Work Text:
Picard knows about the Other Q. He just isn’t quite ready to tell Q that he knows.
The Others aren’t other entities from the Q continuum, these Q are unmistakably his Q just slightly… different.
They start to show up soon after he and Q, his Q, began their relationship. The thing between them was still so new and fragile at the time, Picard was loath to bring it up and break the peace. Well, relative peace, Picard amended to himself with a wry quirk to his lips. Peace as much as any mortal could enjoy while bonded to an all-powerful embodiment of chaos like Q.
And their relationship had been so fragile at the start. Their first serious conversation had been harder than Picard anticipated. Part of the blame was his, of course. Picard is naturally a reserved, private person and he has grown unused to letting down those barriers. Add to that the way Q wears dramatics and hyperbole like armor, and needles Picard when he feels too vulnerable, and it should come as no surprise that it took all that they had not to let things devolve into a shouting match. Another shouting match.
But once Picard coaxed and strong-armed and soothed his way past Q’s many defenses, he had discovered that the entity was quietly, genuinely terrified. Terrified that Picard would find him to be too alien for this to work. Terrified that the gap between them would be too far to bridge, even by the most intrepid explorer.
It was dizzying, the feeling of holding that powerful, fragile heart in his hands. So Picard took a deep breath, pushed down his own building panic, and fell back on what he knew best.
Rules. Regulations.
For his relationship with Q, they settled on only two rules. A modest number, in Picard’s opinion, especially given the sheer quantity of chaos that marked their acquaintance to date.
Rule One: No mind-reading without express and ongoing consent.
Q had made a halfhearted show of groaning and complaining about this one, but when pushed he revealed grudgingly that he had already been following this rule since practically their second encounter.
“Oh smirk all you like, Mon Capitaine, I didn’t start because of your petty human morals,” Q had sneered, shoving at Picard’s shoulder playfully. “At first, it was just to make the game more interesting.”
Picard had raised his eyebrows expectantly and Q had sighed, slumping a bit.
“But then,” he admitted quietly to the teacup cradled in his lap, “once I started to have feelings for you, it did seem a bit wrong to start back up again.”
Picard smiles now to remember it. So bold and dramatic when speaking lies and fancies, his Q, yet so quiet when speaking the truth.
Rule Two: No time travel.
Nothing that would alter Picard’s timeline beyond what their relationship would, by necessity, entail. No premonitions, no last-minute improbable saves. A prime directive of sorts, just for his life aboard the Enterprise. Picard wonders briefly what it says about him that his relationship needs a prime directive.
This rule had hit Q harder. Picard read it in the sudden stillness in his form, the way his hands had gone briefly white-knuckled around his cup. He hadn’t said anything, he just sat there for a long, long moment before he nodded once. Then he was up off the couch, gestures and smile wide as he pressured Picard into 'a quick jaunt across the quadrant, really it won't be for long there's these tall blue drinks that are to die for, really'. Picard hadn't pushed him at the time.
He trusts Q, perhaps far more than he should given their past together. Q had agreed, so he would stick to that agreement.
And beyond trust, was of course guilt.
Because Picard knows, he knows all of this is harder on Q than it will ever be on him. By their very natures, Q must bear the overwhelming burden of making this work between them. Picard likely will never understand how these limitations feel to a Q.
So when he first notices the Others, he doesn’t jump immediately to confrontation and blame. Something strange is happening with Q, the least he can do is try not to assume the worst and keep a level head.
So, he falls back on his tried and true strategy for dealing with the unknown, both as a Starfleet captain and in his holodeck adventures as Dixon Hill: he observes the situation closely, makes his deductions and waits for the right moment to act.
Today it seems the Others will force him to act much earlier than he’d wish.
He sighs, massaging the bridge of his nose, allowing his posture to droop for a little while, at least while he’s out of view of the main room and its distressed occupant. Of course, this had to happen after an especially long shift mediating between hostile dignitaries. Ah, well. He knew what he was signing on for with Q, no use wasting time feeling sorry for himself.
He straightens his shoulders, and sets about his post-shift routine. While he does, he mentally organizes all he knows about the Others.
In truth, they don’t show up very often. Only once or twice a month, and only during times when his Q is safely occupied elsewhere in the universe. He's given a fair amount of thought to whether his Q is aware of the Others. Given Q's galaxy-wide possessive streak, Picard ultimately deems it unlikely.
