Only Human by Alara Rogers    
    
Part III: Yamato    
    
It's the incredible mutating disclaimer, here for one post only-- catch  
it while it lasts! 
 
I'm going to assume right off the bat that you know what ONLY HUMAN is  
and you've been following it.  If you haven't been, brief description: Q  
lost his powers, never got them back, is deeply depressed and is roaming  
the galaxy with a Vulcan psychologist.  If that intrigues you, go get the  
rest of the story at ftp.netcom.com /pub/al/aleph/trek, 'cause this  
section sure as hell doesn't stand on its own. 
 
Now that we've got that out of the way... 
 
Those of you who've been following ONLY HUMAN know that it is, among  
other things, about the human condition, *all* aspects of the human  
condition.  I've gone from the sublime and philosophical (discussions of  
the meaning of death) to the gross and disgusting (Q accidentally peeing on  
himself and then throwing up all over the bathroom).  So it shouldn't  
surprise anyone that sooner or later, I'd tackle sex. 
 
This section is not going to be the only section that deals explicitly  
with sexual themes.  It's not even going to be the most explicit.  But it  
is the *first* section that deals explicitly with sexual themes, so I  
thought I'd warn you.  In my opinion, it contains nothing unsuitable for  
children over the age of 12, most of whom are probably intimately  
acquainted with the phenomena I describe in here, especially if they're  
boys :-).  However, it probably should be kept out of the hands of  
impressionable Congresspersons.  And if you are the sort of person who  
finds the notion that Star Trek characters might have sexual feelings  
offensive... then you probably find the notion that they urinate and  
vomit offensive too, and I lost you in the first chapter. :-) 
 
To the extent that I can, I will mark those sections that deal with sex,  
as I will mark those sections that deal with violence.  But ONLY HUMAN is  
a very, very long story, and I'm not going to rate the thing NC-17 and  
dump it on the erotica board for the sake of what's going to be a very  
small percentage of the total story.  It is, like any regular SF novel  
you'd pick up at Waldenbooks, a novel-- if you pick up a book at  
Waldenbooks, you certainly don't find it in the porno section because it  
has a handful of sex scenes and some disturbingly violent bits (which  
are, for those who *that* offends or disturbs, much further down the  
road, so you're safe for now.)  And if it ends up spoiling some sort of  
plot surprise to put a disclaimer on a section, I am not going to spoil  
my plot. :-) So there, Congress.  
    
             *                   *                    *      
	He awakened that night from the midst of an intense dream, heart 
pounding, his body sheened with sweat... and certain other, 
uncomfortable, physical symptoms.
	Q cursed, and sat up angrily.  The memory of the dream lingered, 
affecting him far more than he liked, disturbing him deeply.  It wasn't 
enough that he had to have horrible dreams, but that he had to dream 
about *that?*
	This was the worst kind.  Q had become inured to nightmares long 
ago.  He would wake up, heart pounding, call for lights and reassure 
himself that it had only been a dream-- change pajamas if they were too 
sweaty, take a shower if required, listen to music or work or do 
something to get his mind off the dream.  They weren't real, and when 
he managed to assure himself of that, he could recover from the fear 
they engendered.  He'd had to learn to-- even with the sedatives he 
took, Q woke with nightmares more often than not.
	The Continuum dreams were worse, but usually only when they 
occurred just before he had to get up.  Incidents like what happened 
the first night aboard Ketaya were rare; most of the time, if Q woke up 
from a Continuum dream, he tried his best to get back to sleep and 
recapture it.  When he was awake, he found it somewhat shameful that he 
would so blatantly try to cling to a comforting fantasy instead of 
waking up and facing reality; Q enjoyed fantasy as much as the next 
person, or had when he'd had his powers, at least, but only truly 
pathetic weaklings fled from the lives they were leading into flights 
of fantasy.  When he did it, though, he was usually too close to sleep 
to be able to control himself.  
	No, by far the worst ones were the erotic dreams.  With the 
nightmares, the physical effects he suffered were the aftereffects of 
fear, and easily dealt with.  The effects that erotic dreams engendered 
in him could only be dealt with by engaging in an utterly repulsive 
activity that Q had absolutely no wish to perform, and that nauseated 
him and made him feel pathetic and debased when need drove him to.  And 
*this* particular one... Q might have expected that he'd have dreamed 
about the hologram, or something.  It made sense that his mind would do 
that to him, to take such a senseless image and brutalize him with it.  
