Fic: Fair Trade part 6
Feb. 26th, 2009 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
so_jangTitle: Fair Trade part 6
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. (and knows her dialogue)
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 || part two || part three || part four || part five||
Jean-Luc Picard was hardly touchy-feely but the simple presence of his hand on Will's shoulder was enough to make everything right feel in the world. His own father never really touched him unless it was absolutely necessary. If he'd been here instead, Kyle Riker would have reminded him that Deanna was alive, he hadn't married her yet, seemed to have no intention to do so and it was fairly useless to sit around sickbay waiting for her to wake up.
She'd wake up when she woke up, after all. Will scratched his head and hoped he wasn't being too hard on his father. He'd started and abandoned the third communique in three years when the captain had gone missing. Contemplating the death of Picard was something unpleasant enough to help him realize life was shorter than he cared to admit. The ship felt better with Picard back. The lights seemed warmer, the artificial gravity seemed less heavy and the burden of one thousand lives had been lifted from Will's shoulders.
Tonight, he was only responsible for two, and though neither of them seemed to be in any real jeopardy. He still couldn't get himself to leave sickbay. He'd hovered in the background when the Mendel had finally been rescued. He'd flown the runabout into shuttlebay one just after they dropped out of warp. Data and the Enterprise had dropped out of warp just long enough the retrieve the Mendel before heading back to the demilitarized zone. The ingenious android had managed to flood one of the more contested systems with shards of rock by pulverizing a nearby asteroid belt. Completely harmless to the Enterprise and her mighty deflectors, the tiny stones had made it impossible for smaller ships to navigate through the Fureeki star cluster without serious damage to their navigational delfectors and bought him enough time to scoop them out of space.
Data must still have been in command. The android had stood twenty-four hour watches before and with every other ranking officer off the ship, it was likely he hadn’t left the bridge. Will hadn't changed or showered. Deanna’s blood had dried on his tunic, plastering it to his skin, but he couldn’t bear taking the time to change. He'd stood in the back of sickbay while Doctor Selar cleaned up what had been deemed an 'acceptable' patching of Deanna's injuries. Beverly's second person diagnosis had been correct and the vascular graft had held long enough to prevent any serious damage to Deanna's legs or kidneys.
One of the nurses brought him a chair when it became apparent he had no attention of leaving. Turning it around the wrong way, he'd been it in, watching her sleep for the last few hours. He had watched while the second degree phaser burn on the captain's torso was tended to. Worf had escaped without injury, but Beverly had required an infusion of some trioxyline substance to keep her oxygen up while Doctor Hill repaired the damage to the fringes of her circulatory system. He remembered her mentioning capillary damge as a consequence back on the Mendel and it seemed unfortunate that she'd been right. Under the stress of the firefight, something had gone wrong, and her tiniest blood vessels had suddenly become incapable of returning the blood from her extremities to her heart. Her body's response had been to keep all blood for her internal organs and the baby, at the expense of her brain and her vision.
Running his hand over her sleeping forehead, Will allowed himself to relax slightly. Deanna had color back in her lips and cheeks; it appeared as if she'd happened to fall asleep in sickbay and would be entirely fine when she woke up.
"She looks better," Picard agreed with his inner monologue, as if he were the empath.
Will smiled down at Deanna and remembered the still warm soup in his hands. Nudging a piece of potato with his spoon, he felt the captain's hand squeeze his shoulder again reassuringly before the warmth of it left his body. "It's not bad," the captain urged him lightly. "The soup I mean. Doctor Selar was rather forceful in making certain we all ate, even rescued starship captains. Would you believe it's possible to miss the replicators on the Enterprise?"
Grinning as he looked back over his shoulder at his captain, now wearing one of those blue pajama sets that sickbay issued to anyone who needed them, and nodded. "Of course we have the best, we're the flagship of the fleet, sir," he teased and let himself take another bite.
"Mind if I join you?" Picard asked softly before he pulled up a chair. "It's true, number one, something about these replicators is far superior to any other I have come across. Of course, it's not real cooking, but there's something comfortingly familiar about them."
"It's a good ship," Will agreed. They sat together, comfortable in the silence of a late night in sickbay. He'd missed sound of the captain going to the replicator and he nearly jumped when Picard handed him bread to go with his soup.
"Eat," the captain bid him firmly. "It's harder to stay up all night if you don't. The food makes you sleepy for awhile, but it's much more pleasant to have a full stomach in the long run."
Looking at his captain with amusement, Will wondered if he would have gotten along with the man if they'd been in the Academy together. "Beverly?"
