ONLY HUMAN 

CHP. II: KETAYA

by Alara Rogers; published by Aleph Press

The following is section 1 of 12 of ONLY HUMAN, my alternate universe
Q novel.  If you've missed any parts, the entire story is available
through anonymous ftp at ftp.netcom.com, in the directory /pub/al/
aleph/trek, under the name HUMAN2.ZIP.  HUMAN1.ZIP, the first chapter
of this story, is also available there.  The files are pkzipped using
PKWARE's version 2.04g.

Other sites where you can obtain the rest of this story:

ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q
ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/incomplete
http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html
http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html
http://aviary.share.net/~alara

This is an alternate universe novel, and it's long. I mean *looong.* In 
this chapter and all future ones, we will learn things about the 
Continuum which are contradicted by the Voyager episode "The Q and the 
Grey". This is because that was a miserably bad episode which 
contradicted so much Q canon that I have decided that, for my purposes, 
it didn't happen. None of the "facts" about the Continuum established in 
that episode have any bearing on the Continuum background shown in Only 
Human.

For those who have not read Chapter 1 and want to jump right in anyway,
the story is based on the episode Deja Q, where Q lost his powers; except
that in this alternate reality, he never got them back.  It's been
three years since then, and there have been some changes.  In exchange
for protection from various enemies he made while omnipotent, Q has
been selling his services as a scientific advisor to the Federation for
the past three years.  He assisted the Federation in developing a weapon
against the Borg; as a result, casualties were lighter at Wolf 359, and
Picard didn't become Locutus, someone else did. On the other hand, recently 
Picard died when a plasma grenade fused his artificial heart. This know-
ledge was the final straw to push an already-deeply-depressed-and-  
borderline-suicidal Q over the edge into a fairly nasty suicide attempt
by drinking hydrochloric acid.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Q survived, perhaps by the graces of his
personal guardian angel/demon, the Q who got him kicked out of the Con-
tinuum.  This Q has "hired" a mortal psychologist for Q, a Vulcan woman
named T'Laren who was raised on Earth (in Texas, to be precise.) Thus
far, T'Laren is something of a mystery; we know that the other Q, whom
she calls Lhoviri, saved her life and sanity and offered her something
she could not refuse in exchange for taking on this assignment. Lhoviri
also gave her a ship, called Ketaya, basically a luxury yacht with a
souped-up engine. It is T'Laren's belief that Q's depression is in part
caused by the fact that everyone on Starbase 56, where he's been living
for the past three years, hates him, and that he needs to leave the base
in order to recover. Though Q is not entirely sure he believes her-- he
believes his depression is simply caused by the fact that he is, in com-
parison to before, "blinded, maimed, exiled, and condemned to die--" he
is willing at this point to try anything.  As Chapter 2 opens, Ketaya
has just left Starbase 56 with Q and T'Laren aboard. 


*                              *                                *

     There were monitors in her room, hidden behind paneling,
from where she could observe every room of the ship. They had not
been part of the original equipment; she had suggested that they
would be helpful to have in dealing with a suicide risk who was
frequently attacked by various beings, and so Lhoviri had
provided them. She was glad, now, that she'd set them up to be
hidden unless she asked for them to be displayed; after the story
Anderson had told about Q's hunger strike, T'Laren knew that she
couldn't under any circumstances let Q know the monitors were
there. 
     She checked the setup. She had programmed the computer to
recognize human emotional states to some extent by monitoring the
biosensor readings, listening to what people said-- such as
"Help" or "Stop", indicating possible need or distress-- and
comparing non-verbal vocalizations to a list of parameters to see
if particular sounds might be cries of pain, or of fear, or
expressions of happiness. The system was not perfect-- she had
done extensive testing of similar monitor systems when she was
still a ship's counselor, and found that the computer had a
fairly high error rate, especially with people as theatrical in
their ordinary behavior as Q was. But she wanted to invade his
privacy as little as possible, and at the same time needed a
system to alert her if he was in trouble or in pain. The computer
was programmed to contact her through a stud in her ear, on a
frequency inaudible to humans, if it determined that Q was in any
sort of distress, and it would automatically display the monitors
if she was in her rooms and he wasn't with her.
