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Will looks at the screen in the Captain's ready room. His mouth feels dry.
"My condolences, commander," the officer on the screen showing the prerecorded message says. "May your father rest in peace."
May he may he not, Will thinks bitterly, it's all the same to me. He doesn't say it. It feels wrong to even think it. The guilt that always hides just beneath the surface of the blanket of numb Will forces around his emotions threatens to bubble up. Will pushes it down. Slams the metaphorical lid shut on the boiling pot.
"You can discuss your leave for the funeral with your captain," the officer goes on. "If you need arrangements made for planning or attending, let us know."
The speaker beeps and the screen flashes black. That is it, then. Just a simple message. Not that Will cares. He clears his throat, trying to get rid of the thickness collecting there. It doesn't help all that much, he still keeps choking.
"Computer," he says, louder than strictly needed. "Is a spot on a holodeck free tonight?"
"Please specify time frame," the computer answers.
"1900 hours tonight to 0700 hours tomorrow."
"Holodeck four is unoccupied during this time frame."
"Reserve it for me."
"Holodeck four is now reserved for Riker, William T., in the following time frame: stardate 45201.9 1900 hours to 0700 hours."
"Thank you."
Will straightens his posture. Two hours left of his bridge shift before Data takes over for tonight. He can do that.
The door beeps as he steps out of the captain's ready room. His face shifts into his typical grin as he reaches for his typical boyish nonchalance.
Nobody asks.
--
"Computer," Will says to the panel, "enter program Riker four, time 1900 hours, mid December."
"Riker four is a private program. Please enter the authorization code."
"Riker, William T. Theta Psi four seven two nine."
"Program loaded. Enter when ready."
The room is cramped. The walls are wooden, an oil lamp hanging from next to the door to the simulated landscape in the holodeck and making everything appear yellowish. It isn't cold yet.
Will's backpack slips from his shoulder down onto the floor. Steady fingers pull out item after item in an untidy stack and then peel off the outer layer of Will's uniform, leaving the insulation layer underneath. With the uniform stuffed into the backpack, Will dresses himself again. Socks first, followed by cargo pants with a huge rip at the knee he meant to fix years ago. A hoodie, the draw strings tied into a small knot on the middle of his chest. The zip of the heavy woolen sweater gets stuck right at his throat, but a gentle pull fixes the issue. The snow pants' colour is faded and jacket is short of a few buttons, but they'll do the job. They've done fine for years now.
Hiking boots, hat and gloves are last. Will used to have real snow boots, but they fell apart when he was seventeen. He didn't bother to get new ones. It would only be a few more months until he'd go to the academy and he didn't plan on ever going back to Alaska. (The replicator stopped working after the power cut out one too many times. A common problem in his hometown, which is why most people still clung to the backward practice of exchanging currency for goods. (Money was tight. Will's father had stopped the allowance three months before his shoes finally broke. Boots weren't the priority.))
With the backpack strapped safely back on his shoulders, Will takes the oil lamp from the hook next to the door. The door opens without a creak. The snowy mountains surrounding Valdez feel like a relief, kilometers after kilometres of white and grey, heavenly empty of any soul at all. The wind bites at Will's cheeks. Snow crunches under his shoes. He breathes in, letting the freezing air settle in his lungs, almost burning him from the inside.
His feet carry him of their own accord. The path is so familiar still that the torch in his jacket pocket is of no use; the oil lamp is enough to guide him. He walks past the two cabins where the Mariaks used to live. The roofline is illuminated by string lights. It's pretty. Peaceful.
The snow keeps crunching under his feet. The air is still burning cold, his breath shows in little clouds of warm humidity. It collects on his eyelashes in little droplets of water along with the melting snow blown into his face by the wind.
For the first time since he loaded that message in the captain's ready room this afternoon, his mind is pleasantly quiet. The pot isn't boiling anymore.
He keeps walking. Another cabin appears to his left. An empty one. His hiding spot for particularly bad nights. He walks right past it this time, keeps listening to the silence, to his own breathing. He can barely make out his destination in the distance, a dark shape forming in the white ocean of ice and snow.
His socks feel wet. They're woolen. Will knows they'll still keep warm.
--
His boots drip water onto the wooden floor. They're sat on a little mat by the door, underneath the outer layer of clothing drying on one of the heater units. The cabin is dimly lit, two oil lamps burning on the table and a few candles spread around the cabin. After his father left, Will stopped bothering with constantly fixing the lights. The only electric light source is the string of lights wrapped around the small fir tree in the corner.
Wind howls around the cabin, rattling the window shutters like it always does. A wet nose bumps against Will's thigh. Will smiles.
"You're a menace, Moose," he says softly. "Just give me another minute."
Moose doesn't leave his side. She keeps pressed against him, soft fur occasionally brushing against the still cold back of his hands while he stirs chocolate into the hot milk. It's like she knows that he needs the contact.
