Only Human by Alara Rogers 
 
Part III: Yamato 
 
With minor revisions to the parts posted before, here is all of 
Only Human Chapter III.
 
Paramount owns Q and the universe; I own the original characters.
No copyright infringement is intended.  Not to be sold for profit.  

ONLY HUMAN (for those who haven't caught the story thus far) is an 
alternate universe, based on the premise that Q lost his powers for 
good in "Deja Q."  In exchange for protection, he offered the 
Federation the benefit of his advanced knowledge, and was transferred 
to Starbase 56.  Three years later, miserable beyond endurance, Q 
attempted to kill himself. 
 
Dr. T'Laren, Vulcan xenopsychologist and former Starfleet counselor, 
turned up at this point, claiming that Starfleet had hired her as Q's 
therapist.  In fact, it turned out that she was really hired by the Q 
Continuum, in the person of the Q who got Q thrown out, whom T'Laren 
refers to as Lhoviri.  T'Laren persuaded Q to accept her help and 
allow her to counsel him through his depression.  To that end, they 
left Starbase 56 on T'Laren's ship Ketaya-- a gift from Lhoviri, with 
some surprising capabilities-- and headed for the starship Yamato, 
which was currently hosting a physics conference. 
 
Over the course of the past weeks of travel, Q has come to trust 
T'Laren, more or less, though they've had some knock-down-drag-out 
fights in the process.  At the end of Part II, Q decided that he no 
longer wanted to die.  Part III details 's adventures at the scientific 
conference aboard the Yamato, T'Laren's problems as her 
somewhat shady past comes back to haunt her in the forms of her 
young sister-in-law and her former lover, and the ups and downs 
of Q and T'Laren's relations with one another.  Section 14 also 
deals explicitly with sexual themes, though I consider it suitable 
for teens and mature Congresspersons (like Patrick Leahy, who 
opposed the CDA.) 
 
Note that elements of this chapter and previous ones contradict
the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey."  I remain convinced
that my version of the Continuum is more interesting than the
vision we were presented with in that episode, and so I have not
revised to fit that episode, as it's too stupid to be canon. :-)

Parts I - III are all available at the following sites:

FTP:

ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/al/aleph/startrek
ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q
ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/tng

Web:

http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html
http://aviary.share.net/~alara
http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html

Send comments to aleph@netcom.com.
             *                   *                    *  

	As she stepped through, she glanced back at Q.  For just a moment, 
he had a desperately forlorn expression on his face, as if he wanted to 
beg her not to leave him.  Then he hardened into the stony mask again.  
She looked away and turned to Washington.  "Lieutenant, would it be 
possible for Q to have read-only terminal access?  It would be 
preferable if he had the ability to do some work while he's here.  I 
understand the security issues involved with terminal access, but 
surely he would be safe with read-only."
	Washington gazed at her impassively.  Finally he nodded, once, and 
returned to his desk, where he apparently punched a few buttons on his 
console.  A wall panel in Q's cell slid up to reveal a terminal.  
Washington walked up to the cell as Q gave him a puzzled look, as if 
unable to understand why Security would grant him anything at all.  "It 
uses standard voice commands, but it will only allow you visual access-
- you can't record and you can't listen."
	Q glanced at the terminal and back at Washington.  "Well, this 
might make the crushing boredom of this cell lighten a sufficient 
fraction that I won't die of it."
	"You're welcome," Washington said evenly.  
	"Who should I speak to about getting the charges dropped?"  
T'Laren asked him.
	"Me.  Let's go to my office."  He touched his badge.  "Wiggins, I 
need you on duty in the brig."
	They waited the minute or two until security officer Wiggins 
showed up, then stepped into Washington's office to the side of the 
main security office.  The door swooshed shut behind them.  "I 
suppose," Washington said, "that you're going to tell me this was an 
accident."
	"That would hardly be a sufficient excuse," T'Laren said.  "No, 
Lieutenant.  I think it would be more helpful if I explain the reason 
for the accident."
	He sat down, and gestured her to a seat.  "I'm listening."
	"I don't know if you're aware of this," she began, "but Q has 
effectively spent the past three years of his life in a war zone.  He 
has suffered multiple attempts on his life.  He has been beaten 
savagely, sometimes by the very people who were supposed to be 
protecting, often by people whom he physically outsizes.  Because he 
lost so much when he lost his powers, he has a deep-seated image of 
himself as powerless, to the point that he has never learned how to 
defend himself physically while he was on Starbase 56-- he never 
believed there would be any point.  And it became a self-reinforcing 
cycle-- he didn't try to defend himself, so he was hurt worse, so he 
became more convinced of his own helplessness."
	"Are you saying that he couldn't be bothered learning to defend 
himself?"
	It was impossible to read Washington's tone-- still calm and even.  
"No," T'Laren said, "not at all.  I'm saying he was doomed to failure.  
You must know, Lieutenant, that believing in oneself is the first step 
toward succeeding, at anything.  No one can succeed at something if 
they are sure they'll fail.  You know that."
	He nodded.  "It's something they teach at the Academy, yes."
	"It's true.  And this is why it was so very difficult to teach Q 
how to defend himself-- he believes he is powerless and weak."
	"He must know he's bigger than everyone else," Washington said, 
still with the same mild tone.
	"With respect, Lieutenant, you are taller than me.  But if you can 
defeat me in hand-to-hand combat, it's because you're better trained.  
When I was twelve years old, I could defeat adult male humans twice my 
size in wrestling matches.  Size has very little to do with it."
	"Yes, but you're Vulcan."
	"I am that.  I'm also well-trained and very determined.  I have 
defeated Romulans who were considerably bigger than me, *and* who had 
some training, because I have focused on that all my life.  I pride 
myself on my abilities at self-defense.  Q, however, has been 
frequently beaten by people who are physically smaller and quite 
possibly not as physically strong as he is, and this has simply 
reinforced his belief that he will always be the one who gets hurt.
