4.

Stardate: 2370

Well, Beverly knew that it couldn't have lasted forever. Really, it was kind of surprising that her luck had lasted as long as it had, serving aboard the same ship with Jean-Luc Picard for nearly eight years and not once being assigned a solo mission with him. They had become not friends, really, but pleasant acquaintances, who spoke of day to day occurrences, births, deaths, promotions, missions, that sort of thing, but nothing more substantial than that. Yes, small talk was alive and well in the twenty-fourth century, evidenced by the weekly lunch dates that they had, along with the rest of the senior staff, where the conversation between she and he never delved deeper than the success of a new medical procedure or a tactical team drilling in record time. Casual observers might have guessed they were close. In actuality, they rarely spent any time together alone. If ever.

Beverly kept the feelings of love and desire she still had for Jean-Luc well-hidden. She would never do anything to hurt him or make him feel less of a commander, or jeopardize the respect he had of his crew, regardless of the personal pain he had caused her so many years ago. Yes, that was the clincher. So many years ago, so long ago that it seemed like it had happened to someone else in another lifetime, and not to her. Truth be told, she hadn't been unhappy on board the Enterprise. A little lonely, perhaps, but not unhappy. Her career was fulfilling enough to overflow into her painfully empty personal life. Now even Walker was gone and had been for some years now. Her life was this ship.

She was lucky enough to count Deanna Troi among her friends; Deanna was probably the only person in the whole universe, save for her neighbours in the apartment building, who knew of the night she'd spent with Jean-Luc Picard. She'd found a soul sister in Deanna Troi—Deanna herself was in the same kind of torch-bearing position Beverly was, in regards to the first officer, William Riker. Deanna commiserated completely, and had a friendly shoulder whenever Beverly needed it, especially after her fleeting romances with Odan and Ronin. Two women, experiencing similar problems with the men they loved. She was beginning to think—

"I am beginning to think," came a voice out of the darkness, "that there is nothing on this planet we can eat."

Reality avalanched down on Beverly as she sat there by the fire, and she sat upright. Silly to let her thoughts get away as they just had, considering the circumstances here on this foreign planet: there had been some kind of mental link established between herself and the man she called her captain. They had been so preoccupied keeping one step ahead of Kes security all during the daylight hours, that it was only now she realized what an utter burden it was to rein her thoughts in. She wasn't sure she liked the concept of having her every thought open for discussion, and tried to focus on the banal, keeping her emotions level.

"Oh…" she mumbled lamely, running her hands up and down her shins, pulling her knees up close to her chest.

"It was ridiculous of me to set down my jacket like I did," he cursed to himself. "You're obviously cold."

"I'll be fine," she replied.

"Don't be foolish. I can literally feel it every time you shiver." He moved towards the center of the circle. "Let me stoke the fire."

Surely he had caught the intermittent stray thought that escaped her admittedly weak mental curtain, as she had 'heard' some of his. He had made an obvious effort since their abduction on this planet not to look her squarely in the eye, but as he sat to her right, his eyes met hers, and the veils of pretense were lifted away. Usually, under his scrutiny as his subordinate, she felt uncomfortable. In this case, she inexplicably did not. As his attention turned to the fire, it became obvious to her that he had achieved the result he had been shooting for.

"Thank you," she said all of a sudden, and realized that she meant many things by it. Something surprising happened as a result: for the first time in a very long time, possibly the first time since she'd come to serve under him, he smiled a heart-felt smile to her. She could actually feel the low bloom in her chest, of his pleasure at hearing these words from her.

"You are most welcome, Doctor," he said.

"I think you should feel perfectly free to call me 'Beverly'. It isn't as if we are strangers." But weren't they strangers? She hardly knew a thing about his personal life, except that he liked Earl Grey tea and cucumber sandwiches for lunch, and of course certain other things about him that he probably hoped she'd forgotten. It made her suddenly sad. She held her hands up to the fire to warm them and caught a glimpse of another smile. The amber glow cast shadows on his face, along the creases of his smile, glinting off of his short grey hair, as he sat there poking at the firewood with a large stick. Regardless of the fact that they were in a situation that put them at great risk, on the run from the Kes, he was so at ease here by the fire that he barely resembled the rigid commander she had grown to know so well on a professional level.