But that wasn't what happened.
	Sometimes the dreams were absurd enough that he could keep from 
taking them too seriously.  He hadn't actually believed the one about 
Medellin when he was in it, and the only lingering aftereffects *that* 
one had left him with was disgust.  Sometimes they latched onto 
imaginary people, or people who meant less than nothing to him-- the 
hologram, for instance, or the woman who served snacks one day at one 
of his conferences on Starbase 56.  Those left him with a good portion 
of self-disgust for the utter meaninglessness of the desire, but at 
least they didn't present him with any actual possibilities.  Some of 
the dreams were frighteningly intense, but dealt with people beyond his 
reach-- like Picard, for instance, who would never have wanted to do 
such a thing with Q, even if Q had wanted to, or Data, who probably 
understood the mechanics even less well than Q did, or Keth'wyn, 
Tandoris' defiant sister from the time Q had been Tajitan, Keth'wyn who 
had defied him and intrigued him and who was over a thousand years 
dead.
	Dreaming about T'Laren, though... that was horrible.  She was 
right there, separated from him by a thin wall.  He knew he didn't talk 
in his sleep, because he'd been paranoid enough to record himself a few 
nights, but he did make sounds-- whimpers of fear, moans of... other 
emotions.  It was an obscenity beyond belief that he could have been 
dreaming *that*, about *her*, when she might even have heard him 
moaning, she was so close.  And that wasn't the worst of it either.  Q 
huddled , wrapping his arms around himself, trying to drive out the 
memory, but it was impossible.
	He had dreamed that she'd raped him.  There was no other word for 
it.  And he'd liked it.  She had pinned him down and forced him, doing 
things to him that he should have protested, should have fought off.  
In the dream, he had known this was wrong, had known he shouldn't want 
this.  But he hadn't resisted.  And-- and when he felt himself waking 
up, he had tried to cling to sleep, to perpetuate the obscenity that 
was happening to him.  
	How could he have *done* that?  How could he have wanted it?  Was 
there some dark part of his psyche that wanted to be raped, the way 
male human morons had claimed human women felt for centuries before 
finally getting a clue about two hundred years ago?  And why had his 
subconscious chosen T'Laren to do it?  He knew the real life T'Laren 
would never do such a thing; he wouldn't go near her if he thought she 
would.  He also knew that the real T'Laren thought he was physically 
repulsive and was turned off by his personality, though she was willing 
to accept him as a friend.  Even if her ethics didn't get in the way, 
she couldn't want him.  And that was exactly what he wanted; if he ever 
*did* engage in such base animal behaviors, it would be with someone 
who thought highly of him, not someone who had seen him broken and 
crying and suicidal.  Besides, he was angered that his body's 
unnecessary hormonal reactions might interfere with his ability to 
appreciate T'Laren aesthetically; he didn't *want* to get those sort of 
feelings every time he looked at her if he was going to be spending a 
lot of time in her company.  So why had his mind presented him with 
such images, and *why* had his mind concocted a fantasy in which 
T'Laren forced him?  If the dream had had overtones of horror and fear, 
he might have borrowed a page from T'Laren's own dream interpretation 
book and decided it was representing his fear of her telepathic powers, 
or something.  But there hadn't been anything like that-- just guilt, 
sick excitement, and pleasure.
	Angrily he got up and got dressed.  Sleep was a lost cause right 
now, unless he was willing to do something truly disgusting, which he 
wasn't.  He stalked out of the room-- thank whatever fates there were 
that T'Laren was not in the common room-- and out into the hall, where 
the slightly dimmed lights and scarcity of people proclaimed how late 
it was.  He didn't care.  He'd blow off the conference again tomorrow 
if he had to, but he wasn't going back to the emptiness of his room, 
not now.  It would be courting disaster.
	At this hour, he only passed one or two people in the halls.  And 
that was good-- the last thing he wanted was to deal with people.  At 
the same time, though, the emptiness disturbed him.  It was too quiet, 
too lonely, too much like his bedroom.  If he'd wanted to stay 
someplace quiet and unpopulated, he would have stayed there.
