Sleep in our eyes / her and me at the breakfast table

[fingersnapping]

When; December 18th
Rating; G
Characters; Kathryn Janeway directives  and Q fingersnapping 
Summary; The morning after this thread
Log; 

The light stayed on all night.

Losing the full range of his powers was difficult, but it was nothing compared to the loss of his omniscience. Don't let this handsome visage fool you! Q was no frail human, and his confinement to this fragile form was claustrophobic at best. For a creature with no need for a solid form, who existed in all places at once and none at all, the small bedroom with its four close walls was stifling. Having picked one of the corners on the very top floor, he'd found at least some small assemblage of calm; the view gave him a familiar feeling of overseeing everything, but that was all it was. A feeling. No longer were the answers to the universe in his head. No longer could he see as well with his eyes open as closed--or with the lights on as off.

So sleeping without the lights was completely unacceptable. The darkness made him feel completely detached from reality, struck intellectually dumb. There wasn't even an illusion of being completely aware of his surroundings. A Q that was afraid of the dark! Preposterous! And yet here he was.

He slept invariably badly, and tonight was no different. He rose, padded circles around his room looked out at the stars, squinting until his eyes hurt, then climbed back into bed again. In the other room, he told himself that he could hear Janeway breathing. He slept an hour or two more; rinse, repeat.

The stops and starts weren't altogether nonconstructive. At one point, sitting cross-legged on his bed, Q conspired to transform his apartment. The previous evening, Kathryn had done him a number of services, comforted him about his son, and even though he knew that she was effectively here to keep an eye on him (he'd let her insist it was he doing her the favor not the other way around, but he wasn't stupid) it became his prerogative to make sure that her stay here had the comforts of home. She'd tell him that it was cheating, but what better use of his powers than to bring emotional relief to those who brought him the same?

By morning, a sonic shower replaced the hot water and soap. Her bedsheets had been transformed from the already grim 21st century cotton into the 24th century cheese-grater variety that Starfleet captains liked best. Where once a microwave oven had sat like an ugly little home invader on one of the counter-tops, now a replicator waited to be used. When the sun rose, Q decided to abandon his attempts to sleep, and he was to be found at the kitchen table, staring a steady hole into the replicator while his hand pressed on and off against his lips, as though testing the sensation. It would be a while yet before he quite forgot that kiss. If ever.

Comments

[directives]

She rolls her eyes at his commentary, fully expecting similar requests when he discovers the gold command dress hanging in her closet, nevermind the dress Kirk gave her.

The uniform is handed off to him while she vanishes once more to retrieve the PADD Kirk gave her. It's something the other captain fashioned out of an iPad, saving the two of them the trouble of having to make do with it or the other tablet options while operating in the century this city's based on. And while it isn't as up-to-date as a PADD from the 24th Century would be, she's grown rather attached to it.

"You break it, you bought it."

It's a miracle she's letting him touch it at all.

[fingersnapping]

Gosh, Kirk. You really do deserve every comment you get, you dog.

He takes the uniform, moving to sit down with it while she goes out into the other room again. She's not gone for long, but it's long enough that he folds it neatly about the hangar and sets it down on a clear space on the table. He accepts the PADD carefully, and investigates it for a few moments.

"I break it, I'll fix it. It isn't so complicated."

He turns it over thoughtfully, then looks back up at her. "I can work with this. May I?" See? He's genuinely, actually trying to help; to get involved.

[directives]

"Carefully," she says, as if handing something fragile to Naomi Wildman instead of a grown man. (Or as much of a grown man as a Q can be.)

[fingersnapping]

"Well of course." There, that was much better, and though it was a rather clumsy machine, it could at least record words. He wouldn't need it for calculations, but the words - yes. They'd do just fine.

Janeway treating him like a child, though. He gave her a very arch, sharp look, though it was accompanied by his placing the PADD down on the uniform delicately.

"So little faith you have in me, Kathy."

[directives]

Her response was to, of course, roll her eyes. She saw it more as being protective of something that was hers, though perhaps she was belittling him a bit in the process. She wasn't exactly in the best of moods right now, and perhaps some of that annoyance was bleeding into her interactions with the formerly omnipotent being who had, the sheets and shower aside, done nothing to warrant her ire. Not yet, anyway.

"I have an appropriate amount of faith in you, Q, but that was a gift. I'd rather it stay intact."

[fingersnapping]

"I will keep it long enough to duplicate it--how about that?"

It couldn't be that complicated if Kirk had made it. Q carefully gathers the breakfast things back onto the tray, circling around to place them in the replicator. No washing up, no wasted food--it was a wonder humanity hadn't invented these sooner.

"Now then, we've had breakfast, avoided discussing the previous night, talked about work. What's next?"

[directives]

At a loss, momentarily directionless, Kathryn shrugs hopelessly and makes her way into the living room to plop down on the nearest — and lone — sofa. Her legs come up, curling beside her on the couch.

"I was planning on doing more work at the lab before yesterday's debacle, but I'd rather not venture out in case this is a two day thing."