Physically, the Others are indistinguishable from his Q. In conversation with Picard they never slip up: they are fluent in all the in-jokes and inconsequential references he shares with his Q. And yet. And yet, somehow they are distinguishable as Others to Picard, clearly as a neon sign.
It shows the most in their eyes, he decides after some weeks. Q’s eyes, both his Q or the Others, are wonderfully expressive.
And every one of the Others look at him with eyes that are invariably, immeasurably full of grief.
Picard tries his best to treat the Others exactly the same as his Q. He is a fair actor when he needs to be, and an even better poker player. So, as long as the Others also hold to the sanctity of mind rule, he is reasonably certain they don’t suspect him of knowing. He even spent several days planning out some fairly clever thoughts to try to catch one of them out, without a flicker of reaction. So he proceeds under the assumption they think their subterfuge intact.
He speaks to them kindly, laughs with them, and watches them closely. Watches them as the strangest things crack their carefully constructed masks of normalcy.
With one, all it takes is a cup of tea, handed over with a brush of fingertips and a gentle reminder to mind the temperature. The flash of sorrow is quickly hidden, but it is as black as deep ocean trenches. Picard wonders.
Another shows his cracks in obsidian sharp splinters of anger, Shakespeare lines delivered a little too hoarse, jokes a shade too bitter.
Another still is genial and laughing, charming in every word and action. But when he thinks Picard isn’t watching his eyes are the flat, empty black of the space between stars.
They all avoid his touch. It’s honestly a relief. Picard would have had to force the issue much earlier if they had tried to initiate anything beyond the chaste affection he feels comfortable offering them. He is fairly certain this far into his observation that the Others are, in someway, his Q. But until he knows for certain, things are complicated enough without the added moral tangle.
Picard heaves a quiet sigh, bringing himself back to the present issue. The Other currently huddled on his couch, watery eyes wild with barely restrained panic, the mask of normalcy lying undeniably shattered between them.
In truth, it'd been Picard's fault as much as the Other's. He had been thoughtless, tired from his shift and unobservant. It wasn’t till he had pulled this Q into his arms and felt the entity’s form stiffen, that he noticed the eyes. This Other’s eyes are the arid tawny of an ancient desert, any civilization long eons buried beneath its barren sand.
He’d been nearly knocked over as the Other pulled out of his hold and launched himself over the couch. They had frozen like that, Picard and the nearly hyperventilating, trembling Other. He had defused the situation as best he could, extracted a promise that the Other would stay. He left the Other on the couch to pull himself together while Picard absolutely did not rush through his post-shift routine.
“It’s ok, Q, I’m not angry,” Picard begins as he reenters the room, careful to keep his voice even and calm. “But, I need to understand what’s going on here.”
The Other drags a palm roughly over his face and lets out a watery, bitter laugh.
"Apologies, J-Jean-Luc," he says, breath still hitching unevenly. "Such a f-fuss after you've had a long shift. I shouldn't have, I wasn't supposed to…"
He falters and bares his teeth briefly, eyes shut tight against more tears. Picard starts towards him with a hand outstretched, before pulling back, remembering himself. The touch would likely do more harm than good.
Before he can decide what to do, there's a bang, loud as a lightning strike in the small cabin. Both Picard and the Other startle up off the couch.
There's another Q in the room. Another Other Q.
"You!" The newcomer shouts, leveling a finger at the Other beside Picard. His face is contorted into a mask of rage, eyes glittering obsidian shards.
"You pathetic, weak, miserable excuse for a Q. You've ruined everything!" he snarls, stalking forward. The tawny-eyed Other flinches and shifts unconsciously closer to Picard.
"I-I d-didn't- he-," the first Other's weak protests are cut off as the angry one grabs him by the front of his fake captain’s uniform, hauling him forward till they are nearly nose to nose.
"You've ruined this for all of us, you realize. All of us. And you and I both know we don't forgive easily," he hisses, poison dripping from every syllable.
Picard abruptly reaches his limit for this farce. He steps forward and with one efficient move, taken from his old hand-to-hand combat training, he breaks the irate Other's grip and pushes the two apart.
"That's enough!" he barks, falling back on the tried and true steel of his captain's tone.
Both the Others freeze, watching him with identical wide-eyed expressions.
Picard nearly sways under a wave of sudden weariness. He pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes through it.
"No more fighting, no more lying," he dictates slowly, precisely, forcing calm into his tone. "We are all going to sit down, have some tea and then you need to explain to me exactly what's been going on here."
