"It's a long walk from the transport hub."

Gretchen dug her three tined gardening claw in around her lilies and let whomever it was approach without looking up. She had great many bulbs to bury before the ground froze and some of them she wanted to move around. Her lilies would look better near the gate, and the lovely irises Tuvok had sent would need more shade, best to put them near the house.

"It's a nice day and I was a little early."

The voice was soft and feminine, most likely the illustrious woman already celebrated by her youngest daughter for being the most impressive catch of her oldest.

Beverly Crusher was worth getting a look at. Especially if she was half the beauty Phoebe swore she was. Gretchen set the tool down and rubbed her gloves together as she stood. Her joints protested a little more each year, but none of them were creaky enough yet to need replacing. No matter what Phoebe and Kathryn might tell her.

Gretchen began with her feet. This Doctor Beverly Crusher had worn civilian clothes, but her boots were simple and dusty from the road. Beverly's legs were long and shapely like a dancer's, Phoebe had been right about them. Her top was deep blue and her black jacket was Starfleet issue, Gretchen knew the cut.

Beverly's red-gold hair caught the late afternoon sun and glowed. She smiled, lighting her eyes. "I hope you don't mind."

Gretchen grinned back, stripping off her gloves and reaching out to shake Beverly's hand. "Gretchen Janeway."

"Beverly Crusher."

She had a firm grip, long fingers and the kind of smile that promised she was the kind of doctor Gretchen liked, genuine and witty.

"Well, Doctor, I suppose my daughter's absence means she's working late?"

Beverly's smile faded slightly and she seemed to be debating what she could say to a civilian. Gretchen had seen that look before on her husband and daughter.

"The Phedre's three days late reporting in from our trade route near one of the more conflicted parts of Romulan territory. Kathryn works in trade and first contacts. She needs to see them home."

The slight tightening of the lines around Beverly's eyes gave away her concern. Whatever was happening was serious.

Gretchen brushed her hands against each other, shaking off the sweaty feeling of the gloves. "Come in, I'll make you some tea."

Expecting a real teapot, Beverly smiled when she watched Gretchen pull a blue and yellow ceramic one from her cupboard. Nana had sworn by real tea. The replicated blends just weren't right because they were always the same. Making tea with leaves had a hint of difficulty to it. Steep them too long and the tea was bitter, pour too early and the tea was weak. The replicator didn't understand that perfection had to be sought. It couldn't just arrive on command.

Gretchen tilted her head, amused by Beverly's whimsy even though she couldn't have shared it.

"My grandmother depended on her tea pot."

That brought a gentle laugh to Gretchen's throat, much like Kathryn's on her lazier days.

"Edward found this one in an antique shop. He thought I'd like the colours. He didn't pay any attention to the fact that it was a late twenty-second century original from an art gallery that once cost hundreds of credits. He just saw it and thought, my wife will like the colours."

Gretchen scooped tea leaves then poured hot water from the electric kettle on the counter. Steam rose from the blue and yellow pot, curling up towards the ceiling.

Heavy beams of wood were bare in the ceiling above them and the house smelt of trees from centuries ago. The floor creaked a little as they brought tea into the living room. Gretchen favoured her right hand slightly when she passed a mug to Beverly. Her tiny hesitations would have been almost unnoticeable to most people but Beverly had spent her life watching people.

As she broke a corner from a brownie and lifted it to her mouth, Beverly called her out.

"Does your hand hurt often?"

"It's more stiff than painful."

That was the polite answer. Beverly studied the eyes of the woman across from her, wondering if Kathryn's tells were anything like her mother's.

"I suppose I'd be right to assume that you see a doctor as often as Kathryn did-"

Gretchen chuckled, nearly inhaling her brownie. She politely covered her mouth with her hand and swallowed, still shaking slightly with laughter.

"I hear she sees quite a lot of one in particular now."

"Has she ever told you how we met?"

Beverly filed the potential arthritis away to bring up again later and tore another piece of

her incredible brownie. When Kathryn made them, brownies were exquisite. Gretchen's were close to experiencing a moment of what Wesley called 'true oneness with the universe', only through chocolate instead of the more spiritual explanation he'd have.

