ten_fwd | so wake me up when it's all over ( open )

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so wake me up when it's all over ( open )

Arrival

The last week was very literal hell for everyone in Zelien. Between the Eldritch horror, the rain of COMPASS monsters, and the cultists, survival was difficult for seven days. Well, survival in Zelien was always difficult, but it seemed much more so now. The days passed by so quickly and yet so slowly, to the point where each hour bled into the next, each day bled forward and Beverly fully lost all track of time. Nothing was safe and after living even a short time like that, even the most stalwart of people couldn't take it forever. So when the frantic man with white hair came through the mess advertising a serum that would take them through to COMPASS' realm where they could, theoretically, defeat the organization and get everyone to safety, if not home... to say she had jumped at the chance would be an understatement. At least, after she had ascertained that the serum wouldn't do any damage to anyone. While she couldn't be absolutely certain, she was sure enough and it would be better than their current options. With the serum in her system, she had followed the frantic man.

One side of the portal was Zelien. On the other, she found herself being tossed a good few feet and then dropped, landing on her back with a whoosh of air. With the breath knocked out of her, she takes a few seconds to recover and in that time, security is called to Ten Forward. Her phaser rifle sure does stand out. The altercation when she tries to stand is short, her surprise and a touch of fear being the largest reasons she resists so hard at first. Eventually, she relinquishes the weapon, snapping, "Okay, okay! Take it!" They like that better, leaving her to get reacquainted with the middle of Ten Forward and the stares of whoever happened to witness the scene.

Later

Once she's gotten the idea of what's going on, has dealt with something else, and has managed to accept the idea that this might not be a hallucination from the serum or COMPASS using one of her most important memories against her, she heads for the replicator and a cup of Earl Grey tea. She hasn't honestly had anything that wasn't canned pears, coffee, or creamed corn in so long. This might be overdoing it, but at this point, she's given up caring. After a moment's thought, she replicates a croissant to go with it. Both she'll take up to a table in the corner where she can, hopefully, sit in peace and get her head on straight. Looks like she can finally have a cup of coffee and a croissant tomorrow. For the first time in weeks.

For anyone who might want to approach, she doesn't look entirely unapproachable. She is tense, though, extremely so and she's noticeably facing towards the room at large with her back to the wall, watching people with the gaze of someone who has learned not to let her guard down too much. It'll pass and in time she'll be back to herself. Right now, she's just on the edge of a breakdown. Good thing she has that medical training to separate her emotions from a situation, right?

Closed

After getting more food and drink in her than she usually gets in a day in Zelien, she finally takes a deep breath and decides to go ahead with something that needs doing. This... will be difficult, but she needs to do it. For both of their sakes.

"Crusher to Picard." Pause. "Do you have a minute, Jean-Luc?"

She uses his first name in her request to show that she's coming to him not as his Chief Medical Officer, but as his friend, as a friend who needs him. Because she does. If there's anything in this universe that she needs right now, it's as many friendly faces and people as she can gather, people she can be sure of. That and she does have a lot to tell him.

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A couple of weeks, or a couple of days. Time didn't register as much against the grief and anxiety, tension swirling through Beverly as she spoke about it. It's not the only time, but is the first one for personal reasons, that Deanna questions the good of sending the arrivals back. They don't belong here and it is Q's meddling, but stories like this one, make it very hard to consider there being a good from sending someone back to something horrific.

It's troublesome to watch her. The softest of whispered words. Choosing to rest against the bulkhead for long moments. Even though ever passerby's would get curious when neither of them moved, as both of them were well known for their positions by nearly everyone on the ship.

The concern is all that comes with her voice this time. Gently, not forcing it. "How did you end up there?"

Beverly pauses only long enough to process Deanna's question before she pushes away from the bulkhead and continues walking. The sooner they get to the Arboretum, the better. She gives her head a gentle shake as they walk.