	"I recognized this as a serious problem, and have more or less 
coerced Q into training.  I've tried to present lessons in such a 
fashion that if he actually tries, at all, he won't fail.  Sooner or 
later, it was my hope, he would develop the self-confidence to believe 
in his own physical abilities, and in the meantime I've taught him a 
few things that he can use in an emergency.  What happened today was 
that Q believed that Dr. LeBeau was about to beat him.  Remember, he 
was not raised human-- he doesn't *know* what it means when a human 
woman slaps a man.  The fact that she is smaller and weaker than he is 
was meaningless to him-- he's been hurt badly by people who are smaller 
and weaker than him, before.  So he reacted to protect himself from 
being hit again, without any clear notion of the actual level of threat 
Dr. LeBeau represented.  And being panicked, and convinced that she 
represented an immediate threat to his well-being and that he would be 
virtually powerless to stop her, he would subconsciously have struck 
with full force."
	"A beaten dog finally biting back?"  Washington asked.
	"I would not have used that analogy, but it has some validity to 
it."
	Washington leaned back in his chair.  "To be honest with you, Dr. 
T'Laren, I had expected something like this,"  he said.  "After this 
incident, I read through Q's files.  He doesn't have a history of 
abusing women."  His tone was rather dry.  "He *does* have a history of 
verbal abuse, but in this case the witnesses all say that LeBeau 
started it.  LeBeau also hit him, and I haven't got a great deal of 
respect for women who go about hitting men and then cry 'assault' when 
the men hit back.  Violence against a stranger is *always* a bad idea, 
even if that stranger is ostensibly a member of one's own species.  So 
my inclination would have been to let Q go some time ago."
	"But?"  T'Laren prompted.
	"But Dr. LeBeau pressed formal charges.  I can't release a man 
who's been charged with committing assault out on his own recognizance 
with nothing more than my own hunch that it'll work out.  On the other 
hand, if I have a formal report from a psychologist that I can use to 
reassure my superiors that I didn't just let a dangerous criminal go 
wandering the ship..."
	"Of course," T'Laren said, relieved.  This had gone remarkably 
well.  She was almost nervous, expecting another shoe to drop.  
	"Perhaps it would be better if he got some self-defense training 
here," Washington said.  "No offense, Dr. T'Laren, but I doubt you've 
been given a great deal of training in how to train people.  Since he's 
here anyway, he might be best off getting some lessons from us."
	"Do you think so?"  She considered.  "It's certainly a good 
suggestion, but Q can be very, very stubborn.  I'm not sure it will be 
possible to persuade him to accept training, though I can certainly 
try."
	"What if it's made a condition of his sentence at the hearing?"  
Washington asked.  "Even if Dr. LeBeau won't drop the charges, I can't 
see Q being given anything all that terrible as a sentence, but that 
might certainly be part of it."
	"I'd rather avoid that if possible.  Q... is very unresponsive to 
coercion.  If he's ordered to take self-defense lessons, he'll be 
entirely too resentful and sullen to get anything out of them at all."
	Washington grinned.  "He sounds like my kid brother."
			*				*				*
	An hour later, Washington had his report and Q was free, with a 
warning that unless LeBeau dropped the charges he would have to attend 
a hearing in a few days.
	Q walked back to his room with T'Laren, wrapped in a sullen 
silence.  It was very late at night.  He hadn't been able to sleep in 
the cell-- he well remembered how unpleasant it had been to sleep in 
the brig, the very first time he'd fallen asleep, and besides he was 
dressed too uncomfortably to be able to relax at all.  There was 
another source of serious discomfort as well.  The cell had had only 
the most minimal of privacy, a recessed alcove with a toilet in it, 
with a partial screen that would block only the most crucial portions 
of view, and that only if he sat down.  The way his clothing was 
designed, he would need to disrobe almost entirely to use the 
facilities.  It hadn't struck him as such a terrible design when he 
first put the clothes on, but then, he had expected to be out for no 
more than two hours, and certainly not stuck in a dungeon with some 
Starfleet eager beaver staring at him.  So he had ignored certain 
bodily requirements in favor of maintaining his dignity, and he was 
paying for it now.  The only thing that kept him from running for his 
room, and his bathroom, was the fact that running would make the 
sensation worse.  
	In addition, he was exhausted, and his back was screaming at him.  
Fortunately, T'Laren didn't seem to want to talk, which was a first.  
He wanted to snap at her, to verbally flay her for getting him into 
this, but he was too tired and too uncomfortable.  He also wanted her 
to rub his back, so badly that he was almost contemplating actually 
asking.
	Once they reached the room, he headed immediately for the 
bathroom, and stripped off his uncomfortable armor with a deep sigh of 
relief.  After taking care of more pressing business, he proceeded to 
spend the next twenty minutes in the sonic shower, getting rid of the 
filth and sweat of hours stuck in costume.  It was truly disgusting how 
human bodies generated all this filth.  Skin flakes.  Who had designed 
skin flakes?  Random evolution seemed hardly malicious enough to 
produce such a diabolical result.  If *he* had been in charge, he would 
have done a *much* better job.
	The bathroom replicator was not programmed to produce any of the 
clothing patterns Q had put into the bedroom replicator.  This was a 
source of serious annoyance to Q, who had gratefully forgotten how low 
the selection of acceptable clothing was on a Galaxy-class starship.  
After a great deal of effort, he finally managed to find a black satin 
bathrobe and a pair of royal blue pajamas that he considered 
acceptable, wrestled his hair, always unruly after a shower, into some 
semblance of order, and went out.
	T'Laren had out a big plate of fruit and cheese, with small empty 
plates beside it.  She seemed intent on devouring the fruit.  He 
scowled at her.  "You're eating at *this* hour?"
