Q continued up the steps until he was a shadow in the doorway, then gone, leaving Picard in the cellar alone with his thoughts. Don't ask me for anything, Jean-Luc. The statement seemed haphazard, unattached to any statement made either before or after. One could assume Q had aimed it into the larger context of their conversation. It certainly made more sense there.
So Q thought he was trying to wheedle some favor out of him. It was probably true. Picard had crossed quadrants in order to talk with Q. He had apologized twice now about the same incident. He clearly wanted something.
It must be tiresome being in a position where you had everything to give. It must be frustrating being petitioned all the time. For a moment Picard considered complying with Q's request out of sheer pity. Only a moment. It wasn't that he wanted exactly what he wanted; he wanted them both to have exactly what they wanted; or, in the likely event of a conflict of interest, the least they could give each other was an explanation.
Don't ask me for anything.
Not even for the knowledge of what was really going on?
He found Q sitting in the same chair as before. Funny how he'd had a handful to choose from and he'd picked Picard's favorite spot. With less than thirty minutes left on the clock, Picard set his wineglass out of reach before seating himself.
"I had no idea," he began, "about the Continuum. That that was what they were to you. You always spoke of them so coldly, as though they were… something other."
Q's eyes did not leave the flames. "Bitterness. It's what happens when one knows one must do something and does not. One begins to blame everyone but oneself."
"One must do something," Picard repeated. "You must associate with them?"
"Of course not. I'm Q. I could ignore them for eternity and remain exactly as you see me now. But for my… oh you don't really have a word for it. It's a craving every millennia or so."
"That is something I will never understand. Living a millennia."
"Try millions of them."
The fire burned lower along with their antagonism. Q wore a silence no longer buoyed by annoyance but by a genuine desire to think. Well, Picard could not afford to let him.
"And yet I do understand the desire for community with your own kind. With those like-minded." Here it came. "The one thing you've told me which I am still puzzling over is this concept of committing yourself to the Continuum. You imply this requires all of your time and attention, and yet you admitted to be conducting affairs in the Delta Quadrant when you saw me. It seems you may do both? That it is not really committing yourself, in our understanding of the word?"
Picard expected an excuse either vague or "too complicated to comprehend," perhaps a claim that Q had planned on returning to the Continuum immediately if only Picard had not gotten in the way. It was not like Q to remain silent upon the accusation of dishonesty, but that was exactly what he did. Simply stared into the fire.
"Is it a sort of holiday?" Picard asked.
"I told you we come up for air."
"Then it is your intention to return again as soon as this is over?"
"It is my intention to do as I wish."
"Why would you tell me that, Q, all of that, as if you needed them?" In the face of Q's obvious discomfort, Picard found the courage he required. Adrenaline tightened his throat as he leaned forward. "Q. You must have seen something in me when we first met. What changed between then and now? Enough of this nonsense about the Continuum."
Q's eyes shot to Picard's. A moment's silence.
"Nothing I told you was nonsense."
"That it has as much sway over you as you claim is nonsense. That much is clear."
"I made no claim as to its sway."
"True, you've added you can ignore them if you wish. I'm finding the whole concept of 'committing yourself' a little vague. Conveniently so."
"Convenient? I was stumbling through that explanation. If you were a little sturdier I could beam it into your head, that would be convenient."
"But you can ignore them, which would lead one to assume there's something else motivating you here, something else that's changed. Are you really so unaware as to have missed this? Or is it disorganization, this contradiction?"
"My, but we're very persistent today!"
"As persistent as you are unforthcoming. I don't buy this cloak of superiority, Q; I never have. You have a mind, with reason, with logic, and though the details may very well lie beyond my perception the logic does not. Logic is universal. Stop evading the question, Q. What changed?"
Q made no immediate attempt to respond. His expression became more and more pained, however, and Picard thought he saw an array of answers flitting behind his eyes, examined and then discarded one after the other. The silence drew on, but Picard would not abort. Let Q answer or refuse to. Let him be genuine.
"You're old," Q said at last. It had all the earmarks of one of his flippant quips except there was no lightness of heart in his demeanor, and no follow-up either.
He was serious.
"And that matters to you? You mean I can't… I can't walk fast enough?"
