Chapter 7: Or it can be over

The next six days in transit to the Ranah conference passed relatively uneventfully. Beverly managed to get out of two of the six breakfasts with Jean-Luc by simply being very difficult to nail down on when she would be free. The breakfasts they did have were not dramatically different initially, but Jean-Luc noticed that he spent more of the time talking than usual, trying to fill the silences when Beverly stared off to the side of the table. She shared factual information, but very little of her feelings, and she seemed increasingly less mentally and emotionally present to their conversations, lacking the very liveliness which so drew him to her.

On the fifth day he nearly asked her about it, and on sixth day he made an excuse to leave early, unhappy with himself for his inaction, but simultaneously too uncomfortable to say anything and too uncomfortable to just stay there watching her slip away from him gradually for another hour. Maybe it was just an off week, he told himself. Or she wasn't getting enough sleep. If it continued, he would say something. He was sure of it. But it wouldn't. Deanna would talk to her. Tomorrow, he was sure, she would sleep more, smile and joke with him again. Still, when Will came to see him in his ready room that morning he could have sworn that the Captain was...well...sulking, for lack of a better word.

After he left that morning, Beverly poured herself another cup of coffee, and she told herself that she was pleased that he had left. Glad that he would help her to disintegrate their entanglement, their friendship. And yet, underneath that, she found herself strangely disappointed that he hadn't pushed back, hadn't forced her into a conversation. Maybe she didn't matter to him as much as she had thought. No, she corrected herself - it was better this way.

She had succeeded in keeping herself occupied and making herself generally unavailable to meet with Deanna by filling her days with a new immunology research project she'd been hoping to have a chance to work on. And if she stayed up late reading papers so that by the time she finally climbed into bed there was no time to dwell on her relationships and her fears, then all the better.

The afternoon after Jean-Luc left her quarters, the Ranah conference delegates were beamed on board and the conference on interspecies cultural exchange began in earnest. That evening, having just been in a meeting with the delegates, Captain Picard was responsible for escorting them all to Ten Forward for the concert of Earth, Vulcan and Klingon music that the Enterprise crew had been planning for months. This naturally meant that he arrived a full twenty minutes in advance. After extracting himself from an awkward conversation with the rather serious Bajoran delegate, he found a place in the front row fifteen minutes before the concert was scheduled to begin. Naturally, he placed his program on the seat next to him to reserve it for Beverly without a second thought. The crew began trickling in. Data was playing in the concert, as was Will, so it was Deanna who filled the space to his right as each crew member in attendance passed up the seat to his left without a second glance, long-used to the Captain and CMO's practice of sitting together. Long-used to the soft laughter and leaning together of heads, the way if you sat behind them you could see the Captain forget himself and nearly put an arm around her shoulders at least once at a given event.

He stopped in the middle of his idle conversation with Deanna as Beverly entered the room, wearing a maroon blouse that displayed an expanse of porcelain shoulder. He smiled to himself at her casual beauty, forgetting his earlier guilt when he saw that she was back up to her usual level of radiance as far as he was concerned. Their eyes met as they always did, but this time hers shifted away quickly. She looked to his right, nodded to Deanna, then raised her hand in a small wave in their direction as her eyes passed over him and over the seat next to him. She scanned the rows behind them and walked right by, taking a place in the fourth row next to a distinctly surprised ensign from engineering.

Starfleet discipline and a healthy respect and appreciation for their commanding officers was the only thing that kept several crew members already in the audience from gasping or otherwise exclaiming over this unprecedented shift in the Captain and Doctor Crusher's interactions. Needless to say, the reception following the concert was bound to be full of small pockets of hushed gossip when they were certain the Captain was far from earshot.

Sitting right next to the Captain and well aware of the shock and disappointment he was working hard to keep from his face, Deanna worked equally hard to ignore the exchange entirely. Giving him a moment of privacy and acting as though everything was perfectly normal, she subjected herself to the droning of the Bajoran delegate to her right. What is she doing? Deanna thought to herself, she can't mean to alter their relationship entirely, can she? She wrinkled her brow in concern as she thought through the possible outcomes of such an effort on Beverly's part, and the Bajoran delegate luckily took this as a relevant response to his story. Would they even both be able to continue working on the Enterprise? I'm really just not sure that the Captain could handle it. Could he stand looking that rejection in the face every day at senior staff meetings? As the ship's counselor, this was a legitimate cause for concern - the companionship that the Captain and CMO had found in each other beginning several years ago had contributed to a level of relaxation and camaraderie amongst the senior staff which was part of what made the Enterprise such a fine ship.

The musicians were warming up now, and the lights in Ten Forward began to dim. Before they dimmed entirely she caught Will's eye amongst the musicians, and he raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged.

The concert passed otherwise uneventfully, and Jean-Luc did his best to block Beverly's absence at his left from his mind entirely as he focused on the music. During a particularly fascinating section of the Vulcan piece, he found himself nearly turning to his left to make a comment to her, but he resisted the impulse, frowning for a moment. He shifted in his seat and feigned a grave interest in his program while he shoved away the disappointment and confusion. Now was not the time for that.

