Only Human by Alara Rogers  
  
Part III: Yamato  
  
Brand new! Never before seen! A new section in the ongoing saga of ONLY
HUMAN, the story that ate my brain! :-)
  
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. 
             *                   *                    *   

	In his room, Q was wakened by T'Laren's shout.  "Q!  Get help!"
	*Get help for what?*  he thought groggily.  And then he heard the 
thwack of a fist against skin and bone, and the solid thud of a skull 
hitting something much harder than it was, and nothing more from 
T'Laren.  Terror awakened him fully.  There was an assassin out there, 
trying to get in to kill him, and T'Laren might very well already be 
dead.
	"Computer!  Lock door!"  Q shouted.
	"Unable to comply.  Requested circuits inaccessible."
	"*What?*"  Q grabbed his combadge.  "Q to Security, help!"
	Still no reply.  A terrified moan choked in Q's throat.  The 
assassin had cut him off somehow.  What a fool he'd been to leave 
Starbase 56!  The security of *this* place was hardly geared around 
protecting him the way Starbase 56's was.  He threw the covers aside 
and ran to his terminal.  Once, on the starbase, assassins had brought 
down the computer's ability to process voice commands, but it still had 
been possible to use the keyboard.  He had managed to summon help while 
a security guard held the assassins off in the other room.  Perhaps 
that would work here.  
	Q used the keyboard to invoke the command processor, and quickly 
typed in code to transmit a message to the intercom of the security 
offices.  Before he was finished, however, the door slid open, and one 
of the Vulcan scientists-- Stamor, the one who'd had a tantrum because 
T'Laren wouldn't let him test the amplifier-- stood there.  
	The terminal was entirely too close to the door.  Q abandoned it, 
his code half-typed, knowing there was no way he could send a message 
in time, and backed away.  "Let me guess," he said shakily.  "You want 
me to put your name on the paper when it's published."
	Stamor said something in a language Q didn't know.  This time, he 
heard the faint click of the door locking.  "If you don't resist me, I 
won't hurt you," Stamor said, coming forward.
	"Oh, right.  You'll just kill me painlessly.  No thank you."  He 
backed around the bed, eyes flickering over the room, looking for 
something he could use as a weapon.  Maybe he could slip past the 
Vulcan, who probably wasn't a Vulcan after all, and run.  Or something.  
He had to do something.  He had just decided life was worth living, it 
was so unfair, why did he have to face an assassin *now?*  Why couldn't 
one have come two months ago, when he'd *wanted* to die?
	"I'm not here to kill you.  I only want what's in your mind."
	"The psionic amplifier."
	"That, and other things.  I'll have no need to kill you if you 
cooperate with me."
	The offer was not tempting.  Q was far more afraid of having his 
mind invaded than he was of dying.  And the thought occurred to him 
that whoever this person was, if he wasn't an assassin then he probably 
didn't come from a highly technologically advanced species; he was 
probably Federation-level or less.  And if he was telling the truth, 
then he wanted Q's knowledge, which made it all the more imperative 
that he not get it.  Q had a responsibility not to let himself be used 
to destabilize the petty mortal politics of the quadrant, even if he'd 
owed no loyalty to the Federation at all.
	"Somehow that is not the most reassuring thing I've ever heard," Q 
said, using bravado to keep himself from screaming in terror or begging 
for mercy.  He could see only one possible way out.  Stamor was 
following him around the bed, and would have backed him into a corner 
in moments.  Right now, though, Stamor was not in Q's most direct path 
to the door-- he was coming around the bed, and if Q went across the 
bed, he might be able to reach the other side before Stamor could get 
to him.  And maybe the door wasn't really locked.  Maybe he'd just 
imagined that noise.
	Q leapt onto the bed, took a step forward, and started to leap off 
the other side.  Stamor grabbed at his leg, tripping him, so Q ended up 
flying off the bed and toward the floor head first.  Some of T'Laren's 
training took over, and he managed to twist his body so that he hit the 
floor with his hands and chest instead of his head.  He got to his feet 
as fast as he possibly could, long experience with trying to get up and 
run while being beaten up serving him in good stead, but Stamor was in 
front of him now and pushed him back.  Impossibly strong hands grasped 
Q's wrists, pinning him, shoving him back so the bed caught him in the 
backs of the legs.  
	"*HELP!*  Help me, please!  Someone, anyone, help!"
	"They can't hear you," Stamor said.  "There's a forcefield around 
this room that disrupts communications.  There's no one to hear you but 
T'Laren, and she's beyond hearing anyone."
	T'Laren was dead.  Oh no, no.  And then Stamor bent him backwards, 
pushing him against the bed.  Q screamed at the strain on his back as 
he was bent in a direction his stiff muscles emphatically did not want 
to go.  "Please stop, please, my back, please it hurts it hurts--"
	And then he had fallen back onto the bed, his back shrieking, with 
Stamor lying on top of him in an entirely too intimate position, one 
hand reaching for Q's temples as the other kept his wrists cruelly 
pinned against the bed.  Q struggled, screaming, frantic with terror, 
but even though his wrists were actually too wide for Stamor to hold in 
one hand, the Vulcanoid's strength was enough to keep one pinned on top 
of the other, crushing them, and without his hands, Q had no leverage 
to push Stamor away from him, though he was physically bigger than the 
other man.  
