Only Human by Alara Rogers Part III: Yamato Brand new! Never before seen! And at long last, the end of the Chapter From Hell! :-) 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. * * * It was difficult to say this, difficult to begin. But if the alternative was letting Q throw her out, decide he didn't trust her any longer, and most likely get himself killed, she had to do something. "I said you didn't need to--" "I know," T'Laren said. It didn't matter if he said she didn't need to tell him. It was clear to her that she did, that he was entirely too frightened and mistrustful, and she couldn't quite understand why. He'd been willing to tell her almost anything, in the past. Why the sudden panic? Perhaps it had something to do with what he'd said about Guinan. If she truly had hurt him when he'd gone to her for help on this issue in the past, then this issue coming up again might have reminded him of the dangers of trust. Or, perhaps, it was a cumulative effect. Or something triggered by the incident with the Romulan. In any case, she didn't think this would simply go away. She had to deal with it, and it seemed that the only way left to her was to tell him what she had thought she would never tell anyone. "It was two years ago," she repeated. "Maybe a little more, when it began. It was after I'd come back from my mission to the Romulan Empire." T'Laren stared into nothing, remembering. "That mission...changed me. In many ways. And when I returned, I felt that my life as a Vulcan might be empty; that perhaps there should be more to my life than duty and discipline." "Very astute of you." She shook her head. "Not necessarily. What I had realized... was that I was missing a significant portion of possible experience by choosing to be Vulcan, but even more particularly, by being married to my husband. Soram... was a traditionalist." She looked at Q. "Vulcans are bonded to their mates in childhood, by tradition. Some Vulcans feel the tradition is outdated, and that an adult can make a better, more logical choice of mate by choosing from a pool of fellow adults than a parent can make by comparing two children, who have not yet shown how much of their potential they will realize. Soram's parents believed this." "That's why Sovaz is unbonded." "She told you this?" "More or less. She said you and Soram got each others' names out of the Vulcan equivalent of a dating service." "I am sure Sovaz did not say that." "Well. Maybe 'dating service' is my own interpretation," Q said, grinning. "I would think so. The Marriage Registry exists to help Vulcans who are unbonded as adults to find compatible mates. Since I had been raised on Earth, by humans, I had never had an opportunity to be bonded. So when I went to Vulcan to live with my father's cousin, it was suggested that I add my name to the Registry so that at some future date I could find a bondmate. And Soram seemed ideal. Both of us wished to go into Starfleet; he was a traditionalist who knew the disciplines well, and could help me to understand what it meant to be Vulcan, or so I thought, and I could help him in the interacting with humans that is required of any Vulcan entering Starfleet." "This sounds rather like a recipe for disaster." "Does it? I still think it sounds perfectly reasonable... it merely did not work out so well." "I'm finding it hard to imagine you in a decent relationship with a traditionalist Vulcan." "At the time, I thought I could achieve full Vulcan discipline if only it was reinforced strongly enough." She looked away. "For the most part, we had little difficulties. Soram attempted to correct my non-Vulcan behaviors, and I accepted it. On some issues, I would not be moved, and there he eventually accepted that. It wasn't until after I returned from the Romulan Empire that I realized what was wrong." "What was wrong?" This was the difficult part. How was she supposed to tell Q, of all people, what had happened after that? "I... realized... certain things were missing from my life. Things that I had never known, and realized now that I had experienced them that I needed them." "For example? You're being rather excessively vague, don't you think?" "For example... what do you know of Vulcan biology?" "Not much... Vulcans bored me silly when I was omnipotent, if you must know. I know you can't be entirely dissimilar to other humanoids, since Vulcan/human crosses exist." "Our... sexuality is very different from human. Vulcans... every seven Earth years, approximately, which translates to two of our own, a Vulcan male will endure... a mating cycle. That is... he becomes incapable of thinking about much else. And if he does not, during this time, mate with someone and establish a telepathic bond with them, he will die." "That's the most ludicrous piece of evolutionary nonsense I've ever heard. Did someone experiment with you people in your racial infancy, or are you just incredibly unlucky?" "The need to mate or die appears linked to the genes that control telepathy. So evolutionarily, telepathy must have conveyed enough of an advantage that the trait did not die out." "I definitely don't remember this. The idea of Vulcan men running around desperate for sex strikes me as the kind of thing I would have thought amusing enough to remember." "It might be amusing to outsiders. It is hardly amusing to live through it. A man suffering from the mating cycle is, for all intents and purposes, insane. Imagine what it would be to have one's control over one's own actions stripped away by an overpowering biological need." Q seemed to consider that. "I suppose it would be less amusing from that perspective, yes. What about the women?" "Females don't enter pon farr unless they are bonded; our bodies can produce the correct neurotransmitters but we lack the internal cycle men do. As a result of all this, all Vulcan males must be bonded, and Vulcans generally do not choose to mate outside of the cycle." "Ah." He nodded. "You told me that." "While in the Romulan Empire, I was... forced is a bad term... I found it expedient to allow myself to be seduced, to preserve my cover. My identity was as one of Melor's subordinates, and I felt that, if I turned him down, he might grow angry at me and see my flaws more clearly, including flaws in my disguise. If I allowed him to court and finally win me, he would remain blinded by lust." "What a manipulative little schemer you are. I love it." "That, I do not particularly regret; I have regrets about what happened later, but that isn't germane to this. I... I had had sexual experiences as a child on Terra. Humans rarely remain virginal much past sixteen; I experimented with a close friend when I was fifteen, but Vulcans aren't actually sexually mature at that age, even though we look like human adolescents. What pleasure I derived from it was mostly from my unfocused telepathy picking up on my friend's pleasure. And I had enjoyed Soram's times, when they came, but it had never occurred to me that sex outside the times was possible or would be enjoyable. Melor taught me otherwise. And it wasn't merely sex. Romulans are allowed to express their feelings far more so than Vulcans, and