"I don't know." This seems to be a common theme these days. "They said that an organization called COMPASS brought us there to... experiment on us, test us in every way possible. It's hard to remember the official explanation after arriving in the middle of a train wreck." She's not kidding about that. The train she was on crashed and that was her introduction. "All I know is that they were responsible for everything that happened to us. I remember... being on the Enterprise and then I remember waking up to a train that had crashed. But I don't remember anything that happened between those two points. No one did."

It is a terrible thing to construct an image of.

She would call it impossible, but a year ago it was impossible for people from other other worlds and universe to just appear on the Enterprise. Temporal and transdimensional travel of people who never asked to be torn from their own lives and the Enterprise being used by Q like toys in the hand of a hubristic god who wanted only approval and whose displeasure for not receiving his wished due could have just as dire circumstances.

They've all walked in a grey zone between what they were sure of before this started and what they've adapted to for handling it. It's not entirely on the beaten path, and though they've tread the edges of it before, it's never felt like they'd needed so much of a blurred line before, and never for so long.

Deanna chose a personal response, over a professional one. One that came from her gut as much as her heart, as she reached out and touched the back of Beverly's shoulder, very slightly and tenderly, at once companionably but, also, with the lightness that someone might attempting touching a spook-able horse. "Then, I am glad that you are here now."

It did not mean that she was alright with the disappearance of their own Beverly.

But she could not wish what little she had already heard, and was hear slowly now, on Beverly. Any Beverly.

Edited 2015-05-24 04:54 (UTC)

They're just outside the Arboretum when Deanna touches her shoulder and for a minute, Beverly thinks she might just shatter where they are. Somehow she manages to hold herself together long enough to get inside, though she does lift a hand to grip Deanna's, gratitude and horror all mixed up in her emotions again. This reaction without even touching on the details, like the monsters and the deaths, the cultists, the soldiers in the camp, or the fact that there were children with them. That can come later, when Beverly's throat hasn't closed around the words.

"I'm glad I'm out of there," she says softly as she finally steps into the Arboretum and gazes around at the trees and plants she can see, greenery that she hasn't properly seen in weeks. Guilt flares up again as she continues, feeling the brunt of the change on the Enterprise. "But if it's a choice between her or me being there, I'd choose me. She can't handle that place."

Not that this Beverly was particularly thrilled by it, not that she wants to go back, but if it's a choice between sending an innocent woman with no understanding of that place or its horrors or how to live there and the older version who's been through a hell of a lot more and can survive long enough to try to take down COMPASS, then she would choose the latter every time. The other Beverly Crusher belongs here; this one should never have been brought here.

"If I knew she was on my timeline's Enterprise, it might not be as bad." It would be worse in some ways, but she can't exactly talk about the Borg to these people whose only interaction with them was during her year at Starfleet Medical. Locutus hasn't yet come into being and she honestly dreads that day now that she thinks about it. "But no one deserves to be there, least of all her. If I could be sure..." But knowing Q, he'll never tell.

Deanna lets her hand be taken. A second time, now. But this time she squeezes back the hand that takes hers, faster. The maelstrom of the storm inside of Beverly raising itself up again, each time, and yet Beverly still doesn't pull away and she doesn't flinch from it like she wants Deanna to stop. There are flashes of panicked concern, but it doesn't seem directed at Deanna at all.

She keeps the hands once they step inside. The smell of dirt and green growing things wrapping them up as they walk in, and making something in Deanna cool that she can never tell has wound itself up again until she walks in here, again. Once, she was always surrounded by green and growing things, beauty surrounded her and all of her world, both natural and made. The great gardens and teeming landscapes were a thing she would never not miss.

"She could," Deanna said quiet, but resolute. Even if her heart quivered at the idea, she was looking to Beverly with such doubtlessness that her faith might have been scrawled. "She'd find a way. Just like you did. Just like you always do. Like you are, even, right now doing here, with us." Beat. With a small, if understanding and entirely honest touch of a smile that was even then a little sad, for both Beverly's. "With me."