     Everything was working. T'Laren thought of testing the
system, and decided against it-- Q might be dressing for bed or
something, and while she had no personal taboos against that sort
of thing she didn't yet know what might disturb Q. There was
conflicting evidence as to whether he had developed a sense of
modesty or not. If Q ever did find out she'd been monitoring him,
she wanted to be on unshakable moral high ground. So she shut the
monitors down and prepared for her nightly meditation.
     It was more difficult to achieve trance state than it had
been since she'd relearned the disciplines. Insistent thoughts,
observations she'd made in the course of the day, plans she had,
all intruded and disturbed her concentration. She considered
sleeping instead, but rejected the possibility almost out of
hand. T'Laren had not experienced uncontrolled sleep since... had
it been two years already? Two years since she and Soram had
returned to Vulcan, and she had... well, of course she hadn't
dreamed since then. Until she'd met Lhoviri, she'd been in no
position to dream. And in the time since Lhoviri had come to
her-- she thought it'd been about eight months, but time did
strange things around Lhoviri-- she had been too busy fighting
her way back to a precarious self-control to allow the luxury of
dreams. Dreams were entirely too dangerous, their function to
bring to the surface things that T'Laren had to repress. The
thought intruded that that was a kind of cowardice, but she
pushed that thought away too. Few Vulcans allowed uncontrolled
dreaming. Meditation was the Vulcan way. She was Vulcan,
therefore she would meditate, and there was nothing dishonorable
or cowardly about it. So she concentrated on the disciplines,
focusing down until all external disturbances vanished and there
was nothing but utter peace.
     When her internal clock wakened her, five hours later, she
felt relaxed, refreshed and completely free of intrusive
feelings. She lay on top of her bed, reflecting. It was times
like this that made her believe she had, indeed, chosen the
correct path in deciding to be Vulcan. She was at such peace that
she could not understand why anyone would choose the path of
emotions, if given a choice. 
     Q would still be asleep; most humans slept eight hours or
more, and Q had been exhausted. T'Laren dressed and went out to
the bridge, where she checked that everything was running
smoothly-- of course, the computers would tell her if there was
anything wrong, but she felt it illogical to rely on computers
too much. Upon determining that there were no problems, she went
out onto the observation deck and sat down on the balcony, gazing
out at the stars. Soon enough Q would wake up, and she would be
plunged back into the stresses of her work. Right now, though,
she wished to maintain the peace of her meditation for as long as
she could. 
     A tiny chime in her ear woke her out of her meditation.
T'Laren stood up. According to the monitor system, Q was
apparently in some distress. She didn't waste time detouring to
her room to see what the problem was; instead, she jumped off the
balcony and down into the pit, reaching Deck 3 as fast as Earth-
normal gravity could carry her, and went directly to Q's
quarters.
     As she entered his suite, she heard a faint whimper from the
bedroom, behind a closed door. There were a number of relatively
harmless possibilities-- he could be asleep and having a bad
dream, for instance-- but for someone who regularly came under
attack by various species with unknown capabilities, there were
also a number of genuinely threatening possibilities. T'Laren
palmed open the door and went directly in.
     The light was on. Q was lying in bed, in black and blue
pajamas, curled up tightly and facing the door. He raised his
head as she came in, with an expression of outrage and red,
swollen eyes. Shiny tracks glittered on his cheeks. "I thought
you Vulcans were big on privacy," he snarled. "Don't you
*knock*?"
     "I'm sorry," T'Laren said, and meant it-- she wouldn't have
intruded if she'd thought she had a choice. But she made no move
to leave. "I heard you cry out, and I thought you might be under
attack of some sort. I would have asked your permission to enter
otherwise."
     He levered himself up on one elbow, outrage giving way to a
horrified disbelief. "You *heard* that? Through *two doors*?"
     "Vulcan hearing is much superior to human," she said. "A
human would have heard nothing, I'm sure." She took a step
forward. "Q, what's wrong?"