in truth, are allowed to feel more. Melor, whom I betrayed in the end, was kinder and more loving to me than Soram ever could be. When I returned from Romulus, I realized that in coming back to my true life, I was giving up the freedom I'd had as a Romulan, the freedom I'd had as a child-- to use discipline when it suited me to do so, and to feel when I wished to feel. And it seemed a remarkably empty way to live my life, to lose those freedoms." "It would be. I can't imagine why you'd want to." "But all my identity was tied up with being a Vulcan. For a while, I considered leaving Soram-- I was in love with Tris, and he with me, and he could give me what Soram could not. But the only way to obtain a divorce is to call challenge at the time of mating, which would kill Soram or else kill my champion, or to prove that Soram was abusive, a criminal or insane. He was none of these things. I could only leave him by leaving my Vulcan identity behind." "You couldn't just pack up and leave?" "Our bond needed to be formally broken, and that could happen only if I became Kolinahru or went into exile. Otherwise, if the bond was not broken, Soram would die at his next time and take me with him. And I was not willing to go into exile; I still wished to be Vulcan, yet I found myself chafing more and more at the requirements of being Vulcan. I wanted to create a kind of Vulcanness that walked between worlds, a synthesis of Vulcan and Romulan that chose the best of both." She stared at the floor darkly. "Instead I was consumed. Over the course of a year, perhaps, I became less and less able to control my emotions. They flared at inappropriate times. I laughed during briefings, cried during departures for away missions, flew into rages when minor things went wrong. I managed to control myself when I was counseling, but at other times I could not. My... sex drive... was equally out of control; I picked up strange men in bars on every shore leave planet I went to--" "And your husband didn't know about this?" "He knew. Of course he knew, he was bonded to me. But he could not give me sexual release, and they could. As long as I did not bond with them, he allowed it, and I loved him desperately for making such concessions for me. I flew back and forth between extremes of emotion, and through it I clung to Soram, considering him my anchor of sanity. "I was discharged from Starfleet, and sent home to Vulcan, to Soram's family's home. They recognized-- Starfleet recognized-- that Vulcans heal better from mental illness when treated by fellow Vulcans, in the privacy of the ancestral home. A mindhealer was sent to me, and tried to assist me, but I was madly out of control by then and could neither summon the discipline to follow the mindhealer's instructions nor the desire to. I was waiting for Soram's next time of mating; I was sure it would bring us closer together, would bridge the gap between us in our minds. Soram had taken to shutting me out, which I understood; no one wants to share his mind with a madwoman. But I longed for that connection, and I knew, when his time came, he would need to open his mind to me. "He came home at the proper time, and we shared his time together. And then, a week afterward, when I had begun to believe I had some hope of pulling my mind back together, he--" Her voice caught, and she couldn't go on. "What did he do?" Q asked, his voice serious, not quite sympathetic but certainly not the flippancy or pushiness she'd have expected from him. "He... I cannot speak of this, Q. I cannot." "Isn't it you who always said to me that things need to be brought out into the open before you can deal with them?" "I've *dealt* with it! I had Lhoviri change it so it didn't happen, and still the memory haunts me..." "Fixing it isn't the same as dealing with it, T'Laren." She looked at him, startled. "Are you suddenly trained as a counselor?" Q smiled sardonically. "I've occasionally been called on to give advice to poor primitive beings. It's not my preferred role, but it's one I've done." "So you are trying to act as what? My guardian angel? My spirit guide?" "Something like that," he agreed. "So what happened?" She swallowed, and took a deep breath, trying to focus the disciplines. They had never worked particularly well against this memory, though. "He told me... he was leaving me. Because I was insane. He had sought a divorce, and was enacting it now, since his pon farr was done with and so divorcing me would not require him to find another mate for seven years..." "Logical." "I... suppose it is. I have a hard time seeing the logic... I saw that I had sacrificed for him, that I had given up one I loved for him, that I had tried so hard to fit myself into the mold of proper Vulcanhood and it was all for him. I realized much, much later that most of my striving to be a proper Vulcan had never come from within me; it was how I expressed my love for him, my desire to be more like him. At the time, though, I felt... betrayed..." *Betrayed me, betrayed me, I gave you love and you throw it away, I shelter you once again from the storms within that would kill you, and you throw me aside rather than so shelter me, betrayer, betrayer, you've taken everything from me and I won't let you leave, you will not leave me, never leave me, never ever leave me again*... "Of course you did. Who wouldn't? That seems particularly heartless, to leave you right after you'd saved his life." "Yes..." She swallowed. "So I-- I was mad with rage, you understand, I was humiliated and betrayed, and it all raged out of my control-- I remember thinking I would not let him leave, I would *make sure* he could not leave--" "You killed him," Q said. "H-- how did you know?" Q shook his head. "It's a very old story, T'Laren," he said softly. "I don't mean to belittle you, but you're hardly the first woman to kill the man who was abandoning her." "But I am *Vulcan!*" "And Vulcans are biologically one of the most violent, vicious species in existence. If you and the Romulans didn't have such strict societal controls to prevent you from killing yourselves, you would outdo the Klingons for bloody-mindedness. Your disciplines were cracking anyway, you'd been through an emotional upheaval-- at least I assume those mating seasons of yours cause emotional upheaval, I imagine going insane on a regular basis should do that--" "Yes. It is very much an emotional experience." "And then he throws you over for being nuts. When it was partially his fault you were having problems. I'd have killed him." "You are neither a Vulcan nor a pacifist." "True. And actually, I probably wouldn't have. Q don't... under normal circumstances... ever try to kill one another." His voice dropped darkly, as if some inner pain haunted him. "But Vulcans are not nearly as mentally stable as the Q." "Mentally stable? I wouldn't have considered that one of the standout features of your race." "Based on a sample size of what, two? When one's lost everything that meant anything to him? I can see a clear scientific basis for your conclusions." He stretched out an arm along the top of the couch, so her head ended up resting lightly on it. "Tell