***
From Time to Time
a Star Trek story
by Merlin Missy Wilson
Copyright 2003
PG
***

Paramount retains the rights to the characters and situations.  And so on.

Written as a pinch-hit for Alara Rogers, in the "While We Tell of Yuletide
Treasures" Obscure Fandom Secret Santa project.

***

Since their last encounter, Q had contented himself with watching his
favorite mortal.  He could interfere if he chose, extend a tendril of power
and save Picard from whatever peril the human found this time; Q
preferred to watch him twist in the wind, as it were.  Picard was ever the
inventive one in finding ways out of tight situations.

Q could have plucked him from the path of the Nexus.  From his own
reality, he watched the ribbon cut across the star system, watched the sun
wink out, watched his pet be snatched from harm's way and into pure
light.  And did nothing.  Picard was gone, and moments later, so was his
ship and his crew, and there was nothing to see.

Q entered the Nexus with a thought.

Again he watched, first as the human reveled in his fantastic surroundings,
and then as he rebelled against them with the help of that old witch's
shadow.  Q watched him search for and locate help in another shadow,
long years dead.

But *this* one ...

Picard was restraint personified, was staid and proper and everything a Q
was not.  It had delighted him to chip away at that wall bit by bit, try to
expose the man's core. *This* one knew restraint, yes, but only as a
prelude to action.  Where Picard was ice, this one was flame.  Picard's
imaginary realm meant a wife and children in a perfectly boring
Christmas; this one knew lover after lover, and Q was quite certain most
were memory rather than fantasy.

*This* one was passion.

How interesting.

They left the Nexus together, these strange brothers on their quest, but as
the witch had left her shadow, so too did remnants of both remain here.

Q manifested himself into a dream.  "Hello, Jim."

The shadow-man, lost in his own illusion, turned from where he was
dressing.  "Who are you?"  Demanding.  Lovely!

"Q!  What are you doing here?"  Picard's shadow materialized, glared at
him.  Even better.

"Welcome to wonderland, mon capitans!  The three of us are going to
have a *very* good time."

***