     "I'm *fine*," he snapped, but his voice broke, undermining
the statement. He sat up, yanking the blankets around him like a
kind of cloak. "Fine," he repeated sharply, keeping his voice
under slightly better control this time. "It was just a dream."
     "It must have been very bad," T'Laren said softly, walking
over to a chair by his bed.
     Q laughed bitterly. "Oh, no. I'm used to the bad ones. I can
handle them by now. It's the good dreams that are killing me." He
looked down for a moment, then raised his gaze and glared at her.
"It's all your fault. I *told* you I needed a sedative. I always
have dreams unless I take a sedative."
     "I don't understand," T'Laren said, sitting down in the
chair. "How are the good dreams killing you, Q?"
     Q's face twisted with sudden pain. He turned his head away
from T'Laren with a sharp shaking gesture and made a sound
halfway between an exasperated sigh and a cry of pain. For a
moment he seemed to be struggling with his words, or perhaps with
his voice. When he finally spoke, it was with the harsh tone of a
person using anger to fight off pain. "Every so often I dream
that I'm back in the Q Continuum," he said. "It varies, how.
Sometimes I dream that my people have taken me back, I'm
forgiven, all debts paid. Sometimes I never left at all. All this
has been a cruel practical joke a few of my fellows have played
on me, and at first I'm outraged, but then I laugh about it with
them. Sometimes it turns out that I inflicted this on myself, for
some obscure reason that makes perfect sense in the dream, but
that my limited mortal mind can no longer comprehend when I wake
up. Once, I dreamed that Lhoviri gave me my powers back directly
after I tried to sacrifice myself to the Calamarain-- time off
for good behavior, I suppose. Whatever, I'm back. I'm myself
again." He looked back at her. The anger had faded from his tone,
replaced by a desperate longing. "My brothers and sisters have
taken me back. I'm immortal again, omnipotent again. All my
worries and troubles are gone. My family cares about me. My life
is wonderful." 
     The pain came back to his face as his voice started to
crack. "And then I wake up, and it's not true. It's not true. And
the disappointment is so incredible that I want to *die*." 
     "Q--"
     She reached for him, but he threw her off. "Don't you
understand? It's *never* going to get any better! They'll never
take me back, and I can't bear living like this..." His voice
broke completely. "I want to die, T'Laren, I can't stand this
anymore. I can't!" 
     "I thought you were going to try to give this a chance,"
T'Laren said, still gentle. "I thought you wanted to try to hang
on long enough to see if your life would become bearable--"
     "It never will!" Q shouted. "I could hold on a year, maybe
two, I don't know how many, if I knew they would take me back,
but they won't! I'm never going to be part of them again,
never..." His breath caught, and he doubled over, unbreathing,
for several seconds. When the air finally came out, it was as an
agonized sob. He drew his knees up and pressed his face against
them. "I can't bear this anymore," he said again, choking it out
between strangled sobs. "Please. Help me die..."
     T'Laren moved to the bed and put her arm around him. "Q.
Listen to me. There's no reason to believe they won't take you
back--"
     "There's no reason to believe they will, either!" he
screamed, his voice raw with hysteria. "If they *cared* about me,
they wouldn't let me suffer like this!"
     "You were doing so well before. You were so calm when you
went to bed. What happened? Was it just the dream?"
     "I was stupid before," Q snarled, lifting his head to look
at her. Now his entire face was puffy and tear-stained. "I
actually believed you could help me. Stupid, gullible, pathetic
*fool!* Damn Medellin, damn Li, why did they have to save me? Why
couldn't they have let me die?"
     T'Laren raised an eyebrow. She was beginning to get
seriously alarmed. Unless it was normal for Q to go from being
upset over a dream to full-blown hysterical despair, there was
something very wrong. "Q, we discussed this, remember? There's no
reason to think your people won't take you back. It'll just take
time. Don't you remember?"
     "Oh, I remember. I remember you browbeat me into believing
you because I wanted to believe it so much." He turned away from
her and put his face against his knees again, muffling his sobs.
"Thus proving I'm as pathetically gullible as any other mortal
creature, and all my years of experience and wisdom don't mean a
damn thing. Biology is destiny, and my destiny is to be worm
food. And I'm never going to have anything good in my life again.
