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Two weeks after the destruction of the Scimitar, Jean-Luc Picard still had not restored the photo of himself in his cadet days to its proper place in the album. That photo was the closest thing he had to a picture of Shinzon, who was the closest thing he would ever have to a son. In the privacy of his ready room, he held it and grieved.
Perhaps saying it aloud would be mawkish enough to make him put the thought away. "He had my eyes."
A most unwelcome voice chimed in: "And my mouth."
Picard's head snapped up. Q lounged against the opposite wall, wearing a credible rendition of Shinzon's iridescent armor. "What fresh hell—"
Q pouted, of course. "Now, now. Is that any way to greet the father of your child?"
"Shinzon was a clone. Genetically identical to me, and no other." Dr. Crusher's tests had confirmed it.
"Was he really, though? Your lips are skinny little things. Shinzon's lips were pillowy, like mine."
"As I aged…" Picard pressed a hand to his forehead. Yes, that was a headache coming on. "What do you want, Q?"
Q took swift steps across the room, well into Picard's personal space. "To mourn with you, of course. He was such a good lad. Bright, passionate, only a touch genocidal..."
Picard stood. "Get out."
"Or would you prefer to talk about Commander Data? I suppose he doesn't matter, since he doesn't have your, what's the word, those twisty acid bits you carry around."
Picard made a high-priority mental note: ask Guinan if she's sure Q can't be killed. "My crew and I remember Mr. Data better than you ever will. Why are you here?"
"Because you've forgotten, and it wounds me. Not just the magical night we shared—"
Lovely. Not just a Q headache, but Q vertigo.
Q folded his arms into a little cradle. "But how carefully and tenderly I carried our son in my pouch—"
No more. "If we had combined our genetic material, I would have noticed a damned pouch!"
Q grinned, damn him. "I don't have genetic material. But you're right. I'm here because you're being boring. Your fixation on your bloodline is uninteresting to me and unworthy of you."
"I do not recall asking for your opinion."
"And yet you always need it. You want a legacy? You already have one. Small in the larger scheme of things, but far larger than most humans can achieve. And a better shape, too."
Images sprung up around him: a host of children on Earth who were only born because Picard stopped the Borg from enslaving humanity. Will, Deanna, Worf, Geordi, Wesley, and Ro. Data, who had never been quite human but still became the best of them.
How odd. None of that was insulting at all.
Still, as Picard looked around, he saw what was missing: not what he had done, but all the things that he hadn't suffered. Or at least, he hadn't suffered them until he was old enough to come out the other side. "If I have changed the world for the better, it's because of luck. I had a family, friends. An artificial heart," Picard added with a wry smile. Q smirked back. "Shinzon was a murderer and tyrant. He would have killed billions of people had we not stopped him. I mourn because of the horrors that shaped him, and in so doing, robbed us both of what might have been."
Q's smirk grew wider. "So, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. What are you going to do about it?"
Picard retook his seat behind his desk, already composing a letter in his mind. "The Federation will soon reopen talks with the Romulans. I'll convince the Council to make the dilithium mines on Remus part of the negotiations."
The Remans' rebellion had only intensified after their leader's death, but control could shift away from them as quickly as Shinzon had grasped it. The Federation would be a powerful voice on their behalf. Another piece of that legacy of his, if he was lucky. And perhaps, indirectly, part of Shinzon's legacy as well.
"Oh, goody," Q drawled. "Diplomatic talks. A step up from moping, I suppose." He snapped his heels together and gave an atrocious salute. "As you were."
Picard would need to begin discussions with the Council at once. They would be loath to ask for anything "unnecessary," so he would frame it as a matter of Federation security. "Goodbye, Q."
Q turned to go, which meant he wasn't gone yet. "Oh, one more thing."
Of course there was. Picard waited.
"His lips really do look much more like mine." Q vanished, but his laughter lingered.
Picard gave a small sigh, shook his head, and went back to work. He wasn't smiling, of course. Certainly not. That would be absurd.