He turned to look at her again. "You know, Doc— er, Beverly, I cannot remember the last time I saw you with your hair down."

She automatically raised a hand to smooth the loose tendrils back against her head. "I don't like to wear it down much. It makes me look impossibly too young to be the CMO."

He laughed lightly; another first in a while, for it was genuine. She could feel it spiraling up from his soul. He poked further at the fire, then added another small piece of wood. "I meant that figuratively."

Another surprise. She laughed back, acknowledging how right he was.

They fell into a contemplative silence. Beverly didn't feel like she needed to say anything; perhaps it was his influence via the mind-link making her feel at ease, but she didn't think so. She had a feeling that after leaving Kesprytt their serving together would take a new direction, that they actually might be closer as friends. Yes, she was sure of it. Beverly's eyes finally settled on the starry sky; the constellations were unfamiliar, but the ambiance was the same. After all of this time, she really would welcome his friendship. She sighed softly, content. Amazing what a little mind link could do.

What was that.

She whipped her head around to look at Jean-Luc, who knew his mistake immediately. Not a mistake, really, but a little slip in his mental control, a slip that allowed her to see a flash of memory, a flash of a day at the theater, of herself laughing at something that Helena was saying, of dinner in a cozy restaurant, of looking at a reflection in a mirror. And an emotion that accompanied all of that, one she wasn't prepared to think Jean-Luc Picard would ever associate with that day or that night.

"Jean-Luc," she said gently, "I felt that—don't push it away."

He hung his head. All these years of hiding shot to hell; his body language said more than his words or thoughts ever could.

Her voice was barely existent when she spoke to him. "Why didn't you tell me how you felt about me?" She all but choked out the next words: "That you were in love with me?"

He said nothing.

"Jean-Luc, I'm not going to ignore what I just felt—"

"What was I supposed to do?" he said in a low tone. "After his death, was I supposed to pursue a woman who rejected me when I attempted to show her how I felt? Oh, you made it all too clear to me then…"

If she'd had the energy, she would have torn into him like a drill sergeant. Instead she merely spoke in a voice that was close to inaudible. "I thought you were grasping for support from someone who was in the same emotional place you were. What was I supposed to think your outreach meant? Especially after everything you'd said about our night together being 'improper' and 'I should have had control of my hormones' and all of that other nonsense." She sighed, turning away from him. "What was I supposed to think," she repeated quietly, wondering how they could proceed with a relationship from there.

He returned his eyes to the fire, saying, "Well, it's all in the past, anyhow." She turned wild eyes to him, was dumbfounded at the emotions coming from within him that actually reaffirmed what he'd just said, and she was about to respond when his eye was caught by something on the periphery of his vision. He rose, squinting his eyes against the darkness beyond the flames, taking a defensive stance, only to recognize the face of his chief of security. "Mr. Worf," he said, exasperated, "what are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you," he replied in a sharp whisper. "Enterprise, three to beam up."

Beverly looked to Jean-Luc as the surroundings changed from the dark planetside fire circle to the harsh blue and pink lights of the transporter room. Selar was there with a medikit, ready for any emergency, and approached Beverly warily before Beverly raised a hand to stop her.

She said, looking to the captain, "I'm fine. We're both fine. Just— just get these implants out," indicating the base of her skull.

"Please, follow me to sick bay immediately." Selar exited.

Worf left also, presumably to get back to the bridge to prepare for the inevitable heated exchange over this abduction, which most assuredly had been denied vehemently by the xenophobic Kes. The two of them really didn't have any time to waste, getting the implants out; he had important dealings ahead of him with the Kes and the Prytt, to try to get explanations for their abduction, and arrive at a diplomatic solution. Regardless, Picard took a moment to look at her, quickly communicating that he was utterly sorry for reopening the old wound and subjecting her to more pain. She nodded in acknowledgment, but secretly knew that her hopes for a close friendship had just been dashed, and it also meant he never wanted the subject broached again.

