riverview | @b.crusher

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@b.crusher | video

[Nine years. Nine years since she stepped back through the portal, nine years since she returned to the Enterprise, nine years that inevitably faded some of the memories of this place - but not everything. The faces she knows. Even if she forgets now where that cute little corner market was or what the hell half these gifs and memes mean anymore (if she ever understood in the first place) Beverly never forgets a coworker, a patient, a friend. And she left them all in such a hurry. The portal's connection to her time and place had been tenuous, she had to go then, or risk losing her chance to go home all together.

And now... now she's back, exhausted by the weight of war and the toll of death, new lines etched into her face. When the portal specialist told her it had only been a week since she'd left, she had to laugh. Of course. It seems this place isn't ready to let go of her.

Though not typically a frequenter of the network, it is the easiest and quickest way for her to contact multiple people at once. She doesn't want anyone (else - apologies to Lucretia) to be caught unawares by her sudden reappearance, so she leaves a quick video message:]

Good Morning. This is Dr. Beverly Crusher [of the USS Enterprise no more] reporting that I have returned to Riverview.

[For god's sake, woman, this isn't a mission log. She offers a smile - it's a little sad, but a smile nonetheless.]

I wanted to apologize to those I left without proper goodbyes. I hope you got my messages, at least. I'll be at my apartment for the rest of the day if anyone wants to stop by. Thank you.

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Yes.

(Now she's getting there!)

I know it may seem... impulsive, but we don't have to decide right now, I just...

(She sighs, feeling at a loss for words again.)

(Lucretia can only stare for a moment, overwhelmed by the future this presents. Beverly could come back through the portal with her, to Abeir-Toril, and she wouldn't have to be alone. She wouldn't have to leave Beverly behind, or forget she had ever known her.

They could be together. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and takes a hand back to wipe away tears of relief. This is too good to be true. Is this a trick?)

But– um, Wesley, (she says, voice thick,) your friends, your crew. Did something happen?

Wesley will find me.

(She says this with absolute certainty in her voice. Indeed, if she wasn't so certain on that front, she would never be able to make such a proposal, even given everything else that has happened. Now she smiles, warm and bright, not burdened troubles weighing on her.)

You should see him now, Lucretia. He's... he's become so much more than I ever imagined possible for him. He's still an explorer and a scientist at heart, as he always was, but he found a way to break through the boundaries of time and space. (She laughs, still in wonder at it all) I admit, I still don't completely understand it, but I do know that he's found his place in the universe, who he's supposed to be and that's all that matters.

(Beverly's sudden happiness and warm smile stem Lucretia's tears almost immediately and she smiles too, a hesitant little twitch of her lips. It's very good to hear that Wesley is thriving. She'd been immediately nervous for his well-being when Beverly had appeared so shaken, so nervous.

Not only is he okay, but he's broken through... time and space?)

So he could visit, (she breathes, slowly starting to piece it all together. Of course he'd be able to come and find the two of them. He'd know Beverly wherever she was, Lucretia is more than sure of it.) And I would be able to meet him? Provided he did?

Mmm-hmm. (Beverly nods.) I told him all about you, you know. About this place. I thought... I thought maybe he could find you for me, bring you a message at least, even if I couldn't Travel with him. But the portal found me first.

You did?

(Her smile is more genuine now, a combination of both embarrassed and pleased. She likes the idea of Beverly talking to Wesley about her. She wants to meet him very badly, even if she is nervous about making a good first impression!

She sniffs, and wipes her eyes a final time. She never did answer Beverly's original proposal, did she?)

I'd love for you to come back with me.

(Of course she talked to him about Lucretia. They have always been close, rarely keeping any secrets from one another. Plus, she has no doubt he would love Lucretia too, whenever they finally get to meet. Not would, she reminds herself. Will. It's been a while since she felt like this, like she was really able to plan for the future again, and not just work from day to day, battle to battle, hoping each day wasn't the last.

She reaches up and cups Lucretia's cheek. Oh, how she missed that smile. It's good to see it again.)

I'm not too old for you now?

(She's teasing, of course.)

