The BLTS Archive - The Stranded Heart
by MizJoely (vze1iwnd@verizon.net)

---

Published: 03-03-07 - Updated: 03-05-07

Author's Note: This story takes place between ST:TNG episode "True Q"
and ST:DS9 episode "Q-Less", and was written and published in 1995 in
Involution 8 (Orion Press). Let me know what you think! Oh yeah, I
guess it could be considered an A/U story. And I don't own Star Trek
or any of the characters herein. (Except the snakes. They'll show up
later.)

---
Prologue - Somewhere In Space
---

"My dear, would you care to read aloud to me?"

Vash looked up warily. She had gotten to know Q fairly well as they
travelled together, and she recognized that oh-so-innocent tone of
his. Besides, whenever he disappeared without explanation and then
simply reappeared, also without explanation, she knew he was up to
something. "Why?" she asked, a half-smile of anticipation hovering
about her lips in spite of her intentions otherwise. Life with Q was
never boring, she could certainly say that much.

He sat down on the floor by her feet, the innocent expression replaced
by one of wounded dignity. "My dear Vash, why take such a tone with
me?" Q pressed a dramatic hand against his heart --- if he even had such
an organ, a matter of much speculation among the beings who had dealt
with him in the past. Especially the crew of a certain Galaxy-class
starship. "I'm hurt that you feel the need to ask me that. I merely
thought I might make another attempt at understanding humans better by
delving into your philosophy. And you know how I love to hear the
dulcet tones of your velvet voice... "

Vash's wry smile deepened as she shook her head. Once Q's speech
became that flowery, it was impossible to get him to answer anything
he didn't want to answer. It would be far easier to play along with
him; eventually, he'd get to the point. "What do you want me to read?"
she asked resignedly. "Plato? Aristotle? T'kuhl?"

Q shuddered distastefully and leaned back against the leather sofa
he'd created at her request, along with the roaring fire and bearskin
rug they were presently seated in front of. The entire "room" was
merely floating, with neither walls nor ceiling, in the middle of
space, but Vash had gotten used to Q's sense of showmanship and barely
even noticed their surroundings anymore.

The master of showmanship raised a negligent hand. "Nothing so dull as
that," he protested. Vash gave him her full attention, alerted by his
tone. He was definitely up to something. "I have something a little
more... current in mind." A book instantly appeared between his
fingers, leather-bound, with no title apparent on the cover. Only
three small initials embossed in gold leaf on the lower right-hand
corner: JLP. Vash's eyes narrowed suspiciously as Q added: "Something
a little more pertinent to the here and now," with a sly grin that
belied his air of innocence.

"Is that what I think it is?" Vash reached for the volume, only to
have Q pull his hand away teasingly.

"I find it absolutely fascinating that you humans feel such a
compulsion to record your thoughts, your innermost feelings, and to
keep those records where just anyone can find them," her companion
said musingly, turning the book over in his hands as if to examine it
more closely.

"And exactly where was this that 'just anyone' could find it?" Vash
shot back, drawn into the game as she knew she would be. Q knew darn
well that she could never resist a challenge. And Jean-Luc Picard had
definitely been a challenge. She was dying to know what Q was doing
with the captain's private journal.

"What, this?" Q looked at the book in feigned surprise. "I had
a... small errand to perform on the Enterprise1, and when I finished, I
went to say good-bye to my dear friend." A pause. "Unfortunately, he
wasn't available at that time, and of course I needed to return to
you, but I did happen to spot this handsome volume lying around his
quarters before I left."

"Just lying around his quarters," Vash repeated drily. She stared at
him, eyebrow raised. Waiting.

Q coughed delicately behind one hand. Caught, that sound said. But if
he was caught, it was only because he wanted to be. More showmanship.
"Well, it was locked in a drawer, granted, but it may as well have
been lying about in the open to someone of my modest abilities. I just
knew Picard would want me to read it," Q added virtuously. "After all,
he's the one who's always giving me those boring, sanctimonious
lectures about how little I know of human nature." He tossed the book
lightly from hand to hand. "A subject Picard fancies himself the
expert on."

Vash snatched the book out of Q's hands, ignoring his words as she
looked the volume over critically. "Old fashioned, but then,
Jean-Luc's just the type to prefer something like this to a computer
record," she murmured, tracing the letters with one finger. She looked
up at Q. "You want me to read this to you? You haven't read it
already?"

She showed no signs of reluctance at the idea of reading Picard's
private thoughts; indeed, she seemed eager to do so, Q noted
gleefully. Vash was rarely predictable, but when she was, it was
generally to his advantage. He shook his head in response to her
question as he moved up to sit on the sofa. "I thought this was a
special moment we should share together." With those words, Q swung
his feet up and maneuvered his head onto her lap. He closed his eyes.
"Would you mind?"

Vash shook her head once again before settling herself more
comfortably on the sofa and opening the book at random. "Where should
I begin?"

"Try the last few entries," Q murmured, his eyes still closed. "I
think you'll find them extremely interesting."

Vash frowned down at his peaceful face, then shrugged and turned to
the pages he'd indicated. She didn't really expect him to tell the
truth all the time, not even to her. She began reading.

---
The Enterprise
---

"Beverly, I am receiving the distinct impression that your mind isn't
really on this workout."

Beverly Crusher sighed mightily and flopped down onto the mat. She
shook an errant strand of red hair out of her eyes, then glanced over
at the speaker. "Why?" she asked with a sly grin. "Am I radiating
negative vibrations?"

Deanna Troi rolled her eyes and joined her friend on the floor with a
gracefully fluid motion the doctor envied. "First of all, that is a
totally inaccurate term," the ship's counselor replied with mock
severity. "Second of all, I don't need to use my empathic abilities to
know that something's on your mind. What's troubling you?"

Crusher shook her head ruefully. "Dee, you are getting to know me far
too well," she complained, avoiding the question. "Am I getting
charged for this counseling session?" Troi said nothing, merely waited
with an expectantly raised eyebrow. It didn't take the doctor long to
reach the decision to give in gracefully. "I'm not really sure what's
bothering me," she confessed. "It's just that, lately I
feel... restless."

"Restless?" Troi repeated. "In what way?"

Crusher shrugged, then jumped to her feet to pace around the edge of
the small exercise room. "I don't know," she said crossly. "If I knew
that, then I could do something about it. It isn't Wesley, or at
least, not more than usual," she added wryly. "And it's not that I'm
unhappy here. It doesn't feel like 'moving' restlessness. Do you know
what I mean?" She glanced back at the other woman, who nodded
encouragingly. "I don't feel as if it's time to move on or make
changes in my career." She came full circle and stopped in front of
the still-seated Deanna Troi. "The fact that I can't pin down the
source of this feeling is driving me absolutely crazy." She plopped
back down on the mat. "Any suggestions?"

A thoughtful expression crossed the Counselor's face. "You say it
isn't your career or your son that are bothering you. Aren't those the
most important aspects of your life right now?"

"I'd have to say they are my life," Crusher replied wistfully. She was
about to add something when she stopped, sat up straighter and looked
at the other woman suspiciously. "Dee, why do I have the feeling I
know what you're going to tell me my problem is?"

"Because you know me as well as I know you," the ship's counselor
replied serenely. "And you know yourself far better than most people
do. Some people need to have a constant guide in order to reach their
own emotions. Others, like you, only need a hint every now and then to
help them get on track. Something in your life is lacking; it isn't
Wesley and it isn't being the CMO of the Enterprise or being in
Starfleet. Therefore, it must be something else. The fact is, right
now there are no other aspects to your life." She winced at her own
bluntness. "I know I'm putting this badly, but it's something I've
been concerned about for some time now."

