Title: Only Human Part IV Author: Alara Rogers Series: TNG Rating: NC-17 Codes: Q/f, AU Part: 9/12+1 Summary: Q and T'Laren are taken captive aboard their own ship by the Ferengi. Their lips met again, this time with all the fervor and passion and experience of T'Laren's extensive sexual history. Their hands worked together to remove his briefs, their hands roaming over their bodies to soothe the burning need to be touched, feed the skin hunger and send waves of pleasure through their bodies. Then they had his body as naked as they needed it to be, and they locked themselves together, him penetrating her, her engulfing him, and it was so good their shared mind orgasmed then and there, shuddering through pleasure more intense than they could recall from either of their sets of memories. But the need was still there, unquenched by a single orgasm. They didn't separate. They lay together, still one inside the other, and kissed and stroked each other's bodies for the few minutes it took before his body could respond to the need they both still felt. And then they were moving together, hard and fierce and passionate. Their hands and mouths found the sensitive places on their bodies and caressed or licked or sucked on them, heightening the sensations. They touched her clitoris, stroking it gently, because it was very sore, but the sensations were too maddening for them to bear and they had to use a firmer, more rhythmic touch, ignoring the soreness they could still feel echoes of in favor of the need burning through both their bodies. They sucked their nipples and kissed their necks and lips and squeezed their buttocks and their breasts and pounded their hips against each other, one entity in two bodies and both bodies utterly overwhelmed with desire, need and pleasure. When climax finally came, it was deep, all-consuming, convulsing every muscle in both their bodies with ecstasy. It went on and on, impossible tension coiling even tighter, and tighter, and then finally releasing in a paroxysm of sweet pleasure. For the first time in days, the body that was T'Laren's felt relief, a release of the terrible energy consuming her, and her mind fell out of their joining into the delicious darkness of sleep, leaving Q's mind his own again, semiconscious and more than a little dazed by what had just happened. For several minutes he lay next to T'Laren's sweat-drenched body, boneless, mind drifting, slowly remembering who and where he was. And then he laughed in delight, rolling over to curl against T'Laren's body, pressing his skin against hers again as sweet waves of afterglow lapped over him slowly. He'd done it. Not just the aspect of finally experiencing mortal sex, and finding that he wished he hadn't wasted three years trying to avoid it, but he had lost himself completely in someone else, merging minds so completely that he'd had no separate consciousness anymore... and he'd come back out of it intact, without even having had to struggle or work to separate as two Q would have had to. He was safely anchored in mortal flesh, something he'd never thought of as a positive attribute until now; he could join completely and totally with another mind, become part of a gestalt sharing a single consciousness, and then return to being his own self without any risk of being changed or devoured. Mortals, or at least mortals engaged in a Vulcan mind meld, *couldn't* lose themselves that way. Sooner or later, the power that made the connection would fail, because Vulcans were mortal and had finite energy, and when their telepathy shut down the two minds would naturally separate again. As a mortal, he could have the deepest, most dangerous pleasure a Q could experience without any threat to his identity or integrity whatsoever. He laughed harder, and hoped the Continuum was reading his mind right now, because he really wanted them to bite down on *that* fact like it was a particularly sour lemon and suck. The punishment they'd inflicted on him, almost uniformly horrible up until now, had freed him to have the one thing he hadn't dared to have when he was all-powerful. Not that the freedom to merge minds *actually* made up for the loss of his powers, but it was a completely unexpected side benefit that provided the first modicum of compensation for his loss he'd encountered in three years. It felt so good to lay here pressed up against her -- even though he normally wasn't particularly fond of physical contact unless it was a backrub, the pleasure he felt now from simply having his skin against another mortal's warmth was sweeter than anything he'd experienced in his mortal life... well, aside from the mind-bogglingly intense orgasms he'd just had, but it was a lot easier to think through this kind of pleasure. Orgasms were like backrubs; both were deliciously pleasurable but derived most of their pleasure from the release of tension and need. This simple contact was a much purer pleasure, not dependent on any kind of need for its sweetness, just wonderful in and of itself. He felt totally relaxed, barely able to move and completely unconcerned with it. For a short while he drifted off to sleep; he'd also had a sleepless night. But when he felt a hand moving on him, running along his side, it woke him easily and without fear or exhaustion; he could feel her sense of presence, a connection in his mind where there hadn't been one before, and he knew even before he was awake exactly who was touching him and exactly what she intended. Apparently the pon farr wasn't usually satisfied by a single mating; she would continue to become aroused very, very easily and need frequent sexual release for some time. The thought made his groin stir. He'd slept long enough for the human male refractory period to end, and if T'Laren's arousal spilling through the link hadn't been enough to stimulate him, the memory of the pleasure they'd experienced this morning might have been enough to make him harden again all by itself. Really, why *had* he avoided this for three years? It was infinitely better than masturbation had ever been; the feeling that there was actually someone else there who cared about making one feel good made everything seem much less shameful and debauched. He wasn't a complete loser for fantasizing about imaginary sex with people who didn't in reality give a damn about him, he was actually *with* someone who wanted him. Wanted *him*. It had been so very long since he'd felt that anyone wanted him. Elejani Baii had been offering him charity based on her feelings of gratitude, and Harry... Harry flirted with every tall smart humanoid man he met, which on a starbase dedicated to scientific pursuits was a significant part of the population. It was a bit flattering, but Q had hardly felt special being the object of Harry's attentions. But at least right now, in this time and place, T'Laren wanted *him*, specifically. And he wanted her, he admitted to himself. He had for some time. He'd told himself it was some passing whim of his body's the way most of the physical attractions he felt were, but if it had only been his body that had wanted her, he wouldn't have felt compelled to fantasize about her being with him the last time he'd masturbated, when he'd had that dream and then found her in skimpy exercise clothes. He himself, his mind, had wanted her. She reached for his temple, but he caught her hand and moved it away. "Not like that, this time," he said. "Let's do this as ourselves, this time. You can handle that, can't you?" T'Laren nodded, and he sensed her assent through the link they still shared. He didn't mind having a link; it made the whole thing rather more like the pleasures the Q shared, and he was interested in seeing how much of his previous experience could apply here. He just didn't want to join minds fully again. That had been... intense. After he'd been so terrified of it, he was still somewhat stunned at how good it had felt and how easy it had been to separate again, but it was too much to do again so soon. Apparently his brain had a longer refractory period than his penis