The beauty of the Arboretum is overwhelming, enough that she just stands there for a few minutes to gaze at everything, to see the beauty in such a simple thing. The only really green thing in Zelien had been the jungle, but that was a mess. Survival was less of a guarantee there than on the college campus and it was pretty low to begin with. Beverly had never really braved the jungle herself, but she'd seen the poisonous frogs in Doctor McCoy's lab. That had been enough.

"I know," she sighs after a while. "I know I'm seemingly not giving her enough credit. I just hate the idea that I've taken someone else's place at all. I shouldn't be here. She should. I don't want anyone to face that because I'm suddenly where they are."

There's more to it, of course, but that goes into the camp with eh soldiers and her guilt for not having followed her crew, for choosing to help the women of the camp until it got to be too much to bear. Then she'd followed the crew she'd been adopted into and found that she was too late to help them instead. She had made a choice and in the end she'd lost some of the most important people in her life. That guilt won't be so easily banished. Despite those thoughts and despite her own words, she is grateful for Deanna's counsel and support. All of this is just going to take her time to work through.

Eventually, she sinks to the ground in the middle of the Arboretum, tucking her legs up and resting her arms on her knees. For someone whose hobby is a form of botany, coming to this place was one of the best decisions that could have been made. She's grateful for that, too. She's grateful to have Deanna at all, grateful to have met her, grateful that the Deanna of this timeline is so willing to help and accept her. It means everything to her.

"It's been a long time since I've seen anything this green, longer since I had a chance to enjoy it," she says after a few moments, glancing at Deanna and finally smiling. Actually smiling. Nothing huge or bright, but something approaching her normal warmth at least. It's a start.

Of course, she is. Because Beverly will never not be Beverly. With her steel core, and her want to be the one fighting all her own battles. Not waiting for someone else to fight them for her. Not willing to let someone push her back into place when she knows her own path forward is the right one. She would not even wish herself, past or further future, any more than her friends, to have to handle something she felt she should be, if she could be doing it herself.

It's not a guilt she can lift from Beverly, nor a thing she can promise either way. She does not know what happens on the other side of this situation. If there are people in worlds who have been mourning the losses and lives of those who have appeared here. Whether people in the past missing butterfly affected their whole time streams. Or if they were frozen waiting. It wasn't her realm of study by any means. Even if she'd had to learn many things this last year.

Instead of words, Deanna sank down next to her, legs curling to one side and looking at the room in front of them. It was not entirely empty, but it was close enough. Any of the children who played in it during the day were long since taken home with parents for dinners and any of their plans. It was them and only a handful of others, some working on the plants themselves and others, sitting together, immersed in their own worlds.

"It might be a good place to start, then," Deanna decides to say after a long moment of letting the words sink in. Slotting them into place with everything else about this small horror-filled place Beverly had been taken to. "Better, perhaps," she adds. "To start with focusing on yourself, here, where it's calm and beautiful rather than on trying to adjust to everyone else in Ten Forward and the whole ship."

She'd get there. Deanna had absolutely no doubt in that. But sometimes starting at the center was the most important.

It's quiet enough for Beverly to manage. She can keep her voice down for now so it doesn't carry, but the place isn't empty enough to feel... empty. She feels the connection to the ship and the people growing just a little. Little by little, she's starting to accept her placement here. Little by little, she's beginning to believe this might be real.

"I think I might come here more often than I used to," she admits softly, gazing out over the vast spread of plant life. "The only thing Zelien had was a jungle, but I heard it was full of dangerous and deadly creatures, so I didn't really dare to go out there. Besides..." The corners of her lips tilt upwards in more of a smile than she's given so far, fondness clear on her face and in her emotions. "The poisonous frogs were enough and we had a whole lab full of them."

She'd promised not to tell anyone he was asking her for help, so she won't. There are plenty of ways to explain the situation without admitting to that part.

The smile and the swell of affection is a good thing to see and feel.

Deanna doesn't draw any notice to them, as there is no reason to interrupt her friend, and it is good to know.