"I believe she’s attempting to get kicked out of sickbay," Picard answered with a shake of his head. Crossing his arms over his chest, he settled into his chair and turned his eys towards the vascular lab. "Will, no matter what she says, doctors are by far worse patients than captains. Doctor Hill assured me the vascular damage is completely reversible, just tedious work. I think Beverly would rather do it herself, but it's impossible to work on your hands when your hands aren't working." Even though he was smiling, the captain’s sigh was heavy, as if the weight of the Enterprise had just landed on his chest. He squared his shoulders before turning to the younger man. It took a moment of silence before Picard reluctantly admitted what was on his mind. "To be honest, she frightened me."
"Understandably so," Will agreed with his mouthful. Surprised, he couldn't think of anything else to say while he chewed. He hadn't expected the captain to admit any of his fear. He knew Picard was incredibly worried about Beverly because he knew his captain. The quieter Picard became when exposed to a situation the closer to his heart it was. Realizing he'd been wolfing down his soup, he started to apologize.
Picard waved him quiet. "It's all right Will," he said evenly. "Eat, please. Allow your captain to ramble on while you finish.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he stared down at his bare feet. “Guilt is a singularly unpleasant emotion. One that I had hoped to avoid by solving my problem with the smugglers before you or anyone else on my crew got involved." He stopped and his eyes echoed his thanks. "I never would have asked you to come for me however, I am deeply grateful that you did.”
“I’m not ready for this ship yet,” Will teased. Scraping his spoon across the bottom of the empty bowl, he set it aside. “That’s a big chair in the middle.”
“Believe me,” Picard replied with a shake of his head as he got up again and headed for the replicator. “There are occasions when I am acutely aware how awesome that responsibility is.”
Will heard something appear and when Picard returned he had two steaming mugs in his hands. As he took the coffee, noting the mug in Picard’s hand was tea, he comtemplated it silently as he “So, I suppose the real question is are you going to go with daddy or the more traditional papa?”
Picard’s face was suddenly pink. He brought his tea back down to rest on his thigh as he stared at his first officer as if mortally wounded. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?” he asked softly.
“Congratulations,” Will offered sincerely as he lifted his coffee in a toast. “You’re going to love it. Your very own little terror running screaming all over your ship. Probably naked. Throwing food, throwing tantrums," Raising his eyebrows playfully, he grinned before he finished, "Throwing up--"
Cutting him off sharply, he glared at the younger man. “Thank you, number one.” Shaking his head before he took a sip of tea, Picard smiled dryly. “I’m going to take that as an offer to babysit,” he said.
“Anytime,” Will replied gently. “Captain-”
“Jean-Luc,” Picard corrected him as he reached for his arm again. “Please, if we’re going to have this discussion and I believe we should. We will have it is as friends. You shall also have to be patient with me, I'm sure I don't need to remind you that my feelings are frequently difficult for me to articulate.”
Grinning with him, Will tried to find the words he wanted as he stared down at the dark brown surface of the coffee in his hands. “I’m happy for you. I think in a way this will be good. You may not have allowed it to happen any other way. And Beverly, well-" he paused and wondered if he was actually comfortable calling the captain by his first name. "Jean-Luc, she’s an astounding woman.When it happens to be the case that an incredible woman has feelings for you, you’re pretty damned lucky.”
Jean-Luc smiled laconically and agreed, “Indeed, number one." He bit his lip and Will wondered what thoughts were moving behind the other man's unreadable eyes. The captain could definitely give him a run for his money if he ever joined the poker table. "I’ve thought the next phase of my life was becoming an admiral or retiring to tend the vines in La Barre. Perhaps even taking up the professorship they keep trying to offer me at the Vulcan Science Academy.”
Chuckling, Will swirled the bottom of his coffee and shook his head. “No offense, but you’re never going to leave the big chair,” he corrected him. “It’s where you belong.”
Shrugging as he took a slow sip of his tea, Jean-Luc didn’t argue with him. “I was once told that our destiny is not something fixed in stone, but instead something malleable where each thing we are asked to become isn’t a change of our being but instead an addition. We’re not one thing becoming another, we’re simply adding to the richness of what we are by being these new things as well.”
“Like one of the oil canvases of the great masters of old,” Will ventured as he tried to make the connection to Jean-Luc's thought process. “Painting over and over their masterpieces until they got it right.”
“Something like that,” Jean-Luc agreed. “Though it seems too much service to one’s ego to fancy myself a part of Monet’s water lilies.”