	"Would you like some?"  She held a small plate of peach slices out 
to him.  
	"How unutterably nauseating.  Do you have any idea what time it 
is?"
	"0243 hours and 57 seconds," T'Laren replied absently, pulling the 
plate back and munching on a peach slice.  "What does that have to do 
with anything?"
	"You can't seriously mean me to eat at this hour," Q said, sitting 
down.  His back was screaming at him, pleading with him to break down 
and ask T'Laren for a backrub, and it was making him particularly 
irritable.
	"I don't.  You can eat if you like, or not."  She put a pair of 
fresh bagels and a cheese danish on a plate and pushed it toward his 
side of the table.  "If you do eat, I'd suggest bread products.  You 
might have stomach pains if you ate fruit at this hour."
	"I might have stomach pains if I have to watch you guzzling your 
food like that," Q retorted.
	"Then don't watch."  She wrapped a pineapple slice in a cheese 
slice and bit it in half.  Q grimaced.
	"What is your fetish for fruit, anyway?"
	T'Laren looked up at him.  "I'll let you in on a secret, if you 
promise to tell no one else," she said gravely.
	"I'm not making any promises."
	"Yes, but no one would believe you, so I imagine our secret is 
safe."  She leaned forward.  "Have you ever noticed how obsessed 
Terrans are with chocolate?"
	Chocolate was one of the few foodstuffs Q could actually tolerate 
in large quantities; he had been known to eat three meals of chocolate 
ice cream a day.  No doubt this was a not-so-subtle dig on T'Laren's 
part.  "As if you were entirely immune."
	"I like chocolate," T'Laren confessed.  "But my real weakness is 
for fruit.  If you are ever in a position where you're attempting to 
make a stubborn Vulcan eat, try succulents.  Grapes, cherries, 
berries..."  She popped a few into her mouth.  "I am convinced that 
Earth was specifically created for the purpose of producing fruit."
	The hyperbole amused Q, taking a bit of the edge off his 
irritation.  "What would you know about it?"  he asked lazily.  "You 
weren't there."
	"Merely forming a hypothesis.  Why, were you?"
	"I might have been."
	"Then tell me, o font of wisdom, why was Earth created?"
	"A cosmic accident," Q said.  "It was Mars we had hopes for."
	"How do you know that a power higher than the Q didn't induce you 
to create the Earth just for the sake of fruit?"
	"There *is* no power higher than the Q."
	"Well, of course you'd think that," T'Laren said.  "If It had 
intended you to be able to handle the notion of beings higher than 
yourselves, It would hardly have created you with such enormous egos."
	T'Laren was being unusually humorous tonight.  Normally she wasn't 
any good for this sort of light witty repartee, though she was 
remarkably talented at the somewhat more vicious kind.  "Cling to your 
delusions if it makes you feel better," Q said lightly.  "I had no idea 
Vulcans subscribed to anything so illogical as religion."
	"I have a god telling me that religion is illogical," T'Laren said 
somberly.  "There is something askew in this picture."
	"Only in your limited mortal opinion," Q responded, tentatively 
starting to enjoy himself.  He leaned forward to take the danish, 
feeling the need for a prop, and possibly some sugar-- it had been a 
long time since his last coffee, and exhaustion was beginning to rag 
his edges.
	As he leaned forward, a sharp shooting pain went up through his 
back, the muscles in his lower back spasming.  His first, instinctive 
reaction was to try to hide it; humans had made it very clear to Q that 
he spent too much time whining about how much pain he was in, and he 
tried very hard to hide that, to avoid being laughed at.  But then he 
realized that that was a foolish thing to do here; if T'Laren knew he 
was in pain, she would jump at the chance to help him.  So he let the 
moan that he'd instinctively stifled out after all, and put his hand to 
the small of his back.
	T'Laren immediately looked concerned.  "Are you all right?"
	"Of course, I whimper in agony all the time," Q retorted.  The 
pleasure and relaxation he'd started to feel had vanished, leaving him 
extremely irritable.
	"Would you like me to rub your back?"
	He almost moaned at that, at the very thought.  He'd been wanting 
her to offer for hours.  But right now, he didn't feel like being in 
any lower-status position at all, and even so much as simply saying 
"yes"  would put him there.  "It's the least you could do, since you 
were responsible for the incarceration that led to this," he snapped.
	T'Laren made no move toward him, merely gazed at him as if he were 
an intriguing species of tropical fish.  He glared at her.  It was on 
the tip of his tongue to snarl, "Well?" when she broke her silence.  
"You honestly don't know what you've just done, do you?"
	"What are you talking about?"
	"I'd thought about actually granting your point," T'Laren said, 
"or at the very least, ignoring your rudeness and giving you a backrub 
anyway.  It gives me no pleasure to see you in pain, and I myself am 
hardly offended when you behave in an obnoxious manner.  But other 
people will not make allowances for your bad moods, Q.  I would be 
doing you no favors if I ignored your rudeness."
	Q stared at her for a second.  "Let me translate that for you, 
since you seem to have such a hard time expressing yourself," he said 
harshly.  "'I promised I'd give you a backrub, Q, but you're annoying 
me, so I'm going to make it sound like I'm doing this for your own good 
instead of admitting I have emotions.'  Isn't that right?"  
	"Actually, no," T'Laren said.  "It's quite wrong.  Let's analyze 
what you did wrong here."  She leaned forward.  "When I offered to give 
you something that you show every sign of wanting rather badly, you 
responded with a personal attack.  This is not acceptable behavior; no 
one will grant what you wish after you've attacked them for offering, 
or if they do, they will do so in as unpleasant a fashion as they can 
manage."
	"I hardly *attacked* you, T'Laren.  I merely pointed out your 
culpability in my current miserable state."