did. She reached out to his chest instead of his face and trailed her fingers down his body, stroking down to his inner thigh and then over to his groin. Q moaned, for a moment completely lost in the sensations, before he remembered that he'd actually wanted to have more control over things this time around. Part of him was insisting that he should just lay here and let her do as she wished with him; if he was passive then he didn't have any responsibility if things didn't go well, and he didn't have to do any work, and all he had to do was surrender to pleasure, which, he had to admit, was affecting him a lot more thoroughly than it ever had when he was a Q. He couldn't remember what the pleasures of being a Q had felt like, exactly, but he was pretty sure they were much more intense than this; still, a Q also had a much larger and more easily divisible consciousness than a human did, so even vastly more pleasurable sensations than a human body could bear couldn't fill up a Q's mind and crowd everything else out as easily as T'Laren's hands on him were doing to his human psyche. He had always done this kind of thing to *other* Q; no Q had ever been able to get him as thoroughly helpless and enthralled in pleasure as T'Laren was doing, mainly because he'd been a lot better at resisting it when he was a Q. But he *wanted* to take a more active role, for much the same reasons as he'd always taken a more active role with other Q. So he sat up, shifting his body slightly so T'Laren couldn't easily reach his groin. She moved to his back and chest, running her hands all over his body, which was still very nice but not quite as derailing to his train of thought. Tentatively Q reached out for her breast, hazy memories of their joining earlier telling him that she would respond to almost anything he did to it. She sighed when he cupped it and moaned when he squeezed it gently, and then he remembered that she was a mammal and wired to want the nipples sucked, so he leaned down and tried that. That made her scream and arch her back, hands grabbing him and pulling him close. This could be remarkably entertaining. In theory he should be able to get the upper hand here even though she was physically stronger, a telepath and had a lot more experience with this messy mortal form of exchanging pleasure than he did; she was also hypersensitive and had been suffering uncontrollable lust for days, and as long as he could keep her from actually merging minds with him he could avoid most of the desperate desire she was suffering from, which meant, in theory, he could keep his rationality and drive her absolutely mad with pleasure. Well, given that frustrated lust had in fact driven her nearly mad, maybe that was a bad metaphor, but the point was she was biologically programmed to totally lose her rationality to her sensations right now, and he wasn't. If he could remember enough of the confused, jumbled and indistinct memories of what they'd done to each other before when their minds had been united to figure out what she would especially like, he could have her in his power, and that was a very enticing idea. T'Laren had had enormous power over him since they'd met, and any mortal who'd lived to adulthood in a mortal body had seemed to have power over him and his ignorance of the human condition, his entire human life, and sex in particular seemed very much a weapon other people might try to wield against *him*. The idea that he could actually do, as a mortal, what he'd have done to a lover when he was a Q, and control their responses, make them lose themselves in what he did to them, was exciting, and seemed a lot more interesting than simply lying back and letting T'Laren pleasure him, as much fun as that had seemed at the time. His motions, his actions, were far from sure or practiced. It took a lot of concentration to remember what he should do, the things that she'd especially liked when they'd been one, and the things she was doing to his body in return didn't improve his ability to concentrate any. But fundamentally T'Laren seemed to want to lose herself in pleasure, and he didn't, and that made a good bit of difference. T'Laren seemed to have completely lost the ability to speak for the moment, but every so often he would get a powerful visual or tactile image through their link, something she wanted very much, and he would do his best to give it to her. Except for entering her. He held off on that, although the images coming through the link were demanding it more and more, because as soon as he did that he'd lose most of his ability to focus on her needs. Instead, he used the link against her, feeding the sensations she was giving him right back at her, teasing her body and her mind at the same time. And then as he was sucking one of her nipples again and rubbing her clitoris with two fingertips, following the guidelines her sensations through the link were giving him, her pleasure suddenly spiked and she convulsed around him, grabbing his hand and using it to pull herself halfway up. The sight of her face and body when she was lost in sensation, when orgasm rippled through her, was both deeply gratifying and incredibly arousing. Who would have thought *he*, of all people, could make a mortal feel so good? He didn't know what he was doing, he wasn't well coordinated, he had never been good at any other mortal cooperative activity... but a mindlink helped, a lot. As her pleasure surged through her, his own need broke free of his control, which to be honest hadn't been all that good in the first place and he'd never had held off so long if he hadn't needed to feel like he was in charge even more than he needed to feel her warmth around him. He wanted to be inside her, desperately, and she picked up his need through the link and transmitted enthusiastic, even frantic, consent. Yes. As much as he wanted to be in her now, her need to have him there was even more intense. He slid onto her, and she opened her legs widely, tilting herself up to try to meet him. There was a bit of fumbling -- his memory of exactly how they'd done this the last time was pretty vague -- and then he was inside her, thrusting, and she convulsed again, his presence inside her apparently extending her orgasmic plateau or possibly even giving her multiple orgasms. He wasn't sure, and he didn't quite care anymore, his mind entirely occupied with how good she felt around him and her hands on his back and her lips under his and she was so tight and wet and then any semblance of rational thought fell apart, his mind melting in a sweet wash of pleasure. Exhaustion hit him as soon as the tension released by his orgasm finished ebbing away. He might not have gone without sleep as long as T'Laren had, but he'd had a pain-wracked night of getting drunk to ease the torture he'd suffered and having it help get him to sleep but not keep him there, and then last night where he hadn't slept at all. Q was awfully tired, and the whiplash of terror followed by intense pleasure had drained him as much as the sex itself had. He rolled off her and curled up next to her, enjoying the feel of her skin against his in the afterglow again, and fell asleep. &&& At some point, long before he actually wanted to wake up, he felt her hands on him again. This time, although the sensations were pleasurable in themselves, it was annoying him more than anything else. What he really needed right now was sleep. Q tried to push T'Laren's hands away. "Go 'way. Wanna sleep." Her mind pressed against his again, cold fire pushing at his brain and behind it a considerably hotter flame. She still *needed*, she still hungered badly enough that it maddened her. Their last coupling had given her relief for several hours, but the need was back again. Mentally Q pushed her back, an especially tiring thing to do when he was so sleepy. "Later," Q mumbled. "I *really* need sleep." His voice was slow and slurred with his exhaustion. And then he felt her mouth on him, kissing and licking her way across his skin, nibbling at his neck. He tried to slap her