The Smile

"Deanna?" A slightly worried baritone voice called from the blackness, resounding through her mind as a low whale song through water. She tried to raise herself up but the effects of hours upon hours of meditative trance had left her muscles utterly relaxed and a turn of her head was the best she could do.

She could feel the worry and slight puzzlement from her visitor as clearly as her own emotions. When her mind was this raw with such intense emotions her shields failed. "Deanna?" She closed her eyes and did not answer, unsure if she wanted him to find her or not.

Quiet thuds told her that he was approaching her and in response she opened her eyes and held her breath. There wasn't a spark of light in the room, absolutely nothing for her eyes to lock on. The blackness as suffocating as the emotions that had wrapped themselves around her heart and she welcomed it, allowing the blackness and despair to overwhelm her. Her soul revelled painfully in the hurt, almost sadistic in its passionate flight.

"Imzadi." Her soul dropped brutually back into her body, bringing an end to the languid, almost detached, enjoyment of despair and once again setting off the sharp pain that was busy slicing her heart to shreds. She forced herself to remain quiet on the small mediation board, keeping her breathing shallow and slow in spite of feeling like screaming until she was heard in the far edges of the Galaxy and beyond.

"Computer," he was going to fill the emptiness, the darkness around her, she knew. She just wished he could do the same to the darkness inside of her, but this time even his help wouldn't be enough. "Turn on the lights at 10% intensity." Deanna closed her eyes again, keeping herself within blackness for a little while longer, unable to face reality just yet. "Deanna."

"Will." She acknowledged the faceless voice, keeping still. His need to touch her was palpable to her but she couldn't handle -his- touch together with the pain. His hand hoovered above her, she could feel the warmth it radiated in her cold world. It reminded her of the unique warmth she had felt for the past two days, her heart bleeding anew.

"I want to help." Help? There was no help; there was only blackness. Blackness and despair and pain and loneliness. It was all there was and it was all she could handle. It was all she wanted to handle. The perfect balance; days of intense happiness followed by days of despair. Emotions of love followed by those of grief. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. The Galaxy at its best, almost poetic in its mix of joy and pain. Almost beautiful.

"I'm fine." And she was. The tiredness of her body and the aching of her heart were dulling the memories and her senses. It was...peaceful. So painfully peaceful that it could only be expressed in tears. A smile crept up inside her, turning the corners of her lips up. This was what it was, no more fighting, no more knives through her heart, just this black peace.

"Imzadi, you have to stay here." Why? What was there for her outside the blackness? "I am." The voice answered her thoughts, soft with tenderness...with love. Yes, there was love for her but that wasn't enough anymore. Love didn't mean peace. It wasn't the languid feeling she had now, the feeling that she was floating in the afterglow of passion.

Yes, that was what it felt like; exhausted passion. The last breaths of peace, the last whisps of light, the last flicker of the eternal flame, Galaxy's final smile. "Stay with me." The loving voice coaxed, urgency creeping into its deep tone and she felt tempted to open her eyes, just for a second. A look at him, at love, at the world she had known.

Instead she exhaled, breathing out the last of her worries and doubts and all there was left, was a final heartbeat and the smile on her lips.