	He found himself at the doors to Ten-Forward, as if he'd been 
pulled there by some unconscious tropism.  It was not where he wanted 
to be, he was sure, but when he thought about it he realized there 
*was* nowhere he wanted to be right now, nowhere in his reach, anyway.  
So he stepped inside.
	On Starbase 56, there'd been a big difference between a lounge and 
a bar.  There were places for the base inhabitants, provided by 
Starfleet, low-key places like this, and then there were privately 
owned places for the transients, places that were grungy and served 
real alcohol.  Q had found the bar the more entertaining of the two 
locales until the Bajoran women beat him up in it; after that, he stuck 
to the lounges.  Ten-Forward, like Guinan's Ten-Forward, was definitely 
a lounge.  
	There had been many, many nights when insomnia and vague needs Q 
couldn't explain had driven him to the lounge, to sit nursing a cup of 
coffee, or several, for hours and stare out the large portholes at the 
stars.  Here there were no portholes, but one entire wall was 
transparent.  Q sat down by it with a coffee, staring sullenly into the 
darkness beyond the transparasteel.
	Human beings had a deep and abiding need for symbols to represent 
that which they could not see.  Q had found that tendency quaintly 
amusing once, and been totally unprepared for the strength of the need 
when he himself became human.  The ineffable nature of the home he'd 
left behind was barely comprehensible to him anymore, its "location"  a 
silly question when posed by a human mind, even one that had once lived 
there.  He needed a symbol to represent his home, and his mind had 
latched onto space, the stars, the inhospitable region in which he now 
traveled.  In morose moods like this, he would stare out at the tiny 
spots of light and see his home in them-- magical, beautiful, 
forevermore out of his reach.  Once he could have reached out his hand 
and grasped those stars, just as easily as he moved through dimensional 
planes between the Continuum and this matter-based universe.  All gone 
now.
	He buried himself in the scent of the coffee, fighting off tears.  
The loneliness, the sense of loss was overwhelming him.  And he 
couldn't turn to T'Laren, couldn't look at her right now, couldn't even 
think of her without his mind turning to that horrid dream, and his 
body reacting to the memory.  But without her to turn to, he was no 
better off than he'd been on Starbase 56.
	Once, very long ago, when he'd been young and stupid, Q had 
experimented with cutting himself off from the Continuum.  They were 
annoying him, demanding that he do this and that and the other thing 
that he didn't really want to do.  And so he had--only for a moment-- 
severed the link.
	What he'd felt then-- aside from the terror-- related to no one 
human sensation directly.  The terror, of course, was very much like 
human terror, or at least he remembered it that way.  But the *reason* 
he felt terror, the sensations he'd experienced, didn't translate 
exactly.  It was like cold, and hunger, and the weakness he got if he 
got angry or overexcited when he had gone without food too long.  It 
was like loneliness, but like a loneliness that could literally kill, a 
loneliness as dangerous and powerful as starvation and hypothermia.
	He had tried to connect back, to re-establish the link, but he 
didn't know how.  Without the power from the Continuum  filling him, 
warming him, he was lost, disoriented and cold, unable to perceive how 
to reach back to them.  Panicked, he had thrown all the power he had 
left into a desperate cry for help.  A few nanoseconds later, one of 
his older siblings had swooped down on him and drawn him back into the 
Continuum, enfolding him, bathing him with warmth and light and telling 
him how many different kinds of idiot he was.  It was one of the last 
transitional events of his childhood-- the brief instant of terror and 
pain had burned a lesson into him, jolted him a step further into 
maturity whether he liked it or not.
	Q felt like that now.  He was cold on the outside, burning up on 
the inside, his skin chilled and desperately hungry, starving for 
something.  The loneliness he felt was something he was more inured to 
than he'd been ten thousand years ago, but no less terrible.  And no 
one was going to swoop down on him, gather him up and comfort him now.  
He wanted-- he wasn't sure what he wanted, since sex was disgusting and 
sordid and the cold hungry loneliness he felt would not be sated by 
touching himself, as mere sexual arousal would be.  Sexual arousal was 
a part of it, a different kind of hungry ache, a heat at his core and 
between his legs to contrast against the cold hunger for warmth he felt 
everywhere else-- but it wasn't all there was.  And that was confusing-
- he didn't know whether to fight it or not, didn't know what he *was* 
fighting.  If someone offered him what he wanted, would he even know 
that that was it?