	"Let's look at that, briefly.  You broke a woman's arm and ended 
up in the brig for it.  This is ostensibly my fault for teaching you 
how to defend yourself.  Yet I never taught you to break people's arms 
for slapping you.  This would seem to be a failure of your own common 
sense.  But be that as it may.  Even if I were entirely at fault, it is 
not appropriate to attack me for having caused the problem when I have 
just offered to fix it."
	"I suppose you'd rather I fell at your feet and worshipped you," Q 
retorted sarcastically.
	"No, actually.  I'd have preferred if you said 'Yes, thank you.'  
Or 'Thanks.'  Or "That would be nice.' Or nothing at all.  Nothing at 
all is not an ideal alternative, as people would find that offensive in 
the long term, but it's better than what you did say."
	"Wonderful.  I am enlightened.  Now what?"
	"Now you apologize."
	"I will do no such thing.  It *is* your fault my back is so bad 
right now.  For that matter, the fact that I've been able to maintain 
an even vaguely bearable mood over the past several days is most 
assuredly despite your behavior, which has been reprehensible."  Q 
stood up.  "You have been ignoring your duties to me in such a 
consistent fashion that if it were *me* who had hired you, I would 
certainly give you your walking papers now.  You have been erratic, 
overemotional, and vicious.  I warn you, if this behavior persists, you 
will be dispensed with."
	"I think it's very interesting that you consider a request that 
you apologize to be a threat you must react to with more threats," 
T'Laren said calmly.  "Please observe that your back is not being 
rubbed."
	As if he could possibly miss that.  "I didn't ask you for any 
favors," Q snapped.  "I don't *need* a backrub, and I don't need *you*.  
Both are luxuries, and I'm perfectly capable of doing without either 
one!"
	He stormed off to his room before she could get the last word, 
unreasonably outraged.  It was not at all fair.  If she hadn't wanted 
to rub his back, fine, he hadn't asked, he didn't need it, but why had 
she offered in the first place?  That was simply cruelty.  Q dumped his 
robe on a chair--  normally he was very careful with his clothes, 
hanging them up back in his wardrobe, but this was just replicator 
junk-- and flung himself on the bed, lying flat.  Some of the tension 
drained away, just enough to make the rest of it really painfully 
obvious.  
	It hurt so much.  He had endured pain this bad in the past, dozens 
of times.  Hundreds.  Thousands.  But he'd allowed himself to get used 
to getting massages.  Obviously a very bad idea.  Q sat up and half-
heartedly tried the stretching exercises T'Laren had taught him to 
loosen up his back and neck; right now he'd try anything.  But they 
were as useless as he expected them to be, and he lay back down, 
stifling a moan of pain.  Wonderful.  The creature in the other room 
had superhuman hearing, had been *known* to hear a faint, tiny whimper 
from him through two doors, and here he was, in agony, unable to get 
rid of her and completely unwilling to let her hear him suffering.  
	Q got up and walked over to the replicator.  "Cyomil capsules," he 
told it.
	"That item is under medical restriction."
	Figured.  He hadn't really expected that to work.  "Prozium 
lozenges."
	The weak painkiller appeared in the replicator.  He snatched out 
the two lozenges and swallowed them without benefit of water.  They 
would do him absolutely no good, of course; he needed stronger stuff, 
but if the replicator wouldn't even let him have Cyomil, there was 
little chance it would give him something *really* useful.
	He went back to bed and laid down, trying to sleep and knowing 
exactly how futile it would be.  There had been more nights than he 
could count that had been like this... but before, he'd always been 
able to go down to Sickbay and harass Li into giving him painkillers, 
or after they were restricted, sedatives.  Now he actually toyed with 
the idea of going to Sickbay and getting whatever doctor they had here 
to give him something... but in the first place, he couldn't leave the 
room without T'Laren seeing him and realizing that he couldn't sleep, 
and in the second place, he was sure T'Laren had put some sort of 
restriction on his medical file.  She might not have the power to 
prescribe anything without a physician's approval, but if she had power 
anywhere equivalent to Counselor Medellin's, she could restrict him 
from getting a prescription for psychoactives fulfilled.  
	In fact, she had total power over his life.  Bitterness welled up 
in him, and a sense of rage at himself, for letting himself be seduced 
into giving her that power.  When he had left the starbase in T'Laren's 
care, he had effectively signed his life over to her.  How could he 
have been so blind?  So stupid?
	How could he have done anything differently, though?
	He did moan then, quietly, pressing his head into the pillow so 
she wouldn't hear.  He had signed his life away when he'd first handed 
himself over to Picard, naked and powerless.  How could he have 
expected it would be any different?  His knowledge and abilities didn't 
give him power, they gave him value, and value made him a commodity.  
And if he hadn't been a commodity, he would have been worthless, and 
would have died for it.  But as a commodity, he was a possession, with 
no control over his own life.  Picard, Anderson, now T'Laren... he was 
allowed to change owners of his own free will sometimes, as he'd done 
with T'Laren, but there was no question that he was still a slave.
	Q shifted again, trying uselessly to make himself more 
comfortable.  The pain was bad enough that he wanted to cry, was 
holding it off by sheer force of will.  He couldn't do this.  When he 
was awake and active, he didn't notice the pain.  He should get up now 
and go tear T'Laren to shreds, but he was terrified that if he faced 
her, she would manipulate him somehow, wear down his resistance, and he 
would break down and apologize.
	*Would that be so bad?  *a treacherous part of his mind whispered.  
Maybe it was a small concession after all.  Was his pride worth this 
pain?
	Yes.  His fingers dug into the pillow until the knuckles went 
white.  His pride was all he had left.  Anderson had broken him in the 
past, made him crawl, jerked him around like a puppet and made him 
dance for her, but T'Laren wasn't Anderson.  She wouldn't put him under 
house arrest for not apologizing; she'd just refuse to give him a 
backrub.  And he could endure that.  He didn't need her help.  Okay, he 
wanted it, wanted it very badly, but he didn't need it, and he wouldn't 
crawl to get it.  This was a matter of principle, and he would *not* 
give in.
