If That's What It Takes
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek: Picard
Copyright: Paramount +
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"I will lay down my heart, my body, my soul
I will hold on all night and never let go
Ev'ry second I live, that's the promise I make
Baby, that's what I'll give, if that's what it takes"
- Celine Dion, "If That's What It Takes"
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Jean-Luc Picard was on a mission. Again.
Laris couldn't take much more of this.
As a daughter of Tal Shiar agents, she'd been taught to accept the frequent absences of loved ones because duty to the state came first, but as Zhaban's wife and Jean-Luc's housekeeper, she hadn't spent a day alone in decades. She could take care of herself, of course, and knew the Admiral could do the same. She could accept him leaving to save the galaxy, be proud of him even, if only they hadn't left things so unresolved. If only she could be sure that he cared as much about coming back to her as she did.
Solitude was hard to unlearn, which only made it worse when it came back.
She threw herself into her work. Harvest season was over, but there was always something to do. She activated a small armada of cleaning bots and chased after them, making sure they didn't eat the carpet fringe or get stuck in corners, and that Number One didn't attack them. Their whirring, the dog's barking and her own fairly colorful vocabulary of swear words did not do much to drown out the silence of the house, however. She couldn't help but listen for Zhaban's off-key humming, Jean-Luc's step on the creaking floorboards, the whistle of a teakettle or quiet scales on a flute, even though she knew she wouldn't hear it.
She saved Jean-Luc's study for last. She deactivated the bots, sent the dog out into the garden and went in with a soft cloth. His antique books were delicate. She could almost see him now, wrinkled hands turning yellowed pages, and hear that beautiful voice as he read aloud to her from Shakespeare or Voltaire. No matter how upset she was, she wouldn't have damaged one of these books for anything.
That was when she found the note on his desk.
It was written by hand. She knew Jean-Luc's spidery scrawl at a glance. He often left notes for her and she teased him that he could use his handwriting as an encryption code, but of course she'd learned to read it by now. She laid her dust cloth aside and picked up the paper.
It was addressed to her.
Her own name was all she could make out, when a blinding flash of light broke her concentration. When she looked up, she was no longer alone in the house.
A woman was standing on the opposite side of the desk. She was tall, long-limbed and narrow-faced, had the pointed ears and olive skin of a Romulan or Vulcan, and her brown hair was pinned up in an elaborate twist. She wore a Romulan army uniform from the time before the Supernova, a gray suit with wide sleeves and shoulder pads. She carried herself like a soldier too, spine straight, chin held high, cool confidence in her green eyes. She looked like every authority figure Laris had been taught to follow for most of her life. Still, that didn't give her the right to barge into Jean-Luc's study without so much as a by-your-leave.
"Who the hell are you?" Laris pulled a phaser out of the top desk drawer and set it to maximum stun. It was from the 2360's, but still charged. She aimed it at the intruder's chest.
"Put that toy down, girl," said the intruder in Laris' native dialect of Rihannsu. "I won't hurt you."
"Wish I could say the same," said Laris in the same language, "But first explain who you are and what you're doing here."
"Fine, I will. I assume you've heard of the Q Continuum?"
The other woman flicked a disdainful hand at the phaser Laris was holding. It turned into a child's plastic water pistol, which would have been funny if the implications weren't so alarming. Laris had never encountered a life form with that kind of power, but she'd heard and read more about them from Jean-Luc than she ever wanted to know. She put her useless weapon down on the desk.
"Is that who you are? A … a Q?" She fought to keep the terror out of her voice, but the stranger would most likely sense it anyway. The Q were omnipotent. She was helpless as a rat in Number One's jaws. She clenched her sweaty hands into fists. "What do you want?"
"I want the same thing you want, Laris," said Q. "For the men we love to get their heads out of their asses and listen to us for once."
"What are you talking about?"
"Ugh, I'd forgotten how slow it is, talking to you lot," Q grumbled. "I'd better start from the beginning. Right, you know the Q that Picard talks about? That's my husband. Experimenting with mortals is a hobby of his. I used to tolerate it, but now he's taking it too far. You see, he's … my husband's not well."
Laris, even as she went hot and cold with rage at the mention of experiments, couldn't help but recognize the falter in Q's voice. She hadn't known it was even possible for a Q to be unwell. Did this woman feel the same way about her husband's illness as Laris had felt when Zhaban had died? Or when Jean-Luc had received his diagnosis?
"His powers are fading," Q continued, twisting her hands tightly together in front of her and pacing around the room. "We don't know why. What he needs is to rest and let Junior and me look after him until we find a cure, but instead … " She shook her head and blew out a frustrated sigh."He's gallivanting around the multiverse as if he thinks he's still immortal. He could hurt himself, not to mention the fabric of space-time. Your Admiral and billions of others will get caught in the damage if we don't do something to stop him."