"You make it sound as if I have no friends, no social life," Crusher
protested, clasping her arms around her drawn-up knees. "That just
isn't true."

"Of course it isn't," Troi agreed. "But let me ask you this: are you
involved with anyone right now?"

"Involved?" Crusher asked blankly.

Troi nodded. "Involved," she repeated. "Are you seeing anyone?"

Crusher shifted uncomfortably, but didn't jump to her feet again,
which Troi saw as a good sign. When the doctor paced, it was due to an
unconscious desire to avoid the subject. That desire was definitely
present in her friend today, but Crusher wanted to solve the
restlessness more than she wanted to avoid an uncomfortable subject.
"No," she admitted after a long pause. "Not since Odan."

"And before him?" Troi prodded.

Another painful silence, then: "I hadn't really seen anyone since Jack
died."

Troi felt her eyebrows climbing skyward at that revelation. "No one?"

"Nothing long-term," Crusher clarified. "Nothing that went beyond
casual. Even my relationship with Odan seems... very distant in my
memory. As if it happened a long time ago, to a different person." She
ducked her head self-consciously. "I still don't know how I feel about
that whole situation."

"Mixed emotions at the end of any relationship are common; we just
have to get used to the fact that sometimes they're never resolved.
One of my mother's favorite sayings is that things always work out in
the end." A rueful pause. "Of course, she used to take great pleasure
in reminding me that they don't necessarily work out the way we expect
them to." Troi jumped to her feet. "That's enough philosophizing for
now. I am officially calling this unofficial counseling session to a
close."

Crusher also stood up as Troi asked: "Would it be fair to say we've
isolated the causes of your restlessness?" Crusher nodded cautiously.
"Well, then, Doctor Crusher, as ship's counselor, I recommend you try
and find a solution to that problem. If you want to talk to me about
it, you know my dr is always open, but in this type of situation, I
generally encourage people to work things out for themselves.
Otherwise, they might begin to depend on others for answers to their
problems." She shook her head and smiled. "I think that's enough
advice-giving for one day. Just promise me you'll think about what
I've said." She waited for Crusher's nod of assent, then deliberately
changed the subject by asking: "How about a trip to Ten-Forward for a
hot fudge sundae?" She glanced around the exercise room with an
expression of vague distaste. "I think we've earned it."

Crusher stood, arms crossed, through the entire speech, and retained
that pose as she slowly shook her head. "Deanna," she said
wonderingly, "I will never understand how you can make such quick
diagnoses --- and be 100 right, I might add --- and yet take three hours
deciding what to wear to a party." It was her turn to leave Troi
speechless, and the knowing grin plastered across the doctor's face as
she turned and headed for the dr let the ship's counselor know that
her friend was extremely pleased to have scored such a good-natured
point.

---

It was the end of the day. After spending far too much time in Sickbay
going over crew files and compiling her monthly reports, Crusher was
in Ten-Forward once again, this time for dinner. Alone. Not that she
always ate alone; most of the time, in fact, she ate with company.
Either with Deanna Troi or one or more members of her medical staff,
not to mention the occasional dinner with Jean-Luc Picard. It was just
that, once in a while, she wanted to eat by herself. It gave her a
chance to think.

Tonight was not one of those voluntary times. She'd already thought
over what she and Troi had discussed, and all she wanted to do now was
stop thinking about it, at least for a while; it was starting to give
her a terrible headache. But everyone else already had plans, so she
found herself alone in Ten-Forward with a bowl of soup and half a
chicken sandwich.

Even Guinan, whom Crusher could usually count on to provide
conversation or consolation, whichever seemed to be required at any
given time, wasn't there. "She had a family emergency and went on
leave for a couple of months," her assistant, Rico, told the doctor
with an apologetic shrug. Naturally.

It was extremely frustrating, and Crusher decided to cut her evening
short. Maybe if she took a nice, relaxing soak in a hot tub and read a
chapter or two of the book Jean-Luc had loaned her, she'd be able to
get to sleep. No more thinking, she told herself firmly. At least not
tonight. She wolfed down the rest of her sandwich, waved good-bye to
Rico, and headed for her quarters.

---

Sleep, so eagerly courted, naturally refused to come. Sighing with
exasperation an hour after she'd tried to retire for the night,
Crusher gave in somewhat less than gracefully to the inevitable,
turned on the light and rose from bed. Her discussion with Deanna and
its inescapable conclusion kept running through her mind, refusing to
be ignored any longer.

She was lonely.

What was more, she'd been lonely for a long time, only she hadn't
noticed it until now. Between her work and her son, life seemed much
fuller. Work might still be there, but Wesley was removed from her
immediate life, and she was amazed at the hole he left behind. A hole
as big as the one created by Jack Crusher's death. No, surely it was
the same hole left by her husband's passing; why hadn't she noticed,
after all this time, that it hadn't ever truly gone away, that instead
Wesley had filled it? Wesley and work? Now the edges were caving in
once again. Work just wasn't enough to fill it, not with her son away
at Starfleet Academy.

Crusher frowned. That was another thing she'd been trying not to think
to much about, her son's recent trouble at the Academy. At least he
hadn't irredeemably destroyed his future with Starfleet. But it wasn't
actually that worry she'd been avoiding; it was the selfish voice from
the back of her mind that whispered, and would that have been so bad?

She walked a restless circle around her room and shook her head
violently, as if to dislodge the thought. Part of her was terrified
that one day someone would be taking her gently aside to tell her that
her son wouldn't ever be coming home again. That fear, she reluctantly
acknowledged to herself, was part of the reason she hadn't allowed
herself to get close to anyone, to fall in love again, especially not
with someone in Starfleet.

Or at least, not to acknowledge those feelings if she had them.

That thought made her pause, in the middle of reaching for the bottle
of wine that stood on her dresser. Where had it come from? She wasn't
in love with anyone, for heaven's sake! Crusher shook her head again,
this time in exasperation, and turned away from the bottle, a gift
from Captain Picard.

"I think a walk will do me some good," she murmured, reaching to pull
her favorite blue sweater over her head. She grabbed a pair of pants
and tugged her low blue boots on over her socks, hopping slightly as
she headed for the dr. Her feet regained their normal confident
stride as she stepped out of her quarters.

And came to a stumbling halt as she suddenly, inexplicably found
herself in the middle of a forest.

---
The Next Morning
---

"Captain's log, Stardate 45713.8. In the midst of our current mapping
expedition in the Aurelian Sector, we have received a distress call
from the Federation Free Trader Far Traveler. While attempting a new
route through this sector, they were unexpectedly caught in an ion
storm that damaged both their warp and impulse engines. An engineering
contingent and a medical team are being assembled to beam over once we
reach the disabled vessel."

Picard shook his head wryly at the main view screen. "You never learn,
do you, Lori?" he asked, his voice tinged as much with amusement as
disapproval. When they'd received the distress call this morning, his
first reaction had been a brief exclamation in French that caused Will
Riker to raise his eyebrow and Deanna Troi to visibly wince --- although
it was far more likely that she was reacting to the emotions behind
the curse rather than to the words themselves. All of which led to the
captain's reluctant admission that Captain Crosby was his cousin --- and
one who seemed to constantly be in trouble of one kind or another. So
much for the hope that the captaincy of her own ship would settle her
down, he thought wryly, then returned his attention to the view screen
before him.