"Perhaps Twelve Sunflowers in a Vase?" Will asked as he wracked his brain for more pieces of art. "Starry Night? I know," he stopped and snapped his fingers. "Vermeer's Astronomer."
"Always searching, never finding? Very good, number one," Jean-Luc replied with a soft smile of pride. ""I've always been more of a fan of Gauguin or Matisse, brighter colors and more abstract thinking. I do have to admit, I didn't think art was one of your fortes."
"Oh it's not," Will admitted immediately with a gleeful smile. "But you should have seen the Andorian who taught my art class at the Academy."
Surprising him, Jean-Luc carefully set his empty tea cup on the floor, reached for Will’s hand and grasped it firmly. “Number one,” he began. “You kept the lights burning admirably while I was gone and I must thank you for that. Beverly told me you took her even took her news pretty well.”
“She startled the hell out of me,” Will admitted sheepishly before he dropped his free hand to Deanna’s bed. “I was so surprised I thought Deanna was going to come flying into the back of the runabout and demand to know what Beverly had done to me.”
Jean-Luc’s smile was gentle but curious. “Deanna can feel your emotions that well?”
“Hey back on that damn planet, we’re married,” Will explained playfully before he sighed and tried to come up with a more serious answer. “As my imzadi she will always be more to me than anyone else could. More then, well, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. We’re connected. Marriage hasn’t really been on my mind, but I don't think I could contemplate marrying anyone else. I don't think they'd compare to what I could have with her.”
Jean-Luc leaned back and, slightly to Will’s surprise, seemed to be enjoying the intimate conversation. “First love, number one?”
Chuckling as he reached for Deanna’s shapely fingers, Will toyed with it thoughtfully while he spoke. “I was a young, brash, extremely over-confident lieutenant who had no idea what he was doing. We ended up in the jungle together for five days. When she touched my mind, my perception of what love is, what love could be, changed forever. I don't really know how anything else could emotionally compare to that." Winking at his captain, he finished his thought cheerfully. "Though, I will admit it doesn't stop me from looking for a good time.”
To Will's great surprise, the captain responded in kind. “I’ve been in love several times over the years,” Jean-Luc offered. “Believe it or not Will, I have been blessed to cross paths with a number of beautiful, charming women. Some of them even let me speak to them without slapping me. However, my first love was the Stargazer. She was no Enterprise, but when my feet touched her deck, I knew I belonged with her.”
Will nodded easily. He’d always imagined his first command would be like that, having that sense of destiny to it when he stepped on board was what he'd thought he wanted. He was curious and had to ask, “And Beverly? I know you've known her for decades, but when did you--”
"When did I fall in love with her?" Jean-Luc finished the question for him. His face was hardening again and for a moment Will worried their moment of sharing was over. "Forgive me, Will. It's a difficult question to answer. Starfleet captain’s do not,” he corrected himself, “ I do not make a point of discussing my feelings with my crew. Even though it is now a matter of record that I love her, I'm not comfortable speaking to you."
The captain looked suddenly sheepish, as if he’d been caught doing something inappropriate. Rubbing the back of his head and seeming to put that aside, he relaxed into his chair and met Will’s eyes. “Perhaps it is one of life’s little ironies. That which truly unites the two of us is the nobility of the women we care for.” His breath made a dry sound in his throat before he explained,
“To be honest Will, by the time I met Beverly, she was completely in love with my best friend.”
“Ah,” Will replied sympathetically. Part of the puzzle of the captain's feelings he'd never understood seemed to finally be illuminated. “Tough break?”
Jean-Luc tilted his head to the side thoughtfully and seemed light years away. “Not at all,” he answered softly. “The time I spent with Jack and Beverly was some of the best years of my life. Jack and I used to spend long nights on the Stargazer watching holos of Wesley trying to crawl and talking about the future.”
Stopping to change his tone, Jean-Luc smiled and leaned back fondly before he divulged more of the past. “You see, Beverly was going to be head of Starfleet Medical, Jack was going to be the youngest, least annoying admiral in the history of the fleet, Wesley was going to be President of the Federation, and no matter how much time passed, I was still going to be Captain Picard, because no force in the universe was going to get me out of that chair.”
Laughing was something Will had desperately needed to do. Still chuckling, he remarked, "It's good to know I'm not the first one to have that opinion of you." When he brought his eyes back to Deanna, he could finally believe she was going to be all right. He retrieved the empty cups and stood. “More tea?” he asked as he headed for the replicator.
“I can get that--” Jean-Luc insisted.