me what happened." "I..." She shook her head. "I remember... seeing blood everywhere. And not quite realizing what had happened, where the blood was coming from, until I looked down and saw Soram, and the ceremonial blade I'd brought back from the Romulan Empire in my hands, covered in his blood. And then... then Sovaz came into the room... and she said 'You have killed my brother,' and it was as if I had destroyed everything in her that was innocent and pure... I ran then. I couldn't bear the shame. They captured me, and brought me to healers, who tried to help me find a constructive way to deal with my own guilt and pain... I could not. They were not equipped to handle Starfleet officers who'd been trained for espionage. I escaped, and stole a shuttlecraft. I think I was completely mad then, because all I could think was that the sands of Vulcan would reject me, my ancestral mother would cast me out and I belonged nowhere, nowhere at all but the cold dark of space. And I flung myself into space, and died." "Died?" Q asked, startled, and then recognition lit his eyes. "Lhoviri." "Yes. When I awakened, Lhoviri told me that inasmuch as I now existed in linear time at all, I had been dead for over a year. He had brought me back to perform a task for him. And I... I could not bear the thought of living, I could not live when Soram was dead at my hands. I tried to kill myself, again and again. There were times when I succeeded, and he brought me back. Finally he asked me what I would need to keep me from killing myself... and he said he could do anything... so I said I never wanted Soram to have died. I didn't want Lhoviri to bring him back, as he did me; I was not sure I was real, that I was anything other than a soulless construct of Lhoviri's mind. I would not have that for Soram. So I asked that he never be killed, that I never have killed him. And he did it. No one remembers Soram's death any more but me." Q stared at her. "I am amazed." "Why?" "Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to retroactively alter the universe? Even a small change, less than two years old, is incredibly taxing to arrange. Not to mention the effort involved in raising the dead. You actually have to tap into the dimension where the dead go, find them, and if they're not there anymore scan backward through time until you *do* find them--" "Do you think he really did it?" "You look rather not dead to me." "That isn't what I mean. Is it possible I'm merely a simulacrum he created?" Q considered. "Possible, but unlikely. Truly self-aware simulacra with a totally independent existence are very hard to do." He frowned. "Frankly, it's a lot more likely that he didn't really revise the universe." "Why do you think he didn't do it?" "It's a lot more likely that he implanted the memory of killing Soram in your mind to make you more loyal to him." T'Laren shook her head. "No." "It makes more sense. Do you know how many kinds of permission he'd have had to get to retroactively alter the universe that way? The entire Continuum would have to agree to it, and given how cavalier they've been about whether or not I live or die, I just don't think that's likely." "Lhoviri did not do that to me. I killed Soram. I *know* this." "Yes, but *how* do you know? Lhoviri could just as easily have implanted false memories in your mind; it's easy enough to do, and no one would be able to tell, except another Q of course." T'Laren sighed. "Q, this seems like the sort of point that belongs in a philosophical argument. I cannot know that Lhoviri did or did not do this; however, the only reality we can perceive is that which our memories supply. I *know* what happened. If my knowledge is untrue... there is nothing I can do about that." He sighed. "I just don't want you being blindly loyal to Lhoviri, when he might well have suckered you into this." "I am hardly blind in my loyalty. But based on what I know, I owe him a great debt. And it is within the power of the Continuum to do as I believe Lhoviri has done, isn't it?" "Oh, sure, but it's a lot of work and the higher-ups don't tend to like it. You have to get permission from the entire Continuum, as I said." "Then I have no reason not to believe it happened that way." "I suppose you'll cling to your beliefs regardless of the evidence; you mortals get like that when religion's at stake. My only point is, I don't want you thinking you're irrevocably bound to me just because Lhoviri fixed the universe for you, because he might not have." "It doesn't matter. Memory makes up what we are, Q. If someone had implanted a memory in me of something I know I could not do, of something completely out of character, I would know it and recognize that there was something wrong. Even if I had no way to distinguish that memory from my other memories, still I would know that I could not have done this thing. But... it was a part of me. If Lhoviri implanted the memory, it was still a thing I could have done. As difficult as it is to bear, as much as I wish it was not a part of my character... I know, now, that I am capable of murdering the one I most love." "That must be a very difficult thing to know," Q said quietly. "Especially for someone who prides herself on her pacifism and emotional control. But what you have to understand, T'Laren, is that *all* mortals have these dark little secrets. Give almost any mortal the right circumstances, and they'll strike down their best friends, or betray, or commit rape, or any number of morally reprehensible acts. I... almost think that might apply to any sentient being, mortal or no. If you were in control of yourself, you wouldn't have done it. But the loss of your inhibitions against emotional expression reduced you to your biology, and your biology insists that you kill anything that might be a threat. Someone you love abandoning you is a threat." "And this is supposed to excuse me? Other Vulcans suffer from loss of emotional control, sometimes. They do not murder their bondmate." "No," Q said. "Nothing excuses you. But you have to recognize what the reasons were. If you go about thinking, 'Oh, I'm such an evil person and that's why I did this,' it doesn't prevent you from doing it again, or overcompensating in areas where you shouldn't." He shrugged. "Accept what you're capable of, understand why you're capable of it, and keep yourself from falling into the situation again. And stop blaming yourself. You've fixed the problem. Soram isn't dead anymore." This was a very different side of Q than T'Laren had seen previously. He still wasn't dripping with emotional support and sympathy, but he was, for Q, being very sympathetic-- and his advice actually made sense. It was easy to forget, in the midst of his whining and his posturing and his cluelessness about the human condition, that he was really an incredibly ancient entity with thousands of lifetimes' worth of accumulated experience in studying mortals. "Under most circumstances, killers don't have the opportunity to 'fix the problem'." "I know," Q said in a suddenly bleak voice. "Oh, I know." He turned to her. "Well. My turn now, I suppose? Quid pro quo?" "If you wish to tell