The slender, green-eyed blonde facing the Enterprise bridge crew
shrugged elaborately, then winced and brought her hand up to her
shoulder. "I bruised it," she said briefly, her tendency to minimize
personal injury exactly as Picard remembered. "But hey, what can I
say? You win some, you lose some." She shrugged again, more carefully
this time, then brushed impatiently at the few strands of hair that
had escaped her tightly braided coiffure to dangle impudently in front
of her left eye. "I should never have trusted a map bought cheap from
a Ferengi." She grinned sheepishly.

Picard smiled back in spite of himself, still shaking his head. He was
extremely fond of his American cousin, despite her rather impetuous
nature. "You were lucky your ship wasn't more badly damaged," he
chided her gently, "and that no lives were lost. Not to mention the
fact that we happened to be close enough to hear your distress call.
What," he added innocently, "would your mother say?"

That remark brought a grimace and, briefly, a roll of the eyes. "What
she always says. That I should give up this foolishness and plant my
ass back on Earth, where it belongs. And," she added with a devilish
glint in her eyes, "she'd say it was all your fault for being
irresponsible enough to join Starfleet in the first place, thus
becoming a bad influence on me. Also for not getting here sooner to
rescue her pr, helpless, idiotic daughter." She fluttered her
eyelashes extravagantly.

Picard had no response for that bit of outrageousness, but heard what
sounded suspiciously like a suppressed snort of laughter from the
chair next to him. Apparently Commander Riker was finding this
introduction to one of his captain's relatives vastly amusing. The
fact that this particular relative was young, female and attractive
was an added incentive. Once they'd finished the repairs to her ship
and crew, Picard's first officer would no doubt entice Lori into
sharing a tour of the Enterprise, ending up with dinner in Ten-Forward
and a night-cap in his cabin. Then, using all his considerable charm
and powers of persuasion... he would pump Lori for every ounce of
information on the captain he could get. A shudder almost went over
Picard's frame at the thought of what she could say about him --- and
what Will could do with that information --- but he managed to control
the motion as he returned his attention to the woman on the screen.

"All that aside," he said briskly, "we should be arriving at your
position momentarily. Engineering and medical teams are standing by."
Picard smiled again. "We'll see you in a few min --- "

He vanished.

On the bridge of the Far Traveler, his cousin frowned and blinked
rapidly, not quite sure what she'd just seen. A flash of brilliant
white light in a starburst pattern that caused spots to dance before
her eyes, then, as they quickly cleared... Jean-Luc was no longer in
the command chair. "Hey! What's going on?" she demanded in alarm.

Picard’s first officer had jumped to his feet and was staring
disbelievingly at the same place, shouting for a red alert. The
Klingon, Worf, looked up from tactical, snarling angrily as his
fingers automatically punched in the code that would bring the ship to
alert status. The lighting on the bridge dimmed as alarms began
wailing in the background. All eyes were focused on the central
chairs, including Lori's, but she forced them away as she called out
to Riker again.

The commander turned at the sound of her voice. He'd almost forgotten
the Far Traveler's presence with the onset of this new emergency.
"Captain, we'll get back to you as soon as we find something out," he
said tersely, the words a clear dismissal. Suddenly, her minimally
disabled vessel had become a secondary priority.

Lori nodded briefly, managing somehow to control her emotions. She
felt more like screaming than saying coolly: "Of course. Let me know
what we can do to help." She glanced down, then back up at Riker. "Our
scanners are still operational. We'll start looking for anything out
of the ordinary. Keep in touch," she added sharply, waiting for
Riker's assenting nod before signing off and returning the screen to
its normal, serene view of space.

A view Riker never noticed. "Computer," he snapped urgently, "locate
Captain Jean-Luc Picard."

"Captain Picard is not on the Enterprise," came the coolly feminine
voice.

"Q 'borrowed' him." Riker, who was still facing the main screen,
whirled around in surprise at the sound of that unexpected voice from
the central command seats.

It took Riker a second to recognize the speaker, and when he did, it
only added to his confusion. Vash, the captain's "friend," was sitting
calmly in Picard's recently vacated chair. She was dressed in the same
short, black dress she'd been wearing when Riker first met her, with
the incongruous addition of a tan pith helmet perched on top of her
straight, shoulder-length brown hair. She looked up at him, a wry
smile on her face, then glanced around the bridge, silent now except
for the blaring alarms. Worf's expression was decidedly hostile as he
shut the volume off with a single, expressive motion. Vash's smile
vanished as she returned her gaze to the first officer, whose face was
almost as hostile as the Klingon's, and looked especially forbidding
in the glaring red light of the alert. "He put him down on one of the
planets in this sector." She waved her hand vaguely toward the view
screen and the stars still shining softly there. "And said to tell you
that it's up to you to find him after helping the people on that other
ship." She waved toward the screen once again as an annoyed expression
crossed her face. "Then he oh-so-kindly dumped me here to 'observe.'
But don't expect me to be very helpful."

"Why?" Worf interrupted with a snarl. "Are your loyalties to Q
stronger than your loyalties to your own kind? Or to the captain?"

Vash swiveled her head to glare up at the Security Chief,
unintimidated by either his tone or his menacing stance. "No," she
retorted sharply, holding his gaze with her own. "I simply mean that I
have no idea where Jean-Luc is or what exactly Q's planning for him. I
can say that it isn't something that'll put him in any danger." A
doubtful expression crept into her eyes. "At least, I don't think it
will."

The expression that flashed into Riker's eyes was not what one would
call doubtful. "Vash, would you mind stepping into the captain's ready
room with me?" he asked as politely as he could manage through gritted
teeth.

Vash looked up at him, a flippant response on her tongue, then thought
better of it. "Certainly, Commander," she replied grandly, rising from
the chair and following him from the bridge.

"Mr. Data, you have the conn," Riker said in a voice that sounded
suspiciously like Worf's growl before the two of them disappeared
behind the doors to the ready room.

---

"All right, lady, I want some answers and I want them now," Riker
snapped as soon as the doors shut behind them. He walked behind the
captain's desk, hesitating only briefly before lowering himself into
the chair.

Vash shrugged and sank gracefully into one of the seats opposite,
meeting Riker's gaze as frankly as she'd met Worf's. "Like I said,
Commander, I have no idea what Q has in mind. All he told me was that
he still had something to prove to Jean-Luc." She pulled the pith
helmet off and tossed it onto the captain's desk, reaching up to brush
impatiently at her hair.

"Did he say what exactly he needed to prove to Captain Picard?" Riker
asked icily, glancing down at the helmet with an expression of
annoyance, then looking back at Vash.

His heavy emphasis on Picard's title did not go unnoticed by Vash.
"No," she replied sarcastically, ignoring Riker's pointed glare. "He
did not tell me what he needed to prove to Captain Picard. He doesn't
let me in on all his little secrets, you know." She glanced around the
ready room. "And in case you're wondering why I'm still here, I can
only teleport when Q wants me to. Believe me," she added drily, "I've
been trying ever since I found myself on the bridge. I'm stuck here,
Commander, whether you like it or not."

"Well, I don't like it," Riker said, sounding less hostile but still
unenthusiastic, "but I suppose I can live with it."

"Thanks," Vash replied drily. "You sure know how to make a girl feel
welcome."

Riker grinned at her unexpectedly, a rueful smile. "I'm sorry if I
seem antagonistic, but you of all people should know how we feel about
Q. Especially about Q kidnapping people off this ship."