	But it hardly mattered what he wanted, after all.  Since he wasn't 
going to get it, now was he?
	"Do you mind if I join you?"  a voice behind him asked.
	Q didn't turn to look at the interloper.  "Yes."
	He heard a chair being pulled back, felt someone sitting down at 
the table, and turned his head angrily.  "Do you have a hearing 
problem?"
	"Most likely," Elejani Baii said.  
	"I don't want to talk to you."
	"I may not be your ideal choice, but I'm better than no one."
	"Hardly.  Now go away."
	"You prefer staring out the window into space and contemplating 
suicide?"
	"Yes.  Go away."
	"I would go away if that was what you really wanted," Elejani Baii 
said.  "But since you're only saying that so you don't have to admit 
that what you want is to talk to someone, I think you would really 
prefer it if I stayed."
	Q stared at her, outraged.  Humiliation swept over him as he 
remembered that Elejani Baii was an empath.  "Get out of my head," he 
told her icily.
	"I'm not in your head.  You're shouting, and I can't help it that 
I'm not deaf."
	"Don't you have mental shields or something?"
	"Yes, of course.  They work wonderfully to stop other empaths from 
sensing my emotions.  But they're not very good at keeping other 
people's voices out."  She shrugged.  "I tried not to listen, but your 
mental voice is very loud."
	"Why would that be?  I have no psionic abilities."
	"Psionic abilities only give you the ability to consciously 
modulate what you're broadcasting.  The rest of it is force of 
personality."  She smiled.
	Well.  Reluctantly he admitted that that made sense-- in the 
Continuum, force of personality and loudness of mental "voice"  *were* 
closely related.  And he undoubtedly had a more powerful personality 
than most of these bland little creatures.  "I'm tremendously sorry if 
my depression inconveniences you, then," he said in his most sarcastic 
voice.
	"I owe you far too much to feel that you are inconveniencing me," 
she said simply.
	"Is this more of that 'I saved your silly little planet' 
nonsense?"  Q asked harshly.  "That wasn't me.  I let you think so 
because it amused me, but it isn't amusing anymore."
	"Who was it then?"
	He didn't think she believed him.  Had he slipped that far?  
Certainly he could still tell a convincing lie, couldn't he?  "My 
people are closely interrelated mentally, far more than you can 
imagine.  It *was* a Q-- it just wasn't *me*.  Of course, your empathy 
is a sufficiently primitive sense that you'd be unable to detect the 
distinction there."
	"Do you remember your first meeting with Captain Picard?"
	"What does Picard have to do with this?"
	Elejani Baii smiled.  "The emotional resonance you present when 
you think of your first meeting with Picard is very similar to what you 
presented when I described the deeds of Emaroth.  Either you *were* 
Emaroth, then, or you identify with the being who was so closely that 
you may as well be her.  One way or the other, then, I owe you."
	"I didn't do it for you," Q retorted nastily.  "I did it because I 
was bored and you people were boring, and boring creatures should not 
be allowed to exist.  I decided I was going to make you look up from 
your shallow, complacent little lives and start being of interest to 
someone whether you liked it or not.  I had no grand benevolent 
motives, and I am *not* interested in being worshipped."
	"Oh, I know," Elejani Baii assured him.  "I worshipped you when I 
was a child, but I don't see you as a god right now... or a demon or 
anything of the sort.  I'm well aware that you're a person who happened 
to belong to a far more advanced species, but still a person.  But 
regardless of whether you had grand benevolent motives or not, you were 
very important to my life-- I don't even mean the fact that you saved 
my people from a supernova and that therefore I wouldn't exist without 
you; that's important, of course, but not my greatest consideration."
	Q was somewhat bewildered.  "I don't recall having done anything 
else of great note in your planet's history."  
