see you out there

" give  me  something  real . " ~cptjeanluc

The god from the realm beyond all stars takes the old human's fragile face between careful, careful hands. He loathes the give of rice-paper skin against his thumbs, the droop of flesh over dimming eyes. What fundamental element of this or all cosmos would collapse if he simply continued to empower Picard against death indefinitely? What, really, would be a price too high, to pay back the treason of passing years and mortal shells with that sort of sweet revenge?

"Real, Jean-Luc?" Q tries to feint, to dodge the question, with his own philosophical repartee. "But how do you measure 'real'? Something empirically observable? Something emotionally authentic? Do you think that, because I haven't said the words you seek, what I offer you isn't real?"

Hazel eyes, bloodshot with an appropriate illusion of age, linger on Picard’s features.

"Must I express it in the same way that you do?"

There are frontiers, yet. I will find them and I will give them to you. I love you, a new perspective of the universe will say. You are my very favorite thing that I can lose, so says an unanticipated mystery, challenge, or dilemma.

The deity will bear its offering at the altar to its supplicant.

" But you were dissolved. " ~cptjeanluc

"Do you honestly think I wouldn't divine a way to bend the rules, in order to be reunited with my foil and favorite creature?"

Q's words are as grandiose as ever, and yet it's their softness that conveys their quaking sincerity.

Don't think on his impermanence, the deity tells himself. On the way his gait grows uneven and his skin frail, despite his legendary, unmatched self-restraint. You can at least last long enough to go hand-in-hand with him, into the Unknown.

For it's not only Q who is Jean-Luc's teacher; the reverse is also true. Why else would the creature beyond a lifetime, beyond a corporeality, choose to assume a form that delicately, carefully mimics the rank, age, and ability of his guinea pig? There's more respect in that than is immediately apparent.