"Pathways I"
QDestinyy@aol.com

Note:  Post "Nemesis"... no spoilers (other than those pertaining to Riker's
promotion--oops did I gave that away? <smiles>).  Twenty minute writing
exercise so please don't comment on grammar.  Gosh it's been a while! 




"Penny for your thoughts?" Will Riker asked, leaning back against an old
familiar tree.  He glanced up at an old familiar canopy of leaves and almost
smiled.  "You were awfully quiet in the meeting this afternoon, Counselor,"
he offered her his solemn appraisal--and a means of professional escape if
she should choose to take it.

"Oh? I was just thinking..." her arms unfolded when she met his level gaze.

"Thinking..."

"...about leaving, actually."

His eyes fell away for a flicker of a moment, but when he looked up at her
again, he took in the lush--and all too familiar--landscape of a certain
Starship's arboretum.  "Program not to your liking?" he teased lightly, "If
there's a holodeck malfunction I could ask Geor--I could have someone fix it."

Deanna finally did smile. Albeit almost sadly. "The holodeck's fine, Captain.
I was only thinking... that when I had my fill of this place, I would leave
out through that door," her hand vaguely indicated the computer arch which
had yet to be dismissed.  "--and when I walked into the corridor, I'd make a
left turn and head straight to my quarters... only to discover I'd been going
the wrong way.  Because my quarters are seven decks up, and to the right
outside that door..."

"Our quarters," he corrected her gently.

"Will--" she came to him and stood directly opposite.  Uniform to uniform. 
"I'm a Counselor.  A command ranking officer... and an adult.  But I feel
like a displaced child who's just left home for the first time.  I should
have the answer for that..." her dark eyes fell, "but somehow I don't."

"Imzadi," his hand reached up to caress her hair--a rare moment of affection
outside their quarters since the honeymoon had ended and the TITAN took off
several hundred light years toward the neutral zone.  It had all been
politics and duty after that.  Long hours and late night shifts, coupled with
the awkward warming process of a new crew to a new captain.  A new life and a
new family--so far away from the family that was left behind.  "Sometimes, I
feel as though the decisions shouldn't be mine to make," he shook his head,
"I think... if only I could walk into the CAPTAIN'S ready-room and present
him the options.  He'd know what to do..."

"There are days I need to talk to Beverly so much, about some silly trivial
thing, only I reach for my COMM badge and I remember..." Deanna's bottomless
expression fixed on his.

Riker sighed.  "They're not gone, Deanna, they're just..."

"Not here."  She provided logically.  "And we have eachother, I know that..."

He gathered her into his arms and felt her squeeze him gratefully.  "Don't
forget those weekly communiques from your mother--" he added dryly.  Deanna
squeezed far harder than was comfortable after that, before pulling back. 
But she was smiling again.

"She does seem to call a lot, doesn't she?"

Putting on his best--and most absurd--impression of Lwaxana Troi, Riker
placed both hands on his hips and declared, "Tick tock, Little One!  You're
not getting any younger, you know!--Ouch!"

"You deserved that," Deanna followed up her moderate attack with a dangerous
advance, "and besides, if she wants a grandchild so much why doesn't she just
have the damn baby herself.  Save me the headache."

"God I love you," Riker suddenly declared. 

Deanna looked back at him through narrowed eyes--as though he'd gone
completely mad. 

"I do, you know,  I love you so damn much... sometimes it feels like the
universe could self-destruct and none of it would matter as long as you were
there with me. Crazy, I know."

Troi proffered him a wry and somewhat crooked smile, "Well--we'd both be
dead."

"BUT... we'd be together."

"Says who?"

"Ahh," he grinned, "that infamous and mystical Betazoid bond of yours..."

"Bond of mine?" she challenged.  "I seem to recall we were in this together."

With a deep throated laugh, Riker pulled her back into his arms.  "Which
proves my point...Imzadi," indigo eyes flashed down on her before his lips
descended softly on target.

Deanna sighed and melted against him.  He was so perfect ... so wonderful
when all he wanted for an instant was to cherish her.  But he had something
up his sleeve this time.

"All right, Will, out with it," she broke from him and frankly studied his
resolve.  "I can feel your ambivalence, what is it?"

