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PAST THE MISSION
By Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)
RATING: NC-17 for sex and twisted up stuff
CODES: J/QJr
SUMMARY: After Endgame, Q Junior decides to come to the aid of his Aunt Kathy.
Kathryn had her head on the bar. Not on her hands, not even on a bar towel, but on the bar itself. It was wet and smelled badly of the stuff that everyone drank here, the stuff called Cracker or something. Thick and green and tasting like bile, she had been drinking it herself all night.
Her mouth tasted bad. Her breath was hot and her face was numb. Never a good sign. She didn't care, though. In her hand was another drink.
The music pulsed in her ears, dark, dirty, rhythmic. The lights were dark and throbbed with the same pulse, over and over. On the stage, a woman danced, near-naked. Her skin glowed pale and she writhed, lost. It ... she ... was pretty good. Pretty close to human, too. Good enough to fool a drunken admiral at this distance, with her long blonde curls and soft white thighs. Damn they looked soft.
Damn she was drunk.
She felt rough. The Cracker was a bit thick for her stomach, and she was bound to bring it up at some stage during the night. Really, she was grateful for the dark and the crowds. There wasn't much chance of getting recognised here, and she was pretty sick of the Hero Captain bit. She really wasn't living up to it at the moment.
She lifted her drink to her lips and sucked another gulp down her throat before returning her head to the bar to watch the dancer some more. For a crazy moment she thought about staggering over to her and putting something in her g-string. Her fingers, she thought with a grin before deciding she'd definitely had enough.
She knocked back the rest of the Cracker and slammed the glass on the bar with relish. At least she wasn't in pain right now. The slow, sluggish nausea that sat in her stomach was at least bearable. At least she wasn't alone in her living room bouncing off the walls. Thinking about hurting herself. How good it would be to hurt herself.
She rolled her face down so her nose pressed against the bar, her eyes tightly shut to stop the room spinning. To stop herself vomiting. To stop the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. Nothing sounded quite real. Everyone's voices sounded far away, almost far enough to be the Delta Quadrant.
She could hear Tuvok, behind her at his station. Paris, in front of her, making course corrections. Beside her, Chakotay's soft voice, always gentle. Always solid. Always hers. Hers, until the last day, until they got home. Then his voice, speaking to Seven. Seven's voice, too, frightened, arrogant. Seven's voice, slightly filled with excitement.
How much she hurt.
Harry's voice. B'Elanna's. Neelix, he really was that far away. Even Kes. Even Seska, somewhere in her head. Jaffen. Q, believing in her. Believing that she believed the things she said about humanity. Even his son, speaking to her. Calling her name.
"Aunt Kathy?"
How sad that made her. How much that had meant.
"Aunt Kathy?" There again, harder than before. His touch on her shoulder. Lifting her up. His face right beside her, right in the bar.
Perhaps she was dead.
He slapped her face, lightly, like he was trying to sober her up. Just like that, in fact. He was there.
"Q?" she asked, forcing her tongue to work.
He was looking at her like she was a piece of Yarellian Ghar Slime. Disbelief. "Aunt Kathy?" he asked again, incredulous.
She wasn't in the mood. "Oh, fuck off, Q," she told him.
He looked quite taken aback. Offended. She supposed he had a point. In the morning, when she'd sobered up, she'd probably feel bad about that.
"What are you doing here?" he asked her.
"Just ... just ... night out ...." she slurred at him.
"You're seriously intoxicated!" he said.
"Wow, you ARE omniscient," she managed.
"Funny," he said, and snapped his fingers.
They were in her room, in her living quarters. She was on the bed, he was standing by her dressing table. He was still in the Starfleet uniform of Voyager, four pips at his collar. She missed that uniform. So much warmer, friendlier somehow, than the one she had come home to.
The lights hurt her eyes. She groaned. "Q ..." she complained.
He was shaking his head at her like a disapproving parent. "Aunt Kathy," he admonished. Then he snapped his fingers, and she was sober again.
She groaned. "What the hell did you do that for?!" she complained.
He rolled his eyes. "I'm here to find out what's wrong with you, Aunt Kathy," he told her. "It's not going to help me if you're too intoxicated to talk."
She gaped. "What's WRONG with me?!"
"Yes," he said. "Q ... my father, he's worried about you. He sent me to take care of you. Save you."
"Oh how thoughtful," she sneered. "All those years I was in real trouble, stuck in the Delta Quadrant, fighting the Borg, getting myself assimilated and he never raises a finger to help me. Now I'm home, big house, nice promotion, easy desk job ... he's sent you to SAVE me?!"
