not,” she replied. She didn’t know what to say. Words barely seemed accurate. “But thank you.”
Alyssa’s dark eyes were deeply sympathetic. After a moment, she guessed; “I’ll feel better with the captain back. I think the whole ship will.”
Speaking was tenuous at best so she only nodded. Her programming of the radiation emitter, usually only used to treat persistent local infections, was done. Beverly rechecked her work as Alyssa disappeared to make the rounds in sickbay. She didn’t remember imputing the specifications, but the program was there. Holding it in her hand as if moving too quickly would cause it too explode, Beverly activated the emitter.
The silence of her office was only filled with the gentle beeping of monitors in sickbay and the gentle, omnipresent hum of the ship breathing. The tiny emitter made no sound as she clipped on her stomach just beneath her navel. Her uterus was ready and the rest of her body was as prepared as it was ever going to be.
A slow, measured dose of Eichtner radiation would morph and change the tissues growing within her until the embryo matched the level of change already in her body. Then she could halt the process and hope for the best. Leaving the relative safety of her desk for her lab in the back of sickbay, she deactivated the emitter and allowed herself the moment it took to bring the room back into focus.
It certainly was less romantic than any of the places Wesley could have been conceived. Thinking it was not much at all like making love, she rolled back her head and sighed as she stared at the ceiling of her lab. After implantation, the zygote was a ball of cells, barely more than a white blotch on the wall of her uterus. It didn’t hurt, there was no pain at all because of the local anesthetic. Beverly only felt the soft carpet of the laboratory and the strange pressure for an instant as she injected the zygote into her body.
The child was something she could contend with if it survived. Her mind barely comprehended its fragile life, though its death would leave a stain in her memories, she’d go on without it. The real change was more subtle, something insidiously buried within her as she pulled back on her uniform and activated the tiny radiation generator before hiding it beneath her lab coat.
She had thirty-two minutes before Will would arrive on the bridge. He might even be in the captain’s ready room. If she caught him early, she might be able to get him to understand. Deanna would tell her she was insane but Will would understand. He was the man who had lurked in sickbay, unable to leave Deanna’s side when Ves Alkar was killing her. He was more romantic, more foolish and ultimately more like herself.
The local anesthetic started to wear off and Beverly was stricken with a new sensation, something she hadn’t remembered. As shaky and uncertain as her hold on her body was at the moment, she suddenly realized she was inhabited. For the second time in her life, she was the protective shell of something small, fragile and completely dependent on her for survival.
Picking up the data padds she’d brought to her office, she sighed and carried the bundle towards her quarters. With the impending shift change, the corridors held a steady trickle of people. Some on the way back from the gym, a few headed home after a night in someone else’s quarters. On another morning, she would have smiled at the ensign wearing last night’s uniform who was already in the turbolift.
The anesthetic faded further, something that wasn’t quite pain tugged at her stomach. Trying to ignore it, Beverly closed her eyes. “Deck eight,” she asked the turbolift. Due to her rank, her request overrode the ensign’s and the lift proceeded to deck eight. Clutching the stack of information to her stomach, she tried to act nonchalant.
Leaving the lift gratefully, she kept her eyes downward until she reached her quarters. When the door shut behind her, Beverly turned and leaned against the wall. Pressing her hands into her stomach alleviated the discomfort for a moment. Reaching around to the zipper in the back of her uniform, she let the familiar fabric slide off her shoulders.
Replicating her costume for the planet, she reminded herself to order her bra one size larger than the one she was wearing. Dropping her uniform into the laundry slot, Beverly sighed and sent her bra into the reclamation slot instead. Even though Starfleet had designed their uniforms to be comfortable for as long as an officer might be forced to wear one, in the last twelve hours her bra had become too small. She tried to change herself as gently as she could, but even in the weak light of her quarters, she could see the marks of what she’d done on her skin.
In the mirror by her sink, the skin of her breasts was too pink, as if they’d been bruised. Her stomach was the same. The skin was too pink, as if it had taken a heavy blow. Darker marks represented the damaged collagen beneath her skin. She could heal them, but she didn’t have the time. Clipping the radiation stimulator back on her stomach through the fabric of her jumpsuit, she hoped it would be hidden enough by her coat not to cause suspicion.
Clipping her comm badge over her breast where it belonged, she straightened up and pulled on the copper colored overcoat. She’d picked it because a phaser and a tricorder could be easily concealed in the pockets. She’d need to carry a few hyposprays and have her staff stock the runabout with additional supplies. Tapping her comm badge, she made the thought an order.
Settling the strange dark hat over her bizarrely dark hair, Beverly dropped her hand to her stomach and told herself she was only checking the monitor. She couldn’t afford the emotional attachment by acknowledging what was inside of her. She couldn’t worry for Jean-Luc and it at the same time. Was it really still an it? One tricorder swipe and she’d have to admit it had a gender. Gender was a few steps from a name and all the heavy responsibilities that went with it. Smiling ironically at herself before she left her quarters, she let a tiny part of herself decide that not wanting to know, wasn’t really a bad thing.