That it was not only all bad things. Not all about survival. It might have been the pervasive main piece. But she had not been alone, and to such a degree that she carried deep, warm feelings for those she had presently been parted from.

"There are definitely no poison frogs," Deanna agreed, with a gentle but conspiratorial smile.

"We were making an antidote," Beverly continues, gazing out at the expanse in front of her as she lets just a little of her normal humor bubble to the surface. "I promise we weren't just collecting them, even if they were pretty. People kept bringing them in. Doctor McCoy--" She cuts herself off for a second. Doctor instead of Admiral is pretty telling, though. There's a fondness to her voice that she can't quite keep out as she continues, the type that suggests they were very good friends. "Doctor McCoy kept complaining that the whole lab smelled like a swamp. I guess... I'll never know what happened to those frogs."

Presumably, the building walls ate them. Ate or whatever word would properly describe what was actually happening before last week.

"And maybe someday I'll have something better to talk about." Again, she lets a little of her humor, a hint of herself, out to show them both that it's okay. She really is Beverly Crusher. And life here is safe. It's okay.

It's really okay.

Deanna doesn't prod for hard or deep questions yet, though she does wonder given the two different versions of the man referenced who have been on board now. Neither of whom had happened to be the one existing somewhere far, far away from where they were now. It's good to be hearing her talking at all. Putting together more and more sentences, without feeling she has to stop herself, or hesitate too much.

She doesn't aim for watching for or wanting to see none at all. Maybe in a few weeks, a month, if she's still here. Even beginning to heal from trauma could take a long time. Learning how to carry trauma and choosing which part to keep, part from, or even grow from. Deanna leaned over, but did not knock Beverly's shoulder. "You don't have to worry about that here, with me."

It's harmless question she asks, with a smile, to show so. "They were beautiful, you said. What did they look like?"

"Well, you know how Earth nature is," Beverly says, her tone straying more towards teasing, "the brighter the colors, the more deadly it is."

They had been pretty in their own way, but the frogs were still huge and deadly. Beverly had never seen frogs that size before. Her first day in the lab had certainly taken some adjusting. Her pause is momentary as she thinks back to that day and all the subsequent days she spent helping Doctor McCoy harvest the poison and work on the antidote.

"They were bright red with black. I think they were actually poison dart frogs, just... poison dart frogs the size of large dogs." No, seriously. She's not joking about that. "The antidote was necessary just due the nature of the poison itself. When you factor in the sheer size of the frogs it was a wonder that people didn't just die on contact."

She's pretty sure some did when they went looking and that was all the more reason for the antidote.

"There were other living things wandering around, but I didn't have nearly as much to do with those as I did with the frogs."

"I do not think I would like one of those," Deanna says back, just as teasing as Beverly had started her first, though nothing in her expression questions the validity of her friends' story about this world she was taken to and then relieved from. "Not to count, Starfleet and The Captain would not likely accept that as a newly requisitioned pet."

While her first is a light joke, the rest she listens to calmly and easily. Head tilted just enough to be paying attention while not entirely fixating on looking at her. Paying attention to the great green room, filled with newly blooming plants, and at the same time to Beverly's tale.

"Not that one," Beverly agrees, though that smile slowly slides off her face as she realizes something else. She sighs wearily again, her arms tightening around her knees. The Captain. Jean-Luc. If she's going to take herself off active duty, she'll need to talk to him. Well, she'll need to talk to him no matter what. There's a lot she has to tell him.

"I need to speak with Captain Picard," she admits softly. Calling him by his rank and title is far more formal than she likes to be unless she has cause for it or she's around the rest of the crew. Right now, she's falling back on protocol, keeping even the smallest of walls up around her. It's been falling slowly around Deanna, as she acclimates to her other best friend's presence, but the moment she imagines going to see their captain, the walls shoot back up again. She needs to see him; she knows that. She just isn't sure how that meeting will go. It isn't that she doubts her best friend. It's more than she knows her presence here will shock him and throw a twist in their friendship. It's shaky enough in this timeline as it is without this to make things worse.