away, but she only moved, sliding lower on his body. Despite himself Q was waking up; it was impossible to stay asleep when someone's tongue was drawing circles on your abdomen. "Do you *ever* get enough?" he asked, still blearily. And then her mouth was on his penis, and he forgot that he would rather be sleeping. This time Q was much too tired to try to take control; he really did simply lay there and let T'Laren did what she willed with him. Part of him thought that he should probably be disgusted, because the thought of mouth to genital contact was nauseating when you considered what else the genitals were used for, but he was worn out emotionally as much as physically and he really couldn't muster up any sort of outrage about anything that felt this good. As long as she didn't expect him to reciprocate. It was her mouth; if she wanted to put filthy things in it that was her lookout. After everything that had gone before, he felt almost no sense of urgency at all. It took a long time before T'Laren could get him hard again, although the sensations of her mouth and tongue on him and around him and her hands stroking his inner thighs and testicles were wonderful. Q let himself drift on waves of pleasure, not quite falling asleep but not entirely conscious through all of it either. Eventually T'Laren had him as hard as she apparently needed him, and she climbed on top of him and rode him hard, her intensity a bizarre contrast to the lassitude he felt. It wasn't entirely comfortable; her warmth around him still felt good, but to be honest her hips slamming into his were starting to hurt a bit. He was also starting to feel somewhat used, as if he was nothing to her but a particularly lifelike dildo. It probably wasn't fair, because he *had* promised to give her whatever she needed, and obviously she needed this, but he wasn't participating and he was starting to not even particularly like this and she didn't seem to care. Experimentally he reached out and rubbed her clitoris with his thumb, both to help her come faster so she could end this, and because if he actually roused himself enough to *do* something he felt less used. The response was gratifying, although a little bit painful -- she moaned and moved more frantically, driving herself onto him deeper and pressing into his thumb at the same time. The pounding of her groin against his had graduated to actual pain in his hips and back, but the sight and sound of her so completely lost in the pleasure he was giving her was arousing, re-awakening his interest in the proceedings, and his own desire rising made the pain fade back into the background, almost invisible again. T'Laren's mind reached out to his, and he was both too worn out and too aroused to resist her. Her self slid into his, overlapping, not fully merging this time, and her heat and her need overwhelmed him. Instinctively he responded, rubbing her harder, faster, his hips moving in time with hers now, his exhaustion forgotten. Then she fell over the edge, any coherent thought in her mind dissolving in a burst of pleasure, though to be honest there hadn't been much in the way of coherent thought there before. The sensations she was feeling combined with how her muscles tightening around him made him feel, and seconds later he joined her, release sweeping over him. &&& Q became aware that he must have fallen asleep when he felt her hands moving on him again, and he felt cold and leaden. He couldn't remember what had happened after he came; probably he'd been so exhausted that he'd simply passed out immediately. He desperately wanted to get back to sleep, preferably after wrapping warm blankets around himself, but T'Laren was touching him again and he could feel her need through the link again. "No," he mumbled, and tried feebly to push her hand away from his groin. He ached, and he was so very, very tired, and he was starting to feel a little bit raw. Her hands were only irritating him. "Too tired. Lemme sleep." She ignored him. He pushed at her harder, and she changed tactics, using her mouth on him again. This time he was so tired he couldn't respond with pleasure; simply being awake was making his head hurt, and he was oversensitive between his legs, and even her mouth was irritating. Q pushed at her head again. "Stop it... I'm *tired.* I wanna *sleep.*" His voice sounded whiny even to him, but he was too tired to care; all he cared about was returning to sweet oblivion, and T'Laren wasn't letting him doing it. She wouldn't stop touching him. He could feel her need, but he was too tired to care. He *had* to sleep, felt like every moment he spent awake was burning his brain somehow. And her hands and mouth on him couldn't draw any kind of response out of him; he was used up completely. His penis didn't even stir under her caresses. It wasn't that he couldn't feel it; he could, but what had felt wonderfully pleasant earlier just grated on him now, not exactly painful but not really comfortable either and certainly not pleasurable. He felt her frustration through the link, and for a moment he was pleased. She understood that he wouldn't be able to respond until he'd gotten some sleep. He was sure of it. She'd leave him alone now. And then her hands moved to his temple, and Q was so sluggish with exhaustion it took him moments to react, moments to realize what she was doing. Cold fire pressed against his mind again, and it finally sank in what she was doing. In sudden horror, Q tried to shield himself, tried to force her back out, but his exhaustion made him slow and weak and she simply overwhelmed his defenses, and then her mind was in his and he stopped being. The unity of their minds was considerably less pleased this time. T'Laren's frustration and rage at being denied what she needed, the enormity of the need she still felt even after multiple sex acts, Q's horror at losing his mind again, boiled through both of them. But T'Laren's mind was dominant now, Q's mind too exhausted to put up any real resistance, and it was her need that drove their actions. They tried to arouse his body to hardness again, but despite the awful need they both felt, his body was simply done, far too worn out from far too many orgasms to become erect at all. So they used his mouth and fingers on her clitoris and vagina, and when what was left of his consciousness cried out in disgust and tried to pull away from the meld again, they used the raw force of T'Laren's telepathy and the intensity of her need to dominate that part of them, drowning the fragment of his identity in their shared self and shared need. Sweet pleasure washed through them as they used his body to satisfy hers, making his mouth suck hard on her hard little nub, his fingers drive into her wetness over and over until finally, at long last, her orgasm shuddered through their shared consciousness. And in that moment, Q got free, mind and body his own once more, and crawled away from T'Laren as far as he could get on the bed, shivering. He was cold, and he was so tired he wanted to die, and he didn't want T'Laren anywhere near him. She had fallen asleep again, curled up on the bed, and he wanted so badly to be asleep too, but he had to protect himself. In his bleary, exhausted state, it didn't occur to him that if T'Laren woke up she could just crawl to the other side of the bed to get at him; he just wanted to be somewhere she couldn't reach out and touch him right now. He felt sick, and betrayed, and used; he was shaking in the aftermath of an orgasm that he hadn't actually had, his body hurt ferociously, the taste in his mouth was nauseating him, and he thought maybe he should go to the bathroom because he might throw up, but he was too tired to get off the bed. T'Laren was laying on top of the sheets, so he crawled under them, as far as he could go from her without falling off the bed, and pulled them over his head. He yanked a pillow down into his blanket fortress to lay his head on, and another to hug against his body as if curling in a fetal ball around a pillow could actually protect him from anything