"At Starfleet headquarters."

Gretchen shrugged and poured the tea. She raised her eyebrows playfully.

"I've been told you took her to a play after that but all recounting of the meeting has been vague."

"Kathryn skipped her appointment for her physical. I suppose it's something she's gotten away with in the past, counting on her good health and her doctors' patience."

Beverly lifted her tea and let it warm her hands as the rich scent of it floated up.

"I probably would have tracked her down on a starship. It's the advantage of confined space. Starfleet Headquarters is unfortunately large, so I had to give her an incentive."

"Bribery?"

"I shut off her computer terminal and medically locked her out of any others in the vicinity."

Laughing as she dropped a second brownie on Beverly's plate as a reward, Gretchen beamed. "I assume that went over as well as running out of coffee in the Alpha Quadrant."

"She sent me flowers and an apology."

Nodding approvingly, Gretchen poured milk into her tea. "That's my girl." She stirred her own and held the pitcher above Beverly's mug. When Beverly nodded, she poured. "Were they nice flowers? I like to think she was raised to have taste."

Returning Gretchen's smirk, Beverly thought again of her grandmother. Nana would have loved Kathryn's intensity and enthusiasm for life. "Lilies, red and pink ones. Very beautiful."

"And then you went to a play?" Gretchen settled back, getting comfortable with her tea. Her smile lit her eyes and she seemed entirely content to keep listening while Beverly was willing to talk.

"I love the theatre. I directed the little theatre company on the Enterprise. On Earth, there's so much around I don't have to create my own, which works out because I'm so much busier than I ever was on the Enterprise."

Gretchen's quick smile said she understand. "More constant small crises instead of one big one followed by weeks of calm?"

"Exactly."

"Edward hated being on Earth because there was no transport time. He said he was never going from one place to the other and catching up, he was always exactly where the crisis was."

Beverly chuckled and decided she would have liked Edward Janeway, if she'd had the chance to meet him. "That sounds accurate."

"Do you work too much?"

Beverly tilted her head, trying to judge herself. "Yes, but I've improved greatly since Kathryn moved in."

"Now you have a reason to go home?" Gretchen set down her tea and rubbed at the back of her right hand. The way she favoured her fingers was much more obvious now. Beverly set down her own cup and held out her hand without verbalising the request.

"I think that's part of it. Kathryn can't cook, so if I beat her home, I know dinner will have safely emerged from the replicator."

When she finished frowning her disapproval, Kathryn's mother gave in. Gretchen reluctantly allowed Beverly to take her hand, relaxing her fingers as Beverly examined them slowly. "Is she still having trouble with her replicator?"

Beverly smirked down at Gretchen's slightly stiff fingers. She had no idea what it was with Kathryn and replicators, but it was an ongoing issue.

"Now Kathryn's having trouble with my replicator. I thought the one in her apartment was a fluke, a bad model, but when she moved in, mine started hating her too."

"She hasn't mentioned that." The elder woman's voice caught slightly in her throat when Beverly examined one of her knuckles. "I suppose you'll tell me that's not supposed to hurt."

"You have a very mild case of osteoarthritis." Beverly released her hand and glanced towards the kitchen. "If you have a class two replicator and a medkit..."

"Oh Kathryn's going to have to keep you." Gretchen left her chair and led Beverly back into the kitchen, collecting the medkit from the cupboard. "You do housecalls."

Beverly smirked and input the sequence of the synthetic biopolymer joint fillers she wanted into the replicator with a slow roll of her eyes that Gretchen caught and chuckled at. "If you're anything like your daughter, you won't bother to see your own doctor until you can't hold a fork."

"I've been intending to."

"Don't make me lock out your computer."

"Doctor," Gretchen feigned innocence. "I wouldn't dream of such a thing."

"Of course." Beverly took the hypospray, a subdermal scalpel and a very fine microsuture and gestured to the countertop. "It'll take me a few minutes. Our tea won't even be cold."

She opened up the tricorder and let it tell her what she already knew. Four of Gretchen's phalangeal joints had worn down and needed to be filled. After sterilising the area quickly with one of the handheld units, Beverly began.