"Quite frankly, nothing he does surprises me," Vash admitted with a
shrug as she pulled her helmet off the desk and dropped it carelessly
to the floor. She leaned back in her chair and studied Riker
thoughtfully. "Commander, there's no reason I can't try to help you
locate the captain. Now that I've had time to think about it, I'd be
willing to bet that's the real reason Q left me here. After all," she
added, "he's the one who likes to do the observing." Her eyes strayed
ceilingward and another wry smile crossed her face before she returned
her attention to Riker. "Believe me, I'm as much a pawn in this game
as you are." With those words, she reached into a pocket of her skirt
and pulled out a small, flat box. Riker watched skeptically as she
depressed the single red button on top of it.

Suddenly, hovering above Picard's desk was a large, three-dimensional
star chart. "This is our current position," Vash declared, depressing
the button once again. A small, glowing blue dot appeared. "Here's the
disabled ship you're helping." Another glowing dot appeared, this one
red. "This is a map of the planets Q and I have visited." This time a
touch of the button produced a sparse collection of small, blinking
green triangles, each connected to the other by a single white line.
Another touch of the button and a random selection of bright purple
squares appeared. "These are all the systems containing planets in
this sector." She looked back at Riker expectantly. "Where do you
think we should start?"

Riker was still staring at the map she'd just created, all from
touching a single button. "How did you do that?" he asked, distracted
for the moment by the apparent impossibility of it.

"What, this?" Vash replied. She glanced down at the device, shrugged
and laid it on the table. "A gift from Q. It responds to thought
waves; the button is just a focal point."

Riker shook his head, then looked back at Vash. "Well, one thing about
Q; he occasionally manages to impress me." They were interrupted by
the dr chime. "Come," Riker said impatiently. Whoever it was, it had
better be damned important...

It was Worf. The security chief's expression had, if possible, become
even more forbidding. He spared not a glance for Vash or her
holographic map as he strode up to the captain's desk. "Sir, we have
another missing crewmember," he reported stiffly.

Riker took a deep, calming breath, then let it out again. Slowly. This
was just what he didn't want to hear. "Who?"

"Dr. Crusher," came the grim reply. "She did not report for duty this
morning or respond to the emergency alert. Dr. Selar investigated and
discovered Dr. Crusher's communicator just outside her quarters.
According to the computer," he continued with an expressive curl of
the lip that demonstrated his absolute frustration with the situation
more clearly than any amount of shouting or growling, "she has been
'standing outside her quarters' since 2230 hours last night. She is
the only other person missing," he added, his smoldering eyes
reflecting the tension in his voice. "When Dr. Selar made her report,
I instructed the computer to check our current complement versus our
complement at the start of this mission, minus any routine crew
rotation or emergency leaves. Everyone else is present or accounted
for."

"No one missed her until this morning?" Riker asked, more to clarify
the issue than anything else. "No one noticed her communicator on the
deck?"

Worf shook his head in self-disgust; any lapse in security reflected
poorly on him, at least in his own eyes. "No sir. She apparently
disappeared after retiring for the night, at a time the computer shows
the lowest traffic level in that corridor. Everyone who passed that
way has denied seeing the communicator. But," he was forced to add,
"it was just inside the frame of the dr, wedged in a corner. Easily
missed."

"As easily missed as the doctor," Riker muttered in pure frustration,
then visibly took hold of himself before turning to face Vash. "Well,
now we're missing two people. Any suggestions as to what Q might have
done with them? Do you think they're together?"

Vash was as staggered by Worf's information as Riker, although she
tried not to show it. While the security chief was making his report,
she had enough time to compose her features and think rapidly on the
implications. She merely shrugged at Riker's question and focused her
eyes firmly on the map. When Q had announced that he wanted to prove
something to Jean-Luc, he hadn't said a word about anyone else being
involved. The fact that Beverly Crusher was part of Q's plans made all
the pieces fall into place. Q and that damned diary; she was beginning
to wish she'd never allowed him to tempt her into reading it those
all-two brief weeks ago. The entries and her reactions to
them --- including her irritable request that Q return the damned book
before Jean-Luc realized it was missing --- had prompted this latest
experiment of her travelling companion; she knew it. Not that she
would dare tell Riker that; if she did, she'd have to reveal how she
knew what she knew, and that would not sit well with Picard's
right-hand man. Nor with Picard himself, should he ever find out.

Besides, that information could have no possible bearing on their
search; Q wanted them found, he'd made that very clear. It was only a
matter of time before they succeeded.

Vash returned her attention to Riker and Worf, still waiting
impatiently for some kind of a response. "They probably are together,"
she replied slowly. "Somewhere reasonably near, but not too near. This
isn't a heavily populated sector; that gives him a lot of choices."

"Any suggestions as to where?" Riker prodded. She was hiding
something, he could tell, but for the life of him he couldn't figure
out what it was. Not yet, anyway. Maybe if he got Deanna to help...

Vash shook her head and looked at him innocently. "Not really,
Commander. You know how Q likes to play his little games. It might
help if you think of this as a sort of cosmic version of 'hide and
seek.'"

"Yes, well some of his 'little games' have almost gotten us killed in
the past, in case you've forgotten," Riker retorted. Worf's lip lifted
in another silent, angry snarl as he gave a curt nod of agreement. The
first officer visibly took hold of himself once again. "However, I'm
willing to take your advice on this matter. You've probably gotten to
know Q much better than any of us." He looked at Worf. "Assemble the
senior staff in the main briefing room in one hour." Worf nodded and
headed for the doors as Riker glanced back at Vash. "And arrange
quarters for our guest, Mr. Worf. She may be with us for a while."
Another curt nod, and the security chief was gone.

Vash returned her attention to the map. Riker didn't quite believe
her, that much was obvious, and Worf looked ready to strangle the
information out of her. Not that she could blame them. They were even
more in the dark than she was, which was saying a lot, since she knew
absolutely nothing about Q's exact plans. When that aggravating alien
showed back up, she was really going to give him what-for! If he
thought she'd been pissed off the first time he messed around in her
life, he was in for a rude awakening.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind asked if she was upset because he
was manipulating her, or because Q's mysterious plans for Jean-Luc
Picard included a certain red-headed doctor. She squelched the voice
mercilessly, concentrating instead on what she knew about this sector.

She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a single, jealous thought.

"I'm sorry, Will. I can't get any reading from her at all," Troi
reported a few weary hours later. She and Riker were the last two
people in the briefing room. Worf had, reluctantly, escorted Vash to
her quarters while Geordi and Data headed for Engineering and Dr.
Selar, acting CMO, went to coordinate emergency procedures with her
staff. Just in case.

"Q?" Riker asked tightly. He was beginning to hate the alien as much
as Captain Picard did.

Troi shrugged and half-nodded. "I believe so. I could read her when
she was on the ship before, although she is very adept at hiding
things. But this is something entirely different; it's almost as if
she weren't even here." She paused, then blew a quiet sigh of
frustration, reaching up to massage her temples with a slight frown.
"It has to be Q."

"So we don't really have any way of knowing if she's as innocent as
she claims to be," Riker mused, staring out of the window at the
deceptively serene view of space.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that; Vash really doesn't know what I'm up
to," came an infuriatingly familiar voice from behind the two
Enterprise crewmembers. Riker and Troi whirled to face the invader at
the same time, the first officer taking a threatening step forward
before consciously stopping himself.