The angry Other opens his mouth, objection in every line of his posture, but Picard cuts him off with raised palm and a glare. When neither seem likely to offer further rebellion he motions them to the couch.
Both Q sit obediently. They end up as far apart as they can from each other, nearly hugging their respective couch arms. If this situation wasn't so concerning, Picard might have smiled at their identical pouts, facing pointedly in opposite directions.
He orders some tea from the replicator in his private quarters, and takes a few minutes respite while it brews to reorder his thoughts. Three teacups and a rough plan of attack in hand he settles into the armchair across from the two Q.
"To start, Q, I must admit I haven't been entirely honest with you all either. I have known for quite some time that the entity spending time with me was not always, for lack of a better term, my original Q.”
"You knew?" gasps the tawny-eyed Q, "We… we all tried to be so careful."
The angry one scoffs, lips twisting into a bitter grin. "Of course he noticed," he sneers, "Our Captain was always entirely too perceptive for a species with such a limited sensory set.
Of course, it didn't help that we were too disgustingly pathetic to hide it."
"Q," Picard warns, "What's done is done. All I want now is answers."
The Other gestures for him to continue, expression unreadable.
"So," Picard leans forward, steepling his fingers thoughtfully, "who exactly are you?"
"'When are we' would be the more correct question to ask, Mon Capitaine," mutters the obsidian-eyed Other.
"You're from the future," Picard breathes, half in question, half in confirmation as the pieces align. He finds he’s not entirely surprised. Some part of him knew from the start that it had something to do with the second rule.
This time it is the tawny-eyed Q that responds. A horrible, empty smile spreads across his face and he shrugs eloquently.
"Give a timeless entity a shred of affection and next you know…"
He snaps his fingers and suddenly the walls of the cabin open up, unfolding in a direction Picard can't quite comprehend. Q spreads his arms wide, gesturing to the white void around them and suddenly they are surrounded. A silent crowd of Q extends in all directions. They stand still and silent, crammed together shoulder to shoulder without break, as far back Picard's vision can reach.
There must be millions, billions, more. More than the mind could comprehend. Their collective attention is like a physical weight, a vast pressure on Picard’s mind. He thinks suddenly of the crushing, unspeakable black depths of ocean trenches, where no creature of the surface can hope to survive.
Picard can't help the sharp, startled inhale that escapes him. The Other chuckles darkly.
"You see, we are really, truly infinite, Picard. Infinity is rightfully terrifying to the mortal mind, beyond comprehension, beyond sanity. So we tried our best to protect you from it.
What we are is monstrous. Uncountable grasping hands, infinite hungry eyes devouring every instant of your achingly finite existence again and again and again. We would suffocate you, consume you, unspool your very existence until every instant of your life stretched into eons, so we could each have even a minuscule sliver of your love. And even then, we would not be satisfied.
"There is just. So. Much. Time. In eternity," he drawls, his voice flattening until it's empty, empty of bitterness, empty of any emotion at all. His face is all smooth planes and knife’s edge shadows, more marble statue than flesh and blood.
Though he's still in human form, Picard thinks suddenly that Q has never allowed himself to look so alien around him.
"So we devised a lottery, of sorts. For the leftover moments the original, your Q, squandered so thoughtlessly. So many evenings, mornings. We knew we couldn’t have them all, just a couple every few weeks. It’s terrible odds, of course, and some of us have spent so, so long without you, but the alternative…” he looks at Picard, they all do, and the weight of their infinite devotion is no less terrible than if it had been hatred or murderous intent. Picard’s mind balks at last, his thoughts blanking into screaming static. It’s too much, dizzying like space walking without a tether. No way to tell up from down, the self from the vast expanse.
Picard shuts his eyes briefly, breathes through the animal instinct to cower, to run screaming.
He has given his life to embracing the new, the unknown, he reminds himself. Picard knew this relationship would challenge him, challenge his very understanding of the universe. As always with Q, the reality is so much more than the imagination could possibly supply.
And that fierce, wild part of Picard, the part that no amount of rules and regulations could tame, absolutely loves it.
Picard straightens his shoulders, tugging his uniform straight. It’s time to step up and meet Q halfway.
"Q, something about this doesn't make sense."
Q scoffs, "Hardly a surprise, Mon Capitane, the mortal mind could hardly-"
"Stop. No excuses, please. Our experiences are vastly different, yes, but we agreed we would try to make this work, did we not? Not just that you would make it work, but both of us. As equals."
Their infinite audience shifts and sighs, like the wind through the desert. Q gestures for him to continue, expression unreadable.
