Title: Befitting a Legend
Author: ChristineCGB
Rating: PG - 13
Category: TNG P/C
Archive: Sure
Feedback: luberluber@yahoo.com.au
Webpage: http://Appelsini.tripod.com/Christine
Summary: How do you befit a legend? How do you become part of a life that shines so much brighter?
This is my first P/C. I haven't read many either so if anyone wants to point me in the direction of a good, P/C specific, archive, I'd be most grateful.
Thanks to August for encouragement and damn helpful advice.
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She should have known that it would happen this way. She should have known it would be nothing as simple as an invitation to dinner or eyes meeting over a drink in Ten Forward. Jean Luc Picard had commenced his Starfleet career as the recipient of an artificial heart. There was the same sense of occasion about everything he did. Even something as common as falling in love.
So this is what it's like to
read minds, she thinks. Even Deanna can't sense with this kind of clarity. It
is as frightening as it is intriguing. Buried in Jean Luc's psyche is a desire
to have her know how he feels about her.
As if she has finally gained access to his private logs, and Jean Luc,
on discovering this, proceeds to offer her a tour of his most guarded secrets.
It's all about him of
course. She thinks it funny that when
two minds meet, there is still one that screams the loudest. Or maybe she's got feelings buried so deep
that even she can't recognize them.
He is embarrassed having been
revealed, but only in the way that Jean Luc can be embarrassed. As though he is graciously conceding his
normalcy.
And he is gracious. But she's
gracious too. She wrote the book on grace.
She came from a family known
for their expertise on tribal and natural medicines. A history of oddities and
eccentrics accompanied her into the halls of Starfleet Academy. Without her 'grace', without the stature she
worked so hard to cultivate, she may never have survived their critical
appraisal of her.
She knows how to be tactful.
She knows how to be cordial, diplomatic, and she knows when to leave well
enough alone.
"So now I know".
"So now you know".
There was probably a fanciful
moment in her life when Jean Luc's affection would have turned her into just
the right amount of ignited passions and bursting emotions but she'd been
married, widowed, forced into a single motherhood and commanded the Enterprise
since then.
She knew she wanted
more.
----------------------------------------
She told Deanna.
"You mean you could
understand everything he was thinking? And you found out he was.." Deanna's
rant paused whilst she searched for the right word, "interested in you
romantically?"
Beverly threw a look over her
shoulder. Who was listening? What would the crew think? There was no one there.
They were moving at a frantic
pace, late for a meeting of the senior staff.
I wonder if it's the
prerogative of the Captain's paramour to be late, she thought wryly.
They entered the
turbolift.
"Deck One" Deanna said, and
she turned to Beverly, "we must talk about this!"
Talk, Deanna's answer to
everything. For an empath, she seemed a
surprising advocate of verbal communication.
"It really isn't necessary"
she said. Deanna looked at her quizzically but the door slid open and they were
on the bridge.
Throughout the meeting Jean
Luc makes eye contact with her on numerous occasions and beams his special smile
for her when she delivers her report.
Of course she hadn't expected him to play the rejected suitor
intimidated by her presence, but his ease, his confidence, is unsettling all
the same.
Evidence suggests it is
unlikely that he has accepted defeat. It would seem she is fated to be the
Captain's desire a little longer.
---------------------------------------------------
He visits sickbay.
"You told Deanna". It isn't a question but is it a guess?
She attempts a half truth.
"I did, but that's her job".
"Ah but you didn't tell her
as a patient, did you?"
"No". Damn him.
She notes that he almost
smiles, pleased that his suspicions have been confirmed.
"Well, she's a professional.
I believe we can count on her discretion?"
"Of course".
"Good. I'll see you on the
bridge later then, Commander".
He is still smiling as he
leaves. A self satisfied smirk. For a
moment she thinks he enjoys toying with her, revenge for her rejection, but
then she remembers his tenacity. More important than his privacy is the
knowledge that she is talking about him.
--------------------------------------------
Jean Luc slides an arm around
her shoulders in the manner of a spouse sharing her grief. They are in plain site, for all to see. The
transporter operator, the crewmen in the hall, all eye them out cautiously out
of the corner of their eyes. The Captain and the Doctor! Who'd have thought?