"No," Q said, fidgeting in several ways at once: readjusting himself in his seat, raising his chin, picking some lint off his knee. "It means you'll be dead in forty-something years. It means in thirty-something years your mind will start to go. It means you've depreciated in value. I told you you were old last time we met, not as nicely as I would have liked, but nonetheless. It isn't something I can overlook."
"I see," Picard said, forcing it out for the sake of appearing strong. Q's reasoning was not wholly foreign to him—in fact a lot of question marks were beginning to match up to answers now that he'd said it. But that did not mean Picard was glad it was true. He had hoped his humanity to be only a small dissuasion for Q, not the entirety of it. He felt a little foolish for being so easily led along. So easily let go.
Q, who had been watching Picard closely, leaned forward. "This is why you had to scheme it out of me."
"You think I'm not aware I'm going to die?"
"No. Delusional as to the rest of the universe not dying with you."
The unfairness of this ruffled him. "All mortals see their lives that way. And do not pretend you're not equally self-centered. What does twenty years mean to a Q? I was twenty years younger and my age did not matter then. You're raising the issue a little late, don't you think?"
"Don't dissect this. It's not going to be prettier inside."
"I will be the judge of that. Billions of millennia you've lived, you were just flaunting that."
"Millions."
"I fail to see how the whole of my life is any more significant than twenty years against millions of millennia."
"Yes, you're very smart. Good math. Your lifetime is nothing against mine. In fact we should frame it the other way and say rather than mistaken I was insane to even speak to you. Attachment to a mortal—that's why the Continuum mocked me. Less to do with your status so much as your impending demise. Frankly I don't really see the benefits in pursuing it again."
"Attachment."
"Yes."
"You use that word."
"Why not?"
"I think it's significant. And as for what benefits there might be in an attachment, whatever benefits you saw twenty years ago."
"If only they existed anymore! When you're marooned in space you'll take any old garbage scow home because you aren't in a place to be picky. But if you're setting out fresh from Earth…" Q opened his palms.
"I didn't realize I was a last ditch effort to entertain yourself."
"It's an analogy. It enlightens one aspect of the discourse. You shouldn't use it to extrapolate about every other aspect."
"An analogy describing how you viewed me."
"View you. It was different back then."
"And what exactly was it back then?"
"How did you view me back then, Picard? How do you view me now?"
"I asked you."
"Yes, you've peppered me with questions tonight. Your turn to play the open book. Or if we can't decide who goes first, how about we both write down our answers and pass them off at the same time?"
"I think my hand might be a bit arthritic for writing."
Q's eyes went heavenward. "Surely you can do better than that."
"Apparently not."
"Well Picard, I think it's safe to say we're arguing. I think it's also safe to say it was you who pushed us willy-nilly into it."
"I didn't appear to have a choice. It was that or go along with your charade. But I take responsibility, since you won't. You've won, and you may go. Clearly there's no point in us ever meeting again."
Q stood. "Wonderful."
"Excellent."
Q's hand shot to the mantle where he clasped a piece of paper and threw it into the fire. Picard wasn't sure what had happened. He glanced between Q and the fire. As the paper started to curl and blacken, he recognized it. His first thought was how angry he must have made Q for him to stoop so low. His second thought: Good I upset him. He upset me.
"Let the record be shown you released me from my obligation. It is fulfilled, and I expect you to fulfill yours. If I catch you so much as glancing across the borders of the Federation, I'll treat you as any other mortal who crosses me, whether it be death, blighting, maiming, etcetera. Do you understand?"
"You've reversed the xenocide of those species?"
"Not in the rules."
"Then I have no intention of obeying you."
Q rolled his jaw, his lips crammed shut, as though he were counting to ten before getting angry. "They were killed because you challenged me. I'd be wary, Picard, very wary of challenging me again."
"They were killed as a warning to me against travelling further, which I am distinctly not doing. However, if you don't reverse it, I see no motive for me to honor anything."
"So more don't die."
"I thought I was the only one being punished in the circumstance of my disobedience? You should get your story straight."
"They remain dead, past tense, whereas you will be punished, future tense. I am this close to giving you the intellect of an infant. Let's see you plot a course then."
"Why not? You already treat me that way. Saving their lives more than talking to you was my priority, and you know that. That's why you threatened it."
"And yet you didn't put it in the rules."
"Damn your rules, Q. Damn you, if you've really changed so much."
Q affected a groan. "How shall I go on without the approval of the captain?"