"You told me once that you lived outside of time, able to move through it as we mortals move freely in three dimensions," Picard continues, slowly feeling his way towards the heart of the mystery.
"Simplistic, but accurate enough I suppose," the Other agrees cautiously.
"Then why should you all exist like this? You should not be distinct entities as you move through time any more than I should be a new person for every new position I take as I move across a room."
The Other pales, puts a hand over his mouth. A different Q steps forward from the crowd to take over, a crooked smile on his face. "Even in the face of existential horror beyond your comprehension, you are too perceptive by half," he says, admiration warming his tone.
“To tell the truth," the new spokesman continues, "‘your’ Q did this. He forced himself to fit your linear timeline and we fractured.”
“Did he do this because of my rule?” Picard asks, feeling his stomach twist with sudden nausea.
“No,” the Other assures him, “Or not entirely. Mostly you gave him an excuse to indulge his worst, cowardly instincts. If he follows your rule, hobbles himself to live in linear time, he doesn’t have to see beyond the event horizon of your life. He doesn't have to confront how this will inevitably end.”
“It's self-mutilation,” sighs a Q to his left, picking up the thread of the conversation. “It goes far beyond removing one of your mortal senses or a limb, constricting ourself to fit a dimensionality lesser than we were meant to inhabit. Trauma of the continuous becoming the discreet, the infinite whole made into terrible, uncountable shards.”
“Q,” Picard starts, pausing to swallow against the ache in his throat. “You must have known that I would never have wished this on you? Damn the rules, I want you as you are.”
“Nonsense, Picard,” another Q scoffs, “How could you possibly wish to love something you couldn’t comprehend. All us shards suffer, but at least your Q can close the gap enough for this to work at all.
“I’m not afraid, Q,” he says firmly. He turns to take in the crushing, infinite press of Others, the immensity of the fear and hurt that has driven Q to this starved half-life. He takes a breath and draws up straighter, projecting his voice to the whole crowd.
“I reject, with everything I am, the notion that one cannot love something beyond their comprehension,” he proclaims.
The crowd shudders and sways, a sigh rippling out in waves.
Picard turns and turns again, searching the faces near him. Searching for changeable chocolate brown eyes not yet touched by long, long eons of loneliness.
“Q, where are you?” he calls softly, “I know you can hear me.”
At last, his Q steps forward hesitantly from the crowd. Picard feels some of the tension leave him in a rush. He steps forward eagerly to draw Q into a hug.
“Fix this Q,” he murmurs against the entity’s shoulder, “I know you can.”
“It was just too tempting to resist,” sighs his Q, eyes a soft, regretful honey brown.
"If I tell the truth (which I try not to do too often, it's so terribly dull) it's just as hard for me to understand your perspective as it is for you to understand mine. And you know how I despise being bad at things. This made things so much easier.”
“There are no shortcuts in love, Mon Amie,” Picard says, cupping his cheek comfortingly. Q leans into the touch for a brief moment before he pulls away to glare at the silent, waiting shards of his future.
“If this ends up blowing up in our collective faces,” he drawls, acid dripping off every syllable, “I really hope it was worth it.” He raises his hand, fingers poised to snap.
Picard locks gazes with a few of the Others, nodding to them solemnly. He tells himself they aren't getting erased, just reintegrated into the whole. A healing, not an unmaking.
Snap.
Picard’s cabin is back to its usual dimensions, walls covered in unassuming beige carpet and solid as ever. Yet it is still a feeling of space opening up, a releasing of pressure. Picard half expects his ears to pop, as if returning to the surface after a long, deep dive.
Q sighs out shakily and Picard turns back to examine him with some alarm.
“Alright?” he murmurs, stroking comforting hands up and down Q’s upper arms.
“Humpty Dumpty all back together again,” Q replies, not quite meeting his eyes. His mouth is pinched at the corners, the lines on his carefully crafted human face deeper than before.
“Did it hurt?” Picard asks softly, stepping closer.
“Only as much as I deserved,” Q replies on a bitter chuckle.
--
These days he looks the same as he always did, Picard's Q. All except the eyes. Q's eyes are sadder now, and more alien, the sweep of unimaginable eons encompassed there.
They clash more than they used to, misunderstandings more frequent. But Picard finds it easier now to keep his temper, to remind himself of how truly alien Q is. To remind himself how far Q would go to make this work. Of how much he is trying.
And the least Picard can do is try to meet him halfway.