	The fingertips against his temples felt like fire-- a cold fire, 
that spread through his body and numbed it unpleasantly.  He felt the 
sense of a presence touching his psyche, where only other Q had ever 
touched him before.  *GET OUT!!*
	To his shock and amazement, the presence cut off behind a barrier.  
Q remembered T'Laren and Markow speculating that a human who had once 
wielded telepathic power would have some idea what he was doing-- they 
hadn't said, "perhaps enough to shield himself," but now Q thought of 
it.  He had millenia of experience trying to keep his fellow Q out of 
his head.  Maybe he could protect himself against this mental rapist, 
after all.  If he could only hang on long enough for help to arrive-- 
surely they would notice an alien forcefield on their ship-- Picard's 
crew would have--
	--And what if it took them too long?
	*I won't think about that, I won't...*
	**You should*,* a distant voice came from outside his shield.  
**They'll never sense it in time.  It hides itself from their sensors.  
Give in to me, and I won't kill you*.*
	*That's still not a very tempting offer*, Q retorted, 
strengthening his shields.  They were like certain muscles, whose 
tightness couldn't be accurately judged unless they were closing around 
a solid object.  He imagined them as a barrier, firming them against 
the invasion from outside.
	Stamor battered at Q's shields, using no finesse at all, nothing 
but raw telepathic power, and horrified, Q felt his defenses starting 
to crumble.  They'd never been designed to keep out people with more 
raw power than he had, after all.  Terrified, he channelled all his 
terror at the shields, all his formidable willpower at a single, 
overriding imperative.  *Keep out of my head!*
	But he couldn't withstand the sheer power Stamor had to turn 
against him.  His shields weakened, weakened, and finally crumbled 
entirely, and he felt the triumphant invasion of his mind as if it 
really were akin to a rape.  *NO!*  He tried to push the invader back 
out, but all his strength had gone to his shields, and now that they 
were broken he had no way to keep the other out of his head.
	*You fight well, for a non-telepath.  But you have to realize, I'm 
much more powerful than you are.  Why not just relax and give in?  
You're only hurting yourself by resisting.*
	This far into his own mind was past the level of surface speech, 
the level where Q would use flip defiance to protect himself.  His 
response was a wave of raw emotion and thoughtform.  *disgusting filthy 
mortal creature how dare you invade MY mind! MINE! get out, get out, 
GET OUT!*
	*You're mortal yourself.  Helpless to resist me.  You don't have 
the power to protect yourself, you're now even lowlier than I am, you 
deserve this for losing your powers.*  The litany repeated softly into 
the depths of Q's mind, trying to break him, trying to make him believe 
it.  The worst of it was that part of him did.
	Grimly Q continued to resist, this time by the elaborate feints 
and misdirections he'd use against the Continuum, or against his older 
siblings when he was young and hadn't the raw power they had.  He 
tangled his assailant in false leads.  He took the battle *to* his 
attacker, reaching into the other's mind-- apparently his own lack of 
active telepathy meant nothing now that the other's telepathy had 
forced a link-- and going for the jugular, evoking the worst memories 
in the young man's memory.  A Tal Shiar officer had many memories that 
haunted his nightmares.  Q found them and flung them at the Romulan's 
ego, using them as a shield as he hid his own memories in a maze of 
false trails.
	None of it did him any good.  The Romulan's sheer power bulldozed 
through most of Q's traps.  It took a long time, or what felt like a 
long time-- Q had spent millennia doing this, after all, and was better 
skilled at defending himself than any of the Romulan's other victims 
had been.  He picked up that thought from his assailant's mind, and the 
brief flash of pride and hope it gave him bolstered him for a moment.  
But eventually he was exhausted, panting, run to ground in the mazes of 
his own mind, and the relentless stalker was on top of him, probing 
him.  Seeking out his memories, invading the most private sanctuary he 
had, and he couldn't resist anymore.  He had fought as long and as hard 
as he could, and now he had no strength left.
	Quickly the invader moved from Q's personal memories to his 
knowledge, began reading through it, while Q's battered ego huddled in 
a tiny corner of his mind, keeping as much of himself away from the 
attacker as possible.  Intellectually he knew that his personal 
memories were less valuable, that the real danger lay in letting the 
Romulan have access to his knowledge, but emotionally it felt like a 
small mercy, that the parts of him important to *him* were no longer 
being violated.  He had some dim sense that the man intended to kill 
him when he was done, leakage from the Romulan's own psyche.  Defeated, 
he curled his psyche into as tight and small a knot as he could manage, 
and waited, despairing, for the end.