"Q!" Riker clenched his fist angrily as he briefly entertained a
picture of himself vaulting across the briefing table and throttling
the location of their missing officers' whereabouts from the alien. He
dismissed the thought before it was half-formed; threatening Q was
nothing but an exercise in futility. "What have you done with Captain
Picard and Dr. Crusher?" he demanded instead.

"Oh, come now, Commander. Do you really expect me to answer that?" Q
countered scornfully. "That would take all the challenge out of it.
That is why you went into space, isn't it? For the challenge? Well,
I'm challenging you to find your precious captain and his doctor
before anyone --- or anything --- else does." His mocking eyes focused on
Troi. "By the way, you may as well stop trying to read Vash," he said
casually. The empath backed up a step involuntarily as Q's eyes bored
into hers. "It won't work; all you're going to do is... give yourself a
headache." He vanished. At the same instant, Troi gave a loud moan and
crumpled into a heap on the carpet, clutching her head in agony. "Good
luck, Commander; you'll need it," Q's voice echoed tauntingly through
the briefing room as Riker raced to the counselor's side.

The first officer glared impotently at the space the alien had just
occupied, then reached gently for Troi's shoulders. Q was toying with
them, daring them to figure out his game. And reminding them of his
powers as well, judging by the maliciousness of his final act before
vanishing. Apparently he'd given Deanna the headache of a lifetime.

"Deanna," Riker said, turning her gently to face him. "Are you all
right?"

His only response was another anguished moan. Riker wasted no more
time as he saw her tightly clenched eyes and the tormented expression
on her face. He lifted her fully into his arms and rose to his feet.
Hopefully someone in Sickbay would be able to do something for her.
Then he would speak to Vash once again. This was going to end as
quickly as possible.

---
Elsewhere
---

Dr. Beverly Crusher was lost.

Of course, she mused tiredly as she regarded her unchanging
surroundings, technically she'd been lost from the moment she arrived.
She'd been utterly, spectacularly lost from the minute she stepped out
of her quarters and into this impossible, night-darkened forest,
somehow dropping or being divested of her communicator in the process.
Her quarters and the deck of the Enterprise had vanished from sight
before she was even able to whirl around to look for them; all she
faced was more of the same --- dark trees, glimpses of a starry sky, and
two moons that let her know that, no matter where she was, it
certainly wasn't Kansas. Or anywhere else on Earth, for that matter.
Not that she'd expected it to be, but it was just as likely a
possibility as any other place in the galaxy.

The problem was, if she didn't know where she was, it was likely that
no one else knew where she was, either. Not a very comforting thought.

The doctor shook her head, determined not to dwell on the
impossibility of her situation. On the multitude of impossibilities of
her situation. Barring the just as unlikely possibility that this was
some sort of experimental holo-program (Set up right outside her
quarters? In the corridor?), she was on a strange planet.

Right now, she needed to concentrate on the basics. She needed to
ignore the fact that her survival training had never prepared her for
being so utterly alone and helpless in an unknown environment, without
so much as a communicator to offer hope of contact or a phaser to
protect herself or a tricorder to tell her what was edible and what
would kill her instantly, to warn her of the approach of possibly
harmful life forms or alert her to the presence of a rescue team. She
needed to keep her head, not let panic take control.

A twig cracked, somewhere to her left; in her disoriented state and in
the dark, she found it impossible to judge the distance. She jumped
nervously to her feet, body tensed, listening with all her senses.
There, another small noise, this time distinctly closer. She looked
around, wishing she had the means to make a fire in spite of the humid
warmth of the evening, then looked up at the tree she was currently
sitting beneath. It was certainly tall enough; now, if only the local
predators would remain ground creatures, and not turn out to be
climbers...

As Crusher hauled herself up the tree, she had the uneasy feeling
that, no matter what this particular planet's period of rotation, it
was going to be a long night.

---

Jean-Luc Picard looked around in confused anger. He was no longer on
the bridge of the Enterprise; he was no longer on the ship at all, if
appearances were to be trusted. Instead, he found himself standing
alone in the middle of a forest, surrounded by trees that closely
resembled Earth pines but whose needles held a purplish tint not
unlike the leaves of a Norway Maple.

"Well, Captain," a familiar voice rang out mockingly, putting a
momentary end to Picard's observations, "I've heard that you are a
very private man." Q appeared suddenly before the captain, dressed
with his usual attention to unnecessary detail in a Paul Bunyonesque
outfit that consisted of a red-and-black plaid jacket over a red
undershirt, dirty-looking gray flannel trousers, sturdy tan work
boots, and a knitted cap artistically arranged on top of his thinning
brown hair. "Now you have an entire world almost to yourself. That's
about as private as it gets." He gestured at the surrounding trees
expansively, as if offering a rare and valuable gift.

"Q." Picard's voice was tight with disapproval. "What do you want from
me this time?" He was not at all pleased to find himself somewhere of
Q's arbitrary choosing. Again.

"I?" Q asked, feigning surprise. "I want nothing but the best for you,
Picard." A book appeared in his hand --- one that was very familiar to
the captain. "I'm just trying to lend a hand."

"What are you doing with that?" Picard growled angrily, taking a
threatening step forward.

"Oh come now, Picard," Q replied mockingly. The book vanished. "What
do you think? I must say it makes fascinating reading. I feel as if I
know you much better, now." He frowned. "Although I'm not particularly
flattered by your description of me as a 'petulant, spoiled child.'
Not flattered at all; it's rather like being compared to the Squire of
Gothos. What a bore that brat was," he added reflectively. "Until we
assimilated his family into the Continuum, of course."

Picard had no interest in the identity of the Squire of Gothos; his
only response to Q's words was another angry growl. The alien raised
an eyebrow. "Really, Picard, if I wanted this level of conversation, I
would have brought your Mr. Worf here. But," he added lightly, "I've
chosen a different companion for you."

Picard raised his head alertly at that statement. "You’ve brought
someone else here? Who?"

Q smiled beatifically. "That's for me to know and you to find out. And
I mean that quite literally." He glanced around the clearing.
"Somewhere in this very forest is a damsel in distress. One," he added
drily, "that I trust will play her part a little more conventionally
than Vash did."

"Who else have you brought here? If it's not Vash, then where is she?"
Picard demanded, distracted briefly by the thought of Q's current
traveling companion. "If you've allowed some harm to come to her --- "

"Not at all," Q replied, waving a negligent arm. "Vash is currently on
the Enterprise, no doubt helping your Commander Riker try to locate
the lost lambs. Not that she has the faintest idea as to where you
are, mind you, but I'm sure between the two of them and your
oh-so-capable crew they'll be able to figure it out. As for the
identity of my other 'guest,'" the alien continued, "like I said;
that's for me to know and you to find out. I'd suggest you do so as
quickly as possible, mon Capitane." He began to fade from view. "This
planet may be a Garden of Eden, but it still has a few snakes." With
those final, chilling words, he vanished completely.

---

Crusher awoke with a start. She felt a momentary sense of
disorientation as her tired mind tried to figure out why she was
sleeping in a tree, but memory returned in a flash as she came more
fully awake. She was on an unknown planet for an unknown purpose, and
had apparently spent the entire night there. Wonderful.

She'd wedged herself between two sturdy branches, facing the trunk of
the alien tree in which she'd taken shelter. An errant wind stirred
the broad, cup-like leaves surrounding her, and the bright sunlight
had briefly penetrated the thick, luxuriant foliage, to stab at her
eyes and startle her awake to face the unpleasant reality of her
situation. Doubly wonderful.

