The BLTS Archive - Pride and Joy
First in The Captain's Chair series
by Deede (jaylee_g@yahoo.com; deedej@pacbell.net)

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Disclaimer: Paramount owns them, not I.

Special Note: This is a prequel to my stories "Cold Feet" and
"Captain's Chair".

Special Thanks: To April, the absolute best support system in this
world and beyond.

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I can't say that I was surprised when Deanna came to me with the news
of her pending marriage. In fact, I had realized years ago what my
daughter's fate would ultimately become... it was just a matter of
those two people finally growing up. Of two beings from different
worlds striving to differentiate their wants from their needs while
learning to correlate the two. Of two souls, a man and a woman, coming
to understand, or at least appreciate, the dizzying, cascading, and
whirling matters of the heart, in all its many, funny, little quirks.
Of learning to trust in fate as only two beings who had experienced
life could.

For them to finally see for themselves what the rest of the universe
saw so clearly.

Deanna looked so sincere when she told me: nervous, edgy, yet glowing.
She had this look about her that only a mother and fellow woman could
categorize: happy, healthy... satisfied. This knowledge that she had
made a certain peace with herself, which then allowed her to fully
accept another heart into her own. And William, despite his rather
charming attempt to appear in the contrary, looked even more
anxious... as if he was uncertain to what my reaction would be.

It  was all I could do not to laugh out loud: in joy, in contentment,
in obvious, yet what would probably be unappreciated, amusement.

I wonder what they would say if I projected to them what I've read in
them all along: the love, the confusion, the secret, thinly repressed
longing. Would they be amused, as I am, that what they are telling me
now has pretty much been a forgone conclusion since the day Deanna had
called to tell me that William was serving on the same ship she had
been assigned to? Or would they be frustrated, as I have also been
with them at times, that it took them so long to wake the hell up?

I have to squelch the urge now to prevent myself from announcing
'Finally! It's about time. Good gods, I'd thought I'd have to lock you
two in a room together and not let either of you out until one or both
of you had taken off your blinders and let fate take its course.'

On second thought, why should I hold that back? It would definitely
serve them right.

"Finally! I was beginning to think there was something mentally wrong
with the two of you. That or that you were both as blind as one of
those disgusting, little, Earth bat things. I was getting tired of
waiting. Good gods, I'd thought I'd have to lock you two in a room
with nothing save a bottle of Romulan ale and a bed. All those years
of repressed longing for each other had made you both far too
uptight," I couldn't help but proclaim, thoroughly enjoying the stark
embarrassment that crossed the unflappable Commander Riker's face, and
the shocked, angry expression that flashed across Deanna's.

Perhaps it was wrong of me to speak my mind like that, after all,
William is human, and Deanna half, but frankly honesty is the best
approach to anything. And I figure it is a mother's duty to let her
child know how ridiculous it had looked for her to love one man for
over a decade while keeping him at arm's length, and vice versa.

Friends? I really had a good laugh the first time Deanna informed me
that all she and Will wanted to pursue on the Enterprise was
friendship. Here were two passionate, enchanting creatures trying to
resist the strong and irresistible pull they felt towards one another,
and one that they had allowed themselves to be swept into once before,
in what I considered to be an extremely futile maneuver. After all,
it was Deanna who had defied me in order to be with William the first
time.

And defied me she had, in a moment that causes me to swell with pride
when I think of it now. My daughter: angry, strong, independent;
beseeching me to believe in her right to make her own choices, in her
ability to know her own heart, and to believe in the love she felt for
the man who had stolen her heart for the first time in her extremely
disciplined, yet youthfully naive life. That picture of Deanna: so
wildly beautiful, so fearfully determined, stayed with me awhile and
danced across my mind at so many key moments throughout the years...

When William had broken her heart, as I had warned her he could. When
she joined Starfleet and left Betazed, as I had feared she would. When
she told me that she and Will were to be no more than friends...

To their credit they did become friends... good ones. And despite my
desire to see my daughter truly happy and fulfilled, and despite my
indignance that either of them could fool each other and themselves so
easily with their mantra of 'we're just friends' it didn't escape me
that their bond, in one form or the other, was still just as strong.

However, I still reserved the right to be incredulous over the status
of their relationship. Who wouldn't be? After all, with the amount of
repression they had forced upon themselves while serving on that ship,
it's amazing they didn't work their way into therapy.

My daughter may be a psychologist, and a damn good one if I do say so
myself, and I do. But her refusal to admit to or explore her deep
feelings for the equally frustrated Enterprise first officer was a
heart wrenching sight to behold. Try as I might I couldn't take away
the sting of past hurt from her. I couldn't force acceptance or growth
on her, just as I couldn't force my will on her when she had fallen
for William Riker to begin with. Deanna had been right all those years
ago when she had proclaimed her independence, her life was hers to
live and hers alone.

As her mother I could only sit back and watch as she lived it,
trusting that knowledge, wisdom, and inner peace were things achieved
through the passing of time, while life's lessons  were in the process
of being taught.

