Title: Only Human Part IV
Author: Alara Rogers
Series: TNG
Rating: NC-17
Codes: Q/f, AU
Part: 5/12+1
Summary: Q and T'Laren are taken captive aboard their own ship by the Ferengi.

Morning came at last but didn't leave her well-rested.  Paradoxically, her body felt charged with restless energy, too much of it to sleep well, but her mind felt fogged and sleep-deprived.  A combination of nightmares and the restlessness had kept her waking up frequently all night.  When she could no longer stand lying on the cold floor trying to sleep, she tried to meditate, and failed as utterly as she had failed the night before.  Q was still asleep, but she wasn't willing to stay in here and be silent, trying to avoid waking him, for any longer -- if the Ferengi did attempt to come for her, as Q had feared, let them.  She was, at least physically, wide awake, and the violence of a fight would do a lot to wake her up.

That was an incredibly stupid thing to think.  She had to blink at her own idiocy.  She *wanted* a fight?  Evidently the dicydrenaline was taking quite some time to wear off.  She hadn't felt this way -- sluggish, stupid, and violent -- since her mental breakdown.  Vulcans weren't supposed to feel this way, ever.  

As best as anyone had ever been able to determine, the proximate cause of her mental breakdown had been the telepathic rape she'd inflicted on Melor to save her life.  He had figured out that she was a spy, despite her having slept with him for weeks in order to prevent exactly that, and had captured her and bound her, planning to turn her in or kill her.  She had seduced him, playing on Romulan male fantasies of "converting" Vulcan women to the way of emotions and Romulan beliefs, and it had worked -- he'd thought himself to be her lover; he'd never known she'd only slept with him to keep him from looking at her cover too closely.  He'd been willing to believe that she had fallen in love with him.  He'd left her bound -- he wasn't *that* stupid.  But he didn't understand Vulcan telepathy.  Without her hands to touch the contact points it'd been harder to make a telepathic connection, but with all of his naked skin laid against all of hers, she didn't *need* the contact points.  She'd invaded his mind during sex, paralyzed him, and ripped out all of his memories of her true identity, replacing them with false memories of bondage bedroom games.  Of course, after he was done with sex he'd untied her, because by then she'd made him believe he'd tied her up for fun, not because she was a threat. And then she'd run, and returned to Federation space as soon as she could.

She'd done it to save her life, not for some prurient pleasure.  But the fact had remained, she'd touched the mind of a man she'd been having sex with at the time, and it had fulfilled her as nothing but Soram's *pon farr* ever had.  And she had hated herself for that.  As a Starfleet officer, and later as an intelligence agent, she'd been prepared to kill or be killed.  She'd been prepared to pretend to emotions she didn't feel, to use her body to accomplish her purposes, because a body was only a body and only telepathic intimacy could break her marriage vows.  She had never expected to start actually feeling anything -- she was a Vulcan.  And she hadn't expected to feel pleasure in committing an act that not only broke her marriage vows but was itself one of the most horrible crimes a Vulcan could commit.  The moral dilemma, the guilt, and the memory of pleasures she never experienced in her real life, had all conspired to shatter her control, and she had seriously considered leaving her Vulcan identity behind entirely.  Soram had talked her back from that... and she had repaid him by killing him.

Lhoviri had sent her to the past, to study with Surak.  The father of Vulcan philosophy had taught his techniques to people who'd never grown up with them, who had expected to fail at them as often as they succeeded.  Surak's gentle lack of judgementalism, his acceptance of any horror his students might have committed in their pasts as long as they were dedicated to forsaking those sins and overcoming the emotionalism that had led them to commit such acts, had done far more good for her mental state than any modern Vulcan teacher, coming from the perspective that all Vulcans should be easily capable of such discipline, could give her.  And for a long time she'd thought herself fully cured.  But had she been?  Dicydrenaline shouldn't evoke such powerfully violent feelings in her.  It lowered Vulcan inhibitions and reduced the ability to control the emotions, but by itself it usually produced feelings of giddiness, excitement, an openness to pleasure and humor -- at least in the literature she'd read.  Vulcans who became extremely violent under its influence were mostly found to be suppressing an unusual amount of rage and violent desire in their everyday lives.  And yes, she was a prisoner with an uncertain future, being sexually harassed by her captors, but did that really explain the violent feelings she was having?  She hadn't felt this way when she'd been taken captive before, in her work as a Starfleet officer, even in worse conditions than this.  She hadn't felt this way when she'd been raped.  

Of course, she hadn't felt this way for *most* of the time that she'd been losing her control completely, either.  She'd been just as likely to act out sexually, to giggle inappropriately, or to suffer sudden crying fits as she'd been to feel rage.  The level of desire for violence she felt was something she associated with the moment she'd killed Soram -- though she wasn't that far gone yet.  

