Message-ID: <002b01c3e2d3$2bcdf2c0$b5e1453f@max>
To: "ASCEM-S" <ASCEM-S@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Sileya" <sil@sileya.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list ASCEM-S@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEM-S-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 17:38:28 -0600
Subject: [ASCEM-S] New TNG - Never Been (P/C, C/S. NC-17)
Reply-To: "Sileya" <sil@sileya.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit



Title: Never Been
Author: Kaite
Medium: ST:TNG
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Shinzon was always intended to be a replacement for Jean-


It's never been Beverly. Not really, not in the way it counts.

He has caught her and let her go again, sitting quietly back as she 
murmurs apologies and finds excuse after excuse. This one didn't 
take no for an answer, and she wonders if perhaps things had been 
different...She knows that's not really how it was. She held Deanna 
as she cried and stammered out a vague description of what happened. 
Shinzon's body on hers, his mind in hers, in a way Beverly can only 
remember from a couple of blurry days, years ago. She didn't go on 
the away mission. She has not stood face to face with this monster 
in Jean-Luc's body. All she knows is the face on the viewscreen, the 
voice coming over subspace. He is an echo, a shadow. Spending so 
long living in dark places must have warped his pysche, lower even 
than the slave race who created him. Of all the hundreds of people 
on board, only she and Jean-Luc feel that cold chill when they look 
at him. Deanna would get a hint of it, if her mind hadn't closed 
down on itself. But to see that face, see that being who is Not-Jean-
Luc but so eerie a duplication, is like looking at a ghost and a 
nightmare, rolled into one. She wonders what it would be like to see 
herself at that age -- still gangly, but growing into her figure, 
fresh-faced and falling head over heels with every man she met. 
Falling into bed with all except one of them. That was who Jean-Luc 
fell in love with all those years ago. She'd lied when she told him 
she had no idea. Her fair skin was never rosier than when she was 
around him, blushing at his presence, at the heated looks she 
pretended he wasn't giving her. She has left his illusions 
unshattered for so many years. If she came to him now, older and not 
much wiser, would he be startled at the distance between fantasy and 
reality? Would she? But no-one can put the clock back, not even the 
great Captain Picard himself. This man may look like the same 
arrogant young man who stiffly held the door for her, helped her 
into her coat as a flimsy excuse to give her back a quick caress, 
but he isn't. He isn't.

She traces the line of DNA with her finger as though tracing his 
skin. Two genetically identical beings. The same fingerprint, 

(calloused, moving across her cheek)

the same eyes,

(hazel, glowing in the candlelight)

the same voice

(rich and intoxicating, like heady red wine. "Perhaps we shouldn't 
be afraid...")

Two different people. Worlds apart, lifetimes. Shinzon never met 
Jack, never met her, never gave up an eternity of warm beds for the 
cold metal of a starship. He isn't Jean-Luc. He's the `what could 
have been', the `what if'. Once she was all that, a myriad of 
unexplored possibilities that he got lost looking at. Now Shinzon 
occupies his every waking thought and he doesn't notice her even 
when she's standing right beside him. He sat in his ready room for 
hours, staring at the holo of his younger self. Jack took it, years 
ago. They'd been dating for about three months. 

Jean-Luc, always so courteous, respecting her wishes. Moving back 
when she stepped away, playing by the rules she set. Shinzon of 
Remus took what he wanted, arrogantly presuming that he didn't even 
need to ask. His mirror image? It's no mirror Beverly's ever seen. 
Does Jean- Luc feel that way about Deanna too? He's looked at her in 
the past, everyone looked. After Kireel Odan left the Enterprise, 
even Beverly looked, wondered if there was something there she could 
be drawn to. It's all so much background noise to Deanna, but for 
Beverly, alone with Jean-Luc on Kes-Prytt, his feelings for her sang 
out loud and clear. What would she have heard if they'd stayed like 
that forever? 

It's never been Beverly. Not really, not in the way it counts. This 
one didn't take no for an answer, and she wonders if perhaps had 
things been different...

"Transporter, energise."

Her mouth opens, the wrong name forming on her tongue, until his 
mouth turns into a sneer she's never seen before. "A messenger from 
Picard?" She's shy as a teenager again, even though his melodramatic 
clothes and imperial manners, the lack of hair, are at odds with the 
young man she remembers. "I'm not who you want." Her voice, harsh in 
the large chamber ("I swear, Doctor Crusher gets more shrill every 
passing year.") His mouth quirks, his voice is sneeringly 
sardonic. "No". "But -- I am who he wants." An offer he can't 
resist. He doesn't try to. The irony that she will give him what 
Deanna of all people refused to. "Tell me." And she does. It doesn't 
take long, and she is ashamed at the pitiful summation she can make 
of her relationship with the love of her life. He doesn't look 
impressed until she tells him of Kes-Prytt. Only then does he 
believe her, believe that she's here out of more than sick, morbid 
curiosity. Maybe he sees her as an olive branch, or as some kind of 
trade. A substitute for the woman he really craves, an insight into 
the mind of Jean-Luc Picard. Either way the idea of claiming her 
appeals. He can have something Jean-Luc wants. A trophy fuck, even 
at her age a notch in his bedpost. Something to boast about, to 
torment his icon with. If he does, she'll deny it. Jean- Luc will 
take her word over his anyway, and the odd bruise and scratch isn't 
that hard to replicate in this day and age. 

