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Who: Beverly Crusher
Broadcast: No
Action: Blue Fish
When: May 10 (Mother's Day for anyone who celebrates it)

[Having had her fill of the casino scene for now, Beverly is back on board the Blue Fish, hard at work in their sickbay. She quickly discovered that she is unable to download the Starfleet database from her newly-obtained tricorder to the ship's computers, so she has been painstakingly typing up some of the more important information. Right now, she's going back over some of her own medical logs from the Enterprise, editing typos and adding comments where necessary. It's a slow process, but the more projects she has to work on, the better. Today is a day she'd rather not think too much about.

Unfortunately for her, Atroma is not going to allow that to happen.

Hi, Mom! says a bright, chipper voice. A voice she would recognize anywhere, the most important voice in the world to her.

She stands abruptly, knocking her chair over in the process. Where is his voice coming from? Did he... is he really here? A momentary surge of hope flows through her.]

Wesley?

[He continues to speak, Sorry I haven't written in a while. Things have been so crazy at the Academy lately. We got a new member of the Nova Squadron today, her name is Sito Jaxa and she's from Bajor! She's got a pretty cute nose...

Beverly gasps, feeling as if someone's just stabbed her in the heart and twisted the knife. This is only a recording, and an old one at that, before the incident with the Squadron, before Sito... scrambling around the room, she finds the tricorder where she left it sitting on a nearby table. A small hologram of Wesley is being projected above it as he talks. For a solid minute or two, she simply stares at the hologram, not really comprehending his words.

Anyway, I just wanted to wish you a happy Mother's Day! I miss you! His smile is so wide, so happy, and then the hologram shuts off. Beverly picks up the tricorder and scrolls through the messages. There they all are, every single letter he ever sent her while he was away, the videos she sent back of planets she had visited, holoimages of the two of them together on the Enterprise. She is absolutely certain these weren't here when she first got the tricorder out of the voucher machine. Selecting another letter at random, she hits play. There's no hologram this time, but he's excited: it was his first day of zero-g training. She picks up her fallen chair and drags it over to the table so she can sit and just listen.

Suddenly, it all gets to be too much and she begins to cry. Once she starts, she finds she can't stop, so she just lets it go and falls forward, elbows on the table and head in her hands, desperately hoping no one will see her like this.]

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[As if Beverly is pouring all her pent up feelings into this one action, she hugs Allen a little more tightly and holds it a little longer than she originally intended. However, it helps, greatly.Finally, when she pulls away she rests her hands on his shoulders for a moment and meets his gaze directly for the first time since he came in. When she speaks, her voice is soft and still a little shaky, even if the tears have stopped.]

I'm glad you're here right now.

[And he let her hold onto him, lightly hugging her back so it wouldn't feel too awkward. He was used to hugs, he knew how much they could help someone. When she finally lets go, he'll pull away as well and offers her a smile]

We're crew. A crew looks after one another.

[Aka, think nothing of it.]

[Returning his smile with a painfully weak one of her own, she lets go of his shoulders. Somehow, she gets the sense not all the crews in the fleet would feel the same way Allen does. Once again, she is grateful that if she has to be here, at least it's on the Blue Fish.]

Still. I'm thankful.

[What little there was of a smile fades and she stares at the tricorder again.]

This isn't... I'm not... [She takes a deep breath. She feels a need to explain, maybe more to herself than Allen.] I've been in situations a hundred times worse than this: I've been kidnapped, nearly killed in countless ways, trapped in a collapsing universe... [Been taken over by more than one entity, turned into a dog, really, this list could go on]. But there was almost always something I could do about it. Keep calm, think things through, and there is usually a solution.

[Her jaw hardens and she's starting to grit her teeth a little.]

I thought I could simply be uninteresting enough, not entertaining enough, but oh no, we can't have that, can we?

[He listens to her words, his expression sympathetic. He only chooses to speak up when she seems to be done]

...It's always harder when it seems like you don't have power, isn't it? [Allen knew that one well. How many times has he felt helpless to change things in the past? It never got easier.]

Maybe you haven't found a way home yet, but...look at it this way. Thanks to you, the clinics are running better, we have access to medical information centuries ahead of what the rest of us had, our crew has the knowledge of how to act like a functional crew, several people have been treated for injuries and illness...

You've given us all a much better chance to weather whatever Atroma decides to throw at us. A better chance for us to survive long enough to find that solution we need to get home. That's...not nothing.

[Her anger deflates slightly with Allen's words, but there is still that edge to her voice.] You're right, it's not nothing. They may have dumped me in the wrong universe and in the wrong fleet, but I am still a Starfleet officer and a doctor, and I will continue to help my fellow passengers in any way that I can. That will never change.

[She chews on her bottom lip for a minute, debating over whether or not to express more of her concerns to Allen. But if not him, who the hell else is she going to tell? She knows it is not good to let these things fester, like she has already.]