Will grinned and shook his head. “I need to stretch my legs, they’re going numb in my chair.” Walking towards the replicator near Beverly’s office, he placed the cups inside the replicator. Stretching each of his arms slowly, he asked the computer.
“Coffee, black, and tea, earl grey, hot.” Both beverages appeared in a shower of light. Grabbing the handles of each, he headed back to the bed where Deanna slept.
While Will was at the replicator, Jean-Luc had taken Deanna’s hand in his stead and he was no longer alone in his vigil. Beverly had been released from her vascular treatment and she stood next to his chair in a similar pair of the blue sickbay pajamas. Circling him, Beverly put both of her hands on the captain’s shoulders. Her head dropped to his and her long red-gold hair spilled down over his shoulders.
Unwilling to break the moment, Will held still on the other side of sickbay and watched as Beverly guided the captain’s forehead until it rested against her stomach. Watching her kiss the top of his head, Will turned back to set Jean-Luc’s tea back into the replicator. Holding his coffee carefully, he advanced on the two of them with a grin. His grin widened as they noticed his approach and neither of them moved.
Nodding to Beverly, he noticed the color was back in her cheeks and her fingers were a healthy pink again. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Much,” she replied sleepily running her fingers down Jean-Luc’s neck. “I can feel every part of myself again. All of it’s exhausted, but at least it's all there.”
“Data’s still camping out on the bridge,” Will reminded her and Jean-Luc as he settled back into his chair. “I believe his orders were to get ourselves to bed.”
Jean-Luc took Beverly’s hands from his shoulders and held them. She turned, wrapping herself in his arms as she brought their entwined hands to her stomach. “All of Deanna’s vitals look wonderful,” Beverly reminded him. “It appears Jean-Luc’s a better surgeon than anyone ever knew.”
“I was lucky,” Jean-Luc mused. "And though Deanna is exceptional beautiful, I will be content never to have to see that side of the counselor again." He seemed not entirely sure what do to with the woman in his arms, but he was obviously and unabashedly enamored with her.
“Goodnight,” Will said simply. Waving his hand at the door, he invited them to head to bed. ”I’m sure the two of you have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Thank her for me when she wakes up, number one,” Jean-Luc requested. “I’ll have to start making arrangements to repay my bail money.” With his arm securely around Beverly's waist, he started heading out of sickbay.
“She’ll be all right Will,” Beverly promised him as she pulled the captain’s arm a little bit tighter around her. “Call us if you need anything.”
“Your quarters or the captain’s?”
Beverly’s soft chuckle was the reward he was looking for. Jean-Luc simply turned and dead-panned, “Provided you didn’t make any attempts to take mine over while I was gone, I believe mine are still the best on this ship.”
“I’ll contact Data and tell him to start moving the doctor’s clothes,” Will teased resting his coffee on the now empty chair beside him. Beverly was still laughing softly as the doors to sickbay hissed shut behind them.
“Just you and me now,” Will sighed as he settled in to wait out the night. “I hope you could hear that. They’re happy, Deanna. Relaxed. I'll be willing to bet it we'll never see more than them holding hands in public, but Beverly might surprise us.” Lowering his head to his hands, he scratched his hands through his hair and sighed heavily. “You’d know this if you were awake, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Now that we’re back, I envy them.”
Taking her hand in his, he studied her slim fingers before he kissed the back of it thoughtfully. “Not the whole situation, mind you. If I were going to have a child, I’d much rather go about it the old fashioned way. Take the full ten months and enjoy every moment of it. Deanna, talking to the captain, I’m sure you heard him, he’s happy.”
Picturing the two of them on the bridge, or trying to deal with a baby in ten forward, he shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll fight. I’m sure it’ll be difficult for both of them, trying to be officers, lovers and parents all on the same ship. I really don’t think I know what I’m trying to say, yet, but when you’re back, we should talk. Maybe we’ve been in a holding pattern too long. Maybe there are things in this universe that we have to make possible."
Leaving his chair when the metal dug into his back, Will sighed and stretched as he paced sickbay at the foot of Deanna’s bed. “I keep thinking the captain had a point, he already has one of the best rooms on the ship. They’d be crazy to give it up. Fitting Beverly’s possessions in there shouldn’t be difficult, but I can’t help wondering what he’s going to do the first time his son sticks one of his priceless, eons old artifacts in his mouth. Or his daughter spills tea on one of his antique paper copies of Shakespeare. I wonder what he’ll say.”
Resting his hands on the bed, Will found Deanna’s feet and wrapped his hands around her ankles thoughtfully for a moment. “Maybe he’ll laugh,” he mused. “After all, we are on a ship named Enterprise, perhaps anything’s possible.”