In silence, they left of the transporter room together, headed for sick bay.

5.

Stardate: 2371

Beverly swore that she could actually feel the moment that the ship broke the uppermost layer of the atmosphere, had felt the unmistakable pull of inertia in the pit of her stomach. That sensation was nothing compared to the different directions her body was being pulled in now—or at least that was what it felt like. She'd given up trying to stand minutes ago and was now on the floor, between a biobed and a medical cart. Her breath came in great heaves and she clung desperately to the person closest to her, just as they clung to the person closest to them. She wasn't even sure at this point who it was, and didn't care; opening her eyes made them burn. She'd foolishly found that out the hard way. She clenched her jaw shut to keep herself from biting her tongue. She squeezed her eyes together so tightly that tears escaped the corners, and kept her head down to keep her neck from getting sprained.

After what had been an eternity of rocking, pitching and yawing, all motion stopped.

The light prickled at the back of her eyes as she opened them, subconsciously smoothing her hair back into its loosening bun. "Is everyone all right?" she managed, as heads all over the room lifted warily to survey the scene. One by one she heard an affirmative from each person, and she sighed in relief.

"What about yourself, Beverly?" queried a serious-looking Ogawa. Beverly looked down to see she had herself sustained a gash to her thigh, and blood was issuing sticky and dark through the fabric of her uniform pants. She could not contain a gasp of surprise. Alyssa wordlessly reached for a medical instrument and Beverly quickly sutured the wound.

That was when the calls started coming in. Injuries on Deck 12. Fatalities on the lower sections. Crewmen trapped in the Jeffries tubes. Snapping to action, Beverly formed medical triage teams with the scant personnel she had, and scattered them to the four winds to get as many people treated as quickly as possible.

It wasn't until the last victim had been tended to an eternity later that she was able to think or have a moment to herself. Not that she particularly wanted to think about what happened; in fact, she walked from group to group, checking on the separate relief efforts, mostly to keep her mind off of the fact that her life as she had known it for close to eight years was over. The ship was destroyed. The way of life she'd become accustomed to was no more.

And then she heard the unquestionable sound of a shuttle.

The wind whipped her hair around her face and into her eyes, as she turned to see a shuttlecraft touch down at the edge of the clearing. Despite her fatigue, she ran to meet it.

A dark-haired human male, probably late 20s to early 30s, came out of the back of the Brown. "Lieutenant Barnett of the Aspire. You may not be aware of this, but there's a massive rescue mission en route. We're the first on the scene."

She hadn't any idea about a rescue mission, but it did make sense, and nodded, pushing her hair back against the wind. "Chief Medical Officer Beverly Howard of the Enterprise." She indicated the massive wreck behind her.

Barnett looked grim. "Status?"

"We have fifteen fatalities, twenty injuries that need more extensive care, hundreds of less serious injuries that have been tended to."

"Everyone accounted for?"

"Yes, except for—"

When she realized who had not been accounted for, she felt as if the wind had been knocked from her chest. Barnett silently questioned her when her face went pale.

She answered, "Except for the captain."

"Missing somewhere in the wreckage?"

She shook her head absently. Jean-Luc had not gone down with his ship. That much she'd recalled before the dizzying nose-dive the Enterprise had taken to the planet's surface. "No. He went after Soran. Into the Nexus. Must have succeeded, since we're all around to talk about it now. He's got to be on the surface here somewhere."

She realized before long that Barnett was looking at her like she had begun reciting "Jabberwocky". He took her gently by the upper arm and said reassuringly, "We'll send out a shuttle to look for him. Barnett to—"

"No. I'll take this one and go and look myself." She broke from him and walked towards the shuttle's entrance.