	"My people are extremely boring," Elejani Baii said.  "You are 
completely correct.  When I was a child, there was no outlet for the 
dreamers, for people who wished to explore and question.  They told us 
space was your domain, and if we encroached on it you would carry us 
off to hell.  I felt sure that hell would be better than my life then, 
so I researched you, and the events of three thousand years ago, and I 
felt sure you weren't the monster they claimed you were.  Space was 
full of suns just like our own.  When we fled Old Laon, we encountered 
other species in our travels, who lived on worlds that orbited those 
suns, worlds like the one we came to.  What then was hellish about 
space?  And you, when I read between the lines of the records, had 
placed a premium on individual thought and then carried the thinkers 
off with you.  I couldn't believe that thought was evil or dangerous.  
So I decided you were more like an angel, come to guide us to the next 
step of our evolution, and that you'd taken those who passed your tests 
to a far more interesting place.  I used to pray to you to come take 
me."  She smiled.
	In some ways, Elejani Baii was clearly demonstrating how much she 
was like other mortals, how little clue she'd had as to what had really 
gone on.  In other respects, she seemed frighteningly close to the 
truth.  In all his human existence, Q had never met anyone who'd 
thought of him as a benevolent god, and it made him obscurely fearful.  
"You must have been terribly disappointed when I didn't," he drawled 
coolly.
	"But you *did*-- indirectly.  The Scamarans came back to us, and 
brought the Federation and the stars.  At the time I thought you'd 
planned that."
	"Nothing of the sort," he protested, about to come up with 
something scathing.  She interrupted.
	"I know that now," she said patiently.  "I thought you were a god 
then, that you were watching us still.  I know better now.  But it was 
still your doing, don't you see?  If I had grown up on Old Laon, before 
your coming, what would I have had even to dream about, or to wish for?  
You kept me alive in a world so numbingly empty it would have crushed 
my soul.  It was not your plan to do so, perhaps, and certainly it was 
not for my benefit in particular, but that makes my gratitude to you no 
less."
	"This is terribly sweet, but what makes you think I want to hear 
your life story?"  Q asked sarcastically.
	"Too late, I'm done,"  Elejani Baii said brightly.  "And it isn't 
that I thought you wanted to hear my life story, it's that I wanted you 
to know that of all the people in the galaxy who seem to hate you for 
what you were, one person at least feels gratitude to you."  She leaned 
forward slightly, placing her hands flat on the table, very slightly 
over the midline into his half.  "You have someone to turn to should 
you... need anything."
	"You don't have anything I need," Q retorted.
	"Perhaps not.  I merely make the offer."  She looked directly into 
his eyes.  "It may well be that if you think about it, you will find 
there are things you need, or even that would merely make you more 
comfortable, that I *can* help you with.  And it would make me very 
happy to do so."
	Was he imagining things?  As keyed up as he was from the dream, he 
could easily be mistaken, could be reading her wrong-- she *couldn't* 
mean what he thought she meant.  Could she?
	"I'm not interested in charity," he said harshly.
	"Neither am I.  But I'm an empath.  And a Laon'l," Elejani Baii 
said in an amused tone of voice.  "Perhaps you don't remember quite 
*how* dull our lives are.  I've discovered, since leaving my homeworld, 
that there's a host of things that humans and most other species can 
experience, but that I can only feel if someone else experiences them, 
someone I am... close to.  Naturally, I would like to show my gratitude 
toward someone I owe so much... but it would not be mere gratitude.  I 
cannot help but feel what those I'm close to feel... when I do favors 
for people, I get out exactly as much as I put in.  Do you see what I'm 
saying?"
	He was very much afraid that he did.  Q's mouth was dry, his heart 
pounding.  Harry Roth flirted with him, but Q didn't take that 
seriously-- it was a game to Harry, at least when he wasn't drunk, and 
it was certainly no more than a game to Q.  This was different.  If he 
were reading Elejani Baii correctly, this was the first real verbal 
proposition he had ever received, and it terrified him.  His eyes were 
glued to the petite form of the woman before him, the fluffy, short 
white hair and soft features, the huge golden eyes and delicate, 
exposed shoulders, mouth curved in an understated but almost certainly 
inviting smile.  Was she mocking him?  He couldn't tell.  He couldn't 
trust himself, and she knew everything he was feeling, could drag it 
out and humiliate him with it at any moment.
	"I'm afraid not," he said, trying to be cold, although it was hard 
to do it right when his mouth was so dry.  He pushed back his chair.  
