The noise had stopped. Now the space was blank and empty. She was falling. Strangely, though, she felt no fear.

The chasm was dark, and on the walls, visions exploded around her in so surreal a manner she would have been nauseated, had she not been intrigued. She wondered what had happened to him. For about a millisecond. Then she had no time to wonder anymore.

It felt as though time were crashing in on her, as though the universe were enfolding itself around her, smothering her with lives she'd have rather not relived, and pains she'd tried all too hard to forget.

There were voices, and there were moments. She saw things she'd forgotten; found things she never knew she'd lost. She wept and she laughed and she lived and she died in the space of a breath.

She thought, rather fancifully, that perhaps she was dead. She was trying to decide her feelings on the subject when she slammed into the floor below.

Then she did not think, could not think, anymore.

* * * * *

Wesley arrived just after the fall. He knew they were unhurt, but that did nothing to ease the turmoil that ravaged his soul as he paced the room, waiting for them to awaken. He took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He had done this before, after all. It was part of the life in his line of work. Someone falls, seemingly errantly, upon a weak spot in the space time continuum. They then have to relive a series of events in their lives, events that changed or defined them in some way. It was Wesley's job to make sure that their experience left them with an impression that they could carry over into their normal lives when they returned to them.

He had never guided more than one person at a time, however. Furthermore, he had certainly never expected to perform this service for his mother and the closest thing he had to a father, Jean Luc Picard. He tried to tell himself that it just came with the territory, but this revelation did nothing to diminish the lump in his throat.

After all, things did go wrong. People messed with time, not realizing that something so simple as a misspoken word or arriving a second too early or too late could drastically alter time, throughout the cosmos, forever. They refused to rectify their blunders and kept making the same simple and obvious mistakes over and over again. Usually, things did not go well. To him, the lessons to be learned ware simple. The problem was that people often tend to overlook the little things, feeling subconsciously that a difference could only be made by doing something complex and therefor, in their eyes, meaningful.

Wesley prayed that his mother and the captain were as smart as they had always seemed to be.

* * * * *

They awoke slowly, almost simultaneously. Picard lifted himself from the ground, feeling as though he had been run over by a renegade shuttlecraft. His face felt squashed and flat, his lungs deflated. Beverly wasn't too much better off, he decided after quickly glancing over her. In moments, they were on their collective feet, staring at each other, each wondering what to do next.

"Hello Mom. Captain," Wesley stepped forward from the shadows, his face twisted in a jovial grin.

Picard, still searching for explanations, jumped to life at his appearance. "Wesley, what the devil is going on here. We were looking at a mirror, and the next thing I knew I was waking up face down on the ground in here." Picard looked stern, and unamused. He was in as bad a humor as Wesley could ever remember seeing him.

Which is the precise moment that Q arrived.

Wesley moaned. His task would be hard enough without the omnipotent being running around wreaking havoc and mussing things up. Q delighted in trouble, and was always happy to be along for the ride when it seemed they were headed straight for disaster. None other than this pesky being had destroyed some of his best work. Wesley did believe, however, that this was the absolute worst moment Q had ever picked to arrive.

"Q!" snapped Picard, at once whip tense and alert, "Are you behind this?" There was something dangerous in Picard's eyes, a look he reserved solely for beings like the one standing before him.

"Moi," Q put a hand to his chest in melodramatic astonishment. "Why, Mon capitine, I'd have thought you would be better able to recognize my work by now. Surely you do not believe this slipshod nonsense to be my doing. "You just happened to be at the right place at the right time."

Beverly scoffed in the corner, her blue eyes diamond hard.

Q clapped his hands in delight, then rubbed them together briskly. "So now down to business. You solved the riddle on that ridiculous mirror, and now, here you are, having won your prize. Congratulations, Picard, you and Red here are about to change history."

"Oh no, Q, I think not. The Prime Directive specifically states…"

"Picard, be quiet for a moment and listen. You are being given the chance of a lifetime. You can undo your wrongs and make them rights. In a few minutes, you will go back to a time in your life, together, where you will make amends with whatever demons still eat away at your soul. You won't even remember this conversation having taken place."

"That's right, Captain," Wesley joined in. "This happens more often than you think." He wanted to tell him that, in the end, nothing would have actually changed. He knew that Picard would not be so abrasive if the Captain knew that history would remain just as he had left it, only his understanding of the universe and how to survive in it would be different. He knew that he could not, however. People thought that it was redundant to repeat their past, then, and didn't even try to make a difference. He decided to remain silent.

"Your life," Q continued, stepping forward to seize command of the situation back from Wesley, "will be as you make it. You will be left only with a footprint of what you once became. Hopefully you can refrain from making the same stupid mistakes twice."

With that, Q snapped his fingers and the officers disappeared.

"Good luck," Wesley whispered.