"You may clown, but this is in very poor taste. I will protest it."
"How could you possibly?"
"I will hire my own ship and fly straight back to that planet, since it bothered you so much the first time."
Their faces were already close when Q stepped closer. "I'll kill you," he said, a fleck of moisture hitting Picard's cheek.
"It won't be much of a punishment since I'm practically dead."
"You tedious, feckless old canker. Even if I gave you the universe, you would still find cause to defy me."
"I'm beginning to agree."
Q's glare was so intense parts of his face were beginning to twitch. His nose. His lower eyelids. He sucked the air in and out of his mouth.
"Go on, Q. Kill me. It's the only way you'll have peace."
Q pulled away. Near the bookshelf he seemed to collect himself, rolling back and forth on his feet, smiling to himself like he'd heard a joke no one but he would understand.
"It's never nuanced with you, is it? 'Kill me, Q.' Because if I'm not enabling you, I might as well. If one agreement ends poorly for you, all agreements are null! It matters not that I'm an occasional philanthropist by your own admission. I'm morally stunted. Or if I save the Federation from annihilation by the Borg. Eighteen of your crew died, so I'm evil incarnate. Never mind that I see all the pieces. Never mind that I have a billion times your experience and wisdom. I'm Q, and I should exhaust myself trying, even as the act of exhausting myself leaves me impotent to fulfill the unending list of your paltry, self-centered demands. If I'm not just so, I must be the devil himself. And better to squirrel yourself away than anyone see you speaking to me. If you must be with Starfleet, you must be with Starfleet one-hundred percent. How foolish to suggest I take you anywhere exciting, even if no one will miss you! I save your life—twice!—and if I'm done doing that there's no point in us ever meeting again. All the severity, all the black and white, and where did it get you, Picard? Here. Dusty, dumpy, dreary Earth. A horrible black hole of a life that I count myself fortunate to have avoided falling into."
"If there's any black and white it's you. Sixty years, not forty, not twenty. Either sixty or there's no point in bothering."
"And of course you won't even entertain the thought of me extending your life. Humanity au naturel, or dead."
"I let you heal me."
"You didn't have a choice."
"I might have broken it again."
Q's head tilted back with a laugh. "There it is! There's that Picardian logic tripping all over itself, always a joy to behold! But mine will be the last word. Mine always is. And the day that you die I could throw a party that would consume pages of your history books, an event akin the Eugenics wars or the Roman civilization. I could snap and your name would be blotted from memory. A celebration that lasts a century, and no one would recall why. You've certainly made me angry enough. You've certainly given me cause. But justified though I am I'm not going to do anything to you, Picard. Do you know why? I don't care. About justice. About vengeance. About you."
Picard saw himself from afar. Like he was watching the scene from the ceiling, his emotions displaced along with his perspective, lacking all prior knowledge of their history or kinship. What he saw was this: two people, two friends, who knew all the strengths and weaknesses of the other, who knew exactly which insults to fling, and when, and who were making full use of this knowledge. Whatever closeness they had had was disintegrating. Whatever truth lay at the heart of their dissension had been cast aside in favor of making the other feel worse than they themselves had moments before. The forward momentum was palpable, insatiable, the quaking of an avalanche. If one of them did not step aside now both would be trampled. No one left to throw anything. No one left to rebuild.
Picard had no ready reply when Q was finished. He had stopped listening with that intent. Instead he heard and reheard the last words Q had said, stunned by them, a cookie-cutter validation of what he'd just concluded. They would denounce the very foundation upon which the argument had begun.
Years of Starfleet had taught Picard cool-headedness in the face of hostility, and this was no better. Showing no sign of distress he plucked up the wine glasses and made for the kitchen. He muttered as he went, knowing Q would hear, "You cared enough to destroy that letter."
He didn't know if it would work, and truthfully he wasn't hoping one way or the other. What would hoping do? Q would either respond or he wouldn't. At least Picard had made the effort.
Needing to do something with his hands, he started on the dishes. The water was warm, palliating, carrying the food and grime away with it. When the last plate was clean, Picard took a towel and made slow, circular motions across the porcelain. A window over the sink showed Q entering the room.
"There's your letter," Q said. There was a smacking sound as it landed on the island. Picard dried his hands and opened it, verifying it was the same as before. "And I never gave you a letter," he observed.