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. (and knows her dialogue)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 || part two || part three || part four || part five||
Jean-Luc Picard was hardly touchy-feely but the simple presence of his hand on Will's shoulder was enough to make everything right feel in the world. His own father never really touched him unless it was absolutely necessary. If he'd been here instead, Kyle Riker would have reminded him that Deanna was alive, he hadn't married her yet, seemed to have no intention to do so and it was fairly useless to sit around sickbay waiting for her to wake up.
She'd wake up when she woke up, after all. Will scratched his head and hoped he wasn't being too hard on his father. He'd started and abandoned the third communique in three years when the captain had gone missing. Contemplating the death of Picard was something unpleasant enough to help him realize life was shorter than he cared to admit. The ship felt better with Picard back. The lights seemed warmer, the artificial gravity seemed less heavy and the burden of one thousand lives had been lifted from Will's shoulders.
Tonight, he was only responsible for two, and though neither of them seemed to be in any real jeopardy. He still couldn't get himself to leave sickbay. He'd hovered in the background when the Mendel had finally been rescued. He'd flown the runabout into shuttlebay one just after they dropped out of warp. Data and the Enterprise had dropped out of warp just long enough the retrieve the Mendel before heading back to the demilitarized zone. The ingenious android had managed to flood one of the more contested systems with shards of rock by pulverizing a nearby asteroid belt. Completely harmless to the Enterprise and her mighty deflectors, the tiny stones had made it impossible for smaller ships to navigate through the Fureeki star cluster without serious damage to their navigational delfectors and bought him enough time to scoop them out of space.
Data must still have been in command. The android had stood twenty-four hour watches before and with every other ranking officer off the ship, it was likely he hadn’t left the bridge. Will hadn't changed or showered. Deanna’s blood had dried on his tunic, plastering it to his skin, but he couldn’t bear taking the time to change. He'd stood in the back of sickbay while Doctor Selar cleaned up what had been deemed an 'acceptable' patching of Deanna's injuries. Beverly's second person diagnosis had been correct and the vascular graft had held long enough to prevent any serious damage to Deanna's legs or kidneys.
One of the nurses brought him a chair when it became apparent he had no attention of leaving. Turning it around the wrong way, he'd been it in, watching her sleep for the last few hours. He had watched while the second degree phaser burn on the captain's torso was tended to. Worf had escaped without injury, but Beverly had required an infusion of some trioxyline substance to keep her oxygen up while Doctor Hill repaired the damage to the fringes of her circulatory system. He remembered her mentioning capillary damge as a consequence back on the Mendel and it seemed unfortunate that she'd been right. Under the stress of the firefight, something had gone wrong, and her tiniest blood vessels had suddenly become incapable of returning the blood from her extremities to her heart. Her body's response had been to keep all blood for her internal organs and the baby, at the expense of her brain and her vision.
Running his hand over her sleeping forehead, Will allowed himself to relax slightly. Deanna had color back in her lips and cheeks; it appeared as if she'd happened to fall asleep in sickbay and would be entirely fine when she woke up.
"She looks better," Picard agreed with his inner monologue, as if he were the empath.
Will smiled down at Deanna and remembered the still warm soup in his hands. Nudging a piece of potato with his spoon, he felt the captain's hand squeeze his shoulder again reassuringly before the warmth of it left his body. "It's not bad," the captain urged him lightly. "The soup I mean. Doctor Selar was rather forceful in making certain we all ate, even rescued starship captains. Would you believe it's possible to miss the replicators on the Enterprise?"
Grinning as he looked back over his shoulder at his captain, now wearing one of those blue pajama sets that sickbay issued to anyone who needed them, and nodded. "Of course we have the best, we're the flagship of the fleet, sir," he teased and let himself take another bite.
"Mind if I join you?" Picard asked softly before he pulled up a chair. "It's true, number one, something about these replicators is far superior to any other I have come across. Of course, it's not real cooking, but there's something comfortingly familiar about them."
"It's a good ship," Will agreed. They sat together, comfortable in the silence of a late night in sickbay. He'd missed sound of the captain going to the replicator and he nearly jumped when Picard handed him bread to go with his soup.
"Eat," the captain bid him firmly. "It's harder to stay up all night if you don't. The food makes you sleepy for awhile, but it's much more pleasant to have a full stomach in the long run."
Looking at his captain with amusement, Will wondered if he would have gotten along with the man if they'd been in the Academy together. "Beverly?"