But I'm worried about what else might change. About how I will change. If - when - I finally return home, will I even belong on the Enterprise any more? I won't be able to go back and just pretend nothing happened to me.

[He hesitates a little] I...can't really give you the answer to that one. I don't know fully what the Enterprise is like, or what is in store for us in the future.

And of course you might change some, that's...part of life. But...I don't think you'll have to pretend nothing happened once you go home. If anything, from everything you've told me about your life with Starfleet- it sounds like the Enterprise crew will have very little trouble believing you about what happened. [Since dude. Your life is weird]

Oh, I have no doubt they'll believe me. A similar enough thing happened to our captain, where he experienced an entire lifetime on another world in what only seemed like an hour to the rest of us.

[Because yeah. Their lives are weird.]

The problem is I don't know how quickly or if I will be able to resume my usual life and duties there. If I go home tomorrow, it's not an issue, or even several months from now, but none of us know how long they plan to keep us here. If it's years... [She shakes her head] I don't know how Jean-Luc did it.

[...See. It's stories like that you state so calmly that make him think your life is beyond weird. And this is coming from a guy whose most normal years of his life were spent in the circus.]

...Maybe you can ask him. You and Jean-Luc are friends, aren't you? Friends help each other.

[And Picard does get some terrific motivational speeches I'm just saying]

[She nods, looking a little like she might be in danger of crying again, but she won't.] Of course. He's... he's always been there for me. We've been through a lot together, and I think that's what makes all of this so hard as well. Even when we weren't on the same ship, there was always a way to contact him, even across long distances there were letters -

[She abruptly stops talking, a thought suddenly occurring to her. If Wesley's letters were now on the tricorder... she picks it up again and searches its databanks. It doesn't take long to discover that all her personal correspondence is here, not just whatever she exchanged with Wes. She finds a relatively innocuous letter from Picard during the year she served at headquarters. There's no accompanying hologram, but his steady, familiar voice rings out from the tricorder.

The way she stares at the tricorder... if Allen is astute, he'll probably pick up on the fact that this is a bond deeper than most friendships.]

Edited 2015-05-19 17:39 (UTC)

[Allen meanwhile listens as she pulls up the recording. He doesn't recognize the ~~very fine~~ voice, but he can guess from her expression that this must be Jean-Luc. It's...a little awkward, listening in on what must be a private correspondence between two very close people.]

[When it seems to end, there's a pause before he speaks again]

...Sometimes I like to make letters to people I don't see anymore. It makes me feel a little closer to them, even if we're worlds away.

Maybe you could write some for Jean-Luc. And show them, when you get home.

[Don't worry Allen, she really did pick a very dry sort of letter, nothing too personal. Besides, she wouldn't have played it in front of you if she didn't trust you.]

You know, that's not a bad idea.

[Though she's not sure how she feels about an audience listening in on that. Today was bad enough. Still she doesn't want to immediately discount Allen's suggestion, as it is in general a good one and she really is grateful to him for sitting here with her while she deals with all of this.]

I may try it.

[Look have you heard Patrick Stewart's voice? He could be reading off a cooking recipe and it'd come off as intimate-]

[Yeah okay bad example, lets be real Allen would probably find reading off food recipes hotter than erotica. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.]

[But he smiles just a little]

It's a little strange feeling at first, but...it does make you feel better when you're finished. [And then he half shrugs] Or you could always talk to Timcanpy- I do that too. He's a good listener. And I'd promise not to listen to anything he records with you!

[And yet this is the woman who makes that voice incoherently stumble over itself.]

Not too strange, really. Starfleet encourages personnel to keep personal logs in addition to their official ones. They just aren't directed to anyone in particular. I... haven't been able to make myself continue the practice here but maybe if I think of it as a letter instead... we'll see.

[She returns his smile with a half-one of her own.]

[Oh that's good, Starfleet having something like that already. He gives a nod and says reassuringly]

It's worth a try.

[At the very least...as a way to outlet her feelings since she seems like the private sort. Just how much pain has she been holding in for their sakes? It made him worry.]

It is.

[She absentmindedly toys with the tricorder for a moment before looking at Allen again.]

You don't need to look so worried. I'm going to be fine.

Ah-

I'm sorry, but it's part of my job to worry!

[It can't be your job because that's her job. Obviously.]

Well, in that case, I suppose I will allow it for today [because let's be honest, today was terrible], but only for today. Tomorrow I promise will be better.

Edited 2015-06-01 02:40 (UTC)

[He gives a little laugh]

Very well. If you insist, I'll work on being callous for tomorrow.

[She smiles and gently rests a hand on his cheek. Despite her tendencies to keep a lot of things to herself, she has no problem showing affection to those she cares about. And she very much cares about Allen.]

You're a good friend, Allen. Thank you, for everything today.

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