Imzadi: My Version
Chapters Five and Six
Chapter Five
Deanna and Lwaxana were having dinner that evening. Like always, Mr. Homn was banging the gong for every bite taken to praise the gods for the food eaten. Most nights this annoyed Deanna immensely, but tonight it did not bother her, for her mind was on other things. In this case, Will Riker.
Lwaxana was concerned something may have been troubling her
daughter, so she did a mind brush. Deanna completely ignored it and had blocked her thoughts from her mother. So, with frustration Lwaxana resorted to the inconvience of speaking aloud.
"Little One." Lwaxana said.
"Mother, please." said Deanna. "I'm a grown woman, not a child. I am almost 21, not three years old."
"OK, Deanna." Lwaxana restarted. "What's bothering you?"
"Nothing is bothering me."
"Are we resorting to casual lies?"
"No, Mother. Everything is fine." Deanna reaffirmed.
"First you brush aside my mind brush and then you refuse to tell me what's bothering you. Really Deanna, I'm hurt. I thought we were more open with each other than that."
"No, Mother. There's no reason to be hurt." Deanna
said. "Technically, I'm the one who is usually open to you. Is it really necessary that I share every intimate detail of my life with you?"
"Intimate?"
"Mother, please. I really don't want to get into it."
"You want to fuck him." Lwaxana let the crude response float from her mind to Deanna's.
Deanna turn red and said, "Mother! That was really uncalled for!"
"So it is him. The Star Fleet man. Striker."
"Riker, Mother."
"Mr. Homn, get me Star Fleet!" Lwaxana demanded.
"We'll put a stop to this relationship right now!"
"Don't you DARE, Mother." Deanna scolded her mother.
"You tell me, the holder of the sacred chalice of Riix,
don't you dare?" Lwaxana repeated. "How dare you talk to your mother like that! Who in the Great Fire do you think you are talking to? One of your friends? I will not be addressed in that manner by anyone, especially you, young lady!"
"I'm sorry, Mother." Deanna backed down.
"Ever since you met this Piker."
"Riker."
"Whatever his name is, you have been trying to ignore your responsibilities to the Fifth House."
"I have not!" Deanna insisted.
"And may I remind you of your commitment to Wyatt." Lwaxana said.
"Mother, Lieutenant Riker is just a friend." Deanna stated. "Besides, where is Wyatt now. I refused to be force into an out dated tradition. It's archaic."
"Archaic!" Lwaxana repeated in shock and dismay.
"This is that Biker's doing isn't it?"
"Riker! and no Mother, it is not." Deanna said.
"You know Mother, I do have a mind of my own that I can
think with."
"Little One, I'm not holding you to anything, but a
tradition and a custom. I don't come up with these things to
inconvience you. I simply teach them to you and I expect you to abide by them. You know your place in society and the
responsibility that it holds. And you will abide by them.
Right?"
Deanna looked down at the floor for she knew how her mother
expected her to answer. She really did not want to say she would. She wanted her own life and to live the way she wanted to live it. Not by some archaic tradition and custom.
"Right." Lwaxana repeated.
"Yes, Mother." Deanna finally responded.
"Very well." Lwaxana stated. "Now you will not be seeing him any more."
"Mother!" Deanna said. "He's just a friend and I can handle myself just fine."
"Oh, dear, I'm sure you can." Lwaxana said. "But it's not you I'm worried about it's him."
"I assure everything is fine and you have nothing to worry about."
"I know I don't, because you will not be seeing him
anymore." Lwaxana insisted. "End of discussion.
Will Riker over the course of the days that followed read the Betazoid Primer and just did not understand any of it. On top of it all he had not heard a thing from Deanna in days and she had not return his calls.
He received stategy advice from fellow colleagues on how to
handle the situation. Roper insisted Riker had lost the bet to him, but Will insisted differently. Finally, Roper slipped and told Will it was Lwaxana's doing that he was not hearing from Deanna, much less seeing her. Will felt shock and frustration and disbelief. He just had to see Deanna again. He had to come up with a stategy. Which he did and he was going to carry it out the next day.
Chapter 6
Will decided he was going to go with his plan of strategy after he finished his early morning meeting with Tang. He walked over to campus and he found a bench to perch himself on in the middle of everything and waited for Deanna. He knew sooner or later she would pass by.
Will really believed, from what Roper said about Lwaxana saying she had Deanna well trained, she was just intimidated. Deanna had been intimidated by her mother into breaking off any communication with him. So, Will thought he would just get Deanna's attention some other way.