(She chuckles, covering Beverly's hand with her own and squeezing gently. She feels similarly: she'd never imagined a happy future for herself. Everything back home was in turmoil, made that way by her own hand, and even though she knows she will fix it and a time will come where everybody she loves is safe and whole again, Lucretia still worries. She imagines she'll spend a long time, fixing her mistakes. It never felt like there would room in a future like that for her to be happy, let alone be with somebody, but...

Maybe it's within her reach after all. She feels light-headed with hope.)

No. You're perfect. (And she'll bring Beverly in close for another kiss, smiling against her lips.)

(This time, Beverly meets the kiss wholeheartedly, wrapping her arms tightly around Lucretia's waist as she does, never wanting to let her go again. So far, everything's going far better than expected. But... there are still some concerns. She breaks away from the kiss and her look is very serious.)

In all seriousness, there is a lot that's changed, for me, about me. If at any point... well, I'd understand if it became too much. There's so much I have to tell you yet.

(She nods, her smile fading a little to match Beverly's seriousness. But whatever Beverly has to tell her won't cause her to change her mind, she knows it. After all, she's changed innumerable ways over the course of this relationship and Beverly had accepted her for all of it, even before the exchanging of the 'I love you's, and moving in together.

She doesn't want to dismiss what Beverly has to tell her, though.)

I know. I want to hear it, all of it.

(She tilts her head towards the living room.)

Why don't we take a seat then, maybe finish that coffee?

(She glances back down at the counter top, at the empty mugs: Beverly had caught her hands before she could get anything going for either of them, after all.)

I'm fine without it, (she admits. Probably best that she doesn't partake in caffeine now that she's full of a restless, nervous energy!

She'll take it upon herself to go over and sit upon the couch instead, waving her hand toward the door to gather her fallen things together and prop them up against the wall instead of leaving them scattered across the threshold.)

(Beverly lingers in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, watching Lucretia, soaking in the sights and sounds of her: the precise, confident way she flicks her wrist to perform her small miracle of magic, the crinkle of lines around her eyes (an echo of Beverly's own, now), and the deep, comforting calm of her voice. These are all the little things she'd forgotten, the memories blurred by time. She doesn't want to forget again.

Finally, she comes over to sit, curling one leg underneath herself.)

It's hard to know where to start.

(With the war? With the Borg? With Ronin, with Data? There's just so much that has happened.)

(She glances back toward the kitchen when Beverly doesn't immediately follow her over and catches her looking. For a moment, she holds her gaze. There's a lot behind Beverly's weighty stare that she doesn't know any more and it's strange to realise that a part of her has become unfamiliar. It makes sense, she has a lot to tell Lucretia. But Lucretia still feels a little twinge of unease when she comes to sit.

Unsure whether or not to touch her, she simply lets her hand rest between them on the couch. Let Beverly take it, if she likes.)

How about from where you left off? When you came here for the first time, I mean.

Right. On Kesprytt.

(Makes sense, to begin with that. She'd been so worried about what would happen when she returned to that place, the last time she was here.)

When I went back, no time had passed for Jean-Luc or anyone else in my world. But he knew something was different right away, because of the psi-wave devices. Perhaps it seems absurd, but I asked the portal techs to refit me with mine. I was so sick when I came through the portal the first time because of being separated from his device, I didn't want the same to happen to him when I returned. So he knows, about Riverview. And we got out safe.

(She sighs.)

Turns out the two factions on the planet were convinced that each was trying to use the Federation to destroy the other and that Jean-Luc and I were secretly agents of one or the other faction. Needless to say, they were not admitted into the Federation.

You were able to tell him about it? (Lucretia sits up a little straighter on the couch, interested at once,) but I thought... you were supposed to forget everything about this place once you stepped through the portal.

(Perhaps they had been able to extract information through the psi-wave devices? And of course Beverly had said she remembered her against all odds... had Beverly mentioned her to Jean-Luc, too? Lucretia blinks, feeling suddenly embarrassed, and promptly seizes on the next part of the story.)

I'm glad you made it out safely. I– did think about that, while you were away. What you were going back to, I mean. (She had been plucked from the middle of a moment of peril, after all.)

