where do we belong

 (Working) Title: "That's My Cue"

Pairing: Q/Q(uinn) (pre 'Death Wish')
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation & Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: PG-13ish? Mentions of alcohol and ''homosexuality''?
Word Count: ~2080
Summary: Q has seen Q a lot through history, but never so far despondent, and so out of his character in the universe.


This is the work in progress version, so I will be constantly editing it (for those who run across it).

 

He had met this - renegade - Q only a few times before: there were some Qs who didn't mix well with other Qs, and this Q was exactly not Q's type. He was earnest and scholarly, two things Q despised.

He'd met this Q (who he'd think of as Quinn for narrative's sake, and not because the man had broken out and away from Q and didn't deserve such a label contrary to his nature slapped on him, it wasn't that at all) first - chronologically, of course, because there were no real firsts or lasts for Qs - on Earth. Q had always been begrudgingly fascinated and intoxicated by Earth and its mishmash culture of savagery and civilization, trying to mix manners and murder with all the grace and ease of a small land mammal learning to skate.

It was (as the natives of Earth were calling it) the Sixteenth Century. Q, despite his loud and vociferous mocking of Earth's culture, customs and history, respected Shakespeare. No one better summed up the stupidity that befell any race than that. He enjoyed a good play about humans getting what they deserved as much as - and almost more than, he thought - any other sane Q.

So he went to see Shakespeare. It not only made sense, but it gave him something else to rub Jean-Luc's nose in if the occasion ever arose. And he had no doubt it would, because he would make it.

And when he went to see Shakespeare's performance, sitting in his seat as nonchalantly as could be (which was very), who should waltz on to the stage pompously but Q - Quinn, Quinn, not Q - playing the part of Romeo. Which faintly ruined the play for him, but at least he got to see Quinn collapse dead due to mortal stupidity. Mortal stupidity was always entertaining.

Afterwards, Quinn found him lingering by the stage door (not waiting for Quinn, of course, but for a word with old Willy - maybe he was lacking inspiration, and needed to write a play where no parts could be played by idiots). Quinn blinked once, nearly unsurprised, and smiled. "I saw you in the audience," he said.

"Hmph," replied Q.

"You should join me for a drink - I'm going down to the local -" and he stopped, noticing Q resolutely ignoring him. He sighed, fondly, and said, "you know where I'll be," as if Q would, and walked away.

Walked. Like he was some sort of mortal.

Quinn was enjoying a mug of mead and a crust of bed when Q appeared in the chair opposite him.

"Q," said Q warily, his fingers perched atop the table and his foot ticking in time with, if asked, he would claim, 'the great music of the universe'.

Quinn smiled again. "Q," he said warmly.

They didn't talk. Q watched Quinn for some time, stealing bread when Quinn wasn't looking and knowing it didn't mean that Quinn wasn't watching, before offering sullenly: "you perform very well."

Quinn nodded his head graciously. "You should try it, sometime," he said. "It seems like something you'd enjoy, Q."

Q scrunched his nose in distaste.

(He wanted to say, "I don't need to be on a stage for people to pay attention to what I'm saying," but he considered that it might make him look petty.)

He disappeared. Quinn walked away whistling, but he ignored that.

He saw Quinn again throughout history - Earth's history, though. He'd been back and forth throughout those he knew to be the major players in the future Federation - Vulcan, the Klingon Empire. Other places he didn't care for. He never saw Quinn on any of them. He didn't see that many Q skulking around mortal planets at all - they thought all the action happened in the Continuum. It was a hopeless ideal on their part.

He ran into Quinn one memorable night in eighteenth century Paris.

He spotted Quinn sitting on some picturesque cobbled lane, talking to a group of men who shaved but still looked ill maintained.

"The thing isn't," Quinn was saying boisterously, "well it's not that we don't support individuality, he's saying, but we discourage it where unnecessary!" and he laughed. "When is individuality ever unnecessary?" he asked, incredulously. Q rolled his eyes.

"Yes," agreed one of Quinn's companions, "but when is individuality ever unnecessary, M'sieur? As much as we all agree that a man has a right to all his -"

"Or her," added the short man in the corner.

"- or her graces and airs, but there comes a time," said the man, gesturing so ferociously he spilt his strangely fluorescent green drink down his shirtfront, "there comes a time when King and Country must be put before that!"

His companions quieted down. "Surely you jest -" began the short one.

"Jest!" cried the talkative one. "Jest! Matters of state are no jest, M'sieur!"

"Then you are currently the only man in France," said Quinn tactfully, "who thinks that!"

The table laughed again, but uneasiness reigned. Q tried to slip away.

"I say, you sir!" cried Quinn delightedly. "Q! Don't think I don't see you skulking about!"

Q considered pretending he hadn't heard - but he was never one to miss an opportuninty to steal the admiration of someone else's peers.

"Hello again," he announced, stepping out of the shadows.

"Q! Won't you come -" Quinn pulled up another chair to the seemingly borderless table, from what looked like thin air "- sit down?"

Q smiled darkly. "I'm afraid I'm on business," he said.

"Nonsense! Have a drink," replied Quinn. Q ground his teeth.

The Continuum had - compunctions - about mortals. So, accordingly, did Quinn.

He handed Q a glass. Q rigidly sat in the chair, ignoring the would-be philosophers and great thinkers of the time. Nothing would have pleased him more than to speak up and prove all their theories and ideals rubbish. He likes to think it was his goodwill towards primitive and developing species that stopped him, and not the expression of contentment on Quinn's face.