"I believe she’s attempting to get kicked out of sickbay," Picard answered with a shake of his head. Crossing his arms over his chest, he settled into his chair and turned his eys towards the vascular lab. "Will, no matter what she says, doctors are by far worse patients than captains. Doctor Hill assured me the vascular damage is completely reversible, just tedious work. I think Beverly would rather do it herself, but it's impossible to work on your hands when your hands aren't working." Even though he was smiling, the captain’s sigh was heavy, as if the weight of the Enterprise had just landed on his chest. He squared his shoulders before turning to the younger man. It took a moment of silence before Picard reluctantly admitted what was on his mind. "To be honest, she frightened me."
"Understandably so," Will agreed with his mouthful. Surprised, he couldn't think of anything else to say while he chewed. He hadn't expected the captain to admit any of his fear. He knew Picard was incredibly worried about Beverly because he knew his captain. The quieter Picard became when exposed to a situation the closer to his heart it was. Realizing he'd been wolfing down his soup, he started to apologize.
Picard waved him quiet. "It's all right Will," he said evenly. "Eat, please. Allow your captain to ramble on while you finish.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he stared down at his bare feet. “Guilt is a singularly unpleasant emotion. One that I had hoped to avoid by solving my problem with the smugglers before you or anyone else on my crew got involved." He stopped and his eyes echoed his thanks. "I never would have asked you to come for me however, I am deeply grateful that you did.”
“I’m not ready for this ship yet,” Will teased. Scraping his spoon across the bottom of the empty bowl, he set it aside. “That’s a big chair in the middle.”
“Believe me,” Picard replied with a shake of his head as he got up again and headed for the replicator. “There are occasions when I am acutely aware how awesome that responsibility is.”
Will heard something appear and when Picard returned he had two steaming mugs in his hands. As he took the coffee, noting the mug in Picard’s hand was tea, he comtemplated it silently as he “So, I suppose the real question is are you going to go with daddy or the more traditional papa?”
Picard’s face was suddenly pink. He brought his tea back down to rest on his thigh as he stared at his first officer as if mortally wounded. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?” he asked softly.
“Congratulations,” Will offered sincerely as he lifted his coffee in a toast. “You’re going to love it. Your very own little terror running screaming all over your ship. Probably naked. Throwing food, throwing tantrums," Raising his eyebrows playfully, he grinned before he finished, "Throwing up--"
Cutting him off sharply, he glared at the younger man. “Thank you, number one.” Shaking his head before he took a sip of tea, Picard smiled dryly. “I’m going to take that as an offer to babysit,” he said.
“Anytime,” Will replied gently. “Captain-”
“Jean-Luc,” Picard corrected him as he reached for his arm again. “Please, if we’re going to have this discussion and I believe we should. We will have it is as friends. You shall also have to be patient with me, I'm sure I don't need to remind you that my feelings are frequently difficult for me to articulate.”
Grinning with him, Will tried to find the words he wanted as he stared down at the dark brown surface of the coffee in his hands. “I’m happy for you. I think in a way this will be good. You may not have allowed it to happen any other way. And Beverly, well-" he paused and wondered if he was actually comfortable calling the captain by his first name. "Jean-Luc, she’s an astounding woman.When it happens to be the case that an incredible woman has feelings for you, you’re pretty damned lucky.”
Jean-Luc smiled laconically and agreed, “Indeed, number one." He bit his lip and Will wondered what thoughts were moving behind the other man's unreadable eyes. The captain could definitely give him a run for his money if he ever joined the poker table. "I’ve thought the next phase of my life was becoming an admiral or retiring to tend the vines in La Barre. Perhaps even taking up the professorship they keep trying to offer me at the Vulcan Science Academy.”
Chuckling, Will swirled the bottom of his coffee and shook his head. “No offense, but you’re never going to leave the big chair,” he corrected him. “It’s where you belong.”
Shrugging as he took a slow sip of his tea, Jean-Luc didn’t argue with him. “I was once told that our destiny is not something fixed in stone, but instead something malleable where each thing we are asked to become isn’t a change of our being but instead an addition. We’re not one thing becoming another, we’re simply adding to the richness of what we are by being these new things as well.”
“Like one of the oil canvases of the great masters of old,” Will ventured as he tried to make the connection to Jean-Luc's thought process. “Painting over and over their masterpieces until they got it right.”
“Something like that,” Jean-Luc agreed. “Though it seems too much service to one’s ego to fancy myself a part of Monet’s water lilies.”
"Perhaps Twelve Sunflowers in a Vase?" Will asked as he wracked his brain for more pieces of art. "Starry Night? I know," he stopped and snapped his fingers. "Vermeer's Astronomer."