He is lying there naked, wanting her and oh god, how often she'd 
fantasised about this. Sat with him, Jack and Walker, desperate to 
leave so she could imagine doing in private what she could never 
have done in reality. Out of habit, her hands wander between her 
thighs and begin...A flash of irritation and disgust in his eyes and 
he snatches her hand away roughly, putting it on his cock. "Don't do 
that." His mouth is hard against hers, bruising her skin. Hands 
moving quickly, earnestly. Unzipping, pushing aside fabric. His 
touch on her skin is unreal, her mind flits to one subject, then the 
next. Only his fingers pinching harshly against her nipple brings 
her to her senses. She doesn't know if her cry is of pain or 
pleasure, figures that after what he did to Deanna he can't 
distinguish the two anyway.

He fumbles, frustrated, breathing harshly, grazing his teeth on her 
skin. The blood in her veins turns to ice as she realises he never 
finished what he started with Deanna. The words come out on her 
exhalation. "Let me do this." Easing him down onto the bed, 
straddling him. He's so damn young. When she knew that Jean-Luc 
Picard, he was cavalier, sophisticated, sipping hot Earl Grey when 
all the cadets she knew drank bitter black coffee. She breathes in 
his scent, unfamiliar and alien rather than the light, spicy cologne 
she foolishly expected. It is a reminder that he is not who she 
really came for. She thinks to herself as a stranger's hands move 
across her skin -- He wouldn't do that. Or this. Or -- and then she 
stops thinking anything in particular, other than how strange this 
all is.

She pushes herself down onto him angrily and his fingers claw at her 
skin. For a moment she can't breathe, his heat, the fullness, taking 
her breath away. Warm, smooth flesh buried inside her, not the cool 
silicone she spent so many years getting used to. His skin is smooth 
and soft, damp with sweat. Unbidden, the name springs to her 
lips, "Jean-Luc!" He turns them, pins her beneath him and nuzzles 
her neck, nipping at her ear. His voice is lower, gruff, laced with 
a passion she has never heard. "Beverly" She comes with a ragged cry 
and for one moment wants to be nowhere else. When the blood stops 
pounding and her reason returns, she sees him clearly. Lying there, 
sprawled beneath her -- how had they twisted round again? She hadn't 
been paying attention, lost in her private fantasies. He forces his 
breathing to return to normal, sits up and pushes her away. He 
smiles, nastily. This man -- this boy - isn't Jean-Luc. If she were 
to ask Deanna -- a bitter smile twists her lips at the thought of 
explaining how it came about that she is sleeping with her best 
friend's' violator -- the counselor would tell her that this 
deflowered virgin was projecting his own shame and disgust onto her. 
Beverly thinks he might have a point. Her slim figure may not have 
been ravaged by age, but she is old enough to be his mother. He is 
younger than Wesley. His psyche may be warped, may be twisted beyond 
all recognition, but he is still little more than an adolescent. 
Even if he is a monster, she is so much worse. He is what his life 
has made him. Created to be used as a replacement for Jean- Luc 
Picard. Bile wells up in her throat and she backs away. When she 
tries to cover herself with the bedsheets, she realises they never 
made it that far. 

She turns to look at the wall as she pulls on her clothes and 
summons up the will to get the hell out of there before another 
bright idea strikes her.

In a shimmer of light, she is back on the Enterprise, in her 
quarters as if she has never been away. She's half surprised to see 
her reflection in the glass, sillouhetted against the stars. Her 
face pale, her eyes empty. Exhausted. When the door chimes, she 
knows instinctively that it's Jean-Luc. He enters, all anger and 
energy, living off his nerves. She wants to go to him, ask him about 
his first time, if he looked at the woman afterwards and felt 
revulsion seeping through his veins. Or the time after that, and 
after that. She has never seen him, lazy and post-coital. Only 
imagined the warmth of his body spooning hers, his arms wrapped 
protectively around her. A flash of anger that he let her go so 
easily when he could have shoved her up against the wall in his 
quarters and made her forget her protestations. She knows he must 
have thought about it, jerked off angrily when she left him in 
favour of her own cold and empty bed. Even after he heard what 
happened to Deanna, his obsession that Shinzon was his mirror 
remained. She has pulled away from him so many times. Refused him. 
Rejected him. The look in his eyes that has haunted him ever since 
the blushing bride sat trembling and tearful on the edge of the bed 
has haunted Beverly, too. 

Somewhere in the secret corner of her heart, Beverly is glad it has 
never been her.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


 

Yahoo! Groups Links

To visit your group on the web, go to:
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEM-S/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
 ASCEM-S-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
 http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 


From ???@??? Sun Jan 25 13:36:58 2004
Status:  U
Return-Path: <sentto-1978024-7767-1075055172-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com>
Received: from n29.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.85])
	by eagle (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1aKOZa3843NZFji0
	for <stephenbratliff@earthlink.net>; Sun, 25 Jan 2004 10:27:51 -0800 (PST)
X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1978024-7767-1075055172-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com