at all, and pulled the blankets as tightly around him as he could. If he'd been more conscious he'd have realized that the security he felt was a complete illusion, but he only needed enough to convince his half-asleep mind that he was safe enough to yield to sleep, and as soon as he had that much safety the darkness rose up out of the pillow and into his head and washed him away. &&& T'Laren awakened, again, when the desire became too intrusive to stay confined to erotic dreams. By instinct she reached out for Q, but he wasn't there. Reflexively she reached her mind toward him instead, and hit a wall. Q was fully shielded against her. This was unusual enough to wake her completely. She sat up, and saw him on the other side of the bed, or something that was probably him anyway because he was completely covered by blankets. T'Laren crawled over to him and pulled back the blanket slightly, until she could see his head and part of his arms, which were wrapped tightly around a pillow. His face was as tense and drawn as it had been the day she came in on him after he'd taken sedatives. T'Laren frowned, not quite able to match up his mental shield and obvious tension to what she remembered of the night. She started to reach toward him -- --and memory flooded back in of the last encounter they'd had. T'Laren recoiled back on the bed, rocking back on her heels, in sudden horror, as she remembered what she'd done. She had wanted him so badly. Even after they'd been together three times, the need had still throbbed within her. But Q hadn't responded; he'd kept trying to push her away, telling her to stop. Now that she'd finally satisfied enough of the need to be more or less in her right mind, T'Laren cringed, remembering, because she hadn't stopped. She had kept touching him, trying to arouse him, and when he didn't respond at all, she had thought that a full mind meld, a total joining of their minds, would enable Q to feel enough of her desire that he would want it too. She remembered Q's sudden terror as she felt him realize what she intended, remembered him trying to throw up mental shields in a sudden panic, but although he had actually turned out to be remarkably adept with his mind when he was wide awake, in his exhausted state he'd been no match for her. She'd forced a joining of minds on him, and drowned out any resistance with her need. And when his body *still* couldn't respond -- apparently human men simply didn't physically have the stamina Vulcans did, which she supposed shouldn't have surprised her -- she had taken what she needed from him a different way, directing their joined mind so that Q would perform oral sex on her and use his fingers inside her. Q had tried to resist again, the part of their joined self that was his mind reacting with utter disgust to the thought of putting his mouth anywhere near anyone's genitals, but she'd needed him and he couldn't give it to her the other way so she'd overridden him. Instead of a perfect melding of minds, their joining had been more T'Laren controlling Q's mind, and through his mind his body, and neither Q's fear and disgust nor her own personal ethics had even raised a warning flag in her mind about it. She had raped him. Both physically and mentally. He had consented to give her what she needed, she dimly remembered that, and he'd willingly joined with her and then willingly had sex with her three times, but the last time he hadn't consented -- he had told her to stop, he had tried to push her away, he had tried to resist the mindmeld and he'd been horrified and disgusted at what she'd wanted him to do, so she'd mind-controlled him into doing it anyway. She wrapped her arms around her breasts and crumpled in on herself, folding into as tight a ball as she could. Tears welled in her eyes, and a sob forced its way out of her throat, and there was no question of using discipline to control herself, not now. She didn't even deserve to be controlled. The thing she had most feared doing, the thing she had had Q lock her in a closet to prevent and had endured an eternity of agonizing need instead, and she had done it anyway. She remembered saying over and over "I will not *harm* you," a mantra that meant she refused to do it, the way "There is no pain" meant to a Vulcan "I won't let myself feel pain", but she hadn't even meant harm, generically. She'd meant she refused to rape him, though she hadn't been able to bring herself to use that word. And then she'd done it *anyway.* T'Laren half-fell, half-laid herself down on the bed, still curled as tightly as she could, and sobbed brokenly. He should have let her die. But it wasn't his fault -- he'd done the noble thing, the heroic thing, just as she'd thought he would if anyone actually told him what was at stake, which of course the Ferengi had, and she still wanted to kill them all for this. She should have found a way to kill herself so Q couldn't have let her out and she couldn't have raped him. She should have foreseen that the Ferengi would tell him; she *had* foreseen that if he'd known the truth he would sacrifice himself to her, to save her life, and she should have realized that the Ferengi wouldn't leave such a weakness unexploited. But it wasn't the Ferengi that had forced a mind-meld on him and drowned out the protestations and fears of his mind and used him for sexual gratification when he was too exhausted to get any pleasure from it himself. *She* had done that. Ultimately there was no one to blame but herself. And the horrible thing was that, although her mind was her own again, the need still raged through her; it was weaker now, more the levels that had driven her to have sex with random human men that she found in bars on shore leave on various planets, because Soram wouldn't have sex with her at all outside his Time, rather than the level that had simply destroyed her will and rationality and ethics and left her barely conscious, a mindless bundle of nerves. It was weak enough that she could control herself now; she wasn't going to rape him again. But she still *wanted* him, and that was an awful thing to feel after what she'd done. How dare she still want him under these circumstances? How dare she remember the pleasure he'd given her before, and the wonderful release she had finally felt, when she'd obtained at least one of those releases against his will? She cried, and cried, and wished she were dead, but Vulcans didn't actually really have the ability to stop their own hearts any more than Q really did. Dying, apparently, wasn't an option, now that Q had given her enough to keep the need from killing her. Sooner or later she was going to have to face him, when he woke up, but he would hate her and she would deserve it. &&& Q dearly wished he was not awake. Everything hurt, horribly. Unfortunately he needed to use the bathroom too badly to stay blissfully unconscious, and by the time he had staggered to the bathroom, dragging the blanket with him so he could at least avoid giving the Ferengi *more* of a free show than they'd already had, he was in far too much pain to be able to get back to sleep. His head pounded, he was so thirsty his tongue felt like cardboard, and although he dimly recalled having gone to the bathroom at some point during the earlier activities, his bladder still felt like it might burst. That taken care of, he needed clothes. When he'd taken everything out of his closet to make room for T'Laren, he'd piled the clothes in the corner of his bedroom. He stumbled back into the bedroom from the bathroom and started rummaging through the pile, one-handed since he needed the other hand to hold up the blanket. "Q," T'Laren said, her voice hoarse enough that it was almost a whisper. Q was startled; he hadn't actually heard her voice in quite some time. She was kneeling on the bed, naked, half-covered in another of the blankets. "I... I am deeply sorry... I know what I -- " "Shut up," Q said, more tiredly than irritably, though what he felt was mostly irritation. "I'm not interested in hearing it." "I... I'm sorry..." "And stop