Was this dicydrenaline, or was this her old mental illness reasserting itself?  Was this a delayed reaction to tr'Sahlassiu's mental invasion, or simply the stress of her captivity breaking down barriers she'd never built back up as well as she thought she had?

She exercised until breakfast arrived, trying to drive out the unwanted feelings of rage and overwhelming restlessness with physical activity, or at least tire herself enough that she could sleep.  It didn't work.  She wasn't hungry, either, despite the exercise, but at least when breakfast arrived, she figured she could wake Q up, and have someone to talk to in order to take her mind off its obsession with its own flaws.  But that didn't last; Q drank his coffee, ate his omelet and bacon, complained about stupid things like the lack of cheese in the omelet, got dressed, and left to go help their captors develop transwarp, without giving T'Laren much opportunity to talk to him.  She knew that wasn't his fault, that he had to do as Yalit was demanding, but she felt inappropriately angry about that as well, both at the Ferengi for taking him away and, absurdly, at him for going along with it.

She picked morosely at her own food.  Although it seemed a perfectly palatable meal -- toast with *chalan* paste and peanut butter -- she had no appetite.  In an effort to push back the tide of useless anger, since meditation wasn't working and the value of exercise seemed limited, she ate several of the grapes from last night.  Vulcans didn't use sweets to improve their mood -- generally Vulcans didn't acknowledge that they had moods that needed improving -- but humans did, and T'Laren had used the technique as a child when the disciplines her teacher had tried to train her in failed, or when she needed not to control her emotions but to pretend to positive ones.  Hopefully, at least the sugar would waken her appetite.

But the effect, unfortunately, was not what she had hoped. The fog of exhaustion lifted somewhat, but if anything she became more irritable, and the food less appetizing.  Q had done a lousy job cleaning up the dead bugs, and there were still clothes on the floor, furniture in disarray, and although yesterday she'd thought she'd been thorough enough cleaning the smell of human urine out of the carpet, today she smelled it as strongly as she had yesterday.  She started cleaning ferociously, attacking the dead bugs and the disarray as if the symptoms of her captivity were themselves the disease, and freeing herself of mess and smell would free her from the Ferengi.  

It was hours before she thought the main room was clean enough to suit her. As she marched into the bedroom, planning simply to straighten it up a bit, the smell hit her again -- the scent of male human.  Q was as clean as he could reasonably keep himself under such circumstances -- it wasn't the acid stench of ill, frightened or unhygienic human, merely the pure scent of a male human body.  She gathered the sheets of the bed and breathed deeply, drinking in the small.  A pulse of arousal shot through her, radiating upwards from her groin throughout her body.

Startled, T'Laren almost dropped the blankets.  What was she doing?  Where had *that* come from?  She remembered the powerful sexual urges that used to overwhelm her, when she'd been ill, and shook her head very slightly in negation.  If she *was* having another breakdown, that was the last thing she could afford to let herself feel.  Q was the only available outlet for such desires -- she would rather rip the Ferengi limb from limb than have sex with them -- and it was one thing to indulge a need for casual sex with the average xenophilic human male space traveler she'd meet in bars on alien worlds.  Quite another to make overtures to a virgin with serious hang-ups on the subject, who trusted you as his only real friend.

She was going to have to wash the sheets after all.  She couldn't be reacting this way.  Not when this drug was taking so long to leave her system.  And that made no sense, either -- she wasn't a psychiatrist or a doctor, but as a psychologist she had certainly studied the effects of mood-altering drugs on all the major Federation species, including her own.  Dicydrenaline was supposed to be purged from a Vulcan's bloodstream within a few hours of the last dose.  Had they put a time-released version in her food?  It would have to have a very extended period -- except for the grapes, she hadn't eaten in 12 hours.

T'Laren brought the sheets into the bathroom to wash them.  The cleaning solvent she'd been given didn't handle the sheer volume of fabric very well -- Q liked very plush blankets.  It took forever, iteration after iteration of spraying with solvent and then turning the heavy blankets this way and that in the sonics.  She thought of generations of women before her, using whatever technologies they had at the time to wash out the blankets their mates and children slept in.  And then to her horror she found tears welling in her eyes and her chest growing tight.  She had no children.  With a history of mental illness she probably never would.  She would never belong to that ancient sorority of motherhood, never be anchored to the future, and she was an orphan, cast adrift from the past.  Soram had been supposed to bind her to Vulcan, connect her to the shared web of history and family.  Instead he'd cast her aside.  She was alone.

Furiously T'Laren flung the mass of blankets to the bathroom floor.  This was unacceptable!  She couldn't be getting emotional, to the point of *weeping*, over stupid issues like her lack of family.  She was a prisoner and the man in her charge was depending on her to find a way to free them both.  She had bigger things to worry about than if she would ever have children.  This was stupid, none of this made any sense even given that they'd drugged her, and she would *not* lose control like this!