Quinn said, "we were just discussing the merits of individualism," like he's saying, "we were discussing the inopportune pregnancy of the impotent fisherman's wife." Q smiled. 

"Were you now?" he said. 

Quinn nodded, obtuse to his comrades’ tense and nervous looks. "Oh yes, yes!" he said.

"The merits of individualism, you said?” 

"See, M'sieurs! This man agrees with me!" announced the talkative fellow. 

"Yes, the merits of it! And we have come to the conclusion," he added conspiratorially, "that we must agree - to disagree!"

And he smiled, like it was new to him that humans wouldn't get along even if you locked them up together in a box in the darkest depths of the ocean, starship in the farthest reaches of space.

Well, it happened to humans, but it didn't happen to Q. At least, not on a scale such as basic theology.

"So what do you think?" asked Q. "Should there be one individual, or many?"

Quinn laughed. "It should be every man - for himself!" he said gleefully. 

"What barbarism," said Q, and he sipped his drink.

 

"I've always found theatre to be the most philosophical of all the human disciplines."

This was back in England. Q had always preferred something less supposedly civilized - when it came down to Earth cultures, that was - something that wasn't restraining itself with cravats and waistcoats and silly bowties on fitted leather boots, but England would do in a pinch to cure the boredom and malarkey of the Continuum.

"Yes, but - why humanity? They have some intriguing philosophies developing on Vulcan right around now, and Bajor has always been, I've found, a more insightful place than this -"

"You," said Quinn, smiling and sipping his drink, "you've always wanted all other Q to stay away from humanity. It's like a toy you can't stand to share."

Q glowered at him. 

They meet again - for the last time in a while outside the Continuum - on Earth again, and in America. It was the early twenty-first century. Q was running out of steam.

Quinn looked something close to stylish in his 'new age' American clothes in his little thing called a cafe - humans are so redundant, putting identical ones on every corner that then indulging in the fantasy that it makes a difference which one you go to - sipping his drink out of a little white cup. This /human/ indulgence, this drinking, was beginning to get on Q's nerves, enjoyable or not.

"Going native?" he asked.
 
Quinn hummed happily, his drink poised by his lips. "Not that you wouldn't know anything about that. Q," he added in greeting. He gestured to the chair opposite him.
 
Feeling contrary, Q twisted the chair around the table like a beast on a merry-go-round, and sat down next to Quinn. He crossed his arms and stared stubbornly out the window at passing mortals. Quinn stirred his drink with a vaguely irritating scratching noise.
 
"How would you feel," said Quinn, solemnly and suddenly, "if I told you your purpose - you reason for existence - was as the grand judge of humanity."

Q raised his eyebrow. His fingers drummed idly on the table. "I am the grand judge of humanity," he said finally.
 
Quinn shook his head. "I mean if that was the only thing you were there to do - if you were born to do that and that that's all you'll ever amount to.

"You wouldn't feel trapped, Q - don't say it, I know you were going to, with pretensions of nobility and freedom and all those other things you think you understand - you'd feel superior. That's the kind of thing Q like, feeling superior. It's easy to be a populist philosopher, Q, very easy: you just appeal to the Qs' vanity. That's it. The Q are vain, Q, and all they want out of life is something that strokes their ego. That's why I think humans are so far ahead of us - they have this theory - nihilism, they call it, nihilism! - that says that life is meaningless. There's no point! By God, they say, there's nothing to live for. No higher calling, no fate, fortune, destiny, guiding and collaborating forces leading them towards a future determined by the moulding artist's hands of some ubiquitous, benevolent force. Just - meaninglessness!
 
"The Q couldn't ever live with that idea. They need to believe that there's some form of higher power in places - like Earth, Cardassia, Vulcan, Romulus - because they want to believe that they are that higher power. That they were created to be the Gods that mortals so often worship. They reason, they're immortal, they're all-powerful, they must be there to be the ultimate deciding factor. There's no soul in the universe with more knowledge or more ability than any single member of the Q Continuum.

"And that, my good Q, is why you're such a brat sometimes," finished Quinn succinctly, and Q was rather taken aback (and this was a new experience, as Qs are hardly ever taken aback, so Q was rather taken aback at being forced to be taken aback). "You think you know everything, when really, all you can know is that nobody knows as much as you do and how to be a prat about that fact."

Q slouched back into his uncomfortably militaristic plastic chair and sulked. Quinn ignored him, and sipped a drink. His eyes roved throughtfully over the passers-by. If Q were paying attention, he could have composed sonnet to the echoing melancholy and tiredness in Quinn's eyes. But he was too busy sulking. 





Q remembers - with a high degree of accuracy - the one time in his existence he ever saw more than three Qs in a room getting along. Quinn was giving a speech. He doesn't remember what the speech was (not that he doesn't know what the speech was about, indeed, he could recite it point for point -- he could just never match the passion with which Quinn reiterated old and tired ideas with new fever and light, a spark in his eyes hinting at brilliant new Creation and his lips moving so fast the galaxies froze in their tracks, with ideas so vast and irreconcilable to the Q notion of life that he might have just as well been a madman, and let well enough alone. 

He remembers a strong feeling - not sharp, but not exactly dull - welling up in his chest. Not painful, and not annoying, but perplexing. He didn't want to think about it: he wanted to watch Quinn speak, watch him express a notion of being that the Q had long since ceased to consider. 

But the more he watched, the more the feeling welled up in his chest, like little comets whizzing around just the other side of his immaterial ribcage,