Confessions From The Edge. Jean-Luc Picard was where he’d wanted to be for nearly thirty years. He should have been deliriously happy, but he wasn’t. The woman he loved…the only woman he ever truly loved, lay beneath him, her legs gripping his waist as her fingernails dug into the muscles of his shoulders. They were having sex, hot, sweaty, mindless sex, but it wasn’t what he wanted. These past months…had it been eight months already?...should have been the happiest of his life. Instead he’d been left feeling hollow, hollow and very, very sad. As she had instructed, his eyes were open, and to her, it appeared as if he was staring at her intently, but in reality he had retreated inside his mind. He went back, back to the beginning, to the moment where he had let his cowardice overrule his heart.
Jean-Luc hummed as he laid the table for the evening meal. His friendship with Beverly Crusher, CMO of his mighty Starship, was the most cherished thing he possessed. It was a deep friendship, covering nearly thirty years and it seemed to him, it had grown stronger recently. They shared breakfast almost every morning, often ate lunch together and dinner was usually taken together too. Yes, he sighed, things couldn’t be better. Then he paused and shook his head, a wistful grin on his face. “Well, Jean-Luc, actually it could be better.” He loved Beverly, had done so since the first time he’d seen her. For most of the years of their friendship, he had loved her silently, not the least because she had chosen to marry his best friend and even after he died and he and Beverly grew apart, he continued to love her. Then, twenty years after the death of her husband, she came back to him, to serve as Chief Medical Officer on his new ship, the indefatigable, Enterprise. It was difficult as first, indeed he had tried to stop her appointment, but as time went on, he realised he could live with her in close proximity. He still loved her, but he was willing to suffer the pain of unrequited love just to have her in his life. For Beverly, their relationship became comfortable, like a favourite old pair of slippers. She came to rely on Jean-Luc for many things, not the least to be her emotional anchor. Once, after an intriguing experience with an alien culture who captured them and implanted neuro-cortical stimulators in their brains, they developed the ability to read each other’s mind. Around a fire, late one night on the alien planet, Beverly had learned of Jean-Luc’s love for her. She acted surprised, but Jean-Luc was privy to her thoughts too and he felt the echo of her love for him. Later, once again back on board the Enterprise and the stimulators removed, Jean-Luc took a terrible risk. He invited Beverly to dinner and afterwards and offered her his heart. She turned him down, saying that 1