Hard Won

Notes: //"Quotes surrounded by forward slashes"// indicate telepathic communication.



A few canon details have been conveniently misplaced. *cough* literary license *cough*









"We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove." -- Mark Twain







Q's journey through the Continuum was a long one. The Continuum itself was made of Q, made Q, was Q -- all of them. The memories, wishes, fantasies and terrors of too many Q to count shot past at immeasurable speed, floated listlessly toward nowhere, sprawled across the ground, were the ground. The landscape was at once stark and teeming, silent and cacophonous.



Q crept slowly, quiet to the perceptions of the others. He envisioned a black highway over a white void, pushing the void out to the edge of his influence and crowding away the remnants of other migrations, of other Q. The hinterlands were perilous and infrequently traveled, housing as they did the flotsam and jetsam of all Q consciousness. The Q at the center of the Continuum had done as Q did, had edged out the useless and the dangerous with their collective void, sending it all to decay along the border. Q had crossed the hinterlands before; in fact, most Q had, at one point or another, but always rarely and always with great care. It was the only sure way to approach the Continuum with subtlety, to become gradually aware of first the overall tone and then the specific patterns and frequencies of the Q who gathered there without being similarly sensed. A Q with something to hide trudged in through the hinterlands, but so did a Q with something to protect. Q would brave the unknown hazard of other Q's stray musings, of other Q's painful recollections, of other Q's sadistic delusions, for the chance at forewarning of the Continuum's collective opinion of his recent endeavors. If things went dangerously wrong, he would wish himself out of the Continuum, far away, to some place-time that would not suffer immediate disruption if he were followed. They would feel the energy surge, realize his intentions, but in the end few of them could claim to be above such an act of subterfuge.



Q tramped along his black highway on ethereal feet, his form a gaseous cloud that clung into itself and approximated his human embodiment. The once awkward shape comforted him on his journey because it reminded him of the man who enjoyed it. The shape itself had become a memento, as though the man had given it to him, though in a sense the opposite was true. But the man had given him an appreciation for it, and that appreciation was wholly and unalterably dependent on the man himself. Should the man cease to be or cease to enjoy, the form would cease to please, except in memorial. Q knew he would have to alter himself when he neared the concentration of other Q to avoid inciting -- or exacerbating, he reminded himself -- their indignation prematurely, but for the time-place he was what he wished to be and he was comforted by it.



Heavy, blue steps of dread carried him on and up, in and over. Infinitesimal sands of energy dusted from Q's edges to sprinkle along the blacktop in his wake, a necessary side effect of traveling through individual segments of time and space at the edge of the Continuum. Without looking back he called them to reunite with him and they obeyed, swallowing themselves into his being in sandy swirls. A glossy black island of rock floated near, perched upon by an ambulatory plant with broad, purple plumes. While the plant's roots clacked and scrabbled at the surface of its miniature planet, pulling it in tiny, aimless near-circles, Q curved his highway to avoid a collision. //How bored did Q have to be to come up with that? I've seen more interesting toys at a 20th Century terran shopping mall.// At the edge of his vast consciousness, Q began to detect a faint chattering, the many voices of many Q, jumbled and indistinct. They moved toward him as he them, one grave pace after the other.



//"…appalling…"// a Q thought from very far away.



//"…put a stop…foolishness…"// thought another Q.



//"…always…troublemaker…"// thought a Q with a whiny, nervous frequency.



//"We never…back…"//



As he neared them, Q reined his mind back and back, a bit at a time, to avoid becoming too noticeable amid the din. Far above and in front of him, the landscape was shrouded in the sickly, vibrating green of contention. //So much for flashing in once I made sure they had better things to do than take out their personal problems on me. I wonder if anyone's leaping to my defense.// Stopping his stride, Q concentrated on the voices, unmindful of the energy grains that trickled down the length of his gaseous form to settle on the highway he'd made for himself. He would weaken in tiny increments as he focused his attention elsewhere, but when he was finished he would gather his energy into himself again.



//"…is not … place… discourage Q… pursuing whatever… enriches… existence."//



Q followed the knotted trail of the thinker's thought pattern until he had a glowing image of the Q's consciousness. The frequency was sky blue and rumbling, with rounded peaks and fuzzy, imprecise valleys. //You always were a maverick, Q. I should have known I could count on you to make some sense. But you're too dry; they won't listen.//



//"…most …our place. Are… forgetting… Q…?"//



When Q tugged at the new thinker's pattern, the trail tugged back and he let go with a start. //Reflex. I hope.// The gaseous cloud that was Q grayed slowly, losing saturation, but he ignored his own deterioration to listen harder.



//"…forget? What if… up like Q?"//



//"Yes, what…then? What… comes…chooses… human over… Continuum?"//



//"… slander!"//



//"…a …possibility!"//



//"Could… two… more dramatic?"//



Q swooned as the voices spun around each other, nipping and whirling at the edge of his consciousness. The white void dimmed and his highway became vague, insubstantial. Swaying, he recalled his sloughed off energy and it returned, eating into him and being eaten until he was whole again. His road and the nothing beyond it sharpened as he regained his mental balance. //*That* was helpful. At least they'll be surprised when I get there. Here's to making an entrance.// A nano-second before Q wished himself out of the hinterlands and into the nexus of the Continuum, a black emptiness swooped in unnoticed from the border and engulfed him.



