When the door to his temporary quarters opens, and Picard enters with two armed security guards, Q knows. It isn't the presence of the guards that tips him off, though that's confirmation. It's the wintry expression on Picard's face, the arctic cold mask that cannot hide the ashen color of his skin or the bleakness in his eyes.
But Q is not going to make matters easy for Picard. "Jean-Luc," he says, making his voice sound cheerful, though with an edge of tension he cannot quite hide. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
Picard breathes deeply. "Q, I regret to tell you... I have made a decision. The Enterprise has taken considerable damage in protecting you, and the Bre'el IV moon is tearing the planet apart with tidal forces. If we cannot return the moon to its orbit within the next few hours, the loss of life will be incalculable. We... cannot continue to protect you from the Calamarain."
He suspected it the moment Picard arrived, but it hits him like a body blow nonetheless. He had believed the human's rhetoric about compassion and mercy. He had thought he could find sanctuary here, maybe even a place to belong. "So... what does that mean? Are you going to send me to the planet? Ship me off to a starbase? What?"
Picard shakes his head, very slowly. "We don't have the time or resources to send you to a starbase. And if I send you to the planet, and the Calamarain follow you, they can make a disastrous situation far worse. The planet has no shielding at all and all of its disaster control resources are occupied trying to save people from the effects of the moon's fall." For a moment, his eyes flicker away from Q's, but they return, as if by an incredible effort of will. "I can give you a shuttlecraft and allow you to make your own way. That is the best I can do for you."
Q blinks, uncomprehending at first. A shuttlecraft? What good would that do him? The Calamarain can travel at high warp. Does Picard seriously think Q can outrun them in a shuttle?
And then he realizes, and it is cold fire washing over him, as if the winter in Picard's face has become a storm lashing against him. Picard knows perfectly well that Q won't be able to get away. That's why he looks so frozen, steeling himself to do something that horrifies him. He is going to sacrifice Q to his death in order to save Bre'el IV and the ship.
For a moment Q feels lightheaded, the room spinning. He thought Picard was abandoning him when Picard arrived, but it's worse than that. Picard is going to kill him. Or give him up to be killed, but from Q's perspective it's the same thing. He would never have imagined this -- he thought he knew humans, thought he knew Picard in particular. But then, he hadn't thought of what would happen if the Enterprise could not, in fact, protect him from his enemies, or what would happen if he arrived in the middle of a crisis and it was his life or a few million random mortals.
Q laughs, because if he doesn't he might burst into tears, or scream and run away, and neither strike him as appropriately dignified under the circumstances. "You always manage to surprise me, Jean-Luc. You know that? Just when I think I know what you're going to do. That's what I always liked about you, when I had my powers. You were unpredictable."
"I'm sorry," Picard says.
"But it doesn't matter, does it? Because however noble and ethical the great Jean-Luc Picard may be, the fact remains that you are ruled by the same equations that rule all mortals. And if one person has to die so that millions will live, well, so be it. Right?"
"I... We cannot be certain the Calamarain will kill you. You might manage to escape..."
"Oh, no. Don't lie to me, Picard, and don't lie to yourself if that's what you're doing. If I leave this ship and its shielding, the Calamarain will kill me. There's no ambiguity about it." He hears his own voice, louder and faster than usual, slightly higher pitched. "In fact let me resolve any wishful thinking you might have in that regard. I won't take a shuttlecraft. You can throw me out the airlock directly, because I'd rather die of asphyxiation in vacuum than let the Calamarain take as much time with killing me as they'd like."
Picard takes another deep breath. "Q, I am sorry I must do this. If there were another way I would take it, but there's no time. If there is any way to give you a fighting chance..."
"There isn't." Q stares hard at Picard. "Don't fool yourself, Picard. This is murder."
Picard bows his head, closing his eyes. "Yes. I'm sorry. I cannot let an entire planet be destroyed to save you."
Q smiles with false brightness. "Well, then you learned your lessons well, Picard. You can do something that's necessary, even if it goes against every ethical belief you have. I'm proud of you." In a twisted way, he is. He wanted to show them the Borg, last time, because he feared that the weakness of their compassion and peacefulness would end up destroying them. Nice to see that Picard took the lesson to heart, though he might have hoped for better circumstances to see that in. He walks forward. "So where's your airlock? I thought you said time was of the essence, here."
"You should take a shuttlecraft."
"Going to stun me and throw me in one? If I'm going to die anyway, I see no reason to drag it out. In fact I don't suppose you'd consider just shooting me first?"
"No."
"You should think about it. That would really be the merciful thing to do, you know."
"Q, we are not murderers!"
"Funny, you must know a different definition of that word than I heard. Because from what I hear, if you kill someone that makes you a murderer, and throwing me to the Calamarain, with or without a shuttlecraft, will kill me."
"I have no choice," Picard says in almost a whisper.
"No, I don't suppose you do." He marches forward. "Lead the way."