	So.  If he couldn't sleep, and he couldn't leave his room for fear 
of T'Laren seeing him, what else was there?  He couldn't use the 
computer; even if he set it to keyboard commands only, even if he muted 
it, she'd hear his fingers on the keys.  He could get a pair of 
headphones from the replicator and listen to music-- it wouldn't give 
too much away if she heard him do that.  He could read.  That was about 
it.
	Oh, joy.
	He turned in bed again, in exactly the wrong direction, and a stab 
of agony shot through his side and lower back.  A whimper escaped him 
before he could stop it, followed by a sick sense of humiliation.  She 
was listening and she'd heard him, he was sure of it.  She knew he was 
suffering because he wouldn't give in to her, knew he was weak.  
	There was a buzz at the door.  Of course.  "Go away!"  he shouted.
	"I wanted to apologize," T'Laren's voice came through the door 
intercom.
	Apologize?  She *should* apologize, but it was totally out of 
character for her to do so, Q thought.  T'Laren never admitted she was 
wrong.  What kind of trick was this?  "I don't care.  Go away!"
	There was a moment of silence, and then, "Please?"
	That simple word brought him up short.  Had T'Laren ever pleaded 
with him for anything?  It seemed an utterly alien thing for her to be 
doing.  "If you must," Q sighed, defeated by a single plaintive word.
	The door opened.  She took a step inside.  "I'm sorry," she said 
simply.  "I chose the wrong moment to make my point, and placed you in 
an untenable position.  I should have known your pride would not allow 
you to respond, and I should not have pushed you that way."
	Q wasn't entirely sure what she was apologizing for-- that wasn't 
how *he* would describe what she did.  It sounded to him uncomfortably 
as if she were apologizing for not manipulating him properly.  "Is that 
it?"
	"Pardon?"
	"You just waltz on in with your pathetic excuse for an apology, 
you don't even mention what you actually *did* to me, and you expect me 
to kiss and make up?  How stupid do you think I am?"
	"What specifically are you referring to when you say 'what I 
actually did to you'?"
	He sat up.  "Oh, don't play coy, T'Laren.  You know what you did."
	"Certainly.  At least, I know what I think I did.  What I don't 
know is what you perceive me to have done."
	"Do you expect me to believe that?"
	"Since you would rather I avoided reading your mind, I think 
you're going to have to."
	Q's eyes narrowed.  "You're supposed to be an intelligent woman.  
Try using your brain for once."
	"All right."  She sat down on the edge, uncomfortably close to 
him.  Actually, it wouldn't have been uncomfortably close-- it was the 
normal distance she kept from him-- but he was in too much pain.  
Having her this close to him, so close to giving him what he needed, 
and being unable to ask or even hint at what he wanted, was torture.  
He wanted to edge away from her, but if he did that she might go away 
and then there would be no hope at all.  "You must perceive me as being 
monstrously unfair.  To you, I offered something and then refused it, 
in such a fashion that you couldn't even challenge me for my refusal, 
because if you did it would imply you wanted it and that would make you 
feel as if you were begging.  Admitting in any sense that you actually 
want me to rub your back and feel betrayed that I wouldn't do it would 
humiliate you.  So even if you were inclined to apologize, the fact 
that I was trying to persuade you to do so by offering you something 
you wanted if you apologized made it seem to you that if you apologized 
you were giving in to coercion.  I put you in a position where you were 
forced either to give in on a matter of principle, or to torture 
yourself by refusing.  That is what I'm apologizing for, Q.  Does that 
help?"
	Her insights terrified him sometimes.  It was hard to believe that 
she could only read his mind if she was touching him.  Right now, he 
found her words frightening and reassuring at the same time-- he didn't 
need to tell her what was wrong if she could figure it out and tell 
*him*.  "You missed your calling," he told her, leaning back against 
the headboard and the pillows.  "You should have gone into writing 
detective novels."
	"I don't get any real enjoyment out of detective novels," T'Laren 
said.  "I tend to ignore all the clues to the plot and focus on the 
meta-plot-- I try to figure out who did it based on the author's 
dramatic agenda.  Sadly, it works a good three-fourths of the time."  
She shifted, turning toward him, pulling one leg onto the bed and 
folding it.  "I don't enjoy seeing you in pain, Q.  I'm a healer, and 
only secondarily a teacher-- I haven't the stomach to make you suffer 
for principle's sake, even if I think I'm right.  If you would accept 
it, I'd like to try to do something about your back."
	Q swallowed.  This was what he wanted, what he'd hoped for when he 
let her into his room and let her sit near him, but the act of 
admitting that yes, he did want this paralyzed him.  The humiliation of 
having to ask for help, even help that was offered to him on a silver 
platter, washed over him.  It was almost on the tip of his tongue to 
respond the way he had earlier tonight, with something scathing that 
made it seem as if he was doing her a favor, but he remembered too well 
what had happened when he did that last time.  "I certainly wouldn't 
you want to lose sleep worrying about me," he finally said, striving 
for a light tone and miserably sure he hadn't pulled it off.
	"Lie down," T'Laren said, her tone patiently indulgent, humoring 
him.  He obeyed with alacrity, the tension much worse in the seconds he 
was waiting for her touch.  T'Laren got up and moved around him, to 
where he couldn't see her anymore unless he strained his neck.  He felt 
her weight settle on the bed again, and held himself agonizingly taut 
with anticipation.
	Slowly fingertips pressed into the area just under his neck, 
between shoulderblades and spine, and began to rub.  Q moaned.  It 
hadn't been this bad since the first time, that first night aboard 
Ketaya.  He was going to make a complete fool of himself again, he knew 
it.  But he couldn't bring himself to care overly much.  The easing 
agony in his back as her hands worked slowly down his spine was all he 
could focus on, all he could care about, and while he had a sort of 
abstract fear of admitting his weakness and his need for this, it was a 
far distant concern.