	And then there was what seemed to him like a bright light flaring 
across his consciousness.  Just for a nanosecond, he felt a sense of 
Presence, as familiar to him as his own mind.  And then he was once 
more conscious of his physical body, blearily, as he stared up at a 
blurry ceiling and heard someone screaming. 
	There was a flare of phaser light, and voices.  Weakly Q turned 
his head toward the door.  Lt. Washington, three security guards, and a 
very short male humanoid in medical blues who looked rather like a 
potato with legs were coming through what remained of his door.  
Someone was still screaming.  He looked down-- a painful thing to do; 
his back screamed in protest that he would dare move-- and saw the 
Romulan on the floor, holding his head and shrieking.  Green trickled 
out of the man's nose and ears and from his lip.
	The short man pointed a scanner at Q.  "He looks mostly unhurt," 
he reported, and knelt next to the Romulan, whom the security team were 
all holding phasers on.  "But this one's dying.  Cerebral hemorrhage."
	"Can you save him?"
	"I can ease his pain-- he's in agony.  But there's nothing I can 
do to keep him alive."
	And then the Romulan shuddered, let out a final exhalation, and 
went silent.
	"Are you all right, Q?  Can you get up?" Washington asked.
	He tried to sit up, and fell back in pain-- not just from his 
back, but an unexpected agony in his head, like the worst migraine he'd 
ever had.  "Lie still," the short man said, and pressed a hypo against 
Q's neck.  "That should take enough of the pain off that you can get to 
Sickbay."
	Q tried to sit up again.  This time the pain in his back was less, 
and felt removed, as if he were wrapped in blankets against it.  "They 
saved me," he whispered, stunned and grateful.  There were already 
tears in his eyes from terror and pain; new ones welled now, but these 
were of reverential and disbelieving gratitude.  
	"Who saved you, Q?"  Washington asked.
	"My people... they saved me..."
	He was certain of it.  They'd caused the Romulan's death because 
the man was about to kill Q.  They'd saved his life.  They really did 
care about him after all.  It was too much for him, after the horror of 
the assault and the pain he was still feeling in his head, a throbbing 
migraine headache, and he began to cry softly.  The Q loved him.  They 
had saved his life.  They wanted him to live and earn his way back to 
them after all.
	"We need to get you to sickbay," the doctor said.  "Do you think 
you can walk?"
	He nodded, still crying.  But when he tried to stand, the world 
spun around him, and he sat down again, dizzily.  "I need help," he 
said, and then thought of T'Laren, who always helped him at times like 
this.  And then remembered that the telepath had said T'Laren was dead.
	"T'Laren!  Where is she?  Is she--"
	"She's alive and recovering in the other room, but she's taken a 
nasty bump to the head.  She needs to go to sickbay too."
	"Oh..."  Q wasn't quite sure he believed that.  Maybe they were 
saying that to make him feel better because he'd had a shock.  "I want 
to see her."
	"Help him into the other room," Washington told one of his 
security guards.  
	The man wrapped Q's arm over his shoulder and stood, supporting Q 
as he tried to stand himself.  The world still spun dizzily, but with 
support he could manage it without falling back down again.  It was not 
the first time Q had needed help walking, and he was reasonably 
practiced at letting the other take a good portion of his weight while 
he navigated his way painstakingly into the other room.  
	T'Laren was leaning against the wall, seated on the floor, eyes 
closed.  There was a massive greenish-black bruise running along the 
side of her cheek and temple, with some of it extending onto her 
forehead.  "T'Laren?"  Q said fearfully.  She looked unconscious, 
perhaps even dead.
	Her eyes opened, flooding him with relief.  "Q!  Are you all 
right?" she asked hoarsely.
	"Fine.  Never better."  He made his way over to her and let the 
security guard let him down on the floor next to her.  "That's quite an 
unsightly bruise you've got there."
	Her hand reached up and touched it lightly.  "I hadn't noticed," 
she said.  "It's probably worse than it looks.  I have a mild 
concussion and my sense of balance is impaired, which is why I'm 
sitting on the floor.  What happened?  I heard someone screaming..."
	Q felt himself smiling, almost without volition, his eyes stinging 
with happy tears again.  "He's dead," he said.  "T'Laren, they saved 
me."
	"Security?"
	"No!  The Continuum.  They *saved* me, T'Laren.  He was going to 
kill me, and they blasted his brain into so much cerebral jelly.  They 
really do..." he cut off.  It was acceptable to say to T'Laren, "They 
really do care about me," but it was entirely too much to reveal in 
front of a security guard.
	She put her hand on his arm, gently.  "I thought he would kill 
you," she said softly. 