me. I did not actually tell you this so that you'd be obligated to share your secrets; I told you my secret so you would trust me." She looked at her hands. "An odd way of doing so, I must admit. I half expected you to call me a barbaric primitive and throw me out." "You *are* a barbaric primitive. I'd hardly blame you for that." Q grinned. His expression then darkened. "T'Laren, I've seen the worst the universe has to offer. I've seen horrors that would curdle your soul, depths of evil beyond your imagining. One woman murdering a husband who's leaving her is fairly tame, by my standards." He gazed off into space. "And it *is* important that you've fixed the problem. You see, it's idiotic to blame yourself for causing a problem when you've also solved the problem. For millennia, I believed that actions had no consequences, and I was blameless, because anything I did that I decided was a problem, I could solve with the flick of a wrist. Snap! Problem solved." "But this-- becoming human-- you could not solve that way." "True. I can't. But it... isn't my first experience, with a problem I couldn't solve." He took a deep breath. " We *did* have a deal, regardless of whether you were planning on following through on it or not. You want to know about Azi? I'll tell you." Q leaned back against the couch. "See, we Q have a-- a problem, of sorts. Most of us don't think of it as a problem, I myself usually thought of it as a plus, but there you go. I may have mentioned this before, that we have a problem with... close emotional intimacy, between two Q." "You did," T'Laren said. "You said that if two Q are emotionally too intimate they can become entangled in one another, and merge into one being." "Yes. And the two Q who did that are gone. Dead, if you will." He played with a button on his elaborate topcoat. "Something else you have to know about me-- well, you probably figured this out already. The Continuum tend to have distinct generations. We don't need to create many new Q, since almost none of us ever die, but we do it to prevent the Continuum from becoming completely stagnant. And one could argue that perhaps it hasn't worked, but that's beside the point. Anyway, we do this in cohorts, of a sort; agemates, ranging within a few million years of one another, form one cohort, and then the next set comes along, and so on. And among my agemates, my generation if you wish, I'm one of the youngest Q. But Azi was younger." He sighed. "She should have died in infancy. Any Q with a strong need for intimacy usually does. Another child will consume them. For an immortal, omnipotent species we have fairly high child mortality; we have to. We have to let patterns that cannot exist as adult Q weed themselves out. No adult Q would ever interfere in a small child's self-destruction. But I was a small child myself, and... I *liked* Azi. I didn't want to subsume her into myself; from the beginning I never wanted anyone else to influence me, even by becoming a new part of me, under my control. She was a lot more interesting if she stayed outside me. So... I protected her. And I... you know, I was one of the babies, older children taking care of me or making fun of me or both at the same time... there weren't a lot of beings I could play the role of protector to. I liked it. "We were friends for... longer than you can possibly imagine. And for a long time, I thought Azi had adjusted. Maybe she'd picked up just enough of my pattern when we were still young and malleable that she could defend herself, keep herself separate from other Q. But as we got older, I realized she still had that need for connection, for... I guess you could call it love. She tried to reach out to me, her oldest friend, for it... and I gave her what I could, but it just isn't safe for a Q to get too close. I had to hold her off, and I had to keep her from reaching out to anyone else, because anyone else would just subsume her. By that point in my life, *I'd* have subsumed her if she wasn't someone I valued so much as an individual pattern. We Q... don't tolerate weakness within our ranks well. It's sort of our evolutionary duty to the species to subsume other Q if they let us." "It does not sound like such a pleasant life." "Oh, it's *wonderful*. Don't get me wrong. Through the Continuum, all of us have a deeper emotional connection to one another than any two humans can ever achieve. It's only on the topmost, superficial layers that we have to push each other away or get more or less eaten. It's a balance, and it works beautifully... except when it doesn't. When someone lets personal sentiment interfere, and protects a fellow Q who's weak... you don't want to know what a weak omnipotent being is capable of doing." "How can an omnipotent being be weak?" "Oh, I don't mean weak as in less powerful. I mean weak as in flawed. Azi was not a functional Q, or shouldn't have been. But I protected her, and cared for her, and they let me. And everyone thought she was perfectly functional, well within the range of diversity that we actively seek without falling into the range that can't survive in the Continuum. She had a fierce ego, something most of the children that don't make it to adolescence don't have, something that every Q needs." He shrugged. "We thought she was okay." "But she wasn't." "She decided, at some point, to fall madly in love with a mortal. Which is, you have to understand, considered something of a vice. Rather like... hmm, I can't think of a human equivalent. It's not morally wrong, it's not as if we think someone's going to be hurt, except for the poor hapless Q idiotic enough to get involved with one, but it's... beneath us. And stupid. Like... like falling in love with a holoprogram might be for humans." "I see." "But Azi was hardly the first. One of my older siblings fell in love with a new mortal on the average of every other hundred years, then moped about with a broken heart for a hundred years until she found a new mortal to fall in love with. And it was safe, in a way. I mean, if Azi tried to share herself totally with her lover she'd fry his puny brain, and if she shared herself to the extent that she could it still would be no danger to her whatsoever, so I felt reasonably secure about it. I mean, we were friends, but I didn't own her. I watched over her interactions with other Q, to be sure she was safe and they weren't going to take advantage of her, but it was never like we spent every minute together." "What you are trying to say is that you were not jealous?" "Well, I *wasn't*. All right, maybe a little, but not seriously. He was a mortal from a very long-lived species-- he could last a thousand years or so, which was actually a real amount of time to me. Most mortals I wouldn't have cared at all. I made fun of her, of course, but the Q always do that; she mocked me back, and I didn't see any real problem. "Then she said she wanted to make him a Q." T'Laren nodded. "Yes, I remember from your files you have the ability to do that." "Well, he *couldn't* be a Q. The notion was absurd. He was a Sarrin-- one of those tall, bendy people Sovaz mentioned. They're pacifistic, gentle, telepathic, they