	"This is worse than usual, isn't it," T'Laren asked.
	It was several seconds before he had breath or concentration to 
spare for an answer.  "Yes, much," he gasped.  "*Ohh... *do you know 
why?  Is this... oh... is this normal?"
	"You'd know better than I would," T'Laren said.  "I don't think 
I've ever seen you this bad.  But is this fairly normal for you?"
	"I don't know... I have no concept anymore.  Everything's 
changed."
	"What do you mean?"
	"A little lower... ohh... right there, yes.  Everything's changed, 
is what I mean.  You've corrupted me."
	"In what way?"
	"Tonight... I think it's normal... well, not *normal*, but it's 
usual for me to hurt this much.  Happens all the time.  But I used to 
be able to ignore it more.  And it used to happen a lot more often.  I 
think I remember hurting like this every night... but that can't be 
right.  If that were true, I can assure you there'd have been a lot 
more than three suicide attempts."
	"Were you taking a lot of painkillers?"
	"Li wouldn't let me have enough painkillers.  Ever.  He kept 
saying I'd abuse them."
	"In your medical file, it claims that at one point you were taking 
six tablets of Feranzal a day.  Do you remember doing anything like 
that?"
	"I'm hardly going senile already," Q retorted.  "That was... 
*ahh*... that was when I'd been human for, I don't know, four or five 
months maybe.  After that Li started cutting me off."
	She shifted to her knuckles for the small of his back, digging in 
over a broad band of muscle.  The relief was so intense he almost 
wanted to cry.  "Are you aware that one Ferenzal tablet is the 
recommended dosage for an adult human male?  That if you give most 
humans three tablets, you could cut off their fingers and they'd hardly 
notice?"
	"Well, I didn't start out taking six."
	"What did you take tonight?"
	"What do you mean?"
	"I heard you asking the replicator for something, but I couldn't 
make out what."
	"Prozium lozenges.  And they were totally useless.  Exactly as I 
expected.  Ahh... no, back where you were before.  Right there.  Yes."
	"Prozium lozenges are the strongest things most humans without an 
acute medical condition need, Q.  They're completely useless for you?"
	"Totally.  They worked for maybe a week.  Haven't since.  But any 
port in a storm... I had no idea you would be sensible enough to 
apologize."
	"We have to do something about that," T'Laren said gently, digging 
her thumbs into the small of his back.  "Q, it's not normal for a human 
to be in that much pain all the time.  I think your reactions to pain 
might be finally starting to normalize-- when you first became human, 
you probably had so little tolerance for pain that you abused 
painkillers, to the point where they would never again have a normal 
level of effectiveness for you.  You've probably never been able to 
completely wean yourself from them-- even when Li would cut you off, 
you were too often injured for you to be deprived of painkillers 
entirely.  As a result, you were always suffering withdrawal pangs; Li 
didn't enforce his controls on you consistently enough to be of any 
benefit in stopping your addiction--"
	"I am *not* addicted to painkillers!"
	"Q, you are.  There's no other explanation.  You may not be 
suffering direct physical addiction now, but your body's been 
sensitized.  In the same way that an alcoholic would become fully 
addicted again after just one drink, you keep getting off painkillers 
and then getting addicted to them again because some incredible fool 
prescribes them for you for back pain.  Or you suffer some near-fatal 
injury and end up needing such a huge quantity of drug, given your high 
tolerance to painkillers, that you end up storing the excess in your 
body for months."  She reached down to the back of his legs, just above 
the knees, and began kneading the muscles there gently.  "Does this 
make you uncomfortable?"
	He could not comprehend anything having to do with massage being 
uncomfortable.  "No... why, are you fishing for compliments?  You 
*must* know how good that feels."
	"I meant... well, let me rephrase the whole thing.  Your legs are 
a disaster area, Q.  I'm not entirely done with your back, but I think 
any more work there without dealing with the leg muscles is going to 
produce diminishing returns.  It would be best to do everything-- 
gluteal muscles, legs, feet-- but I know that you're not terribly 
comfortable with touching at all, and a lot of humans would perceive 
any contact with their buttocks and the backs of their thighs as a 
sexual touch.  I don't intend anything sexual, but I don't want you to 
feel any sort of discomfort in that way at all."
	She was right.  If it meant she had to touch him near his groin, 
even if it was on the back of his body, he wasn't at all sure he would 
be comfortable with it.  On the other hand, what she was doing felt 
wonderful, and the moment she made the suggestion he could feel the 
tension in the upper part of his legs, begging for something to soothe 
it.  "I don't have to take off my clothes, do I?"
	"As usual, though it would be more effective if you did, it isn't 
necessary."
	He thought about it.  But it was more or less a foregone 
conclusion.  After all, if she did something he didn't like, he could 
always stop her.  Q took a deep breath.  "If you must," he said, 
meaning yes, please.
	T'Laren shifted position on the bed.  She moved back up to his 
lower back, to the line where back became buttocks, and dug her fingers 
in slowly.  Q made a half-hearted attempt not to moan with relief, 
failed, and decided he didn't really care.  He hadn't been consciously 
aware of the intensity of the pain in his lower back and leg muscles-- 
he'd known his lower back hurt, but he'd thought the biggest problem 
was the upper back and neck area.  Now he realized that the pain had 
gone deep enough that somehow he had stopped noticing it-- how long had 
it been this way?  He had been in a generally good mood over the past 
few days, he couldn't remember being in a lot of pain-- had all this 
happened while he was in the brig?  He was going to absolutely kill 
LeBeau.  How dared she cause something like this to happen to him?  Who 
did she think she was?
	"I don't understand what happened today," he confessed, talking 
into his pillow as she worked her way down.
	"Which of the various things that happened today do you mean?"