	He interpreted that as not wanting to use emotional phrases like 
"and I was frightened for you" or "I'm glad he didn't" in front of the 
security guard herself-- she might be a Vulcan pervert, but she didn't 
want to let the entire starship see how weird she was, he thought.  He 
held the hand on his arm, warmed by the gesture and feeling as if he 
might start crying again, which was unacceptable.  It was idiotic of 
him to be crying anyway.  He hadn't been hurt-- well, not badly anyway, 
though his back and head still ached and he still felt too dizzy to 
walk under his own power.  Not nearly as badly as he could have been 
hurt.  And the man who'd violated his mind was dead, and he'd had a 
sign in the form of that death that his own people still cared for him 
and were watching out for him.  Why should he be crying?
	The doctor came into the room then, followed by Washington and the 
other guards.  "How do you feel, either of you?" he asked.
	"As well as can be expected," T'Laren said.  "I believe I have a 
concussion, but I don't think it's serious."
	"You do, and I'll have to be the judge of that.  Q, what about 
you?"
	"Perfectly happy.  Except I have a headache.  Can I have some more 
painkillers?"
	The doctor ran the scanner over him again.  "Oh my.  This is not 
good at all."  He tapped his combadge.  "Three to transport to sickbay, 
immediately."
	Before Q could ask what the problem was, he felt the 
disorientation of a transporter beam sweep over him and deposit him in 
Sickbay, still seated on the floor.  A nurse helped him to his feet and 
got him onto a bed, lying down.  Now he was starting to get a little 
bit frightened.  "What's wrong with me?" he demanded.
	"Amalyzine," the doctor said.  Someone handed him a hypo, so Q 
presumed that that was not an answer to his question.  The doctor 
pressed it to his neck-- and the headache disappeared within seconds.
	"You were very close to suffering a cerebral hemorrhage yourself," 
the doctor told him.  "The migraine headache you were suffering from 
after your attack was the result of leakage from your assailant's mind 
building up a potential aneurysm in the blood vessels of your brain 
when he died; essentially, whatever killed him came very, very close to 
killing you too.  If he hadn't broken the connection between your minds 
when he did, you would have died-- and if we hadn't caught it in time, 
you might have suffered a stroke later tonight anyway."
	At first, Q's only emotional reaction to the words was a feeling 
that once again, he'd had a close call.  Then the meaning sank home, 
the meaning that the doctor couldn't know, and it was like a wash of 
liquid nitrogen in his veins, far too cold and painful to be mere ice.  
Whatever had killed the Romulan had almost killed him... he might have 
died tonight without treatment... 
	They hadn't cared.  They had acted to kill the Romulan, not to 
save Q but to prevent his knowledge from being spread to lesser races 
without his control.  What sort of fool was he, to believe they had 
killed the man to protect *him?*  They hadn't tried to stop the 
Romulan's actions by killing Q, no, but they hadn't cared if that was 
the result.  He might have died if the Romulan hadn't broken contact 
right then, might have died anyway, and they simply hadn't cared.
	The revelation, on top of the emotional trauma he'd suffered 
tonight, and after he'd believed so strongly that the Romulan's death 
meant the Continuum still loved him, was too much.  He closed his eyes 
and curled up tightly on the bed, ignoring the pain in his back, 
wanting very much to be dead.
	"Q?" T'Laren said.  He opened his eyes, looking over at where she 
was seated on the other bed.  "Q, are you all right?"
	He didn't want to talk to her.  He wanted nothing to do with 
anyone.  "I'm tired," he said dully.  Saying he was fine would just 
mean more poking and prodding from her.  
	"All right," she said, nodding and turning her attention back to 
the doctor working on her.  That infuriated him.  He had wanted her not 
to pry, but now that she wasn't, he felt as if she was paying no 
attention, that she didn't care about his pain.  Fine.  Let her not 
care.  He had never really needed her anyway.  He closed his eyes again 
and pressed his face into the pillow, stifling a sob.  He couldn't cry 
in public, in front of doctors.  He didn't need that kind of 
humiliation.
	"Q, does your back still hurt?" someone asked him.
	He opened his eyes to see a female nurse, or maybe a very junior 
doctor-- in Starfleet, where medical personnel often spent their 
internship as nurses and then graduated to being full doctors when they 
were promoted to lieutenants, it was sometimes hard to tell the 
difference.  "Does it matter?" he said, his voice still dull.
	"Of course it matters," she said.  "Here. Lie on your stomach."
	He still didn't see much of a point-- he hurt, and he should hurt, 
because life as a human was pain and he'd just been informed that his 
particular life was meaningless to the only people that mattered.  But 
he did it, since he didn't feel like arguing, and since it didn't 
matter anyway.  Having his back fixed would also hurt, probably more 
than the injury did.  T'Laren was the only person who'd ever bothered 
to fix his back without hurting him.
	The woman took some sort of instrument-- he saw it in his 
peripheral vision, and tensed despite himself, expecting pain-- and 
held it to his back.  He heard a humming, and to his vast surprise, 
felt a pleasurable vibration deep within the muscles, felt them 
loosening, without any pain at all.  "What are you doing?" 
	"It's a sonic massager," the nurse said cheerfully.  "That doesn't 
hurt, does it?"
