Disclaimer: I collect 'em, but I don't own 'em.
WARNING: LEMON
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CHAPTER 6: Q'S INTENTIONS
______________________________
"So," Rose told her captain, "I ran through the woods, trying to get away from them, when Q popped up in front of me and I was back here. Not only am I torn away from my family, but with the kind of distance involved here, I'm almost sure that my bond with Trunks will kill me."
As Janeway sat, absorbing the huge amounts of information she had just received, she hoped the ensign was wrong. Why would Q give her such a wonderful life and then snatch it all away, leaving her to literally die of a broken heart? The entity had never been this cruel. He had a nasty sense of humor, but he had morals and principles, and these actions didn't fit what she knew of him. She sighed. "Well, Ensign Briefs, I'm going to want you to stay here in Sickbay for a while. It may be that we can find a way to help you survive this."
Rose smiled tiredly. "Thank you, Captain, but not even Darijan could actually remove a bond, and that's what it would take. I won't last long, but honestly, without my family, I won't be sad to go." Then she laid back down on the cot and promptly fell asleep, silent tears running down her cheeks.
The Doctor motioned for the captain to come with him into the office. He had scanned her body extensively while she was talking, and he wanted Janeway to see the results. "Captain, her scans show that while she's physically no older than she was yesterday, she has not only the extra memories, but quite a few well healed scars that show quite a bit of age and the signs of a difficult childbirth, also well healed. She's far stronger than she was, very well toned, and she has a deep tan now, signs of a very active, out-doors lifestyle. I also found an anomaly in her brain wave patterns." He pulled up a split screen, one with the brain activity recorded from her last physical and the other with her current activity. "There's a new strand running through all three bands (Alpha, Beta, Delta) that connects to every mental and physical function in her brain and is tied to every system in her body. It has so integrated itself that if it were destroyed, it would scramble her pathways until there's nothing left, and that's exactly what's happening. It's going fairly slowly, and I think she'll be all right for a day or two, but within seven days her brain will start loosing cohesion. She'll be in a lot of pain, probably suffering hallucinations, and eventually her heart will stop when the brain stops sending it signals."
Janeway, sighed heavily and leaned over the console, bracing herself there with her hands. She turned her head to look up at the hologram. "Is there no way to keep that pattern stable?"
"I may be able to use some of the Borg technology we've gotten from Seven. The Borg collective has to be able to control the synaptic impulses of the drones in order to control them. I might be able to alter that for Ensign Briefs to hold the bond stable, but I don't know how long it will last."
Janeway nodded. "Work on it with Seven, Doctor. Keep me posted." She stood up and moved to leave. Before walking out of Sickbay, she turned back around to look at her crewman. *I pray we can help her, but I have a bad feeling about this.*
x x x
Trunks had never felt such pain in his life, not even while fighting the androids or Cell. He only knew one thing; this pain was being caused by the fact that his wife was gone. She wasn't dead, he knew that, but his bond with her was being attacked somehow. She was far, far away, perhaps in another dimension.
Ben was trying to figure out what was wrong. They had been off training in the mountains when Trunks had felt her power rising. But before he could get to her, the bond had stretched and nearly snapped, causing him to double over in pain. Ben had dragged his father into the house, noticing but avoiding the gigantic hole in the wall, and tried to figure out what was wrong.
Ben suddenly felt a great power coming toward them. It wasn't fighting energy, but it was definitely evil and somehow strong. He looked outside and saw a dark man dressed in black.
x x x
Darijan stared at the boy before him. Save for the coloration of his hair and eyes, he was the spitting image of Prince Vegeta. He didn't have a tail either, but he definitely had the attitude. This must be Trunks' son. Damn! He was not told that they'd had a brat! The boy looked to be in his early teens, but he was obviously well trained. If Vegeta had been able to destroy him at a mere five years old, then this kid would have absolutely no trouble doing the same.