All was blank. All was vacant. There was only Q, and Q himself was nothing. No voices, no frequencies, no energies, only Q, and Q was nothing. There was no mind to panic, no voice to cry out and no memory of there having been either. No wishes, no destinations, no hopes, no possibilities. There was a void, and the void was Q.



And then the emptiness passed. Q reeled and his cloud form dispersed in a puff of black panic, only to be drawn together again by the sheer force of Q's desperate will. He shuddered, retching, and energy made kinetic and antagonistic by having been too haphazardly united vomited up and out again. Gropingly he recalled it, longed for it, wished for it, and ate it back into himself. Still tottering, Q righted himself and took a mental inventory. Everything seemed to be in place, if somewhat worse for the wear, but he would have to find a Q to join with soon or risk being permanently weakened. Would any of them to consent to a joining now? Q might, or he could take it by force if necessary. It was a distasteful thought but Q would do what he had to do. He glanced around to make certain that the emptiness had moved on, and was relieved to find that he could not detect it anywhere within his influence. //Whose masochistic fantasy was that? Too kinky, even for me.// Q scoffed, even as he knew. Few things were universal among the Q, but a terror of nothingness, of complete separation from the Continuum and from themselves, was one of them. The small number of Q who had actively sought nothingness through suicide were abominations. Pushing the memory of his sibling's horrifying fantasy from his mind, Q once again prepared to wish himself into the nexus of the Continuum.









--









"Something has got to be done! It was one thing when he was just toying with the little animal, but now he's... ugh, I can't even bring myself to think about what he's doing. What happens if the human's interests come into conflict with those of the Continuum? Did you think of that?" The Q with a high-pitched, yellow Q-voice flailed his Q self amid the swirling masses of other Q, stripped of all embodiments, existing only as Q. The sickly green of contention had deepened and grown black at the edges as it enveloped the Nexus.



"They have," purred the red Q with the languid, pulsing frequency. She radiated calm, and she spread herself slowly across the first Q, settling him into a subtle, rapid vibration. "And I don't think anyone here is eager for a repeat of THAT little episode."



"I know *you* aren't, Q. You never were graceful in defeat," Q was drawling even as he finished materializing inside the Nexus. The masses of Q shivered, adjusting their frequencies to compensate for the appearance of the newcomer. Immediately Q could feel the entire attention of the Continuum on him.



"Q," the red Q murmured icily, her Q-attention migrating with exaggerated slowness toward Q. //That's right, bitch; pretend you're not shocked to see me.//



"Whom were you expecting? The Borg Queen?"



"At least she knows how pathetic humans are." The yellow Q trembled his mirthful agreement from under the red Q's energy wings. The masses of other Q trembled kinetically, chattering here and there and taking energy from the conflict into themselves before they breathed it back out again along with their impressions and opinions. Q could tell that most Q agreed with, felt obligated to, or were afraid of Q and Q, but it was a slim majority. Nearly all found his affair with the man disgusting, but few were in genuine agreement with the ringleaders. He wasn't sure yet what the two would demand of him, and so could not begin to tear down their arguments. It seemed judicious to come out as aggressively as he could, though, so he opted for tearing down their character.



"As I recall, there as a time when you were absurdly fixated on a human game called… oh, what was it? So trivial I can hardly remember. Oh, yes. 'Chess'." There was a collective Q-gasp, and then a few brave titters across the Nexus as the red Q energy seized up and seemed ready to spit red Q-spittle all over her companion. It was nothing they didn't already know, or even anything that she didn't know they knew. In fact, there was little a Q could keep hidden from another during a joining, and, with very few exceptions, each Q in the Continuum had at some point joined with each other Q there. Q's actually saying it out loud, though, and putting it on display, was something else altogether. Humiliating secrets learned in a joining were necessarily 'forgotten' afterwards, with the implicit agreement that each Q had more than enough embarrassing history to have him slobbering with shame well into the next millennium and that a mutual pact of silence made more sense than an all-out mud-sling. The other Q would think him bold for launching the first blow as it made him fair game for reciprocation. He was banking on the fact that most of his shameful secrets had already been discussed and their impact dulled by overuse.



"It wasn't the *game* I enjoyed; it was the way their little spirits crunched when they lost repeatedly, no matter how many techniques they studied or how long they went without resting their tiny human brains to practice." The red Q huffed, her frequency rising slightly as she expanded airily. Her companion shivered out from under her and flailed yellowly at the crowd.



"We're not here to discuss her past dalliances, Q. We're here to discuss your current… infirmity. Really! What do you have to say for yourself? Well?" Q fanned out menacingly and then thought better of it, drawing into himself again.



"Infirmity? What are you babbling about?"