apologizing for apologizing. I know what you want to say and I don't care. I don't really want to hear it now. So shut up." He found what he was looking for and dragged it to the bathroom with him. There honestly wasn't much point to this -- if there were monitors in the bedroom, the Ferengi had seen pretty much everything there was to see, and besides, he'd walked around without his clothes on in the main room after the bugs incident -- but he felt a profound need for sartorial armor at the moment. Especially because he looked like death only slightly warmed over. He took a shower, got dressed in one of his more formidable outfits, and took twenty minutes to apply makeup, and even then he thought he still looked awful. He'd fallen out of the habit of being able to put on an unassailable front when he was in considerable pain, since pain had stopped being his default state. Q tried a few poses in front of the mirror, putting on different expressions until he had one he thought hid his suffering reasonably well. He didn't even go back in the bedroom, leaving the bathroom directly through the door to the main suite. There was food on the table -- some sandwiches, two glasses of wine, candles that had obviously burned down, and a basket of heart-shaped cookies. Someone undoubtedly thought they were being hilarious. He took a small bite of all of the sandwiches, including the ones with no meat in them, to check for the grated aspirin taste, but it wasn't there anymore, nor was it in the cookies. Under the circumstances Q wasn't going to trust alcohol, or even synthehol, for any reason. He returned to the bathroom, dumped the wine in the sink, rinsed the glasses and filled them both with cold water. Then he stalked over to the bedroom and walked in. T'Laren was curled up on the bed, crying softly. She looked up as he entered. "I don't know how long it is since you ate real food, but I checked the meal they left for you, and miraculously they don't appear to have poisoned it," he said shortly. "Get some clothes on and come eat something." It had been something like 9 am when he'd left the suite yesterday, and he'd returned maybe an hour later. It was now 4 am, which was an utterly ridiculous time to have to be awake. How long *had* everything taken... yesterday, or earlier today, or whatever he was going to call it? He hadn't been checking the time. Right now he wasn't actually genuinely tired, per se; he ached horribly, he was extremely irritable, but he didn't feel any particular desire to go back to sleep, so eventually he must have gotten enough sleep. But that made it close to 20 hours since he'd last eaten, and before that, it had been a day and a half without food. He was starving, which probably wasn't helping his mood any. There were six sandwiches; Q devoured the three with meat, even though one was made with bologna and he hated bologna and there was mayonnaise, which he also hated, on all of them. He then ate half the cookies, and was eyeing one of T'Laren's less unpleasant tasting sandwiches when she came in. She hadn't brushed her hair or washed her face, her eyes were bloodshot bright green and sat in sockets surrounded by greenish-yellow markings under her eyes, and the nightgown she was wearing looked as rumpled as if it had been sitting in a suitcase for days, which of course it had been. She walked stiffly, and her face had no expression as she made her way to the table without ever actually looking at him. Q got up. He was done with his food, and he didn't feel like sitting with T'Laren right now. "After you eat, take a shower. You look like targ feces." He returned to the bedroom because there was nowhere in the main suite to go to avoid T'Laren if she was sitting out there. The bedroom stank. He ripped all the sheets off the bed and threw them in the bathtub. This reminded him that if he ever wanted to use his closet again, it would probably need to be cleaned up as well, so he went back out into the main room, ostentatiously ignoring T'Laren, and checked the closet. It reeked, but not of urine or feces; she hadn't even used the urn he left for her for the purpose. The smell was more like sweat, and musk -- possibly, literally musk, or the Vulcan equivalent thereof. Who knew what sort of pheromones she'd been putting out that his human physiology hadn't noticed or responded to? "When you're done eating, clean up the bedsheets, since you're the one who knows how to do it with the primitive solvents the Ferengi gave us. And see if you can get the smell out of this closet. I'm not going to be able to put my clothes back in it for a month at this rate." T'Laren nodded mutely. The fact that she wouldn't talk normally, and that she looked horrible and couldn't even be bothered to put herself together to look presentable before showing herself, irritated him enormously. "What, have you permanently lost the power of speech?" "You asked me to be quiet," she whispered. "No, I told you to shut up, and I was talking about your idiotic need to apologize." He stalked over to her. "Instead we can talk about your distressing lack of personal hygiene, your poor eating habits -- what are you, a rabbit? Quit *nibbling* on your sandwich and *eat* it. You look like you haven't eaten in a week, and since I think that's probably about accurate, *eat* something." "I'm not hungry," she said, still whispering. "I don't care if you're hungry or not! You didn't exactly care if -- " He cut himself off before he said, or thought, anything more on that subject. "I did not undergo *great* personal distress to save your miserable little life just so you could starve yourself to death. *Eat*." To his shock, tears welled in her eyes. She ducked her head rapidly, but not before he saw them. "Oh, please! You call yourself a Vulcan? Are you going to cry every time I insult you? Because if you're going to be that unutterably tedious maybe I *should* just have let you die." "You should have," she said dully, head still lowered, not looking at him. "No, I *shouldn't* have, and you win the all expenses paid, star-studded, gold latinum plated, three year vacation on the Pakled homeworld for your *unutterable, mind-numbing, indescribable* stupidity in not telling me what was *wrong* with you until it was almost too damn late! You obtuse, pathetic misuse of Vulcan protoplasm, *why* did you think I would prefer to see you *die*? And I don't want to discuss this! Eat your short-sighted, bleeding-heart excuse for a meal and go clean yourself up! And the bedsheets!" She pushed the food away and ran for the bathroom. Q rolled his eyes. "And learn how to act like a Vulcan while you're in there! If you're going to cry every time I say anything to you I'm just going to have to get meaner until you toughen up!" When she was gone, he propped himself against the wall with one hand, leaning against it, and breathed, hard. The rage he felt was totally out of proportion to what she was actually doing, but he'd been doing so well at not thinking about why that was so far, it was a shame to break the streak. He dearly wished the Ferengi would actually show up; right now he could actually use the distraction of having work to do. But it was far too early; they weren't likely to make an appearance for another four hours or so. Of course he didn't really *want* to deal with the Ferengi, either. As much as T'Laren's presence upset him, the thought of actually doing anything for Yalit's benefit filled him with helpless fury. But he didn't really have a choice in the matter; between the neurowhip and what they'd proven themselves willing to do to T'Laren, he had to do what Yalit wanted, and at least working would get him away from T'Laren. Besides, he wanted to point out to Yalit how she'd just screwed herself over. She was angry that he'd tried to destroy her reputation? Exactly what did she probably think sexually assaulting a pair of Federation citizens would do? If it got out what she'd done, she'd be ruined. Kidnapping was one thing; the Ferengi kidnapped people all the time, and since their government didn't seem