He landed in front of the house. The boy came up to him, completely fearless, and spat, "What do you want?" Oh, yes, he was WAY too much like his grandfather for Darijan's taste. Gods, the expression of disdain was identical!
Deciding that he would rather not be sent back to hell by ANOTHER child, he decided to change his tactics. "I have a message for your father, boy." This would work just as well as taunting the older Saiyan personally, even if it did sting his professional pride not to finish the job with his individual stamp. Hell, the whole thing had already been botched up by that other Q! How dare he stick his nose in! Oh well. His kidnapping the girl had done the same job quite efficiently. The bond between the Saiyan and his mate was strained nearly to the breaking point. The only thing left to do really was to torment him about it and ensure that the blame didn't fall on his own head. With his sort of power, there was nothing that he could do with the boy. For that he would have to wait until he was grown and had a bondmate of his own. "You've probably noticed that he's in a lot of pain."
The boy drew an obvious conclusion and in less than a half a second he had closed his hand around the large alien's throat, crushing it. "What have you done to my father!?"
Darijan moved his hands to the boy's iron grip, trying to get them loose enough to speak. "Not...me," he gasped.
Benjamin looked at the alien. *I won't get any information out of him if he's dead.* He dropped Darijan to the ground and kneeled beside him. "Start talking, creep, before I REALLY get mad."
Darijan gulped at the soreness in his throat, then said, "Your father's bond with your mother has been broken. It's killing them even as we speak. It's hitting him harder right now because he's a Saiyan, but he'll last longer against the pain than she will. They'll die at the same moment." The boy was about to strike again as he had let a little of his enjoyment of the situation leak into his voice. "Wait, please! I didn't do this! I was assigned to do it, but it is not my work."
"How do I fix it?"
"You can't. The only way to repair the bond is to get them back together, and Q took her back to her home dimension, to her ship. There's no way you can get to her. Your parents are dead, boy." That was the wrong thing to say. Benjamin had never killed a sentient being before, so he wasn't going to start with this piece of trash, but he knocked him out, punching him in the gut. He ran inside and grabbed the phone, calling his grandmother.
Bulma answered the phone. "Yes?"
"Grandma? It's Ben. Look I don't have time to explain much, but Dad's been hurt. Can I come get you? I need your help."
Trunks? Hurt? "I'll be on the front porch." She hung up and started rifling through boxes and found the tricorder that Rose had managed to make all those years ago and the first aid capsules and headed out to the front of the house. She knew that Ben would be there quickly, so she ran. What could her son have possibly managed to do to himself?
x x x
The EMH sat behind his desk fiddling with the microscopic nanoprocessor that Seven had given him to work with. It wasn't one of her normal nanites. This one was there only to relay information through the synaptic pathways from the collective and the Queen, and he thought that he might be able to modify it's programming to boost the transmission of the bond's signal to and from the ensign's mate. They had figured out that it was the strain of the distance between the dimensions that was causing the bond to degrade, so he thought that if he could boost the signal it would buy them some time. He knew that this was not a permanent solution, even if he could get it to work. It was what they had called in the twentieth century a "Band-Aid fix." It would buy them a month at the most, but hopefully that would be enough time to convince Q to fix it himself. If he would show himself.
Motion caused the him to look up. Rose was starting to nightmare again, thrashing around on the bed in response to what ever visions were assaulting her this time. This had happened a lot over the past couple of days, a sure sign of the problems in her heart and mind. He went to wake her up, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Ensign?" She didn't respond, still trapped inside her dream. "Ensign Briefs!" He tried calling her like that a few more times, but it wasn't working. So he shouted, "Rose!"
That woke her. She shot straight up in the bed and the alarms went off. There was a glowing ball of energy in each of her hands and she had a wild look on her face that told him she wasn't quite out of the nightmare. He jumped back, but she finally saw him and recognized him. The fear on her face subsided, as did the ki balls, and she breathed deeply, tears streaking down her face.