She stomped out to the other room to exercise again, but simple katas weren't enough.  She needed impact, she needed violence.  Methodically, albeit swiftly, she beat the wall within an inch of its nonexistent life, pretending it was a Ferengi and kicking and punching it as if it were alive.

Finally she was tired enough to feel some peace.  She looked at the wall, which was dented and painted green in spots, and then at her knuckles, disinterestedly, like a doctor assessing a patient's injuries rather than a woman looking at what she'd done to her own hand.  The knuckles were skinned and bruised, green smeared all over the back of her hand, but no serious injury.  She felt languid, relaxed.  The hand hurt but the pain was far away, more like pain felt through a mental link or pain distanced by the disciplines.  At last, she thought, she would be able to meditate.  Or sleep. Either would help.

She went back to the bedroom, sat on the now-bare mattress with legs crossed under her, and closed her eyes.

&&&

It had been bad enough having to teach fundamental principles of physics to typical run-of-the-mill mortal idiots.  Teaching brain-dead Ferengi engineers how to make a Thetaran transwarp drive work on dilithium crystals was nothing short of awful.  It would have been unbearable if he hadn't been lying through his teeth.  It was actually much harder to devise consistent, plausible lies that worked in preliminary testing, and wouldn't make the ship blow up, than it would have been to tell the truth, but lying was simply much more satisfying.  Every violation of the fundamental laws of reality that he could pass off on Yalit and her brood with a straight face was another shovel of dirt out of the tiger pit he was digging for them, and he found it grimly amusing that they had no idea what lurked under their feet.

Overall, he was miserable but hopeful.  The groveling apology the Ferengi had delivered last night meant that the harassment would probably stop, or at least ease up.  They'd provided edible food for breakfast and the amenities he needed to not feel positively bestial.  And if they followed his instructions, the power crystals would blow spectacularly.  He knew where he had stashed the extra crystals he had requisitioned from *Yamato* the night before they left; he doubted very strongly that the Ferengi would be able to find them.  As soon as the power went out, he and T'Laren could... well, do something; fighting their way through the number of Ferengi on this ship seemed implausible, but Q also knew where the emergency distress beacons were and could probably amplify one to call back to *Yamato.*

The Ferengi engineers didn't take lunch breaks; they kept bowls of grubworms around and snacked on them incessantly, rather like Q had seen human engineers do with coffee.  Until he'd met T'Laren Q had never eaten lunch, and he felt entirely too stressed, not to mention nauseated by the Ferengi eating grubworms, to feel any real hunger now, but he did demand refills of his coffee every time the cup ran low.  By 1400 hours he was completely wired, almost hyperactive.  Yalit had disappeared a while ago.  This was both positive and negative -- he hated having to deal with the grotesque little troll, but she *was* smarter than her sprogs had turned out, and easier to talk to on the level of pure physics.

Then she called him in to her office.  *Finally woke up from your nap, old woman?*  He strolled in insouciantly, pretending not the slightest concern as to what she might want him for.  "You rang?"

Yalit nodded.  "Gon.  Sed.  Hold him down."

*What--?*  Almost before he could register what she'd said, the two Ferengi who'd escorted him in had grabbed his arms and shoulders.  They shoved him down on the desk.  Q resisted, throwing all his weight backwards, trying to pull free or at least keep them from pushing him down, but they were strong enough to force him into place. "What are you *doing?*  Let me go!"

"You've been a bad, bad boy," Yalit said, her voice cold and mocking.  She walked up to him and ran her hand through his hair.  "You really thought you could get away with it, didn't you?"

"What are you talking about?  Let me *go!*  Are you trying to dislocate my shoulders or something?"

Her hand tightened, yanking his hair and pulling his head up to look at her. He screamed with the pain.  "You've been lying to me.  What was supposed to happen?  Was the ship going to blow up and kill us all?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!  And let go of the hair, I really don't need to go bald this week."  

"Don't *lie* to me, little man," Yalit snarled.  "You made a deal.  You said you'd show me how to build and sell this transwarp drive.  And you lied.  You've tried to sabotage my work, make a fool of me, and I would be within my rights to put you in stasis right now, sell you to the Ceuli with instructions to take you out as soon as they're ready to kill you, and let my sons fuck your girlfriend as much as they want."  Suddenly terrified, Q struggled harder, kicking and trying to push against the desk.  Yalit *knew.*  How had she known?  This wasn't happening, it couldn't be.  "But as you pointed out before, that doesn't get me transwarp.  On the other hand, trusting you to do as you said doesn't seem to be getting me transwarp either.  So... perhaps a small inducement to make you take me seriously.  Some *discipline*, for your outrageous behavior."

"I'm not lying," Q said desperately.  "It's not my fault if you're too stupid to--"

She slapped his face, hard.  Q cried out.  "Shut up.  You lied, and you are going to be punished for it."  

