I'm going to go for a theme here.
OOC Note: Locked from any Star Trek universe socks. Q doesn't care if people from other universes read this, but he doesn't want it getting back to a certain Trek character.
It's been a while. I'm tired of dancing with myself. The entire reason I answer these things is because I have explored the entire universe, and I know everything, except the things about myself I've refused to know. The only thing I have left to explore is my own mind. ...And heart, I guess. Although I don't really have a heart. Except when I'm in a humanoid form. But you know what I mean.
- Heart's Desire: Think about something you once wanted so badly but never acquired. Write about how you think your life would’ve been different if you had received what your heart desired.
- What do you look for in a romantic partner?
- The first time I saw...
- Talk about something you did that made you feel ashamed of yourself afterwards.
- Write about losing control.
There is a point to grouping these questions together.
What do I look for in a romantic partner? Boredom is my most ancient and dire enemy. If I am to have an interest in a person, whether it be a fellow Q or a mortal, they cannot bore me. They have to be unpredictable. They have to occasionally seriously piss me off. They have to be like me, or they have to be my opposite. Even my opposites, though, have to have something in their character that reminds me of myself, perhaps myself as I used to be when the universe was young and I still had a purpose in life, perhaps themselves when they were young and less weighted down by whatever boxes of tradition they've let their culture put them in over time. They have to be well-spoken and (for their species) intelligent. Practically intelligent, not just egghead intelligence -- they have to be able to come up with clever plans and outwit their enemies, because I am Trickster and I never get enough of that kind of thing. Aesthetically pleasing by the standards of their species is a plus. And they can't be hypocrites. Whatever they believe, whatever is their guiding star, their *raison d'etre*, they must live it to the fullest, even if it might destroy them. They have to be who they are. They have to like who they are. They can't break when I lean on them, they can't worship me or literally consider me a demon (a serious annoyance is ok), they can't beg for my mercy or my intervention (unless I force the issue. See below). They need to see the universe with eyes of wonder, because I can't anymore, and it was what I was born to do, and I need it, if only vicariously.
They don't have to love me. And, in fact, none of them ever have. And of course I would never have admitted to loving any of them. Admitting to love is terribly gauche in the Continuum. I do like it if they want me, and most especially if they are willing to act on that desire :-), but I don't need to participate in mortal sexual rituals to enjoy myself with the objects of my interest. I only feel such physical desires if I want to feel them, and if I don't think I'm going to get lucky, I don't let myself want it.
The first time I saw Jean-Luc Picard I had no idea. I saw a boring, stuffy, hidebound creature who wouldn't willingly take chances. I picked him for entirely stupid reasons that I've explained before, so I'm not going to do it again. My goal was to see if humanity lived up to its own hype, and since it went around declaring how peace-loving and advanced and ethical it was, I was going to see if I could shake up some human who really believed in the hype and make them fail to follow those principles. So I picked this pompous starship captain.
In our first encounter, he defied a direct order from me, after I'd proven that I had the power to destroy him any time I wanted to. Then he surrendered, but even after that, he kept trying to argue his case, convince me, and catch me in some sort of logical trap. He was actually the one to suggest that I test him -- oh, I'd planned to do it anyway, but the fact that he said it before I did was impressive. And then he refused to be rattled by my presence or to do anything he wasn't planning on doing anyway. It takes some nerve to do that around an omnipotent being who's watching you -- and I reminded him every so often that I was watching him -- and he still pulled it off.
His first officer seemed more of an explorer, more of a rule-breaker, and at the time he seemed like he might be more interesting. He wasn't all talk like his captain. I soon found out that he couldn't walk the walk, though. *He* could be tempted into violating his ethics for expedience. I offered him the powers of the Q (it was, I admit, an unparalleledly stupid move on my part -- I was so focused on scoring points against humanity, I somehow failed to remember that if I *won* I was going to have to live with this twit FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY), and he came *soo* close to accepting, despite the human belief that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Picard tempted him back. From the brink of absolute power. Picard and his ethics could exert more control over a human soul than I could with the lure of immortality and omnipotence. Words cannot describe how much this event PISSED ME OFF.
That... is when I fell in love with Jean-Luc Picard.
You have to understand this. I was enraged. I, an almighty Q, had been beaten by a mere human at a test I *cared* about winning... and totally humiliated in front of my own people, who gave me a royal chewing out for trying to create a new Q without their permission and then told me to take a hike... and tricked. Because these humans, they were fascinating, but Picard had tricked me into agreeing that if I lost, I would leave humanity alone forever. And I can't *stand* staying away from something that interests me. There's so little that does.