"You've got to be ill, haven't you? You copulated with him! You let him poke things into your human body and cover you with slime!" There was a mass shudder of mirth and revulsion from the crowd and Q puffed himself up threateningly, ignoring the wincing jolt that shot involuntarily through his Q-energy. He was not ashamed. He was not ashamed.



"None of that is any concern of yours, Q. Now run along and go back to planning out your democratic takeover of the Continuum." That had been the wrong thing to say. The masses of Q quivered and shifted apart, with several energies migrating nearer to Q and Q. Q gnawed at himself fretfully, cursing himself for his mistake. Now he had alienated all of the 'social government' morons and they were going to feel the need to assert themselves. What was worse, of those who opposed the idea, none came openly to his aid, not even Q. //Merde,// he found himself thinking, and it both comforted and terrified him.



"We think it is our concern, Q," the yellow Q squeaked, emboldened by the broad show of support.



"How, exactly?" Q asked more carefully, folding further into himself and unconsciously preparing for the possibility that he might need to attempt a quick getaway. In the same unconscious way, Q and Q, and their supporters, subtlely shifted to surround him.



"Think of it as an intervention."



"You belong to us, Q, and we belong to you," the red Q purred, confidence back in place as she took up smoothly where her companion left off. "The last time you forgot we made you human to remind you."



"Beyond the fact that it's unseemly to an excruciating degree to have a Q debasing himself so abjectly over a human, this particular human represents an unacceptable conflict of interest," drawled a brown Q with a low, whistling Q-voice. Q whirled on him, his energy quivering hotly with controlled aggression.



"And who decides what's unacceptable? You? Them? And what is this conflict, anyway? Somehow I really don't see the Federation flagship declaring war on the Continuum." He folded over on himself e ree redirected his Q energy at the red Q, the mastermind. "You're going to have to do better, Q."



"No," she murmured, the chilly calm of her Q-voice terrifying him; she knew something he didn't. Had the Continuum already made its decision? Was that why no one came to his defense? But what could the decision be? It was all so ridiculous. He was a Q, not some citizen under the jurisdiction of a corrupt mortal government. He was a Q! "*You* are going to have to do better. Beginning with taking a trip back to visit your loverboy and telling him it was all a cruel Q joke and you're going to leave him. Permanently." Miniature explosions of anger and indignation splashed across Q's energy pattern and failed to conceal the fear that crept in from his edges and made him shake and blur.



"Or what? You're a Q, I'm a Q, we're all Q here, *Q*. We're the same. You have no authority over me." His frequency boomed, though he couldn't keep some of the fearful tremolo from infecting it, and he came out sounding much more confident than he felt. The Q slQ slithered, her energy elongating and twining around itself gracefully.



"It has been decided; if you refuse to cease all contact with your human pet, we will run time back to before we sent you to him, and eliminate every encounter you ever had with him. We'll see if his fused heart kills him, or if something else gets him first. You really were so vulgar and inappropriate, Q. How many times did you fall all over yourself to save his insignificant human life?" Q's energy blurred and thrashed, tendrils flailing out and leaving splashes of energy as they fell at the edges of other Q energies. He quaked and blackened, buzzing with terror and rage.



"You stink of jealousy, Q… and spite. There isn't a Q in the Continuum who doesn't know why you're doing this," Q hissed before swirling his energy in the direction of the mass of silent Q. "If you let them do this to me, they'll do it to you, too. Just wait until you have something she doesn't, something she wishes she had…" Q's speech was already beginning to lose steam as he became more desperate at the lack of response from his audience when the red frequencied Q's stinging laughter interrupted him.



"There, you see? Q is already thinking like a human. We're not doing it to you, Q. You're a Q, after all, as you so cleverly pointed out. We're doing it to him… or not, if you want to run along and save him by breaking his little clockwork heart. Either way, you'll be rid of him and after a few hundred years you'll stop hating us and everything will be the way it's supposed to be. You might even thank us when it's all over." But they were doing it to him. He would never let them cause the man's death by effectively erasing him from the man's existence, and so the man was in no danger. It was Q who was being deprived of the only thing he'd really cared about in so long he couldn't remember if it had any competition at all, and he had needed it so much when it came along; he had been on the verge of doing strange, dangerous things he really shouldn't do out of boredom and a sort of bitter, angry depression. And now he had no choice. He couldn't oppose them all by himself, and it would take years, maybe decades to assemble any kind of organized resistance from the cowardly, huddling mass. He didn't have to ask whether Q and Q might give him that long to carry out his order. With a violent, anguished shudder, Q made his decision. He would do as they demanded, but he wouldn't give up. He had come this far, been this persistent, been this patient with the man; he was not going to give up now, and especially not to Q. Shuddering again, he expressed his acquiescence in a ripple of resigned hatred. "That's the first step toward recovery," the red Q purred. "Oh, and Q?" Q waited, clenching himself and resisting a strong urge to reach out with his tendrils and throttle her. "You had better make him believe it."





[To Be Continued In Chapter 5]