"We'll Always Have Tomorrow"
a companion to: "The Robber Of Sentience"
By: qdestinyy@aol.com

In the dead of night, in the shadow of a boundless darkness, I often find that I'm awake.

Propped on an elbow, with my hand beneath my ear and my eyes on a wayward fall of his hair, it's difficult not to think.

Of life. Of decisions. Of the first time.

It might have been simple, pretending that he had been the fool for all these years. Or that he hadn't known. That he had been blinded by career and circumstance. Or that I had.

But 'simple' is a quotient of complication. And my life with Will Riker has never been uncomplicated.

And so I'm awake.

From the time I was a girl on Betazed, I was always a nocturnal creature. My mother used to marvel. She would frown and scold and threaten me with bags beneath my eyes or premature age; but what does a twelve-year-old care whether she reaches thirteen any faster?

I wanted to be older. To grow up. To discover every iniquitous and wonderful truth that adults knew, and I did not.

I was a sheltered child. And in the shade of such shelter, I think I may have missed the heart and soul of adolescence. What a wayward, dusty mischief-maker I might have been -- forever in trouble -- if I hadn't always been so desperate to please.

I think back now, on all the times I sat up straight, pat down my uniform and smiled properly at school. Gave up the opportunity to climb in the mud for the chance to follow my mother's swirling dress into the Betazed consulate.

There to learn.

At times, I cannot help but wonder ... was I ever really a child? I was young once. I know that, and I think at times, I miss those naive moments. But only as one might think back on a distant, far-off dream.

I used to sit on the edge of my veranda; two thousand square decants of shimmering white alabaster protruding from my mother's great 'Fifth House' estate. What I knew of that veranda, was that I could slide on it when I wasn't wearing shoes...

I could pretend that I was up 'there', somewhere, soaring through the stars with my father.

He knew about adventure. In the years before he was gone -- when I was five, and six and seven -- I hung on every story. Every word that left his lips and every secret shared. So many were of Earth. For he was human, after all.

I'll never forget the day my mother found me going through her chest of his things. She had locked it all up once he was gone. She'd told me never to tamper with it. But I had.

I'd found the key. And oh, what treasure there was there ... for a heartbroken eight-year old.

I think I put it all on. His uniform shirt. His rank. His belt -- though it hung off me like an ancient western gun-sling. I think I liked that part best. And though it was all too large, and I was drowning inside an ocean of fabric, I remember that I played with it for hours.

Until she came.

She stood in the doorway for a very long time, and she watched me, while I went on oblivious.

As a child, I had only begun to develop my empthy; a skill I would eventually master. But so young, I could barely tell the difference between my kitten's often overbearing frustration with her ball of yarn ... and my mother's similar feeling when I disobeyed.

For all I knew, she was the cat.

When I finally did look up at her, I half-expected her to call down all the fury of all the gods for what I'd done. Breaking into her chest...

She didn't. I remember she picked me right up off the floor -- it was the last time that she ever did that -- and she held me in her arms. And she rocked back and forth. And she cried.

And I cried, of course, because she was my mother, and my mother simply wasn't supposed to cry.

I realized in that moment, that she had made a resolution. For all her life and most of mine, she'd hoped to keep me safe from the pain; a pain that she herself had never really felt.

I didn't want to be an empath that day. I didn't want to feel her pain. But I was and I did. And so I came to a new truth; of the sort that life presents us while we're busy with the business of growing up.

I wasn't an angry eight-year-old anymore. I was the only thing standing in the space between my mother and the monsters. And we were going to have to grow up ... together.

Growing up is always considered the shortest span in a person's lifetime. But I wonder at times. Is it really our childhood we leave behind, or the willingness we have as children to try out something new?

In either event, it seemed a short lifetime, my adolescence. And suddenly I was everything a noble-born daughter of the Fifth House should properly have been. Decorous, respectful, well aware of 'my place' and my responsibilities. Certain of my destiny and where I was going.

Until I met Will Riker.

He swept into Betazed with all the sound and fury of a legend in his own mind. At first I thought it was arrogance; that sparkle in his eyes which preceded a smirk. The one he favoured in my direction whenever I'd ask him to leave.

He seemed perpetually amused. At reason. At Betazed. At me. And there was nothing funny about that.

It didn't matter what I said to him, or how I repelled his numerous advances. I'd open a door or turn a corner, and there he'd 'just happen' to be.

I even found him once, in the library of the University, under a sectional sign that read 'COGNATIVE DISSONANCE'. I think that I recaptured my sense of humour in that moment. He, on the other hand, seemed to have misplaced his...

He called me ... 'Aristocratic'!

Imagine the nerve. Floating in on whatever Starship it was that dropped him off with a small garrison of Starfleet officers ... with his ... too-blue eyes and that self-assured smile. His attitude that any woman he'd ever wanted was a foregone conclusion.

Well I certainly wasn't.

I wanted nothing to do with him. I'd have sworn that I didn't. And I enjoyed nothing of our meetings.

