tampered | one more day in paradise (forward-dated to sunday)

Entry tags:

one more day in paradise (forward-dated to sunday)

When; February 9th
Rating; let's say PG-13 for the half-Klingon being in the same room as the omnipotent being. There might be an honor issue in here somewhere
Characters; Chakotay, Kathryn Janeway, B'Elanna Torres, Harry Kim, Pavel Chekov, Hikaru Sulu, and Q. Yes, even Q
Summary; Chakotay decided that it would be nice for both crews to get together and talk / bond. And Q would've turned up to party crash anyway.
Log;

They were all going to meet at Chekov's little cottage in the woods for this get-together and Chakotay hoped it would be a success, if not a smashing one. He was well aware that it might be a slightly more volatile situation than any of them really wanted simply because Q would be there -- and he knew Q would've been there even if he hadn't been invited -- but he had to hope that everyone would be able to keep their tempers in check and Q would take what he'd said about respect to heart. Maybe then they would be able to enjoy this dinner without hostilities.

Chakotay had done a good part of the cooking. Anyone else was welcome to have cooked or brought something -- no dishes by the captain please -- but he was ready and willing to bring the majority. Cooking was something he was used to and he'd come to like it, especially in this place. It meant he could provide something interesting and it took up a good part of the time he might otherwise spend working in the labs or just being bored. Or trying to meditate or contact his spirit guide. That had been hit or miss lately and he had a feeling that had more to do with the City itself and less with him in general.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was this dinner and how everyone would take it. Hopefully it would all work out. With the food all set out now they just had to wait for everyone else.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's true; she has. Kathryn wandered too close to the still-cooking food more times than necessary, partly out of a need to indulge her ever unyielding curiosity and partly to keep her first officer on his toes. It was both running joke and unfortunate truth that Kathryn was unable to cook to save her life. Even the replicator in her quarters rebelled against her half the time. Her going anywhere near the pots and pans was a disaster waiting to happen and she knew it, but she tempted fate anyway.

Why? Because she could, that's why. And she left rank at the door.

Her answer came first in the form of jabbing Q in the side with one of the spatulas, the flimsy, plastic end bending in against his shirt. "Something to stab you with."

Q is startled by her playfulness--in fact, she just about gets a laugh out of him, certainly a surprised scowl-smile and an outraged expression! And then all at once he reaches out, and as he pins her close against him the lights in the house flash out for a few seconds. Just long enough to press a peck of a kiss against her mouth.

It happens without warning, in almost no time at all, and by the time the lights are on he's standing by the counter keeping his hands to himself again, one eyebrow raised in challenge. His elbows are propped behind him on the edge of the counter.

Retaliation. If she can play then so can he.

She doesn't even have time to retaliate before the moment is done and over with. Kathryn's left standing where he left her, with her back still thankfully to whoever might happen to walk into the kitchen and discover her in there with him. It would give her time to quell the heat currently burning her cheeks and get a handle of the piercing, blazing stare she's currently fixed him with.

"You crossed a line."

Q straightens slowly, bringing his elbows up off the countertop. Something steely has settled down into his expression, matching the gray and bland rust red of his coat. His expression meets the feeling that he's been carrying around with him since he arrived.

"Yes, I suppose I did. Some time ago, in fact, though I haven't regretted it since." His voice was low, so as not to carry amongst the cottage's many eaves. "I made a decision, Kathryn, and I have played my part to keep it, but if you think for a second that defying my own nature is easy... Crossing the lines without breaking any of the rules is my speciality. I may change the direction of my stripes, but don't expect me to shed them entirely. It's unrealistic." He tilts his head. "And besides, you'd get bored."

Kathryn. Somehow, the use of her name versus the nickname she only ~~tolerated~~ allowed him to use added a sudden note of seriousness to the conversation. She realized that he had been sulking, that there was something weighing him down that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but she didn't stop think it was an issue with him warring against his nature. Perhaps she should've, but she's also a touch irritated by the notion that she expected him to act any differently.

Wasn't it the lack of that deviance that defined him (one of but many ways to do so, one that was over-implied while other traits went unrecognized, unnoticed) which drove her to seek him out in the first place?

She licked her lips and sighed, the majority of her anger dissipating.

"Unrealistic and unexpected. I never asked you to stop being you, just to tone down... this," she gestured between the two of them, "for a bit. Doing that doesn't exactly fall into that category, no matter what precautions you take to ensure it isn't seen."

"Now, that's not true. I distinctly recall being ordered to behave myself, and that until I made a decision either way, all offers were off the table, as it were."

If he'd thought that simply applied to his relationship with her, and not the potential that he might traumatize her crew when they were expecting everyone to get along and have a nice time, he might not have hesitated. And he had hesitated. There were a great many things he had considered doing and held himself back from since arriving at the party. Turning all the food into root based derivatives had been one of those things. And making all the chairs bite. And spiking the drinks.

He hadn't even spiked the drinks, that was how much he was behaving.