Q said nothing.
"It was good of you to give me this. To let me keep it, even if you've changed your mind." Picard had something else to say, but he decided it would sound too saccharine and therefore too manipulative. Of all the people Picard had met, Q was perhaps the most sensitive to manipulation. "I'm sure everywhere you go, you're getting asked for things."
Still Q said nothing.
"You're right that I'm black and white. In truth, Q, there's a lot of black and white in you too. And I hope I'm not remiss in saying that. You used to claim we were something alike, and I used to not see it. Well I'm admitting it now. We are. Maybe your past self can feel some victory at that. Maybe then your speaking to me today would not be completely pointless, although you have an eternity."
Picard was beginning to resent the pressure of Q's silence. He didn't know what else to say, and wasn't exactly enamored with what he'd said already. He distracted himself drying another dish. "Mankind built machines to wash dishes centuries ago. They did all of this work automatically, wetting, washing, drying. But I never saw the appeal in owning such a machine. Too much like a replicator. The joy of keeping one's own china is caring for it. It's work certainly. Every year or so I have to polish out the cracks. But so it goes, to own something real."
Q's voice was dark, sneering. "Is that supposed to be a metaphor for something?"
"Yes." Picard put the dish aside. "Why are you still here, Q? You seemed very set on leaving."
"There's still the small matter of your obeying me, isn't there?"
"But you told me you'd kill me if I go anywhere. You were deciding if you wanted to kill me now."
Q's sigh seemed to empty his lungs. He leaned on the island for support. He pulled the letter towards him, absentmindedly sliding his finger over his handwriting. The characters laced and unlaced themselves, like tiny creatures sensing their maker, until they were still again, Standard again.
"I'm reversing the explosion. Because you asked so nicely."
"Good."
"I don't even get a 'thank you,' do I? Because," he mimicked Picard's voice, "it's the moral thing to do."
"Thank you."
"I can't say it's the moral thing to do. I'll meet you halfway and say it's kinder."
"An immense kindness, I would say. So much so as to be obvious."
Q tilted his head as though acknowledging the point. "And since I took away the ship and therefore my responsibility, I suppose it doesn't matter where you go anymore."
"May I have the ship if I promise to stay within the Federation?"
Q gave him a sharp look. "We both know what you're really asking with that question."
"And?"
"If you won't come out and ask it, I don't see why I should have to answer it."
"Will I ever see you after today?"
Q became interested in rubbing out a spot on the countertop. "I know I should be flattered you wanted to talk to me. That you came all that way not even knowing if you would. That last time in your ready-room, I would have settled for even a sliver of that gesture. But it's different now. I am involved with the Continuum. That wasn't fiction, even if it wasn't the whole of the story. As such, I don't have quite as much free time."
"Not even to visit once a year?"
"It's difficult to know."
"Because I'm dying?" Picard delivered it like a joke, but Q seemed lodged in the sadness of it. Sinking, actually. Pausing only as long as it took to marvel at that, Picard moved on.
"Of course I want to explore, but failing that even a visit would be palatable. I don't see my friends very often, and since retiring I am much more aware of that fact. Surely you can spare a few days out of a year. If I am the best human you've ever met."
"I should have never put that in writing. I can see it's going to be used against me in all manner of un-clever ways."
"Only if you let it."
"I don't see that I have much of a choice."
"What are you afraid of, Q? You're starting to sound like me now."
Q's gaze lifted to Picard's. His eyebrows furrowed the slightest in thought. Millions of centuries, and not a grey hair among them.
Picard's mind was more exhausted than anything else after weeks of wondering what-if. He slept that night without waking or dreaming, slept for what felt the first time in years, blissful in the knowledge that he was done with worrying for now. He couldn't help but feel a little self-satisfied, too, though he would never show it. After wrangling in an omnipotent being, how could he not? One as stubborn as Q, no less.
"I'll take you to the planet," Q had told him before he'd gone, "but that's all I'm promising to do."
Picard replied he didn't need any promises, to which Q answered, "Good. Because the Continuum won't like this as it stands. If you had a fraction the amount of nagging from Starfleet as I do from them…" Q didn't finish the thought.
As put-out as he seemed to be, he hesitated then, staring at Picard with a mixture of puzzlement, wariness, relief. It was as if he was asking himself, "What have I gotten into?" Picard had asked himself the same. In some ways this had been a struggle; in others, all too easy, all too fast.