With a groan at the prospect of hauling her aching body back down the
tree, Crusher pulled herself over to hang by the arms. Her foot
reached hesitantly for the lower branch she'd used the night before,
and she gritted her teeth as she began her descent. "You did this in
the dark, Crusher," she reminded herself. "Just don't look down and
you won't get dizzy."

She breathed a sigh of relief when she finally jumped to the ground,
grimacing as she looked at herself. Her blue sweater, tough synthetic
or not, had not been designed to handle this kind of abuse. Nor, she
noted as her rueful gaze traveled to her feet, had her soft boots. If
she had to do any amount of walking, she'd have blisters very quickly.

But she did need to walk; there was no way she could remain here.
There was no water, for one thing, and if the early-morning heat was
any indication of the climate, water was what she'd be needing, and
soon. If a rescue party had been nearby, they would have located her
by now, and survival was her top priority. She would have to depend on
Captain Picard and the rest of the crew to find her. Staying alive
until they did so was her half of the job. Somehow, she doubted that
she'd be lucky enough to stumble across someone who could help her,
and she especially doubted that she'd find civilization of any kind.
It wasn't Q's style, and this whole escapade had "Q" written all over
it; she'd eat her tricorder if he wasn't responsible. Who else would
take her off the ship and just dump her in the middle of a densely
overgrown forest? And to what purpose? To see if she could
successfully navigate the jungle-like growth surrounding her? It was a
daunting task, she admitted, glancing up at the thickly intertwined
branches of the alien trees.

If it weren't for the nearly constant breeze stirring those branches,
she wouldn't be able to catch more than an occasional glimpse of the
greenish sky, or this planet's golden ball of a sun. If worse came to
worst, she could always climb another tree and check her position, to
make sure she was at least keeping to whatever arbitrary course she
picked.

Which was something she'd need to decide soon. Everything looked the
same, but the ground did seem to have a slight incline to the north.
She shrugged. It was as good a direction as any. She took a step, then
hesitated and looked around. A few minutes later, she'd managed to
scrounge a small pile of stones to point her direction. Better safe
than sorry, as her mother used to say.

She began walking.

---

Picard continued to stand in the same spot for several minutes after Q
vanished, considering the implications of everything the alien had
told him. Then he studied his surroundings, taking in the details more
carefully now. The question of Q's motivations would have to wait.

A more careful look at his surroundings led him to the conclusion that
it was early morning, giving Picard the distinct impression that Q had
placed him on a planet whose rotation at least simulated the
earth-normal schedule of the Enterprise. "How thoughtful," he murmured
sardonically as he turned in a full circle.

The purple pines weren't the only form of plant life; just beyond this
grove he caught a glimpse of the tops of other trees, a more
conventional green and with what looked like leaves instead of needles
adorning their branches. Further in the distance, to his left, was a
hazy range of mountains, with this planet's sun just peeping over the
tops of the highest peaks and brightening the cloudless, green-tinted
sky. The ground was covered with dead pine needles; he would have to
make his way out of this grove if he wanted to find food. Coniferous
forests were notoriously barren of edible plant or animal life, and
the sticky heat let him know that water would have to be a
priority --- especially if this planet was as uninhabited as Q described.

With an exclamation of annoyance at himself for not thinking of it
sooner, Picard touched his communicator. "This is Captain Jean-Luc
Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise; can anyone hear me?" he asked at
random. If whoever was stranded with him were a member of his crew, he
was bound to have a communicator.

Then again, maybe not. There was no response. He tried again a few
minutes later as he followed a downhill path to the east, in the
direction of the mountains. The communicator remained stubbornly
silent, and he finally gave up as he left the pine grove and entered
the cool depths of a deciduous forest filled with occasional bird song
and the chattering of the local tree dwellers. He watched the small,
squirrel-like animals as they hurried from tree to tree, busily
attending to unknown tasks. Some of them paused to stare inquisitively
at the strange, two-legged being that had invaded their territory,
then seemed to decide he was no threat and ignored him.

The idyllic surroundings and soothing noises did nothing to soothe
him, however. The longer he walked, the more annoyed he became. His
mind filled with images of what he would do to Q, were the alien
before him right now. And if Q were somehow human once again, as had
happened the one time...  Picard found such thoughts an entertaining
way to pass the time as he strode through the forest.

---

Crusher hesitated as she neared the edge of a sparkling blue lake. It
stretched as far as the eye could see, seeming to continue to the foot
of the mountains she saw to the northeast. At least, she assumed it
stretched that far, since she couldn't actually see the opposite
shore. It almost looked to her untrained eyes like an inland sea, but
she wasn't sure; she knew there were certain indications that Ship's
Geologist Lt. Michalkiewicz could rattle off to her without pausing
for thought or breath, but since Eric wasn't here, she could hardly
ask him. At any rate, the sparkling water looked extremely inviting,
especially after spending the better part of a day following the
meandering path of what looked like a deer path --- although she'd seen
no sign of anything larger than the small tree-dwellers she'd dubbed
"squirrels" busily scrambling around.

All of which had nothing to do with the fact that she still had no
idea if she could drink the water. It was vexing. "What I wouldn't
give for a tricorder about now," she muttered to herself, then
shrugged and moved forward a few more steps. She didn't really have
much of a choice in the matter, and most Class M planets were fairly
safe for humanoid life, at least when it came to drinking water.
Especially unspoiled Edens like this place. Unless, of course, this
happened to be an inland salt-water sea. Only one way to find out.
With another small shrug, she leaned down, scooped up a handful of
water and brought it to her lips for a cautious taste.

The water was most definitely not salty. It was marvelous, clear and
cool and far better than anything she'd ever tasted before.
Nevertheless, she waited a few minutes before allowing herself to
swallow a more substantial mouthful. When that seemed to cause no ill
effects, she drank her fill, then settled in to wait on the edge of
the lake and contemplate its unearthly beauty for a few hours. She
needed to rest, to regain her strength, and to let the water work its
way through her system before doing anything else. Besides, this was
the logical place to wait for a search party --- she must have been
missed by now. Even if this planet's rotation didn't exactly match
that of the Enterprise, it seemed to be fairly close. She estimated
that she'd been marooned for at least 12 hours, and just hoped the
ship was nearby. Or she'd be testing a lot more things than the local
water.

---

Picard looked around hopefully. His southward journey had brought him
to the edge of a large lake, bordered by a small mountain range to the
west. Whoever was stranded here with him was bound to make for the
body of water just as he had --- that is, if he was even in this part of
the world. Q could just as easily have deposited his two pawns on
opposite ends of the planet, but Picard was inclined to take the alien
at his word when he said they were in the same forest. He displayed a
sort of impatience at times that was more human than he'd be willing
to admit. Having two people searching for each other on opposite ends
of the planet might be amusing, but it would be more amusing to
deposit them closer together; after all, this glorified game of
hide-and-go-seek couldn't possibly be the alien's true motive for
kidnapping the captain of the Enterprise and his as-yet unknown
companion.

No, Q played a deeper game than that; he always did. Picard resolutely
kept his mind from wondering what out of his personal journal had
prompted the alien to this action; although he could think of one or
two items that might have attracted Q's interest, he wasn't ready to
explore the possibilities. Nor was this necessarily the right time to
do so; he had to concentrate on locating his counterpart as quickly as
possible, especially if Q's vague threat of dangerous life-forms was
legitimate.