He made a sound that resembled a patronizing sigh, which didn't score any points with Beverly. "Doctor, I can't allow you to do that. You've just suffered a serious trauma."

She turned and fixed her fiery eyes on his, her hands on her hips; it was one of her most intimidating stances, and she knew it. "I have been independently given a clean bill of health by two different staff members, and as the highest ranking medical officer on Captain Picard's ship, I feel it's my duty to make sure he is all right." Irony silently laughed at her as she continued with, "We have been close friends for a long time and I would like to be the one to tell him that his ship has gone down without him. Not to mention, Lieutenant," she concluded with an enigmatic smirk, "that I outrank you and could order you to turn that shuttle over to me."

Barnett stepped aside, returning her smile. She silently thanked him as she passed him for the shuttle.

Within seconds, she was airborne.

And then she realized what a huge planet it was. She wasn't going to be able to find him on a visual search alone. And given his close proximity to the quantum filament, his comm badge had more than likely been rendered useless. It would have to be a check for life signs. Even though there were no visible signs of any humanoid life on this planet, she wasn't willing to take any chances: "Computer. Scan below for Terran life forms." When she spoke, she realized how immensely broken her voice sounded. She turned to the console and programmed the shuttle to do the broadest sweep it was capable of doing, set the autopilot to orbit appropriately, then sat back into her chair.

A beeping sound woke her from a sleep she wasn't aware she had slipped into. Absent-mindedly she lurched forward and saw what the computer had found: a human.

A dead human.

Her heart leapt into her throat. She gasped, "Computer, give me a visual of the general area." On the console she was shown rugged, arid terrain, with a crosshair placed over the exact coordinates, pointing to the top of a stark, weather-beaten rock that rose up like a tower from the horizon, one among many. She did not ask the computer to show her what it had found at those coordinates. It was something she could not know yet. Jean-Luc's death was not something she wanted to confirm on a viewscreen. This was something she had to see with her own eyes, touch with her own fingers.

The ship descended towards the dusty ground, then touched down, and as the engines quieted to silence, her heart pounded with a mounting force. This was something she never wanted to have to do, and the moment hung with thick foreboding.

She reached and pressed on the console to open the craft, and the dry, hot air whooshed into the interior of the Brown. To Beverly it felt like the breath of the Reaper himself. Steeling herself, she stepped towards the entrance, squinted as she looked into the sun, and began to look around the area.

That was when time itself stood still.

There, in the middle of the towering rock formation, she saw a small mound of stones. She walked unsteadily towards it, her legs weak and shaky yet moving of their own accord. The mound was about two meters long and not very wide; clinically speaking, it was just the size of a human body. A glint caught her eye; she looked over and saw a shiny metallic object that sat near one end. She bent to pick it up; she knew at an instant that it was a communicator pin. It was the new design that they had received only two months previously. That was when her knees gave out and she crumbled to the ground. Tears welled in her eyes, and she clutched it to her breast as she sobbed.

Beverly, you fool!

Burying her face in her free hand, she could feel the corners of the communicator cutting into her palm, and somehow that comforted her, this last little bit of him to keep with her. There could not have ever been another way for Jean-Luc to go, she realized. For an adventurer like him, this resolution was inevitable. And she knew exactly how it must have happened, could picture it in her mind as if she was watching it take place before her own eyes. Jean-Luc versus the nefarious Soran, and in true form, he succeeded in destroying Soran's device, but not without sacrificing himself for the millions of people on the nearby, populated planet. After burying his foe in the hopes of disguising the body, Soran most assuredly fled the system with the help of one of many accomplices….

His heroism did not serve to console her.

She took a seat beside the hasty grave, and began to cry.

Sooner or later she would have to exhume the body. But she couldn't do it now, not yet. She'd had her time so many years ago, after Jack's death, to make peace with him. She had to do the same here and now, to reflect and remember, to grieve and accept the loss of this man, the one man who had always held her heart.