"If you're so powerful," Laris retorted in spite of her fear, "Why don't you stop him yourself?"
"Because he won't listen to me, that's why. He needs to feel in control of something, and putting on one of his trials is the only thing that helps. The sooner Picard and his crew pass that trial, the sooner my husband will be ready to listen. You and I are going to help them pass, but we need to do it quietly. He'll throw a fit if he thinks I'm interfering."
Laris could not decide which of this she found most unnerving, the reference to trials - one of which had included throwing the Enterprise-D to the Borg - the threat of Q's husband throwing a fit, or Q's high-handed way of assuming that Laris would help her. "And what do you expect me to do about all this?"
Q nodded with brusque approval, like one of Laris' former instructors when they thought she'd asked a good question. "You'll go undercover. And I mean deep undercover, with an identity even you believe is real. That way he won't sense that you're from the wrong century. Here." She snapped her fingers.
In less than a second, Laris found her cardigan and jeans transformed into a black business suit and her hair pinned up. The reflection of her face in Jean-Luc's computer screen showed that her ears had become rounded at the tips, like a human's, and when she looked down at her hands, something about the color of her skin was subtly different. As if the blood underneath was suddenly iron-based. She gasped, and even the air in her lungs felt alien. It had taken years for her to adjust to the rich air and cold temperatures of Earth, which left this new body extremely disoriented.
"What the … ?" She reached up to feel those round ears, just to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. "Now wait just a minute. I never agreed to this! You have no right - "
"Oh, relax. I can always change you back later, although I don't really see how one corporeal form is so different from another."
"How do I know … " Laris took deep breaths, struggling not to panic in this unfamiliar body. "If you're telling the truth? Why should I trust you?"
"Seriously?" Q sighed, flicked imaginary dust off the boxy gray shoulder of her uniform, frowned, and with another flash of light, changed into a cardigan and jeans identical to what Laris had been wearing a few moments ago. She looked disarmingly ordinary, even down to the loose threads and messy bun.
"Look," Q said, "We both know I could easily force you to cooperate, but I haven't. I'm asking you instead, as a sign of good faith."
"Sorry if I don't find that reassuring."
"You have every right to refuse, of course," Q went on, strolling over to the window and looking out with folded arms at the gray autumn sky and empty fields outside. "You know that every time your beloved Admiral leaves you, he might never come back … but if you'd rather putter around this vineyard while he dies alone, It's up to you."
"Go to Ganmadan," Laris cursed.
"I'm halfway there already," Q retorted. "You should know."
Laris did know, all too well. If Q was telling the truth, that meant the fate she was threatening Laris with was the same one threatening Q herself: the loss of someone she loved. She knew how it felt when you would do anything to prevent that. Although in one sense, at least, Q was more fortunate than Laris; at least she got to call the other Q her husband. At least they'd already had a few eternities together.
Laris glanced around, looking for anything that might help her decide, and her gaze fell on Jean-Luc's note. It was the last message he'd left for her and, if Q was correct, might be the last message he would ever leave. Laris hadn't even read it yet.
My dear Laris,
Please forgive my sudden departure. I wish you were coming with me. I wish I had a fraction of your courage. You were right, things do have to change.
I have no right to ask you to wait for me, but when I return, wherever you are, I will search for you and tell you what I should have told you last night, namely that I am
Yours with all my heart,
Jean-Luc
If Laris had been alone, she would have run her fingers along the page, sniffed it to pick up traces of his cologne, and burned it to ashes because it would be desecration for any eyes but hers to read it. She did none of this, because Q was still in the room, but she did memorize every word.
I wish you were coming with me decided her. Never mind following Q, but she would follow Jean-Luc to the end of the universe if he asked. And if it turned out to be a trick, well, she had nothing left to lose.
When she looked up, she saw that Q was smiling, as if she already knew the choice Laris had made.
"One question," said Laris, letting the note slip through her fingers and back onto the desk, "If you're planning to send me so deep undercover that even I forget who I am, how will I know the Admiral when I see him?"
"You won't have to," said Q condescendingly. "He'll know you. And as for the rest, I'll send you all the instructions you need. Under an assumed name, of course. I still don't know why my husband chose such a ridiculous random symbol to represent us."
"Fine. I'll do it," said Laris. Q's smile widened. "For the Admiral, not you."
"I don't care, as long as you do it." Q moved over to Laris' side of the desk and, in the blink of an eye, became the Romulan general again. "Watch over Picard. That's an order."
She tapped Laris on the forehead with one finger, setting off another flash of light.
It was the last thing she saw before becoming Tallinn the Watcher.