But most importantly - he folded his arms across his chest - he had been acting this way because he felt it was what Kathryn wanted from him. (Not that he'd believed she did for a second). Yet it proved useful as far as sulking over his own impending dissatisfaction went, too, neatly killing two birds with one stone.

"You've made the decision to be a brat, is what you've done. And not the sort of brat you ought to be, but one that pouts instead of — I don't know — filling the room with packing peanuts."

Those styrofoam squiggles were but one of many banes of her 21st Century existence. Honestly, there were more efficient ways of ensuring a package wouldn't get damaged in transit without involving packing peanuts.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

He pouts deliberately for a second longer, arms unfolding and refolding in the other direction across his chest, and then he lowers them slightly, scowls at her.

"Is that what you really think?"

"You know what I really think, Q, and now is not the time nor the place for me to put words to what you're already well aware of."

It was her turn to fold her arms across her chest.

He considered her for a moment longer, sized her up, then let out a great harumph, pulling away from the countertop and taking a single stride toward the door before stopping, reaching out to catch her arm, just above the elbow.

"I will admit that there was one small part of me behaving just to see what it was like. But I--" A step away from saying something articulate and profound, and he closes his mouth on it abruptly. "Yes, well. Be careful what you wish for." He raises his hand and clicks, cue dazzling flash of light, and then a darker smile as Q releases her arm. "Kidding, kidding!"

Of course he was behaving just to see what it was like. Hadn't most of the human activities he'd participated in been for the sake of seeing what it was like, of being able to take the experience of having done them back with him to the Continuum should he happen to remember it? It reminded her of the fact that remembering was unlikely, that certain things wouldn't be as they were if he weren't human and in possession of a limited array of abilities. It reminded her of how that, on some level, upset her in spite of her levelheadedness, of her one track mind and bulls eye set against the ultimate goal of getting out of here and resuming a course for home.

She braced herself for reappearing elsewhere, almost expecting to feel the sting of the cold from somewhere up on the roof, but nothing happens short of Q looking infuriatingly smug. Kathryn shoved him away, took a good few steps back.

"Ha ha. Notice how I'm laughing." (She's not.)

He got exactly what he wanted out of it - she flinched - and he grinned politely from where he'd been shoved away to, moving away to examine one of the pots on the stove.

"You know, Kathy, I've always wondered--if I were to drop a single tribble into a pot of boiling stew, which do you suppose would occur first: the tribble dying, or its multiplying?"

A pause. "Purely scientifically speaking, of course."

Edited 2014-02-16 02:17 (UTC)

She legitimately facepalmed at that question. (It was either that or roll her eyes or the hundredth time.) Boiling tribbles for scientific curiosity... Only the mad and the Q would dare to even ask the question, let alone conjure up the scenario.

"I'm not answering that, because unlike the scientists of these historically accurate times, I don't participate in animal cruelty."

"Hmm."

But he puts the lid back on the pot without dumping any tribbles into it, and instead produces one of the creatures by passing his hands around himself. Snow white, and about the size of a volleyball, he offered the cooing creature toward her.

"Then you should look after this one, make sure nothing terrible happens to it."

He...might have altered the tribble's replicating ability some, but she doesn't know that. And she did accuse him of not causing any fireworks.

So it might duplicate a few times before midnight...

And it does, but Kathryn manages to contain them within a pet carrier meant for Chekov's dog. She has it in hand, ready to cart the damn things back with her, when she slips her feet back into her heels, ready to head out for the night.

"You can't possibly mean to bring those things home with us?"

Against all odds, Q has behaved himself, but in twenty minutes the forty eight tribbles squeezed together in the dog carrier will be three hundred and thirty six tribbles, and he'd rather hoped for them to make that number in Chekov's front room, surrounded by astounded Starfleet officers and one very disgruntled part Klingon.

Now they'd be all over his apartment.

Again, he failed to count for her resourcefulness in the face of impossible odds, such as tossing a pregnant tribble into a pet carrier. If he wanted them to breed in an open environment, he should've shoved the initial tribble off on someone not her. She smiles at him, brightly and innocently, as if there's absolutely nothing wrong with what she's doing.

It was the same sort of smile he'd seen plastered to a much younger Katie Janeway's face.

"Haven't you always wanted a pet? Now we'll have a good three hundred to contend with. You know what they say, the more the merrier."

His spluttering was incoherent, but it didn't really need to be coherent given that it was spluttering for the sake of spluttering. She knew she had him, and as he pulled his coat on and let himself be ushered back outside, he stuck his hands back into his pockets obstinately.

He could disappear them with a click of his fingers. He could take Kathryn home without them, leave them in the street for people to discover and free at whim. He could have it rain tribbles for three days solid and see what people thought of that. But he doesn't have to take them home at all, and yet that's exactly what he's doing, as though he's forgotten how his powers work.

"I haven't always wanted a pet, and if I had, I'd have gotten myself something interesting, like a bipedal android, or an Australopithecus. Something with real potential."