There were so many things she had never said or done, to express to him how she truly felt, even though he must have known, right? He must have known that her feelings were too strong and true to have diminished over the years. Perhaps he had just assumed she had stopped caring. Or perhaps the problem was that she had forgotten to remind him. She stretched out on the rocky ground, her head and shoulders on the mound, and watched the sun begin its descent. One last sunset with you, Jean-Luc. One last sunset.

As the top of the sun dipped down beneath the horizon, she sighed, closing her eyes. Now, here in the twilight, she felt a more intense sadness taking her over. Reality came closer and closer, and she knew that she would soon have to leave this serene place, take his body from the ground with her for a proper, honorable service, and inform a crew that had just lost their ship that their captain had died that day too. How would she ever be able to deal such a blow to them? She buried her face in her hands, the despair almost too much for her.

And then she thought about how Jean-Luc would react, seeing her like this. She sat up straight and wiped the tears away from under her eyes, taking in a deep breath. Professionally, she and the captain had gained respect and trust for each other over the years. He would be highly disappointed to see her questioning her ability. For a moment she actually believed that she could hear his voice, telling her that everything would be all right, that she would somehow find the strength to carry on, because she had always been strong.

"Is that you, Doctor?"

The sound of those words cleanly pierced the air, frightening the breath straight out of her. She turned her head to the source of the sound and at once questioned her doubt of the existence of the spirit world.

She squinted her eyes, sure that she was dreaming. "Jean-Luc?"

He stepped closer to her, tipping his head, surely wondering why she was looking so pale. "Yes, of course. What are you doing here?" His voice rang with genuine surprise, not an ounce of disdain.

"I—went looking for you."

"And you found me." He squatted beside her, reached out his hand—

With his touch, she began to tremble. Unless ghosts regularly took bodily form, Jean-Luc was not dead, after all. Not dead. Not dead.

"I can't believe it," she whispered.

"I'm surprised you didn't find me sooner, with that search shut—"

She cut his words short by flinging her arms about his neck, and pressing her lips desperately to his, tears streaming down her face. The action caught him so off guard that he fell back onto the rocky ground; Beverly landed on top of him with a profound lack of grace. She kissed him more deeply and more passionately than she had ever kissed another person, and it seemed that he was returning her passion fully and equally.

She must have been mistaken, or he must have come to his cursed senses. "Beverly!" he managed, when he got a chance to breathe again.

She knew in her heart that she had overstepped her bounds with this kiss. She had no words to explain what had come over her, other than she was a victim of her emotions. Beverly delicately retreated from her position atop him, murmuring, "I'm very sorry." She turned and faced the shuttle, not wanting to look at him just yet. How was it that he still was able to make her feel like the young twenty-three year old girl she'd been when she'd met him, embarrassed of her actions, doubting her ability to relate to a man such as him? She cleared her throat audibly.

"What was the meaning of that?" he asked.

"The grave," she explained. "I thought you were buried here."

"I meant the kiss."

She gave him her most piercing gaze. "So did I."

He launched into an explanation, folding his arms across his chest and pacing as if he were delivering a report to Starfleet. And breaking her gaze as quickly as possible. "In the Nexus I found James Kirk, who had been presumed dead during the launch of the Enterprise-B. He came back here with me. Soran was killed when we exploded his rocket, but this victory came at the price of Kirk's life. I buried him here; he deserved that much."

His behaviour all but forced her to turn logical and rational, herself. "Where did you go? I mean, why did you leave such a visible vista point?"

"The heat and the sun. It was too much to bear. I headed down hoping to find a cave. Luckily I found a niche (albeit it a rather small one) about four meters down. Once the sun started to set, I climbed back up, hoping that someone had found my comm badge by then."

Even now, with the sun below the horizon, she could feel the heat of the day. She could barely imagine what it was like six or so hours ago. "So you left your communicator behind so you'd be found? Why on the grave?"

He turned and looked around, finally settling his eyes on her again. "You found it on the grave?" She nodded. "I left it on that other stone there. I guess it a passing creature must have decided it wasn't tasty enough."