The Doctor was not programmed with emotional therapy techniques. He was never meant to be a ship's councilor. He was a surgeon, plain and simple. But he also had emotions, and to some extent he had compassionate instincts, all of which had been given to him while in the Delta Quadrant by a crew who wanted him to have a better bed-side manner. He walked over to her and embraced her to give her some small comfort. She took his offer and clung to him, sobbing. He just held her, letting her cry herself out, but ready to sedate her if it became too much again.
She finally calmed and thanked the Doctor for his presence. Suddenly there was a flash of light in the room. A familiar voice said, "I don't suppose you even want to talk to me." They whipped around to see Q standing there in the middle of Sickbay. The Doctor thought, *At least he has the decency to look apologetic.*
Rose, however, was not inclined to be so charitable. She knew that she couldn't hurt him, so there was no reason to hold back her fury. She let loose two ki balls straight at his head, both of which he caught effortlessly. "Damn right, I don't want to talk to you, you bastard!"
Q crushed the ki balls and allowed them to dissipate. He sighed. "I need to tell you what's been going on. Normally I'd just let you flounder, but since I've made a few mistakes in this mess, I think I owe you a few explanations." He sighed again and sat down on one of the cots. "I opened the gate to that little dimension about four and a half centuries ago, hoping to learn what the differences between the two versions of Earth were. Recently, after the war in the Continuum, I was told that someone had been trying to tamper with the fabric of that dimension, and I felt a bit responsible. I believe I have the captain to thank for that bit of conscience. Any way, I needed an excuse to be there, continually watching, so that I could attempt to catch whichever Q was doing this. So I - ah - made a bet with one of them."
Rose scowled at him. She had a feeling she knew where this was headed. "What bet?" she growled.
"I put up that you would adapt easily and might even be able to learn to control your ki energy and the bet was as to how long you would last. The only time limit was to the length of your life, and no one could interfere. The stakes were only bragging rights. We weren't betting on the fate of the universe or anything.
"Any way, things got quiet for a couple of years, but as soon as you got married, someone got in and changed things. I still don't know which one it was. Once he realized that you had bonded to that Saiyan, he released Frieza's old henchman from Hell and told him if he didn't want to be sent back he would have to wipe you two out. The reason it has taken this long is that the fool didn't drop him on Earth. He just left him on the same planet he'd died and made him work his way there."
Rose thought about the whole mess for a moment. "Maybe he wasn't a fool. He was probably hoping that with the amount of time it took Darijan to get from that planet to Earth you would forget about the intrusion." She looked up at him and smirked. "He underestimated you, probably because you needed your female and our crew to get your butt out of that war intact." She was handling him just like Bulma described having handled Vegeta, and she was fairly certain it would work.
She was right. He smirked right back at her and said, "Probably. He was almost right. I didn't catch up to Darijan in time so I exercised the only option I had left, bringing you back here. I didn't take the time to investigate the bond, or I would have thought of something else. I'm sorry."
Rose closed her eyes and sighed. Q apologizing was like Vegeta doing the same. It was a rare thing, something to be either treasured or feared. He really hadn't meant to put her in this kind of danger, nor Trunks. "So why don't you take me back? That would let us fix the bond."
"The council closed me out. Taking you back was violating the rules of the bet."
"Damn!"
That was about the time when Tuvok and his security teams got to Sickbay. They had come for the alarms that Rose's blasts had set off, but the Vulcan was hardly surprised to see Q standing there. He touched his comn badge and said, "Security to the captain, please report to Sickbay."
"What's the problem?" came Janeway's voice over the intercom.
With the calmness that only the distant android Data and the Vulcan people could display, he said, "We have a guest."
x x x
A/N: Yeah, Q's a little OOC here, but not too much. Fatherhood *has* mellowed him a bit, as is only natural. Please remember to review, as this fic is in revision and I need all the help I can get.