He's terrified, of course, and shocked, and horrified. He doesn't want to die -- miserable as this mortal existence has been so far, he still prefers it to non-existence. And the fact that the beings he genuinely had come to believe really were gentler and kinder and more merciful than their closest evolutionary neighbors will be the ones to send him to his death both stuns him and utterly humiliates him, because of course he should have known better. The Universe kills that which is gentle and compassionate. The humans wouldn't be alive today if they weren't just like all the others at their stage of being. The fact that he seriously thought otherwise, and is now proven wrong, is so embarrassing it almost makes the notion of dying seem pleasant. Almost.
But he's not going to show any of that. He's not going to weep, even though his chest feels tight and he thinks maybe he wants to. He's not going to beg for his life. He walks in front of the two guards, head held high, studying the way Picard moves as he walks in front of Q. Stiff, rigid, almost jerky. Extremely reluctant. He doesn't want to do this any more than Q wants him to, but he feels he has no choice. And realistically, maybe he doesn't. Q can do the math. He knows he's not worth a few million mortals, not in this reduced state. In a strange way, Q begins to feel sorry for Picard. Killing Q was the obvious solution to the problem from the beginning, and the fact that it's taken so long that the planet has started to tear apart from tidal stresses means that either Picard is an idiot or Picard waited until the absolute last second before making this decision, and Q doesn't really think Picard is an idiot.
In a few minutes Q will be free of all this, beyond fear and humiliation and pain. But Picard will have to live with himself for the rest of his mortal existence. Q has very, very rarely experienced guilt in his lengthy existence, but he remembers what it feels like. Quite possibly, death is preferable.
They reach the shuttle bay, where there are also space suits and airlocks. Picard continues on toward the shuttles, but Q stops when they reach the airlock.
"I'm serious, Picard. I'm not going to take your idiotic shuttlecraft. There's no point."
Picard turns around. "Do you expect me to throw you out into space with nothing but a space suit?"
"No, I expect you to throw me out into space with nothing but my clothes. That way, I'll be dead by the time the Calamarain reach me."
"Q, you don't even know for certain that they are trying to kill you! Some cultures, some species, practice corporal punishment rather than capital. What if the objective is simply to deliver some sort of finite punishment and move on? I realize that pain must be a new experience for you, but death is final. If there's any chance--"
"I told you. There is none. I know the Calamarain. They don't go in for public floggings, Picard, they want me dead. Painfully. If I must die, I don't want to be tortured first." He swallows. "Please. I know you have to give me to them. But let it be on the terms I choose, not at their hands."
Picard sags slightly. "At least you must wear a space suit," he says in that harsh almost-whisper again. "I cannot just space you. I need to know you have some chance, even the smallest, most impossible chance, of survival. If the Calamarain leave you be for some reason, we can pick you up again, but not if you have no suit."
The Calamarain won't leave him be, of course, but he doesn't want to spend his final minutes arguing the point with Picard. "All right. I'll take the space suit, if you insist, although of course you realize all this is just to salve your conscience and in fact I don't have the tiniest chance of survival and you're kidding yourself."
"Q..."
"Give me a suit."
The suit is difficult and bulky, rather obnoxious to put on, and the pointlessness of it all irritates him, but he humors Picard because if Picard spends all his time arguing with Q about exactly how Q will die then he's not going to be able to save that planet he's killing Q for, and that would be truly pointless. When he's done putting it on, he steps into the airlock and waits, facing Picard and not the exterior door, as the inner door shuts.
"I want you to know," Picard says, and there's a crack in his voice. "I did not choose this lightly. If there were not millions of lives at stake -- if there was any other way--"
Q smiles sadly. Picard doesn't even like him. The Continuum showed very little sign of concern or regret for the decision they claimed he drove them to, and they were supposed to have been his family, his home. The grief this small mortal feels at killing him is more than he got from those who supposedly loved him. There's a lump in his throat.
"It's all right, Jean-Luc. I forgive you."
He watches that sink in, watches the pain Picard has been trying uselessly to mask suddenly blossom in his face, and feels a sense of Pyrrhic triumph. At least the person who kills him will hurt for having done it for the rest of his life. He does, in fact, forgive Picard, but he also wants to see that pain. He wants to know he matters, that at the end of his existence someone will mourn him, even if the only reason is the man's horror at having to kill someone who came to him for help. And by telling Picard he forgives him, he's twisting the knife.
"I... if you need a moment, I will wait until you're ready."
He's not ready. He'll never be ready. He was an immortal; he was never supposed to die. "Go ahead," he says.
And as he sees Picard's hand reach for the airlock release, he unsnaps the catch on his own helmet, yanking it off just as the door opens and pulls his breath away, and then him. The last thing he sees before he falls into the blackness of space is Picard's face, white with horror. That, and cheating the Calamarain by choosing his own death, are the two things he clings to for comfort as vacuum blinds him and cold burns him and finally the lack of air makes everything go dark.