"Perhaps if I had the vaguest idea what you were talking about, your 
offer might intrigue me, but I confess I'm too bored with this 
conversation to puzzle it out."
	She slid out of her chair and stood.  "Perhaps it will come to you 
at a later date," she suggested.  "If so, my offer will still be open.  
If you need anything... anything at all... I would be delighted to help 
you."
	It was a common enough cliché, but the way she said it, it sounded 
as if she meant it.  But she couldn't possibly.  And even if she did, 
he couldn't risk it.  Q stood there and gazed at her with a forbidding 
stony mask on his face, dismally aware that she knew about the conflict 
under that mask perfectly well, and feeling like he had when he was a 
child and hadn't mastered shielding himself and his older siblings were 
constantly invading his head and making rude comments about what they 
found there.  Elejani Baii made no rude comments, though.  She simply 
bowed slightly to him and left.
	As soon as she was gone, Q sat back down and put his head in his 
hands, trying not to moan.  She *had* meant it, he was sure of it.  His 
body was screaming at him that he was seven different kinds of fool for 
letting her go, that he should call her back, go to her room-- she'd 
just *told* him she wanted to.  And so many people had tortured him and 
tried to kill him for who he used to be-- would it be so terribly wrong 
to accept gratitude from the one person in the universe who felt it for 
him?
	Yes.  It would be wrong, and even if it wasn't wrong, it would be 
abysmally stupid.  Elejani Baii didn't know him, knew nothing about him 
except that once he had harried and herded and helped her people.  She 
knew him as Daisheneon Emaroth in an alien body, the goddess/demon she 
had believed in as a child-- not Q, the human.  His humanity, his 
fallibility would disgust her, if she expected a god.  People didn't 
react well when they learned their idols were mere clay.  There was no 
way he could ever show his vulnerability to someone who looked up to 
him, someone who thought highly of him, who had never seen him broken 
and crying and suicidal.  The disappointment would be too great for 
her, and she would turn it against him, and destroy him for not being a 
god.
	No, he'd done the right thing in telling her to leave.  So why did 
he regret it so much?
	
	He saw no choice but to return to his room-- there was nothing for 
him out here, and he didn't want to be subjected to an endless parade 
of people asking him what was wrong.  It was unlikely he'd be able to 
sleep, but maybe if he read, or listened to music, or something, he 
could drag his mind away from its current painful obsessions.
	As the door slid open, he heard heavy breathing.  Horrified, he 
stepped inside.  A scantily clad T'Laren, body sheened with sweat, was 
in the common room, exercising.
	She was doing this on purpose.  She had to be.  The timing was far 
too diabolical otherwise.  "*What* do you think you're doing?"  he 
snapped.
	"Exercising.  Why?"
	"I would *appreciate* it if you would refrain from such a 
disgusting display in my presence," he told her, his voice as cold and 
vicious as he could make it.
	"I wasn't in your presence when I started," she replied mildly.
	"You were in my room, were you not?  What compels you to strip 
away all vestiges of civilization and sentience and comport yourself 
like an animal, grunting and sweating as if you had no higher brain 
functions at all?  What do you think you are, a Klingon?"
	"Did you know that you actually sound hysterical?"  T'Laren asked.  
"I don't think I've ever heard you sounding this shrill."
	"I am *not* *shrill*!!"  Q forced his voice back down to its 
normal register.  "What do you expect?  I come back to my room after a 
bout with insomnia, only to be confronted with this hideous display.  
Did you truly think I *wanted* to see you in such repulsive condition?"
	"I truly didn't care what you thought one way or the other, as I 
assumed you were in your room asleep."
	"Then did it ever occur to you that these animalistic behaviors of 
yours might actually wake me up?"
	"Since I've done this nearly every night since we came to Yamato, 
and you haven't complained yet, the evidence suggested not."
	"Well, put an end to it.  *Now.*"  He couldn't look at her.  Her 
body was all power and grace, long and exquisitely honed, the sort of 
beauty that came from a perfect marriage of form and function.  He had 
never considered the notion that physical power might have any 
aesthetic component to it.  Or that his body would respond so strongly 
to that aesthetic component, betraying him cruelly.  
	"You realize that you're being totally unreasonable, of course."
	"*I'm* being unreasonable?  You're the one parading around half-
naked in *my room*!"
