A Start
Based upon Star Trek: The Next Generation
Post Insurrection
- - -
Will had really thought that he and Deanna had had something again. But, once again, it had slipped away from them. He didn’t really know how it had happened, but they left the Briar Patch and things just fell apart.
- - -
“I know you don’t like the ambassador, Will, but that is no excuse to act childish!”
“It’s not that I don’t like him; it’s that I’m jealous, damn it!”
The words hung between them coldly.
“What?”
“You heard me, Deanna, I’m jealous. I see the way he looks at you. I see the fire in his eyes when you come into a room, and I see the anger when you’re with someone else. I see it because I recognize those own looks from my own face!”
She shook her head, bewildered. “I didn’t know.”
“That part of it!” He paused and took a deep breath. “You used to be able to tell the difference between dislike and jealously in me, Deanna.” He smiled darkly. “And I thought Imzadi was forever,” he hissed. Turning on his heel, Will stormed away.
“Oh, no you don’t!” she bit back. From his jerked stop, and questioning face, she knew that her aggressive stance caught him more than a little off guard. “You are not making me the bad guy. You can’t pretend that you haven’t had a thousand little ventures of your own over the years, Imzadi,” she spit the word out as if it were poison.
“I was there when you needed me.”
“But that never stopped you, and you know it. I always sat by and let you live your life, but whenever something may have turned out for me, you went ballistic.”
“But I have been right,” he challenged.
She laughed. “So that makes okay? One of your hussies gave you a game that almost destroyed the ship, so — by your logic — that sets a precedent?”
“That was an unusual circumstance,” he balked.
“My point exactly! If you want to be able to count on Imzadi, you much decide to dedicate yourself to it.”
His entire body froze. “Do you mean that?” he whispered.
“Mean what?” She searched her thoughts for the words that had just tumbled from her mouth.
He took a single step towards her. “That I could come back to you?”
“You left of your own accord, Will” she said gently.
“But I never really expected you to wait for me to . . . grow up.”
She shook her head. “And I haven’t been, not really. But, everyone always seems to fall short of you. I guess part of me never wanted to let go.”
He took another step towards her. “Neither did part of me.”
She shrugged. “So, what now? We can’t simply pick up from where we left off.”
“I’m not saying that we should. I’m saying that you should have dinner with me tomorrow.”
She reached out for his hand and squeezed it. “I think it’s a good start.”
- - -
Deanna looked at herself in the mirror in her quarters. She had just gotten back from dinner with Will. Things had been a little awkward at first, but they both remembered themselves and allowed themselves to have a little fun. They joked, they laughed, they remembered.
It wasn’t a long term commitment, but it was a start.
- - - Fin - - -