DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc and Viacom. The story contents are the creation and property of Djinn and are copyright (c) 2003 by Djinn. This story is Rated PG-13.
Someone to Watch Over Me
by Djinn
She sleeps. She sleeps and I watch her, assessing each
rise and fall of her chest, listening for the small moans, the soft sounds of
the dreams that disturb her slumber. Her
hands lie still on the white coverlet. Only her head moving from side to side
on the pillow is an indication that her sleep is not peaceful.
"Beverly," I
whisper, trying to soothe her without waking her. I do not want to see those haunted eyes
looking up into mine, would rather imagine them as they were when we served
together, when all I had to do was look into her calm blue gaze and know that I
was all right. That I could do whatever
had to be done because she believed in me.
Because she would always believe in me.
And she has. Even after the Borg, when I came back as Locutus and had to watch my friends and crew shrink away
from me despite their best intentions.
Even then she was the one who held out welcoming arms to me, who said,
"You're home, Jean-Luc." Her
face held no recrimination, yet I knew that she was as aware as the others of
the horrors I was responsible for. She
knew. We both knew she did. But she forgave me, her good friend. Her Jean-Luc.
I should have run to her
then. Why didn't I? Why didn't I take her in my arms the way I
have always longed to and hold her? How
can I have loved this woman for so long and never have made love to her? What's wrong with me that I could let her get
away from me so many times?
I stare down at her and push
the damp gray hair away from her face.
She is outdistancing me, leaving me alone here to face the world without
her. I'm an old man now, older than she
and tired, more ready to go. Yet it's
she who's run out of life, she who'll go first, leaving me to carry on without
her.
Life will be a lonely place
without her. My life has always been a
lonely place without her. But she's been
there, in the background. Steadfastly
keeping watch, protecting the humanity of her friend Jean-Luc.
Of her love Jean-Luc? Up to now, I have never had the courage to
ask. It was easier to assume that she
cared deeply but in an abstract, gentle way.
I couldn't have borne the idea that she carried a great passion for me
inside her. I couldn't have shared all
those light-hearted breakfasts with her knowing that she wanted me. Knowing that I could have come from her
bedroom to join her at the table, and not from my cold quarters down the
corridor.
"I love you." There I have said it. I've said it and she can no longer hear
me. So many times I should have said
it. So many opportunities, moments where
the two of us stood precariously balanced on a cliff, never sure enough of each
other to take the leap together. Our
hands might slip, there might be rocks below.
Did I never just want to grab her hand and pull her with me, fly
laughing into the air to fall down, down, down screaming with delight? Did she never want to pull me into her soft
and gentle dance, twirl me off the cliff with her and float down to the water? Could we not have tried it just once? Just for a moment?
Life is a series of these
moments, a continuum of lost and taken chances.
I'm an old man and I can look back and chart these, show the moments
where I lacked the courage to change the course of my life. Or where I grabbed my destiny boldly and
changed the course from will alone. The
moments. Why did she and I never have a
moment? Just one. It would have been all we needed.
"I love you," I say
again. The sound echoes slightly in the
hospice room. It would be silent in here
if not for the low pings and buzzes of the monitors, the biobed charting her
course. I don't have to look to see the
indicators all heading down.
She's dying. Beverly is dying.
My love is dying. My mind stops at that, refuses to go on. I
can think of nothing else. How sad, how
pathetic am I that I sit here an ancient man, grizzled and bent and finally
having the courage to tell the woman I love how I feel. Finally letting her know...and she can't hear
me.
Or if she can hear, she
cannot understand the words. When she's
awake, her eyes look up at me blankly; she struggles against the restraints
that force her to lie still on the bed.
Her system is shutting down, the doctors tell me. Her motor functions erratic, her moods
rushing up and down. It's better for her
this way, they say, as I stare down at the soft webbing that holds her in the
bed. Safer for her this way. Tethered to firm ground.
She was meant to fly, some
whimsical part of me protests. Let her
go.
I cannot let her go. I've never been able to. There were times she wanted to leave, times
when she would have been wise to go. But
I needed her and she needed to be needed.
And so she stayed and watched over me.
My protector, my champion, the one in the background who believed in me
so firmly I could never lose my way. She
was my north star, my one true guide.
"I love you," I say
again, and this time when I look at her, I have to blink away tears. I'm an old man. It's all right to cry now. No one is here to see. Even she can't see. I can cry for her and for me and for the life
that we never led. The love we never
shared. I can cry for it all.
But I don't cry for
long. It's not my nature to let my
feelings show, even now, even after all this living and dying and
fighting. Why did I take so little time
for loving? Why did I never stop running
and reach out for her?
But I pushed her away, over
and over. After Shinzon,
nothing was the same. On the outside, it
appeared fine. But inside, I was warped,
damaged. I'd faced the dark side of my
soul, and it had won. I shut down, shut
her out. She tried to reach me, tried to
help me. She came to me, a few weeks
later. Came to me and offered me her
body, her soul, her touch. She kissed
me, she held me, she began to pull my uniform off. And she forgot to say I love you. Or she was too afraid of what it would mean
if I didn't want that love. She was as
fearful as I was, and her hand reaching out to me only crossed half the
distance between us. I pushed her away
as gently as I could and pulled my uniform back on. She left weeping.