to think it was illegal and the Federation wasn't willing to go to war over a kidnapping or two as long as the victims were eventually returned unharmed, nothing was generally done about it. The Federation didn't go to war over or even get particularly upset about financial issues, and kidnapping for ransom fell in that category. But sexual assault was something else entirely, and by Federation law, using drugs to compel a person into sexual acts was sexual assault, and so was blackmailing a person into sexual acts by threatening the life of someone they cared for, and it didn't matter in either case whether the sex acts were performed with the perpetrator or another party. Prostitution was not illegal in the Federation, but trafficking was; forcing, blackmailing or otherwise compelling a person to have sex with a third party was considered rape, even under circumstances where the third party's acts *weren't* -- for instance, if the coerced person was also being coerced into pretending that they were acting of their own free will, and therefore the third party didn't know the sex was coerced, the third party who actually *had* sex with the coerced person wasn't a rapist, but the one responsible for the coercion *was.* Q had actually looked into Federation law regarding this in detail after the incident with Amy Frasier -- which had been very upsetting to him at the time, because the law had plainly stated that she had assaulted him and yet Security's laughing at the matter had made it quite clear to him that he couldn't possibly get justice, and he'd thought the Federation was more advanced than to have laws on the books they'd just laugh at. Now Q thought he understood a bit better why they'd laughed, and why T'Laren had told him that what Amy had done to him hadn't been sexual assault. He still thought she should have been punished for it in *some* way, but it turned out there was an enormous difference between someone doing something to you that you wanted badly enough that you couldn't bring yourself to make them stop even though you knew it was a terrible idea and you were terrified of the potential consequences, and someone doing something to you that you genuinely didn't want, at all, but you *couldn't* make them stop even when you tried. He needed to find out how Federation law handled Vulcans and their weird sex-or-die compulsions. As angry as he was with T'Laren right now, he didn't want to see her prosecuted or harassed for what had happened; he wanted to be able to charge Yalit and her goons with rape for what they'd done to both him and T'Laren, but he didn't want T'Laren branded a rapist, although technically, from the pure facts of the case, she was. No. His breathing grew harsh and ragged. He didn't want to think about that. Q walked over to the couch and sat down hard on it. He stared at the wall, eyes unfocused, not really looking at anything. This wasn't T'Laren's fault. Right now he hated her for it and wanted her to suffer as much as she'd hurt him, which was turning out to be much easier than he liked because she seemed to be more than willing to torture herself for it, and really, he'd have preferred it if she'd actually put up some resistance or fought back instead of blaming herself and crying because it wasn't satisfying at all to torment someone who was so broken already, but he couldn't exactly soften and offer her comfort or something asinine like that under the circumstances. The truth was, though, that he *knew* it wasn't her fault. She hadn't asked to be drugged; she'd *tried* to stop herself, to the extent of lying to him about the severity and nature of her problem and getting him to lock her in a closet. He knew, because he'd been part of her mind at the time, how completely disconnected from her own sense of morality and in fact her entire rational mind she'd been when she'd invaded his mind, that last time. He knew that she hadn't been capable of thinking about anything except what she needed, and that he was just lucky that that last time had been enough for her rationality to return. None of it was really her fault. Of course, *his* rationality was on shaky ground right now. He might know intellectually it wasn't her fault, but she'd still held him down and taken over his mind against his will, and the fact that this hadn't resulted in his destruction the way it would have if he'd been Q only meant that he was alive and free to remember it. He'd probably get around to forgiving her... eventually. But he wasn't capable of that right now, and he didn't really want to be. Didn't he have the right to be angry? Who could possibly blame him for being enraged with her right now? Apparently, not even T'Laren herself. Because he could still hear her sobbing in the other room, and he had a dim, faraway sense of a crushing guilt and self-hatred that he could easily tell wasn't his own. Which meant they were still linked, and dammit, he was angry about that too. Was he going to have to go around for the rest of his life with her mind imposing on him, able to invade his any time she felt like it? Experimentally he tried shielding himself the way he would have from unwanted intrusion by another Q. To his surprise, it worked. The dim sense he had of someone else's emotions went away completely. That cheered him up a bit, though not enough to actually overcome the anger he felt. At least there was *something* he could do to protect himself telepathically, even in this reduced state. He hadn't been able to shield against tr'Sahlassiu for very long, but tr'Sahlassiu had been trying to break him, and had been using raw power against him; T'Laren wasn't trying to invade his mind, at least not right now, and as annoying as he found it to have any kind of semi-permanent link, if he could close the link when he wanted to it became a lot less annoying. He tried letting down his shields again, wondering if in fact he had successfully closed the link or if he'd just blocked it. When his shields came down, the sense of T'Laren's mind came back. So the link was still there, but he could control whether she could read anything through it or not. Idly he wondered if he could do what he could have done when he was a Q, and put up shields that he himself could still read others through. Not that he actually *wanted* to be reading T'Laren's mind on a regular basis, but if he could see her and she couldn't see him, it would go a long way toward restoring a power balance that he felt had tilted far too much in her favor since she'd used her telepathy against him. On the other hand, he wasn't sure that mortal minds actually had enough layers to pull that one off; he used to use it on other Q by simultaneously distracting them with something shiny to disrupt their concentration while leaving a false façade of openness up on his own mind, creating the superficial impression that he was open, and he wasn't actually sure that there was enough of him left in this mortal state that he could put up a convincing impression of being open when he was in fact closed. Humans could only think of one thing at a time, maybe two at *best*, and Q had found that while he could control his body language and tone of voice the way that he could create false fronts as a Q, when he'd been up against tr'Sahlassiu and the Romulan had gotten through his outer shields, he'd had nothing left, not even the defenses he'd have had if they'd been verbalizing. Still, it was an interesting idea, so he practiced, trying to actively read T'Laren's mind through the link while still keeping his own mind closed to her. It was impossible to tell if it was working, though, because T'Laren was so distracted by her grief and guilt, and to be completely honest by the irritatingly powerful sexual desires she was *still* suffering from, which made it very uncomfortable for him to read her mind and kept her from noticing what he was doing, so he couldn't read from her whether she *could* read him or not. The sandwiches were still sitting there. This made him irrationally angry again, and he stomped to the