Beverly sighed. "I still don't understand why the scanners didn't find you."

"It's probably for the same reason my comm badge doesn't work anymore. Or maybe it's the rock's composition. I don't know."

What he was saying made perfect sense. Beverly turned to look at the shuttle again, in the fading glow of deepening twilight. What was there left to say? He obviously thought nothing of her kiss, had the same reaction to seeing her as he would have had to see anyone else. Not only had her life as she'd known it ended, so had her chances with Jean-Luc. She began to walk towards the shuttle. With a sigh she said, "Come on. We probably should be heading back to the crash site."

"The what," he asked, with little life in his voice.

Suddenly she felt heartless in her nonchalance. Slowly she turned to look at him; he looked as if he'd just lost his will to live, and in a way, he had. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, under these circumstances. There was a warp core breach. We were able to separate the saucer section before the star drive section exploded. The saucer section then became impossible to control and we crash-landed on the planet's surface."

He'd become even more ashen. "Did she—did the saucer section fare well?"

Beverly looked grim. "Minimal casualties, all things considered, but—I'm sorry. I'm afraid this was the final mission for 1701-D."

His voice was cold. "I see."

She watched him change all over. His shoulders sagged, and his eyes dropped to look at the ground. He turned away and folded his hands behind his back, in some last ditch effort to appear strong. Truth be told, she had never seen him emotionally crumble quite like this, not even when Jack Crusher had poisoned himself. She was almost afraid to approach him, as if maybe he blamed her for this devastating news. It wouldn't have been the first time the messenger got shot, figuratively speaking. There came a point, though, when she could take it no longer. "Jean-Luc," she said at last. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

His voice was barely his own when he spoke. "I've lost my family." She felt the dull pain in her heart, his pain, as she remembered the all-too-recent death of his brother and nephew. "I've lost my ship." Gone too was the ship that he had invested so many quality years in at the helm; now, its destruction left his future not uncertain, but unknown, at a time when he needed the security of that life as much as, if not more than, she did. She sighed in commiseration, leaving him to his thoughts.

It was a long while before he actually turned back to look at her, and when he did, she very nearly gasped at what she saw in his eyes. It was that gentle warmth she had seen at the bayside restaurant, the adoration she had seen reflected in the mirror in her bedroom, the tenderness of their lovemaking. There was a resolve about him that startled her. "I'm not about to lose you."

She questioned what he meant by that with her eyes alone.

He replied, "It's exactly what you think it means, Beverly. You know what you felt by the fire that night. I still do feel it. It's what I fought to keep from you, what I've denied to myself, since the night we met."

Nonplused, she said nothing. He took this to mean that she was waiting for an explanation, which was more or less the case.

The look in his eyes said that telling her his true feelings was no flight of fancy. On the contrary, this was perhaps the most sober he had ever been in talking to her. "I knew that night that I loved you, but it scared me. I had no idea how to be a competent captain and a strong leader and at the same time be in a relationship, because I reasoned I would always question my decisions, to opt for the safe route, in some effort to never have my partner feel the pain of my mistakes. It was easiest for me to just suppress the feelings and just continue on the only way I knew how." He paused to take a breath; she could almost feel the flood of pain coming from him. "When I think of how I made you cry that morning… how I forced myself to give you the impression that I no longer felt how I did there on Kesprytt… I was a coward. I know I was. I should not have shut you out."

She was not sure if she should cry tears of happiness, or punch his lights out. Right now the scales were tipping toward the latter. "Do you mean to say," she asked with a mounting tenseness in her voice, "that we could have spent all of these years together?"

Somewhat reluctantly, as if he knew where she was going with her line of questioning, he nodded.