He beat me. At my own game. In the immortal words of some 21st century human teenager, "God, that's hot." I mean, I was furious, and I loved it. Because I *could lose*. Because the deck wasn't stacked anymore, the universe wasn't predictable, something could happen that I totally did not expect and he had *made* it happen. A lowly mortal. No one, *no one*, had ever surprised me and thrown me that far off balance (except for a mortal woman I trusted who tried to kill me, and a Q I trusted who tried to kill me... Picard hadn't tried to kill me, he just defended himself, and it wasn't like I trusted him at the time. It wasn't a betrayal, it was beating me at a game.) My humiliation in front of the Continuum hurt, but the fact that the universe now had something in it that I didn't fully understand, something new I could explore? I was so excited I *almost* didn't care about the Continuum telling me they didn't want me coming home. Almost.
I watched him for a while. I saw him beat down another powerful entity who wanted to experiment on his crew with nothing but the force of his words and his beliefs. And I knew that if I couldn't go home, I wanted to be there. With him. I wanted to show him the universe. I wanted him to need me. Wanting me would also have been nice, but I had to feel like I belonged to something, and the Continuum was shunning me, so I wanted to belong to him. Or him belong to me, whichever. It wasn't about sex, not like I'd have turned him down, but that wasn't what I was after. I just wanted to make a connection. I didn't need him to love me or even like me but I needed him to be *interested* in me. To find me useful.
To need me.
So I did two awful things.
Firstly, I altered his memories. I couldn't get around a prohibition on ever interfering with humanity again with a legalistic fiction. So I made him think that the stakes of our bet were that I would not go near his ship or his crew... and then I kidnapped him via remote teleportation. The kidnapping was all fun and games, I don't regret that, but I regret tampering with his mind. That is one of the worst violations the Q can commit, at least against each other, and for me to do that to a mere mortal might have been forgiveable except that he was a mere mortal I wanted desperately to connect with, on his own level, and therefore what I did was a crime. On the other hand, he still doesn't know I did it, and I probably will never tell him, so... no harm, no foul. It wasn't a *serious* tampering.
The second thing happened when I lost control.
You want to know what happened? I went to him and offered my services. I told him I wanted to join his crew. That I'd even be willing to make the supreme sacrifice of putting my powers aside, all so I could be with him, so I could *help* him, and guide him. I, a god, lowered myself to offering friendship and *service* to a mere mortal. I basically offered to be his pet djinn, a spirit of chaos tamed at his side to do his bidding. I was so alone without the Continuum, and so desperately fascinated with him, I'd have done anything for him. Anything.
And he turned me down.
So I threw him and his crew to the Borg.
The Borg are a ruthless, nasty cyborg race that consume and destroy everyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. They are kind of like a natural disaster, or maybe lions. You can't negotiate with them, you can't generally outfight them, you can't usually outrun them, and for most mortals, if you meet them, you're fucked. They destroy the individuality, the selfhood, of the people they run into, and they absorb the technology. I hate them, actually, but there are other Q who like them, so doing anything about them wasn't really an option. But they were on the slow boat to Earth, and I knew Picard and his Federation would confront the Borg eventually, and be totally unprepared, and try to negotiate, and be swallowed whole. And when Picard accepted my offer, the first thing I was going to do was tell him all about the Borg and offer to show him what they had done to other worlds. Safely.
But he turned me down. So I decided to let him learn about the Borg the hard way.
I would have killed him, you know. The same short-sightedness that led me to try to make a Q in order to score points on Picard would have had me kill the only being that interested me, because his rejection *hurt*. A lot. I'm used to rejection. In fact many of my games are played for amusing rejections. I don't set out to be liked, so I don't usually care if I'm not. But this wasn't a game. I wanted him to accept me, at least, if he wouldn't like me, and he didn't do either. And he told me his lowly species, who I *knew* were going to get their asses handed to them by the Borg if I didn't do anything, could handle any problem the universe threw at them, all by themselves. So I was going to let him prove it.