"This will quick, painless with a local anaesthetic, and it would make your joints feel thirty years younger. If you were less stubborn, you could have had this years ago."

Gretchen shrugged, smiling sheepishly watching as Beverly numbed her joints. "It's not bad."

Beverly watched the magnification on her tricorder and opened the first joint with the subdermal scalpel. Scraping the bone clean, she set the hypospray to a minute dosage and filled the space that formerly had cartilage. Once the bone was protected again, she wouldn't feel a thing.

"Kathryn thinks it was her father who taught her to live with her headaches and work when she's ill. I don't thinks she's ever contemplated that it's you who set the terrible example."

"Well, Doctor, I hope you're as forward with her."

Beverly thought for a moment and had to laugh at herself this time. "I think I'm worse. She's so slow to ask for help, even when it's something small, like a stiff neck or a sore ankle. I must have told her a hundred times that repairing bodies is just as much my responsibility as it is hers to protect her starships. Her body is especially important to me."

Gretchen smiled, blinking quickly, chasing tears from her eyes. "Good."

Beverly let the suture finish and kept her eyes up. "I love her, very much."

The moment Beverly released her hand, Gretchen had her wrapped in a very tight hug. "I know, dear, I know. It's...well, it's very nice to hear you say it. I worry about her. Edward had the girls and I to come home to. Before you, Kathryn had her empty apartment. It's not that I don't trust her to be single, it's just that..."

"You're her mother," Beverly agreed with her, holding her a little tighter when she realised she empathised completely. "You want her to be happy, and safe. Revitalised and protected when she needs to be."

Gretchen pulled back, studying Beverly's face and searching for something familiar. "Says a woman who knows what she's talking about. Kathryn said you have a son."

"Wesley." Beverly sighed and inclined her head back towards the living room. "He's brilliant, funny but more serious than his father was."

Gretchen retook her chair and moved her fingers a few times, before she smiled broadly. "You're right. I should have asked my doctor about my hand months ago. So, tell me about Wesley."

"I don't see him much." Beverly had spent more time explaining how little she saw her son to anyone who asked than she'd actually seen him in the last few years. When Gretchen's eyes widened with sorrow, Beverly quickly explained. "He lives with a race of inter-dimensional beings called the Travellers. Time passes differently for him."

Gretchen reached across and patted her hand sympathetically. "It's not that he doesn't write, it's that he thinks he's just written?"

What she must have gone through, thinking Kathryn was dead for four years, was beyond Beverly's comprehension. She was lucky with Wesley; he was exactly where he wanted to be, and he was safe. "He's happy, and he loves where he is and who he's with."

"Still, he could write more."

Pausing as she sipped her tea, Beverly laughed gently. "Children could always write more."

"Kathryn writes about you." Gretchen smiled in response, watching Beverly with amusement. "She's always been good about writing, and since she's been back she writes more than ever. A few months ago, after the lily incident, all her letters mention you. You cook?"

"Yes." Her cheeks warmed as Beverly flushed with embarrassment. "My parents died when I was very young, and I grew up with my grandmother. She tried not to use her replicator if she could avoid it. She used it more when she was younger, but after Arvada III, she wanted to be better prepared."

"Arvada III?" Gretchen paled as she made the connection. "You weren't- I remember hearing about that on the news service. You poor dear-"

Beverly had talked about it before. Jean-Luc knew the whole story of her life, Deanna, Will and she had told Kathryn one night when they talked until dawn. No one quite understood what it was like to live through a plague. Her grandmother did, and perhaps that was part of why they had been so close. To her surprise, Beverly spoke of what happened easily and while Gretchen listened intently, she told her life story. How she'd decided to attend medical school after she'd seen what the Starfleet doctors could do once they arrived, and how once she'd reached the Academy, her life had fallen into place.

She studied well, learned a great deal, made friends and fell in love. Jack Crusher was meant to be her partner for the rest of her life. She loved him and once they had Wesley, however unplanned their son had been, life was nearly perfect. Jack was away much of the time, but it wouldn't always be that way. Someday they'd serve together, they'd be together with their son.

