He dwelled on it as he prepared breakfast, going through the various files that he’d been studying over the previous several nights. He’d been assigned a teaching slot at Starfleet Academy, lecturing in tactics and strategy. All things considered, it was a rather plum assignment. He was being given the opportunity to shape young minds, perhaps even save lives. After all, things that he taught today might be used to prevent disaster tomorrow.
But he kept coming back to the mirror.
And to his lack of desire for command, his wish to stay aboard the Enterprise. It gnawed at him, it bothered the hell out of him.
He tried to think of who he could talk to in order to try and get it all sorted out. His crewmates, his only real family, were scattered, busy with their own affairs. Besides, Riker wasn’t really comfortable discussing his feelings and uncertainties with anyone…not even Picard, even after all this time, particularly when it came to questions about advancement, since Picard usually took any opportunity to say, in essence, “I will respect your wishes, Will, but damn, you should have your own ship.”
There was only one person he could truly let down his guard with, of course, and that was Deanna.
Deanna, engaged to someone else.
Deanna, off to Betazed, with her fiancé.
Her fiancé…
“Her fiancé,” he said out loud to nobody in particular, and he abruptly realized that he’d stopped his classroom preparation and had simply been staring across his living room for the last several minutes.
He pictured them, standing hand in hand. He wondered if she was showing him all the places that she had gone to with Riker. Places that had been Riker’s and Troi’s now would be Worf’s and Troi’s.
While Riker was sitting in a tastefully decorated apartment on Earth, was Deanna making love in the Jalara jungle with her fiancé? Was she responding to his touch the same way that she had to Riker’s? Or better? Was she wondering why she had ever wasted time waiting for Will Riker to come around? Was all memory of the time and places they had shared on Betazed being supplanted or erased by the new experiences she was sharing with…him? With…
Riker couldn’t even frame the Klingon’s name in his mind.
“This is insane!” Will said. He rose from behind the table so quickly that he slammed his knee against the underside of it and winced in pain. “We’re friends! We’re just friends! I want her to be happy, and she’s happy with him, and that’s all! That’s it! We’re done!”
He was speaking so loudly that the residents next door wondered who in the world he was arguing with.
“Why are you still here, Will?”
Riker was sitting in the captain’s ready room, facing Picard. Picard, drinking a glass of prune juice, was looking at Riker with what appeared to be unveiled contempt. “You turned down a promotion. Why?”
“She’s not the Enterprise,” Riker replied.
“So what? So bloody what? What sort of sentiment is that coming from Will Riker, one of the most ambitious men in Starfleet? This is nonsense, Will! Nonsense!”
Picard got up from behind the desk and skipped around it to Riker…and then smacked him upside the head. “Hey!” said Riker.
“I’m trying to get your attention, Will. Don’t you understand what’s going on? It’s not about the Enterprise!”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Isn’t.”
“Is.”
“Isn’t isn’t isn’t.”
“Captain, we’re not getting anywhere like this!”
“Yes, we are.”
“No, we’re n—” Riker stopped, rubbing the bridge of his nose and wondering just what in the hell was going on.
Picard clonked him on the side of the head again. “Will you stop that!” Riker shouted.
“Business and pleasure, Will. Doesn’t mix. Never did. Never has, never will…Will.”
“Captain…”
Picard suddenly went behind his desk, picked up an apple, and tossed it with a fairly strong overarm throw. Riker tried to duck, but the apple tracked with him and it ricocheted off his temple. “What did you do that for?” he demanded.
“Isaac Newton. He understood things when an apple fell on him. I thought you might, too.”
“Newton?”
“Yes,” said Data. Riker wasn’t entirely sure when Data had entered the room, or what he was doing there, or why he was wearing a mortarboard on his head. “Framer of theories of gravity, physics, and he also made a damned good fig cookie.”
Riker had the distinct feeling that a headache was going to be forthcoming.
“Newtonian physics, Commander,” continued Data while Picard played with a yo-yo. “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force.”
“What’s your point, Data?”
“Your career was in motion. It has been acted upon by an outside force.”
“Oh really? And what would that be?”
Deanna walked in. She was naked. Riker noticed in a distant manner that he was as well.
He looked in a panic from Deanna to Data to Picard, and back to Deanna. “What…what do I do?”
Picard stabbed a finger toward Deanna with confidence and said, “Engage.”
“En…engage?” He looked down into his hand and he was holding a shining diamond ring in his hand. It glittered with a fire as bright as a warp engine.
“Engage,” Picard said firmly.
Riker turned to face Deanna. Worf, wearing full, bristling Klingon armor, was cradling her in his arms. Riker was frozen in place, incapable of saying anything. His voice, his emotions had all left him. Worf turned on his heel and headed out the door, the nude Deanna tossing off a cheerful wave as they exited.
“Nice going.”
Picard and Data were gone. Seated behind Picard’s desk was Admiral Riker…the older version of Riker from the future. Behind him, a grandfather clock was ticking away the years.
“Nice going, buddy boy,” said the admiral.