Will sat there watching the noon day shadows and tried hard to consentrate on finding his calm, inner self. At times he felt frustrated because he just could not understand what Deanna had tried to teach him about all this calm inner self stuff. He was feeling so much mental clutter that he had no idea if he could go through with his plan.
Then something made him look up. It was Deanna with her friends walking across campus and enjoying themselves. Will felt pain on the inside watching them walk by, but he was not going to let that stop him from getting a message of some sort to Deanna, anyway he could.
He made on last effort to focus on something and then he realized the ability was there. He thought directly at Deanna and said,"You're afraid of me."
Deanna almost stumbled for a minute and then recaptured her
composer. Will knew she got the message and knew it was enough to get her attention. She briefly looked Will's way and then continued on her way. Will just sat there.
Will was happy and satified with what he succeeded in doing. He figured sooner or later Deanna would be communicating with him. He just did not know how soon or when.
In the privacy of her room she sat and wondered how Will
succeeded in mind sending to her. "It just was not
possible." she thought. "But I did teach him how to find his inner self, it would seem. Could it be he actually succeeded and that he did learn something?"
She was not about to tell her mother. Nor about her plans for later in the evening. She had to get to Will, somehow. She wanted to tell him that it was not he who she was afraid of. She was not afraid of him and she was going to somehow make it quite clear. She sat and thought about what she was going to do for about an hour before her mother got home. When she heard her mother come in, she abruptly shut the door on any possibility of anyone
knowing what she was thinking.
Later, that night, Deanna snuck out of the house. She did not want her mother stopping her. She was going to see Will Riker whether she liked it or not. She walked down the dark street to the Embassy and passed the guard, who willing let her in at this later hour to see Riker. She got to his quarters and knocked.
"I know he's in there. I can sense him." she thought to herself and continued knocking until a half asleep, dazed and confused Riker answered. Before he could say a word she said, "I am not afraid of you."
Riker, who thought there was a raid or something before he
answered the door, quickly switched gears and said, "You could have fooled me."
"You're easily fooled." she said. "On what grounds do you think I'm afraid of you."
"You're avoiding me." he said. "You don't return my calls or anything."
"What calls?" Deanna said.
"Never mind." Realizing it was pointless to bring up the fact he knew about her mother. Will walked back into his quarters leaving the door open for Deanna to enter, if she chose. She did.
Not wanting to seem like a child under her mother's control, she said, "I just decided I have better things to do with my time than spend it with someone who has no understanding of our philosophy."
"I must have understood something." Will retorted.
"Because I sent my thoughts to you, didn't I?"
"Just a flook." Deanna dismissed. Deanna continues and accused Riker of doing it for his own self-satifaction and not for opening his mind to her. Riker interrupts her.
"Oh, I upset your intellectual little world and stir
feelings in you that make you feel out of control and your brain just can't accept that."
"Get dressed." she ordered.
"Why? Where are we going?"
"Out."
Will finally got dressed and Deanna took him to the edge of the forest and ordered him to take his clothes off.
Will grins. "First you say get dressed and now you tell me to take 'em off. Which is it you want?"
"Take off your clothes." Deanna said unamused.
"OK, what's the joke?" Will inquired. "I take 'em off and you friends run off with them and I'm left walking back to the Embassy buck naked. Is that it?"
"No, it's a therapy technique." Deanna said and
proceeded to take her dress off. She stood in front of Will
completely in the nude and Will stares at her.
"What a body!" he thought.
"Take them off." she ordered again and Will proceeded to do so. "You may hang on to them if you are still worried someone will run off with them."
"She's awfully aggressive tonight." Will thought.
"She's up to something, but I haven't a clue yet."
"Lie down."
Will complies, but is still trying to figure out what all this about. "A therapy technique?" he thought to himself.
"On your side with your back towards me."
"Is this really a technique or is she trying to get some sort of weird quick thrill here?" he thought to himself, still feeling ill at ease and puzzled. He rolled onto his side and pulled his legs up into the fetal position.
Deanna laid down behind him and curled up against him in spoon fashion. She then slid an arm under him and the other arm over him. Her whole body was against him and his pulse and mind raced. "God, she's making my so horny! I don't know how much more I can take of this!" he thought.
"Now" she said softly. "We are going to
talk."
"Just talk?"
"Um hum." she replied.
"You see." she bagan. "You have to learn to deal with me on a different level than just the physical."
"And this is suppose to help." Will's voice went up an octave.
"Yes." she replied "And we are going to talk about what ever you want."