	For a moment he was irritated.  What did she *think* he meant?  
Then she found a particularly unpleasant knot and started working it 
out gently, and he temporarily lost the ability to be genuinely 
irritated with her about anything.  "LeBeau," he gasped.  "How could 
she be so... fragile?  If human bones break *that* easily, how could 
she have been stupid enough to hit me?... for that matter, *why* did 
they arrest *me* when she hit me first?... Is it a gender thing, or 
simply a 'Q must be the bad guy because he always is' thing?"
	"Human bones aren't that fragile.  I'd think you'd have more 
experience than I would with exactly how fragile humans are."
	"That's what I don't understand... I'm hardly some hulking 
bruiser.  I wasn't *trying* to hurt her... how could it be so easy that 
I could do it by accident?"
	"Because you're a lot stronger than you think you are."  She had 
worked her way past his buttocks now, and now was gently kneading the 
back and outer sides of his thighs.  He was almost dizzy with relief, 
the sensations making him lose track of where exactly his body was.  
When he closed his eyes, he felt sudden lapses of proprioception, up 
temporarily becoming down and a sensation of weightlessness, dizzy 
bodilessness.  The sensations always faded the moment he moved, and 
would fade by themselves if he didn't, but he found them intensely 
pleasurable, if a little frightening.  As a human, sensations of 
dizziness and weightlessness were usually associated with falling, or 
being about to lose consciousness, or other not entirely pleasant 
circumstances, but he was more than a human and the brief inability to 
feel the boundaries of his physical body in space felt to him like 
brief moments of freedom from having a physical body at all.  And then 
when he came back to himself, it was usually to the exquisite sensation 
of a protesting muscle being forced to relax itself.  Q whimpered with 
pleasure as she started working on the back of his calves.  "I don't 
think I've seen you this bad since our first night on *Ketaya.  *You 
haven't been working out at all since we arrived at the conference, 
have you?"
	"You haven't been dragging me off to the gym for torture sessions, 
no."
	"This is the result," T'Laren said seriously.  "Q, I'm sorry.  
I've been entirely too preoccupied with my personal concerns.  I should 
have made sure you continued your exercise regimen."
	"I was always pulling some muscle or other.  I don't see how this 
could be-- ohh-- worse."
	"But it is, isn't it?  When you pulled a muscle from exertion, 
we'd massage it or soak it out right there.  You never had to walk 
around for days with it."  Abruptly she abandoned his legs entirely and 
moved up to his arms, which were stretched over his head, largely 
burrowed under his pillow.  She grasped his upper arms before he could 
think to stop her, and began squeezing them gently, rubbing the muscles 
with her thumbs as she used her palms and lower fingers to apply 
rhythmic pressure.  "You feel that?"
	She couldn't mean the obvious answer-- of course he felt it, it 
was exquisite, he hadn't even realized his arm muscles were tense, but 
T'Laren wasn't in the habit of asking rhetorical questions and that was 
entirely too stupid a question to be anything but rhetorical if that 
was supposed to be the answer.  So she meant something else.  "What... 
exactly am I supposed to be feeling?"  he gasped.
	"You have a lot more muscle density in your upper arms than you 
did a few weeks ago."
	"Surely... not strong enough to break a human arm.  I'm *not* some 
musclebound cretin."
	"Being physically strong doesn't preclude intelligence, Q.  My 
people believe that one heightens the other.  Besides, I think the 
reason you were able to break Dr. LeBeau's arm had very little to do 
with strength."  She released his arms and went back to his calves, 
working her way down to his feet.  
	"My leverage wasn't *that* good."
	She peeled off his right slipper, startling him.  For a moment he 
wanted to protest-- being stripped of any of his clothing, even 
something as innocuous as a slipper, disturbed him.  Then she started 
massaging the foot, using her thumb on the arch and fingertips on the 
top of the foot, working out yet more tensions he hadn't realized he 
had, and he decided he didn't want to protest after all.  Instead, he 
rolled over, pulling his foot free of T'Laren for just long enough to 
turn himself face up, and then dumping it back in her lap with alacrity 
so she wouldn't think he was trying to stop her from doing this.
	"When I taught you self-defense, I assumed that anyone who'd be 
trying to kill you, anyone you would need to defend yourself from, 
would be a trained killer.  I wanted you to know how to disable someone 
quickly, before they had a chance to hurt you, so you'd have time to 
get away or call for help.  To be honest, it never entered my mind that 
someone who *wasn't* a trained killer would attack you that way."  He 
thought perhaps she was really saying, "it never entered my mind that 
you'd be stupid enough to retaliate like that against someone who only 
slapped you," and he felt a surge of anger and guilt, but it was 
impossible to hold onto in the face of the exquisite sensations in his 
foot.  "You broke Dr. LeBeau's arm because that's what I taught you to 
do."  She sounded saddened.  Perhaps she did feel guilty for what she'd 
done to him, after all.
	"I don't think so... that wasn't what I was trying to do.  I just 
wanted to stop her from hitting me."
	"What exactly did you do?"
	"I grabbed her arm and pulled it out of the way.  I didn't mean to 
break it.  I can't imagine how I did that."
	She let go of his foot.  Before he could complain, she had pulled 
the other one onto her leg, and began the same procedure she'd 
performed on the first foot.  Q closed his eyes against another wave of 
pleasurable dizziness.  Perhaps he was going to fall asleep right here.
	"Tomorrow we'll go to the holodeck, and you can show me exactly 
what you did.  We can figure out a way you can defend yourself against 
people you think might want to beat you up without hurting them badly 
should you have misjudged the situation.  Sometimes it's very difficult 
to estimate a dangerous situation like that.  You might think you're in 
no danger at all, and then someone hauls off and hits you.  Or you 
might think you're in immediate danger of losing your life, and it 
turns out the other person was all bluster.  The best thing to do is 
have a few techniques in your repertoire for stopping people without 
hurting them.  Then if you need to hurt them after all to stop them, 
you still have the freedom to do that."
