Title: Only Human Part IV
Author: Alara Rogers
Series: TNG
Rating: NC-17
Codes: Q/f, AU
Part: 3/12+1
Summary: Q and T'Laren are taken captive aboard their own ship by the Ferengi.

As she worked on cleaning the carpet, she focused on trying to control her emotions.  Q had been, for Q, almost conciliatory, even agreeing to use a piece of his precious wardrobe as a rag to clean dead bugs.  She, however, had not been able to stop sniping at him.  This kind of lack of control was unacceptable.  True, Q should not be urinating on their captors.  She could see nothing good coming of that.  And true, it was very likely that the Ferengi's eventual retaliation would be terrible.  But there was no logical point to being afraid.  She couldn't do anything about it, no matter what they decided to do.  Q wouldn't listen to her, the Ferengi wouldn't listen to her... that still didn't mean there was any point to letting herself get angry.

The door slid open.  A Ferengi entered with two covered bowls.  This time she could smell that there were vegetables, and no insects.  Before the Ferengi had even left, she went over to the bowls and lifted the lids.  One bowl was full of salad.  The other... her lip twitched before she got her face back under control.  The other was a bowl of sliced mushrooms. 

"Our breakfast is finally here," she told Q.

"Good, because I'm getting really, really sick of cleaning up bugs."  He came over to the low table.  "What've we got?"

"I've received a salad.  You... have mushrooms."

"*Mushrooms?*  Oh, the horror!  How I despise mushrooms!  *Blast* those Ferengi for giving me mushrooms!"  Q flung a hand out in a dramatic gesture.  "The disgust overwhelms me.  I may die!"  He dropped the hand.  "On the other hand I haven't had anything to eat all day, so I *suppose*, if I *must*, I can *force* myself to partake of *nasty, disgusting mushrooms*..." He grabbed a handful of the slices and stuffed them in his mouth.  "Hmm.  You know, I need to rethink my position.  It seems that after all this, I don't mind mushrooms at all!  But *now* I'd really hate a cup of coffee."

For a moment T'Laren wished she weren't Vulcan, so she could laugh out loud.  It really shouldn't be funny-- Q's histrionics had certainly given away that the two of them knew they were being monitored, if the Ferengi had any brains whatsoever-- but Q had a brilliant sense of comic timing when he felt like using it.  Perhaps, after all, it hadn't been such a bad thing that he'd urinated on the Ferengi.  She couldn't quite see why he defined what had happened to him as having come out ahead in the encounter, but she'd been telling him all along that he'd feel more self-confidence if he tried to defend himself instead of just curling up and whimpering.  Certainly from all she'd heard she wouldn't have expected Q to be in such good spirits after being physically overpowered and force-fed something he was phobic about.  

"I, too, would hate a cup of coffee," T'Laren said solemnly.  "Even more than I would hate a bunch of grapes."

"Oh, and we all know how much you hate grapes," Q said, grinning.  "Want some mushrooms?"

"Yes, I would.  Thank you.  Would you like some croutons?  Or a piece of tomato?"

"Not trying to force-feed me the green stuff?"

"No.  The green stuff is for *me.*"

"Ah.  I see your interest in the welfare of your patient flies out the window when it's your own stomach at stake."

"You're not my patient anymore.  I no longer feel obligated to let you share my bell peppers."

"Well, that's good.  Because I don't want your bell peppers.  Even though I love bell peppers."

Q's mushrooms tasted fine.  Delicious, in fact.  Her own salad tasted slightly off, as if perhaps it'd been grown on a planet and sprayed with pesticide or preservative or something not-quite-vegetable rather than coming fresh out of a replicator.  She resisted the temptation to eat more of Q's mushrooms; she was very hungry, and the Vulcan biological strategy for dealing with low food rations was to want to eat like a pig once food was available, which was making matters worse.  There was very little solid in her salad, very little filling; it was rich in vitamins but low in calories, and after having not eaten for an entire day she really could have used more starch than a few small croutons could give her.  There was also no protein at all.  They hadn't thought to give her a salad with chick peas or lentils in it; they hadn't actually gone into her food menu at all or there'd be at least some Vulcan vegetables in here and probably a whole lot more of it.  Salad was so much a meat-eater's notion of what a vegetarian would be eating, anyway.  But Q was thinner and at more risk for suffering hunger than she was; she needed to encourage him to eat.  She put a few chunks of carrot in his bowl to replace the mushrooms she'd taken and give him something with some vitamins.  