That business about learning about humanity is crap-- the Q know
everything they need to about humanity, they don't need any input
from me. There's never been any reason for them to take me back.
My people hate me. They want me dead and so do I."
     T'Laren was somewhat at a loss. Under similar circumstances
with any other patient, she would reassure them that their loved
ones cared for them, or that they had great potential in their
future. All of Q's potential was behind him in his own view, and
he had no loved ones. The closest he came to friends were an
android who had no emotions and would probably dislike Q if he
did, and a scientist who might or might not have a crush on him
and whose name Q barely remembered. Lhoviri had gotten through to
her under similar circumstances by pointing out that she could
still help people, and thus atone for her own guilt. Q didn't
care about such things, though, and appeared to feel less guilty
than self-pitying. The only thing she could think of to do at the
moment was to put both arms around him and hold him as the spasms
of grief racked his body. "Your people don't want you dead," she
said softly. "They saved your life. Didn't you realize?"
     He looked up at her again. "They did that?"
     "Lhoviri made sure you didn't die of your injuries. I think
he also sent Counselor Medellin a premonition that you were in
trouble."
     It seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Q's face twisted up
with grief again. "No *wonder* I couldn't kill myself right!" he
screamed. "They won't let me die, will they? They want me to stay
alive, and suffer, and suffer..." Abruptly he stood up, tearing
free of her, and screamed at the ceiling. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry
about Azi, I'm sorry about the Kakkadim, I'm sorry about all of
it! Please, stop torturing me like this... take me back or let me
go, please, if I can't be with you I want to die..." He folded up
and crumpled onto the floor, sobbing hysterically.
     His loved ones. Of course. The problem wasn't that Q had no
loved ones, it was that the ones he had had rejected him.
Immediately T'Laren knew what she had to say. She knelt down on
the floor next to him and put her arm around him again. "Q,
listen to me. Please. I think there's something you don't
understand."
     "What?" he asked, a strangled snarl.
     "You think your people hate you because they condemned you
to this. That they saved your life solely to see you suffer. But
don't you realize that they're above that? Why would they let
Lhoviri torment you like this?"
     "They let me torment Azi," he choked. "If they let me get
away with *that*, they'll let anyone do anything to me."
     Sometime later, when he was calm, she had to ask him who Azi
was. "They did not let you get away with it. Is this letting you
get away with it? Isn't that part of what they're punishing you
for?"
     A complete shot in the dark-- she had no idea if whatever he
did to this Azi had anything to do with his punishment. But he
stilled slightly under her arm and did not contradict her. "You
have done things your people consider wrong, yes," she said. "But
you told me before that they could have killed or reabsorbed you-
-" --and what did it mean to be reabsorbed, anyway?-- " instead
of making you mortal. What advantage does it give them to make
you mortal, rather than killing you?"
     "It gives them more time to watch me suffer."
     "It gives you time to change. Mortality is a death sentence,
yes. In Q terms, what's left of your human lifespan is probably
only a fraction of an instant. But you live on our terms now, and
on our terms you have many long years left. Time in which you can
grow and change. Didn't you just say you don't believe they sent
you here to learn about humanity?"
     "Of course they didn't! They've had three or four of us do
it already. They don't need me. They never needed me."
     "They do need you," she said softly. "You're part of them.
But they need you to change. To grow up. Have you ever heard of
the concept `tough love'?"
     "What does some antiquated Earth notion have to do with
anything?" he snapped through tears.
     "It isn't antiquated. The idea is that if a child-- an
adolescent-- is delinquent, or disobedient, and gentler methods
of discipline have not worked, it's time for extreme measures.
Because if the parent doesn't go to extremes, doesn't hurt the
child terribly in order to make him change, the child won't. And
he'll grow up to be a delinquent adult, useless to society.
Sometimes really stubborn teenagers need to suffer tremendously
before they can be salvaged as worthwhile citizens." She leaned
down, trying to see his face. "Don't you see the analogy, Q?"
     "No."
     He was being stubborn-- T'Laren was sure he could see it.