communicate with one another in harmony-- I don't care how advanced Azi thought he was, he couldn't survive being a Q. She'd subsume him, in seconds, with the force of her need and the fact that he wouldn't have the vaguest idea how to protect himself. Or they'd subsume each other. And if he *did* survive, it would be at the expense of all the lovely traits she thought he had, and he would be incredibly lonely, doomed to immortality with people he could never share himself fully with. And I thought that the fact that Azi would propose this at all indicated that she was dangerously obsessed, that she couldn't think straight where this mortal was concerned. So I shot down her proposal in front of the Continuum, and proposed myself that she be forbidden to see him. And we agreed. "She decided to disobey, and I... I knew it. When you know someone for a few million years, you know what they'll do... or you think you do. And if she disobeyed the Continuum would execute her. So I went to talk her out of it." He stopped for several seconds. "Did you?" T'Laren asked softly. "She tore me apart, T'Laren." He looked at her. "Literally. Normally one Q can't harm another Q-- we don't have the leverage, we'd hurt ourselves too badly. She couldn't have killed me without killing herself. But she was trying to. I never saw it coming-- I was trying to talk to her, and then she was ripping me to shreds." He shook his head. "Q against Q violence is almost unheard of. It happens at most every million years. I guess I was just amazingly lucky, that this million years it was me." "That... is horrible. I'm sorry." "Don't be. I did far, far worse when I retaliated," he said darkly. "What did you do?" "I'm getting to it... They exiled her. Stripped her of her powers, made her a Sarrin and dumped her with her boyfriend. Me, they threw into a little pocket universe to get better. I was barely *sentient* at first, T'Laren. It's... as if I'd suffered a stroke, or something. I couldn't get my powers to work right, I couldn't think straight, all I knew was that I used to be powerful and with lots of other Qs, and then someone had betrayed me, and now I was weak and alone. It was dark to all my senses, and I could hear the Continuum but I couldn't participate or understand, and I couldn't leave." "Why did they do that? That seems very cruel." "No... actually it was the best thing they could have done. They were removing me from the influence of other Q while I was in a weakened and malleable state, so others couldn't change me in ways I wouldn't want to be changed. I had to heal on my own-- they couldn't fix it, or risk changing me, and they knew I wouldn't want that. So they locked me away. I could leave the moment I relearned how to teleport, of course, but until then I was trapped there. "I learned again how to view the outside world... and I found Azi. And she was *happy*. Or it looked that way, anyway. I'd been trapped in there for ten years already, and it looked to me like Azi was thriving. She'd found her soulmate... and it wasn't me." "I... understand." "See, she'd tried to kill me. She'd committed the worst crime any Q of our generation had, that any Q could contemplate-- and now she was thriving and happy. And I was alone, powerless, trapped in darkness, with nothing to do but brood about the injustice of it all for the next thirty years. I... I grew to hate Azi, passionately. I couldn't believe she could be getting on with her life, that she could have achieved everything she'd ever wanted, the intimacy of minds she'd sought for millions of years, when I was suffering like this..." He stared at the floor, and his voice dropped. "So I decided to make her pay. "And when I got my ability to teleport and my other powers back, the first thing I did was to go to her. I told her how I'd suffered in darkness for the past forty years, while she lived happily with her new husband. And I couldn't touch her-- it was forbidden, for the same reason none of the Q who don't like me can just show up now and kill me. But I could touch her husband." He looked up at T'Laren, his eyes haunted. "I tore him apart, T'Laren. I shredded him, bit by bit, while Azi watched. I remember her screaming, pleading with me to kill her instead. And I laughed. It delighted me how much pain she was in, how much she was suffering watching him die, because of what she'd done to me." Q leaned back again, no longer facing her. "The Continuum thought I was excessive. They didn't make me undo what I'd done-- none of them resurrected the man, they let it stand that I'd killed him-- but they feared that it wouldn't be enough for me, that I'd torment Azi again and again. So they forbade me to think about her." "How can they forbid you to think something?" "Believe me, it works if you're a Q. It was necessary, I suppose... Q thoughts have a nasty way of becoming reality. But it... I didn't think about it, but on some level I knew, and it haunted me... it's why I went to Guinan, and we know how that turned out..." He looked back at her. "And when they wanted to strip me of my powers, and exile me... I defended myself on every count but that one. For what I did to Azi, I deserved to lose my powers." He shook his head. "And now I know far better than I did then what it was that I did." "What do you mean?" "She wasn't happy, T'Laren. She couldn't have been. She'd lost immortality, omnipotence and her family. All she had left was her lover... so she clung to him as a reason for being. She made their love into something that could justify what she'd lost... and I took that away from her. I destroyed her reason for existing, T'Laren. I must have put her in the same position that I was in at Starbase 56." He looked at the floor. "I thought she was dead, when I thought about it... the last time I'd peeked, she was headed into Borg space, and I know she wouldn't have forgotten where that was. At some point she met up with Guinan, because when I met Guinan the second time, when the Borg were heading her way, she said she'd met Azi. But... I figured she was dead. "And now I know she isn't. And I have to live with that. Because I don't have the power to resurrect her lover anymore." "And this... is the worst thing you've ever done?" "I deliberately set out to destroy a fellow Q emotionally, in as horrible a fashion as I could." Q looked at her. "Yes. That's the worst thing I have ever done. Oh, I've harmed alien races, I've put people through tests they weren't ready for, I gloated when the Borg destroyed Guinan's homeworld, but all those things were crimes against lesser species. When I was a Q, I truly didn't consider them equivalent to us, any more than you'd really get all broken up about hurting a bunch of dogs. Sure, it's not nice, it probably means you're a mean person... but it's not evil. What I did was evil." T'Laren shook her head. "What you did was terrible, but... I think I can understand it. You were not truly in your right mind then, either. And while you cannot 'fix' the problem, as you put it... you have paid." "Have I?" he asked bleakly. "Can anyone pay for something like that?" "Can anyone pay for murdering their love?" she