And so once again I find myself in the tedious position of having to explain why it is a being who can control anything, be anything, do anything would discover himself doing the very thing he wanted to do the least.
It would seem I have a penchant for torturing myself. I would have to talk to someone about that, maybe keep a journal, research medication. Later, though. In that exact moment I was too distracted to consider the ramifications of any of this; Picard was there, here, in front of me, and I demanded to know what he was doing. Alone. Half a year away from Earth and still going strong. There was not even scientific research that I could see, unless he was doing it all in his head.
When he didn't answer I repeated the question again, more slowly, more furiously. "What are you doing?"
He lifted himself back onto the bed and touched his forehead. He was still waking up. Humans had to do that, had to will themselves to full consciousness, the helpless little dears.
"Would you care for some tea?" I said. "A long shower? Shall I wait outside? Maybe I should return at a more convenient time, because please, don't let me interrupt your morning routine."
"It isn't morning." His voice was coarse. "It's the middle of the night."
"I asked you a question."
He looked at me. Not at all intimidated. Not at all surprised. If anything there was a glimmer of amusement. "Tea, please. You know how I take it."
Thoughts of why I tortured myself flitted past a second time. I was angry, angry that he was making jokes at a time like this and angry that he knew it made me angry. As if he wasn't having some sort of crisis. As if I wasn't, humoring him like this. The longer I stayed, the messier things would become.
I started talking, and quickly.
"I don't need you to tell me what you think you're doing, here's what you are doing. You've pointed this little ship I gave you toward that little planet I showed you based on the little charts I left you. The ship will reach it, because I created it to reach anything, except you'll be long dead by the time it arrives. The further out you go the longer it will take you to return until your age catches up to you and you're quite literally in a dead zone. Add to this another layer of insanity—even if you were to somehow survive this journey, defying all the genetic predeterminates of your race, the planet won't be there. I told you the system was going supernova before anyone from the Alpha Quadrant would see it, and I specifically used those words. Well? Please correct me if I'm wrong. For once I'd like to be wrong."
He went to the replicator, ignoring me.
"If it's suicide you want," I said, "why not do it? This is a waste of a perfectly good ship."
"A waste that did not exist before you gave it to me," he said.
"I gave you a ship, not a coffin. It's a reflection on me when you behave like this, did you ever think of that?"
"In fact I did." He turned, tea in hand. "I hoped you would have an opinion, Q."
I dropped my hands to my side, straightened. "So that's what this is. Let the record be amended, you're not insane, you're pathetic."
"No. No, I do want to see the planet again."
"Knowing all the while you won't get there in time."
He met my gaze, not denying it.
"And if I hadn't noticed? Just straight on until you fall over dead?"
"I… Q…." He seemed not quite ready to speak, but I waited. I would out-patience him if that's what I needed to do.
He didn't look suicidal. Too kempt, too recently-shaved—and so horribly deformed, now that I was looking at him. Wrinkled, frail, shorter than he used to be. If I thought about why, I felt a pang of existential horror which was relieved only by reminding myself I was Q and need never think of it at all. Death was his burden, not mine.
He sat on the edge of his unmade bed. There his face fumbled through the expressions—puzzlement, worry, urgency, resolve—and just as he opened his mouth to speak I answered him.
"No."
He frowned. "No to what? I didn't ask a question."
"Will I whisk you off to that planet? No. Will I rig this ship so you get there faster? No. Will I reconsider what I told you years ago? No, no, no. I wouldn't even be here except you accosted me. Fifty light years that way I was salvaging a civilization from a string of volcanic eruptions, when a speck of light flickered in the night sky, and I looked up, and it was you. What's the saying? Any closer I would have bit you."
"It's unfair!" He shouted it. Not to me, towards the room as a whole. In a fit of energy, he stood. "It's unfair for you mock me for this display. Yes, display. I have no way of contacting you. Of course I resort to this, you left me nothing else. You certainly come and go as you please."
"We have nothing left to say to each other. I gave you a ship. Not for suicide, though if that's how you wish to use it. I gave you that bone, the femur your doctors botched. There was a time I had to twist your arm to give you anything so much as advice, and now I don't know what you want from me, or why you think you deserve it."
"I'm asking for a little time."
"I can see why, after you wasted so much getting here."
"As I told you, I didn't have any other option. And perhaps I am asking for more. I am asking you, for once, to listen to something other than the sound of your own voice!" He had shouted again. Seeing the heat in my eyes, he wisely shifted his tact. "Don't you think it's interesting, Q, that we're always arguing? In fact, I struggle to recall one conversation that did not devolve into this… this bitter prattle."
"'Don't you think it's interesting,' he says, as if we're having a pleasant lunch together."
"It's something I've noticed."
"Well, forgive me if I don't care what you've noticed."
"It's worse than that. We've never talked."
