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Time, the omniscient know, is a nonsensical concept. The mistress herself is a wily one but the truly clever know her as a being of foibles – there are backdoors, loopholes, all manner of plausible temporal stretches. One simply goes left when they should go right, on through the heart of the Veil Nebula, slipping between the atoms of supernovas with impossible audacity; or they sneak beneath the layers of galaxies, unseen as dark matter, tug on the right cosmic thread.
It’s how he meets him at the end, the very finale of time and space itself. He barely manages it, has to gather every mote of local stardust remaining and hope more fervently than he ever has before: but there his destination sits, all melodrama and sparks of universes been and gone.
He never had appreciated that outfit enough, he ponders with faint amusement.
He stands before him, waits as he lowers his chair to eye level. Purest recollection washes across his very being in richest watercolour.
Realisation flashes, an eyebrow is risen: a god blinks.
“… Well this is interesting,” Q notes, curious little smirk curling upon his lips. “Who are you, then?”
“Jean-Luc Picard,” he tells him, simple.
Q laughs. “No no no,” he refutes. “There’s nebulaic resonance clinging to your skin, Captain; you wear a hundred hues of dust. Your eyes bear the weight of eons. It’s a seamless swap I must admit, but you are not the man I brought here.”
The courtroom, the old crew (and oh if that doesn’t ache) have fallen silent, are utterly still – locked within a singular heartbeat, blissfully unaware. Another way to fool dearest Madame Time.
“No I’m not,” Picard confesses, smiling. “I’m Jean-Luc Picard, Q.”
The other god stares, seemingly unending: unravels worlds behind a stare of burnished silver.
“… I take it I did that?”
“Well, it was certainly your advocacy,” Picard explains, warm. “More of a ceremonial affair, really. Shards of power, knowledge, evolution, poured from us all into a willing vessel – me.”
“And why would we do that?” Q demands, gaze star systems wide.
Picard beams at that, tears burning in a visual field that once saw totality and now only sees the darkest void of the cosmic swansong.
“Come now,” he murmurs, and the desire to hold his oblivious companion close is almost overwhelming. “Surely those who know all would like a surprise, once in their lives?”
“… No, not really,” Q replies, blasé. Picard hasn’t seen him so fascinated since he’d discovered the wonders of mortal lovemaking. They’ll have to do that again, he acknowledges tenderly – one last hurrah right before the end, when they are reunited in full knowledge. “Not particularly fond of the enigma, actually – not in this instance.”
Picard chuckles, struggles to stop his affection from spilling over in mental waves.
“Spoilers,” he says quietly, “but you’ll enjoy the journey, I promise. Stick with it, please - I am alarmingly stubborn.”
Brilliant eyes sweep him, prod at moments of his essence, read his heart as easily as Shakespearean verse. There are boundaries and walls he has specifically put in place, but Q sees enough.
“You’re suppressing your memories,” he whispers, “but you and I…”
“Oh yes,” Picard confirms, as gentle as a breeze. “And thus you may think this a moment of weakness – an intense, and arguably silly, nostalgia.”
“Or even an insurance policy, perhaps?”
It is strange, Picard muses, to stare into the centre of eternity and know that it doesn’t yet adore the very fibre of you – but the younger god is enchanted nevertheless, and a trillion years of a life together swims through Picard’s memories: of marriage, adventure, fulfilment, constancy. Stars, how he misses his Q.
“No need for that,” he assures, tickled. “You always were far better at this than I, dear.”
Pure wonder settles upon divine features at the endearment.
“And so, if this is simply a nostalgia trip…” Q visibly swallows. “… What’s it like, at the end?”
Tenderness, gratitude, meets him.
“Not lonely,” Picard promises his one-day beloved. “You… simply have your own mission at present, as I have mine.”
If he concentrates, truly focuses, he can see his own far older Q – dying in a vineyard full of sunshine. Explaining to a man quietly in love, who hadn’t even realised it until this very moment, that this is only a beginning – that the man will find him once again, that he will have a future more wondrous than anything he dared to dream even as an overimaginative youth.
Q has never been a liar, whatever the timeline.
“So this… this is a goodbye, even as it isn’t one?”
“No,” Picard counters, regarding him with tearful adoration. “It’s a hello. Enjoy it, won’t you mon dieu?”
Unable to help himself, he leans up on tiptoes, press a gentle kiss to an astonished deity’s cheek. Fingers brush across it, trembling lightly as Q’s stare burns hot and rapt.
“I know I have.”
He vanishes upon the gentlest of smiles, returns to the end’s inked shadows. He doesn’t look back: he knows his love will adapt to the indolent little captain before him again, even as he now knows that the man will one day be so much more.
A hand slips into his, tight and reassuring; a salt and pepper-haired god meets his eyes, his own just as damp.
“Doing well are we, darling?”
Picard nods, sniffs just slightly, turning to face his personal universe with a soft smile.
“You?”
“Better, now,” his Q admits, squeezing his fingers. “Though, I was thinking that I wouldn’t say no to one of those tender sessions of human lovemaking. For old times’ sake, you understand.”
Laughing lovingly, a slipped tear sparkling upon skin, he tells his husband that he couldn’t agree more.
Time is relative after all, he thinks to himself. An au revoir is merely an á bientôt.