T'Laren was finished long before Q.  After one last wistful look at his half-eaten bowl of mushrooms, she got up and began inspecting their living quarters, looking to see if all the dead bugs had been cleaned up and if, in fact, all the bugs were actually dead.  One or two live ones turned up, which she crushed and then cleaned up with the rag.  Many dead ones that Q had missed were strewn all over.  "This wasn't a very good cleaning job."

"I wasn't *done.*  I thought eating was higher priority."

"If it's higher priority, why are you doing it so slowly?"

He sighed.  "Mushrooms, mushrooms, and mushrooms is really an incredibly tedious dish.  You want to finish it?"

"Q, you should eat."

"Yeah, I should, but since I'm not going to, you may as well.  Give me my rag back, I have strange dead bugs to seek out."

She was about to do so when the ship jerked wildly, throwing him into her, and the lights went out.

Aboard a starship, lights going out was a Bad Thing.  An even Worse Thing was the sudden terrible silence, signaling the complete absence of air circulation.  She helped Q get off her and onto his knees.  "What was that?  Are we under attack?" he asked.

"I don't know... I'd expect more shaking around than just that if we were, and the fact that the power is completely out would be strange for a first shot..."

"Oh.  No, you're right.  I know what's going on."  He sounded much more confident.  "They were trying to test out our transwarp engines and they blew the crystals.  T'Laren, while the power's down they can't monitor us..."

"Of course.  Do you need help finding the door?"

"I think I have encountered the concept of darkness once or twice in my existence," he said dryly.  

They made their way to the door to the suite.  "There's an emergency manual release to the right," she said.  "We'll need to find the panel and pull it off."

"Easily done.  I already knew where that panel was.  I just... yes.  Here we go.  Urg!  How the hell do you get this thing to *budge?*"

"Let me help."  T'Laren's fingers found the panel.  "There's a trick to it-- yes, here."  She pulled on the emergency manual release.  The doors banged open loudly.  

Outside there was one Ferengi on watch.  She heard his feet scuffle on the floor as he turned.  "Hey!  I'll shoot!"

"I need fresh air!"  Q babbled, loudly.  "We could *die* in there!  There's no air circulation!  I'm claustrophobic-- I can't *take* being locked up in a tiny room, in the dark!  What's happening?  You have to tell me!"

While his extremely loud blather was occupying the Ferengi's better-than-Vulcan hearing, T'Laren was gliding as silently as she could toward the very, very faint glow of a heat source.  Vulcan vision had less of an infrared component than most of their evolutionary neighbors on their planet, having sacrificed it for better daytime vision, but with her eyes completely dark-adapted she could see just the tiniest bit into the infrared, and that allowed her to see the Ferengi as a very, very dim red glow against the utter blackness.  She waited until he spoke.

"Get back into your room, human! I--"

That was all she needed to identify exactly where his head was, and therefore, where his neck was.  Her hand reached out and grasped, twisting at the nerve cluster.  The Ferengi dropped to the floor.

"There may be others," she said softly.  "Be quiet except in emergency; we'll need my ears to navigate."

"Right."

But they had only gotten three feet down the hallway before the lights came back on.  

"Damn!" Q whispered harshly.  There had been a Ferengi at the end of the hallway, walking toward them; as soon as the lights came on he saw them, and raised his phaser before either of them had a chance to run or dodge.  

"Stay right there!" the Ferengi shouted.  He tapped his combadge.  "I need backup.  The prisoners are escaping!"

"We needed air!" Q complained.  "The circulation turned off in our quarters!  What did you expect us to do?"

"March right back *in* there, *now!*"

T'Laren could see no point to refusing.  At this distance she couldn't possibly reach the Ferengi before he could stun her, and she had been stunned far too many times recently.  She backed away and back into the suite, complying.  With bad grace Q copied her, grumbling.  "Dammit, we were so close..."

Two more Ferengi showed up.  "What were you two doing out of your suite?"  the taller one asked superciliously.

"I keep saying.  We were trying to get some fresh air.  There was no circulation in here."

"And that's why Frej is lying on the floor, right?"

"We tripped over him in the dark and he hit his head."

"Do you expect us to believe that, human?"

"I don't care what you believe.  But I do expect you to be able to maintain basic standards of care like keeping our *air* on."

"Computer.  Relock door!"

The door slammed shut in their faces.  Q flung himself on the couch.  "Goddammit."

"We did our best, Q.  It wasn't our fault the power came back on so quickly."