The two Ferengi holding him down clamped magnetic shackles on his wrists, holding his arms pinned low to either side of the desk.  Someone behind him pushed something against the back of his knees, some sort of magnetic bar, perhaps, that held his legs immobilized against the desk.  Q whimpered and tried futilely to pull free of the clamps.  Sharp fingernails were touching him above the waist, scraping against his skin as they pulled his shirt up to his shoulders.  "No-- no, please--"

Yalit grabbed him by the hair against and pulled his head close to her mouth, whispering in his ear.  Her breath might have made him retch if he hadn't been so frightened.  "Do you know how I got offworld, to attend the Makropyrios?  Do you know how, as a woman, I can attend offworld conferences?  How I kept control of my own sons, why their fathers didn't take them?  Do you have *any* idea what you're dealing with?"

"Please -- let go --"

"You see, a Ferengi man isn't a man at all if he doesn't push his women around.  If he hasn't got the lobes to control a woman in bed, who's going to trust that he's got the lobes for business?  And that's a problem.  Some men, you know, get tired of telling other people what to do all day.  Some men want a spanking when they're bad, and then they want Mommy to kiss it better and tell them they're a good boy.  And if their peers on Ferenginar were to find out they like that sort of thing, well..."

*Oh, I see.  Not just a whore, but a blackmailer.  What a fine exemplar of moral rectitude you are, Yalit!*  He didn't say it.  He was too frightened to say anything.  Yalit continued.  "So you see, you were wrong.  I didn't sell my body.  No more than any Ferengi woman, anyway.  We all sell our bodies.  What I sold was *pain."* She pinched and twisted his earlobe.  "I made my early living punishing men.  Of course, *they* liked it. Do you think you will?"

"No-- no, please-- I'm sorry, please--"

"You're just sorry you got caught at it," she snapped, and brandished something at him.  "You know what this is, Mr. Knows Everything?"

For a moment he didn't, and then he recognized it.  It was a whip.  A Ferengi neurowhip, turned off at the moment.  His heart almost stopped.  "Oh no, no please, you don't have to do this, I'm sorry, I won't do it again--"

"You're right.  You won't."

"The Continuum wouldn't let me give any mortals information like that!"  He tried to follow her with his eyes and head, since he couldn't really move his body at all.  "I was afraid they'd destroy me if I really gave you transwarp.  It could destabilize the whole quadrant.  Please, I'm sorry!"

"Don't bargain with latinum you don't have.  If you weren't allowed to give me the information, then you shouldn't have agreed to do it."

He saw her hand raise, saw the neurowhip come to terrifying life, humming and crackling with light.  "NO!"

The blow knocked the wind from him.  For a split second he was suspended, as if trapped between moments of time, waiting for the pain.  The welt flared awake across his back then, a single burning line.  And then it radiated from there across his entire back, like the acid solution had been on his throat, like she'd set him on fire.  He screamed, and couldn't stop.

"One for disobeying me and breaking our deal.  And one for lying to me."

"No no no *please*--"

When the second lash struck, he started retching.  With his body pinned to the desk, he couldn't keep his head up and out of it; he threw up onto the table everything in his guts, which fortunately mostly consisted of coffee but was still vile, and then fell into it, his cheek laying in his own vomit.  He began to sob.  

"There, now."  She patted his head.  He registered that as an additional dull humiliation, not that it mattered when she'd broken him so far already.  "You'll be a good boy now, won't you?  No more lies, no more deal-breaking.  You'll help me develop a *working* transwarp drive, and there won't be any more of this."

Q nodded frantically.  "Yes, yes, I promise," he choked out between sobs.  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I promise..."

"You know, you got yourself into this whole situation because you underestimated me.  Mocking me, insulting my intellect, trying to destroy my reputation... you thought I was enough of an idiot that you could lie and I wouldn't catch it. Isn't that right?"

"I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry..."

"Oh, you're sorry.  But you're not sorry that you dismiss people, decide they're too stupid to talk to you, despise them and try to destroy them professionally.  I think you need to be.  I think you need just a little more discipline."

He realized that "discipline" was a euphemism for the torture she'd inflicted on him, and started to panic.  "Oh no no please I'm sorry I won't do it again I promise you don't NO NO--"

This time the lash struck through his clothes, against his buttocks, but the pain was so awful he might as well have been naked for it.  For moments the world went gray, and tunneled, and he thought he was about to faint, but even that tiny mercy was denied him -- the pain followed him as the world started to dim, and then reality came back and the pain was still there, perhaps even stronger.  He couldn't hear anything but the blood rushing in his ears and his own screams.  The clamps went away, and he fell into a pile on the floor, sliding off the desk, unable to make his muscles work to support him at all.  Wet cloth was pressing against the skin of his legs.  With distant horror Q realized he'd lost control of his bladder on the third lash.  It was impossible to sink lower than this.  He cried hysterically, repeating over and over "Forgive me... forgive me..." Yalit said something snide about his begging her for forgiveness, but it wasn't her he was talking to anymore. It was the Continuum.