Beverly told this story so rarely that the words felt foreign in her mouth. Jack was an old, slightly blurred memory of another time, of another her.

"I remember when Admiral Patterson came to tell me Edward wasn't coming home, that Kathryn was seriously hurt but healing, and that she'd lost Justin. Kathryn expected Justin to be her life. They were to be married, have children, be happy together for the rest of their lives."

Beverly blinked, calming her stinging eyes and smiling weakly. "That's the idea."

"There are days when I remind myself how lucky I was to have Edward as long as I did. We had nearly thirty good years together, and he was an incredible father to our girls. They were both grown when we lost him, but I don't think losing a parent is ever easy, no matter how old we get."

Gretchen reached over and patted her hand again, smiling in sympathy. "I can't imagine having to raise a child by yourself when he was so young."

"I left Starfleet, for a time. I didn't want Wesley to have to face losing me too. We spent some time in St. Louis, and I thought I'd never return to space."

Pouring herself more tea, Gretchen raised an eyebrow. "Someone enticed you back? Captain Picard, was it him?"

"Captain Keel, actually. He was an old friend who needed a chief medical officer, and Starfleet had just decided to put families on starships." Beverly reached for a cookie and stared at it in her hands for a long time instead of eating it. It was an old fashioned sugar cookie. The kind that first crunched then melted in your mouth.

"I probably lost Wesley then. He was in love with starships the moment he came on board. Once we joined the Enterprise, that's Captain Picard's ship, Wesley was serving on the bridge within a year and an acting ensign before he even went to the Academy."

Gretchen chuckled and dunked her cookie lazily into her tea. "I hope Kathryn wasn't too jealous."

"Only a little."

Beverly took two bites of her cookie, letting the sugar boost her resolve. She felt a little like she was cheating to ask, but every time they talked about Wesley there was a wistfulness in Kathryn's eyes that wouldn't go away. "Kathryn wanted children with Justin. She's mentioned the idea a few times in passing. I know Mark was less than thrilled about trying to raise a child between Earth and a starship, but now we both live on Earth."

Gretchen's eyes twinkled and she held her hand playfully stopping Beverly before she could finish. "If I tell you, it really seems like cheating. How long have you been together? Two months? Three?"

"Fifteen weeks," Beverly corrected, smirking. "Give or take a day or two."

"It depends on how I define 'together', doesn't it?" Her smile broadened. "And asking you anything more comes dangerously close to asking you a question about my daughter's sex life."

That made Beverly bite back the impulse to laugh. "That it would."

"Would you indulge a purely hypothetical question?"

Beverly raised her eyebrow and finished the last of her cookie. She had to nod, deeply curious.

"I've never been with a human woman. Before you, I didn't know my daughter had been either. Is it much different?"

"Mechanically, sure, it's different than a man." Beverly adopted a more professional tone, then had to laugh and shake her head. "I love your daughter very much, and that is far more important than the mechanics."

"Of course, of course." Gretchen beamed at her. "I had to ask. I can't really ask Kathryn-"

"No."

"You're about to tell me when you love someone very much, the mechanics really don't matter."

"Something you've said."

"I may have said it a few times. It's something my mother told me when I was young and experimental."

Beverly remembered the 'human' qualifier from a moment ago and smiled in surprise. "That sounds like a story."

"One that will have to wait for another time and a bottle of wine." Gretchen's promise was cut off when a light flashed on the central computer screen on the desk. "That would be the Southern Bloomington transport relay station. Kathryn should be here in a few minutes. Why don't I start dinner while you walk out and make sure she still knows the way home? There's an old oak tree by the fence. It's at the end of a path through the fields. Kathryn always walks that way. Find that, and you'll find her."

Beverly hoped her anxiety wasn't too obvious in her face. Maybe it didn't matter. Gretchen understood how hard even potentially losing a starship would be on her daughter. Being sent to find Kathryn on her way home was tacit approval. Kathryn's mother was trusting her to know what to say and giving Kathryn the extra time to compose herself.

Smiling her thanks, Beverly headed for the doorway and the road to find Kathryn.