"Of course there's going to be no shortage of power failures like that in the future if they keep playing with the transwarp, so I suppose we'll get another chance as long as they're stupid."

"Yes.  You did very well, you know.  Your patter, at the door?  That was exactly the distraction I needed."

"Glad I could help."

She sat down on the couch next to him.  "They've already made two sizable mistakes," she said softly, almost whispering.  "Logically, it's only a matter of time."

"Oh, I do hope you're right."  He sounded sour and disbelieving.  

She doubted very much that she'd be able to cajole him out of the dark mood.  "Why don't you finish your mushrooms, since we appear to be going nowhere at the moment?"

"I told you.  I don't want them.  You eat them."

"Very well."  Q's mood had obviously taken a dramatic downturn.  She wished he could establish some equanimity.  This was an unfortunate setback, but it wasn't as if they'd expected the opportunity, either.  T'Laren picked up the bowl of mushrooms and ate them hungrily.  They really tasted much better than her salad had.  

She had finished the mushrooms, and was just about to try to see if she could get Q to do something to get his mind off their situation, when the door opened and three Ferengi with phasers entered.  Immediately she tensed.  This could be some sort of retribution for the escape attempt, or for the urination thing.

"Human.  The Lady Yalit wants to see you in Engineering."

"The Lady Yalit can send people who know what species I belonged to for millions of years, then," Q drawled, making no attempt to get off the couch.

"Or, we could just stun you and drag you there," the second Ferengi said.  He was the one who'd caught them in the corridor, and the other two had been involved in Q's fight with the Ferengi this morning.  

"That's quite true, but then what would you do with an unconscious lump of human in engineering?  You want my mind, you call me by my name.  Q.  It's only one syllable and it's *very* easy to spell."

"What makes you think anyone wants you for your mind, human?  Maybe Lady Yalit wants something else from you."

Q made a disgusted face.  "Heaven forfend.  No, I'm pretty sure she wants me to explain to her why the lovely transwarp engine she's just stolen from me does not go.  See, I am smart.  I can make it go."  He said the last two sentences very slowly, with a condescending smirk.

"All right then, *Q*, come with us to Engineering or we'll stun you and drag you," the first Ferengi said.

"Have you any idea what being dragged along a corridor will do to my hair?" Q stood up.  "Come on, T'Laren.  We've been summoned."

"Not your female!" the first Ferengi barked.  "Just you."

"Oh.  Well, then, no deal."  Q plopped back down on the couch.  "T'Laren stays with me."

"Q, there is actually most likely nothing I would be able to do to protect you in this situation," T'Laren said.  There was no point in whispering.  If she pitched her voice loud enough that Q could hear her, the Ferengi would hear as well.

"Protect *me?*"  He looked taken aback for a second.  

Why did that surprise him?  Wasn't that why he wanted her to come along?... unless it was simply for moral support.  "It would be better to avoid being stunned and dragged off."

"Whatever, T'Laren."  He turned back to the Ferengi.  "Do you want me to cooperate or no?"

"Your female is staying right here."

"Well, then so am I."

"Q, there isn't actually anything I can *do* for you that is worth running the risk of being stunned.  And I would rather not go to Engineering."  The thought of being out in a public place, surrounded by the Ferengi, where she wouldn't have any room to defend herself if one of them decided he wanted to grope her, and where Q would have to devote his attention to dealing with their head captor and so she would not be able to draw his attention to her if there was a problem...  She would endure, if it happened.  But it didn't appeal.

"You don't want to come with me."

"No, to be honest I would rather not.  I am not an engineer-- there will be little I can do.  And I suspect Yalit will not talk to me either."  A woman who gained power in such a sexist society didn't tend to do it by having warm sisterly feelings toward other women.  

Q gave her an unreadable look.  "Fine."  He got up.  "Take me to your leader."

He was probably offended, but there was nothing she could do about that.  He had to save his ammunition for the big battles, which meant she couldn't let him expend his energy on the small stuff like this.  

After he left with the Ferengi, she began going through her exercise routines-- she was going to have to become accustomed to moving in clothing that was too large for her if they were to get another chance.

&&&

So she didn't want his protection.  Okay, she didn't realize she needed it, but did she have to undermine him in front of the Ferengi?  If they molested her while he was gone it was only what she deserved for preventing him from stopping it.  No matter how many times Q declared this to himself, however, it didn't reduce his nervousness.  

Nothing he could do.  He let himself breathe, evenly, calmly, knowing that pretending to feel an emotion was the closest he could approach to actually changing his emotional state.  The nervousness would not go away if he pretended it wasn't there, but it would lessen to the point where he could sincerely ignore it.  