"Always searching, never finding? Very good, number one," Jean-Luc replied with a soft smile of pride. ""I've always been more of a fan of Gauguin or Matisse, brighter colors and more abstract thinking. I do have to admit, I didn't think art was one of your fortes."
"Oh it's not," Will admitted immediately with a gleeful smile. "But you should have seen the Andorian who taught my art class at the Academy."
Surprising him, Jean-Luc carefully set his empty tea cup on the floor, reached for Will’s hand and grasped it firmly. “Number one,” he began. “You kept the lights burning admirably while I was gone and I must thank you for that. Beverly told me you took her even took her news pretty well.”
“She startled the hell out of me,” Will admitted sheepishly before he dropped his free hand to Deanna’s bed. “I was so surprised I thought Deanna was going to come flying into the back of the runabout and demand to know what Beverly had done to me.”
Jean-Luc’s smile was gentle but curious. “Deanna can feel your emotions that well?”
“Hey back on that damn planet, we’re married,” Will explained playfully before he sighed and tried to come up with a more serious answer. “As my imzadi she will always be more to me than anyone else could. More then, well, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. We’re connected. Marriage hasn’t really been on my mind, but I don't think I could contemplate marrying anyone else. I don't think they'd compare to what I could have with her.”
Jean-Luc leaned back and, slightly to Will’s surprise, seemed to be enjoying the intimate conversation. “First love, number one?”
Chuckling as he reached for Deanna’s shapely fingers, Will toyed with it thoughtfully while he spoke. “I was a young, brash, extremely over-confident lieutenant who had no idea what he was doing. We ended up in the jungle together for five days. When she touched my mind, my perception of what love is, what love could be, changed forever. I don't really know how anything else could emotionally compare to that." Winking at his captain, he finished his thought cheerfully. "Though, I will admit it doesn't stop me from looking for a good time.”
To Will's great surprise, the captain responded in kind. “I’ve been in love several times over the years,” Jean-Luc offered. “Believe it or not Will, I have been blessed to cross paths with a number of beautiful, charming women. Some of them even let me speak to them without slapping me. However, my first love was the Stargazer. She was no Enterprise, but when my feet touched her deck, I knew I belonged with her.”
Will nodded easily. He’d always imagined his first command would be like that, having that sense of destiny to it when he stepped on board was what he'd thought he wanted. He was curious and had to ask, “And Beverly? I know you've known her for decades, but when did you--”
"When did I fall in love with her?" Jean-Luc finished the question for him. His face was hardening again and for a moment Will worried their moment of sharing was over. "Forgive me, Will. It's a difficult question to answer. Starfleet captain’s do not,” he corrected himself, “ I do not make a point of discussing my feelings with my crew. Even though it is now a matter of record that I love her, I'm not comfortable speaking to you."
The captain looked suddenly sheepish, as if he’d been caught doing something inappropriate. Rubbing the back of his head and seeming to put that aside, he relaxed into his chair and met Will’s eyes. “Perhaps it is one of life’s little ironies. That which truly unites the two of us is the nobility of the women we care for.” His breath made a dry sound in his throat before he explained,
“To be honest Will, by the time I met Beverly, she was completely in love with my best friend.”
“Ah,” Will replied sympathetically. Part of the puzzle of the captain's feelings he'd never understood seemed to finally be illuminated. “Tough break?”
Jean-Luc tilted his head to the side thoughtfully and seemed light years away. “Not at all,” he answered softly. “The time I spent with Jack and Beverly was some of the best years of my life. Jack and I used to spend long nights on the Stargazer watching holos of Wesley trying to crawl and talking about the future.”
Stopping to change his tone, Jean-Luc smiled and leaned back fondly before he divulged more of the past. “You see, Beverly was going to be head of Starfleet Medical, Jack was going to be the youngest, least annoying admiral in the history of the fleet, Wesley was going to be President of the Federation, and no matter how much time passed, I was still going to be Captain Picard, because no force in the universe was going to get me out of that chair.”
Laughing was something Will had desperately needed to do. Still chuckling, he remarked, "It's good to know I'm not the first one to have that opinion of you." When he brought his eyes back to Deanna, he could finally believe she was going to be all right. He retrieved the empty cups and stood. “More tea?” he asked as he headed for the replicator.
“I can get that--” Jean-Luc insisted.
Will grinned and shook his head. “I need to stretch my legs, they’re going numb in my chair.” Walking towards the replicator near Beverly’s office, he placed the cups inside the replicator. Stretching each of his arms slowly, he asked the computer.