replied. "We do what we can, as you said. We go on with our lives, with the knowledge of the worst we can do, and that we have done it, and can never fully atone." She took his hand. "I am no better than you in that regard. I can't offer you absolution any more than you can offer it to me. And I can't offer you forgiveness, because it is not my place to forgive. But I can offer acceptance, and understanding. Because my crime is very much similar." He smiled crookedly. "If Lhoviri really *did* fix the universe for you, maybe that's why he chose you. Because you think you understand." "Perhaps." They sat in silence for a few minutes. Q broke it finally. "So what happens next?" "Am I still fired?" "You are very definitely fired." "You still need someone to offer you advice, on how to deal with humans and other mortals." "I could use a bodyguard too. I don't want to go back to Starbase 56 just yet." T'Laren nodded. "Where did you want to go?" "I don't know. Anywhere that isn't Starbase 56." He grinned suddenly. "Perhaps I'll go to one of those vacation planets Medellin was always trying to get me to go to." "And I?" "Well, of course you'll come along. It's your ship, after all." Q turned to her. "Besides, like you said, I could use some advice. Just don't go thinking you can threaten to throw me out an airlock if I don't exercise any more." "Of course not. I'll merely point out how much more attractive you looked when you were exercising regularly, and your own vanity will carry you the rest of the way." "And then I'll point out how boring you look in whatever boring outfit you're wearing." "What if I'm not wearing a boring outfit?" "Unless I picked it out for you, it will be." T'Laren nodded. "I believe this could be an equitable partnership." * * * "You sure you don't want to stick around?" Harry asked. "I mean, even *you* were impressed with the Mihara's technology. This whole first contact thing could be a lot of fun." "Fun for you, perhaps," Q said, and ostentatiously yawned. "Once you've seen one highly advanced and spiritual society, you've seen them all. Personally, I always liked the more primitive races better. Little species like humanity have a certain raw energy to them which the older, more jaded species lack." "Including your own?" Markow asked. "Oh, I'd be the first to admit the Continuum could get a bit tedious at times. Paradise usually does, you know." Q sighed, and then brightened. "No, no, I'll leave the first contact to you folks. I've done my job; it's time for me to ride off into the sunset. My doctor's prescribed a month of vacation time for me, and who am I to contradict her?" He hadn't actually told any of them he'd fired T'Laren. The whole issue was entirely too personal. "Off to Risa?" Harry said, grinning. "Don't suppose I could come along?" "Risa is a sink of base animal lust and debauchery, Harry, of course I'm not going there. What were you thinking?" "I was thinking you might be a lot happier with some base animal lust and debauchery in your life, myself. Tell you what; ask T'Laren if she thinks it would be good for you. I'd cheerily help a friend with his medicine, you know." "I know," Q said woefully. "You've told me so, ad nauseam." "Ah well. Can't blame a fellow for trying." "I most certainly can. I can place blame whenever and whereever I want." "Where *are* you going?" Elejani Baii asked. "Kyreer. I've never heard of the place myself, but apparently it's well-traveled by tourists, requires little in the way of paperwork so I should be able to go incognito fairly well, and has some fascinating archaeological sites. Not to mention an absolutely lovely shipyard, according to the brochures I've read. If I'm going to go tooling through the galaxy with my Vulcan sidekick, I'd like to upgrade Ketaya's defenses." "After all the nasty things you've said about the engineering department, I can't believe you actually *want* to get your hands dirty with technological upgrades," Harry said. "That's only because you didn't hear all the nasty things I said about the physics department to the engineers." "I'm surprised," Markow said. "I didn't know you had enough tact to say things about people behind their back instead of to their faces." "Amazing the things you can pick up in three years, isn't it?" Q agreed. "When will you be coming back to Starbase 56?" Harry asked. *When hell freezes over.* "I haven't thought that far ahead," Q said lightly. The idea of never returning to the starbase scared him-- he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life-- but the idea of going back and living in that hell again scared him far more. "The Joint Laoni Sciences Council would be delighted to have you," Elejani Baii said. "If you should wish not to return to the Federation. It could well be said that we all owe you our lives, Scamaran and Laon'l both." "Yes, well, I'd rather it didn't be said. There are a lot of people who are out there trying to kill me, and given that Emaroth is *still* considered a demon by most Laon'l and Scamarans... frankly I'd rather the subject never came up, okay?" Elejani Baii nodded slowly. "Yes... I suppose I hadn't considered that. I won't tell anyone." "So when are you leaving?" Harry asked. "Tomorrow night. And no going-away parties, please. Though tasteful gifts are always appreciated." "I've seen your quarters," Markow said. "I'm surprised you know what 'tasteful' means." "What it does *not* mean is 'spartanly barren', though I realize there's a conspiracy afoot in your culture to make you think so. But then, Federation human culture seems to believe one-piece jumpsuits are actually attractive, so quite honestly I wouldn't put much stock in your cultural definition of taste." "Are you sure we can't throw you a party?" Harry asked. "You have such a huge fan club." "No, no. That's quite all right. They'll just have to bear up under the disappointment." "Well, be sure to say goodbye to us before you leave," Elejani Baii said. Q looked at her. "I thought that's what I was doing." * * * This had to be done, and done before tomorrow night, or T'Laren might never have another chance. She pressed the buzzer for Sovaz's quarters. The door slid open. "T'Laren? Is there something I can do for you?" Sovaz asked politely. "I have come..." T'Laren took a deep breath. "I have come to say good-bye." "Saying goodbye is not particularly logical," Sovaz pointed out. "I am not a human, that you would need to do such a thing." "No. But you are my sister, and I have wronged you." Sovaz considered this. "You said you were no longer my sister." "That is part of how I have wronged you." "It was perfectly logical. You are no longer married to my brother. Therefore you are not my sister. It was not wrong to say that." "Sovaz, let us stop trying to prove to one another how terribly logical we are, shall we?" T'Laren took a step into the room. "I was there for much of your childhood; I was an influence on your life. I behaved as an older sister to you in the same way the Dorsets behaved as parents to me. Even when I repudiated my Terran citizenship to claim my Vulcan heritage, and gave up my foster parents' name, I still continued