He had the upper hand here.  Yalit would never be able to figure out how the hell Lhoviri's jury-rigged transwarp drive worked, never having been exposed to a working drive using proper fuel.  It took the knowledge and experience of a Q to screw up technology quite this badly, and it would take the same to disentangle the situation.  He wasn't *happy* with the idea of letting Yalit know anything whatsoever about transwarp-- he'd refused to work on transwarp for the Federation, for good reasons having to do with maintaining the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant-- but he could use this to leverage his return to the Federation, as well as better treatment while he was here, and once he had that arranged he could have Yalit arrested for kidnapping, at which point her knowledge of transwarp mechanics would not do her much good.

They led him into engineering, to a small office on the side of the engineering room.  Yalit was in the office, still naked, sitting in a very tall chair.  "Brill, Yark—you can leave Q here."  She gestured them out.  They didn't argue with her, just obeyed.

"I see you've got these two better trained than the one who whined about you offending your womanhood, on *Yamato*," Q needled.

Yalit ignored him.  "I want information from you."

"About how to work the transwarp drive?  And duplicate it, so you can sell it to the highest bidder?"  Q smirked at her.  "Your incompetence with it was obvious when the power went out."

Her eyes narrowed.  "You just don't learn, do you," she said, leaning forward with a scowl on her face.  "You're in my power here, Q.  Your obnoxious mouth won't save you.  I can do anything I want to you."

"But you won't, because I'm too valuable for you to risk my life. So let's skip the posturing and get to the deal-making, shall we?  I hear you Ferengi are supposed to be good at that."

"Fine."  She smiled tightly, thin-lipped.  

Q sat on her desk.  "I can solve your little transwarp problem for you.  In fact I'm the only one who can, since the reason it doesn't work the way you think it should is because my brother screwed around with it, and I'm the only one who knows what he did and can compensate for it.  But it's going to cost you."

"Oh, really."

"Yes, really.  First of all, I want replicator access restored for myself and T'Laren.  We can't feed ourselves, wash, get clothes that fit—the situation is absolutely intolerable and I won't stand for it."  He stood up and circled around to Yalit's chair, leaning on it as he looked down at her.  "Secondly, you ransom us back to the Federation.  They'll pay exorbitantly to get me back, I'm quite sure.  There's no need to start a bidding war.  Thirdly, you give us access to the gym and swimming pool—supervised, of course, I'm quite aware you're not going to let us run around the ship unescorted, but since you won't give us computer access we're bored out of our minds."

Yalit's smile grew broader.  "Here's my counteroffer.  You do what I tell you to, when I tell you to, and you give me any information I ask for, or I have you sedated and kept in stasis where you can't kill yourself until I have a chance to sell you off to the highest bidder, I don't even include the Federation in the bidding, and I give your girlfriend to my sons to do what they want with until we have a chance to sell her to the Romulans for their breeding projects.  How's that sound?"

Q straightened up, almost involuntarily backing away from Yalit, as cold terror spread through him. For a moment he couldn't speak.  He wanted to hit Yalit, to wipe that cold smile off her face, but he'd never hit anyone in anger before and he wasn't about to start now, not with so much at stake.  He forced his own face back from wide-eyed shock to something more controlled and calculating.  "Well, then you wouldn't have transwarp, would you.  As much as you could get for selling me on the open market, you'd certainly get more for selling me *and* a working transwarp drive."

"That's a financial risk I'm willing to take.  It's your life, Q, you and your woman's.  Are you willing to take that risk?"

He matched her cold smile.  It was a lie; his heart was pounding and he could feel rivulets of cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.  But he was very, very accomplished at using his body language to lie.  "And if I kill myself hours after my new owners take possession, I imagine they'd be really quite unhappy with *you.* I know your Rules of Acquisition have something to say about no refunds, but what are you going to do if, say, the entire Romulan government is enraged with you for selling them a bill of goods?"

"I *could* always sell you to one of the people who wants you dead anyway.  I've had a few choice offers from the Tatarians, and a nice bid from the Ceuli."