Trailing along at his side, she's holding the carrier before her like it housed that puppy he left for her in her ready room and not an assortment of tribbles. She's going to lock them in a room once they get home until the midnight hour causes them to vanish, but they were going home with them, one way or another.

"Something with real potential, like me? Then again, I suppose when you've got a human for a pet, you don't need a few hundred tribbles."

He stops walking dead to look at her, stunned that she'd say such a thing. Although he could see how she might mistake it for being that way. He provided her with food, a place to sleep, went on walks with her.

But it wasn't like that at all. Not at all.

"Although Q may have made pains to suggest such a thing, it couldn't be furthest from the truth. You're no pet of mine. In fact I daresay you're the closest thing to an ideal partner that I've ever met."

They were far enough from Chekov's house now, he thought, not to be overheard. "I've never met anyone like you." Although perhaps it was more accurate to say that he'd never stuck around anyone like her long enough to notice.

She'd meant it as a joke, but his words make her stop in her tracks as well, turning around to face him, the carrier full of squealing, cooing tribbles still in hand. Kathryn had anticipated some sort of witty retort in response to her jest, not this. And it was a good thing they were a good distance from Chekov's cottage and walking in the opposite direction of the rest of this evening's company, else she would've insisted wherever this conversation was going wait until they got back to their apartment.

Instead, she allows herself to be properly flabbergasted, command instincts taking on a rare secondary role.

"You what?"

"I know what you're thinking. 'Well of course not, Q. After all you're quite magnificent yourself, there can't be many creatures out there that come close to your splendor,' and yet--yet I've spent a great portion of my existence wanting to find someone, anyone, who could understand even for a moment.

"Oh, Q tries. She's very forward thinking. But she's also very, very Q, and she rarely even makes the effort. You see, at the heart of it, we're all very selfish creatures. I know! Shocking, considering how time and again I've demonstrated how utterly selfless I am. But true, none the less. Understanding my point of view would be a waste of her time, because for a Q it's all a very personal experience; it's vast, and it's impressive--and it's lonely."

He looked off down the street as he spoke, but now he looks toward her. "You understand. And don't get me wrong, Kathy, I have no intention of rescinding on our verbal contract. We will escape from this place. But I will regret it, because there is still a great deal about being Q, and being with a Q, that I would show you if I could." And down at his feet. "As the bard would put it: Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good night till it be morrow."

They've had similar conversations about her Q-ness, but never to this level. This goes beyond the original conversation she had with him, the one he doesn't remember where he explained to her just why she would've made a good mother to his son. Why it had to be her, were it not that other Q. She's touched, truly and unexpectedly. Such a thing doesn't happen very often, but Q's been slowly worming his way beneath her armor for some time now.

Kathryn can't say for sure whether she's allowing it to happen because it's been far too long since she's let anyone in or because she knows it can't and won't last, that it'll fade away one day as her world is righted and everything returns to normal. Likely a bit of both.

And because they're far enough away from the prying eyes of others, Kathryn sets the tribbles in the snow at her feet and goes to him, reaching out to take one of his hands. "Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast. Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest."

Required reading in high school, even in the 24th Century.

He softens as she recites ~~Romeo's lines but never mind~~, and clasps her hand in his own, encircling it completely and looking back down at her. She was a passionate woman. No 'ifs' or 'buts'. No 'underneath the role of Captaincy'. She was a passionate woman, and so much more besides. And he was a moth to that flame. He'd told her before that she would be capable of rising to the challenges of being a mother to a Q, the battles she'd have to face beyond even those of the Borg. He'd even insisted that she would come to love him--he remembered neither of those subjects. But they were no less true because he didn't remember them.

This would all pass, like an evening, and in the morning everything would be different; but that evening wasn't tonight, and that morning wasn't tomorrow.

But he wasn't used to ultimatums. He was Q. He did things until he got bored, and if the moment passed he'd go back and live through it again until he was good and satisfied (it usually only took one run through). But this was different; finite, mortal. It had a predefined ending, like night and day, like a human life.

"If you remember that, then you must remember what becomes of the lovers at the end of the play. I have to say I'm slightly more optimistic." He raised his free hand to brush a strand of loosened hair from her face, stepping forward. "I thought about saving all your memories for you. Bringing them back when you'd moved on from Starfleet and the prime directive no longer applied to you. It's fine; I'm well aware you wouldn't be interested, but I considered it."

Edited 2014-02-17 05:09 (UTC)

Lovers. She ought to be offended by the insinuation, but that's the truth, isn't it? They're lovers, and they've been lovers since the morning she crossed that uncrossable line with him. Kathryn leans into touch, enjoying the quiet moment out here in the open, away from the prying eyes of those who would never understand, never approve. And while she didn't need nor want their approval, if their disapproval caused problems, she would always choose them over him. Always. It was a certainty, as certain as to knowledge that their relationship would end, sooner if not later.

"I like to think being returned to a proper places in the universe is a better ending than Shakespeare gave them."

one more day in paradise (forward-dated to sunday)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)