Except perhaps ... the way his hair fell in a tiny wayward curl over the edge of his forehead. Or the way his broad shoulders seemed as though they could keep a person safe from anything at all. The sound of his laughter, rich and deep. And the way, when I was with him, it seemed I didn't have to think at all...

Except for those ... trivialities ... I liked nothing about Will Riker in the least.

Of course I also found his 'Starfleet Ethics' disturbing.

Learn what you can about your enemy, he'd said, and use whatever means in your disposal to accomplish the mission. 'Human' means or otherwise, that was understood to mean.

But why have an enemy at all, I'd asked him. Why not look for what there may be in common between you, no matter how small?

He'd smiled at that. He picked up my hand and he turned it over in his, and he kissed it. And I'll never forget the way he shrugged. "That's why you'll be the Ambassador," he said, "And I'll be a starship captain."

I still didn't like it. To give up one's life; one's very moral fibre to the service of Starfleet. I couldn't conceive of the sacrifice. And I told him as much. Of course he argued that my remaining on Betazed for the rest of my days fulfilling my 'responsibilities' was a much a tour of duty as his.

Still I felt there was a fundamental difference. And that difference ... for a reason I was not able to discern until much later ... made me angry.

I realize now that I was jealous.

I can say that with the full and complete knowledge of hindsight. But at the time, I was simply confused. What Will Riker had, I wanted. On a level I'd never articulated; never explored. That freedom ... to discover. To become a semblance of the wayward, dusty mischief-maker I'd never been as a child.

The temperance of adulthood had changed me, of course. I was no longer a girl, but a woman. No longer a captive of my mother, but ... perhaps a captive of my planet.
We were 'free' of course, on Betazed. But I was a daughter of the Fifth House. And with that came specific obligation. Like my mother had. And her mother before her. Who was I to alter the threads of destiny in so bold a manner? To charge away from a peaceful, violence-abhorring world and into the arms of Starfleet. Whether or not it was always what I wanted; what my father would have wanted for himself.

He hadn't lived long enough to tell me what he might have hoped for me. And I'd never realized I had a choice.

Astonishingly, Will Riker had been correct.

And it turned out that I'd been wrong about a great many things. Wrong, and presumptuous.

Lieutennant Riker wasn't nearly as shallow as I'd first imagined. Not shallow at all, in fact. He was thoughtful, and driven. Focussed and ambitious, but never overbearing. Not arrogant, but prideful. Rather brave than rash. And wholly ... UN-predictable.

When I let him, he finally told me his full name was William Thomas Riker. That he had been named for his mother's brother, and his father's best friend.

The other officers all called him Bill, but he had friends (a select few, he claimed) who called him by the name his mother preferred; who called him Will.

I'll forever remember that day, and the day, perhaps a week thereafter when he asked me to be one of those friends. I recall feeling ... something I still can't aptly describe. The sense of it was nearly as vast as my mind could comprehend. And I knew it shouldn't have been.

I think that I must have turned a little red, because he smiled at me, and then he shrugged and said that it didn't really matter. Whatever I was comfortable with calling him would be fine.

I was so touched, I don't think I answered.

But I did call him Will thereafter. Will and nothing else until we were stationed together on board the Enterprise. Will all the while we were lovers, before that.

I suppose it was really no wonder that I fell for him.

Or that from the moment he confided in me that he was not as sure as he sometimes claimed to be ... I knew that his soul and mine were inexorably intertwined. Two halves of a whole, destined to merge anew.

The cynic in me was broken, and I gave into it wholeheartedly. Gave into every heated, midnight rendez-vous my mother never knew about. Every whispered vow he spoke against my ear, and every breathless gasp we cried in unison when our bodies came together with our minds.

I couldn't imagine a life without him in it. His presence fulfilled me. It lent purpose to the days of my existence so that even the beat of my heart was filled with the presence of him.

In the span of a few short months, Will Riker had become the center of my universe. My first and most compelling taste of love.

I couldn't have known then that we were to be friends for the better part of fifteen years. Friends and nothing more. I couldn't have known that his heart would unlock my spirit and then cast it adrift in the wake of an agonizing betrayal. That I would hurt until the pain was so intense I wondered how I could feel at all, anymore.

I didn't know then. Until it was far too late.

Now, of course, I see the occasional patient who utters the phrase 'it's too late'.

They sit in front of me with red-rimmed eyes and hands wrung together at the fingers, and the words are always the same. It's too late, Counselor. It's just too late.

But my answer belies the truth I came to whisper to myself at night. My answer contradicts my logic and my sense of truth. That answer says it's not too late. It's never too late. There is always tomorrow. There is always the remainder of today.

If I had kept one secret that I mightn't have told a living soul in my lifetime, it would have been that I felt like a fraud, sometimes. A hypocrite, whose answers betrayed her own spirit. Because the words 'physician, heal thyself' had never applied so strongly as they did on the morning that William Riker did not show up on Risa.

Did not keep his promise to me.

Did not marry me.

Did not even say good-bye.

