31_days | [march 4] [star trek] Home

Title: Home
Day/Theme: March 4. however you live, there's a part of you always standing by, mapping out the sky
Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Pairing: Q x Picard
Rating: G

It’s utterly ridiculous. For Q, this is even pushing the limited beyond normal oddities, straight to really odd oddities. Climbing a wall, and sweating much more than he thought humans were rightly capable of, and having to deal with an unnatural primal fear of falling is more than he can take. And to top it off, the hyper oxygenated air of this planet is beginning to make him dizzy. The rocks are very sharp too, and he doesn’t particularly enjoy the pain of supporting himself of them.

Q supposes he could just numb himself from the pain. He is Q after all. But, Jean Luc had insisted it wasn’t a good sport if you cheated, and he would certainly know fake pain from real pain when he looked at Q. While Q can be somewhat of a trickster, his acting abilities are admittedly lacking.

This entire ridiculous situation had began a year ago, when former Captain Jean Luc Picard had developed a rather aggressive disease, and was looking at the very end of his overly complicated, overly eventful life. The outlook was grim, and while there was an effective cure, it had some nasty side effects and Picard had no desire to spend the rest of his life in pain. He’d opted to just die.

And Q, being Q, could not just let him die without some sort of an eventful send-off. He had mentioned that it would be like a grand, everlasting party – of course, Q hadn’t had climbing in mind, but that was something he was going to have to tolerate for this man. He had imagined a few nice vacations, each to extend Jean Luc’s life by a small bit, to fulfill those last little dreams he’d set aside for so long in the name of Starfleet.

Unsurprisingly, Q had been unable to convince Jean Luc to become a Q. The man had been much like the rocks Q is clinging to now, sharp, unyielding, and frankly quite annoying. If only he could understand, if only he would consider…

It’s a useless train of thought now, and Q knows he shouldn’t be distracting himself when he’s a good fifty feet from stable ground.

Luckily, the precipice is in sight now, and Q exhales in relief. Of course, Jean Luc is already there, and Q is definitely trailing a good deal behind, but he’s just happy he hasn’t fallen. Forget that he can just will the universe and stop the fall, but the human part of him is ludicrously skeptical of the idea.

He rolls his eyes up to the cavern ceiling. It’s vicious looking, and he wonders vaguely if those jagged stones would fall on him in the event of an earthquake. He tries to ignore the fact that this little planet seems to dislike him, and he wonders what the hell Jean Luc can see in it. In fact, Jean Luc had even mentioned something to the likeness of ‘beautiful’ when describing it, and Q fails to see beautiful. He sees a lot of funny colored rocks and perilous cliffs.

But Q won’t complain, at least not until Jean Luc was satisfied with his little trip. It was the fourth trip so far. The first two had been archeological digs, and Q hadn’t been able to stop himself from just shouting ‘There are no vases here! They were all wiped out in a flood three years ago, you imbecile,’ but apparently that wasn’t the point. After eight hours of digging through dusty, hot sand, they had found nothing at all, and yet Jean Luc had left the scene with a pleasant little smile on his face and Q had left with a backache.

Oh, he loathed humanity.

A final harsh push, and Q drags himself up onto the rock face, panting and red-faced, and feeling like he’d… well, just climbed a precipice.

To make matters all the worse, Jean Luc is no where to be found, and for a moment Q dearly hopes that man fell to his death and freed Q from this damnable little present. But the thought makes him feel funny, but it’s probably just the thick supply of oxygen, and he staggers his way to a small tunnel Jean Luc certainly went through. The funny colored rocks are shimmering, and it’s not helping with his lightheadedness, so he makes sure to keep a hand on the wall to keep himself from toppling over.

A cold rush of air hits him. Q shivers, and he realizes his hatred for this little world is reaching an entirely new level. Sharp, rocky, and cold. The only thing that could possibly make it worse is rain, but he knows rain doesn’t happen here, and he’s grateful for that much.

There’s an entrance to the outside, and Q reluctantly pulls himself from the semi-warm, claustrophobic tunnel to the freezing cold, windy outside. Jean Luc is there, luckily, standing on a tall rock face. Beyond him, there’s a sea of rocks, curved and sharp and deadly, but in the deep night they shimmer the light of the many moons, shimmering silver and blue, mingled with a dank fog. It looks like a vast ocean before them, stretching far into the horizon where the first moon has already begun to set.

For a brief moment, Q is caught up in that ridiculous human fascination with such things, and he feels a powerful emotion that Q’s aren’t accustomed to. A kind of love, love for the sight, but he knows that sight is useless and shallow, something that cannot possibly capture the full magnitude of what lies before him. The splendor of this scene is nothing more than coincidental elements mingling together, invoking some human emotion, human longing for the home planet.

Surely, to any other species, this would be nothing more than a field of rocks and mist.

It’s ironic, then, that Jean Luc isn’t looking out at the rocks, but up at the stars. Quiet, still, and lost in some memory of a home he once loved, he stares up at the endless darkness. Q doesn’t speak, and indulges the former Captain in a moment of silence. In the field, the rocks turn from blue to green as a new moon rises.

‘Q,’ says Jean Luc, gaze never wavering from the sky. His home. Not earth, not this wretched planet of dangerous beauty, but the stars themselves. That endless dark that means freedom and eternity and childish joy that never ceases. The same stars he’d mapped out in his earliest memories, waiting, just waiting to dance in freedom and see everything he once imagined, to live a life he could never regret.

Jean Luc picks up his knapsack. Q waits to hear the worlds, and finds himself hoping they’ll be spoken, succumbing to those foolish human emotions like desire and optimism.

Without looking away from the sky, Jean Luc murmurs the words.

‘Let’s go home.’