He was looking at her seriously. More seriously than she had ever been looked at by a Q. He wasn't saying anything.
"What?" she asked, momentarily thrown off kilter by his expression.
"You ARE in trouble, Aunt Kathy. I've been watching you."
His expression didn't change.
"Don't be stupid," she said in a low voice.
He shook his head. "You're always drunk," he said.
"I'm enjoying myself, Q! I suppose I'm celebrating getting my crew home. If that's all right with the Continuum, that is."
"You get drunk at home. Alone. I'm not the expert on humans my father is, but it's still pretty sad."
"Oh thank-you VERY much."
She fell into silence. Q looked pretty pissed off.
"I understand how you feel ..." he said eventually.
"Oh DO you?" she snapped, but something about the way he said it pulled her up short. He was a Q. A loud, arrogant, braggart Q. They weren't supposed to say things like that. They weren't supposed to appear in moments of torment. Only when they could cause mischief and have fun teasing you, using you as entertainment.
He was hardly behaving like a Q at all.
She sighed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to be so rude."
"I'm not offended," he said, sounding a whole lot more like a Q. But there was still something. Something. For the first time, she got a sense of his destiny, why being under the influence of humanity had been so important to his father.
She regarded him for a long moment before shaking her head. It was too late to do any serious figuring out now. "I've gotta go to bed," she told him. "Thanks for "saving" me from that exotic dancer, but I have to work tomorrow."
"You haven't been going to work," he said. Cutting straight through her lie.
"Perks of the promotion," she said, but she wasn't even fooling herself now. She hadn't been returning the calls of Admiral Mantenna.
"Aunt Kathy ..."
"Oh, don't you Aunt Kathy me," she admonished. "Things are different now."
There it was. She'd said it. It was supposed to be funny, something to blow him off with, but it came out of her mouth sounding hollow. Painful. The words tasted like a metal, but that just made her think of Seven of Nine, and that increased the pain.
She sighed. His eyes were boring into her now, having the truth and not letting go of it.
"Of course things are different," she said. "I'm home now. Things were always going to be different. I mean ... I'm not making life or death decisions every day for one thing." Then she caught herself, and smiled. "Well, I am," she corrected. "Just not MY life or death."
"That makes you sad?"
"No," she said, honestly. "It's just an adjustment." She smiled. "I will get better, Q. You can tell your father not to worry about me. I'm touched by his concern, but I'll be fine soon."
"Is it about Seven of Nine?"
"What?" she gaped. She wasn't even sure if she'd heard him properly.
"You know, Seven of Nine. She married Chipolata, didn't she."
"Chakotay," Kathryn corrected, unable to keep the smile off her face at his irreverence.
"Yeah, Chakotay. You like him too, huh?"
"Been reading my personal logs, Q?"
"In a manner of speaking."
She didn't want to know what that meant. "It's complicated," she said softly.
"Being human is complicated," he said. Somehow, he sounded envious.
"How true."
"You ever wish you'd taken my father up on his offer?" he asked quietly.
"His offer to mate with me?" she asked.
"Yeah."
She didn't know how to answer. Instead she told him, "It was the wrong time."
"Really? Just the wrong time?"
"I was in command of a starship that was stuck in the Delta Quadrant. I was engaged to a man back at home, or thought I was, and I thought I had the unwavering love of a man who would stay by my side no matter what. I thought I had options."
"And if he'd asked you now?"
"He asked me then. The Continuum was in a state of civil war, remember?"
"I didn't exist, remember?" he echoed.
She laughed. "Of course not."
"I wonder about it."
She looked at him, surprised. He had that same expression on his face, that faraway, melancholy look. She had never seen him, or any Q for that matter, have that expression before. It was compelling somehow. Somehow she got the impression that there was more to his visit than he was letting on. "About what?" she asked gently.
"About how it might have been if you'd mated with my father. If you were my mother."
She didn't know what to say. "You wouldn't have been a full Q," she said. "You would have been half human."
"Yes," he said, dreamily.
"I don't know how that would have worked," she whispered.
He looked at her, his eyes wet, or seemingly so. "I think you would have loved me," he said.
"Your father loves you," she replied, almost wanting to reach out to him.
He shook his head slowly. "The Q are beyond love, Aunt Kathy. They've outgrown it. They exist as a wall, a line that's got no beginning, no end. It goes all around the universe and into every living thing, feeling everything about them, but never touching, never a part of it. They all think the things you feel are primitive. Useless. They all do. Well, all of them except me."