WARNING: LEMON
______________________________
CHAPTER 6: Q'S INTENTIONS
______________________________
"So," Rose told her captain, "I ran through the woods, trying to get away from them, when Q popped up in front of me and I was back here. Not only am I torn away from my family, but with the kind of distance involved here, I'm almost sure that my bond with Trunks will kill me."
As Janeway sat, absorbing the huge amounts of information she had just received, she hoped the ensign was wrong. Why would Q give her such a wonderful life and then snatch it all away, leaving her to literally die of a broken heart? The entity had never been this cruel. He had a nasty sense of humor, but he had morals and principles, and these actions didn't fit what she knew of him. She sighed. "Well, Ensign Briefs, I'm going to want you to stay here in Sickbay for a while. It may be that we can find a way to help you survive this."
Rose smiled tiredly. "Thank you, Captain, but not even Darijan could actually remove a bond, and that's what it would take. I won't last long, but honestly, without my family, I won't be sad to go." Then she laid back down on the cot and promptly fell asleep, silent tears running down her cheeks.
The Doctor motioned for the captain to come with him into the office. He had scanned her body extensively while she was talking, and he wanted Janeway to see the results. "Captain, her scans show that while she's physically no older than she was yesterday, she has not only the extra memories, but quite a few well healed scars that show quite a bit of age and the signs of a difficult childbirth, also well healed. She's far stronger than she was, very well toned, and she has a deep tan now, signs of a very active, out-doors lifestyle. I also found an anomaly in her brain wave patterns." He pulled up a split screen, one with the brain activity recorded from her last physical and the other with her current activity. "There's a new strand running through all three bands (Alpha, Beta, Delta) that connects to every mental and physical function in her brain and is tied to every system in her body. It has so integrated itself that if it were destroyed, it would scramble her pathways until there's nothing left, and that's exactly what's happening. It's going fairly slowly, and I think she'll be all right for a day or two, but within seven days her brain will start loosing cohesion. She'll be in a lot of pain, probably suffering hallucinations, and eventually her heart will stop when the brain stops sending it signals."
Janeway, sighed heavily and leaned over the console, bracing herself there with her hands. She turned her head to look up at the hologram. "Is there no way to keep that pattern stable?"
"I may be able to use some of the Borg technology we've gotten from Seven. The Borg collective has to be able to control the synaptic impulses of the drones in order to control them. I might be able to alter that for Ensign Briefs to hold the bond stable, but I don't know how long it will last."
Janeway nodded. "Work on it with Seven, Doctor. Keep me posted." She stood up and moved to leave. Before walking out of Sickbay, she turned back around to look at her crewman. *I pray we can help her, but I have a bad feeling about this.*
x x x
Trunks had never felt such pain in his life, not even while fighting the androids or Cell. He only knew one thing; this pain was being caused by the fact that his wife was gone. She wasn't dead, he knew that, but his bond with her was being attacked somehow. She was far, far away, perhaps in another dimension.
Ben was trying to figure out what was wrong. They had been off training in the mountains when Trunks had felt her power rising. But before he could get to her, the bond had stretched and nearly snapped, causing him to double over in pain. Ben had dragged his father into the house, noticing but avoiding the gigantic hole in the wall, and tried to figure out what was wrong.
Ben suddenly felt a great power coming toward them. It wasn't fighting energy, but it was definitely evil and somehow strong. He looked outside and saw a dark man dressed in black.
x x x
Darijan stared at the boy before him. Save for the coloration of his hair and eyes, he was the spitting image of Prince Vegeta. He didn't have a tail either, but he definitely had the attitude. This must be Trunks' son. Damn! He was not told that they'd had a brat! The boy looked to be in his early teens, but he was obviously well trained. If Vegeta had been able to destroy him at a mere five years old, then this kid would have absolutely no trouble doing the same.