The big question has now become whether or not she's ready to see him.

Deanna can feel it buildings in her, before the words come out. A wall of complex emotions, bound both duty and personal in interwoven beams, that could not be entirely separated, rather like their pasts and presents and future.

"Yes." It's a single word, honest and clear, but quiet. Deanna's ever-honesty of her race always present in words. But she follows it with rocking over gently and nudging Beverly's shoulder, half-testing, half-comforting. "But you don't have to do it right this second. You can take your time. No one would understand more."

Yes. There were things they had to fix immediately about her appearance, but it didn't make her own grief, shock, trauma, surprise any less worthy of their own place. She wouldn't even need as much proof as she already had now to convince the Captain to give Beverly her space if she did need it so first.

Things are too complicated here, Beverly has decided. She hasn't been here a full day yet and it's already far too complex for her to handle. Right now, she needs quiet. She needs peace. She needs stability she hasn't had in weeks.

Sighing wearily, she tilts her head up and blinks at the ceiling above them for a few moments, turning over her options in her head. "I know... but the sooner I do it, the better for all of us." At least she is strong enough to admit that much, strong enough to smile at the shoulder nudge and bump Deanna's in return.

"Deanna, I..." A pause follows as she glances back at her friend, chewing the inside of her lip for a few seconds. "If I'm going to be here for an extended period, I'll need some sense of normalcy. I don't know how strong your friendship is with my other self--" Or what they do in their spare time. "--but in my time, we would... hang out a lot. We had workout times and we would practice Mok'bara during our off duty hours. I know it's a lot to ask, but do you think we might be able to keep up something similar? No matter what you've been through or haven't been through, you are still my friend, one of my best friends, and I don't want to lose you."

She expects to see Deanna for therapy sessions and she knows that doesn't need to be said. What she wants to emphasize is how important Deanna is to her, how much she wants to hold onto a friendship. Of course, if that is too much for Deanna, Beverly will absolutely pull back. She doesn't want to make this more difficult on Deanna than it already is. Beverly would never sacrifice someone else's comfort or health for her own stability. Never.

Deanna blinked, staring at Beverly for a second, but only a second. Surprised, but not all at once. It's one of the first times Beverly has said so many sentences at all. All of it pouring out of her suddenly. In words and a matching wash of feelings, which flow out of her and come at Deanna as a strong rush. Her nervousness turning into the raw admission and request that was almost half plea, if one with a familiar indomitable will behind it.

It was both a lot to ask and not all at once. It was a conflict of interests and it wasn't. It was both crossing the line and not crossing it. The whole situation with the displaced guests was a large grey space, that only grew larger with arrivals like Beverly's. The sudden swap of the Chief Medical Officer. Friend, and colleague. For someone who looked like her, sounded like her, spoke like her, truly seemed very much to be her or believed she was.

Deanna had not yet sensed one thing that she would consider a lie. Much distress and confusion, but not deceit.

"I admit this situation is strange." There's no slight for that. Only honesty, that both sympathizes and asks that same understanding and sympathy. Because the both know the protocol for temporal situations, yet they both know this both fits and does not, with the great circumstances around it. "The you will still be required to follow the protocol for both the arrivals, likely as well as Star Fleets in this situation -- As well as that my concerns for the ship's Doctor is not currently lessened."

She cared greatly to know where The Doctor from before this Beverly's appearance had been taken, or shifted to. She wanted deeply to know that she was somewhere, and that she hadn't simply blinked out of existence. Because even with this Beverly here, that idea pierced her heart straight and sharp.

"But--" She continued, with a nod. "I do not think that it would be too much to ask for company and friendship while we are figuring out this situation." She turned her head, with an interested look. A slide of something more personal, faintly, amusedly, curious and almost winning, because it is a future admissions, oddly enough about herself, letting itself peak out. "I have been curious about Mok'bara for a long while now."