	"Everyone automatically assumes I'm the villain," he said sulkily.  
"Even if I knew some way to stop people with hurting them badly, they'd 
probably throw me in the brig for attempted assault."
	"It's a number of factors causing that, unfortunately.  Your 
reputation doesn't actively include a tendency toward physical 
violence, but people don't think of you as either friendly or harmless.  
And I doubt you'd want them to.  But that means, with your physical 
size, the fact that you're male, and the fact that you don't go out of 
your way to make allies, that if you get into a physical altercation 
with someone much smaller than you, or female, or especially both, it's 
going to be assumed that you're to blame.  People can't actually see 
you for what you are, Q.  They try to fit you into preconceived boxes.  
And there's a box for human men who are so miserable with their lives 
that they beat up human women.  It's easier for them to put you in that 
box than it is for them to empathize with you, especially when you try 
to hide your own feelings of guilt and horror."
	"Guilt?  What do *I* have to feel guilty about?"
	"You didn't intend to hurt LeBeau, certainly not as badly as you 
did.  You felt guilt for hurting her worse than you intended, and 
probably shame for stooping to physical violence at all.  Didn't you?"
	"You're the mindreader."
	"No, I'm the mystery novel reader, remember?"
	He smiled at that.  "I thought you didn't find them enough of a 
challenge for you."
	"Some are more challenging than others."  She let go of his foot.  
"Turn over."
	"Why?"
	"So I can finish with your back."
	He'd thought she *was* finished, but wasn't about to complain.  
"Why do we have to go to a holodeck?"
	"Because I don't want you breaking *my* arm."
	"Yes, but people have such tawdry little minds.  If they think I'm 
in the habit of beating up women because I defended myself, what are 
they going to think if I go to a holodeck with you?"
	"They'll think it's part of your therapy," T'Laren said dryly.  
"Q, I don't know where you got the notion that most people think the 
holodeck is for sex.  Certainly, some people use it for that, but most 
of what it's used for is to recreate environments that people in space 
can't easily get to, or that wouldn't be particularly safe to create.  
Besides, not only does everyone know I'm your therapist, I'm a Vulcan.  
The notion that I might have sexual designs on you would be 
inconceivable to most people."
	"But these people know you."
	"Tris knows me, and he also knows I don't molest my patients."
	"What about Sovaz?"
	"Quite aside from the fact that Vulcans don't jump to unsupported 
conclusions about other people's sex lives, Sovaz is pre-pubescent.  
The notion that I would have sex with anyone other than her brother 
will simply never occur to her."
	"*Pre-pubescent?*"  Admittedly the girl was young, but how the 
hell had she gotten to be a lieutenant in Starfleet if she was *that* 
young?
	"We don't mature quite the same way humans do-- we develop into 
physiological adults before we mature sexually.  It has to do with the 
development of telepathy, and certain natural cycles.  Sovaz will start 
thinking about choosing a mate in the next five years or so."
	"Oh."  Not like he cared anyway.  Q certainly did not find 
children sexually attractive, no matter how charmingly naive.  Not that 
he found anyone sexually attractive, but if he did, he would be 
interested in people with considerably more maturity.  Physical 
attractiveness and intelligence were simply not sufficient 
requirements.  A certain degree of life experience would be required, 
and the ability to understand Q's wit... and the ability to give really 
good backrubs.  Definitely would be a requirement.  And... why was he 
thinking about this?  With a start, Q yanked his mind away from the 
dangerous paths it had begun to wander down.  It must be because he was 
tired.  He'd had a strenuous day.
	"I should have picked Vulcan," he mumbled.  "You people don't jump 
to stupid conclusions all the time."
	"You wouldn't have done very well as a Vulcan.  You don't have the 
training and you don't have family.  Humans without family are fairly 
normal, given the mobility of the human population; Vulcans without 
family are lost."
	There was something wistful in her voice.  Even as tired as he 
was, preoccupied as he was with his own problems, he couldn't miss 
that.  "Personal experience?"
	"My human mother is still alive, although she probably thinks I'm 
dead.  Most of my Vulcan father's family still live."
	Clearly, that wasn't enough.  He couldn't understand why she kept 
rejecting Sovaz, then.  He knew, now, what it was like to be alone.  
Despite himself, he felt an odd protectiveness toward her, born of 
gratitude-- she was isolated, too, and yet she spent her time trying to 
save him, instead of trying to put together the wreckage of her own 
life.  How very foolish of her.  How illogical.
	"It wasn't your fault," he murmured.
	"Pardon?"
	"That they threw me in the brig.  You couldn't have known that was 
going to happen."
	Her fingers reached up to his temples and rubbed them.  He sagged 
deeper into the bed, convinced that all his bones were gone.  "Thank 
you," she said gently.
	"For what?"  he asked, suddenly embarrassed.  If she was going to 
get mushy on him because he'd tried to reassure her that it wasn't her 
fault...
	But she didn't answer the question, or acknowledge it in any way.  
The pleasurable dark dizziness overwhelmed him again, and this time he 
recognized it as the onset of sleep.  "It's very late," she said.  "How 
do you feel?"
	He tried to answer that he felt fine, but he was too tired to 
muster up the strength to talk and so it came out as an unintelligible 
mumble.  He couldn't sleep with her in the room, was fighting to stay 
awake against the dark tide.  He didn't dare sleep with someone else in 
the room, even someone he trusted, otherwise he might get used to it 
and then he wouldn't wake up when they came in anymore.  He had to 
enforce complete isolation when he tried to sleep, as lonely as it made 
him sometimes.  
	"That seems to have been effective," she said, a slight edge of 
amusement to her voice.  "Good night, Q."
	He was asleep before she even left.
			*				*				*