*I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I can't go up against this much pain.  I know you don't understand.  I didn't understand pain when I was one of you, either.  But I'd rather die than let her do this to me again.  I know that if I give her what she asks for, it'll destabilize the quadrant and violate our laws, and you'll probably condemn me for it.  But if I don't, she'll do this again and I can't, I can't bear it, I can't, please, please forgive me.  I'm only human.  You made me that way.  Please, please, understand, I _can't_ resist her now.  Give me a way to escape this, or kill me, or something, but please, I wanted to do the right thing but I can't, please understand...*

**A kick in the ribs got his attention.  "All right, that's enough," she said.  "Get up and get back to work."

After this?  With his entire back still on fire, she expected him to be able to work?  "I can't..."

"You want the whip again?"

"NO!  No, please!"

"Then get up."

He tried.  He tried desperately, terrified of what she would do if he failed.  But his back muscles simply wouldn't work.  He couldn't get up off the floor.  He tried using his arms to pull himself to his feet using the desk but his hands wouldn't hold his weight, he was shaking and he couldn't clamp them tightly enough.  Q moaned in terror, knowing what Yalit had threatened, but no matter how hard he tried he simply couldn't get up.

Yalit laughed, and gestured at the two men still behind him.  They reached down, each grabbed an arm, and hauled Q to his feet.  Once he was there he was extremely wobbly, but able to support himself by leaning on the desk.  He managed, barely, to stop crying.

"Time to get back to work," she said.  "And this time no lies."

His face and chest were covered with vomit, his pants wet.  "Can I get changed?"  he asked, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.  "Please?"

"No.  You can stay like that all day -- it'll remind you of the consequences of disobeying me.  Now."  She lifted a PADD.  "You're going to explain these equations again and you're going to fix them."

He couldn't concentrate.  There was no way he could explain advanced physics right now in terms mortals could understand.  He hurt far too much.  But if he didn't, she would whip him again.  

Grimly, Q took a deep breath -- through his mouth, trying hard not to smell himself -- and mustered up the tattered remains of his dignity.  He had to do this.  There was no choice.

"To begin with, the coefficient of *j* isn't 2.71 times ten to the sixteenth, it's 3.98 times ten to the fifteenth..."

&&&

The door swished open at around the same time Q had returned yesterday.  T'Laren looked up from the couch, and was on her feet immediately.  Something was very wrong.  Q's eyes were puffy and red, his shirt was stained, he was moving very stiffly, and he smelled awful.  "Q!  What's wrong?"

"None of your business," Q snapped.  His voice was hoarse.  "I want a shower."

He stalked into the bathroom.  The door swooshed shut behind him and clicked as it locked. T'Laren followed him to the door.  "Are you all right?"

"Fine!  Peachy! Never better!"  She could hear an awful strain in his voice.

"Q, stop being difficult and tell me what's wrong!"

"Nothing's wrong!  I'm fiiiingaah!"  The last was a strangled cry of pain, cutting off his words and proving, if she had actually needed proof, that he was in fact hurt.

"I can *tell* you're hurt, Q."
<p class=MsoBodyText>"Very good, Sherlock!  Take you all that Vulcan logic to figure that out?"  Another strangled moan.

"Let me help you!  I might be able to do something for you.  I do have some medical training."

He laughed unpleasantly.  "A backrub isn't going to do much for this, T'Laren.  Now go away.  I need a shower."

"All right, but tell me if there's anything I can do."

The sound of the shower came on before she was even done with her sentence, and she heard him scream.  It was a choked-off scream -- he was still trying to hide how much he obviously hurt -- but a scream nonetheless.  He wouldn't let her help, and there was nothing she could do until he unlocked the door, but at least she could listen.  As the shower noise got louder, Q's whimpers grew more and more frequent, until finally he broke down and started openly crying.  The sound haunted T'Laren.  She wanted desperately to go to him, to do something to ease his pain, though off the top of her head she didn't know what yet.  She couldn't walk back to the couch and sit down -- she felt compelled to stand near the door, as close to him as she could come.

Eventually the shower stopped.  "Get me a pair of boxers," Q demanded through the door, no longer crying but his voice still full of that terrible strain.

"You have boxers?"

"One or two pairs.  Probably buried at the bottom of the underpants drawer.  Or else in my luggage still. Although if I bothered to unpack the leopardskin loincloth I probably unpacked the boxers too."

It turned out that most of Q's underwear consisted of briefs, made of a thick, soft and breathable but unyielding material with hardly any give. T'Laren had never previously had any occasion to handle his underwear, so she hadn't observed this before, and she wasn't a man, so she had no personal knowledge in the matter, but she couldn't imagine that they could possibly be comfortable when wrapped around an organ that could randomly change size.  Knowing Q as she did, she suspected the briefs were designed to hide any suggestion of a human weakness like an erection. The boxers, which turned out to be in the bottom of the drawer as he'd said, were opaque in color but so light and silky they seemed hardly solid.  She wondered what had inspired him to acquire them.  They seemed to indicate that at some point he'd had to have been more open to human sensuality, if not outright sexuality, than he was now.