	He thought about lying and saying it did, but there didn't seem to 
be much point to it.  She probably wouldn't stop if it did hurt, and 
anyway, despite his depression it *did* feel good, and he didn't think 
he'd have had the energy to try to make her stop even if it had hurt.  
"No."
	"That's good.  You seem to have strained the muscles in your lower 
back pretty badly. This will relax them, and then we'll use a deep 
protoplaser to help them heal faster.  But they have to be relaxed 
first, or the protoplaser will cause them to heal up tighter than they 
should be, and you'd have trouble relaxing them afterward."
	The explanation made him feel a tiny bit better.  Li had never 
bothered to explain anything to him.  Medical procedures had simply 
been performed on him, some of them painful, without any 
acknowledgement from Li that Q had either the intellect to understand 
what was going on or the right to make decisions about whether or not 
he wanted a particular procedure done.  This was understandable when Q 
was dying from the latest assassination attempt, but not when he was 
aware and conscious and not in immediate danger of death.  The fact 
that this nurse bothered to explain what she would do made him feel a 
little bit more valued.  Which was good, because clearly the important 
people didn't value him at all, so he had to take whatever little 
scraps he could get.
	*				*				*
	T'Laren hadn't fully realized the extent to which she was 
disturbed by what had happened until Tris came down to sickbay to see 
her.  Until that point, she was focused on Q and what he must be going 
through-- this was his worst nightmare come to life, after all.  She 
had little time to think about what she herself had endured until the 
doctor was close to finished with her, and Tris came in.  "T'Laren, are 
you all right?  How do you feel?"
	She examined her own feelings for the first time since the 
incident, and realized that what she felt was an overwhelming sense of 
frustration, rage and helplessness.  It was worse than what she would 
have felt if she had been the assassin's only target.  T'Laren had once 
been physically raped, one of the few people she knew who had been, due 
to her own carelessness on a non-aligned planet, on shore leave.  The 
experience had left her angry and shaken and had inspired her to focus 
intently on unarmed combat techniques at the level a Security or 
Command officer needed to know rather than the level an aspiring 
Counselor was usually trained in.  But it hadn't been like this, 
because she'd been the only person hurt by the experience.  She hadn't 
gotten someone else hurt as well.
	Once, she had counseled a lieutenant in security whose wife had 
endured the same thing, because she had had little combat training and 
he'd been defeated by the thugs that attacked them.  He had handled the 
incident far worse than his wife; while she had put it past her as one 
of the dangers one faced when one left Earth and secure Federation 
worlds, he had been in agony because he was supposed to protect his 
wife, and he hadn't been able to.  He had had the security training, he 
had been taught how to fight and bodyguard, and yet he had been beaten 
to near-senselessness and held down as his attackers took turns hurting 
the person he most wanted to protect.  He had not been one of T'Laren's 
successes; despite all she tried to do for him, he eventually divorced 
his wife so she would never be hurt by his failures again and dropped 
out of Starfleet.  At the time, T'Laren had had only an intellectual 
understanding of his pain, and had thought his reaction was extreme.  
Now she understood.
	"Physically, I'm as well as can be expected."
	"Which means you must be in agony."
	It was a joke.  She recognized that, but she was in no mood for 
humor.  "No, the pain was moderate and responded easily to the mental 
disciplines.  That much I can do.  It is more..."  She hesitated.
	He sat down next to her, putting an arm around her waist.  Such a 
little thing, the physical contact that in humans and Bajorans 
substituted for what Vulcans could get with the mind-bond, that had to 
serve as her substitute as well, she who was bonded to no one.  "I 
couldn't stop him," she said softly.  "All my training, all my skill, 
was essentially useless.  I've been trained to fight, to defend myself 
against Romulans in particular, and I've always considered myself a 
better-than-fair telepath... and it was all nothing."
	"You can't blame yourself, T'Laren.  You've had some training, but 
attacking people and forcing himself into their minds was apparently 
this man's career.  It's not reasonable to expect that you could have 
stopped him.  And you did slow him down-- that's important.  You might 
have saved Q's life by making tr'Sahlassiu fight you harder than he 
would have ordinarily had to."
	It was the way that one comforted Vulcans-- one argued from logic.  
Unfortunately T'Laren had thought of all that herself already.  "I 
understand all that.  And if I had anywhere near the grasp of proper 
discipline that I should, the fact that there was, in all logic, no way 
I *could* have stopped him should prevent me from feeling as if I'd 
failed.  But I find I cannot make myself stop feeling that way."  She 
looked down.  "As usual, I'm a spectacular failure as a Vulcan, whether 
or not I succeed at my career."
	"So you're blaming yourself for failing to fight off an assassin 
that's much more experienced than you are, and you're blaming yourself 
for blaming yourself.  That takes talent, T'Laren.  Think you can get 
any more self-loathing out of the situation if you work hard at it?"
	"You don't understand.  I'm not alone, and I'm not the only one 
who will be hurt if I falter.  I've taken on a responsibility to Q-- if 
I fail, he's the one who will pay the price."