"Oh," was all she could say. She was stunned.
"It scares me," he said. "I didn't used to feel this way. But now ... now sometimes ... I'll be touching a person, watching them, inside them, and I'll feel it with them. Love."
He stared at her, his eyes locked with hers.
"It overtakes me," he continued. "Makes me weak. It's wonderful ... so utterly compelling. I'll seek people out, sit with them for days at a time, just letting myself get swept away in it. Feeling the way that females feel about their offspring, the way Klingons feel when they throw heavy objects at each other. The way people feel when they've been abandoned by lovers ... I can't get enough of it."
"Q ..." she said breathlessly. "That's amazing."
"It is, isn't it," he agreed. "But it's not very Q."
"No," she agreed. "It's human."
"Are you really not my mother?" he asked then. "I have wondered."
"I'm really not," she said, and not without regret.
"No," he said. "I probably would have known that."
She nodded slowly. "You know, your father ... this is what he wanted, you know. For you to become more human, to bring that compassion to the Continuum."
"It's why he chose you to be my mother in the first place."
"That's right."
There was silence for a moment then, neither looking at the other.
"Are you ...disturbed by what you're feeling, Q?"
"No," he told her. "I enjoy it. I love it. It makes my existence worthwhile. But it also isolates me, doesn't it. No other Q feels this way. Some of them are going to be revolted by it. I've tried to keep it a secret."
She did reach out to him then, feeling a little of Captain Janeway, mother to the crew of Voyager, creep back into her. She put her hand on his arm and left it there, just to comfort him.
She thought about what he had said. If she had been his mother ... she would have loved him. Right now, that seemed so important to him.
And her as well. It had been so long since she had felt love. Love without guilt, love without parameters, without anger that the one she loved had married someone else. That they were expecting a baby and she was a loveless spinster who would probably never have sex again as long as she lived. The feelings washed over her then, strong, powerful, painful. Sitting in her gut like a lead weight, like she was about to vomit mercury.
"Oh yes ..." Q said. "Oh Aunt Kathy ..."
She looked at him. He had a beatific expression on his face, a little like sex, a little like communion.
"Are you ... FEELING that?" she asked him.
"Yes," he said, panting. "It's what brought me to you."
She clamped down on the feelings straight away. "Don't," she warned him.
"No, don't do that," he begged. "Please don't."
"The way I feel is private."
"Share it," he said. "Please share it with me."
"No!"
"I know it, Aunt Kathy. I know it already, okay?"
Suddenly, Q was in her head. Speaking to her, from inside her mind, almost using her own voice.
You love them.
You love them, both of them.
You loved Chakotay and then you loved Seven of Nine, and you loved both of them. You thought you'd be with one of them. You wanted to be with both of them. Chakotay loved you, you were never sure about Seven.
You thought maybe she loved you. You knew Chakotay did.
You made love with him once, one time, on a planet far away from here, during your second year in the Delta Quadrant. He held you and stroked your hair and you held him inside your body and you'd never felt love so intensely.
You wanted that again once you got home, you assumed you'd have it.
You met Seven in between and she confused you, threw you into turmoil, excited you. She made you think about her deep in the night. She made you masturbate. She made you think about women, but they were all tall blonde women. You slept with a prostitute on shore leave because she looked a little like Seven. You'd never come to orgasm so quickly in your life.
You wanted her, as awful as it was, you loved her.
You loved her, and she married someone else.
Not only someone else, but she married Chakotay, and no one knew. No one knew how you felt, how you hurt so much when you stood at their wedding and bit your tongue until you tasted blood, being Chakotay's best man.
No one knew how much it hurt you when they got pregnant, when you were supposed to be happy. When he told you and expected you to be happy.
No one knew.
No one knew, Aunt Kathy, but it was supposed to be you.
She cried. She was crying. She was dying. Her face was wet, it was all too much. She wanted to be drunk, she wanted to be hurt, she wanted to be dead. All there was was Q, him in her mind, him holding her pain. Feeling it, loving it.
"Stop it!" she screamed.
He stopped. She all but collapsed, weeping desperately into her hands. "Please don't ... please don't ... please don't," she begged him over and over again. What came out was "I love him, I love him, I love her, I love her."
He took hold of her, this time physically, pulling her hands from her face and forcing her to look at him. She wanted him away from her, she fought him, struggled with him, trying to pull herself out of his grip.
"No!" he said. "No, Aunt Kathy, you don't understand!"