“I…”
And a rage seemed to seize the admiral. He opened the grandfather clock, drew out a Klingon bat’leth, and swung the sword around in a vicious scythe straight toward Riker’s neck. “Nice bloody going!” he howled, filled with fury that was ripped deep from within his soul, from his regrets, from every mistake that he had ever made.
Riker fell off the bed.
It was pitch black in the room, and it took Riker a few minutes to recover himself. He was gasping and twisted around in the sheets, his heart pounding against his chest. He felt as if he had gallons of sweat streaming from every pore. Even though the temperature was cool in his apartment, he still felt hot.
Usually, when Riker had dreams, he would awaken and sense the images flittering away to the far reaches of his subconscious. He never remembered them. This time, he did. Some of the exchanges were already blurring to him, but the general thrust was still very vivid and very potent.
And he understood. For perhaps the first time in his life…he understood.
It wasn’t as if he’d had an overnight epiphany. It was the crystallization of years of thought, of hesitation, of uncertainty. Because the simple fact of the matter was that for years he had known exactly what he wanted and precisely where he wanted to be…and it had all gone straight out the window the moment that he found himself face-to-face with Deanna Troi on the bridge of the Enterprise when the words Do you remember what I taught you, Imzadi? echoed in his head, sent there by the woman he had spent years being absolutely positive that he had gotten over.
Oh, he had most definitely been Hamlet, standing there for years and wondering, prevaricating, trying to come to a decision and not sure what direction to take. Nothing less than the destruction of the Enterprise had been required to shake him from his mental lethargy. For if an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest likewise tends to stay at rest.
The object in motion had be
en his career. And it had stopped. And yes, all the reasons and rationalizations regarding the honor of serving aboard the Enterprise and all of that had been accurate as far as it went. But there was an element that he had not been dealing with, an object at rest—that object being his relationship with Deanna. One, he now believed, was intertwined with the other in a way that he had never fully comprehended.
He was in love with Deanna. Not as a friend, not as a former intimate. They were Imzadi. They had gotten into each other’s souls, and not only had he never gotten her out of his, he had now come to the realization that he didn’t want to.
It wasn’t just the Enterprise herself that had a hold on him. It was Deanna herself, all unintentionally. If he’d gotten command of another vessel, he would have had to leave her behind. Either that, or force her to make a decision to come with him to his new post or stay with the Enterprise. He loved her too much to ask her to tear herself away from her extended Enterprise family, and he was still too damned vacillating on his own feelings about her to commit. And because of that vacillation, she was on Betazed at that very moment in the arms of Worf.
He felt ill, his stomach in a knot. He didn’t know what to do.
No…Riker did know. It was just a matter of doing it. There were not immediate plans for a wedding, so he had a little time. Not infinite amounts, but a little.
He went to his vidcom and began to place a communiqué to Betazed…but then canceled it. Betazed was too far to allow instantaneous communication, which meant that he’d have to send a one-way. A one-way that said what? “Deanna, I love you, ditch Worf, get back here?” Besides, even if something instantaneous were possible, how could he do it? He had to be face-to-face with her, to touch her mind, and to see how she felt. After all, this was hardly just about him. There were her feelings to consider; she was the one who was engaged. She was the one who had moved on, and only Riker was left in neutral. It was entirely possible that she truly didn’t love him anymore, that she didn’t reciprocate the feelings he had finally realized he had. Plus there was Worf to contend with. Speaking one-to-one with Deanna would be going behind his back. He owed it to Worf to be frank with him, to be in his presence. It was, to be blunt, not a concept that Riker was in love with. “Hi, Worf, how you doing, I want your fiancée back, is that okay with you?” Oh, that was going to be just peachy.
But he had no choice. No choice whatsoever.
“You’re not giving me much of a choice here, Commander,” said Admiral Jellico.
It was the next morning. Riker had tried to fall back to sleep and had not been especially successful. When the morning sun played across his face, Riker finally gave up and got on the link with Jellico at Starfleet Headquarters. Jellico was admiral in charge of—among other things—personnel assignment. Riker would rather have gone to just about anyone else, up to and including Satan. Unfortunately for Riker, for what he was requesting, Jellico was the man to talk to.
“I regret that, sir, but it is rather important,” Riker said.
“You want me to delay your assignment to the Academy so that you can go off and conduct personal business? Is that right?”
“That is correct, yes,” said Riker for what seemed to him the umpteenth time.
“But you won’t tell me what it is.”
“I would rather not, sir.”
“Because it’s personal.”
Riker fought down a smart-ass response. This was not the time to crack wise to a superior officer. “Yes, sir.”
“This is not just any teaching assignment you’ve been selected for. Heavy emphasis is to be placed on tactics and strategy in dealing with the Borg. You are uniquely qualified. Only Shelby and Picard have more expertise: the former is unavailable, and it would just be too cruel to dredge up the hardships that Picard endured. We anticipate a year, two at most, before the Borg strike at Earth. We must be ready, and you will contribute.” Jellico folded his hands on his desk. “Commander…as you know, I was strongly against the notion of keeping Picard’s command crew in storage until such time that the new ship could be relaunched. Normally, that’s my call to make. In this instance, I was overruled by highers up.”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“I don’t like making exceptions. Starfleet does not run on exceptions. It runs on discipline and uniformity of purpose. Not on certain captains and their crew being given preferential treatment and special dispensation. Are you reading me, Commander?”