	"So if you're on a planet with him and the sun spontaneously goes 
nova, that's your fault?  T'Laren, you're no more a god than he is now.  
You have an obligation to protect him to the best of your ability, but 
that ability simply doesn't include the ability to fight off trained 
Romulan telepathic assassins.  Recognize when you're out of your 
league, and accept it."
	"And if your people had recognized that the Cardassians were out 
of their league and accepted it, wouldn't you all still be their 
slaves?"
	"Someone being out of your league doesn't mean you don't fight 
them.  It just means you shouldn't blame yourself if you lose."
	What he was saying was true, but T'Laren's feelings of failure 
didn't seem to want to respond to logic.  Which, actually, was the best 
description of it.  Surely she was capable of resisting this, and yet 
she seemed to be choosing to wallow in her pain. 
	*				*				*
	As the nurse continued to work on him, Q heard T'Laren's voice, 
and Tris.  *What is he doing here?*  Q turned his head, to the point 
where it hurt his neck, to try to see what was happening.  
	T'Laren was still sitting on the bed.  Tris was sitting right next 
to her, one arm around her, as she was speaking in a low voice.  And Q 
felt an overwhelming sense of loss and fury.
	She had turned to *him* for comfort.  She had taken Q's statement 
that he was tired at face value, without probing any deeper, something 
she would have done at any other time, and she had turned to Tris for 
comfort instead of asking Q.  After all the times that she had 
comforted him, *he* wanted to be the one to help her.  Wasn't that what 
friends were for?  
	But they weren't friends.  She had said so herself, again and 
again.  She was merely his psychotherapist.  If she gave him comfort, 
it was because it was her job, not because she cared about him, not 
because they were friends.  And the proof of that sat in front of him, 
telling her it was perfectly normal to feel as she did, to stop beating 
herself up for not being able to hold to Vulcan standards when she 
hadn't been raised as Vulcans were, reassuring her.  *Tris* was 
T'Laren's friend, the person she turned to when *she* needed someone.  
She would never ask a selfish emotional cripple to give her anything.  
She would never need anything from him.
	No one, in fact, needed anything from him.  Not even the 
Continuum, who couldn't care less if they accidentally killed him.
	Q stared at T'Laren and Tris for several moments in a white-hot 
jealous rage.  If he'd had the power to strike them dead with a 
thought, he would have.
	*				*				*
	This wasn't helping.  As logical as Tris' words were, T'Laren 
couldn't make herself believe them.  She looked up, over at Q, and 
stiffened slightly, startled.  The expression on his face was one of 
betrayal and rage, as if he agreed with her that she had failed him.
	Tris apparently noticed T'Laren's reaction and followed her eyes.  
As soon as Tris looked at him, Q turned away and pressed his face into 
his pillow.
	*				*				*
	He had to look away as soon as they noticed him, unwilling to let 
T'Laren or especially Tris see how much he was hurting.  Q buried his 
face in his pillow as the nurse continued to work on his back, and 
concentrated very hard on not crying.
	*				*				*
	"T'Laren," Tris said quietly, too quietly for any but a Vulcan to 
hear, "you're having serious boundary problems here.  You have got to 
talk to Q about this, or else stop seeing him as a client."
	What was he talking about?  T'Laren glanced at Tris.  "He's angry 
with me for getting him hurt.  I don't see how that is a boundary 
problem."
	"You really don't see it, do you?"  
	"What do you see?"
	"He's *jealous*, T'Laren.  That look on his face was jealousy, 
pure and simple.  And if he reacts like that to an old friend trying to 
comfort you, what is he going to do if you really do decide to pursue a 
relationship with someone?"
	She shook her head, not in negation but in some amount of 
disbelief.  "I've discussed this with Q.  He's well aware that I am not 
going to become sexually involved with him, and while I believe he 
finds me physically attractive, he denies feeling any emotional 
connection to me beyond friendship.  He knows this."
	"He's also probably not being very rational right now.  You don't 
normally make this mistake, T'Laren, but I think you're attributing 
more rationality to him than humans possess.  You're either going to 
have to work with him on this a lot more... or it might be that he'll 
never be able to think rationally about this kind of thing.  If he's in 
love with you and claiming he's not, he might not be able to deal with 
it in anything resembling a rational fashion.  It might be that the 
only thing you can do is pull out."
	"Why are you so eager to see me give up Q as a client?"
	"Because I think he's dangerous to you.  I think you're a lot 
closer to losing your objectivity than you think you are, if you 
haven't lost it entirely.  And if you did end up falling in love with 
him... you have a bad habit of letting the men you love walk all over 
you, and the fact that Q is a lot more emotionally needy than Soram was 
will just ensure that you excuse everything he does on the grounds that 
he's not well.  And he'll never *get* well, because you'll let him get 
away with being an inconsiderate asshole, and before you know it you'll 
be trapped in another abusive relationship.  You deserve better than 
that, T'Laren."