"Lhoviri doesn't want you to die, Q," she said. "He saved your
life, twice. He hired me to help you-- and I assure you, I don't
care how omnipotent he is, he went to a lot of trouble to get me
into any kind of shape where I *could* help you. There are any
number of psychologists who could play games with your head to
build you back up so he could crush you, as you once accused.
Lhoviri wouldn't have needed to trouble himself at all to acquire
one. Instead, he put a lot of effort into helping me, so that I
could help you. An entity that merely wanted to torment you would
not have bothered."
     "So what are you saying?" Q asked harshly.
     "He *wants* to take you back. He does care about you.
Perhaps he got you kicked out of the Continuum because he thought
that was your only hope. Because if you kept going the way you'd
been going, you would have reached the point where no change
would be possible, and the Continuum would have been forced to
kill you. By condemning you to mortality, he's given you one last
opportunity to learn, and to mature at a faster rate than you
could have otherwise. You're right that the Continuum probably
doesn't need to learn what it means to be human, but you do. A
large part of what they punished you for seems to be your
complete disregard for the lives and rights of mortal beings. If
you can learn how to function in a mortal society, they could
trust you to be responsible with your powers again, and they
could take you back."
     "I can't believe that," he whispered.
     "Why not?"
     "Because I want it to be true, and I never get what I want."
     "That's pure irrationality and you know it. I know how much
it hurts to trust, Q, but you have to. Lhoviri is not about to
let you kill yourself, no matter how much you want to. Your only
alternative is to try to do what he sent you here to do, because
otherwise you're going to be hopelessly miserable and have no way
to escape your misery."
     "I can't believe you," Q said desperately. "I *can't*..."
     T'Laren had made her point. She said nothing more; simply
held him as he wept hysterically. After a minute or two,  she got
him to ease from the tight, inward-drawn ball he'd curled into
and cling to her instead. T'Laren stroked his hair and murmured
soothing words, until finally the sobs faded out.
     Eventually Q let go of her and turned away, embarrassed. "I-
- didn't mean to do that," he said. "That was incredibly idiotic.
I apologize."
     "What was?"
     "Having-- hysterics, like that." He shook his head.
"Everything you said was perfectly rational and sensible, and I
was reduced to saying `did not's' and bawling like an infant.
Maybe I *am* a three-year-old at that; I certainly acted like
one."
     T'Laren disengaged and stood up. "I can certainly understand
why your loss of control shames you," she said. "But please keep
in mind that I'm used to people doing irrational things that
later embarrass them. I would, however, like to figure out why
you lost control so quickly and completely. Do you think you can
talk about it?"
     "Let me wash my face and put some clothes on. I feel
ridiculous."
     "Very well." T'Laren went out into the living room of the
suite and ordered cups of hot chocolate for both of them.
     Q came out about ten minutes later, wearing a red jacket
over a black jumpsuit that was belted at the waist, and boots
with red piping. "More natural sedatives?" he asked. "Or is this
part of your insidious plot to fatten me up?"
     His tone was actually fairly light-hearted. T'Laren studied
his face. It was a bit difficult to tell in this lighting--
Vulcan eyes were not well-adapted to dim yellow lights-- but it
looked like he had made himself up to obliterate all traces that
he'd been crying, and done so successfully. Since she had first
met him lying in a hospital bed, she hadn't seen him wearing
makeup before, but it looked skillfully applied-- which meant he
wore it fairly often. Possibly for this reason? Men in Starfleet
occasionally used basic foundation makeup to make their skin look
better, but rarely took it farther than that. Q had gotten rid of
the circles under his eyes, the puffiness and red eyes from
crying, and had subtracted half a dozen years from his apparent
age. That took more skill than most men had. In fact, in this
lighting and with her Vulcan eyes, she could only tell he was
wearing makeup from the fact that no one who had just been crying
hysterically for the past half hour or so could possibly look
that good without it.
     "It's part of an insidious plot, of course," T'Laren said.
"This one simple drink has more calories than you could possibly
imagine."
     "Than *I* could possibly imagine?" he asked skeptically.