The Borg killed 18 members of his crew. That still hurts him. I didn't realize how much it would hurt him -- I thought of them as mere collateral damage, and anyway, if he wouldn't admit to me that he needed my help I was going to let the Borg kill them *all*. And they learned -- they learned about his ship, his crew. About him. They downloaded his ship's data banks. And they're not stupid. They could detect my presence, they realized that I had an interest in him. It made humanity more interesting to them, more vital to assimilate. It made them interested in *him.*
He did admit it. He surrendered. He told me he needed me. His pride, that overwhelming pride that almost matched my own... he bent it, he pushed it aside to beg for my help. Even though he believed that asking for the help of an omnipotent being was unethical, he did it because he realized it was the only way he was going to live. And I made him do that. In a tiny way, I broke him. At the time the admission thrilled me, and I saved him and let him go, and went back to quietly observing him and his ship, but now my behavior really rather disgusts me.
And then.
And then the Borg came, and they took him, and made him one of them. Because of what I'd done.
In the interim, I'd been stripped of my powers, and Picard and his crew had taken me in until the Continuum had relented. The Continuum put me on probation, though. No more interfering in major ways with mortals, unless authorized by them. They hadn't liked my little stunt with the Borg. So when the Borg came back, and they knew about Picard because *I'd* shown them, and they found him interesting because *I* found him interesting and they think the Q are perfect and they want to be perfect so they'll run around grabbing anything we like too much and studying it if we let them. So they assimilated him, and they made him their spokesbeing to humanity, a new trick on their part, and they used his knowledge -- and his face, and his voice -- to destroy about an umpteen zillion members of his precious Starfleet. And I couldn't do *anything*. Because if I did anything, the Continuum would throw me out again, and I was a coward.
The creatures I most despise in all the universe violated the person I most cared about in the most horrific way *I* can imagine -- the destruction of the self is what the Q fear most of all -- and it was my fault. And yet I stood by and did nothing, because I was too scared.
I don't usually believe in guilt. You did what you did, okay, move on. No point in regrets. But because of what I did, Picard will *never* trust me, will *never* like me, will *never* come to join me. Will never take favors from me, no matter how heartfelt, unless I basically force them on him. And I can't say I don't deserve that. He lived, he got over it, it all worked out in the end. But he still has nightmares about it. It broke him, and he healed but the break scarred over and will never be as strong as it once was. He will never be as whole as he once was. And that's my fault. Because I lost control, because I got angry, and then because I was too scared to intervene to stop what I'd set in motion.
It's not enough for me to simply amuse myself at his expense and move on. I love to watch him, but if I'm with him, he doesn't trust me and he doesn't like me and I can't seem to get past that with him. So I don't manifest myself to him, most of the time. He doesn't know I'm watching him. Certainly he doesn't know that I've finally admitted to myself what I should have admitted all along, that it's not just an interest, an amusement. I love him. It hurts me when I see him suffer. I've never felt that for anyone, *anyone*, before him. Watching my previous objects of interest suffer was merely amusing because then i could watch the clever way they'd get out of it. I never felt... sympathy... before. But he won't take anything from me overtly, and I don't trust myself to be subtle around him, so I'll save his life without him knowing it but everything else that happens to him, happens, and I don't interfere because he wouldn't want me to. Even if he would, in the moment that it is happening, want me to, the way I made him want me to by breaking him down with the Borg. He thinks it's unethical to take favors from me, and I *hate* that, but I'm going to respect it because... because I care. Because even if he'll never like me, let alone love me, even if he'll never accept me, I *can't* do to him what I did in the past, not now that I know what the consequences are.
What is my heart's desire? At this point it should be obvious. There's only one thing in my existence I have ever desperately wanted and not been able to get, eventually. I want Jean-Luc to accept me, to need me, to take favors from me. I want him to join me, to become a Q and never die. But he doesn't trust me. Because after what I've done how could he? And I'm never going to get past that with him, I think.
If he would have -- if he would have agreed to join me, or even if he'd agreed to treat me as a friend -- I think things might be very different. I might have been willing to turn to him, when the war broke out, instead of going to Janeway. I thought Janeway would help me because it was her fault in the first place, and I didn't want to lose face in front of Picard, but if he'd ever given me an opening I could have pushed aside *my* pride. If I wasn't sure he'd reject me out of hand and refuse to even pay attention and worse yet, give me a *lecture*, I could have gone to him for help. And, well, let's just say I'm not married to the concept of keeping this particular physical body. If it would have helped, I could have taken female form. He might have done for me what Janeway wouldn't, because he would have been ethical enough to sacrifice to stop a war his people triggered by their interference. And I don't know how that would have changed things, but it would have. I'm sure of it.
