tv is bad for you

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

Picard was sitting, watching television.

To be precise, he was watching episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He remembered the Farpoint mission, remembered Q and his 'trial for humanity'. He only grew more sullen when he switched it ahead many episodes to First Contact with the Borg. He watched as a model of the Enterprise was bombarded with weapons fire, glaring when an actor dressed as him came on screen, pleading with Q to help him.

"It's entertainment to them," he said, his voice flat. "It's just entertainment to them."

Comments

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

Ditto for the icon, as Picard sighed, thoroughly deflated of any anger. "That," he said, "was me demonstrating my fallibility and foolishness."

[ihatefire.livejournal.com]

"Damn right it was! Jesus, Jean-Luc, you made a teenage girl cry! You think we all don't have a trauma button? And with this crew, knowing as much as some of them do about each other, it's not that hard to stumble all over them, that's for damn sure."

She breathes in a deep breath.

"When I suggested you for captain, I expected you to act with more restraint and stability than myself. I trusted that all your years of experience would lend itself to that. This had damn well better not happen again. You need to take your existential bullshit out behind the woodshed and need to put it out of its misery, because we do not have time for it."

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

"I know. I need to apologize to her soon, of course. Still, something tells me I won't be welcome near her for a while yet, Cybil," Picard replied, adjusting his plant-suit almost unconsciously. He kept forgetting their skintight nature, not that it would change his unconscious actions any.

"You're familiar with me ... with him," Picard said, pointing at the screen. "Just how familiar are you with that man?"

[ihatefire.livejournal.com]

"Saw a few episodes here and there." Not enough to know that what he'd just done was called the "Picard Maneuver" by the fans, for instance. "I watched more of the Original Series growing up. Kirk and Spock and McCoy and the rest," she answers, calming down a little, and leaning over the back of his chair, hands clasped together, looking down at him.

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

"Then let me tell you something about that man," he explained, glancing back the screen, watching and wincing as another screen cut to a naked and unshaven Picard screaming about four lights. "He's just a man. He has a temper. He tries his hardest, does his best, and yet even still he makes mistakes. He can't always do it alone, and he's not perfect. He has a heart that can break, even if it can't exactly bleed."

Standing, he adjusted his shirt once more, turning to Cybil. "These aren't excuses, or justifications for my actions, Cybil. They're an explanation. I don't want someone expecting a hero of legend. I'm not. I'm a man who's doing his best to keep the people he's responsible for alive."

[ihatefire.livejournal.com]

"I don't expect a legend or a hero. I'm just a woman, Jean-Luc. I'm a backwater cop, with no idea what I'm doing or how I managed to hold everyone together as long as I did. I have dreams and memories rattling around in my head that I'm not even sure where they came from, skills I've picked up that I don't remember where I learned them--all part of the big goddamn mystery. On this ship, in the space of a few months, I've been possessed by some kind of entity, mauled by space-bugs, infested with brain parasites, chased by acid monsters, and had to rally together a group of people that are mostly good people, and work together when it's on the line, but are always inches away from clawing each other's faces off."

She takes a deep breath. "Every night--if I can sleep--I dream the worst dreams imaginable about things I wish I didn't know existed, about monsters and demons and blood and rot on the walls, and teenage girls getting their skin ripped off and tossed at me. I dream about getting set on fire and burning alive. I dream about shit that happened."

Another deep breath, this one somewhat shaky. "And after all that, even though that was where I had come from, I put it aside, because I had to. Because the crew needed someone to step up, and try to get them to work together, to look out for them."

She swallows thickly, not looking at him.

"I'm not asking you to do the impossible. I'm not asking you to be perfect. I'm asking you as someone that needed to hand command over to whoever was best for the crew, and will have to deal with the responsibility of that if I made the wrong choice, to at least be able to do what I did. I don't expect you to be perfect, but I can tell even without that--" She gestures to the screen.

"--that you're a good man and you can be better than this."

Cybil finally looks at him again.

"That's all I expect from you."

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

Picard pondered over that for a moment. Finally, he brought up one hand, resting it on the policewoman's shoulder. "Thank you, Cybil. You're right. I need to focus on what's important: this crew, and getting them home. With luck, and the help of a much-needed crew, perhaps even save the multiverse."

He smirked, then, pulling back his hand and stepping closer. "Have you ever considered a career as a counselor? It seems to me you'd do wonderfully at it."

[ihatefire.livejournal.com]

"Answer enough calls for domestic disputes and you can talk anyone out of anything," she remarks.

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

He nodded. "Understandable. Miss Bennett, would you like to join me for dinner? I should get away from this, and that young woman needs time away from the horrific ogre that is Jean-Luc Picard before I try apologizing."

[ihatefire.livejournal.com]

She seems taken aback.

"Well, first, I'm going to make sure said young woman is okay, secondly, we have quite a few things to take care of--but as soon as the hatches are battened down and we have the fort under control, I'll meet you in the Sensoriums."

[clear-horizons.livejournal.com]

"It's a date," Picard replied, chuckling. "I have some duties of my own to attend to. Luckily, I can do them from this." He raised the PADD as he said that, indicating his obsessive compulsive obligation to log their first misadventure.

[ihatefire.livejournal.com]

"I'll have Chief report on all our loose ends, captain," she says, looking faintly surprised, that she walked in to yell at him and walked out with a dinner invite, but as she leaves, she doesn't look displeased with this, at all.