Beverly has never been one for deceit with her friends and Deanna is one of the closest friends she's ever had. She knows she's asking a lot, perhaps not quite the extent of what she's asking, and now that Deanna is responding, Beverly realizes that perhaps it was too much. Pausing for a while, she ducks her head slightly, avoiding Deanna's gaze for a few seconds before she returns her own to the area around them. Maybe it really would be better if she just kept herself isolated. She's already tainting the timeline in terrible ways and it might be better to remove herself from the problem, even if that would prove more detrimental to herself.

"I know," she sighs, her voice turning weary and worn again. "I know that... I'm not her. I'm not the Beverly Crusher who is your friend. You aren't the Deanna Troi I know." She'd just thought that maybe... Well, she's now thinking it was much too much for her to ask, so she shakes her head quickly. "Believe me, I'm worried about her, too. I don't want to think that she's in my place. Neither option is particularly comforting, but one is better than the other two options."

Unfortunately, that's all she can offer verbally on the subject without risking a breach of the Temporal Prim Directive. Deciding that she's stepped well over any kind of boundary that's existed between them, she gives her head another quick shake, as though she's trying to shake everything off and convince herself that she doesn't need anything else. Prepared to tell Deanna to forget it, Beverly glances back at her friend, only to find that Deanna is answering the question anyway. So she listens and takes it in, gratitude mixing with everything else she's feeling, the cascade of emotions tumbling around inside her. Even a small acceptance means the world to her.

Beverly's tiny smile warms, though she doesn't relax any further, still worried that she really has overstepped every boundary that was or wasn't in place. "I was... using it for meditation in Zelien and it helped me deal with a lot of what was going on. I started teaching a..." Her voice trails off as she swallows back a moment of fear at the thought of Kaede, just a child trapped in the hell that was Zelien. "...a young girl name Kaede how to use it for self-defense. It was the only way she was going to survive."

And now Beverly has no idea where Kaede is or what's happening to her. Did those lessons help? Are they enough to protect her now that Beverly isn't there to keep her safe? Her arms tighten around her knees and she takes a few slow, soft, and very deep breaths to calm herself down. Focus on the present. Focus on Deanna.

"I can teach you anytime you'd like. Just let me know." Probably not today, but once Beverly has settled a little more, she would be happy to show Deanna. Maybe then she can find ways to convince her friend that she is who she says she is. And convince herself that everything will work out.

Somehow.

Deanna wasn't sure about that herself. That both of them might not be the same person. They felt very much like it. They both seemed it. Even when being realistic would deem it impossible, Q had done many impossible things since this escapade had began. Pulling people from time. There were whole sections of of StarFleet itself which dealt with the idea that temporal problems could and did happen. This might be one of those. Especially when it kept happening. Even to their crew members.

"I will make you a deal," Deanna offered, with a soft, sympathetic calmness for the storm of sadness that raged for the person Beverly just named, for the dangers and the youth she implied. All the small tells she kept letting out, even as she asked for light and normality. "You come see me, once a week for a while, and I'll come see you for Mok'bara for the same."

Something that needed to address that there were massive underpinnings to what was going on, inside of Beverly, the horrors and whatever else might be there. threatening to spill out, but being dammed back as quickly each time as Beverly could manage, but not without the signs of strain and repercussions from it. But with the promise of something nice in return for it, too. For Beverly, but also for both of them. A promise of fun, and a friend friendship, something new, something to do, something useful even, but with the acknowledgement that hard work was needed as well.

Deanna does not know what she's asking of Beverly.

The doctor does understand that she needs to be seen through counseling sessions and a part of her wants that comfort and security. But she also knows that she has experienced so much that she might not be able to talk about. She wants to; oh how badly does she want to. The problem is that even if she told Deanna everything under the strictest of confidentiality, this Enterprise hasn't gone through Wolf 359 yet. They don't know about Locutus and they barely even know the Borg. They can't possibly understand the sheer magnitude and scope of the trauma Beverly was going through, first with the Borg and then when she was pulled to the horrors of Zelien.