(She doesn't know. She's not real. Moose died fifteen years ago. Will buried her. But that doesn't mean that the exact replica of his most favourite sled dog can't give him a little comfort.)
With his hot chocolate satisfactorily mixed, Will walks over to the couch and sits down on. His free hand slides into his backpack, past the impeccably smooth fabric of his uniform to the bottom until he finds scraggly fluff. Will feels like a child when he's got the beat up polar bear stuffy in his lap. He'd be embarrassed if anyone could see.
Moose jumps up right next to him and pushes her face into his lap right next to the polar bear, whining softly at his lack of attention to her.
"I know, baby." He sips his chocolate. He hopes it'll help him warm up from the inside. He still feels chilled to the bone. Slowly, Will's left hand pets over Moose's head. "I know. Me, too."
--
Will doesn't remember falling asleep. He doesn't remember getting a blanket, either.
Moose is pressed against his side when he wakes, a comfortable heat source. Sometimes, when the storms were bad, Will asked to sleep on the main room couch like this. It felt safer, with fire crackling in the fireplace only a few feet away and Moose right next to him and with the sound of his father working on a padd still audible. Will's father would make fun of him for being scared, but he'd let him stay in the main room anyway. (The couch is too short for Will now. His back hurts.)
"William."
Will's heart jumps in his chest. He blinks, fast, to make sense of the blurry images in front of his eyes. This is a private program. Nobody should have access to it. Nobody knows about it, damnit. Not even Deanna.
Slowly, the silhouettes start to make sense. The tree in the background, the lights dimmer than when he fell asleep. The couch table in front of him, his mug sitting right on top of it. And the armchair on the other side of it. The captain sits in it, a book in his hands.
"Captain," Will says, his voice hoarse.
"We're off duty."
"Sorry, Jean-Luc."
Jean-Luc puts a piece of paper in between the pages and folds it shut.
"I believe there are more comfortable places to sleep on the Enterprise than a couch on the holodeck."
Will sighs. He feels small and silly and he kind of wants to cry. With slow movements, as to not accidentally push Moose away, he turns to lie on his back. His feet dangle off of one arm of the sofa. Moose whines a little and follows him to put her snout back onto his chest.
"You disabled the holodeck safety parameters for this program. It shouldn't be possible to be this cold."
"Alaska in December doesn't feel right when it's 5°C out."
"So this is Alaska."
"A few kilometres outside of Valdez."
Will closes his eyes. If he'd ever bothered replacing the batteries in his grandmother's clock, he would hear it ticking in the silence. The snowstorm outside must have quieted. Paradoxical as it sounds, Will felt safer with it around.
"This is a private program."
"It is." Jean-Luc places his book on the couch table. He turns the knob on the oil lamp to make it a little brighter. "This evening, I got a message from Doctor Katherine Pulaski about your leave to attend your father's funeral. You hadn't responded to her and didn't send word through Starfleet."
Fucking Pulaski. Right. Will grinds his teeth. Tightness settles in his chest, the same way it always does when he feels like he's done something wrong. The guilt from this afternoon comes back, clawing at the surface of the numbness he likes to cover it with. It's heavy and the fear that comes along with is threatening to burn right through his facade of self control. Will tries to swallow it again.
"You haven't requested leave."
Moose's nose bumps against Will's chin. Will's hand finds the way into her fur automatically. She's safe. She's safe. Will won't be hurt as long as she is here.
"It's a private matter," Will says. "It's none of your concern."
Shit. The captain will definitely hear how close to tears Will is. He tries to take a deep breath but it doesn't feel like he can get enough air into his lungs.
"As the captain of this ship, it isn't necessarily my concern. As your friend, however -" The captain pauses to think. "Will. I will not judge you if you decide not to attend your father's funeral. From what I understand your relationship with him was less than ideal."
There's a noise when Will inhales. His lips keep trembling. Hot tears sting in his eyes.
"That's one way to put it," he mumbles.
"Not going to the funeral doesn't mean that you cannot request a few days off to have time to process this."
"I know." Will's fingers feel for the polar bear toy still in his lap. "I know, sir. I didn't think I needed it."
"You didn't think you needed it," the captain says, "or you didn't think you deserved it?"
The weight of Moose's head disappears from Will's chest when he finally cries. Blinking his eyes open, he can see through tear-blurred vision that she watches closely as Jean-Luc gets up from his chair. She doesn't leave him out of her sight when he pushes the chair closer to Will and sits back down.
Jean-Luc's hand feels warm when it settles on Will's shoulder. It squeezes through sweater and hoodie. Will's too hot and too cold all at once.
"Sorry," he gets out. "Sorry, I don't - I just can't-"
His words don't comply. Jean-Luc's hand stays.
"You have nothing to be sorry for, William."
