Visitor
When she is alone, she cries. Wesley sleeps in her room these days, to keep the nightmares at bay. She works during the day. She isn't alone very often. The little boy screams and she has to bite her lip to stop herself yelling in frustration. His face is screwed up and red, tears flooding down it. A toy shuttle is slightly dented, so of course the world is about to end. In reality, it ended a while ago, with another broken shuttle. She strokes his hair soothingly, the way she did with Jack when the dreams about the Cardassians or Nausicaans surfaced again and again. It works. It always works. Her bedside manner has long been polished, is without reproach. It works on frightened, injured ensigns the same way it works on scared, fatherless boys who need something real to scream about instead of the intangibility of grief. He settles after a while, and she smoothes her hair back into place. Creeping downstairs quietly, she slips on her shoes, elegant black heels, bought for the funeral, that damn near crippled her on the day. She's worn them in now and her perfect dancer's feet are no longer bruised and blistered. Instead of the smart black dress that still smells of death but she can't throw out, she wears a short grey shift. Sleeveless, like the last dress he saw her in, but not as modest. The grey is the sky on Caldos just before a rainstorm, the smooth steel of the Stargazer hull, its Captain's eyesˇShe's dressing for a date, of sorts. The only man who treats her the same now that Jack is gone; this gentle courtesy was always his way with her. Treating her carefully, as though she might break. He is a gentleman, she is a lady and that is the way of things. No matter the rumours that reach her ears that say he is a cad, a rake, in love with his captaincy and no one else, she has always found him to be the perfect gentleman. Too good to be true, too good to be such a close friend of Jack's. One day, she thinks, she would like to get to know the real Jean-Luc Picard.
He smiles shyly and offers her the flowers he holds. No one gives her flowers anymore, not since the funeral wreaths. She buries her head in the blooms, inhales their scent, needing a change from the smell of vomit and baby formula. He looks at her discreetly, taking in her appearance. Grey. Not quite black, but not so far off. A widow's weeds, reminding him what she is, what she will always be now. She rests her head against his shoulder and he wonders if she realises the effect it has on him. He hasn't seen her since the funeral. Left on the first transport out, not wanting to deal with grief-stricken relatives and a fatherless child. Not wanting to deal with any more accusing stares from people who believed he could have prevented one more senseless death in an accident that killed many. She was pale, her mouth screwed up in an effort not to cry. Thin and tired, juggling the child on her hip absentmindedly, stroking his dark hair. Not the woman whose eyes sparkled as she moved sensuously across the dance floor, full of life and love. Not the fiery woman he has argued with countless times over art and music and politics. She is not the woman who had haunted his dreams for years (although she will after this). But he still loves her, this stranger in Beverly's body. Thinner than she was, true. Not the same body. Bony where taut muscle used to be, covered by creamy skin.
It wasn't until he was sat, staring out at the stars, that he cried. Broken down, huddled over his table like an old man, shaking with emotion. The weakness that terrified him took over his mind completely. He wonders if it frightens her as much. Jack has told him of her irrational fear of mental illness, of no longer being in total control of her own emotions, her own logic. Grief is a kind of madness in itself, all consuming and always there. Every smile is shot through with guilt at being happy, at being there at all. At surviving. Is there any justice in his continued existence when it was his fault, his orders, his hands covered with his best friend's blood? The same hands that cover Beverly's pale, slim fingers in what facsimile of comfort he can offer. Her cheeks are just as pale. He feels that they should be blotched and tear-stained, her fragile, glacial beauty marred by endless bouts of hysterical weeping. But the inner steel glints in her eye despite the smudged purple bags beneath and her voice is an angry hiss when she whispers "It's not fair." Her eyes close as her mind drifts. Her painted eyelashes glisten with tears and her lips, pressed firmly together, tremble. But the moment of weakness is just that and she sits up, a polite smile pasted across her face. He wants not to let go so easily, not to let her go so easily. His chest feels cold where her warmth was pressed. Some indefinable time after the funeral he found himself in bed with a woman. Limbs tangled around his, strands of red hair left in some anonymous hotel bed. A fevered night, hot and hard and sweating. At some point he thinks he may have called Beverly's name.
She is an impeccable hostess. Taking his coat and making polite small talk. The wine is poured with unsteady hands. On the white tablecloth, spilt drops of red wine blossom, staining the material. Neither of them mentions it. Beverly looks as though she might cry at any moment, but the tears stay locked behind steel doors. She feels as though she can never cry again, because if she starts she will never stop. They ask about each other's work in a vague sort of way. Neither mention the Stargazer by name, neither are willing to admit that life has gone on without Jack.
After he leaves, the flowers stay on the table for weeks until they wither and dry and turn brown. Petals strew the smooth wooden surface, stark and bright in a colourless house. Mistaking them for left-overs from the funeral, a friend clears them away, throwing the dead, crumbling blooms onto the pile of rotting rubbish.