She brought one over to the door.  "When did you get these?" she asked.

The door opened, and Q, dressed in his bathrobe, grabbed the boxers out of her hand, then stepped back into the bathroom and let the door swoosh shut again.  "If you've just been stabbed in the gut, it turns out briefs aren't comfortable in the slightest," he said through the door.  For a horrified moment she thought that he meant he'd just been stabbed, and then she realized he was probably referring to the incident with the Maierlen assassin, and that he was answering her question.  That was a pity, if it was the truth.  It would be so much more pleasant if he had gotten them to enjoy wearing them rather than to minimize pain from an injury.

Q left the bathroom again, still walking very stiffly.  The bathrobe was the color of royal robes in European human tradition, and it was plush velour and very long, so with his stiff small steps and the robe trailing on the floor he looked like a displeased emperor.  

"Can you tell me what's wrong now?  I want to help you."

"Can you break my neck for me?  Because that's about the only help I can imagine anyone but a Federation doctor doing for me right now, and maybe not even one of them." Rather than going to the couch he headed directly for the bedroom.  "Li would probably say I'm overreacting.  Of course I could have my leg cut off with a blunt chainsaw in front of Li and he'd probably say I was overreacting."

"Are you tired enough to go to bed without dinner?"

"I have no interest in dinner, but I'm not going to bed.  I just can't sit down, and I'm not going to stand up all day."

"What happened?"

They went into the bedroom.  Very gingerly, Q climbed on the bed and laid down on his stomach.  "As entertaining as it might be to completely destabilize the politics of the Alpha Quadrant with a piece of technology that shouldn't even be here, I decided the Q Continuum might look at me askance if I actually gave Yalit transwarp.  Unfortunately she was smarter than I gave her credit for."

He hadn't been injured in an accident.  Yalit had done this to him, whatever it was.  T'Laren was possessed of a sudden desire to run Yalit through with a carving knife, lift it into the air and drive it into the wall, letting the small Ferengi hang from it as she bled to death.  *Control.*  There was no point to letting rage run away with her, even if she was having a hard time actually controlling her emotions right now.  "What did she do to you?"

"Hit me with a neurowhip.  Three times."  He was obviously trying to sound casual about it, but it wasn't working.  A slight crack in his voice at the end gave him away.  Not that he didn't have reason.

"When?"

He turned his head toward her.  "*When?*  What difference does that make?"

"A neurowhip is extremely painful but it's only supposed to last a few minutes.  It's a slaver's weapon.  If you're still hurt..."

"It was early afternoon.  Are you sure they're only supposed to last a few minutes?  That was something like four or five hours ago."

"Let me see."

"You are aware I'm not wearing anything but this bathrobe and the boxers you got me."

"If I had a prurient interest in your body this would hardly be an appropriate time to express it in any case.  May I see?"

He got to his knees, very slowly, and carefully shrugged the bathrobe off his left arm and shoulder, then laid back down again with it lying mostly on his back.  "Be my guest," he said through gritted teeth.

T'Laren sat on the bed and reached to the bathrobe, intending to lift it up enough that she could see his injuries.  As her fingers brushed Q's back lightly while starting to lift the bathrobe, he screamed, his whole body stiffening. Startled, she dropped the bathrobe.

"Be *careful!*  You have to grab that thing right where she hit me?"

"I didn't," T'Laren said, staring at his back.  When she'd dropped the bathrobe it had exposed just enough of that spot on his back that she could clearly see the skin smooth, unbroken and unreddened.  "Let me try this again."

Using great caution, she pulled the bathrobe up without letting it or any part of her body touch Q's back. There were two slender welts across his back, one just below his shoulderblades and one lower, near the middle of his back. The skin was broken on the second one, but if it had bled at all, Q's shower would have washed the evidence away.  And T'Laren could confirm that she hadn't touched him anywhere near either welt.  

She reached out and very gently touched his shoulder.  "Does that hurt?"

"No, but it must be the only place that doesn't."

"Tell me when you start to feel any pain or discomfort."

"What are you going to do?" He almost started to roll to his side, then apparently thought better of it.

"I'm going to run a finger along your back, as gently as I can, to find the point where the sensitization starts."

"Did you maybe try looking at where she *hit* me?"

"Yes. The injuries are very minor."

Q turned his head and glared at her. "Oh, I see. I'm just moaning about nothing again, right?  There's absolutely nothing wrong with me and I'm just being a giant hypochondriac because I feel like she dumped acid all over my back but the injuries are only *minor.*"

T'Laren was startled by his vitriol, although given what he'd put up with on the starbase, she realized belatedly that her choice of words was very poor. "No, no, that's not what I mean at all. Q, this was a neurowhip. A neurostimulation weapon.  Races that are still barbaric enough to use torture, but advanced enough to travel in space, almost always use neurostimulation, and it's not because it's more humane. The physical damage it causes is small or nonexistent, but the pain is excruciating."