Still, that didn't prevent me from voicing my own input here and
there, if the situation called for it. After all, life is short, and
one can only be expected to have so much in the way of patience. I
wanted my daughter happy, yes. And I wanted her to be comfortable in
her own skin, but I also had other pressing wants as well.

There was  a saying Deanna's father used to say all the time... 'what
you think about, you bring about', so I figured it was my
responsibility to let Deanna know I was thinking about
grandchildren... a lot. Truth be told, I wasn't getting any younger
and neither was she.

So maybe, once in a while, I may have attempted to nudge Deanna in one
direction or another, for all the good it did me. Yet I always knew,
even then, that it would come to this; with Will and Deanna sitting
before me, flushed with mutual adoration and renewed awareness, as
only two people deeply in love could. For a moment I wanted to cry,
moved irrevocably by the journey these two beings had traveled to
reach the point they were at now. There is so much I want to tell
them, so much knowledge to share, and well wishes to voice, but for
now I could only sit back and stare with pride: at discovery, at
recognition, at joy. At the profound knowledge that my little girl,
my precious child; has her own wisdom to boast, her own experiences to
offer those traveling the rocky path towards completion, both as
people and as women.

Warmth spread through me as I watched William turn his gaze towards
Deanna, as if he couldn't keep his eyes off of her for any given
length of time. He lifted his hand to tenderly brush a lock of hair
from her eyes as she looked at him in turn: steadily, strongly, and
with so much feeling that all my assuredness that these two
individuals were meant for each other was reaffirmed.

At that moment a memory crept into my mind of a young and precocious
woman-child of five, with far too much quiet wisdom in her dark eyes
than was normal for a girl of her age.

When Deanna had been little her father had given her a kitten: a
white, blue-eyed hairball of a creature with an attitude to rival all
of the houses of Betazed, but whom Deanna adored profusely. Sadly, the
little thing met an untimely end and Ian and I had worried that our
daughter had been far too young at the time to understand the concept
of death, separation, and the permanence in the situation.

In our ignorance we had offered to buy her another cat, and she had
looked  at us, eyes wide, enormous, and glistening with tears that
didn't quite fall and made a statement that would stay with me for
years to  come...

"A new cat wouldn't be the same, it would be different. I loved my old
one."

Nearly two decades later Deanna stood before me, eyes wide and
enormous, with tears that didn't quite fall glistening in her eyes.

"You'll love again, Deanna. You'll find someone far better suited for
you. Lieutenant Riker was a lesson for you to learn, you can move on
now."

She was quiet for a moment, her face a mirror of the grief before she
softly proclaimed... "You don't understand, mother. I love Will. I
will always love Will. I may meet another man, and I may even find
that I enjoy being with him, but it would be different. I won't love
the same way again."

My daughter is anything if not stubborn. And despite the fact that she
had been so young at the time, so new to love and the despair of a
broken heart, there had been a quiet wisdom to her words, a finality
that had both awed and frightened me.

Deanna looks up and catches my gaze as the memory of her back then
flashes crystal clear in my mind, distorting to blend with the
portrait she makes sitting before me today.

She smiles at me, gently, knowingly, as if she had picked up the
direction of my thoughts on the experiences that had molded us both.

"I was right, mother," she says now. "I never loved that way again. In
fact, the love I feel this time is different - stronger than it was
before."

Despite my joy at this union, and despite my acknowledgement that it
had been ordained far before either of them had realized it, I found
that Deanna's words were exactly what I wanted to hear.

"Good," is all I can think to respond, my voice sounding odd to my own
ears, so choked with awe and feeling. I wonder what Jean Luc Picard
would say if he saw me here now, speechless, for once, before my
child - a woman who has taught me as much about life as I have taught
her.

I try not to laugh as William looks back and forth between the two of
us, mother and daughter, his expression portraying his confusion over
our seemingly strange exchange. But wisely he doesn't prod, opting
instead to take Deanna's hand in his, as if he couldn't go too long
without touching her in one form or another. I find myself moved yet
again.

"You take good care of my daughter, William. We both know how stubborn
she is, and how she is probably thinking right now, as I speak, that
she doesn't need to be taken care of and that she can take care of
herself, but it eases a mother's mind to know that her child is
properly looked after," I say, gazing directly at my future son-in-law
while motioning to Deanna that she should halt the indignant protest
I can feel radiating from her. I swear she gets that stubborn,
defiant, rebellious streak from her father.

Will, as I knew he would, smiles at me, grasping the double meaning to
my words. He knows now that I accept him as a worthy partner for my
'little one'. In fact, I had long ago, despite my initial protests all
those years ago when they had both been no more than children.

"Of course," he says, his eyes dancing merrily, "Deanna's happiness is
my own," he finishes gallantly, causing his fianc? to soften
immediately.

No doubt about it, this man knows my daughter well. Knows her to the
point where he can ease her troubles and calm her restlessness without
even trying. It tickles me, it really does.

"Good," I say again, still moved though a deliciously playful thought
crept into my mind... "Now that all of that is settled, let's talk
grandchildren. I'm not getting any younger, you know."

And the sound of Deanna's entirely exasperated "Mother!" is lost to
the melody of her future husband's boisterous laughter.

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The End!