	T'Laren picked up a robe from where she'd apparently tossed it on 
the couch and shrugged it on.  "Does this protect your delicate 
sensibilities?"  she asked dryly.
	She hadn't shut the robe properly.  The top of the square-cut 
halter showed clearly, and the lines under the halter that demarcated 
the swell of her breasts.  The bottom of the robe parted to display the 
bottom of her shorts and entirely too much leg.  Q swallowed and turned 
away.  "Barbarian.  I don't know why I expect civilized behavior out of 
you."
	He stomped off to his room, entirely too late.  The image of 
T'Laren in her halter and shorts was burnt into his brain, along with a 
horrid recurring image looping as if he were a poorly programmed 
computer, of the halter and shorts spontaneously disintegrating, and 
what lay beneath-- no.  No, that was utterly disgusting.  Q flung 
himself on the bed, trying to shut down his mind.  He wouldn't think 
about that.  He wouldn't.  Even if T'Laren did go about wearing 
ridiculously skimpy clothes, he had no right to undress her in his 
head, and besides which, he didn't want to.  It was wrong, and 
disgusting, and beneath his dignity...
	...and he couldn't stop.
	Q bit back a moan, realizing he'd been defeated, when he found 
himself pressing against the bed in a disgustingly familiar pattern.  
There was no way he was going to get to sleep.  Too many things had 
conspired against him to make him need, to awaken this body's instincts 
in ways he much preferred to remain dormant.  There was nothing left he 
could do.
	Since he was the primary occupant of the suite, he had a door 
directly into the suite's bathroom.  The fact that it opened as he 
approached indicated there was no one else inside; once he entered, the 
computer would automatically lock both sides, and require a voice 
command from him or his departure to unlock the doors again.  T'Laren 
couldn't walk in on him here, and she couldn't hear him either.  Not 
after he turned on the sonic shower, anyway.
	Back on Starbase 56, Security had had a habit of barging into Q's 
bedroom.  Sometimes they did it to annoy or frighten him, but most 
often it was because of a legitimate false alarm (or for that matter a 
legitimate real alarm)-- the computer, programmed to respond to Q's 
cries for help, had sometimes sent distress signals to Security when he 
was in the middle of a nightmare, or when he'd just stubbed his toe.  
He had never truly felt he had privacy there.  However, even Security 
wouldn't barge into the bathroom without trying to contact him and ask 
if he was all right.  Which was just as well, as the bathroom was also 
the only sanitary place for disposing of bodily wastes, and that was 
exactly what he perceived himself to be doing.  Nothing but a form of 
urination that was entirely optional and avoidable, or should have 
been, anyway.
	He leaned against the shower wall, feeling the sound waves bathe 
him and strip away the sweat and filth that covered his body.  There 
was no way T'Laren would hear anything-- the sonic frequency Q had set 
the shower to was one that was quite audible to Vulcans.  He'd checked.  
So even if she could hear through the bathroom door, all she'd be able 
to hear was the shower.  He was safe.
	Even so, he fought to keep from moaning as his hand moved of its 
own volition, soothing swollen flesh.  This shouldn't feel good.  It 
was a human weakness that it did, just as it was a human weakness that 
eating and sleeping felt good, his body trying to break him to the 
level of the mere human it was through pleasure/pain conditioning.  Q 
was not Pavlov's dog, though, and refused the conditioning.  This 
didn't feel good, he didn't want to be doing this, and he most 
*especially* didn't wish it was T'Laren doing it instead... 
	...but his body would not brook such defiance.  It invaded his 
mind with images, surfacing out of the dark haze of pleasure and guilt 
swirling through his mind... images of T'Laren.  He saw her naked, saw 
her kissing him, stroking his back and his chest, touching him in the 
way he was doing to himself now.  Q couldn't get rid of the images, 
couldn't even properly fight them.  And even though what he was doing 
should satisfy him, had always gotten rid of the need in the past, 
tonight there was an entirely different component to the longing.  It 
wasn't enough that he wanted this.  No, he wanted someone specific to 
be doing it, someone who he had shouted at less than ten minutes ago 
and who was merely on the other side of a door from him, and he 
couldn't have her any more than he could have anyone.  But he had never 
wanted a specific person this badly before, certainly never someone so 
close within reach.  The sensations coursing through him were like a 
refined torture, because they couldn't give him what he really wanted, 
couldn't truly satisfy him.