I could have called her
back. I could have said the words. Three small words that would not force
themselves across my tongue. Or across hers. We neither of us could say it, and so we lost
our last chance. It took us months to
become friends again. And we never
crossed that bridge, never even approached it in all the years that have come
and gone since that night.
How did two such brave people
become such cowards in love? We rode the
carousel for years. Did it never occur
to either of us to stand up and grab the ring?
If I had held her up, she could have reached it easily. But holding her up would have meant risk, it
would have called for me to drop the walls between us and let her in. And perhaps she had walls of her own that
weren't ready to come down. So we sat on
our separate horses and shot longing glances at a ring that was never out of
reach except we made it so. What a ride
it would have been though. If we'd just
tried.
I look at the biobed. There's so little of her left now. It will be soon. She will leave me and move on to whatever it
is that waits for us when we die. I've
never known, didn't spend much time examining it as a younger man. But I find that it interests me now, now that
I'm old and have little else to do but sit and look over my grapes and ponder
what life has to offer me in my remaining years. I find myself wondering more and more what
death will offer me. What if it really
is nothing? What if this is all there
is?
What will we have wasted, she
and I, if this is all the time we were ever meant to have?
"Jean-Luc?" Her voice is raspy, breath rattling around in
it, but it's her voice and I haven't heard it so clear or so sane since I got
to the hospice, and I feel my heart leap into my throat as I turn to look at
her. I have to blink tears away again,
and I realize that I am breathing fast, that my own shallow gasps are louder
than they should be.
Her eyes are clear. She does not struggle against the
restraints. She knows me.
"Beverly?" I say,
as I lean forward, undoing the webbed restraints with such force that for a
moment I fear I will hurt her.
She stares at me, as if I'm
the one dying. "You came," she
says.
"I will always
come."
A silence falls between
us. A silence that is familiar because
it's built of fear. I look down at her and
I see how little of my Beverly lies in that frail body, and I realize that we're
again standing on the edge of a cliff and soon she'll let go of my hand and
jump without me if I do not act.
I lean down, lay my lips on
hers gently. I can feel hers push
back. They are dry and hot but they push
against mine with a strength I would not have expected.
"I love you,
Beverly," I say as I pull back enough to see her, to watch her eyes. "I have always loved you, and I will
always love you." I shake my head,
try to clear the tears that have sprung up in my eyes again. "I wish—"
"Shhh,"
she says. She stares up at me, her eyes
the same gentle blue I remember, the same fierce belief in me is shining out of
them. "I love you too,
Jean-Luc." She struggles for breath
then, for a moment looks panicked, then a strange calm comes over her. She seems to be looking into the past...or
perhaps into the future, and a brilliant smile crosses her face. Then she looks at me, and for a brief moment
she's with me again and there's nothing but love for me shining out of her
eyes. She whispers, "Forever."
And then she's gone.
I close her eyes. I cannot bear to see the light go out from
them, to see them staring sightlessly at the walls of this cold, sterile room. The space is silent, the bed dark. There's no longer anything to measure, to
monitor, to watch over.
I feel suddenly cold. As if someone has pulled a blanket from
around my shoulders on a chilly evening, or has yanked the comforter from me in
the middle of the night. I feel cold and
alone and afraid.
She's gone, I realize. There's no one to watch over me. No one to believe in me. No one to stand on the cliff and leap with
me.
"Admiral?" Giselle's soft voice sounds from the
doorway. "Are you all
right?" She is a distant cousin, a
young girl enamored of space who's taken a liking to the doddering old admiral
that settled two villages away from her family.
She's the stubborn child who comes to visit, even though I refuse to
tell her stories of my adventures, refuse to let her into my life. And she's the determined twelve-year-old that
somehow helped me travel to this small room, got us through every transporter,
every checkpoint so that I wouldn't miss my friend's death. She's the little girl who after one look at
the dazed old man staring at the comm from the hospice, took action, and did
what needed to be done to bring me to Beverly's side. She has the Picard will. She will accomplish whatever she has to,
clear any obstacle that stands in her way, do anything that's necessary. But will she love? Does she have the Picard fear as well?
I turn to her and hold out my
hand. She comes to me and stares down at
Beverly. I wonder if she has ever met
death before. "I loved this
woman. I loved her more than
anything," I say softly.
"I know," Giselle
whispers and even though I don't know how she knows, I believe that she
does. She doesn't flinch away from
Beverly, doesn't appear scared and I love her for that.
I reach out and touch Beverly's
face one last time. I tell Giselle,
"Do not wait, Cherie, until you're my age to embrace love. Don't run away from it, or be afraid of
it."
She nods but I wonder if she
understands. She leans in and kisses me
and for the first time, I allow the affection.
In the past, I have held her at arms length, but perhaps there are other
fears I need to let go of, other walls I need to tear down.
While there's still time.
I push Giselle away gently as
I stand up. Goodbye my love, I silently
tell Beverly. Forever, I think,
not sure what it means, but willing to embrace it.
I take Giselle's hand and
lead her from the room. As we walk to
the transporter pad, I say, "Those stories you're always trying to pry out
of me...I believe I'm ready to tell them."
She looks up at me and I'm
taken aback at the sheer joy in her face.
"Really, Admiral?"
As I nod, I tell her,
"And my name is Jean-Luc, Giselle.
Call me Jean-Luc."
FIN