     "Well, your imagination tends toward the grandiose, it's
true. Perhaps not." She handed him the cup. "Now. Why don't you
sit down, and we'll talk about it?"
     "Talk about what?" Q asked, sipping his drink. He wasn't
being obviously coy; the question was asked in a sincere tone of
voice. T'Laren thought it beyond the realm of possibility that it
was a sincere question, but perhaps Q was trying to make her
think so.
     "Pretending that nothing happened isn't going to change the
facts, Q," she said. "I would like to talk about the fact that
you broke down seemingly because of no more than a bad dream,
despite the fact that you put a high value on remaining in
emotional control. Has this happened to you before?"
     He frowned at his drink. "Occasionally," he said. "I *am*
sorry-- I really don't know what happened to me. I was-- I was
fine when I went to bed, more or less. Actually, after that
backrub, I was in better condition than I've been for a long
while. Then I had that dream, which woke me up, and I felt like
crying. I had it somewhat under control until you came in;
somehow then I fell apart. I'm not sure why."
     "When has this happened before?"
     "Oh... once when I was talking to Sekal. Several times when
I wake up in the middle of the night, or when I'm trying to get
to sleep. It happened to me almost every night when I thought
Security wanted to kill me, but the only person I broke down
around then was Lieutenant T'Meth. She's a Vulcan security
officer, Sekal's wife--"
     "I know. Sekal told me."
     "All right. It happened my first night aboard the Enterprise
and my first two or three nights aboard Starbase 56, so I'm
really not too surprised it's happened now." Q drained his drink
and began to study his now-empty mug. "For someone who's spent
the past several thousand years as an avatar of change, I seem to
handle instability in my mortal existence very badly."
     "What exactly happens? Is the intensity of emotion you're
experiencing greater than normal, or is it just that you are less
able to control the expression of that emotion?"
     "I... don't know." He shrugged, playing with the mug. "Maybe
both. It happens a lot at night, like I said. Data once told me
that human beings are predisposed to getting depressed in the wee
hours. Maybe that's part of it. What time is it now?"
     "0300 hours. And we're still synchronized to Starbase 56's
time, so that's 0300 hours for your cycle as well as mine. That
could be part of the explanation, I suppose..."
     Q put down the mug. "You sound like you think you know what
it is."
     "I may know a factor. Or I may be drawing a false analogy.
But that sort of sudden and total breakdown over a thing that
seems objectively trivial... used to happen to me all the time.
It is a symptom of faulty repression. When a person is incapable
of actually controlling their emotions, as Vulcans do, but is
trying to keep from showing those emotions most if not all of the
time, it creates a terrible conflict. This happens to humans who
repress their feelings quite a great deal. All it takes is a tiny
crack, and the facade breaks completely."
     "I know. Vulcans do that when you finally get them mad."
     She decided that for the moment she didn't want to know how
much Q knew about getting Vulcans mad, or where and when he
learned it. "Does that seem to you as if it could be part of your
problem?"
     "It doesn't much sound like it," Q said. "I don't repress my
feelings. You want the entire range of humanity's least pleasant
emotions-- anger, fear, despair, pain-- I've got it all. I've
never made any attempt to hide what I'm feeling."
     "No, not in the usual sense," T'Laren admitted. "But in
another sense, you do. There are emotions you dislike
acknowledging. You rarely express guilt, or even admit to being
wrong. You rarely express a desire for social contact, despite
the fact that you obviously need it. In fact, you rarely display
any of the social emotions at all. Most of what you show is a
reaction to internal circumstances, or a pose adopted to get a
reaction from someone else. Would you ever admit that you were
lonely and wanted to be with someone?"
     "Of course not," Q said. "I'm allergic to getting laughed
at."
     T'Laren nodded. "In trying to protect yourself from
humiliation, you do hide certain emotions. You'd freely admit you
were angry-- but not if you were angry at someone for hurting
your feelings. Then you would hide your anger with a pose, or
give it some rationalization. You admit to fear because you can't
help yourself-- if you could keep from showing it, you would. I
suspect, in fact, that you would hide as many of your real
emotions as possible, and replace them with calculated poses
designed to get planned reactions out of people. I suspect that
that *is* what you did for the three years or so of your contact
with humanity when you were still omnipotent, and that the only
reason you don't still do it is that your situation has
overwhelmed you."
