Picard felt relief upon first seeing the Continuum. He had expected it to be, somehow, beyond his comprehension, but it was simple enough.
He was standing in a large room. Inside the room, almost as if it were drawn onto the floor, was a single straight line that connected a sequence of points. There were people on or near each point, which must be the members of the Continuum, he realized. The other Q.
"A line of them, a continuum, of course," he thought with a refreshing sense of clarity.
As he looked closer however, the line shifted, the points shifted. Nothing was straight anymore. The line wasn't even there anymore, although nothing had moved and nothing had changed. Picard blinked at this, startled, waiting for it to make sense again and growing more and more disturbed when it did not.
In an attempt to start over fresh, he shut his eyes. He knew he was intelligent. He could understand what he was seeing, because he'd already understood it a moment ago. He just needed to consider it more carefully.
He opened his eyes.
There it was. The line, the Q, the large room around him. As he noticed the individual parts, however, he also noticed how impossible they were, that these elements when combined would not create the image he had initially observed. Yet it had seemed so obvious at the time.
Everything shifted. He became confused. He started over.
Again and again, he went through it. His mind began to ache. He wanted to stop thinking, to rest. But he was so certain. Each time all of his intuition shouted at him that it would be simple to figure out. And each time, it became apparent he was deriving meaning from nonsense.
It began to dawn on him what his fate would be. He was going to mull on this visual puzzle for the rest of his life. It would haunt him, the knowledge that he understood what he was seeing, and at the same time, that he did not.
He would doubt everything. He would go insane.
He heard Q boredly say, "Oh? Too much for you?"
He was frantic to be done with it. Against his will, his mind kept wheeling through the motions.
"Help," he whispered.
"Really, Picard. That's only the form of the Continuum. You haven't begun to consider what it means. And the Q are right there. Talk to them, maybe they'll notice you."
He shut his eyes, tried to think of something else, but his memory still offered up the image, and the image itself tormented him. How could he forget something he'd clearly seen?
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He could feel a wall behind him, wine bottle necks digging into his back. His cellar.
The room he'd just visited, the Continuum, he remembered it…
"Help me," he whispered.
"I did," Q said. "You're not there anymore."
"I see it."
"So stop seeing it." There was an amused frustration in Q's voice.
"I can't. Dammit, make this stop!"
"You're the one doing it."
"Q!"
"Ugh, fine," Q moped. "Isn't this arguing?"
Q gave him a thread of yarn, which Picard grasped onto with both hands. It was a line. Like the Continuum was, yes! He spread the yarn straight, then folded it onto itself. He set the yarn on the nearby table, arranging it into every shape he could imagine.
Q left the room, but Picard stayed there to puzzle it out. Before forming each new shape, he would stretch the yarn into a line again, finding an intense, primal satisfaction by how line-like it was.
He wasn't sure if Q had done anything else to help him. He couldn't remember the Continuum now, only the shapes he was making with the yarn, which had everything to do with the Continuum, although he couldn't remember why. Eventually, gradually, he realized what he was doing was nonsense, and he dropped the yarn to the floor with weary relief.
His pulse had slowed. The cold adrenaline was tapering off. He took in the sight of the cellar, relieved at it: a room he could understand. He could move about it, use it, and it did not perplex him in the least. In fact, he felt new gratitude towards it.
He remembered what he was supposed to be doing.
Winning over Q.
He hurried to check the clock over his kitchen sink. Five minutes left in the hour. The hour he had spent thirty-one weeks getting. Picard grew brittle with anger: it seemed Q would have been content to let him wile away the entire evening making shapes out of yarn.
But he had to be careful. He couldn't simply express his anger. It might seem easier, yet it could undo all the progress he had made.
So far, he'd been performing a balancing act between showing he was interested but not being too interested; meek, but still trying to honor the insolence that had lured Q so long ago.
Q was sitting in front of the fire, drinking his own wine. "Feeling better?" he asked, showing no physical sign of having noticed Picard's approach.
"Why?" Picard demanded from the doorway.
Q turned the wine glass in the firelight. "New life, new civilizations. You wanted to know, didn't you? Now you've seen it. Now you can stop asking. Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to endure your curiosity forever?"