Nodding firmly at this decision, Picard scanned the shoreline, hoping
for some sign of habitation or intelligence. There was nothing except
the pristine wilderness, the curious chirping of the birds, the
chittering and industrious scrambling of the "squirrels."

Nothing. Not even a puff of smoke or an arrow made of stones to point
him in the right direction. With a sigh, Picard made his way to the
sandy shore. Hesitating only briefly, he reached down and drew up a
handful of the sparkling water. Drinking it quickly, he rose to his
feet, feeling more refreshed by that simple handful than he had from a
full tumbler of the recycled, replicated stuff he drank every day on
the Enterprise. At least Q had seen fit to deposit his unwilling
guests on a planet with a congenial environment.

Turning to his right, Picard spied what looked like a deer path. That
was promising; with any luck, it would lead around the lake and keep
him from having to fight his way through more of the dense
undergrowth, which had increased the farther he traveled from the pine
grove until it was positively unpassable in spots. He began walking
briskly down the path.

---
The Enterprise
---

"First Officer's Log, supplemental. Dr. Crusher and Captain Picard
have been missing for more than a week now. We believe the captain
still has his communicator; between that and Vash's assurances that
there are no humanoid settlements in this sector, we feel confident of
our ability to locate them, once we enter the correct system. The
trouble is figuring out which system that is, before we can even think
about figuring out what planet they're on!"

Riker paused, running his fingers through his hair in an agitated
gesture that reflected the frustration in his voice. He took a sip of
his bourbon --- the real thing, not just synthohol --- to try and calm
himself a bit, then resumed pacing around his quarters as he finished
updating his log. "Geordi and his crew have the Far Traveller in
running order once again, and Captain Crosby is assisting us in our
search. Even with her help, I have a feeling this could take quite a
while." Another pause, another sip of bourbon. "We've already alerted
Wesley Crusher and Captain Picard's family to the situation, as well
as Starfleet Command." Difficult though that had been, he'd informed
Picard's brother and Crusher's son himself. It was his responsibility,
and no one had argued with him. "The families are understandably
upset, and it was only with great difficulty that I was able to
convince Wesley not to take an immediate leave of absence from
Starfleet Academy to assist in the search. However, the longer it
takes, the more difficult it will be to keep him from taking such an
action."

Riker continued his restless pacing, holding the whiskey glass
absently in one hand. "We've been given permission to continue the
search for our missing people for as long as it takes --- which means, of
course, until some emergency requires our immediate presence
elsewhere." He drew a deep breath, trying to get a grip on his
cynicism. Before he could continue his moody monologue, the dr
chimed discreetly. Riker glanced over in surprise, wondering who it
could be; it was after midnight, ship's time. Apparently someone else
was having a hard time sleeping. Or perhaps they'd finally had some
luck...  Only one way to find out. "Come in."

"I hope I'm not disturbing you."

It was Deanna Troi. Riker gaped in pleased surprise, then smiled
broadly and ushered the counselor in, bringing her solicitously to a
chair. "Can I get you anything? A pillow?" It was the first time he'd
seen her conscious since her Q-imposed headache at the beginning of
the week; Dr. Selar had been forced to resort to sedation when it
became obvious that the pain wasn't going to respond to conventional
treatment. Riker had made a habit of stopping by Sickbay every night
before going to bed, just to check on her; she'd appeared to be still
under the influence of the sedative, sleeping peacefully, when he'd
visited her bedside earlier in the evening. Her rapid recovery seemed
nothing short of miraculous.

Troi rolled her eyes and gestured for him to sit as well. "Please,
Will, you of all people should know I'm not a china doll," she said
reprovingly. "I just stopped in to see how you were doing on my way
back to my quarters." A lie, but a minor one. She knew very well how
he was doing, especially since it was his distress and frustration
that had served to break through the sedative as the pain finally
vanished --- probably due more to Q's personal whim than to anything
else, in Troi's private opinion --- and had drawn her to his quarters
like a magnet. She could no more ignore Will's intense emotions than
she could her own. Not that she was about to tell him that; nor was
she about to tell him that Dr. Selar had given her strict orders to do
nothing but rest for a few more days --- just in case. There was too much
for her to do right now; the captain's disappearance had disturbed
more of the crew than just Will Riker. It was too similar to the time
he'd been kidnapped by the Borg and transformed into one of their own.

"You're the one who just got out of Sickbay," Riker countered as he
moved to sit in the opposite chair and lifted his glass. "Would you
care for some authentic Kentucky bourbon?"

Troi shook her head firmly. "No thank you. I may not be a china doll,
but I did just get over one headache. I'm not ready to face the
thought of another one." She reached out and touched his arm gently as
he winced, mentally and physically. "That wasn't meant as a
reprimand," she said softly. "I'm sorry. Honestly, I just stopped by
to see how you were doing." She allowed a guilty smile to form on her
lips. "And, I confess, to find out how things are going. I feel a
little out of touch and was hoping you could update me on the
situation."

Riker blew a noisy sigh and settled back on the seat, gazing moodily
at his drink before downing the remainder in a single gulp. "We're
completely in the dark," he admitted after placing the glass on the
coffee table. "Vash still thinks Q put them someplace uninhabited,
probably someplace he hasn't taken her, either. It's all we have to go
on right now." When pressed for an explanation of her reasoning, Vash
had merely shrugged and said, "It's not logical, but then, neither is
Q. I think he'd pick a planet no one knows anything about, even me. I
think he'd find it... amusing." Riker had been forced to agree.

Troi nodded her own agreement to that assessment. "We're on our way to
one of those systems now?" she asked, to confirm the scant information
Dr. Selar had been able --- or willing --- to give her.

Riker nodded. "Captain Crosby is searching the closer sectors, the
ones we already know something about, just in case Q is playing a
deeper game."

"Like the purloined letter?" Troi guessed, remembering one of her
father's favorite short stories. "Hiding them in plain sight?"

"Exactly," Riker agreed. "Trying to outguess Q is an exercise in
futility, as we already know, but all we have to go on is Vash's
theory and our own experiences with him. Which isn't an awful lot." He
sighed again, hunching his shoulders and leaning over to rest his arms
on his legs in a gesture of defeat. "I just feel as if I should be
doing something more."

"You're doing everything you can, Will," Troi replied earnestly,
leaning forward and touching his hand gently with her own. "You've
taken every possible action ." She shrugged. "All we can do now is
wait until we arrive at our first target. Which I know is difficult
for you," she added with a gentle smile, "but not impossible."

Riker nodded, allowing a small smile to tug at the corners of his
lips. "You always know how to help me put things in perspective," he
murmured, catching her gaze with his own.

Troi felt herself blushing slightly at the naked need in his eyes. As
always when they were alone together, she could feel the intensity of
the emotions Will normally kept firmly in check. He was particularly
vulnerable tonight, as was she, and his half-formed longing was
beginning to make her uncomfortably aware of her own uncertainty. Time
to break the spell.

She pulled her gaze away and rose to her feet. "I'd better get back to
my quarters." A note of wistful regret tinged her words in spite of
her intentions otherwise. Will was making it very difficult for her to
remember her logical, sensible reasons for not resuming their former
relationship while serving on the same ship, just by looking at her in
that particular way.

"Do you have to leave so soon?" he asked softly, then rose to his own
feet and shook his head. "Of course you do," he answered himself, his
voice brisk with suppressed regret as he took her arm and walked her
to the dr. "I'm sure Dr. Selar told you to rest, not to come here
and counsel the acting captain." His eyes met hers once again, this
time with a twinkle of amusement showing through. "Didn't she."