	"It isn't going to happen.  Soram... I do not call what Soram did 
'abuse'.  He merely expected and needed me to be a normal Vulcan wife, 
and I was not.  I cannot be vulnerable to a non-Vulcan in quite that 
way-- I let Soram 'walk on me', in your words, because I was trying to 
be a proper Vulcan and he knew how I should do it.  I was following his 
guidance."
	"You were miserable."
	"That was hardly his fault.  Most Vulcans live the way Soram asked 
me to, and are not at all miserable."
	"So you've figured out how to blame yourself for the fact that 
your husband was cold, cruel and incapable of giving you what you 
needed."
	"Who else is there to blame?  If I hadn't tried so hard to walk 
the line between, hadn't tried to take what was valuable from both 
Earth and Vulcan instead of giving myself wholeheartedly to one or the 
other, I would have been a proper Vulcan and in no need of the things 
Soram could not give... or a human, for all my Vulcan blood, and I 
never would have married him in the first place.  It was my choice to 
try to pick and choose, and Soram was the one who paid for it."  
	"He didn't seem to be that terribly broken up about it."
	*He was dead.  I murdered him.  The blood ran down my hands like 
emerald water, essence of life, flowing free...* "You cannot 
understand."
	"Because I'm not a Vulcan?"
	"Because I haven't told you everything.  And I won't, I can't, so 
don't ask.  But I cannot give up Q as a patient because I fear some 
amorphous harm to me.  Only if there is a threat to him can I stop, and 
I don't believe there is one yet."  She looked at him.  "Tris, in all 
other aspects of my life I find it hard to trust my own judgment, but I 
have looked long and hard and I think I am still unimpaired when it 
comes to my clients.  You'll simply have to trust me."
	"It's difficult when you don't trust yourself."
	"I know."
	*				*				*
	The doctors recommended that both T'Laren and Q remain overnight 
for observation.  Q could hardly make himself care enough to protest.  
He wanted only to sleep, to achieve oblivion and forget his misery.
	Almost despite himself, he felt better in the morning.  He didn't 
quite want to-- he had excellent reasons for being miserable, and he 
felt that by feeling better, he was somehow betraying himself.  But he 
couldn't help it-- the morning did give distance.  He had survived, as 
usual.  The Continuum couldn't care less if he lived or died, but so 
what else was new?  And T'Laren didn't want to confide in him-- well, 
when had she ever wanted to, and why would he want to anyway?  Let 
someone else hold her hand.  That wasn't his job.
	The attack was a major topic of conversation at the conference.  
This irritated and flattered Q at the same time.  He didn't want the 
prying questions, the expressions of sympathy, the constant buzz of 
reminder about the brutal attack-- and yet, it had been a long time 
since an attempt on his life had raised such a large and sympathetic 
stir.  The scientists weren't jaded like the residents of Starbase 56 
had become-- to them, this was a horrifying and singular event, the 
attempted assassination of one of their own, and there was an 
outpouring of support for Q and outrage that such a thing could happen 
here.  In vain Washington and Wilde tried to explain how Stamor's 
credentials had been impeccable, how there had been no reasonable way 
to catch Romulan infiltrators with such a good cover short of 
subjecting all Vulcans to forced telepathic probes, which wouldn't go 
over very well with the Vulcans, and making everyone who wasn't a 
Vulcan undergo a detailed medical examination.  Since the medical 
exams, at least, *were* a precaution Starbase 56 took, Q made life 
difficult for Washington and Wilde, pointing out in his best insolent 
drawl that if they were going to invite him to their silly little 
conference, the least they could do was keep him from getting killed 
during it with some elementary security precautions.  For once, most of 
the scientists agreed with his position.  Wilde squirmed quite 
entertainingly, almost enough to make the attack worth it.
	Because Q was so used to these sort of attacks, he was able to 
fake a nonchalance he really didn't feel about the whole thing, making 
him look far braver than he actually was.  It was truly gratifying to 
have his public persona appear to be a brave and strongwilled man who 
didn't blink at near-death experiences, rather than the whining coward 
everyone had thought him on Starbase 56.  In his own mind, Q knew he 
was really the whining coward, but his stock in trade was making people 
believe he was something he wasn't, and it *was* quite wonderful how 
well it worked this time.  
	The other thing that got him a certain amount of kudos was his 
methodical destruction of his telepathy amplifier.  In the end, he 
didn't ask T'Laren to lend him moral support; the desire to use the 
thing was entirely overwhelmed by the fear that someone would use it 
against *him*, as tr'Sahlassiu nearly had.  He simply marched in there 
and started taking the thing apart.  While few people openly praised 
him for this, Q was fairly sensitive to the image he was projecting, 
and well aware that to Federation minds, the idea of someone destroying 
a valuable technology to keep it out of the hands of someone who might 
misuse it was heroic.  All in all, the boost to his image and the ego 
support he got more or less wiped out the feelings of despondency from 
yesterday.  He just shoved aside and refused to think of his despair at 
the Continuum's disregard for his well-being, as he'd had to do most of 
his human life in order to keep functioning, and as for T'Laren, well 
who needed her to get all soppy with him anyway?  She was hired help, 
and it wasn't his job to be nice to her-- rather it was *hers* to 
bolster *him*, and that was the way it should be, and that was the end 
of the matter.