"An explanation would have sufficed."
"No, you want more than words. That's why you want me."
"An explanation would have been superior, since I don't… I didn't understand it."
"Well, that isn't my fault."
Picard would have been glad to tell Q exactly how much his fault it was, but he remembered the clock. "You've wasted the hour with that. Is that fair?"
"You're arguing, is that fair," Q parroted.
Another flimsy response. A part of Picard wanted to cut Q open on this. It was a cheap trick, a cousin of leaving the hour early on a technicality. But when faced with the prospect of Q gone, forever, Picard knew how little it mattered that he be proved right.
He sat in the opposite chair. "Five minutes? You won't extend it?"
"Four minutes," Q said, without glancing at the clock.
Picard hadn't thought he would get an extension, but years of experience negotiating had taught him it was worth the ask. He drew on his experience again: summoning his calm, forgetting the stakes for a moment, focusing on the truth. "Then I say my final word. If you'll let me?"
Q sipped his wine, which Picard took as a yes.
His throat was dry. He swallowed. "If you have changed, as you say, then I truly have wasted my time. But based on our shared history, I had to make the attempt."
Q rested his chin in his hand, leaning on the chair arm — the body language of boredom. But his eyebrows were raised slightly, betraying an interest that Picard knew to be encouraged by.
"Learning is my primary passion," Picard continued. "Discovery, exploration, knowledge. It's not only about where a ship may take me; I find species like yours fascinating as well. I find you fascinating. Your company, I find diverting — once I understood it. And on a personal level, no one else can spar with me quite like you. There is a simple pleasure in our arguing, I won't deny."
Q's eyebrows had settled. He was still staring, but his expression was wholly inscrutable. Cool, all-seeing eyes. His attention might be galaxies away, for all Picard knew.
"I am simultaneously aware," Picard said, "that the universe is far more interesting than I, and aware you have far greater exploits on which to expend your interest. But if you do desire my company like you used to once, I am willing now. I am wiser. Otherwise, I thank you for what you could give."
Q seemed to understand that the speech was done. He inhaled, straightening to his full height in the chair. A muscle in his chin flinched, as though a hint of feeling had slipped out. He said, imperiously, "Time's up," and he didn't even glance at Picard again before he vanished, the wine with him.
Picard looked at the clock, confirming it.
He rubbed his eyelids, listening to the fire crack and settle. His last words to Q. He had said everything he meant to, and for that he was glad.
He stood, feeling a great heaviness. Because it had not been successful. Q was really gone — somehow he understood that, that it would be their last time speaking. He recognized the coolness with which Q had left him before.
He knew what he should feel. Proud. He had accomplished something that most people could never. Even if it had not been successful, there was a relief in knowing one had tried one's hardest. If he told the story to his friends and even some of his enemies, they would marvel at his success in taking Q this far. No one would say he should have done differently.
Yet he had failed. Why should it matter how anyone else saw it, if it hadn't worked?
"Q," he said to the empty room, feeling foolish and desperate and small for uttering it. And yet, feeling that he deserved to feel all of those miserable things. They were the truth.
He was a fool. A trivial old man, to lay his heart's desire at Q's feet only to be so easily brushed aside.
Maybe that was Q's last lesson for him.
"This is about Q, isn't it?" Deanna asked him after Riker had left the call.
It was several weeks earlier. Picard had not yet spoken to Q. He did not even know if he would. He was just entering his twenty-fifth week on the Prospero after shooting away from Earth at top speed.
Will had stormed off the call, distraught that he couldn't talk his old captain off the ledge. Picard should have known Deanna would piece together Picard's full motivations. She more than the others had been privy to Q's interest on the Enterprise.
"It's about drawing his attention," Picard admitted. "No one knows that, that he's ignored me. All of the Federation probably thinks I can summon him whenever I like. But he doesn't answer, he… nothing. I've tried."
"Let's leave aside what the all of the Federation thinks. What do you think?"
"Are you going to counsel me, hm?"
"Never without your permission."
"Here's what I think. I think just because I have entered old age, my life is not over. Until the moment of my death, it is my time to spend however I wish."
"Good," she said.