“Coffee, black, and tea, earl grey, hot.” Both beverages appeared in a shower of light. Grabbing the handles of each, he headed back to the bed where Deanna slept.
While Will was at the replicator, Jean-Luc had taken Deanna’s hand in his stead and he was no longer alone in his vigil. Beverly had been released from her vascular treatment and she stood next to his chair in a similar pair of the blue sickbay pajamas. Circling him, Beverly put both of her hands on the captain’s shoulders. Her head dropped to his and her long red-gold hair spilled down over his shoulders.
Unwilling to break the moment, Will held still on the other side of sickbay and watched as Beverly guided the captain’s forehead until it rested against her stomach. Watching her kiss the top of his head, Will turned back to set Jean-Luc’s tea back into the replicator. Holding his coffee carefully, he advanced on the two of them with a grin. His grin widened as they noticed his approach and neither of them moved.
Nodding to Beverly, he noticed the color was back in her cheeks and her fingers were a healthy pink again. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Much,” she replied sleepily running her fingers down Jean-Luc’s neck. “I can feel every part of myself again. All of it’s exhausted, but at least it's all there.”
“Data’s still camping out on the bridge,” Will reminded her and Jean-Luc as he settled back into his chair. “I believe his orders were to get ourselves to bed.”
Jean-Luc took Beverly’s hands from his shoulders and held them. She turned, wrapping herself in his arms as she brought their entwined hands to her stomach. “All of Deanna’s vitals look wonderful,” Beverly reminded him. “It appears Jean-Luc’s a better surgeon than anyone ever knew.”
“I was lucky,” Jean-Luc mused. "And though Deanna is exceptional beautiful, I will be content never to have to see that side of the counselor again." He seemed not entirely sure what do to with the woman in his arms, but he was obviously and unabashedly enamored with her.
“Goodnight,” Will said simply. Waving his hand at the door, he invited them to head to bed. ”I’m sure the two of you have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Thank her for me when she wakes up, number one,” Jean-Luc requested. “I’ll have to start making arrangements to repay my bail money.” With his arm securely around Beverly's waist, he started heading out of sickbay.
“She’ll be all right Will,” Beverly promised him as she pulled the captain’s arm a little bit tighter around her. “Call us if you need anything.”
“Your quarters or the captain’s?”
Beverly’s soft chuckle was the reward he was looking for. Jean-Luc simply turned and dead-panned, “Provided you didn’t make any attempts to take mine over while I was gone, I believe mine are still the best on this ship.”
“I’ll contact Data and tell him to start moving the doctor’s clothes,” Will teased resting his coffee on the now empty chair beside him. Beverly was still laughing softly as the doors to sickbay hissed shut behind them.
“Just you and me now,” Will sighed as he settled in to wait out the night. “I hope you could hear that. They’re happy, Deanna. Relaxed. I'll be willing to bet it we'll never see more than them holding hands in public, but Beverly might surprise us.” Lowering his head to his hands, he scratched his hands through his hair and sighed heavily. “You’d know this if you were awake, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Now that we’re back, I envy them.”
Taking her hand in his, he studied her slim fingers before he kissed the back of it thoughtfully. “Not the whole situation, mind you. If I were going to have a child, I’d much rather go about it the old fashioned way. Take the full ten months and enjoy every moment of it. Deanna, talking to the captain, I’m sure you heard him, he’s happy.”
Picturing the two of them on the bridge, or trying to deal with a baby in ten forward, he shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll fight. I’m sure it’ll be difficult for both of them, trying to be officers, lovers and parents all on the same ship. I really don’t think I know what I’m trying to say, yet, but when you’re back, we should talk. Maybe we’ve been in a holding pattern too long. Maybe there are things in this universe that we have to make possible."
Leaving his chair when the metal dug into his back, Will sighed and stretched as he paced sickbay at the foot of Deanna’s bed. “I keep thinking the captain had a point, he already has one of the best rooms on the ship. They’d be crazy to give it up. Fitting Beverly’s possessions in there shouldn’t be difficult, but I can’t help wondering what he’s going to do the first time his son sticks one of his priceless, eons old artifacts in his mouth. Or his daughter spills tea on one of his antique paper copies of Shakespeare. I wonder what he’ll say.”
Resting his hands on the bed, Will found Deanna’s feet and wrapped his hands around her ankles thoughtfully for a moment. “Maybe he’ll laugh,” he mused. “After all, we are on a ship named Enterprise, perhaps anything’s possible.”