The cold terror intensified.  It was an effort to keep breathing normally.  He did it anyway, deliberately leaning over her again as he had before.  "You could.  But the thing about nearly everyone who wants me dead is that they don't just want me *dead*; they want me to go through *their* execution ritual.  So again, if I kill myself right after being handed over to them, they don't get their money's worth, and they come after you.  Do you *know* what Ceulan execution rituals consist of?  Do you know that ripping them off financially is a crime they're willing to kill for?  Now, if you're eager to have your chest cut open and your heart ripped out while you're still alive, by all means sell me to the Ceuli.  Nothing could make me happier than to know my death will cause yours." He took a step away from her, leaning back against the wall, the picture of insouciance.  "Or, we could come to an arrangement.  You want transwarp—and you'd rather I *didn't* off myself before whoever you sell me to thinks they've gotten their money's worth.  I want protection for T'Laren and some basic sentient rights.  You either deal, or neither of us get what we want, and as a Ferengi I'd think you'd be a *marginally* better negotiator than *that.*"

"You'd really see your woman sold into slavery and yourself killed if I don't give you access to *a swimming pool?*"

"Well, no, I'm willing to make a few small concessions.  Tell you what.  If you absolutely refuse to give us replicator access, then you have T'Laren's clothes moved into my quarters.  We give you a list of basic amenities, and you replicate them and hand them over so we can take showers and brush our *teeth.* You feed us decent food, on a regular schedule. You include the Federation as one of the bidding partners when you auction me off, and you hand T'Laren over to the Federation before you hand me over to whoever's buying.  Unless, obviously, you sell me back to the Federation, in which case you can hand us over at the same time.  In exchange, I'll help you figure out this transwarp thing, and graciously refrain from killing myself, *if* you don't sell me to someone who wants me dead anyway."  

"I could beat transwarp out of you," she said softly.

"Without me killing myself?  Not likely," he snorted.  "A race of godlike entities couldn't get me to do what they wanted.  What makes you think you could come close without making it worth my while to cooperate?"

All she needed to do was call his bluff about killing himself.  He was gambling everything, and he knew it.  His mouth had gone completely dry with fear, and it was an effort of will not to shake.  Posturing as if he had the upper hand when in fact Yalit had just proven she had him over a barrel was taking everything he had.  But if he gave in, if he didn't try to force any concessions out of her whatsoever, then she'd know he really did have no power, and then she could do anything to him and to T'Laren, anything at all.

Yalit looked at him for several long moments, piggy little eyes narrowed, assessing him.  Waiting for him to crack.  An overwhelming urge to sweeten the deal, to offer her more enticements so she'd take it, swept him.  He ignored it.  He *had* to pretend he had the power here or neither his life nor T'Laren's would be worth living.  He simply lounged back against the wall, studying her just as intently, behaving for all the world as if all this was of merely academic interest to him.

"Let's do this," Yalit said.  "I give your woman her clothes back, after searching them for any weaponry.  I give you the amenities *I* think you need based on the guesting guidelines for humans and Vulcans in the computer.  I'll give you the food on time, and I'll include the Federation in the auction.  And once I've sold a working transwarp drive, I'll hand your woman back to the Federation.  But if I can't sell transwarp, I'll sell *her* to the Romulans."

"I hardly think T'Laren should be punished if you turn out to be an incompetent saleswoman.  Transwarp ought to sell itself."

"Then you won't be worried."

"No, because you can get a financial benefit out of dragging your feet on selling transwarp until after I'm gone.  No.  You guarantee T'Laren's safe return to the Federation or you get nothing from me.  I'll work with you in any reasonable manner to make sure you've got a saleable product, with fuel requirements you pathetic Alpha Quadrant mortals can actually meet, but T'Laren isn't negotiable.  She goes back to the Federation or there's no deal."  This wasn't pure altruism on his part; it would be easier for the Ferengi to hand both himself and T'Laren over at the same time, and demanding that T'Laren be returned to the Federation as a condition of the deal made the Federation a more attractive customer and the Romulans a less attractive one.  But if he were honest with himself, that wasn't a very large part of his motivation.  Having come up against a Romulan telepath, and having read some of that telepath's memories, he knew that Vulcans were useful to Romulans as captive breeders; half-Vulcan children would be telepaths and could be used in the Tal Shiar as elite agents like tr'Sahlassiu had been, though he'd been a full Romulan throwback and not part Vulcan.  He couldn't imagine any circumstances under which being forced to bear children who'd then be taken away to be raised by your captors could not be a hellish life.  If Yalit wouldn't bend on that... well, she had to.  She wouldn't risk losing her money on transwarp; T'Laren couldn't possibly be as valuable as transwarp if for no better reason than that transwarp could be sold many times.

Yalit studied him again.  He met her eyes hard, without blinking.

"All right.  You make sure I have a product I can sell, and your girlfriend will be returned to the Federation when I sell you."