The solitary living of the Prospero must be getting to Picard, because he found himself elaborating. "Most of my life I've compromised on what I've wanted; I've considered the full picture. I still wish to do that, but perhaps less regimented going forward. It would be easier with Q's help. If I can get it."
"In what aspect would Q make it easier?"
"There's an obvious answer to that," Picard said, in a lighter tone.
"And is his power the only aspect?"
"You're right, there is another. I've realized that lately. Q is more aligned than most with living a life free of compromise. With indulging in what he wants. I could never emulate him, but I could learn a thing or two. If the Picard of the Enterprise could hear me say that, he would be horrified."
"That's a common theme for most people. We change, we learn."
"I don't like dwelling on the past normally, but Deanna, the very thing I am craving now, he so very candidly offered to me on the Enterprise. And I refused to hear him. Perhaps the hardest pill to swallow is if he refuses to hear me now, it's… what I deserve."
"Q has often been generous."
"Q has often been troublesome too. To put it mildly, his insistence on participating in my life has made my future more difficult to navigate now, not less. A kind of trauma to be overcome."
"I can agree with that."
"I always thought I experienced more kinds of trauma than was normal. But I suppose I never wanted a normal life."
After Q had left, Picard shuffled around his house, trying to feel some sense of home after being away for so long. Trying to take his mind off his dark mood, too. The last thing he wanted was to linger in self-pity.
Eventually he decided there was nothing for him to do but sleep. He hadn't slept the previous night through, and the morning would afford him more clarity — or so he hoped.
He turned on the light to his bedroom, and he saw it in the mirror first: two legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded on a lap. His heart clenched in shock at the sight.
He stepped in the room to confirm it: Q, sitting on his bed.
Q looked at him like he used to do, quietly, intently. His gaze unwavering, he began to rotate a folded piece of paper in his hands.
Picard was aware of a growing pressure in his eyes. He had been so certain Q was gone. Had it worked after all? He managed to find his words.
"Of course, this should have been the first place I checked for you. Shall I pretend to be upset for old time's sake?"
Q didn't answer, but his mouth shifted like he was suppressing a show of amusement.
"The truth is," Picard said, "you're welcome wherever you want to be."
Q flexed his eyebrows in approval. He slid into a flatter position on the bed, humming a sigh.
If this was a trick, Picard would have expected the reveal then. When nothing happened, he continued with his nightly routine. He was dazed as he went about it; everything seemed to require his full attention to complete, like he was doing it for the first time. Washing his face, cleaning his teeth.
He didn't want to annoy Q with questions; neither did he want to anger him or startle him off. A tiny bird had just lighted on his windowsill, demanding a unique degree of caution. Often Picard glanced back towards his bed — not enough to catch Q's attention, but enough to verify he was still there. And Q was content to be silent, seemingly, as if being in the same room together was meaning enough.
It still felt like a trick. Q had been so closed off before leaving. When had he changed his mind? Had he been bluffing for some of it? What parts? Why bluff? Perhaps Picard could turn and ask now, a small single question to relieve his curiosity… but no, no, there would be time for that later. If it was a trick, the answer would not save him anyway.
He was changing his shirt in his closet when he noticed Q in the doorway, leaning on the frame.
Q set his chin high. "You were always good at talking." He wrist-flicked the card towards Picard, who caught it against his bare chest. "It was smart to save that. Such a meager farewell. I couldn't put it back, couldn't rescind it, and when pressed I—"
Q caught himself, seeming to think about his words. His voice was softer when he finished, "I didn't particularly want to improve upon it. Do you understand, Jean-Luc?"
Picard nodded.
It was real. It was no trick. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief, and his eyes started to sting again. He cleared his throat, forcing himself calm, and waved the letter. "Of course I saved this. As to its form, it was better than any farewell I gave you."
"Well. That's certainly true."
Picard shook his head, caught up in gratitude again. "Thank you for coming back. I thought you had gone."
Q grinned skeptically, without warmth. "Where was all this sugary sweetness twenty years ago? I always knew you had it in you somewhere. But all at once like this, I think I'm getting a toothache."
Touching his cheek tenderly, Q vanished.
Picard smiled at the empty doorway.
He wasn't sure what had happened, or how, or what it would mean. But he believed he had never felt quite this excited to find out.