But nothing like that is ever going to happen. Because I ruined it.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek (TNG and VOY)
It's been a while. I'm tired of dancing with myself. The entire reason I answer these things is because I have explored the entire universe, and I know everything, except the things about myself I've refused to know. The only thing I have left to explore is my own mind. ...And heart, I guess. Although I don't really have a heart. Except when I'm in a humanoid form. But you know what I mean.
- Heart's Desire: Think about something you once wanted so badly but never acquired. Write about how you think your life would’ve been different if you had received what your heart desired.
- What do you look for in a romantic partner?
- The first time I saw...
- Talk about something you did that made you feel ashamed of yourself afterwards.
- Write about losing control.
There is a point to grouping these questions together.
What do I look for in a romantic partner? Boredom is my most ancient and dire enemy. If I am to have an interest in a person, whether it be a fellow Q or a mortal, they cannot bore me. They have to be unpredictable. They have to occasionally seriously piss me off. They have to be like me, or they have to be my opposite. Even my opposites, though, have to have something in their character that reminds me of myself, perhaps myself as I used to be when the universe was young and I still had a purpose in life, perhaps themselves when they were young and less weighted down by whatever boxes of tradition they've let their culture put them in over time. They have to be well-spoken and (for their species) intelligent. Practically intelligent, not just egghead intelligence -- they have to be able to come up with clever plans and outwit their enemies, because I am Trickster and I never get enough of that kind of thing. Aesthetically pleasing by the standards of their species is a plus. And they can't be hypocrites. Whatever they believe, whatever is their guiding star, their *raison d'etre*, they must live it to the fullest, even if it might destroy them. They have to be who they are. They have to like who they are. They can't break when I lean on them, they can't worship me or literally consider me a demon (a serious annoyance is ok), they can't beg for my mercy or my intervention (unless I force the issue. See below). They need to see the universe with eyes of wonder, because I can't anymore, and it was what I was born to do, and I need it, if only vicariously.
They don't have to love me. And, in fact, none of them ever have. And of course I would never have admitted to loving any of them. Admitting to love is terribly gauche in the Continuum. I do like it if they want me, and most especially if they are willing to act on that desire :-), but I don't need to participate in mortal sexual rituals to enjoy myself with the objects of my interest. I only feel such physical desires if I want to feel them, and if I don't think I'm going to get lucky, I don't let myself want it.
The first time I saw Jean-Luc Picard I had no idea. I saw a boring, stuffy, hidebound creature who wouldn't willingly take chances. I picked him for entirely stupid reasons that I've explained before, so I'm not going to do it again. My goal was to see if humanity lived up to its own hype, and since it went around declaring how peace-loving and advanced and ethical it was, I was going to see if I could shake up some human who really believed in the hype and make them fail to follow those principles. So I picked this pompous starship captain.
In our first encounter, he defied a direct order from me, after I'd proven that I had the power to destroy him any time I wanted to. Then he surrendered, but even after that, he kept trying to argue his case, convince me, and catch me in some sort of logical trap. He was actually the one to suggest that I test him -- oh, I'd planned to do it anyway, but the fact that he said it before I did was impressive. And then he refused to be rattled by my presence or to do anything he wasn't planning on doing anyway. It takes some nerve to do that around an omnipotent being who's watching you -- and I reminded him every so often that I was watching him -- and he still pulled it off.
His first officer seemed more of an explorer, more of a rule-breaker, and at the time he seemed like he might be more interesting. He wasn't all talk like his captain. I soon found out that he couldn't walk the walk, though. *He* could be tempted into violating his ethics for expedience. I offered him the powers of the Q (it was, I admit, an unparalleledly stupid move on my part -- I was so focused on scoring points against humanity, I somehow failed to remember that if I *won* I was going to have to live with this twit FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY), and he came *soo* close to accepting, despite the human belief that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Picard tempted him back. From the brink of absolute power. Picard and his ethics could exert more control over a human soul than I could with the lure of immortality and omnipotence. Words cannot describe how much this event PISSED ME OFF.
That... is when I fell in love with Jean-Luc Picard.
You have to understand this. I was enraged. I, an almighty Q, had been beaten by a mere human at a test I *cared* about winning... and totally humiliated in front of my own people, who gave me a royal chewing out for trying to create a new Q without their permission and then told me to take a hike... and tricked. Because these humans, they were fascinating, but Picard had tricked me into agreeing that if I lost, I would leave humanity alone forever. And I can't *stand* staying away from something that interests me. There's so little that does.