bedroom and stuck his head in. "Hey, are you ever going to eat anything ever again? Because if you're planning to starve yourself to death, let me know so I can have your sandwiches, as I for one am hungry enough to eat one of the Ferengi if we just had an oven to cook them in." "Go ahead and eat them," T'Laren said dully. "I'm not hungry." "And you've been without food how long? Eat the sandwiches. How do you expect to get your strength back if you never eat again?" She looked down at the floor. "It doesn't matter," she whispered. "Oh, it most certainly does." He stalked over to the bed she was sitting on and stood over her, looming into her personal space. "You see, under most circumstances your choice of personal self-destruction would be none of my business. But under most circumstances, I wouldn't have undergone an exceedingly distressing experience, at *your* hands, for the ostensible purpose of saving your life. So I believe that right now, I have the right to tell you to *eat* your benighted sandwiches, or you will be effectively declaring that my sacrifice for your sake meant *nothing *to you. Is that *actually *what you want to say to me?" T'Laren shook her head mutely. "Great. *Wonderful.* Now get out there and go eat your sandwiches." She got up and went back to the main room. The bed had been remade; apparently she had, in fact, gone and washed the bedsheets, although she clearly hadn't taken a shower to clean herself up. Q would have flopped onto it except that he was wearing full formal dress and his clothing didn't have enough give to it to do so comfortably, and besides, everything ached. There was still nothing to do. It was too close to when the Ferengi were expected with breakfast to go back to sleep, and he doubted he could anyway, but he didn't have any more entertainment available than he had the night he'd had to lock T'Laren up. He had meant to leave T'Laren alone to eat her sandwiches, but he was too damn bored. Q went back out to the main room, where T'Laren was listlessly nibbling at her sandwich. "How long are you going to be like this?" Q demanded. "I don't know," she said, her voice hoarse, but at least she wasn't crying anymore. "It's never been brought on by a drug before." "Well, how long is it before your appetite comes back, at least? Usually?" "It's... not normally like this." "Yes, we're both clear on that concept. I want to know what we can *possibly* expect, not chapter and verse of exactly what's going to happen to you now." She shook her head. "It's not... *over*, Q. Usually... it was... two or three days, together. And then we would eat, and then... spend more time together, and... there was never a part where I was in it but I couldn't be with him... so this time is completely different. I don't know if my appetite will return soon, or in a few days... or ever." He had gone cold when she said it wasn't over. "You don't... are you going to be all right? You're not going to die now, right?" "I think so, yes. But... I don't know. It's never been a drug. And it's never been just *me* -- Soram was always as affected as I was. You can't... you aren't Vulcan. Your limits... are human limits." Q didn't know whether to be offended at the implied insult to his endurance, or simply appalled that Vulcans would typically spend two or three days doing nothing but taking naps and having sex under normal circumstances. He chose not to address the issue. "Well, you look horrible. I could guess you've lost as much as five kilos over the past few days. If you're actually biologically able to digest your food at this point, I *strongly* suggest you eat." She looked up with an expression of utter desolation on her face. "Why do you care?" she whispered. "Excuse me?" "After what I did to you, why do you care if I live or die?" Q shrugged. "You have no idea how boring it was in here when you lost your ability to converse. Besides, I can't very well get adequate revenge on you if you die, can I?" "Revenge?" "Oh yes." Q seated himself across the table from her and leaned forward. "I have not made your life *nearly* enough a living hell to pay you back. You're worthless to me if all you do is sit there and cry and starve yourself to death. Make yourself back into a worthy opponent so I don't have to feel like I'm beating up someone helpless when I crush you completely." She stared at him for several seconds. "I don't want to fight you," she said softly. "Whatever you want to do to me, I deserve." "Oh, well, I'm glad we're both in agreement about that, but that doesn't change the fact that if you just sit there and take it, it's no fun for me. Give me some sport; fight back enough to make it interesting." A blackly bitter smile spread across his face. "After all, I gave *you* that much." At her sudden stricken look, he got up and walked away from her. He was going to say something that he never wanted to say to her, and he most especially didn't want to say in front of the Ferengi, if he kept talking to her. &&& It wasn't long after that that the Ferengi finally showed up. There were two of them, both ones he'd seen before, and they giggled and leered. "Nice show there, hyuu-mon," one of them said. "But maybe you should've let us take a turn after she wore you out. It was pretty clear there she needed more man than *you*." His face burned, but aside from the involuntary response he couldn't control, he didn't let his humiliation show. "How unfortunate for her that there weren't any besides me aboard this ship who could meet her... *exacting*... specifications, then." The other one laughed, a fast hyena-like giggle that seemed to be covering anger. "I'm sure we could have met her needs just as well as you could." Q smiled maliciously. "I think that you couldn't have. Vulcans require that their partners have souls." The one who had just spoken laughed again. "That's funny! Most women just require money and a big dick!" "Maybe you don't approve of our morals, but she'd have taken any man by the end, whether you think we're nice guys or not," the first one said. "Oh, you misunderstand. I didn't say you have no souls as some kind of hyperbolic commentary on your morals or lack thereof. I said you have no souls because you don't. No psionic ability, no immortal personality core to survive after your physical death. It's why every religion in the universe but yours emphasizes how no material goods will follow the deceased into the afterlife, but you've spun elaborate fantasies of wishful thinking about how all the *things* you acquire in your worldly existence will somehow follow you after you die." He shook his head, as if saddened by their lack of wisdom. "As a former immortal being of psionic energy, I have to tell you that your Great River is purely imaginary. Entities of pure psionic energy have no need for material goods; when most mortals die, their psionic cores, what some would call 'souls', are freed of their bodies and have no material wants or desires at all. There's no means for any material substance to cross over into the realm of psionic energy until a species becomes powerful enough to convert at will, like mine." "What are you talking about?" the first one asked. "I'm simply explaining that because you have no psionic ability, you're confined to this material existence. If T'Laren or I were to die, we would continue on to an afterlife, because we have psionic cores animating our bodies, but you're nothing but a body, similar to an animal. The amazing thing is that you actually manage to mimic full sentience without a soul, but sadly, it's an empty achievement. When you die, you die forever. You don't get an afterlife." He shrugged. "Sorry about that." "That's not *true.