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

[chakotay]

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.

Comments

[directives]

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.

[fingersnapping]

"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.

[directives]

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."

[fingersnapping]

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."

[directives]

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."

[fingersnapping]

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.

[directives]

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?"

[fingersnapping]

"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."

[directives]

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.

[fingersnapping]

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."

[directives]

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."

[fingersnapping]

He softened his hand against her cheek, but for a moment made no move to step away, nor closer still.

"A better ending for them, perhaps, but in terms of storytelling it's dreadfully grim. Whatever happened to riding away into the sunset?"

His smile concealed the fact that it actually stung, would probably continue to long after she'd forgotten, and lived and died and all the other things that mortals did. Or perhaps, restored as Q, he wouldn't remember how much he really cared. It was a very grim ending, but it was the only one that suited.

For now, though, he could lean in and brush a kiss to her mouth in the empty street, safely ensconced in the darkness between one streetlight and the next.

[directives]

She lingered longer than she should've, enjoying these little moments wherein she felt like just an ordinary woman and not someone with more responsibility sitting on her shoulders than any single person ought to have. In these brief, passing moments she could pretend Voyager had never been lost, that she'd moved on from Mark in ways that didn't involve incredible distances and Dear John letters, that she'd somehow found a balance between command, science, and the personal life that was always waiting in the wings for her to raise the curtain and make room for it on the stage. But that's all it was — a moment.

And it passed, Kathryn drawing back to retrieve the carrier full of tribbles before any of the damned things escaped and started breeding in the streets.

"I'm afraid those types of endings are more fantasy than reality. There's a reason happy endings are the subject of so many holonovels. People like to play them through to the end, because otherwise, they might never achieve one in their actual lives. Chances are, they won't. Very few do. Certainly not I." Or you.

[fingersnapping]

He lets her pull away without fighting it, instead moving to put one hand in his pocket and crossing the other behind her, settling it on her hip. It's a little too close for outside, but it's a warning as such that he intends to take them home. Mostly because they have four minutes to get the tribbles out of their box before they exceed critical mass.

"Certainly not you? And what's the point of working so hard if it means being denied a happy ending, Kathy? Certainly not the pleasure of watching your own children grow, I grant you, but the children of your extended family? How many of your crew do you suppose will name you godmother? How many christenings will you see? How many of the most famous days of Starfleet's golden age will be events you grace with your presence? And of course, the golden age of the Continuum. There are momentous days to come, Kathryn, and for you - for any mortal - that should be happy ending enough."

A flash, midstep, and they emerge in the front room of their apartment, where Q gently takes the grip of the carrier from her hand.

"Life is about the journey, not the destination."

[directives]

"Exactly," she said as the arrived inside their apartment, completely unphased by the sudden move from the street to a room indoors a few blocks from it. "Which is why the journey will make dealing with the end result worth it."

For them. Anyone who knew her could tell him that she was fighting tooth and nail to get home for them and not herself. But of course, he didn't need any of them to tell him that, did he? He ought to know that better than anyone and could probably see the inevitable challenges that being back in the Alpha Quadrant after being gone so long, with Maquis officers, in the wake of a devastating war was going to bring. She wasn't going to enjoy any of it, she knew that. She was likely going to hate being known as the woman who brought a crew back from the great beyond for the rest of her life, but that journey — however long it took them to get home — was going to make it worth it.

"I'm going to drop this in my room and lock it, stuff a towel under the door frame. You hit the proverbial switch and let them out once I do?"

Kathryn feared they'd escape otherwise, stepping away from him to see to doing just that.

[fingersnapping]

He nodded, quietened, and moved after her, hovering near the doorway. Of course, the tribbles would all disappear at midnight, how bad could it get? But he suspected her desire to confine them stemmed from not wanting alien creatures from her home universe temporarily infecting the entire tower block. Q would have offered to banish them, but he could already hear her admonishment now: he had brought them into existence and he should deal with the consequences of having done so--something like that. So he doesn't even offer to get rid of them.

And as soon as she escapes from her room, blocking up all escape routes, he clicks his fingers, releasing the temporary tribbles. Their gentle cooing noise could be heard even through the closed door.

"Despite my reservations, I actually had a rather pleasant evening. I hope you did too?"

[directives]

"I did, actually. It's been a long time since I had that many people addressing me by first name in one room before."

Which was awkward in its own way, because her people (Chakotay aside) never called her anything other than Captain. Asking them to step outside of that box and address her casually caused uneasiness on both sides, but perhaps it was a necessary step towards befriending them all as someone other than their captain. For while she was still a captain, there was no ship to command and their duties were considerably less and more lax than they were on Voyager. She could get used to that idea in time.