"There's another one! Tell me, Picard, do you often reflect on your memories of me like this? Is it a symptom of self-exile? Or just a consequence of my munificence?"
"Don't deny it. You yourself once asked me to simply talk, on the Enterprise. You held me hostage in my own room for that end."
"I will not entertain this."
"Of course you won't. You're a frightened child."
I had nothing more to say to him. He was a fool, wasting what little attention I had given him only to insult me. He would have done better begging. My very appearance was an immense kindness, and if he would not recognize it—
"Q, wait, don't."
My arms were folded, and he reached out and clutched one of them. His fingers pressed into the top of my hand.
I looked at where our skin touched. His skin was corpse-cold, blotched with age. I couldn't remember a time he had ever touched me.
"Don't leave," he said. "Not yet."
I laughed, part chortle, part cough. As if him grabbing me would do anything. As if asking me would do anything. He had forgotten his place, forgotten what our relationship had only ever been. How had Data once put it? A master and his beloved pet? And that was at its zenith.
My eyes lifted to his, and I vanished.
His reaction was not what I would call entertaining. His hand, the one that had clasped my arm, fell slowly to his side. His shoulders slumped. He put his tea away, and took a sonic shower, and changed into his day clothes. Besides the ambiguity of his shoulders slumping, I could not detect any mourning over the time and effort he had wasted. Admittedly I wasn't looking too closely.
I felt an energy running through me, like nerves, which I was trying to shake off into the wide blackness of space. It wasn't very effective. I needed to go somewhere calming, and lately that had been the Continuum. But before I left for the Continuum, I needed to get him home and keep him there. I needed to stop this from ever happening again.
There were a thousand ways I might go about it. I was Q, I could conceive of them, categorize them, prioritize them in a moment. I did so, noticing a few issues immediately. First, any way of blockading his ship would invariably affect other ships in the area, which would only make matters worse. Second, any way of grounding his ship felt like I was reneging my gift. I wouldn't do that. Third, any way of enforcing the rule beyond this — whether involving a third party or altering reality — started to seem cold.
What was I supposed to do, police him myself? Unthinkable.
It was his damned love of exploration that was the cause of this, so integral to his being I couldn't adjust it or alter it. Now he was forcing me to choose. His freedom or mine.
He was being interesting now — and I needed a distraction. He'd gone to the bridge and was running a scan in a fifty light-year perimeter from the point in space when I had appeared. No guesswork for this Magellan; he had asked the computer for the timestamp of my appearance, searching for M-class planets with volcanic activity.
This show of protest, futile though it was, amused me so much I didn't care about whether or not he had earned another interaction with me. I appeared on the ship's viewscreen.
"You're as small-minded as ever," I said. "It's P-class. And did you think I would be there when you arrived?"
When he saw me his chin tilted up with a nervous energy I found uncomfortably familiar. I was wearing the judge's garb, pale skin, plummed lips. My fingers touched to form a cage.
"Q," he said, greeting me. "It's a rank search according to planets I could plausibly visit. And yes, I hoped you would be there."
"I'm not sure if I should be flattered or file a restraining order. Speaking of restraining orders, you will not be permitted to stray beyond Federation space again. I'm sorry but that's how it's going to be."
He took two steps toward the screen. "And how do you plan on enforcing that?"
"I've had a few ideas. I'm still workshopping the best one."
He shook his head. "I won't allow it. I do not consent to your meddling."
I smiled, concealing a budding annoyance. "You never have, and it hasn't seemed to matter yet."
"I came here of my own free will. This is still my ship, is it not?"
"For the moment."
"You would take her away from me, Q?"
I rolled my eyes, angrier now. "I would do nothing to you, if it were up to me. But you insist on throwing yourself at my feet, demanding a response. I won't be blamed for giving you one."
He stared at me. I stared back, waiting for him to respond. When he didn't, I felt the plunging sensation of having no idea what came next.
Oh, of course I knew what I might say. I could insult him, especially the fish-like way he was gawking at me. I could wax poetic about my control over the universe and the meaninglessness of his resistance. I could tell him how much he exhausted me. I knew this script by heart, and that was the problem, wasn't it? I could see the lines I would say, the lines he would say in return, and how it would all end. Then we would repeat ourselves, again and again. Rehearsing for some unknown catharsis, some conclusion that would never come.
It was pointless. Last time I had finally admitted that to myself, realizing that if there was any hope of breaking the pattern, I needed to try something new. So I had been kind to him. Yet, here we were again.
How could I have been so certain it was solved? And if I had been so wrong about this, what else was I deceiving myself about?
Some of these thoughts must have flitted across the judge's makeup.
He stepped closer to the viewscreen. "Are you as tired of this as I am?" he said.
I glared at him, ignoring the fact that he had somehow seen my mind. "Tired of what?"
"Tired of this argument. Tired of those robes you're wearing. Tired of not getting what you want."