As the concert came to an end, he rose from his seat along with the rest of the audience. Applauding, he walked in front of the performers and waiting until the applause died down.

"A truly marvelous performance. Thank you. And now we invite everyone to stay with us for a reception in honor of the opening of the tenth Ranah Conference." He turned to personally congratulate the musicians as people began to rise from their seats and Guinan and several ensigns began to distribute drinks and hors d'oeuvres. He made a special effort not to look for her - not to seek her out. It was one thing to skip out on breakfast, to make excuses, even to be strangely distant, but it was another thing entirely to snub him at a public function in front of his crew and the assembled delegates. He was hurt, and from that hurt sprang anger. Whatever her reasons were, he did not deserve this from her - of that much he was certain.

They spent the first hour of the reception mingling with separate groups, orbiting around the room like repelled magnets; always maintaining a maximum distance as though by planned mutual consent. Their ability to find each other easily in a room was now employed to spot the other one and maintain distance. Both ignored how many conversations seemed to swiftly change topics when they walked up to a group, and if they heard the words "Doctor" and "Captain" rise above the general noise level in the room more than seemed quite natural, they paid it no attention. Or they tried not to, in any case.

It was inevitable that, at some point, they would fail to notice the other's location when moving groups or would both decide to get another drink at the same moment and collide. Circling the crowd and observing, Deanna and Will debated whether or not this inevitable collision would be explosive or icy. An hour and a half in, Will turned to Deanna and nudged her gently. They extracted themselves from the group they were currently talking to, and he led her towards the bar. Standing at the end farthest from the doors, he pointed down the bar. At the other end, Jean-Luc and Beverly were approaching at the same time as a small group of delegates between them kept them from noticing each other.

Jean-Luc placed his hand on the bar, and nearly jumped when a halo of red hair came into his peripheral vision. Until that second, he had thought he had calmed down, had talked himself out of his frustration with her; his offense at the way she handled this evening. Then he saw her, and that moment of blatant rejection came rushing back to him. Red alert, came the thought unbidden to his mind as their eyes met. Shields up, he thought, raising an eyebrow at her and turning to Guinan. Guinan took in the sight of the two of them and judged the situation to be too tense for even her intervention. Best to get the drinks quickly and take a serious interest in the other end of the bar.

"Whiskey," said Picard.

"Scotch," said Crusher.

Guinan noted the strength of both their drink requests, efficiently poured them, and promptly feigned extreme interest in Deanna and Will's conversation at the far end of the bar. They should have taken their drinks and escaped back into the crowd, but instead they sipped their drinks where they stood, glued to the spot by the tension between them. Jean-Luc finished his whiskey off with a gulp and set the glass down more firmly than he'd intended. The noise startled Beverly out of her own circling thoughts and she looked at him sharply.

He drummed his fingers on the counter, "Your seat tonight...did you have a good view of the concert, Beverly?" he asked, and while many would not have caught the venom and bitterness in his voice, she knew him. His voice deepened as he said her name, and the sound of it stung with criticism.

How dare he? she thought, but following quickly on the heels of that thought was another, But don't I deserve it? I knew how much it would hurt him, and I did it anyway.

"Don't, Jean-Luc," she said, ignoring the part of her that rejoiced at the anger in his voice, at the sight of him so provoked by her casual rejection of his companionship, "Let's not do this here."

"Not here, Beverly? Because I think what you mean to say is not ever. I don't think you want to have this conversation with me at all, or any conversation for that matter, do you? You're too cowardly to tell me whatever it is to my face. You'd much rather just sneak away. Well go ahead then." Ah yes, fire phasers at her in a crowded room - we're both cowards, then, he thought with significant regret as he saw her hand tighten around her glass until her knuckles were white. She put the glass down abruptly. She looked as though she was about to say something angrily in response, but instead she turned and walked straight for the doors. His heart sank at the sight of her departure, and he stopped breathing as he realized that his angry words might just have truly put an end to his relationship with the woman he loved.

Watching this entire scenario unfold, Deanna, Will and Guinan also saw the Bajoran delegate approaching Picard from behind. Deanna shoved Will forward without mercy as Guinan walked swiftly to Picard.

Will skillfully intercepted the Bajoran delegate, professing a profound ignorance of the finer points of Bajoran religion and successfully turning him away from Jean-Luc and back into the middle of the crowd.

Guinan placed a hand on the rather-distraught looking Captain's arm, "Captain," she said, and she heard him take a massive breath as the interruption startled him out of his shocked state.

He looked up at her, and she wasn't sure she'd ever seen him look quite this lost.

"Go."

The idea hadn't occurred to him at all, but as soon as she said it, the desperation fled from his face to be replaced by stubborn determination. He didn't need to hear the suggestion again - he was out the door in seconds.

"Computer, locate Doctor Crusher," he stated perhaps too loudly into the empty air of the corridor.

"Doctor Crusher is in the turbolift," a pause followed, "Doctor Crusher is now exiting the turbolift on Deck 8." Headed towards her quarters, then. He set out on the same trajectory.