Deanna might be able to understand simply through sensing the fear and pain that will undoubtedly course through Beverly if she explains, but even Deanna cannot possibly understand.

All of these thoughts shoot through her emotionally before she can clamp down on them, knowing that Deanna will pick up on everything. She manages a small smile and a huff of a laugh. "You drive a hard bargain," she says wryly. "But all right. I'll come see you as often as you think I should and you can see me as often as you'd like."

It would be extremely hard work to get Beverly to open up, for her to allow herself to open up about what had happened to her in Zelien. She was aware that this wouldn't be something Deanna would let up on, but there is a string of fear that accompanies everything else. Fear of reliving what had happened, fear of the memories, fear of what someone else might think of her choices. Fear of what she might have to do or hide here, what might be expected of her. Can she expect anything of herself?

Time will tell. And her friend is here to help. That means everything to her, even if she will have a difficult time accepting it and opening up to it.

The wariness is another sign all in itself. Deanna doesn't interrupt her process or contradict or try to fight any of the emotions that run through Beverly, no more how caustic or curious, dreading or desperate. She can't force Beverly to agree, but she can test the waters to see if she's aware enough that it needs to be handled.

Especially if she plans to go back to her own duty to the Enterprise.

She doesn't make it now, because now is too soon. Especially for Day One, and for who Beverly is. Even is she agrees, she'll need the space and the time to accept her choice, and to prepare herself for such a session. Which is why Deanna said a week. Her own time to come to terms with and be as ready as she could choose to be.

If she accepts. When she accepts.

Because if she's Beverly, she won't accept being less than she can be.

Which is why she does, even wry and rueful in her honesty for Deanna's ruthless inability to be any less of a Counselor or Friend or Betazoid. Ever honest, but never heartless. Which is why Deanna looks back at the garden, as she nudges Beverly's shoulder a second time, lingering there instead of pulling away with the bounce, while saying, "You wouldn't do any less for me, if it was in your hands."

Beverly would never accept being less than she could be. She could never accept not trying to get better, could never handle being this broken forever. As difficult as it will be, she wants to get better, to find a way to cope with this, with everything that's happened to her. She wants to be useful, to take over the role she should be in, but only time will tell if she can manage even that.

Or, rather, time will tell how long it will take for her to manage that. Because she will someday. She won't let herself stay away.

Somehow, despite all of that, she manages a gentle and teasing bump of shoulders in return, leaning against her friend for a while, as long as Deanna is willing to stay. "No, I wouldn't," she admits gently, fondly. "If you were bleeding out on me, I wouldn't let you walk out of sickbay, so I'm not surprised you're doing the same for me."

It's comforting, actually, to know that Deanna still cares so much, even if they aren't from the same timeline.

"Which is why I'm agreeing," she continues, a slight tease to her tone. "I don't want you chasing me down until I comply."

Deanna watched her through her words, feeling the emotions that had started as a deluge continue to sort themselves out. Softer, and more fine, in different places and directions. Calmer, more complicated emotions lacing through to accent the greater one.

It's always been a pride to work with her, and to call Beverly here friend. This one of the many among the endless reasons. But it wasn't necessary for that to show right now. For now, all that she felt the need to do was smile, a little bright and teasing, "I always liked that you were smart."

Because she would have, too. They've both had to do it to any numbers of crew members on this voyage.

Beverly's smile warms just a little more as she glances at Deanna. A moment passes, two, three, and then she slowly disentangles herself. Her arm reaches slowly, hesitantly, almost as though she's asking permission before she asks for one last thing:

A hug. Even a one-armed hug. Something to show her appreciation better than words can.

Thank you.

Deanna can't miss the hesitation, but even more she can see the offer and the effort that goes into it. She's graced with the ability to feel what's behind it, and it's not even a question for her. Deanna shifts into her friends arm, raising one along Beverly's mid-back to hug her back. It's a rough, confusing and curious road Q has put them all on, but they are not walking down it alone.

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so wake me up when it's all over ( open )

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