Imagine the universe were a place of black and white, of brilliance and shadow, monochrome with shivering shades of gray. You go about your daily life and it pleases you to see the variations; those dalliances of transparency between solid shapes. But all of it is set on a scale that starts with dark and ends with light. It all makes sense.

It has to.

And then one day, we see that every shade of grey was never grey to begin with, but a series of brilliant threads in a tapestry.

What a simple and delectable psychosis that might be. What a pleasant insanity it is to fall in love. Rhapsody; aflame with passion; with torrid emotion.

We walk a fine line when we admit to ourselves we've lost control of the one thing that makes us who we are. That living spirit.

And so Will Riker and I parted.

For more than two years we lived on opposite ends of the galaxy. And though I felt him every night when I looked up at the stars, I knew that he was gone.

That part of me, was also gone.

Forever, was a romantic notion. The kind of word that left a person breathless, and alone. And maybe I'd been wrong about a great deal more than my 'Imzadi'. Because not even the death of my own father had hurt me as much as the day Will Riker was gone.

When I think back on it now, it seems the threads in the tapestry of our lives were woven together so tightly that even the dark parts merged together, alive with memories to nurture the whole.

I loved again, of course. Before the Enterprise, and during. And sometimes I was happy. But I was happiest when I saw Will again. When we were friends.

I kicked myself at first, I didn't want to let him in. I wanted to punish him. I even called him 'Bill'.

He hated that.

But sooner than later it was time for us. He pulled me aside at a poker game, and when the others had gone ... he called to me.

Imzadi.

I can still feel the whisper of his awkward thoughts inside my head. The way it tickled, as the thoughts of an unpractised novice always did. But I felt more than just that whisper. And to know that he still loved me ... after so many years...

My spirit wept for joy.

Aloud I was far less moved. I had practised, after all. The girl that was an unwilling empath had grown into a woman who held mastery over her mind. And maybe that had been a blessing ... for both of us. There would never be anyone again who saw me hurt the way he had. Not without my very real consent.

I told Will I would always love him; as a friend. But that more was impossible. On the same ship, with the same crew and the same captain, it would always be impossible.

I felt his heart break, just a little. And a part of me was glad. That's when I knew that I was wrong. Because I should never have rejoiced in someone's pain. In Will's pain...

I let him go that day. Walked slowly from his quarters and turned the corner into mine. We would speak again, I knew. We would love again. As separate, and together. There would always be tomorrow. And the remainder of today...

Where I find that I'm awake. In the dead of night, in the shadow of a boundless darkness. Propped on an elbow, with my hand beneath my ear and my eyes on a wayward fall of his hair, it's difficult not to think.

Of life. Of decisions. Of the first time.

Fast forward nearly a decade and our service together on board the Enterprise has grown from duty into family.

It might have been simple, pretending that he had been the fool for all these years. That he had been blinded by career and circumstance. Or that I had.

But 'simple' is a quotient of complication. And my feelings for Will Riker have never been uncomplicated.

I find myself remembering the first time he left Betazed. And the last time that our bodies came together in the sultry heat of the darkened falls at Janaran.

When he didn't show up on Risa, he broke my heart.

When he fell in love with Soren, he scored my spirit in half.

But fair is looking sideways. And when I nearly left with Thomas, I know I broke Will's heart.

When I fell in love with Worf, I bent 'Imzadi' in two.

They say on Betazed that 'Imzadi' implies forever. Forever, as I understand it, must mean that it can never be 'too late'.

For Will and I, it means that heartache is a measure of honour. And honour, Worf taught me, walks hand in hand with love.

I did love Worf. And I have always loved Will Riker.

But through the years and the days of our journey together on board the Enterprise, there has only been one constant in my life. One truth I've never been willing to release.

Imzadi.

And though I'd never trade a moment of my feelings for Worf, I know now that the Briar Patch was not a temporary anomaly; not a dangerous side effect or a circumstance to right itself.

Not as I lay here, observing him sleep.

I can feel the warm, familiar echo of his lips across my skin. Of his strong arms, as they close around my body. And though our bodies aren't touching, I can sense he feels the same.

Because I will him to.

I need for him to share that understanding, and he has little choice but to open the eye he does. To look at me and smile; through the darkness in the room has hidden his face in a kaleidoscope of shadows. He knows that I can see him; sense him. And that I always have.

'Deanna,' he watches me while I trace the outline of his silent repose.

But when his thoughts slip quietly into mine, it doesn't tickle anymore. It doesn't feel strange.

Because he knows, just as I do, that we have arrived at a new truth. The kind that life presents us with while we're busy with the 'business of growing up'.

I'm not angry anymore. No longer hurt.

And even if Will Riker is the only thing that's standing between me and the monsters, I know now that we'll fight them off together. It nurtures my faith in him. Whatever comes. It carries a gift that he and I were meant to cherish, no matter the passage of time. I feel it as I bend to taste his lips with mine.

'Imzadi,' I whisper. And I know by the way his eyes have found the means to look beyond my face; into the light of my spirit ... He feels it too.

[end]