to consider them parents. The same applies to you. It was Soram who repudiated me, not you. But I have had great difficulty in dealing with fellow Vulcans since that repudiation, and in particular you reminded me of what I had lost, and what my own actions had brought me to. You reminded me of the worst possibilities that lie within myself, and I turned you away for that reason. It was not logical, but it was what I did." "Why did Soram divorce you?" Sovaz asked. "I was insane." "That doesn't seem a sufficient excuse to me. Surely you could have been healed." "Perhaps our marriage was never meant to be. I have heard that he remarried..." "He did. A year after we believed you had died... Why didn't you tell us you were alive?" A year. The minimum decorous period after a mate's death before one could remarry, unless the pressure of one's Time was bearing down on one. And even then, the trauma of a wife's death usually threw a man off his cycle, giving him an additional two or three years before the Time of Mating returned. Soram had wasted no time at all. "I... could not. I owed an obligation to the person who had saved my life, and I could allow nothing to interfere with that." She shook her head. "But that isn't the whole reason. I will be honest-- you deserve that. The truth is I didn't want to. As I said... I couldn't deal with fellow Vulcans right then, or anyone who would remind me of my shame. My control was in total disarray and my emotions were largely ruling me. I didn't wish to be seen by anyone I knew in such a condition." Sovaz frowned slightly, as if trying to understand. "It seems to me that this was not your fault. You began behaving strangely after you returned from that top-secret mission. I think Soram should have understood that something that happened on that mission clearly caused your difficulties, and he should have stayed with you. The fact that he didn't shames him, not you." She still wasn't willing to tell Sovaz the whole story... she remembered the shattered look on Sovaz' face when the girl had seen what T'Laren had done, and couldn't bear to let Sovaz realize she was capable of such a thing. "I was the one who faltered. I... believe I am essentially recovered, now, but I am not willing to see Soram yet. There is... in some areas my logic remains impaired, and that is one. However, I don't wish to lose you, and I fear with the way I have treated you I may have done just that." "*My* logic remains unimpaired," Sovaz said. "I accept your apology, and I am grateful that you don't wish to lose me, for I've never wished to lose you. I..." She deliberately composed herself. "I will ask you someday why you did it. I have wondered that for two years. But I don't think you can tell me right now." "I cannot. You're right. Perhaps... someday." * * * "I thought you'd already left." "Growing senile already?" Q mocked. "I don't depart this ship of fools until tomorrow night, remember?" "Wishful thinking," Markow said. It felt wrong, somehow, to leave without more acknowledgement to Markow than he could have done in public, at the goodbye lunch the few people he could call close to friends had thrown for him. Perhaps they all deserved more than that, but quite frankly Q didn't want to be alone with Harry, as the man was likely to get maudlin, and might well say or do something that required more tact than Q was willing to muster. And Elejani Baii made him uncomfortable. But Q didn't quite know how to say what he wanted to say, and perhaps it went without saying anyway, but without telepathy who could know for sure? "I see right through you, Daedalus," Q said. "You want me gone so you can dazzle the conference with your feeble human excuse for a brilliant mind, without being overshadowed by the real thing." "I want you gone so I can talk to the other one without having to admit I know you," Markow said. "New worlds to explore and all that." "The other one?" "The other Q." A silence fell for a moment. "That is why you ran out on the first contact briefing, isn't it? High Magister Martikale's a Q, and you knew her." Q struggled with a lie, and realized his face had already shown too much to pull it off anyway. "You are entirely too damned perceptive for your own or anyone else's good," he said bitterly. "Tell me, where was that keen grasp on the nature of things when you decided to burn out your nervous system with an alien hat?" "The same place your brilliance was when you did whatever you did that got you thrown out of the Continuum," Markow said. "Don't do it, Lucy. I can match you blow for blow if I need to." "Could you really?" Q said in a dangerous tone. "I've got millennia of experience at this, and I've always been willing to call the kettle black. Are you warning me off because you don't want to go head to head with me, Daedalus?" "I have better things to do then get into pointless mind-shredding competitions with my friends. You're upset over Martikale, aren't you? Did you not want me to talk to her, or did you just not want the subject brought up?" "Talk to her all you want," Q said bitterly. "All she'll do is present you with meaningless meandering treatises on the nature of mortal emotion, in particular love-- which I'd be willing to bet is not something particularly high on your priority list." Markow said nothing for several seconds. Finally he said, "It's not impossible, you know." "What isn't?" "That someone could love a cripple." His face was unreadable as always, but his eyes burned, and Q was not at all sure he was talking about himself. "Even the galaxy's biggest asshole might be able to find someone. Who knows?" Now Q was sure Markow was talking about him, or at least both of them. "One would need to be looking, I would think." "That isn't how it works. Things like that sneak up on you." "Why are we having this conversation?" "Because I'm tired of you being an asshole." Markow closed his eyes. "Being a cripple isn't an excuse, Lucy. Much as we might like it to be. You should talk to her. You're in the same boat, it looks like to me." "You misunderstand the situation so badly, if I weren't used to wrapping my mind around truly cosmic concepts I might not be able to grasp the magnitude of your misunderstanding." Q looked away. "You've heard... I got thrown out for crimes I committed?" "I figured something like that." "Azi is one of those crimes," he said softly, then looked at Markow again. "And I'm not going to say anything else about it, so you can stop trying to pump me." "You can't run away forever." "Fortunately, humans don't live forever. I can certainly run away for the length of a human lifespan." "Seems like cowardice to me." "Fortunately, everyone in the universe knows I'm a terrible coward, so I needn't fear for my reputation." Markow sighed. "You'll do what you want," he said. "What did you come here for?" Q took a deep breath. "I'll... miss you, Daedalus." "You're not coming back?" "I... don't know. I can't stand the thought of going back to Starbase 56..." "So go someplace else. Plenty of fish in the sea." "I don't know," Q repeated. "And... since it's become even more obvious to me how fragile mere mortals are now that