He landed in front of the house. The boy came up to him, completely fearless, and spat, "What do you want?" Oh, yes, he was WAY too much like his grandfather for Darijan's taste. Gods, the expression of disdain was identical!
Deciding that he would rather not be sent back to hell by ANOTHER child, he decided to change his tactics. "I have a message for your father, boy." This would work just as well as taunting the older Saiyan personally, even if it did sting his professional pride not to finish the job with his individual stamp. Hell, the whole thing had already been botched up by that other Q! How dare he stick his nose in! Oh well. His kidnapping the girl had done the same job quite efficiently. The bond between the Saiyan and his mate was strained nearly to the breaking point. The only thing left to do really was to torment him about it and ensure that the blame didn't fall on his own head. With his sort of power, there was nothing that he could do with the boy. For that he would have to wait until he was grown and had a bondmate of his own. "You've probably noticed that he's in a lot of pain."
The boy drew an obvious conclusion and in less than a half a second he had closed his hand around the large alien's throat, crushing it. "What have you done to my father!?"
Darijan moved his hands to the boy's iron grip, trying to get them loose enough to speak. "Not...me," he gasped.
Benjamin looked at the alien. *I won't get any information out of him if he's dead.* He dropped Darijan to the ground and kneeled beside him. "Start talking, creep, before I REALLY get mad."
Darijan gulped at the soreness in his throat, then said, "Your father's bond with your mother has been broken. It's killing them even as we speak. It's hitting him harder right now because he's a Saiyan, but he'll last longer against the pain than she will. They'll die at the same moment." The boy was about to strike again as he had let a little of his enjoyment of the situation leak into his voice. "Wait, please! I didn't do this! I was assigned to do it, but it is not my work."
"How do I fix it?"
"You can't. The only way to repair the bond is to get them back together, and Q took her back to her home dimension, to her ship. There's no way you can get to her. Your parents are dead, boy." That was the wrong thing to say. Benjamin had never killed a sentient being before, so he wasn't going to start with this piece of trash, but he knocked him out, punching him in the gut. He ran inside and grabbed the phone, calling his grandmother.
Bulma answered the phone. "Yes?"
"Grandma? It's Ben. Look I don't have time to explain much, but Dad's been hurt. Can I come get you? I need your help."
Trunks? Hurt? "I'll be on the front porch." She hung up and started rifling through boxes and found the tricorder that Rose had managed to make all those years ago and the first aid capsules and headed out to the front of the house. She knew that Ben would be there quickly, so she ran. What could her son have possibly managed to do to himself?
x x x
The EMH sat behind his desk fiddling with the microscopic nanoprocessor that Seven had given him to work with. It wasn't one of her normal nanites. This one was there only to relay information through the synaptic pathways from the collective and the Queen, and he thought that he might be able to modify it's programming to boost the transmission of the bond's signal to and from the ensign's mate. They had figured out that it was the strain of the distance between the dimensions that was causing the bond to degrade, so he thought that if he could boost the signal it would buy them some time. He knew that this was not a permanent solution, even if he could get it to work. It was what they had called in the twentieth century a "Band-Aid fix." It would buy them a month at the most, but hopefully that would be enough time to convince Q to fix it himself. If he would show himself.
Motion caused the him to look up. Rose was starting to nightmare again, thrashing around on the bed in response to what ever visions were assaulting her this time. This had happened a lot over the past couple of days, a sure sign of the problems in her heart and mind. He went to wake her up, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Ensign?" She didn't respond, still trapped inside her dream. "Ensign Briefs!" He tried calling her like that a few more times, but it wasn't working. So he shouted, "Rose!"
That woke her. She shot straight up in the bed and the alarms went off. There was a glowing ball of energy in each of her hands and she had a wild look on her face that told him she wasn't quite out of the nightmare. He jumped back, but she finally saw him and recognized him. The fear on her face subsided, as did the ki balls, and she breathed deeply, tears streaking down her face.