"Well," he took a few steps out before he finally began to pace, "the thing
is ... we've been talking about our family--on board the Enterprise--for a
while now.  And I know how much we both miss them all.  There's a hole that
no one else can fill, and to be honest, I think that's only normal.  I'm not
a Counselor of course, you'd know for sure," he winked, "but it seems to me
that we've taken a different path this time.  And maybe it'll take some time
for us to 'settle in'--so to speak.  Which is why it occurred to me that..."
Riker trailed off suddenly.

"What?" Deanna shook her head, "say what you're feeling."

"Okay," Riker's straightened his back and tilted his head to one side, "it
occurred to me that maybe it might be a good idea ... if we thought about
starting our own family, here, on board the Titan."

Deanna gaped. 

"I don't mean right away, of course," he spread his hands and came toward her
slowly, "I just think maybe it might be right ... after some time has passed."

"How much time?" she asked quietly, still unable to clarify her own emotions;
still slowly walking in his direction, bridging the gap between them.

"I don't know," he whispered finally, feeling her breath caress his lips,
"--a couple hours, maybe?" 

Their mouths met suddenly; clasped with an urgency that neither expected. 
Reality melted--as it often did when they gave in to their desires so
completely--the whole of existence seemed almost to converge on them. 

"You want to have a baby?"  Deanna managed thinly when they finally withdrew
for air.

"With you."  Riker's hand traced the edge of her cheek. 

"William Riker wants to have a baby..." she repeated, slowly tasting the
realization on each syllable before he gently turned her face to look up into
his.

"What I want," he amended softly, "is to start a family ... with you.  I want
us to--"

Deanna kissed him again.  Long and hard, she wrapped her arms around his neck
and gathered their bodies so close that it became a giddy fuzziness where
each of them left off and the other began.

"I don't know if I'm ready for a baby," she finally confessed.

Smiling down at her, Riker shrugged, "neither do I."

"But it does sound ... sort of nice ... when you put it that way."  Her dark
eyes shone with uncanny luminance in the artificial light.

"It does, doesn't it?" he kissed her fingertips.

One grin led to another, and Deanna had wordlessly grasped his other hand
before the dulcet announcement of the ship's computer interrupted them both
from their reverie.

<<There is a priority two message for Counselor Troi on subspace channel
alpha-seven.>>

Deanna sighed.  There was only one person in the universe who would send a
priority two message on a subspace channel in the alpha-band.

"That time of the week again?" teased Riker.  But Deanna held captive his
hand.

"Computer, transfer message to Holodeck-two.  Two minute delay."

<<Acknowledged>> came the dutiful reply, and Riker's eyebrow rose.

"You're keeping me here on purpose," he pretended to scowl at her, but she
only smiled.

"You forget, Imzadi," her fingers traced the inset of his palm, "when we were
married, we swore we'd share everything."

He grimaced.  "That must be the part about 'sacrifice'..."

Still grinning, Deanna slapped his arm.  "Be good, or I'll promise her
quintuplets..."

"That's not a family, Deanna, that's a bridge rotation!"

Smiling gaminely, she reached for the COMM.

"Okay, okay, I'll stay..."  Riker swallowed.

"Smart move, Captain."

"So what do we tell her?"

"Nothing," she shrugged.

Riker lifted an eyebrow.

"Will, it's really none of her business at this point, is it?  And don't you
think telling her anything now would be a bit premature?  We've only just had
this conversation for fifteen minutes..."

"All right," he acceded, then took her other hand and held it, "but I was
serious Deanna.  You know that, don't you?"

A moment of silence passed between them; a moment where nothing was spoken,
though a heart-full of emotion was transferred. Deanna closed her eyes and
drank it through her soul like a drug, squeezing both his hands.

Together, they activated the COMM channel.  And as the vivid countenance of
Lwaxana Troi appeared boldly on their view-screen, Riker heard his wife's
quiet whisper in his thoughts.

::You are my family, Will.  You always will be.  You're all I'll ever need.::

Riker looked down at her just then, and in a moment of uncharacteristic
weakness--all too visible--he wore his heart on his uniform sleeve; his
devotion in the light of his sky-blue expression.

In the interim that intervened, without so much as word or a welcome, the
view-screen visage of the indomitable Troi Matriarch transformed with a
vibrant smile.


-end-