Author: Eren
Recipient: Kangeiko
Rating: R
Fandoms: Babylon 5/Star Trek: The Next Generation
Summary: Some paths should never cross. Or, what happens when you try to get away from it all ...
Jean-Luc watched his lover wind his way through the crowded bar, heading for the music. An amused, fond smile touched the human's lips. Q...loved to indulge him. Even if it was something as simple as acting as a human for small things - going to physically change the music, instead of snapping his fingers.
Of course, these excursions were indulgences of their own. Sometimes, he simply wanted away from the responsibility he had created for himself. So, he would wish to be in a certain type of place, such as this dirty smoky bar, and Q would whisk them from the palace, from the burden of emperor. And however long they were gone, they always reappeared in the same instant they left, Q apparently having as little trouble rewriting the laws of time as those of physics.
He indulged his lover in other ways. Sparing those that Q asked for and never demanding to know why. The bumbling schemer Riker, the mad Troi, the broken, bitter doctor Crusher. Others, not many, not often. But sometimes Q would come to him, bring his attention to this execution order or that exile writ and ask. And the Emperor would grant.
Riker, given command - far from the court he had sought to overthrow. Troi, sent back to her own people, to her cold, powerful mother. Crusher, given work to bury her grief in. The android, Data, he had found a use for. It guarded the doors to his chambers, keeping others out when Q was with him.
Jean-Luc sipped his wine, watching that slender body move. He wondered sometimes how long Q had watched him before he had appeared in his life, all those years ago. Come from nowhere in a flash of power and offered him... he chuckled. All the kingdoms of the world, will I give to thee. They had struck a bargain. Q got, whatever he seemed to get out of just being near him, being with him. And Picard got Q on his terms. It was incredible, indescribable and he often wondered what a being as old as Time and as powerful as the heart of a thousand stars could want with one human, emperor of a hundred hundred worlds or not.
Suddenly, the music - everything - stopped. All the people froze, even the smoke that clouded the air caught in stillness, all but he and Q, coming to him through the crowd, twisting and sliding between the living statues.
Frowning, Jean-Luc rose, body moving with loose limbed ease. He had stopped aging in the moment he met Q, had never since been touched by illness or frailty, his body under the skin as healthy as it had been in his youth. Only his visible age had remained, so that sudden youth would not get in the way of his aspirations. Q had promised - and so far as Jean-Luc knew, had kept the promise - not to interfere in his rise from Captain to Emperor, except to foil assassination plots.
"Q?" the human asked as his lover moved to his side, a trace of power filling those eyes, anger tightening that familiar face, "Is there a reason you've stopped the party?"
"She -" and one slender finger - that could crack worlds and shatter Jean-Luc until he knew nothing but pleasure - pointed at a redheaded woman "tried to scan you."
"Really?" He raised an eyebrow. "Free her."
She stirred, eyes widening as she took in the frozen room. "What - I..."
"Indeed," Jean-Luc said, advancing, Q's power humming against his back. "What were you doing, trying to scan me? Why me, out of this crowd?"
She tried to bluster her way out of it, of course. "I don't know what you're - " and she cried out, body arching in pain as Q gripped her wrist, sending his power pouring along her body.
Jean-Luc smiled, hand resting on his lover's shoulder. "I suggest you not try to lie again. What is your name? And why did you try to scan me?"
Then she changed, eyes going black with some power of her own, voice changed by it. "I don't answer to you, "she spat. Then she shrieked, knees collapsing, body shuddering as Q punished her.
Perhaps that was how she had known to single him out, that otherness. On these outings, Q wrapped a command around him, which made people not pay any particular attention to him. It would spoil the game, if he were recognized.
"But you do. You will not like it if I ask again."
Her eyes were green again, her skin fading pale as cream. "Lyta. Lyta Alexander."
"And, why, Lyta, did you pick me to scan?"
"Your power, your aura, you control the room, while barely being part of it. I wanted to know why."
He reached out, noting with amusement that she flinched back, gently tucking one flame wing of hair back from her cheek. "And so you shall, my dear. Home, love." There was a flash of light, and then they were home.
Another flash and they were nude and Lyta bound to the bed in this room that no one knew of, that appeared on no map of the palace. The walls heavy, sound-muffling stone.
And so they taught her, with pain and with blood and with screams, why he had power and control, until she was broken, this strange woman, that Q told him was from some other dimension, lost and trying to find home. Jean-Luc broke her, until she wanted nothing, nothing that he did not give her.
The story she told of her home dimension was fascinating. An epic battle between order and chaos, that spanned thousands of years, hundreds of worlds, billions of lives. It reminded him of the wars against the Borg, Q blood-spattered at his right hand in the killing fields, reminded him of the Fall of the Dominion, that had dared to try and take what was his.
Sometimes, in those first days, her eyes would bleed to black and her power would whisper out and she would try to get free. Try to command him.
He taught her better manners, until she would not call up that power, except at his command. He taught her many things.
Until she, proud arrogant woman, would beg and would crawl. Would go on her belly or her back for him at a look or a touch. Warm flesh around him and the devil's eyes watching him from the shadows.
Oh, Q gave him such glorious toys.