The Doctor was not programmed with emotional therapy techniques. He was never meant to be a ship's councilor. He was a surgeon, plain and simple. But he also had emotions, and to some extent he had compassionate instincts, all of which had been given to him while in the Delta Quadrant by a crew who wanted him to have a better bed-side manner. He walked over to her and embraced her to give her some small comfort. She took his offer and clung to him, sobbing. He just held her, letting her cry herself out, but ready to sedate her if it became too much again.
She finally calmed and thanked the Doctor for his presence. Suddenly there was a flash of light in the room. A familiar voice said, "I don't suppose you even want to talk to me." They whipped around to see Q standing there in the middle of Sickbay. The Doctor thought, *At least he has the decency to look apologetic.*
Rose, however, was not inclined to be so charitable. She knew that she couldn't hurt him, so there was no reason to hold back her fury. She let loose two ki balls straight at his head, both of which he caught effortlessly. "Damn right, I don't want to talk to you, you bastard!"
Q crushed the ki balls and allowed them to dissipate. He sighed. "I need to tell you what's been going on. Normally I'd just let you flounder, but since I've made a few mistakes in this mess, I think I owe you a few explanations." He sighed again and sat down on one of the cots. "I opened the gate to that little dimension about four and a half centuries ago, hoping to learn what the differences between the two versions of Earth were. Recently, after the war in the Continuum, I was told that someone had been trying to tamper with the fabric of that dimension, and I felt a bit responsible. I believe I have the captain to thank for that bit of conscience. Any way, I needed an excuse to be there, continually watching, so that I could attempt to catch whichever Q was doing this. So I - ah - made a bet with one of them."
Rose scowled at him. She had a feeling she knew where this was headed. "What bet?" she growled.
"I put up that you would adapt easily and might even be able to learn to control your ki energy and the bet was as to how long you would last. The only time limit was to the length of your life, and no one could interfere. The stakes were only bragging rights. We weren't betting on the fate of the universe or anything.
"Any way, things got quiet for a couple of years, but as soon as you got married, someone got in and changed things. I still don't know which one it was. Once he realized that you had bonded to that Saiyan, he released Frieza's old henchman from Hell and told him if he didn't want to be sent back he would have to wipe you two out. The reason it has taken this long is that the fool didn't drop him on Earth. He just left him on the same planet he'd died and made him work his way there."
Rose thought about the whole mess for a moment. "Maybe he wasn't a fool. He was probably hoping that with the amount of time it took Darijan to get from that planet to Earth you would forget about the intrusion." She looked up at him and smirked. "He underestimated you, probably because you needed your female and our crew to get your butt out of that war intact." She was handling him just like Bulma described having handled Vegeta, and she was fairly certain it would work.
She was right. He smirked right back at her and said, "Probably. He was almost right. I didn't catch up to Darijan in time so I exercised the only option I had left, bringing you back here. I didn't take the time to investigate the bond, or I would have thought of something else. I'm sorry."
Rose closed her eyes and sighed. Q apologizing was like Vegeta doing the same. It was a rare thing, something to be either treasured or feared. He really hadn't meant to put her in this kind of danger, nor Trunks. "So why don't you take me back? That would let us fix the bond."
"The council closed me out. Taking you back was violating the rules of the bet."
"Damn!"
That was about the time when Tuvok and his security teams got to Sickbay. They had come for the alarms that Rose's blasts had set off, but the Vulcan was hardly surprised to see Q standing there. He touched his comn badge and said, "Security to the captain, please report to Sickbay."
"What's the problem?" came Janeway's voice over the intercom.
With the calmness that only the distant android Data and the Vulcan people could display, he said, "We have a guest."
x x x
A/N: Yeah, Q's a little OOC here, but not too much. Fatherhood *has* mellowed him a bit, as is only natural. Please remember to review, as this fic is in revision and I need all the help I can get.