	T'Laren tried to draw him out, to talk to him about it, that 
night, but he had no desire to talk to her.  He'd rendered himself 
quite vulnerable enough as it was.  So he was flippant and cruel, and 
eventually she got the idea and stopped pestering him.  
	The next day, after modifications were complete, the probe was 
launched.  The entire symposium ground to a halt; no one could really 
motivate themselves to do anything other than wait eagerly for the 
results, Q included.  After so long waiting, it was almost an 
anticlimax when the probe returned-- almost, but not quite.
	Everything Q had speculated was true.  The probe had identified a 
quasar on the other side of the barrier, a quasar whose energy output 
seemed to be channelled almost entirely into a series of devices 
orbiting the quasar.  There was also a planet, which, judging from the 
lights visible on its nightside, the hardware orbiting it, and the 
sensor logs showing a great deal of replicator-and-transporter type 
matter/energy conversions going on on its surface, was obviously the 
home to a technologically advanced civilization.  Further, the sensor 
logs showed that the people were humanoid, and that they had warp-
capable ships-- pointless things to own, if it were impossible for 
humanoids to cross the barrier, but since they owned them and they were 
humanoid, it was excellent evidence that it *was* possible for 
humanoids to safely cross.
	Excitement erupted throughout the ship.  Suddenly, what had been a 
dry scientific conference, of interest only to those with the 
background in physics to follow it, had become a first contact 
situation.  Speculation ran rampant as to who was going to get to go.
	Q insisted that, since the whole thing had been his idea in the 
first place, he should be allowed to accompany the contact party.  
Wilde shot him down.  "This might be a dangerous situation.  We don't 
know if the people on the other side of the barrier are friendly or 
hostile."
	"I've been making contact with new alien species since before your 
people crawled out of the mud," Q retorted.
	"Yes, and we all know how many friends you made in the process," 
Wilde said shortly.  "Besides, aside from the fact that you're not 
trained, you don't know what you're doing and you're likely to offend 
the locals and get the party killed, you're entirely too valuable to 
the Federation to risk on a mission like this, Q."
	"You're letting people like Sovaz and Roth go."
	"Both Sovaz and Roth are Starfleet officers, and Sovaz is in fact 
a science officer of this vessel."
	"Elejani Baii isn't a Starfleet officer."
	Wilde sighed.  "No, she's not.  She's an empath, though, and she's 
been on first contact teams as a civilian specialist before."
	"So you're saying she's not as valuable as me?  That the 
Federation is more concerned with its pursuit of material gain than the 
safety of its civilians?  After all, if it's dangerous for *me*, 
certainly it's dangerous for her as well."
	"She's a lot less likely to alienate the locals than you are.  And 
she's more likely to be useful."
	"More likely to be *useful?*  I might *know* these people."
	"Wasn't it you who said that the barrier was probably put up to 
keep out people like the Q?"  Wilde wasn't quite smirking, but Q was 
sure he wanted to.  "Your knowing these people is probably not the good 
thing you'd think."
	So it was decided.  Sovaz, Roth, Elejani Baii, Wilde himself, 
Washington and a few security guards, and a few first contact 
specialists and anthropologists from the science department would all 
get to go, and Q would have to be stuck here, even though they would 
never have discovered this new alien race without his help.  It was 
very depressing.  He sulked ostentatiously and took it out on people 
like Yalit, who really deserved to be abused every chance he got 
anyway.
	*				*				*
	This was the last straw.
	Yalit had gotten very, very tired of Q.  Tired of his posturing, 
tired of his denigrating her, tired of the fact that everyone hung on 
the man's every word as if it were solid latinum.  And the fact that he 
had just achieved such triumph, that he had successfully predicted the 
nature of the Anomaly, that was only salt on the wound.  
	She had spent her life humbling men who underestimated her.  She'd 
seduced her sons away from their fathers, twisting them around her 
finger as a beloved protection against a society which called her less 
than a man.  She'd schemed and plotted and brought men down with their 
own pleasures, offering forbidden enjoyments and then extorting money 
and power out of the men who'd tasted the forbidden fruit.  She was 
very likely the most powerful Ferengi woman in existence, and she did 
*not* take this sort of treatment from human males who thought they 
were gods.
	"Barak!" she commanded her grandson.  "Do you have that report I 
asked you for yet?"
	"Yes, grandmother," he said eagerly, handing her the data crystal.  
"It's all there."
	Yalit popped it into the viewer and pored over it.  Damned if the 
human wasn't telling the truth.  He *was* worth a small moon to the 
Federation.  A smile grew across her face uncontrollably.
	*I wonder how much he'd be worth on the open market?...*
	*				*				*