He beat me. At my own game. In the immortal words of some 21st century human teenager, "God, that's hot." I mean, I was furious, and I loved it. Because I *could lose*. Because the deck wasn't stacked anymore, the universe wasn't predictable, something could happen that I totally did not expect and he had *made* it happen. A lowly mortal. No one, *no one*, had ever surprised me and thrown me that far off balance (except for a mortal woman I trusted who tried to kill me, and a Q I trusted who tried to kill me... Picard hadn't tried to kill me, he just defended himself, and it wasn't like I trusted him at the time. It wasn't a betrayal, it was beating me at a game.) My humiliation in front of the Continuum hurt, but the fact that the universe now had something in it that I didn't fully understand, something new I could explore? I was so excited I *almost* didn't care about the Continuum telling me they didn't want me coming home. Almost.
I watched him for a while. I saw him beat down another powerful entity who wanted to experiment on his crew with nothing but the force of his words and his beliefs. And I knew that if I couldn't go home, I wanted to be there. With him. I wanted to show him the universe. I wanted him to need me. Wanting me would also have been nice, but I had to feel like I belonged to something, and the Continuum was shunning me, so I wanted to belong to him. Or him belong to me, whichever. It wasn't about sex, not like I'd have turned him down, but that wasn't what I was after. I just wanted to make a connection. I didn't need him to love me or even like me but I needed him to be *interested* in me. To find me useful.
To need me.
So I did two awful things.
Firstly, I altered his memories. I couldn't get around a prohibition on ever interfering with humanity again with a legalistic fiction. So I made him think that the stakes of our bet were that I would not go near his ship or his crew... and then I kidnapped him via remote teleportation. The kidnapping was all fun and games, I don't regret that, but I regret tampering with his mind. That is one of the worst violations the Q can commit, at least against each other, and for me to do that to a mere mortal might have been forgiveable except that he was a mere mortal I wanted desperately to connect with, on his own level, and therefore what I did was a crime. On the other hand, he still doesn't know I did it, and I probably will never tell him, so... no harm, no foul. It wasn't a *serious* tampering.
The second thing happened when I lost control.
You want to know what happened? I went to him and offered my services. I told him I wanted to join his crew. That I'd even be willing to make the supreme sacrifice of putting my powers aside, all so I could be with him, so I could *help* him, and guide him. I, a god, lowered myself to offering friendship and *service* to a mere mortal. I basically offered to be his pet djinn, a spirit of chaos tamed at his side to do his bidding. I was so alone without the Continuum, and so desperately fascinated with him, I'd have done anything for him. Anything.
And he turned me down.
So I threw him and his crew to the Borg.
The Borg are a ruthless, nasty cyborg race that consume and destroy everyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. They are kind of like a natural disaster, or maybe lions. You can't negotiate with them, you can't generally outfight them, you can't usually outrun them, and for most mortals, if you meet them, you're fucked. They destroy the individuality, the selfhood, of the people they run into, and they absorb the technology. I hate them, actually, but there are other Q who like them, so doing anything about them wasn't really an option. But they were on the slow boat to Earth, and I knew Picard and his Federation would confront the Borg eventually, and be totally unprepared, and try to negotiate, and be swallowed whole. And when Picard accepted my offer, the first thing I was going to do was tell him all about the Borg and offer to show him what they had done to other worlds. Safely.
But he turned me down. So I decided to let him learn about the Borg the hard way.
I would have killed him, you know. The same short-sightedness that led me to try to make a Q in order to score points on Picard would have had me kill the only being that interested me, because his rejection *hurt*. A lot. I'm used to rejection. In fact many of my games are played for amusing rejections. I don't set out to be liked, so I don't usually care if I'm not. But this wasn't a game. I wanted him to accept me, at least, if he wouldn't like me, and he didn't do either. And he told me his lowly species, who I *knew* were going to get their asses handed to them by the Borg if I didn't do anything, could handle any problem the universe threw at them, all by themselves. So I was going to let him prove it.