"What?" she pleaded, anything to get him to let go.
"Aunt Kathy," he said. "They love you too."
She sobbed, sagging against him.
"They all love you," he continued. "Everyone loves you. No one doesn't love you. That's what it is to be human."
He took hold of one of her hands. "Feel," he said.
Slowly, he was bringing his index finger to her index finger. Slowly. Pointing it. Just like ... just like ....
"No," she said, pulling back. "I can't do that with you ... I'm your Godmother."
"You have to," he said with certainty. "You're the only one who can."
"No," she said weakly.
"Yes. Feel ..."
He touched her. God help her, she was crazy, she was doing it. Making love with a Q, and not just any Q but her Godson, the son of her friend. The Q messiah.
It felt just like making love, or maybe that was just how her minuscule human mind perceived it. No foreplay though, just naked, on her back sex, wet and swollen, Q inside her. Thrusting. Feeling.
Her own pain, his pain, his love of her pain. All his love, all the love he had ever felt.
He was speaking to her. In her mind again. In her body too, but deep in her mind. Over and over again.
Feel it.
Kathryn.
Feel ... love ... all of them.
Making love with a Q is making love with the universe.
He was right. She was spread open. Every part of her was stars and nebulae. Fingers brushing every astronomical phenomenon. Hair spread out across the mathematics of it all.
But it was the living things, the living things that crawled across her skin and gave her pleasure. All their feelings. She bubbled with them, cried them out. Writhed against them, all of them.
The universe. The universe.
Then one at a time. Every living thing. Inside them, inside her. Making love to her, abstract faces. She thought and concentrated on their love. They loved her. All the universe was in love with Kathryn Janeway.
One by one, she pulled them into her. Neelix first. The taste of dusk. His whiskers on her face as he kissed her softly, with reverent lips. His short fingers on her hips, holding her close.
Love you, Captain.
B'Elanna Torres. Teeth on her cheek. Full lips sticky, moist. Tongue between them, breath like wine.
I love you, Janeway. Yes I love you.
The Doctor. Eyes looking for approval, wondering if he is pleasing her. Is pleasuring her. Oh, his mind says. Oh.
Loved you always, Captain.
Tal Celes, for some reason. Smiling. Thanking her for her suggestion of what to have for lunch.
Yes I love you very much Captain.
Tuvok. She knows his love already, feels it. Feels how special she is to him, love that's never spoken. How he thinks of her when he's with T'Pel.
I have never loved another like I love you, Kathryn Janeway.
She pulls in Paris. He mounts her fiercely, blue eyes flashing. Chest hair brushing over her nipples, slightly sweaty.
I love you Captain.
Harry too, but he's too shy. Barely moves. Just gazes at her with his eyes that are the colour of his clarinet.
You know I love you, Kathryn.
Her given name.
All of them on top of her, all the ensigns and the nameless crewman, all their lives. Harren, arrogant and beautiful. Something about him like Seven of Nine. Hogan and Carey, pulled from the past.
All of them filled with love. All of humanity embracing her, turning her and kissing every spot of her skin.
Finally Chakotay. Holding her the way he held her on New Earth, big and impossibly hard inside her, so hard he hurt all the way to her chest and her heart. Soft lips and eyes unguarded.
That made it easier to say.
Finally Seven. Annika. Lips apart and holding her with her soft breasts naked, no Borg about her at all. Hair sweet and fragrant, smelling of nothing particular.
The others. I can't hear the others.
Kathryn came with a scream, and the universe rippled. Contracted, rippled. Q was inside her, Q was in love. Q was feeling her love.
She was on the bed, her finger against his. Not a second had passed. She hadn't broken a sweat.
"See?" he asked. "Aunt Kathy."
She nodded, speechless. Utterly speechless.
"Good," he said. "I'd better go then."
"What? Just like that?"
He shrugged. "Yes. I'm a Q after all. Wham bam thank you ma'am is my specialty."
"Clearly," she said, still not fully recovered.
He laughed. "So much of the universe to experience still ... and I have to tell my father you're okay."
She nodded. "I'm okay," she said, and she meant it. She really did.
He grinned at her, looking more like himself (and his father) than ever. She had the feeling this had been good for both of them.
Then he snapped his fingers and disappeared.
Slowly, shellshocked, she got up from the bed, and went over to the replicator to get coffee. She took her first sip and then saw him, smiling at her from the dark brown liquid.
"See you in nine months, Aunt Kathy," he winked.
She dropped the cup and it smashed.
THE END
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