	With a half-sob, Q gave into the fantasy, letting his human brain 
construct whatever scenarios it wished in whatever degree of vividness 
it chose without even trying to fight it anymore.  Tears ran from 
tightly closed eyes as his free hand roamed his body, feeding the 
fantasy with touches and caresses that he imagined came from her.  He 
imagined her pressing into him, hot, dry skin against his cooler, 
sweat-soaked flesh, warming him; imagined her lips pressing against 
his, like the way some giddy and probably drunk young woman had kissed 
him after they'd defeated the Borg and he'd never seen her again or 
learned her name or cared.  T'Laren's hand was between his legs, 
stroking him, and her other hand was playing with his nipple, and he 
moaned as the need broke and release swept over him, entirely in the 
grip of the impossible fantasy.
	And then reality sank back in, all the crueler for his brief 
attempt to deny it.  T'Laren was not here.  He was standing naked in 
the shower, having just debauched himself nauseatingly, and worse, 
allowed himself to fantasize about debauching someone else.  What a 
pathetic, miserable, disgusting little lump of flesh he was.  What had 
ever possessed him to think he still retained any of the higher 
qualities he'd had as a Q?  He was far, far worse than the humans.  At 
least they betrayed no higher aspirations when they fulfilled their 
biological imperatives.  It was, after all, the job of a mortal to 
reproduce itself.  One couldn't blame them for that.  But one could 
blame *him* for engaging in such a useless and disgusting activity.  He 
couldn't reproduce himself if he wanted to.  He couldn't form intimate 
connections with other mortals, either, the other thing they used sex 
for.  All he could do was make a pitiful fool of himself pretending 
he'd formed a connection with someone, when that someone demonstrably 
had no such interest in him.
	A sob forced its way out of his throat.  Q fell to his knees in 
the shower, eyes closed, reaching out to steady himself against the 
wall as more sobs welled up in him.  He was so lonely.  It had been 
three years since he'd known the companionship of his own kind, and 
even if he wanted to reach out to his fellow mortals, he didn't know 
how, or what good it would do him.  He was entirely too pathetic to 
have friends.  He was unattractive and unappealing, and he knew it, and 
yet he indulged in disgusting fantasies about mortals wanting him.  How 
ridiculous could you get?  If anyone knew how low he'd sunk, they would 
laugh their heads off.  
	And look at him now.  This was a new low of pitifulness, crying in 
the shower because he wanted to have sex with someone and they could 
never possibly want him.  Black despair rolled over Q in a dark wave, 
drowning him.  No matter what he did, what he tried to do or not to do, 
he just kept sinking lower and lower.  Why couldn't he accept the 
unavoidable?  Why couldn't he perceive his human life as the time-
marking it was, and concentrate on getting through it and getting the 
Continuum to give him his powers back, instead of making a fool of 
himself wanting things he couldn't possibly have and hated himself for 
wanting in the first place?  He wrapped his arms around his knees and 
sobbed, rocking back and forth in an unconscious attempt to soothe 
himself, but his pain would not be soothed.  He was a miserable 
pathetic little person and he hated himself.  
	*Was this what you wanted to show me?  Was this the big lesson I 
was supposed to learn?  That, if you strip away my connection to the 
Continuum and my powers and my immortality, I'm even more pathetic and 
disgusting than a human being?  You wanted to show me how unfit I 
always really was to be a Q, was that it?*
	*Well, it worked.  I've learned my lesson.  Congratulations.  
You've convinced me.  I'm scum and I always was.  Are you happy now?  
You wanted me to admit it, didn't you?*
	A renewed wave of sobbing hit him, as he followed the despair out 
to its logical conclusion.  *Which means... you'll never take me back, 
will you?  If I was always unworthy, you couldn't possibly pollute the 
species by letting me come back.  You're going to leave me here to rot, 
to suffer in boredom and loneliness and the knowledge you've given me 
of my own unworthiness, and I'm never ever going to be one of you 
again...*
	*Why can't you just kill me then!  Or at least let me do it 
myself... oh, Q, why did you ever let me be born at all?*