"How generous of you," he said sarcastically.  He pushed off from the wall.  "Now, if we're done here, *I* want a shower with the proper amenities, and coffee.  Bring me back to my room, prove your goodwill by giving me what I've asked for in terms of showering supplies, T'Laren's clothes, and a pot of coffee, and I'll get to work for you."

"How about you get to work right now, and I have those things sent to your room?" 

"Nope.  You pretend to be a scientist, you ought to know better.  I don't work without coffee.  And I *won't* work while smelling like I haven't had a decent shower in two days.  You want to use my brain, you keep it in good operating condition."

"Well, I suppose my boys won't want to put up with your human stink anyway.  So fine.  But you'd better be useful, or you're going into stasis and your woman's going to the Romulans."

"Oh, please.  Would I be worth what I am if I weren't more fantastically useful than *you* can imagine how to take advantage of?"

"You could be highly overrated, and fooling everyone."

"Don't confuse me with you.  The Federation is full of real scientists, unlike the Ferengi Alliance.  I couldn't have kept my reputation up more than a few weeks if I couldn't back it up.  And besides, who proved the nature of the anomaly back on *Yamato*?  I rest my case."

"Brill!  Yark!  Take this arrogant human back to his room."

"Don't forget.  Showering amenities, T'Laren's clothes, and coffee.  Or else you get nothing from me."

"I haven't forgotten.  No matter how stupid you think I am, I wouldn't be where *I* am without brains, and you'd best remember it."

"Try to prove it to me, then," Q shot back, and followed his escorts back to his room.

&&&

T'Laren was removing things from the room replicator when he came in.  She turned.  "We have toiletries.  Is this your doing?"

"Let's just say I cut a deal," Q said, making a beeline for the replicator.  "What've we got so far?"

"Shampoo, body wash, odor suppressors..." The replicator's "I just made something" noise bleeped, and she reached in and took it.  "Beard repressor.  For you, I'd imagine."  She handed it to him.

"What, Vulcan women have hairy armpits?"

"Vulcan women see little logic in removing body hair when living in cold, human-normal environments.  We also have a hairbrush."

He inspected the hairbrush.  "This is obviously a sophisticated implement of torture."

"It's a hairbrush."

"It's a device to facilitate going bald.  Fortunately I have hairbrushes of my own.  What about tooth cleaners?"

"One.  It's a sonic device."

"That's still disgusting.  There had better be another one.  We are *not* sharing a tooth cleaner."

"It's a sonic device, Q.  It never actually comes in contact with any part of your mouth."

"Maybe yours doesn't, but I like my teeth to actually be clean?  Oh, there we go."  He took the second tooth cleaner out of the replicator and picked up the shampoo.  "Damn.  This is for water showers."

"*Ketaya* has water shower capability."

"Yes, but water showers are disgusting."

"There's nothing disgusting about water, Q.  You drink it."

"It doesn't actually *clean* you.  Plus the temperature controls are always intemperate and ill-controlled."

"Do you truly think you can get them to give us cleansers for sonics instead?  These are typical Ferengi hotel supplies, Q, and the Ferengi don't use sonic showers.  Water's too plentiful on Ferenginar and they're too dependent on frequent humidification."

He didn't really think he could push his luck with Yalit.  "I'll live, I suppose.  But if they're not going to give us stuff for sonic showers they better give us towels."

"They will.  As I said, these are standard hotel supplies for human or Vulcan guests.  See, here are the washcloths."

"How are we supposed to function with only four washcloths?"

"I suppose they'll have to replenish them on occasion.  I wonder if they will make any provision to allow us to wash our clothes, or if they'll give us clothing from the replicator."

"Or they can always do our laundry for us," Q said pointedly at the ceiling, loudly.  He picked up the shampoo, the body wash, the odor suppressors, the beard repressor—which he was in dire need of; there was nothing more repulsive about the male human body than its incessant need to grow ape-like hairs all over its face—and one of the washcloths.  "I'm going to take a shower.  When the towels come out, throw them in the bathroom for me.  I'll leave the door unlocked."

He made sure to adjust the temperature of the water before he actually got in the shower—after his first hellish experience with a water shower, that wasn't exactly something he'd forget, ever—and then, once he was in, slumped down in the back, letting the water hit him in the chest and stomach and sluice down.  The shakes took him then, hard.  He closed his eyes, breathing in the hot mist from the water, trying desperately not to start crying, but he couldn't control the violent trembling in his body any longer, and he didn't try.  He'd learned the hard way that while he could hide his emotions as much as he wanted, if he didn't find some outlet for them eventually he'd lose the ability to hide them at all, and he'd crack.  And he couldn't safely do that here.  His demand for a shower had been more about needing a few minutes in privacy where he could let the fear out than about anything else.