     Q shrugged. "That could be. I never thought about it in
those terms, but... yes, I suppose I do do that. I feel safer
when no one knows what I'm thinking."
     Fortunately, he also seemed to enjoy talking about himself,
or she would never get him to admit anything. She wondered if she
should ask him why he would tell her such things if that were
true, and decided against calling his attention to it. "And
that's where the repression is coming in. The idea behind
emotional expression is to express oneself, not to hide behind a
manufactured facade. The more one represses oneself, the more
pressure is placed on that facade. You do express yourself
frequently-- under normal circumstances, that would be enough to
keep the pressure you place on yourself bearable. But these are
not normal circumstances for you and will never be as long as you
are mortal. The fact that you are suffering constant painful
emotions, and to one extent or another hiding most of them, is
putting a great deal of pressure on your facade. Every so often
it needs to crack."
     "It seems as if you're making this unnecessarily
complicated," he said, picking up the mug again and holding it in
his lap as he looked at her. "There's a much simpler explanation,
one that doesn't involve the invocation of all sorts of
hypothetical repressed emotions."
     "And that is?"
     "I'm just depressed." He put down the mug again and leaned
forward. "T'Laren, I really think you're making a big deal over
nothing. I'm very unhappy. Humans cry when they're unhappy. I am
human. You're a Vulcan, you can do logic-- that one's nice and
simple, enough for even a Klingon to understand. The fact that I
am not crying constantly involves the suppression of emotion, I
assume, but one hardly needs to invoke that to explain why I
crack."
     Actually, he had a point. T'Laren wondered if she was
projecting again. "It seemed rather... extreme. Rather sudden."
     "It's always sudden. If I can feel it coming on, I can
control it usually."
     "Why is it important to you to be able to control it?"
     Q looked at her as if he had never heard a stupider question
in his life. "A Vulcan needs to ask me this?"
     "I know where my own desire for emotional control stems
from. I am asking about yours."
     "Because it's bad enough that I spend all my time whining
and complaining, that I'm a complete coward who'll throw dignity
to the wind and grovel if threatened, that I spend my entire life
worrying about how to avoid pain-- I don't want to be constantly
bawling, too. Humans give me little enough respect as it is. And
shouting angrily at people or eviscerating them with clever wit
are much more acceptable methods of dealing with one's emotions,
among humans, than crying is. And I don't know why we're still
discussing this; this conversation has to be the most trivial
pursuit I've engaged in in quite some time." He stood up. She
could almost see his defenses rebuilding themselves, from
embarrassment to forced equilibrium and now to anger. "I'm going
back to bed. Are you going to continue to refuse me a sedative?"
     "Yes."
     "Then do me a favor. Don't come in my room unless I actually
call for help. I'll come out and get breakfast when I wake up."
He turned and walked to the door of the bedroom. "And for future
reference, unless you're positive I'm dying, knock first."
     "Very well." T'Laren stood, placing the cocoa mug into the
disposal beneath the replicator. "I hope your sleep is
undisturbed this time."
     As she left, she realized, suddenly, why it had happened.
Q's explanation, like most of his explanations, had not
completely satisfied her-- he had given a reason, but not all the
reasons. Now she thought she understood. His defensiveness and
his antisocial behavior were all part of the same thing. Earlier
tonight, she had gotten him to lower his defenses against her--
leaving him unable to protect himself from his own emotions. In
the process of rebuilding his safeguards, Q had started to become
defensive and accusatory, and then had withdrawn contact
completely by ending the conversation.
     He wasn't simply obnoxious because he didn't know any
better. It was a defense. She'd known that already, but had not
quite realized the obvious corollary-- the more she chipped away
at it, the more vulnerable he would become. If he ever realized
that, she would never be able to get him to trust her-- he would
shut her out completely, perceiving her as a threat. And in a
certain sense, she would be.
     Perhaps this was going to be more difficult than she'd
initially thought.