"You succeeded in tricking me, Jean-Luc. For a while there I didn't think you had."
And with a flash of light, he was gone.
Later Q fulfilled his promise. He returned the Prospero to Picard and left him at the planet in the Delta Quadrant. He didn't take them down to the planet's surface or offer to venture back in time or any of the extravagances he would have offered in the past. Those sorts of offers came much later in this renewed chapter of their friendship. It was as if Q was testing him, wanting to see if it was really exploring Picard wanted, as he had claimed, or access to the vast reserves of Q's power, as he was no doubt more accustomed to. Whatever the cause, Picard was patient. It wasn't hard to be. Q was pleasant enough company when he wasn't needling or testing or teaching. He lurked in the background, watching Picard or more often staring off into nothing.
At the end of two weeks Picard showed Q his theory on the pine tree, and Q, after browsing the PADD for a moment, smiled. Just a smile, not a yes or a no, not any acknowledgement that Picard had done good work. "This one was easy. I should give you another one and see how you do."
It took three weeks of observation at another planet in another star system before Picard had compiled his findings. Q did not smile this time. "Good," he said evenly. Then for the next two hours he pointed out all the areas where Picard had gone wrong and where, if he had expanded his thinking even slightly at the onset, most of his later assumptions would have worked out. "It was close enough to be interesting. A Q could see it in twenty seconds, but it's not bad. For a human."
They argued after that. Picard had worked too hard not to boil over. This time, however, Q did not declare how naive Picard was and Picard did his best not to drag out Q's moral failings. The quarrel remained surprisingly on point.
When they tired of each other, which they often did, Picard was left to visit friends and family and Q was left to do whatever it was that he did. The Continuum, presumably. Will, Beverly, Data… all of them knew what was occupying Picard's time and who was facilitating that. Word had gotten out; Picard wasn't quite sure how. He didn't mind speaking about Q. He even bragged about him on occasion. Q was a far cry from the thoughtless, self-centered meddler he was before. He negotiated peace treaties. He stopped up volcanoes and supernovae. He was almost respectable.
They visited one of the civilizations that worshipped Q. A pre-warp culture, which Picard posited had a lot to do with it. They had lingered for a week and were in the midst of a religious festival when Picard confessed he would rather be anywhere else and in fact he had heard about an archeological dig in the Gamma Quadrant, which sounded quite relaxing if Q could just drop him off? But instead of Picard, Q relocated both the archeological team and the ruins. On one side of the hill was a temple to Q; on the other, a dazed group of scientists and a half-excavated funereal mound. Q vanished for days, reappearing only after Picard, in a fit of angry acquiescence, recited an invocation in the temple. The priests lit torches and pounded drums, and then there was Q, sitting on a throne barely visible in the smoke, offering his hand for a priest to caress.
Almost respectable.
It went on for five years. Ten. They did not see each other every day, but there was usually an arrangement on the horizon. Eventually their relationship became such that they rarely argued anymore. What was there to say that had not been said? If Q was still petty and immature, he was better at hiding it. And Picard was no longer so determined that things must be done his way.
Any data Picard collected, he passed back to the Federation. Sometimes Q would flaunt phenomena no human had ever seen, things that might prove truly groundbreaking, that might revolutionize learning as humanity knew it. Whenever this happened Q would reach out and take the scanner from Picard's hands, or the scanner would malfunction, or Picard would collect the data and later it would be gone. Picard had not understood this at first. It was much later he saw the wisdom. He would always have Earth to go back to—Earth unchanged, humanity as he had left it, evolving at its own slow, familiar pace. He needed never make the choice between helping his own kind and feeling kinship with them, between being human and being with Q.
He was content, even content with the idea that Q was responsible for his contentment. He could finally admit openly what inwardly he had always known, that Q was more knowledgeable… about some things. He forgot nothing, not a promise of an engagement, not a food Picard had mentioned he might like trying three months ago. Never once had Picard appeared on a planet and gasped for air. Never once was he tired or hungry and Q did not offer a respite. Intentional. That was the word.
If Picard had concerns about Q treating the universe well, at least he could say that Q treated him well. It was a start. He knew that one day, in his absence, or rather because of it, Q would promise to do more.