Aside from moments when death had seemed imminent, he hadn't been this scared since the time he thought Starfleet Security would kill him.  He had been managing thus far to mostly avoid being terrified—angry, deeply annoyed, somewhat troubled, but not terrified.  The Ferengi were so laughable, it hadn't entirely sunk in that he was a prisoner of someone who hated him and would go out of her way to harm him.  He'd been more upset for T'Laren than for himself, and even at that had been more angry at the way they were treating her than afraid.

It was sinking in now.  They could do anything to him.  Anything at all.  Or anything to her.  This wasn't a joke, this wasn't a minor annoyance.  He was a *prisoner.*  Yalit *might* be money-grubbing enough to keep him alive and unhurt long enough to sell him off... or she might not.  And she would probably *prefer* not to sell him to the Federation.  The knowledge that she'd actually made inquiries of species that wanted him painfully dead deeply shook him.  She'd have had to do some research; there was no way any of his enemies could know where he was this soon, so they hadn't contacted Yalit, she had obviously contacted them.  She *wanted* to sell him to someone who would torture him to death.  His breathing grew ragged.  No.  He wasn't going to cry.  It would be too obvious, without extensive use of cosmetics to hide it and he didn't have time to put them on.  

He'd thought he was doing so well.  He'd successfully won his small victory today, he'd even gotten them to give them decent food... but he couldn't win.  Yalit held far too much of the power here.  Essentially he was a slave now; she could do as she liked to him without even the thin protection being a Federation citizen had given him from Anderson's heavy-handed tactics.  His only hope was to cooperate.

Except, he suddenly realized, he couldn't do that, either.

He had to assume that Lhoviri sending T'Laren to him meant he'd been forgiven for helping humanity fight off the Borg.  But he wasn't going to be so lucky twice.  Transwarp was a technology he'd refused to give the Federation for reasons of personal ethics and Q law; they had tried, on occasion, to pressure him into it, but because they had their own Prime Directive to compare to, he had successfully managed to resist the pressure and get them to back down.  In some ways giving Yalit the technology was actually preferable, since the fact that she'd sell it to everyone meant that the power imbalance giving it to just one nation would cause would be ameliorated.  But it wasn't technology any of these people were ready for.  

For one thing, Thetaran warp drives would be very attractive to the Borg, who currently needed to generate static transwarp corridors and maintain them with an elaborate system of hubs and gates, and would love to get their hands on dynamic transwarp.  Q knew, even if the Federation didn't, that the virus he'd helped them develop would have done serious damage to the Borg and convince them to leave the Federation alone for the indefinite future, but couldn't have actually destroyed the species.  And something like dynamic transwarp would get the Borg to come back into the Alpha Quadrant despite having been burned two years ago.  

Then there was the fact that the Federation used the development of warp as their standard to determine what species were equals, who could be traded or treated with, and what species were primitives that needed to be left alone.  What changes might the development of transwarp herald?  It was already true that the Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers-- the Federation, the Romulans, the Klingons, the Cardassians, and to a much lesser extent the Ferengi-- all had a generally higher standard of technology than smaller, non-aligned powers, with the exception of such outliers as the Tholians.  Having transwarp would set these species even further ahead, and leave the smaller, less technologically advanced species further in the dust, effectively killing their chances of advancing to be quadrant powers themselves if they didn't ally with one of the others.  The Federation would be more effective at its own insidious form of assimilation; the Klingons and Cardassians might start dreaming of empire again.  The Romulans would be the most dangerous, as their quantum singularity drives could be most easily retrofitted to work with transwarp, but there was already a full-time Q assigned to maintaining the Romulans as a destabilized, chaotic power and cleaning up the temporal messes they made due to the chrono-warping nature of their tech.  The Continuum, or at least his brother with oversight of the Romulans, would be *deeply* unhappy with him for letting the Romulans spread their temporal anomalies even farther through the galaxy.

And he couldn't rely on the notion that he could give Yalit transwarp and then expect the Federation to arrest her and thus keep her technology under control.  Firstly, if he wasn't handed over to the Federation then the Federation likely *wouldn't* arrest her, and secondly, he didn't trust the Federation.  Yalit would offer them transwarp to cut a deal, and he'd be forced into the position of seeing her walk free after kidnapping him or else giving the Federation transwarp himself.  

