The BLTS Archive - Misunderstanding
by merfilly (stephvickers@hotmail.com)

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Continuity: Precedes my first Multiverse story 'Here'
with Qui-Gon Jinn and Picard, and infinitely before 
'This Drabble' featuring the same pair.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns these boys, but they might not
want me in their backyard after this.

Notes: [info]sasha_anu, this one is finally written, just
for you

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Q had studied this human for sometime, matching his own
experiences to the linear perspective the primitives still
used to express time. Challenges and debates had been
issued, met, and conquered, with this particular human never
losing one whit of dignity before Q's omnipotent presence.

It made Q experience something long since banished from the
Continuum's thought processes.

Want.

Not want in the more carnal form of pleasure so many
primitive species employed, though, if Q was honest, there
was definitely a trace of that.

Or more.

In fact, it was in analyzing this 'want' to its deepest
core, that Q hit upon a solution. He had studied more than
enough species to understand that intimacy was the closest
two non-mental beings could come to complete sharing of
self.

All he had to do was possess Jean-Luc in that fashion, to
give Jean-Luc all of himself in that fashion.

He'd arrived, they had sparred verbally, and Jean-Luc had
protested the intrusion into his private space. Q of course
knew this part of the dance; humans and their confusing need
to play hard to get. Q had studied humans well to prepare
for this moment so that Jean-Luc would understand him in
the closest, most intimate way a human could grasp. It would
open the way for that which Q wanted most, to have Jean-Luc
as his companion, someone to question reality with for the
future.

Only... Jean-Luc did not react with the ecstasy that the
nerves in Q's corporeal form did. When it was over, the act
of growing close completed, Jean-Luc had pulled sharply away,
curling in on himself.

Q watched in confusion as the very act he thought would be
the beginning of true companionship reduced Jean-Luc...
reduced him nearly to the broken thing he'd been in the
aftermath of Locutus.

Q had made a grievous mistake then, and now... now he saw
he had done so once more.

He had not understood enough, and everything he had
wanted... was irrevocably shattered.

Q froze that moment of linear time in his perception,
exploring the feeling of loss and misery, the guilt for a
long while, watching the curled up form of the human he had
so prized.

He could take away the full memory of this, but ... Jean-Luc
had refused to let go the memory of what the Borg had done
when they had taken Jean-Luc, made him one of their own
without his consent, raped his experiences...

That was what Q had done. He had read the signals wrong, in
his arrogance that any being could refuse what Q offered.

And, as it hit him, Q closed his eyes. A single drop of
moisture welled, and Q realized he was feeling grief.

He, powerful being he was, could not heal the injuries
inflicted to Jean-Luc's soul... but he did heal the body,
dimmed the memory enough to drop it into dream-thoughts, and
he left.

Q was alone again, and this time, Jean-Luc would not be
there to alleviate the burden.

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The End