Only Human Part IV: Ketaya 0/12+1: Preface/Author's Notes This is all of ONLY HUMAN Part IV. It is 12 parts, plus this preface, plus an afterword. All of this has been released privately on my mailing list for Only Human, and some of it has been released on fanfiction.net, but this is the first posting of this chapter to alt.startrek.creative and ASCEML. 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 weeks of travel, Q came to trust T'Laren, more or less, though they 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. In Part III, Q and T'Laren attended the scientific conference aboard the Yamato, where T'Laren's somewhat shady past came back to haunt her in the forms of her young sister-in-law and her former lover. Q actually managed to make new friends and renew his acquaintance with old ones. He also made new enemies, among them the female Ferengi physicist Yalit and the Romulan spy tr'Sahlassiu, who mentally violated both T'Laren and Q in an attempt to gather all of Q's knowledge for Romulus. During the course of the conference, Q and T'Laren's own relationship became strained, as T'Laren thought Q was too blatantly amused by her personal problems and Q wanted T'Laren to actually open up and confide in him as a friend, but her ethics as a therapist demanded that she keep him at a distance. When it was revealed that the anomaly the conference had been called to solve was created by a former lover/sister of Q's, the former Q called Azi, Q had a complete meltdown and fired T'Laren as his therapist, insisting that he needed a friend, not a person who pretends to be one because it's good for him. In order to keep him from throwing her out of his life, T'Laren confided her dark secret – she went mad and murdered her husband two years ago, and is working for Lhoviri because he altered the universe so it didn't happen. In return, Q told her the story of his dealings with Azi, and T'Laren agreed to remain with Q as his friend, not his therapist. The two made their departure from Yamato aboard Ketaya, only to find that their ship had been hijacked by Yalit's brood of Ferengi. As the story opens, T'Laren has been stunned, and Q is on the bridge surrounded by Ferengi... The rating for the overall novel Only Human is R, but this particular chapter goes seriously NC-17. Contains torture, sexual harassment, rape threats, het with dubious consent, het with enthusiastic consent, het with non-consent, and violence. Note that elements of this story contradict the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey." Although I finally got around to accepting this episode as canon, it cannot affect Only Human as the bulk of the story was written before the episode came out. Note also that I do not agree with Quark's statement in DS9 that the Ferengi have never practiced slavery, since it contradicts pretty much every non-DS9 episode with Ferengi, ever. I'm willing to accept that perhaps the Ferengi never enslaved other male Ferengi, but they have quite clearly attempted to take non-Ferengi slaves and their treatment of their women is akin to slavery. Only Human Parts I - III will not be reposted to USENET as they're too bloody long. You can find them at the following places: http://www.alara.net/trek/oh.html http://www.fanfiction.net/s/195109/1/Only_Human Part IV will be up complete in the same locations within a day or two.