Fortune {Star Trek Enterprise Fan Fiction}

A Special Thing

=/\=

"You're distant again," she said.

"It's getting more complex," Q replied.

"Well, do you really need to be here? I mean, drop off if you have to."

"No," he said, "This also affords some meager protection for me."

"Oh," she said, "But you're not endangering us in the process, are you?"

He didn't answer her, but she noticed a small red stain on the left side of his uniform, and it was spreading a bit. He groaned a little.

"Are you hurt? Is that even possible?" she asked, alarmed.

"I am and, of course, yes," he said, a bit angrily.

"Take Miva out of molasses time. She can help you."

"No. She cannot," he said, "I will heal up soon enough."

"Are you injured on that end, during Kathryn's time?"

"Yes, but in a different place," he said.

"Huh. Are you in danger of being hit again?" she asked.

"No. Kathryn has gotten me to a safe camp."

"All right, that was good of her."

"Yes," he admitted, "I should have been the one doing that, not the vulnerable one."

"But you were. You've got, I think, a few conceptions of how things should be. But they're being challenged."

"By you."

"And by events, too. I think you need to let go of some of your ideas, as much as you need to let go of your fellow, uh, Q. In order to move on, that is, and really do this, really be together yet apart, and become individuals."

He was distant for a second, "Another main event," he said, "It would be safer."

"This friendly camp – it's composed of other Q? The ones on your side?"

"Some of them, yes."

"But you're still in some danger?"

"Yes. So we'd best go. In this one, he," Q indicated the baby "is living with two women."

"But it's negative, right?"

He nodded, she picked up Declan and off they went.

=/\=

"Maybe we're not meant to, to fix everything. ... Maybe you're just supposed to be with her, even if you cannot make it all go away." – Malcolm Reed

=/\=

It was a kitchen, with blue walls and a large dining table. There were a few pans hanging from hooks from the ceiling, and a few small paintings of still lifes – mainly varying-colored olowa, but also some pears and the like. Lili looked at the pictures and they were signed DR or D. Reed, "He's very good," she said.

There was a PADD on the table, and it scrolled, again, through the familiar and the not so familiar. There was a picture of a young Malcolm, with Mark Latrelle, horsing around at school. Another was of Tommy being promoted to Major. Another was of Joss and Jia with their two children. Yet another was of Melissa, pregnant, probably with Tommy. Then there was a short movie, of a young Marie Patrice kicking a goal at a soccer game. Another picture was of herself, pregnant with Joss.

Two people walked in, from separate areas of the house, "Is she up yet?" asked Declan, who was one of the two people.

"Not yet," said Norri, who was the other.

He set about making coffee, and Lili looked at the clock on the wall, as it cycled through the time – oh nine hundred hours and then the date – March twenty-seven of 2209.

"I, this is one hundred years since my birth," Lili said.

"You know," Declan said, also looking at the clock, "my mother would have been one hundred today," he looked and sounded so much like Malcolm, even down to the accent. Lili did a quick calculation and realized he was the same age that Malcolm currently was, so far as she was concerned.

"I miss her, too," Norri said, "It's been almost seven years and it doesn't matter."

"Too true," he said, "I still have the last shopping list she wrote – she used to write them out by hand. I think she would improvise, thinking about whatever was in season, and then would write out her list and go. She needed brown rice."

"No wonder you always seem to have it," Norri replied.

"I guess I want to show her that I can take care of things," he said.

"Dec, we should talk," she said.

He poured the coffee, and they sat down together, "What's on your mind?"

"I think that Yifep should come here more often," Norri ventured.

"I see."

"Look, I know you want to take care of everything, Dec, but it's getting to be too much. I, well, it's harder for me to physically handle her, particularly when she gets frustrated."

"Well, tell me when she gets frustrated, Norri."

"It's not just that," she said, "She gets frustrated all the time now, or at least it seems that way. And, and, I can't handle, uh, I hate saying this, but it's getting tougher and tougher for me to handle the messiest of the chores."

"Ah," he said, "Changing her. I can do that."

"I – please understand. This is my great love. I still, God help me, sometimes see her as a sexual being. And she makes advances, you know. And I usually refuse her, but I sometimes don't. I mean, I love her. But I always feel terrible afterwards, like I've just violated a child. And, and then having to deal with changing her, well, it's the same body parts. It's hard to reconcile in my head, from desire to being her parent to just being, well, just being tired of it all."

"Let me do it," he said, "I mean, you do understand that I love seeing naked women. But I don't look at her that way. Not even when she, uh, she's made advances to me, too."

"You?"

"Yes. She gets me confused with my father more and more now. I don't know if she did anything, for real, and is reenacting it. Maybe after, after Doug died. I don't know. My father, I know, he would've been mortified. He was so devoted to my mother. So I doubt that she tried when she had all her wits about her. But now, she doesn't have the inhibitions."

"She calls Joss Doug, too, and sometimes Neil as well. Do you think she's, uh, trying anything with them?"

"Not that I know of," Declan said, "I, um, I can see why this is so hard for you."