Like a bad novel, you blowhard. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s the first thing. The second thing is, Riker, I don’t particularly trust you.”
“You don’t ‘trust’ me, sir?” Now Riker was starting to get angry. “Sir, with all due respect…”
“There’s that phrase again,” muttered Jellico.
“I don’t believe that my asking for a delay in my assignment gives you the right or the authority to question my loyalty to Starfleet.”
“My rank gives me the authority, Commander. Your vagueness in your ‘personal reasons’ gives me the right. For that matter, I am still very disturbed over this business with your ‘twin.’ ”
“What?” Riker stared at him. “Admiral, what are you talking ab—wait…you mean Tom? Last I heard, he was being assigned to the Gandhi.”
“Ah.” The syllable seemed to hang there for a moment, as if Jellico was suddenly uncomfortable. “Well…these events were quite recent, and with everything else going on, we hadn’t yet informed you…”
“Informed me of what?”
“Your doppelgänger never reported for his assignment. He joined the Maquis, hijacked a starship, and tried to make a strike against the Cardassians. The last I heard, he was stewing in a Cardassian labor camp. I don’t know much more than that; the Cardassians are never especially eager to share information with us, particularly when it comes to matters of internal security.”
Riker was stunned. “Why wasn’t I told at once? Why—”
“Believe it or not, Commander, when it comes to traitorous officers, Starfleet is only slightly more forthcoming than the Cardassians. It simply wasn’t necessary for you to know.”
And then the dime dropped for Riker. “Wait a minute. Admiral…are you saying that because Tom Riker joined the Maquis…my integrity, after all these years, is now called into question?”
For just a moment, Jellico seemed to backpedal. “No one is questioning it, Commander. However…”
“However what?”
“Well, it’s clear that the potential for duplicity is present in you,” Jellico told him, his voice becoming hard again. “It doesn’t count against you, you understand. It’s not as if Thomas Riker’s deceit makes a mark on your record. But when it comes to your mysterious requests about—”
Completely fed up, Riker burst out with, “I need to talk to a woman about marrying me, all right, Admiral?”
Jellico blinked in surprise. “Oh. Any particular woman?”
“No, Admiral, I just figured I would grab the first likely candidate I ran across.”
“Save the sarcasm, Commander.” He paused and then said, in a slightly conciliatory tone, “I appreciate your candor.”
“Thank you, sir,” Riker said with a relieved breath.
“Request denied.”
The breath caught in Riker’s throat. “What?” he managed to get out.
“We all make sacrifices when it comes to our personal lives, Commander. That’s one of the simple realities of Starfleet. If you don’t believe me, go talk to the families of the crew of the Voyager, left in limbo and wondering if their loved ones are dead or not. You need to talk to a woman? That’s what subspace radio is for. But I’m not about to rearrange the schedule of everyone else at the Academy just so that you can go off and engage in some frivolous adventure.”
“I don’t consider it frivolous, Admiral.”
“Obviously. But I do. And I don’t advise that you endeavor to go over my head on this, Commander, or go whining to your father figure, Pica
rd. The goodwill afforded the crew of the Enterprise has been more than used up at this point. It will not reflect well on you or Picard if you start seeking out more personal favors.”
“Very well, Admiral. Now you are leaving me no choice. I have no desire to leave anyone in the lurch, but if I have to seek a leave of absence…”
“By all means. If you want a leave of absence, that I will happily grant you.”
That surprised the hell out of Riker. After being such a pain in the neck, for Jellico suddenly to be compromising…it was enough to make Riker start wondering if he’d misjudged him. “Oh! Well…thank you, sir…”
“Of course, the moment you begin your leave, your name is naturally moved to the bottom of the duty roster, and will stay there until such time that you return…at which point you then get to stand in line behind all the Starfleet personnel who didn’t decide to take time off to pursue the course of true love.”
“Meaning,” Riker said tonelessly, “that I then lose out on my assignment to the new Enterprise.”
“Let’s just say that it would be severely jeopardized. So…do we understand each other, Commander?”
“Oh, very plainly, Admiral. Very plainly.”
“Good. So shall I inform the Academy that there will be a change in the current roster?”
Through gritted teeth, Riker said, “No, sir.”
“They’ll be so pleased. Jellico out.”
Riker stared at the screen for a long while after Jellico’s image disappeared. He saw his own reflection staring back…and the gray background of the screen gave him a distinctly older look.
“Time for Plan B,” he said.
Roger Tang, former Starfleet sergeant and grizzled veteran of more battle campaigns than even he could remember, was busy cleaning glasses at his bar when he noticed a familiar reflection in the mirror on the wall behind him. The broad and beefy Tang squinted at first, racking his brains, and then he remembered. He pivoted on his one flesh-and-blood leg and called out, “Lieutenant! Didn’t recognize you out of uniform.”
Will Riker grinned and walked across the busy tavern. “Even officers get to be off duty every now and then, Tang.”