I am one... I don't know if I'll see you again." "The really damnable thing about this condition of mine," Markow said, "is that you can't imply anything. You have to come out and say anything you want to imply. I hate having to say certain things, when I should be able to make them understood some other way." "But you can't. You're limited by the medium, too." "Right." Markow considered silently. "Don't get your fool self killed, Lucy." The idea that he himself could find it more possible to baldly admit to emotion than Markow could struck Q as suddenly, absurdly funny. He laughed. "Daedalus, you're even worse than I am." * * * "You're not going to fall off the face of the universe again?" Tris asked. "I'll try to avoid it." "Not good enough. I want letters. Lots of letters." "Did you ever send me a letter?" "I sent one or two. And they were very long ones. With lots of detail." "And you pacing around the room instead of looking at the camera. I remember your voice fading out on occasion, and many instructive views of your back." "So I don't like to sit still. Maybe I'll actually send a written one. In writing. With those squiggly lines on it that most sentient races used for several thousand years before cameras." "In handwriting?" T'Laren was skeptical. "Is your handwriting legible?" "It's very legible. Standard's my second language, remember; I learned how to write out of a textbook. Now my *Bajoran* handwriting is miserable, but you can't read Bajoran, so I won't send you letters in it." "I will send decorously recorded letters in which I sit still, speak clearly and actually look at the camera." "Good. And I want updates on this situation with Q." She felt a little guilty about that. She hadn't told him how the situation with Q had changed. It didn't seem quite fair not to tell Tris, but she was sure she was going to hear it about what a terrible idea this was, and she really didn't need to. "I don't know of anyone else I'd be willing to talk to about it," she said. He gave her a look. "Very nice answer," he said. "It manages to sound flattering and avoid promising anything all at the same time." "I'm glad you approve." "Oh, well. You'll tell me what you want to tell me, I'm sure." He stepped forward. "Barbaric non-Vulcan leavetaking custom?" "What?" "Hugs," he said, and hugged her. "Be careful." "I will try." * * * "Will you be coming back?" Sovaz asked earnestly. "I still have a great number of questions to ask you." "Funny, that's what Daedalus said. I'm beginning to think you people only love me for my mind." Sovaz blinked. "I don't love you. Love is an extreme example of an emotion, and quite anathema to Vulcans." Q laughed. "*Do* take a course in Terran idioms, dear girl. As for coming back, who knows? Perhaps someday you and I will open up a detective agency-- Mysteries of the Cosmos, Solved! If you wondered what happened to your missing mass, if you think your stellar bodies are fooling around on the side, or if you just want to know who changed the gravitational constant of the universe, call on Q and Sovaz. We could even hire T'Laren as our receptionist." Sovaz simply stared at him. "Oh! Was all of that a joke?" Ostentatiously Q pressed a hand to his forehead. "Why, oh why do I even try?" he asked melodramatically. "Does your humorous statement mean that you *are* coming back, or that you are not? Or does it make a statement of probabilities at all? I confess I really didn't understand it." "That much is obvious." Q looked down at her fondly. She really did remind him of Data. "I don't know where I'm going," he said, with uncharacteristic seriousness. "Not in the long run. But I will try to come back." "That is all I can ask," Sovaz said. * * * By the next evening, goodbyes had all been said, and the entire ship knew Q was leaving, though he had been careful to avoid actually telling anyone why. People seemed to think it was a mere whim of his, which suited him-- he liked to be thought of as capricious, and this way, no one would suspect his fear of becoming known to the Mihara and their spiritual leader. Except for Markow, of course, but then Markow had always seen through him. Since Ketaya was extremely small in comparison to Yamato-- about twice the size of a runabout, which itself wasn't much bigger than a shuttle-- it was docked inside Yamato's shuttle bays. Q and T'Laren said their final farewells and walked up into their ship, taking their places at the controls. "Computer," Q said cheerily. "Set a course for somewhere else." The computer didn't respond at all, not even to tell him the question didn't make sense. Q frowned. "I think we're having computer troubles." "I think your troubles are larger than that, human," a voice said behind them. T'Laren spun around in her seat the moment the voice started speaking-- to face five Ferengi with phasers trained on them. They were Yalit's brood-- she recognized their DaiMon, Dar, as the one who had spoken. Q stared at them. "What is the meaning of this?" he blustered. The DaiMon grinned broadly. "You told my mother, the Lady Yalit, that you were worth a great deal of money to the Federation. We're going to find out if it's true or not. Bej! Take the controls from the Vulcan female and pilot us out of here on the routing they submitted to Yamato's computers." No. She couldn't let this happen. While they were talking, T'Laren was surreptitiously reaching behind herself for the toggle to turn on exterior speakers. She had almost reached it when Bej shot her. "*T'Laren!*" she heard Q scream, as if from a great distance away. The floor moved up toward her in slow motion, and she was helpless to stop it, helpless to stop any of this. "We've only stunned her, human. If you don't wish to see anything worse happen to her, you had better cooperate. You are valuable; she is not." She felt Q kneeling by her side, taking her hand. "All right. As long as you don't hurt her, I'll cooperate." He was doing an admirable job of hiding how frightened he must be, she thought. A flicker of rage at them and pride in him surged through her, that they had stunned her so she could not be there for him, that he had to be strong all alone in the face of these pathetic monsters, and that he was doing so well at it, far better than she'd have expected. "But if you hurt her, you'd best pray to whatever gods you believe in for mercy." "Why?" giggled one of the Ferengi. "Are *you* going to strike us down?" "Shut up, Antek. Let him make all the threats he wants, as long as he cooperates." T'Laren felt the thrum of the engines coming to life, felt the ship glide out of its berth in Yamato's belly and move out. She wanted to tell Q to dive for the controls, send a message to Yamato that they were being kidnapped, not to worry about her-- since he was valuable, they wouldn't dare hurt him, might not even risk stunning him, and that would give him precious seconds to act. But he wasn't trained for this, and apparently was thinking only about her safety, remaining quiet and unmoving at her side as the Ferengi hijacked their ship. She was going to have to teach him how to handle a situation like this. If they both got out of here alive.