And this just makes Will cry harder. He doesn't know what it is. He doesn't know why he feels like this at all, doesn't even know what exactly he's feeling. The persona he so carefully crafted for himself keeps slipping through his fingers like melting ice. He can't get ahold of it no matter how hard he tries, not now in the middle of the night righter after his father fucking died. Not here in the fucking perfect replica of the cabin he grew up in, stuffed full of so many memories; screaming matches swim in the cough syrup on the counter, bruises bloom in the mark left by his father's atlas hitting the wall, blue lips and pale fingers hide in the rug in front of the fireplace after he'd left and the heating unit broke for the first time. And everywhere Will looks, in every puddle of melted snow on the floor and every candle flickering against the slats on the wall, he can see the ridiculing and diminishing raise of an eyebrow, the ever-present answer to little Will's proudest accomplishments.
The image of Jean-Luc feels like a trap. Like someone's going to stop the program and laugh at Will. Or punish him for being childish. Needy. He's an adult man, damnit. And here he is, crying his eyes out, bawling like a toddler because the father that he never really liked in the first place finally did him the favour of permanently getting rid of any chance of contact.
Jean-Luc isn't a trap, though. He's real, just like he's sitting there, blue sweatshirt on top of green pyjamas and all. Will clings to that thought. Jean-Luc Picard is real. The Enterprise is real. She's real and she's home.
At first, Will doesn't feel Jean-Luc move. He is, however, instantly aware of Moose's protesting barks as Jean-Luc pulls his torso up so that he can sit next to him. A few quick shushes make Moose quiet down again. Will sinks against Jean-Luc, too tired to be embarrassed. He only realizes he's stopped crying when Jean-Luc hands him a tissue.
"Thanks. Sorry for this, I-"
"Will. Stop apologizing. You do not need to."
There's another sorry on Will's lips, but he stops himself. Blows his nose and throws the tissue onto the couch table. In the back of his mind he can hear his father yell at him for being a slob. His eyes close.
"I don't remember my mother." His voice sounds steady now. Hoarse from crying, but steady. "I don't remember her but I always imagined she'd be all the things that my father wasn't. Around, first of all. That she'd be warm and proud of me. You don't know how big the temptation was to put her into this program based on her Starfleet record just to see."
I hoped she'd - care I guess. My father was never really good at caring." Will lets Moose lick at his fingers. He wipes the dog slobber in the fur on her head and then keeps petting her slowly. "Well, he did care enough to have expectations. But it didn't really matter what I did, I disappointed him anyway. I don't think I could do right in his eyes. To be honest, it kind of felt like a relief when he left for good and I didn't need to dread his returns anymore."
I had no desire to re-establish contact with him. Especially not after he showed up here when I was offered the Aries. But now I feel guilty for it. As if I failed at being a son. And like I at least now owe him to show up to his funeral."
Jean-Luc places a hand on his back. It's warm. Will doesn't flinch.
"You didn't fail at being a son," Jean-Luc says. "Your father neglected your needs. You were deeply hurt. The instinct to protect yourself after is only natural."
"He never hurt me on purpose."
"He left you permanently to your own devices when you were fifteen years old."
"I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
"You were a child, Will!"
Will flinches at the harsh tone. The captain squeezes the bridge of his nose.
"Forgive me, I didn't mean to be so loud. But do you remember young Mr. Crusher when he was fifteen? You're not going to tell me you would expect him to be fine on his own."
"Wes was different, though. He'd never been completely alone before."
"And neither should you have been."
Will doesn't know what to say. His head hurts. He's cried too much. He's glad that Jean-Luc keeps talking.
"It was not your responsibility to make your father a better parent. It was not your responsibility to keep a relationship that your father did not attempt to build in the first place, either."
I already said that I won't judge you no matter your decision regarding your father's funeral. It might needlessly stir up long-gone feelings. It might help you make peace with your childhood. But I don't think a misplaced guilty conscience should be the reason you decide to go."
Clothes rustle in the silence. Jean-Luc moves underneath the weight of Will's head. Will is about to move away when he feels lips at his forehead. A second, maybe two. It feels nice. Soft. Warm.
"I want you to talk to one of the counsellors," Jean-Luc says. "Someone who is actually qualified in helping you deal with this."
"Is that an order?"
"Not yet. But it will be if it has to."
"Aye, sir." Will nods. His eyelids feel heavy. The couch isn't all that comfortable, but he isn't going to leave anytime soon. Not if Jean-Luc won't make him anyway. "Permission to take tomorrow off due to personal reasons?"
Jean-Luc exhales.
"Permission granted. Computer, clear tomorrow's schedules for Riker, William T. and Picard, Jean-Luc. Authorization Omega one one oh seven."
"Cleared. Commander Data will be notified immediately."
The electronic voice sounds very out of place in this cabin in Alaska. It sounds strangely like home to Will anyway. And when Moose barks at it, it makes him laugh a little.
"It's alright, Moose." To Jean-Luc, Will says, "You don't need to take tomorrow off. I'll be fine."
"You may be. I won't," Jean-Luc says. "I am not a cadet anymore, I don't think my back will forgive me for sleeping on this couch. Now, I'd appreciate it if you let me have some of that blanket, Number One."
"Aye, sir."