But.  If he didn't work with Yalit on transwarp, he'd be sold into slavery or torturous death, with no actual recourse-- as much as he wished his bluff were true right now, he couldn't actually kill himself with his mind, and after he'd seen how effective the Federation was at stopping him from killing himself he was desperately afraid that anyone who enslaved him would even more easily be able to prevent him from doing it.  And T'Laren would be turned into some sort of brood cow for the Tal Shiar.  He couldn't allow that to happen.  He owed her too much.

This was all Lhoviri's fault, he thought hotly.  Lhoviri had put a working Thetaran drive in this boat.  Yalit wouldn't be demanding transwarp from him if there wasn't a semi-working transwarp drive right in front of her.  He was only human, they couldn't seriously expect him to throw his life away for the sake of maintaining Q ethics-- and not just his life, but someone else's as well.  And yet, he was fairly sure that was exactly what they *would* expect from him.  The Q weren't known for taking the circumstances into account.  And he wouldn't be allowed to stand trial and point out that really this was all Lhoviri's fault; they wouldn't even contact him, they'd just... never take him back.  Perhaps even kill him, though a clean death at the hands of the Continuum was preferable to the other alternatives facing him.  There was no point to living if they would never take him back.  He'd almost rather be tortured to death.  It would get it over with faster; living as a mortal with no hope of ever going home *would* be torture.

He didn't know what to do.  He felt completely helpless.

No, he did know what to do.  He had no choice.  He'd work with Yalit, because the Q would give him enough rope to hang himself.  Only at the point where she actually sold off the technology and destabilized the mortal powers around here would they invoke his punishment.  Whereas if he outright refused, she would immediately have him thrown into stasis and he'd have no opportunity to escape until after he was already in the hands of whoever would end up buying him.  He had to play for time.  Maybe there'd be a way to stop Yalit from keeping the information...

...no.  No, better idea.  Maybe he could just *lie.*  Yalit was no great shakes as a physicist, and Q had discovered long ago he could mislead better minds than hers.  He'd give her something, all right, but it wouldn't be true-- and meanwhile she'd be trying to close a deal, and meanwhile he and T'Laren could work on escaping, and maybe he could get Yalit to accidentally blow the crystals once or twice more to kill the power so he and T'Laren could get away.  It was dangerous, but it was the best shot he had.

He got out of the shower and got dressed.  Being clean and free of unpleasant smells and facial stubble was a great help.  The coffee he found waiting for him outside the shower was black, which was repulsive, but it was still coffee, so he drank it.  He'd badly needed it; the adrenaline of his confrontation with Yalit had worn off, and the reaction to that, as well as the fact that he hadn't slept at all last night, was starting to drag him down again.  

"They've brought me my clothes," T'Laren said, sounding surprised.  "What did you offer them?"

"Transwarp," he said shortly.  "They're trying to figure out how that screwed-up drive Lhoviri put in works.  I've offered to help them, in exchange for some small concessions."

"Is that wise?  The Ferengi do not strike me as the appropriate holders of highly advanced transwarp technology."

"Me neither, but I haven't got a lot of choices here.  Anyway, I'm sure Yalit will end up selling it to *everyone*, so it's not like we're going to see a power imbalance."  He didn't mention all of the other very good reasons it was a bad idea.  He couldn't tell T'Laren what he was actually doing in front of the Ferengi monitoring them.

"Still, I think it's a matter for concern."

"Who's the former god here, you or me?  Trust me, I know more about issues of species' accessing advanced technology than your Federation *ever* will.  I don't suggest you try this at home, but I *do* know what I'm doing."

"I hope so," she said, sounding troubled.  He didn't blame her.  He was troubled, too.  But he didn't want to worry her by telling her how high the stakes were; there was nothing T'Laren could do to protect herself, and he'd already seen that her much-vaunted Vulcan control wasn't doing her much good when it came to her feelings about things like being sexually harassed.  Telling her that if he didn't behave himself Yalit would sell her to the Romulans as a breeding slave struck him as something that would bother her rather more than being groped by the Ferengi here, and he didn't want to put that burden on her when there was nothing she could do about it.

His Ferengi escort entered the room.  "See?  You have all the things you asked for, human," the first one sneered.  "Now the Lady Yalit wants to see you in engineering."

"Fine.  Let's go see if you Ferengi have any capacity to understand elementary physics at all.  My bet's on 'no.'"

Q followed them back to engineering.