"Why the hell are you doing this, Deanna?" he asked. "Do your realize what this is doing to me? Obviously, this is having no affect on you!"
"It is having an affect on me." she replied rubbing his chest.
He wanted to turn over and kiss her. To make love to every inch of her.
"So," he asked. "What affect is it having on
you?"
She continued to rub his chest with her free hand and said,
"What do you think?" She really wanted Will, but she was not going to give into her feelings quite so easily.
"If we both feel the same way, what is wrong with giving into those impulses?" he asked.
"Will," she said. "Don't you understand? It's just sex if it's on a purely physical bases. That's not what I want. First and foremost, two people must connect on an intellectual and spiritual level for it to truly mean anything. To give into physical impulses would undermind everything I believe in."
"You are afraid of me." This time there was no mockery in his voice. He felt bad that she was afraid of him and had no idea why. He held her arms tight against him in a comforting manner. There was nothing at all sexual about it. He just wanted her to be comfortable with him.
"A little." she finally admitted. "When you live a certain way and someone comes along and has different ways it totally disrupts everything you ever knew."
"There's something to be said for giving into the spur of the moment." Will said.
"I'm sure you would be the expert on that." she
replied.
They laid there in silence for a few moments and Will found
himself not being affected in quite the same way. His desires were changing slightly. Not that he did not still want to make love to her. He did, but it was not as urgent as before.
"So, what do we do now?" he asked.
"Anything you want."
They laid on the ground in each others arms for the rest of the night and talked about many things. Will learned what RaBeem meant and many other things he had not quite understood before. He was still unsure if he really did understand what he read in the Betazoid Primer, but things were becoming clearer in his mind.
The sun began to rise and they put their clothes back on. Will was hoping Deanna was less afraid of him than before. Hoping she was more comfortable around him and trusted him more.
"I thank you for the interesting evening." he said. "So, when do we get together again?"
"I'll be in touch with you." she said. She did not have the heart to tell him she had no idea when she could get away again. She only hoped that she got back in the house before her mother awoke, so she did not have to argue with her about where she had been all night.
However, as luck would have it, Lwaxana was up and was fuming. Deanna walked in and there was her mother standing there with her hands on her hips asking, "Would you mind telling me where you have been?"
"Yes, I would." Deanna replied.
"Deanna, we've never kept things from each other
before."
"No, Mother. I've never kept anything from you." she stated. "I never had a choice."
"Go to your room, Little One. We'll talk about this
later."
"Mother, you are treating me like a child again."
Deanna stated. "I am not a child."
"I DON"T CARE!" Lwaxana shouted into Deanna's
mind.
Deanna decided this was not the best time to discuss anything with her mother, so she started to comply with her mother's wishes and go to her room. However, before she left the room, she felt she had to say something.
"You don't trust me, do you, Mother?"
"I trust you, Little One." Lwaxana insisted. "It's your Star Fleet friend, I don't trust. You have a higher purpose and I don't trust anyone who may interfer with that."
"So, how I feel doesn't matter?"
"Deanna, you have obligations and no one can interfer with that." Lwaxana continues to run down everything that she had obligations to, due to her birth lineage. She was relentless and Deanna was tired of it. She did not want this for her life. She wanted other things. She wanted to make her own choices and not be dictated and have her life planned out for her. However, because that was the way it had always been for generations, Deanna felt she was stuck in having her life controlled by her mother and she resented it.
"Please Deanna....Tell me you won't let me down."
Lwaxana concluded.
Deanna had heard the lecture so many times that she automatically responded, soberly, without listening. "Of course Mother, I won't let you down."
"Good." she said with a smile. "Now, I know it's early, but how about some hot chocolate?"
Deanna could not resist the thought of hot chocolate. She agreed then wish she had not, because as usual her mother expect somebody else to do it for her because she felt she was royalty. Lwaxana bellowed for Mr. Homn to get up and fix the hot chocolate. Deanna hated it when Lwaxana did that and she was begining to wish she had not agreed to the hot chocolate. She felt sorry for Mr. Homn, having to be distrub from his sleep so early in the morning just for hot chocolate.
Over hot chocolate, Deanna asked her mother if she was going to report her friend, Will Riker, to Star Fleet. Lwaxana refused to answer her question, but insisted that if she had to, she would. Lwaxana said, "Just because we are talking over hot chocolate, does not excuse the fact that you left without saying a word and saw him against my wishes. You ignored the fact that he has no understanding of our customs and traditions. AND you ignored your obligations."
Deanna rolled her eyes and that got Lwaxana started on something else.