The Borg killed 18 members of his crew. That still hurts him. I didn't realize how much it would hurt him -- I thought of them as mere collateral damage, and anyway, if he wouldn't admit to me that he needed my help I was going to let the Borg kill them *all*. And they learned -- they learned about his ship, his crew. About him. They downloaded his ship's data banks. And they're not stupid. They could detect my presence, they realized that I had an interest in him. It made humanity more interesting to them, more vital to assimilate. It made them interested in *him.*
He did admit it. He surrendered. He told me he needed me. His pride, that overwhelming pride that almost matched my own... he bent it, he pushed it aside to beg for my help. Even though he believed that asking for the help of an omnipotent being was unethical, he did it because he realized it was the only way he was going to live. And I made him do that. In a tiny way, I broke him. At the time the admission thrilled me, and I saved him and let him go, and went back to quietly observing him and his ship, but now my behavior really rather disgusts me.
And then.
And then the Borg came, and they took him, and made him one of them. Because of what I'd done.
In the interim, I'd been stripped of my powers, and Picard and his crew had taken me in until the Continuum had relented. The Continuum put me on probation, though. No more interfering in major ways with mortals, unless authorized by them. They hadn't liked my little stunt with the Borg. So when the Borg came back, and they knew about Picard because *I'd* shown them, and they found him interesting because *I* found him interesting and they think the Q are perfect and they want to be perfect so they'll run around grabbing anything we like too much and studying it if we let them. So they assimilated him, and they made him their spokesbeing to humanity, a new trick on their part, and they used his knowledge -- and his face, and his voice -- to destroy about an umpteen zillion members of his precious Starfleet. And I couldn't do *anything*. Because if I did anything, the Continuum would throw me out again, and I was a coward.
The creatures I most despise in all the universe violated the person I most cared about in the most horrific way *I* can imagine -- the destruction of the self is what the Q fear most of all -- and it was my fault. And yet I stood by and did nothing, because I was too scared.
I don't usually believe in guilt. You did what you did, okay, move on. No point in regrets. But because of what I did, Picard will *never* trust me, will *never* like me, will *never* come to join me. Will never take favors from me, no matter how heartfelt, unless I basically force them on him. And I can't say I don't deserve that. He lived, he got over it, it all worked out in the end. But he still has nightmares about it. It broke him, and he healed but the break scarred over and will never be as strong as it once was. He will never be as whole as he once was. And that's my fault. Because I lost control, because I got angry, and then because I was too scared to intervene to stop what I'd set in motion.
It's not enough for me to simply amuse myself at his expense and move on. I love to watch him, but if I'm with him, he doesn't trust me and he doesn't like me and I can't seem to get past that with him. So I don't manifest myself to him, most of the time. He doesn't know I'm watching him. Certainly he doesn't know that I've finally admitted to myself what I should have admitted all along, that it's not just an interest, an amusement. I love him. It hurts me when I see him suffer. I've never felt that for anyone, *anyone*, before him. Watching my previous objects of interest suffer was merely amusing because then i could watch the clever way they'd get out of it. I never felt... sympathy... before. But he won't take anything from me overtly, and I don't trust myself to be subtle around him, so I'll save his life without him knowing it but everything else that happens to him, happens, and I don't interfere because he wouldn't want me to. Even if he would, in the moment that it is happening, want me to, the way I made him want me to by breaking him down with the Borg. He thinks it's unethical to take favors from me, and I *hate* that, but I'm going to respect it because... because I care. Because even if he'll never like me, let alone love me, even if he'll never accept me, I *can't* do to him what I did in the past, not now that I know what the consequences are.
What is my heart's desire? At this point it should be obvious. There's only one thing in my existence I have ever desperately wanted and not been able to get, eventually. I want Jean-Luc to accept me, to need me, to take favors from me. I want him to join me, to become a Q and never die. But he doesn't trust me. Because after what I've done how could he? And I'm never going to get past that with him, I think.
If he would have -- if he would have agreed to join me, or even if he'd agreed to treat me as a friend -- I think things might be very different. I might have been willing to turn to him, when the war broke out, instead of going to Janeway. I thought Janeway would help me because it was her fault in the first place, and I didn't want to lose face in front of Picard, but if he'd ever given me an opening I could have pushed aside *my* pride. If I wasn't sure he'd reject me out of hand and refuse to even pay attention and worse yet, give me a *lecture*, I could have gone to him for help. And, well, let's just say I'm not married to the concept of keeping this particular physical body. If it would have helped, I could have taken female form. He might have done for me what Janeway wouldn't, because he would have been ethical enough to sacrifice to stop a war his people triggered by their interference. And I don't know how that would have changed things, but it would have. I'm sure of it.
But nothing like that is ever going to happen. Because I ruined it.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek (TNG and VOY)