A Captain And A Madman

Chapter Twenty: The End

In the middle of nowhere- literally- Q's delighted laughter echoed through the void.

"Finally!" Q declared, throwing up his hands. "I thought you'd have figured it out ages ago."

"Perhaps I should have," the Doctor murmured, shaking his head. "But I couldn't quite bring myself to consider it... not until the Borg's collective knowledge showed me this place. A layer of reality, superimposing itself over another. A newer reality, the universe of the Federation... and, underneath it, something older, scarred, hidden. This."

The Doctor's hand swept out expansively, gesturing to the silent radiance that surrounded them on all sides. Q, for his part, just nodded along agreeably, studying their surroundings as if he were intending to build a summer home there.

"I brought Jean Luc here once," Q chortled softly. "Told him it was the Afterlife. Little did he know how literal I was."

The Doctor could only stare at their surroundings; somehow, he had always thought that that a universe annihilated would have been blackness, but this made a sick sort of sense. With no matter in all existence, energy reigned supreme, illuminating every particle of the void in its eerie glow.

This place was limitless power, yet barren land all the same. Not a speck of matter would ever form here of its own accord, life would never take independent form. Not even energy would concentrate or coalesce, remaining uniformly distributed throughout all existence, for all eternity. The universe the Doctor had experienced, full of stars and species and ships, had been built upon this incomparable graveyard, knitted over the emptiness like a bandage shrouding a wound.

"Afterlife," the Doctor murmured, "After life... so, you actually did it. The Final Sanction. This universe's Doctor couldn't stop you."

"Oh, this universe's Doctor completely failed to stop it from happening," Q replied mockingly, throwing up his hands. "It was really the most pathetic thing, failure on every conceivable level... it's only great kindness on the part of the Continuum that it isn't chortled about during polite conversation."

"Like you'd have any place to do so," the Doctor snorted, glancing sharply at him. "I'd imagine he was a better man than any of you lot."

Q smiled, but this was one seemed a bit more subdued. "More sanctimonious, I think, but better's pushing it."

The Doctor's eyes tore themselves away from the void, focusing on the smug entity who was even now leaning against his TARDIS.

"All that," the Time Lord murmured, "out there, the Federation, the very universe... where did it come from?"

Q shrugged, spreading his hands in a mockingly apologetic gesture as he circled the TARDIS, studying it with clear interest.

"Just renovations on our part," he replied idly. "It didn't take long for a universe of complete emptiness to get really boring, so we decided to stretch ourselves, see what we could accomplish with out newfound omnipotence."

"Not very much, it would seem," the Doctor snapped. "These new races you cobbled together? What about the Silurians? The Sontarans? Countless species that existed before, could you not have restored them?"

"Impossible," Q replied, waving a hand dismissively. "Even for the Q. The Guardian itself couldn't even tell you about what 'Was,' not for this universe, as it was completely wiped from all existence. Our omniscience didn't extent to the way things used to be either. Besides, even if we just copied from another, intact universe like your own, we couldn't bring back every race that had existed; too much time, too much work to coax a billion different worlds on the same paths they used to travel. We just let life largely develop as it wanted, for the most part."