* When Ferengi die, we become part of the Great Material Continuum -- " "Yeah, about that? It doesn't exist. Sorry. There *is* a continuity of all matter, of course, but it's called 'the universe' and you're already a part of it. There's no higher dimension of matter, no unifying principle, no Great River of material goods flowing through a different aspect of space-time. So, you know, go ahead and mindlessly pursue material profit. What you get for yourself in this life is all you get." "We aren't even talking about souls!" the second one said. "We're talking about fucking your woman!" "She's not my woman. By the standards of her culture I get the distinct impression that I'm her man, or at least she thinks so. But that's exactly what I'm talking about. She needs a man with a *soul*, or it doesn't work for her. I'm sure you knew the Vulcans are telepaths?" "Yes..." the second said warily. "Well, they need someone they can mind-link with, and you're an animal that can talk, so you haven't got a mind. Well, not a mind by Vulcan standards, anyway. She'd consider sleeping with you bestiality. See, I can touch her mind, and you can't. You're a soulless shell, whereas I am a real person, by the standards that matter. So I've got what she needs, and you don't. I may not be able to go all night, but by Vulcan standards you can't go at all, so unfortunately for T'Laren she was stuck with me." T'Laren had apparently been listening to the conversation, and had wandered over to stand behind Q as he spoke, but she hadn't said anything the whole time that Q had been spinning his line of extra grade bullshit about the Ferengi not having souls... in fact the Ferengi did most certainly have minds *and* psionic presences; it was the structure of their brains that made them telepathically incompatible with most other humanoid species, not a lack of psionic presence, but Q was guessing that these ones didn't know that. "I chose you," T'Laren said abruptly. "What?" Q half turned. She didn't look at him. She was glaring at the Ferengi. "Q is only half correct. It is true that you lack what I need in a man, all of you. What Q does not realize is that I did not simply accept him because he was the only available choice; I would be compelled to kill any man who touched me if I did not want him. No other man, Vulcan, human, Ferengi or any other, could have satisfied me. I chose *him*." She put her hand on Q's arm, briefly because he flinched slightly at her touch. "I will kill any other man who tries to have me. If any man were to successfully overpower me and force me, I would not be able to rest until I had found a way to kill him. I am not rational on the matter when I am influenced by your drug. I cannot be persuaded, I cannot be blackmailed, I cannot even voluntarily choose to go with one of you for some sort of gain. Until this drug is out of my system, I will kill any man who touches me but Q, or I will die trying. Do you understand?" They had both gone pale, and they nodded frantically. Q watched them, but kept sneaking glances at T'Laren out of the side of his vision. When she'd touched him, the link had opened again, and before he'd had a chance to put his shields back up, he sensed that she was telling the truth -- that she actually meant that she wouldn't be able to stop herself from trying to kill anyone who tried to rape her, and even more bizarrely, that she meant what she said about choosing him specifically. Which made no sense, because T'Laren had made it very clear in the past that she didn't want him, and it didn't make any sense for her to have changed her mind so radically. Perhaps it was some kind of chemical change in her brain brought on by the drug, or perhaps she'd subconsciously picked him because he was, in fact, the only game in town under the circumstances. One of the two Ferengi shoved their bowls of breakfast at them unceremoniously. "Eat up quick, hyuu-mon," he said. "The Lady Yalit wants to see you in engineering as soon as possible." "Yeah, fine," Q grumbled, taking one of the bowls and handing it to T'Laren, then taking the other. They backed out hurriedly. One of the two yelled, "Good luck with her, hyuu-mon!" "Better you than us!" the other called, and they laughed uproariously as the door closed. When they were gone, Q turned to T'Laren. "What do you mean, you 'chose' me? You didn't exactly have a plethora of choices." "I chose you," she said again. "Yes, you *said* that. What does that mean? Choice in the absence of choices is pretty meaningless." She shook her head. "I cannot discuss it." "You... *what?* We just had *sex* in front of the monitors *you* insisted on putting in our bedroom, multiple times, providing no doubt hours of free entertainment for our captors, and there's something you can't *discuss* with me? Didn't your not discussing things with me result in you nearly getting *killed* because you couldn't be bothered to tell me that if you didn't have sex you'd die?" T'Laren walked over to the table with the bowl of food. "There are two men in the universe I would have embraced at that time. Any other, I would have killed, or tried, and the blood lust might have been all the satisfaction I required. Had I killed any of the Ferengi, I might never have needed to touch you. But there were only two men who could have touched me. You, and Tris. Tris was not here, you were, but that isn't why I made the choice." She looked at him. "There is no logic to choosing. Rationally, yes, I should have chosen you because you were the only one here, but if you hadn't been here and a human man, or Vulcan man, I didn't know had been, I still would have chosen you, and died or killed for it. And there is no logic to that. There are a thousand reasons I should never have chosen you, and you know them because I told them to you, or because we experienced them last night, but I chose you anyway. I am... I am sorry I chose you, because I would rather have died than hurt you and if I hadn't chosen you, you would have never imposed yourself on me. I would have let you be, and died." "Or you'd have tried to kill me." "Only men who try to rape me. Or who look at me with lust, because they're imagining raping me. If I hadn't wanted you, and you had offered, I would have said no. And you would not have pushed yourself on me if I had, because you didn't want *me*. So no, I would not have tried to kill you." He couldn't deal with this right now. It was sounding suspiciously like she was saying she had wanted him specifically, *before* the drugs, and he was pretty sure that couldn't be true. Unless she'd lied about it before. Or unless it was the drugs, the simulated *pon farr*, that had kicked her libido into gear enough that she could fall in lust with him, but why would she do that when she didn't even think he was attractive? Well, okay, she'd said he was attractive in a way she didn't find sexually interesting, like a work of art or a waterfall or something, but he'd always thought she'd just been trying to spare his feelings. And in any case he couldn't deal with it right now. She'd said it wasn't over, and now she was saying she had wanted him *before* this, or something, and the thought of her still being sexually interested in him right now filled him with both dread and a wholly unwanted guilty excitement. He *shouldn't* enjoy the thought of her wanting him, he *shouldn't* feel excitement, or worse, the warm burn of arousal, because that last time had been horrible and he had felt totally betrayed and he was still angry at her... and the fact that before that, it had felt really good, shouldn't matter, not after what she did. If he went around forgiving people who did things like that to him, he'd be a doormat. "Whatever." The food wasn't appetizing at all, some sort of gloppy oatmeal thing, but if he didn't eat he couldn't very well harangue her into eating hers, and besides he was still very hungry. He sat on the couch, well away from her, and ate the oatmeal as fast as he could without getting it all over himself. "Eat your food, T'Laren." "It's true," she said. "You were not a convenience, Q. Believe anything else of me, but at least you must believe that." "If you try to tell me you're in love with me, I *will* vomit. Just be quiet and eat." The Ferengi came for him moments after he was done eating, as if they'd been hovering around waiting. Just as well. He didn't want to be having this discussion with T'Laren right now.