She's too numb to care. Once, she had a family, now she is all
alone.
Jean Luc had said goodbye to
Wesley like a father and no doubt the claim was valid, it just felt odd when
they walked away like that. As if it were their son. Ever so practical Jack
would have approved.
She hated Jack when he died
for leaving her alone with this small creature who frightened as much as
compelled her. Now she hates his memory for assaulting her with the knowledge
that he would have wanted Jean Luc to look after her in his absence.
She knows a great deal about
empty-nest syndrome in theory. But she is so unprepared for the yawning hole
Wesley's departure makes in her identity. Even when he was at Starfleet in
another sector he still felt like hers, an extension of her.
"You still have us, Beverly"
he whispers to her before depositing her at the door of her quarters "And you
will always have me".
He's so sincere, she thinks
as she watches his back moving away from her down the corridor.
She doesn't doubt that he
means what he says but she doubts he knows what it means.
-------------------------------------
She was in demand after the
incident with the Ba'ku. It was not
like she wasn't before, particularly with her knowledge of Borg physiology, but
times were different. The Federation had breathed a collective sigh of relief
at the end of the Dominion war and knowledge and scientific discovery were
quickly back in fashion.
Starfleet medical wanted her
back and the Daystrom Institute made many lucrative offers which she declined
with her usual grace. She admitted the
offers were attractive but she was at a point where she couldn't sit still
anymore. She put it down to her lengthy service on a Starfleet vessel. She just
couldn't stop.
She agreed to lecture on an
occasion at the Daystrom. During the lecture she noticed a significant
contingent of the audience was made up of Federation news services press.
Surprising really, because the lecture would be made available to the press
almost immediately via holographic relay. She guessed the presence of the press
was attributable to a popular interest in the Ba'ku. An interest she was
morally obliged to dissuade.
She was unprepared for the
questions that ensued.
"Did Captain Picard really
resign his commission?"
"What's it like working for
Picard?"
"Is it true Picard fired on
the Admiral's ship?"
"What about the rumour that
Picard has left Starfleet to join the Ba'ku?"
She was stunned into silence.
It had been some time since she had appeared publicly, and in that time Picard's
legend had grown. The man who had so
often laid a reassuring hand on her arm and insisted she was still the main
object of his affections even after he had so blatantly cavorted with that
Ba'ku woman, was suddenly more myth than the man she knew.
She left without answering a
single question.
---------------------------------------------
He comes to her eventually.
One night he appears in her doorway and wordlessly sits on her bed. Long after the Borg, long after the Ba'ku,
he still Captains a starship and sometimes... sometimes the enormity of it all,
of him, is overwhelming for the man inside the legend.
He's just never come to her
like this. In need.
"Beverly, sometimes..." he
falters, trying to understand the meaning of his melancholy, "sometimes I think
I can see five lights".
She sits on the edge of the
bed next to him. She does not respond
but takes his hand and places it between her own. His eyes are focused on the far wall, staring at the demons
hidden within the benign façade.
Jean Luc, who defeated the
Borg, stared down Starfleet brass and played mind games with an omnipotent
being, was so nearly broken by a lone Cardassian whose method was as calculated
as Jean Luc's own plans to save the Federation might have been. There are some things he never dreamed an
individual could be capable of.
And he's seen it all. He
really has.
She watches the wall with
him.
"You will marry me Beverly",
he says. It isn't a question. It's the
truth.
"I know", she says.
Maybe she always knew. Maybe
she knew when she saw her new commission in a privacy sealed communication from
Starfleet that morning. She doesn't believe in fate but she recognizes the
inevitable.
And it has waited for her.
He turns to face her and
lifts his hand to her face to caress her cheek. She thinks once more of Jack before finally banishing his ghost
to the furthest corners of her mind as she feels Jean Luc press warm lips to
hers.
What's one less ghost?
She was the first Doctor to
take command of the Enterprise, the first person to separate Borg individuals
from the collective and the first non-Trill native to perform a symbiont
transfer. She is a noted figure in her own right but she's still human and she
always will be because she never dared ask the universe for anymore than a
right to existence.
She contemplates Jean Luc who
stays in her bed that night and the nights after. People come together for the strangest reasons, she thinks, very
different people.
She would have asked for her
son back.
Fini