The urge to humble him was as keen as ever. But how to hurt him? The Enterprise was gone. So was his crew, and his Starfleet. His family? Most of them were gone too. His pride, gone.
"What a sad man you've become," I said, appearing on the bridge behind him. Abandoning the judge's clothes, I wore a robe as black and insubstantial as the vacuum of space. I looked quite formidable, if I do say so myself.
He swiveled and took me in, momentarily mesmerized by the robe. Then he blinked, eyes up to my face, brows hardened.
"Normally I'd threaten you," I continued, "barter you into obedience, but you have nothing left, do you? You've lost everything. I suppose I could hurt you, directly, but the thought of watching an old man writhe in pain? Just watching an old man is painful enough."
He nodded, understanding me. "There is one way to hurt me, Q."
I chuckled. "Please, enlighten me."
"You could leave me."
My smile froze, started to fall. He watched this calmly, and repeated himself, at a lower volume, "If you left me now, I would be hurt."
He looked away, like it had been difficult for him to say.
I felt a raw, primal rage that startled me. I wanted to unmake him; I wanted to shut him up forever; to never hear him speak another word again. At the same time, I was used to not letting such emotions get the better of me — and in a sort of survival mode, I suppressed the anger and simply raised my hand, snapped.
The ship went hurtling across the galaxy toward Federation space. I let some of the momentum through the bubble, and watched with a soothing sense of justice as he slipped to the floor and careened into the wall, grunting miserably.
When the ship stabilized, he picked himself up and tenderly walked to the panel to verify the location. I was nowhere to be seen now, vanished away — not because I wanted to "hurt" him (what a ridiculous thought!), but because I felt calmer on the outside of the ship, large and disembodied, with him so tiny and unimportant by comparison.
"It won't work, Q." He keyed in a course to the same spot. "Engage," he muttered by habit.
I raised a metaphorical finger against the front of the ship's hull, stalling out the engine.
He read his instruments and sighed determinedly through his nose. "I'll find another ship. Will you strip the Federation of its ships, hm? Will you thwart me until the end? Now doesn't that sound familiar."
I didn't respond.
He swiveled, searching the ceiling. Quietly he asked, "Are you there?"
It would have been amusing to keep him waiting. Some instinct of mine wouldn't allow it. I answered almost immediately, "Yes," my voice filling the bridge.
He was visibly relieved. "I appreciate that. Thank you."
I chuckled darkly. "What a gentleman you've become sans Starfleet. But I'm not staying for long. Once I've solved this sticky wicket you've come up with — very good, by the way — then I will be gone."
"I have a solution, if you're interested."
I was interested. And surprised. "Go on."
"A trade. Something you want for something I want."
I waited, and he continued.
"I will agree to stay in Federation space for the rest of my life. I will even agree to do nothing else to warrant your attention or concern. I ask in return that you… that you have a conversation with me."
Some of the anger I was suppressing slipped out then, as stubbornness. A stubborn compulsion to refuse him. At the same time, I wanted this to be over, craved it.
"Only for an hour," he continued. "It's the same hour you asked of me years ago. And only a single instance, now, and then you're done. It's quite simple, you see. Something even you would be able to manage, with your abbreviated attention span. Oh, and importantly, I want no arguing between us. I don't want to waste the hour. We will be civil. And then you can do whatever you wish, and I will do exactly as you wish. Is that something you can agree to, Q?"
Damn him. I appeared on the bridge, wearing the robe as black as my mood.
"Well," I said dryly, "your brain's still sharp."
He looked at me with an expression so full of longing I wanted to look away. Instead I raised my chin, maintaining my gaze, maintaining dominance.
"You did it to me," he said. "Forced it on me. You can't fault me for attempting the same."
"You're right to keep trying to persuade me. I don't need to take your deal, or any deal. I'm Q. I could make you obey."
"It's only an hour, Q. Or is that suddenly unpalatable to you now?"
I nodded, registering the irony, approving of it even. "You don't know what you're asking for. You think I'm the same, but I'm not. Things are different, Jean-Luc." Oh, that name! It tasted sweet, and at the same time, it almost stabbed into me. I shouldn't have uttered it.
"If that's true," he said, "I would like to see it for myself."
I nodded again. Maybe he was right. Maybe if he saw it for himself, how little I cared for him, that would break the cycle. That would free the both of us.
"One hour," I said. "No arguments. And when we are done you will remain in Federation space, no more hysterics, basking in the devotion of your family and friends until at long last your light goes out. I believe those were your terms."
"Close enough." He stood straighter, almost twitching with excitement. "And you? You agree?"
He had such confidence in my word. All I had to do was agree, and I might as well have it writ in stone for him. I used to be fond of that.
"Agreed," I said, holding out my hand.
As he took my hand, determination sparkled in his eyes. I looked down at this with great pity. He had set himself against my will, and even if I were not omnipotent, immortal, and all the rest, he could not possibly get what he wanted from me.
I had moved on.