He'd hit me. I should have seen it coming, but how could I see it coming? He'd never been so feral before. I suppose he'd had his fits in his younger years, such as that fight with the Nausican, but he was old now and who could have predicted he'd age backwards?

It was an oversight not pinning down his arms. I'd expected holding his jaw would be warning enough. No mortal had ever dared hit me like that, without invitation or provocation, and so my first thought upon lurching backwards was that I would kill him. My second thought was how many hundreds of humans had just witnessed this embarrassment, but I fixed that as soon as thought it, snatching the memory from all of their minds: two thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine of them. Poof. My third thought was the stinging in my lip, the blood in my hand.

I looked up at him, and I let him see all of my anger.

He was favoring his hand as if that decrepit limb was of more worth than my perfect, ageless face. The infuriating thing was he didn't look at all worried.

"What an incredibly," I spat blood onto the grass, "stupid thing to do." My mind seemed foggy, numbed by shock.

"I'm not afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of age. It was you who were terrified when faced with it." He announced this as though it were a rebuttal, as though I had said something to this effect when clearly I had not.

"What ever are you talking about?"

"This was not in the terms of our meeting. The picture of politesse. That's what you told me."

"Terms, what terms?"

"You crossed a line, Q. Were you in my place you would not stand for this. I will not stand for this. This unfettered, unwarranted arrogance. And I don't deny you can shut me up for saying it."

I wished the blood and swelling away. I was done enunciating through a fat lip. "Yes you'd love to die now, wouldn't you? The hero, the martyr, cut down by the malevolent Q. That's always been your narrative, hasn't it?"

"Release me."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Release my legs! Or if you're going to retaliate, do it. Hit me. Or whatever your equivalent is. Let me free or have this over with, now." He held open his arms. I was too angry to laugh, and so astounded by his invitation that I considered it. Considered giving him so much pain his mind would bail into permanent insanity. The thought was not unpleasant.

"If you only knew what you asked for."

"Another lecture on your superiority? Because I would rather die now than prolong this conversation, and since you won't allow me to walk away…"

"I wouldn't kill you, you pathetic, balding ape. I would torture you. That's proper retaliation."

"As I tortured you with the split lip you've since erased? Or do you mean the torture of my rejection fifteen years ago?"

I was so livid I could not think until I saw the wet of his tear ducts, until we were so close he could not mistake my whisper.

"I am Q. Infinite. Ageless. I saw the birth of the universe and I will see its end, and I will outlive it. You are a speck on a speck on a speck of my existence. Your wailing about me killing you… You've already died, mortal. They're lowering you into your grave."

Although I'd frozen his legs, I'd left his arms free. I was hoping he would try to hit me again. He moved quickly, but he was no match for a Q. I caught his fist and slammed it to his side. I spun him, catching both of his hands behind his back. He gave a little grunt of surprise. And then I pulled him into me and leaned down into his ear.

"A pity you're not a Q. You'd be so much better as a real challenge."

He tried to break away, wiggling, but I yanked him against me again and he went still. His breathing was quick. I turned to his other ear. "I did this for you. All of this, for you. Remember this when you tell them how cold and vindictive I am. If I really wanted you, Jean-Luc, I could have had you."

I released him. He took off without a passing glance.

This was why I had come. This was what I had stayed for. A better memory of him than the last, a memory where I was the controlling vote. He was so blotchy and weak, like a shrunken vegetable. And so unremarkable without a uniform. I think I finally understood what the Continuum had been laughing about all this time.

Thus was our ending. A clumsy collapse of an ending, an ending which bore too many similarities to our last ending for my taste. But at least in the similarities I found comfort. I found reassurance that there could be no other ending between us.

How long until the guilt struck me? Not long. Days maybe. I was strolling through the hydrogen rainforests of Altari Four when the sun hit the underbrush just right and I realized… I had done it all wrong. I had crossed a line. It was exactly as sudden as that, too, as if my subconscious had been mulling on it, had found it indigestible and vomited it up. I couldn't reason myself out of it—the guilt, I mean. It grew in me with all the conspicuous vibrance of an Altari hydrogen flower. Our quarrel went beyond him being human and me being Q. There had been moments when I had gone out of my way to be spiteful.

Several days later and the guilt was still there, glowing, growing, more bold and astonishing than ever.

But I was so sick of dealing with him. That more than pride held me back from fixing anything. Exhaustion. The ennui of treading the same ground again and again. I was worried, too, worried that if I tried to move beyond him I would stumble, or worse, that I was incapable of moving beyond him. An irrational fear, but it haunted me just the same. Perhaps I should cut my losses, embrace the guilt forever.

But he had a space in my head I desperately wanted back. I needed to forget him; it wouldn't work unless I did. I needed nothing between us either positive or negative, a neutrality to be lost in the noise. I could do that, couldn't I? There had been a time not fifty years ago when I'd never thought of him at all. How hard would it be to go back?

Suddenly nothing felt more important. I told Q our weekend plans were off. I went to a place that was good for thinking, the heart of a bilious, violet-colored nebula tucked away in a hollow of the galaxy. Quiet there. Spreading thin my essence, I mapped out the possibilities. Everything on the table, nothing out of the question. Even visiting him again, if that's what I needed to do. Even falling on my knees and begging for clemency. This was the difference between now and his retirement party, and this was how I knew it would work. I thought of everything. Things so disgustingly humble they would probably unmake me. No more hiding from the Federation. No more flinching at the very name of Jean-Luc Picard.

It was he who gave me the solution, a tactic I had once accused him of using on me. Courtesy. Was anything more impersonal than that?

First, I healed his hip, and I healed it better than any of his primitive doctors would have done. It would last him well beyond the grave. Second, I gave him something I knew he would enjoy. It was an extravagance he would probably donate or destruct rather than use, but it was the meaning more than the object itself that mattered. I trusted he would weight it more heavily than my words.

It was painful, remembering that exchange. I had said so much about his insignificance. I had pounded him with it. I needed to tell him it wasn't true; it was the last thing from true. Once I had put it into words, then and only then did I feel free.

My third and final gift. Honesty.