[fingersnapping]

Ah, interesting. Q pauses for a moment, then deliberately follows her, finding a perch up on the end. He could have made another chair but...well, his tricks shouldn't be wasted on such trivialities and she seemed... Well, she seemed down. Ideally, she probably needed to be talked to - conversed with - perhaps even comforted. No focused authority seemed to remain, no confidence over what she was about to do, or how she was feeling--this wasn't a Kathryn Janeway he was excessively familiar with.

"You don't need to go to the lab to work. There's plenty that can be done right here."

He could create a stand in laboratory if need be--or perhaps something simpler. Transporter schematics for the past three centuries would disappear at midnight, but they'd have the whole day to copy them by hand if need be. It would at least keep her busy. Or he could...

"I know better than to suggest you take the day off."

[directives]

Kathryn had plenty of reasons to be down, had been collecting reasons for downtrodden moods since their initial encounter with the Caretaker, but she never let whatever mood it threatened to put her in drag her down completely. If five years in the Delta Quadrant couldn't crush her spirit, than six months stuck in this bubble wasn't going to even put a dent in her resolve. But yes, she was, on this particular day, a little... off her game. Sad, underneath all that frustration – perhaps even a little worried about the stability of her professional relationship with her first officer in the wake of yesterday's nonsense.

"And I know you've already got a suggestion or two." She shifts on the couch, sitting up a little straighter, but makes no move to put her feet back on the floor. "Let's hear it."

[fingersnapping]

"One or two."

He drums his fingers thoughtfully on the back of the couch, still watching her, then sweeps his other hand out toward the room.

"It lies within the realms of my ability to transform this room into a laboratory, or even a holodeck." Of course, that'd be him done for the day, but it'd be worth it if it put Janeway into a better mood. He could afford - now and again - to expend his energy on her, in order to perhaps sweeten her to his plight. Being human was difficult enough: he had to keep himself from dying and all sorts of other things, and anyone who had been around humans long enough knew that dying was stupidly easy whether or not you actually knew how.

"Alternatively, or perhaps as well, I could give you access to records and schematics, though without the mental agility of a Cardassian, I'm afraid we'd have to copy everything out by hand. And if none of that suits, well...you could go to the lab and everyone else can just go home."

He puts his hands back onto his lap. "Oh, better idea! Go to work as usual only as a member of 8472--problem solved."

[directives]

"Oh yes, because spending the next twenty-four hours as a tripedal species from another dimension will solve all my problems. I'll just run around screaming in an incomprehensible language about impurities and decreeing that the weak will perish."

She rolls her eyes, but that slight upturn at the corner of her mouth betrays the amusement she found in that thought. Of course, one of her own would likely gun her down before she got very far — not that she was even considering it.

Kathryn slaps a hand down on one of her knees in resolve. "Well, if I'm going to be copying down schematics, you're going to help me. Tell me your penmanship has more to offer than just chicken scratch."

[fingersnapping]

"At least you wouldn't have a mouth, and I'd challenge even Kirk to find you ravishing while you're all..." He waves his hands around slightly, then opens his mouth and does a particularly impressive impression of said shrieking. Impression meaning identical.

Back to normal; back to not making disturbing noises, and Q waves his hand out across the floor, generating out of nowhere a dozen stacks of PADDs, all containing a wealth of useful information. One appears in his hand, too, and this he passes to Kathryn directly.

"The specs for the NX-1's transporter aparatus, mon capitaine."

[directives]

[ she opts out of commenting on any of that, uncurling her legs out from under her so she can slide in a very uncaptainly manner from the couch to the floor. selecting a spot, she sits cross-legged in the middle of them, feeling like a kid in a candy store while surrounded by this much data. it feels good to have a PADD in her hands again. kirk's gift was appreciated, but it was still a piece of outdated technology, a conglomerate of 21st and 23rd century technology that should've never meshed in the first place. it was better than anything available, but this was hers. these were the types of PADDs she should be handling on daily basis. she actually missed the stack that was left untouched on her desk when she went for coffee the morning before her abduction, having not yet had a chance to lock herself in her ready room to read through them all. ]

There's a couple of notebooks and some pens on the desk in my room.

[ kathryn rises to her feet, but walks instead to the kitchen, indicating that she meant for him to retrieve them, not her. as for what she's doing? well, if she's going to be working— ] Coffee, black. [ might as well do it with proper ceremony.

coffee in hand, she returns to her spot, setting her coffee down to one side of her, and sorting PADDs to the other. ]

[fingersnapping]

[ There! And who couldn't help but feel like things were just a little bit more together when Captain Janeway was fashioned with replicated coffee, a handful of PADDs and most importantly a job to do. Q watched her depart, then took to his feet, heading carefully into her room to fetch the notebooks and pens, wary of the fact that he'd been invited even despite his insisting that the room was hers, and therefore he wouldn't be stepping into it. He stayed only very briefly.

When he had gathered the necessary tools, he head back, finding a spot on the floor between several of the towers and trying to resist the enticing aroma of her hot coffee, foul temptress that it was.

He asked instead: ] Do you know where you want to start?