"Oh, believe me, you don't need to tell *me* that."

"I know. I'm validating you.  The point to a neurostimulation weapon is to hurt, a great deal, without risking the life or health of the victim. And a neurowhip is supposed to be a fairly mild neurostimulator, and it shouldn't have left welts over this length of time, or broken the skin.  Does this hurt?" She touched a spot between his shoulderblades, several centimeters away from the actual welt, very gently. He cried out.

"*Yes*, that hurts!  I told you to be careful!"

"That was not even close to the welt.  This is what I was afraid of."

"Afraid of? And what do you mean not even close?"

"I mean that you're continuing to experience considerable pain in parts of your body that suffered no physical damage whatsoever and are several centimeters away from where she hit you.  That's not standard for a neurowhip.  She had it turned up to maximum and she hit you as hard as she possibly could." Stick Yalit to the bulkhead with a carving knife and then use a cheese grater to peel off the skin on her face.  After fastening her tongue to her chin with a protoplaser. "Q... you mustn't be ashamed of anything you said or did after this attack.  She tortured you.  The good news is that because the physical damage is slight -- most of the pain is being caused by the nerves being oversensitized -- you will probably feel no more than a mild ache by tomorrow. But unfortunately your value to them won't be compromised if she uses it again.  You have to be very careful."

His breathing had grown ragged.  "She wants transwarp."

"Give it to her.  A neurowhip is a slaver's weapon -- it's simply supposed to deliver a brief burst of pain, to keep a slave working without impairing their ability to work.  If Yalit is willing to actually hit you this hard with it... there's no telling what she might do to you."  She squeezed his hand. 

"The Continuum won't want me to."

"They'll have to understand. No human can resist this level of pain indefinitely. I have seen Starfleet officers sign false confessions under less duress than this."

"They don't *have* to understand anything. They don't know that pain hurts. Which is to say, they *know*, they just don't *care.*  I know, I was one of them.  They won't forgive it if I break.  Which I've already done.  So not only am I the captive of a torturer who plans to sell me into slavery, but now the Continuum will never take me home again. So could you *please* break my neck?  Or something, I heard there's a Vulcan death grip."

"I'm not going to break your neck."

"I could tie a shirt around my neck and strangle myself with it, but if you didn't stop me the Ferengi would."  He sounded like he was brainstorming, trying to come up with a solution that would let him die and working it out aloud, rather than actually conversing with her.

"You don't know for certain that the Continuum won't forgive you.  You thought they would kill you for trying to stop the Borg."

"The Borg needed a spanking anyway.  This is different." He pulled his pillow over his head.  "Probably a test anyway. Maybe Lhoviri put the transwarp drive on this thing just to see if I was enough of a coward to give it away to a materialistic little troll.  With a whip.  Are you sure you won't break my neck?"  The pillow muffled his words, but not enough that she couldn't understand him.

"No. Although perhaps there is something I can do."  She examined the welt where the skin was broken.  "This isn't bleeding enough that we need to be overly worried about infection, which is good because I don't believe the alcohol content of the grapes would be sufficient to sterilize the wound, but they *should* function as a painkiller."

"The grapes?"

"Yes.  The ones Yalit had sent over yesterday, that you said were alcoholic?"

"Oh. Yeah. You saved them?"

"I ate a few more, but yes, I still have quite a few."

"I tried real alcohol a few times.  It's overhyped in my opinion.  Synthehol works just as well at numbing the pain of existence and doesn't result in one's head exploding the next morning. Or vomiting."

"I believe you're correct, but we don't have any synthehol."

"Well, then, give me some grapes.  I have never in my existence needed to get drunk quite as badly as I do right now."

She got the bowl, sat down on the bed next to him and handed him three of them. As he ate them, wincing, she had a sudden ridiculous mental image.  With Q lying on the bed with a royal purple bathrobe draped over part of his body, the fact that she was feeding him grapes made her suddenly see herself as a harem girl.  It took far greater an effort than it should have to control the urge to giggle. Given how much Q was suffering, that would be beyond inappropriate. To drive out the unwanted image, she looked back at Q's injuries, at the drawn expression on his face.  It worked, if the goal was solely to get rid of the undesired hilarity; she was overwhelmed instead with the urge to take him in her arms, to meld with him and draw his pain into herself, to touch him and soothe the pain away.  That wasn't actually any more appropriate than the urge to laugh.  What was *wrong* with her emotional state?  Why couldn't she get control?

On the other hand, perhaps it was less inappropriate than she thought.  Was there anything inherently wrong with the idea of helping him with his pain?  "There is a possibility I could suggest," she said.

"A possibility you could suggest?  That has to be the vaguest, most qualified sentence I have ever heard out of your mouth.  What are you talking about?"