The fire in the pit of her soul exploded into a conflagration. "And I'm supposed to forget everything you said to me the morning after we made love? Forget all of the years of your denial?" She knew this was not the reaction he was expecting, but she didn't care. She'd shut up her inner feelings long enough. "Did you expect I'd fall to my knees, thanking you for deigning to love me in return?" She walked away from him and towards the shuttle, disgusted and angry. Finally, after a few moments of regular breathing, she called to him, "Come on, Captain. You should get some water in you. And besides, they are probably ready to greet you with a hero's welcome back at the site." She tossed a look back to the burial site, and figured the rescue party could come back for it with the proper equipment.

Silently, he followed her into the shuttle, took the copilot's seat. He got a glass of water from the replicator as she prepared for liftoff. As they became airborne, he looked to her.

"So this is it? Is it really too late?"

She remained stoically quiet, concentrating on the task at hand, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He looked as pitiable as anyone she had ever seen.

"Beverly, if I could turn back the clock and do it right from the start, you know that I would in a minute."

Stiffly, she said, "Begging doesn't particularly suit you, Jean-Luc. Just accept that it really is too late."

He sat back in the seat and sighed.

Some minutes later she turned to look at him. He had drifted off into a world of his own, intently watching the horizon, where she noticed they were coming up on the sunset ahead, moving against the rotation of the planet. She smiled to herself, satisfied. Riding off into the sunset seemed so cliché, and yet, here they were. Her anger was well-founded, and completely natural, but seeing past the initial anger, she knew that his love was something she needed in her life still, especially now. She wasn't about to let her pride stand in the way of something she had been wanting for so long.

However, it sure did feel righteous to play the bitch for all it was worth.

"Now you know," she said quietly.

Roused from his reverie, he asked, "What?"

"Now you truly know what I felt that morning after you left." He looked down in shame. She continued, saying, "Only you never came back to say that you were only kidding."

"What? What do you mean by that?" He looked to her, gripping the arms of his chair; desperation had replaced the sadness. His voice was tight and low. "Don't do this to me, Beverly. If it's too late, then it's too late, but don't tease me with false hopes."

She didn't speak.

"Okay, fine, you taught me a lesson—dammit, Beverly! Will you please say something?"

Beverly pressed a button on the console, turned to him with her arms folded across her chest, and looked at him challengingly. "How can I be sure that when we go back to the 'real world' you won't suddenly be lecturing me again on how 'improper' and 'hormonal' this is?"

She could have knocked him over with a feather, if he hadn't already been seated. It was a chance, albeit a slim one, that he clearly thought he'd never get. "I can only give you my word as a gentleman and a scholar. I don't intend to screw this up again."

She smiled softly, stood from her chair, and unfolded her arms, placing one hand on his shoulder. "I guess I'll just have to take your word, then," she said gently.

With that same 'Is this real?' look on his face that he'd shown to her half a lifetime ago, he stood unsurely from his chair, reaching for her; his hands reverently cupped her face, before they moved to her temples. His fingers combed into her hair and found the clasp that held it in its dubious place; he released it, sending her tresses about her shoulders like a blazing mane of silk. Very slowly, he placed his lips to her hairline, and took a deep breath in; she knew she wasn't the cleanest of sorts at this moment after a day such as the one she'd just had, but he didn't seem to mind and in fact, he seemed to relish it. He ran his fingers down the entire length of her hair, nuzzling into her cheek.

"I can't tell you," he began quietly, "how much I have wanted to do that again."

She quieted him with a kiss.

…

The sun was preparing to set now, and it cast an amber glow over the now-peaceful scene, this vignette of destruction seemingly halted in time. It was not something he would not soon forget any time soon, hoped he would never forget, because it was the Day That Everything Changed Forever. It was tragic, and yet at the same time, exhilarating. The end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

A strange glint of silver caught his eye suddenly—he looked directly at it, squinted, and then gaped his mouth in awe when he realized exactly what it was. He walked, with his eyes still focused on the skies, towards a small group of individuals.

"Do you see that? Is that a shuttlecraft?"

Deanna Troi nodded. "Yes, Will. It's the Brown. She's been circling overhead for an hour now. We figure the doctor and the captain will land when they're ready."

Riker looked to the sky again, and smiled.

The end.