(Beverly shakes her head and smiles.)

No, I remembered. I remembered everything. My best guess is that you have to physically go through the portal to remember. The cannisters, whatever they are, aren't enough.

(She glances down at Lucretia's hand resting on the sofa, just waiting to be held. It'd be a shame not to oblige, wouldn't it? Lightly, she rests her hand on Lucretia's.)

And I had to tell Jean-Luc. At this point, he's my oldest friend. (Oldest still living, that is. She shoves down the burst of guilt she feels at leaving him again, especially so soon after losing so much.) Besides, he understands better than you might imagine. He once lived an entire lifetime away from our world. Fell in love, had children, built a life. Yet for us, only twenty minutes had passed.

(Beverly's hand covering her own makes her smile. It feels a little bit like when they first started dating, and were infamously trying to 'take things slow'.)

Twenty minutes... that's bizarre. (And for Beverly, it would have seemed like no time passed at all. She'd lived an entire year here, and nobody had been any the wiser. It's a strange thing to try and parse.)

What else happened? (Nine years is a lot of ground to cover!)

(It does feel a little like that - minus the fact that Beverly just essentially proposed spending the rest of their lives together. It might seem foolhardy to some but it feels like the right thing. Her gut tells her this is where she's supposed to be, finally.)

Do you remember Odo? He wasn't here for very long so I don't know if you had a chance to meet him...

I did. He was staying at your apartment at the time.

(In a bucket. She remembers!) You saw him again. How is he?

(In a bucket. Is that bucket still here? She can't remember if she kept it or not. Glancing around, she doesn't see it in the living room, but probably she wouldn't have left it out here anyway.)

He's all right. I only ever saw him for a few minutes at a time, on the station, there was simply too much happening for a proper reunion. And now, I've heard he's gone home.

(Which may not make any sense to Lucretia, she realizes. The Changelings have become such a looming part of Beverly's world, it's easy to forget that's not the case here.)

When he and I were here, before, Odo was the only one of his species he'd ever known or that anyone in our quadrant had encountered. Not too long after I returned, however, the Federation made contact with them, at the other side of the galaxy. Through a wormhole. Turns out his people were extreme xenophobes, automatically distrustful of any other species they met, save for the ones they bred for their own purposes. Instead of locking themselves away from everyone else, they decided to conquer other worlds instead. They even called themselves the Dominion and set themselves up as gods.

(She had kept it, but Lucretia had unthinkingly moved it to the bathroom. It's underneath of the sink, and filled with cleaning supplies.

She listens attentively, leaning back into the couch and flipping her hand over automatically to hold Beverly's properly. It's so soothing, to watch her speak. To be sitting on the couch with her, watching her tell a story, when Lucretia had thought that all of this were over. The raw hurt of being left so abruptly is already starting to heal over just from having her close again.

If only her subject matter were as nice.) That's horrible, (she mutters. Imagine finally discovering your kin, only to be met with... that.) What did he do? Did you manage to make contact with them at all?

(Beverly squeezes Lucretia's hand gratefully. Her hand feels like an anchor, a reminder that as awful as everything was, it's over now and she can start thinking about the future again.)

We did and it led to war.

(She shakes her head in disbelief.)

I never thought we'd see anything like that. The war only lasted two years but it was horrible. Millions dead, millions more left with destroyed homes and ways of life... it changed all of us.

(She's quiet for a long moment, dismayed. It's hard to think of Beverly being at war, being in constant danger... how difficult those severe losses must have been for her and her crew, too.)

I'm so sorry. (She squeezes her hand, and turns toward her a little more on the couch,) for all that you lost, and that you ever had to go through it in the first place. What... caused it to cease?

Odo.

(She sighs softly. It's more complicated than that, with rumors of Section 31's involvement and some very un-Federation-like activities but her knowledge of what exactly happened is slim. Someone from Deep Space Nine would likely know better than her.)

He brokered the peace and returned to what Changelings call The Great Link. On their planet, in their natural state, they exist as a liquid, a giant ocean where they are all connected to one another.

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