"A way to help you with your pain.  If I were to meld with you -- "

"No."

" -- I could absorb the pain myself.  My disciplines -- "

"I said no!"

"Q, don't tense up, you'll hurt yourself."

"What part of no -- "

"It was merely a suggestion."

"But you *knew* I'd say no, so why did you even get my hopes up?"

"I didn't.  You told me once -- I believe what you said was 'I'm phobic, not stupid.' If you had a good reason to accept a meld -- "

"What, so I'm stupid for saying no?"

"You're in excruciating pain.  I could *help* you.  You know that a human's mind can't be absorbed or destroyed in a mindmeld the way you've described the Q consuming each other -- "

"Tell that to tr'Sahlassiu."

"He was trying to steal knowledge and then kill you.  I would be taking your pain away.  I think there's a rather large difference."

"I said *no.*"

"Then the answer is no.  That's acceptable.  I only wanted to help."

He said nothing for a minute or two, long enough that she thought he might have dropped the subject.  "I just... if the thing with tr'Sahlassiu hadn't happened... maybe.  But not now. I... can't. Not even for this."

She stroked his hair, running her fingers through it. The muscles of his scalp were horribly tense.  She started to reach toward his temples to rub them, found herself opening her telepathy as if preparing for a link, and pulled her hand back.  He'd said no.  He really had been traumatized by the incident with the Romulan, as much as he'd successfully pretended otherwise.  She understood that.  Why was she almost on automatic pilot, then?  Why was the impulse to meld with him so powerful she had for a moment almost forgotten he'd said no?

"T'Laren?" There was an odd note in Q's voice.  Not the strain his injury had placed in it, something else.  His notes were more clipped than usual, his voice more rigid.  Had he realized what she had almost unconsciously done?

"Yes?" she asked, controlling her own voice.

"Remember our discussion about grated aspirin?"

She blinked.  It was hard to think clearly.  "What?"

"I've had real alcohol before.  It doesn't taste like this.  Whatever they were putting in your food, they put it in these grapes too."  He took a deep breath.  "I couldn't tell at first; between the alcohol and enough sugar to kill a diabetic instantly, I needed to eat a few before I could tell for sure.  But it's definitely the same taste."

They hadn't stopped poisoning her.  The peace offering they'd given her had more of the drug, just masked.  Abruptly everything made sense.  T'Laren went ice cold.  They wouldn't have given her a relatively harmless prank drug like dicydrenaline, and then told her what it was, and then kept giving it to her.  She could just fast, after all.  They needed to trick her into taking enough of something to trigger a reaction that wouldn't stop.  Something where by the time she realized they were still drugging her, there would be enough of it in her system that the reaction would be irreversible.

They'd been giving her *farr t'gahn.*

"I'm sorry," Q said, and his voice broke.  "I thought -- I thought I'd managed to make them leave you alone.  But even when Yalit thought I was telling the truth about transwarp, she was still doing this.  I never had the power to stop them at all, and I -- I've got nothing to bargain with, I can't force them to stop.  I tried.  I'm s-sorry."

The last word came out on a full-fledged sob.  He pressed his face into the pillows, obviously trying to get himself under control.  Did he know?  No, they'd told him dicydrenaline, and he had neither the psychopharmaceutical training nor the personal experience to know the difference.  He thought she was essentially drunk because they were drugging her.  He didn't know she was dead.

*I might be able to stop it.  It's caused by a drug, not a real cycle.  Vulcans have survived when it was caused by an external influence before -- a virus, mind control, perhaps even a drug.  They might not have dosed me enough to make it irreversible.  Perhaps with meditation, I can overcome it.*

*Or perhaps if I kill some of the Ferengi.  Blood fever can be quenched by blood, sometimes.  Isn't that what they say?*

*No, ridiculous.  I'm not going to kill anyone.  I'd hardly have the opportunity.  I just have to overcome this with discipline.  That's all.  Others have.*

Others who were far more disciplined to begin with than she was.

But she had to defeat it somehow.  If her cycle had been triggered, the only person who *could* satisfy her need would be Q.  And if he wasn't willing to meld with her to eliminate the pain of being tortured, he certainly wouldn't be willing to do it to fulfill her sexual need.  Given that the alternative, if she couldn't control it, was her death, he might offer himself -- Q had been willing to sacrifice his life to save people who meant less to him than she apparently did.  He might well consider giving himself up to be raped an acceptable sacrifice to save her life... but it *would* be rape, regardless.  Even aside from his sexual hang-ups, he was terrified of intimate mental contact. He'd already *been* mentally violated, by a Vulcanoid telepath no less.  She couldn't do that to him.  She *would* rather die.

But it wouldn't come to that.  Because she was going to get it under control.  Somehow.

"It's all right," she said, and was proud of how calm her voice was.  "It's not your fault.  Do what you must; don't worry about me.  I'll be fine."