Troi shrugged guiltily. "I think you know me a little too well," was
her only response. "Good night, Acting Captain Riker." Then she was
gone.

---

Riker and Troi weren't the only ones having a sleepless night. Two
decks below, the lights were on in the comfortable guest quarters that
had been set aside for the angrily pacing form of Q's current
travelling companion.

At least, she assumed she was still his current traveling companion.
For all she knew, this was Q's way of letting her know that she was
now his former traveling companion. Leaving her on the Enterprise
might just be his idea of a subtle way of telling her he was ready to
move on. Without her.

It was an annoying thought, and one Vash couldn't get out of her head.
Not that she was all that enamored of Q on a personal level, but the
fact that he could just dump her like this, with no warning or
explanation, irked her in a way she never would have predicted.

To make it worse, all of this irritation was founded on baseless
speculation, not on any kind of facts. But then, Q was hardly around
to contradict her conclusions, now was he? No. As far as she knew, he
hadn't made another appearance on the ship since he'd taunted Riker
and given Deanna Troi that walloping headache.

The headache was another source of irritation. It smacked of casual,
needless cruelty. Not that she had any illusions about Q's rather
arbitrary moral code, at least as far as "inferior beings" were
concerned, but she also knew that he never did anything without a
reason. What exactly his purpose in creating the headache was, she
couldn't quite tell --- to keep the empath from helping in the search for
the missing people? --- but she had no doubts as to his reasons for
removing the captain and the doctor from the ship.

She reached the far wall, spun on her heel and turned back the other
way. The speed of her pacing increased furiously, but she never
noticed, too busy with her thoughts. Oh yes, she knew exactly why Q
had chosen that particular couple to deposit on some unspoiled
wilderness of a planet. He delighted in making Picard do things he
didn't want to do --- or things that he didn't want to admit that he
wanted to do. He was probably sitting somewhere out there right now,
watching everything and laughing to himself. Or sitting somewhere
nearby, invisibly observing her reactions to the situation.

Vash paused in her restless pacing to glance up at the roof of her
cabin, then shook her head ruefully. Even if Q was watching her, she'd
never know it. Not unless he wanted her to. And it was extremely
obvious that he didn't want anyone to know where he was or what he was
doing right now. Especially her.

"Q, you're nothing but a colossal pain in the neck," she announced to
the room at large, then sighed and headed for the bathroom. A hot
shower would help her relax, and then bed. Some sleep would do her
good. She'd leave the worrying about Q --- and his dubious
intentions --- for the morning.

---
Elsewhere
---

Crusher settled in near the shore of the lake, using her rusty
woodsman survival skills and memories of summers at her cousin's camp
in the Adirondacks to build a makeshift sleeping platform in the
branches of a tree near the path she'd originally taken. Close, but
not too close; after almost a week, she still hadn't seen anything
large enough to make such a path, and there was always the chance that
the creatures might not turn out to be the innocuous herbivores her
imagination had originally conjured up.

In the middle of her sixth night, she was awakened out of an uneasy
sleep by the sound of something large moving along the ground beneath
her. She inched her way to the edge of her platform as silently as
possible, laying flat as she cautiously peeked over the edge.

It took her eyes a moment to realize what they were seeing; in the
uncertain light of the twin moons, it looked as if water were flowing
along the path. She stared at the undulating mass uncomprehendingly
for a moment, then it suddenly snapped into focus as a startled gasp
escaped her lips. She was looking at the body of a snake. As it
continued on its silent way, a second one appeared, the same shimmery
black and silver as the first, with a large, triangular head that
moved in an uneasy side-to-side motion as it slithered along. The
doctor barely breathed until they passed, her heart pounding in her
throat. The snakes were huge, bigger than any she'd ever seen or even
heard of. Both snakes nearly touched either side of the four-foot wide
path, and she couldn't even begin to guess their lengths. More than 20
meters, more than 30 meters. Maybe even more than that. All she could
tell was that they took a long time to move completely out of sight. A
very long time.

When they were finally gone, she continued to wait, ears straining,
until she heard a pair of faint splashes from the direction of the
lake. Great. The damn things were swimmers! "Why me?" Crusher mouthed,
glaring accusatively skyward before scrabbling away from the edge of
her platform. She backed up until she reached the trunk of the tree,
then leaned against it, eyes wide. She stayed there the rest of the
night, unable to return to sleep, unable to do anything except listen
for other noises in the darkness.

And curse Q with every fibre of her being.

---

"How big is this damned lake?" Picard muttered. He'd been tramping
around it for nearly two weeks now, following the randomly appearing
and disappearing "deer paths" when he could and forcing his way
through the dense underbrush the rest of the time, and still he hadn't
completely circumscribed it. It must be larger than he'd estimated;
much larger. Practically an inland sea. And in all that time, he
hadn't seen any signs of his fellow castaway. There was always the
possibility that he was completely wrong and that she --- whoever she
might be --- was nowhere near this damned lake, but he refused to follow
that line of thought; the large body of fresh, drinkable water was his
best --- and so far only --- lead.

He paused, raising a hand to shield his eyes as he looked around. He'd
come to a small hill of sorts, just a bump in the landscape, really,
but high enough to give him a better view of his surroundings. Time
for a bit of a rest, he decided wearily, maybe even time to call it
quits for the day. The sun was beginning to set. He leaned back
against the nearest tree and looked around critically.

Trees were all he could see, trees and the lake and the distant
mountains. There were no other signs of life, besides the ubiquitous
squirrels and occasional bird. If there was any kind of aquatic life,
it kept itself well away from the shore. That was fine for now, but if
Q's little "game" lasted much longer, Picard knew he would have to try
his hand at making a fishing pole of some kind. The nuts and berries
he'd cautiously eaten were acceptable --- and, incidentally, incredibly
delicious --- nourishment, but he'd need something a bit more substantial
if he were stranded for any length of time.

Picard flinched away from that prospect. He determinedly kept his
thoughts on the here and now, on the unknown person he was trying to
locate. With any luck, that reunion would be the signal for Q to end
the game. Perhaps he was testing Picard's perseverance; perhaps he
was merely testing his patience, in the most literal sense of that
phrase. Either way, the captain of the Enterprise was determined not
to give in.

Right now, though, he was tired and thirsty; another attempt at
puzzling out Q's motives could take second place to the primary
concern of staying alive and healthy. Looking more carefully at his
side of the lake, he uttered a triumphant "Ah-ha!" as he spied another
of the paths, leading toward the water. At last. An easy way to
collect a drink before he found a comfortable perch for the night. He
pulled himself away from the tree with a tired sigh and headed for the
path.

The humid weather had dictated that he remove his jacket, which he’d
simply tied around his waist. The sturdy material rinsed clean with a
simple dunk in the water, although he hadn’t been willing to complete
strip down in order to clean all of his clothing. Not yet. Even after
two weeks with no large predators in sight, he was still uneasy about
making himself vulnerable without someone acting as backup. Putting
aside the question of personal hygiene whilst stranded on a strange
world, he leaned forward, reaching down to scoop up some of the water.

"Jean-Luc, look out!" Picard froze at the sound of that
unexpected --- and unexpectedly familiar --- voice, then stared down at the
water. Something was moving, something very large. Moving rapidly and
directly toward him. He barely had time to jump away from the edge of
the lake before a head rose from the water, a huge, dark gray and gold
head, larger than his entire body and sporting a mouth full of deadly,
needle-like teeth. He continued to backpedal, had almost reached the
dubious safety of the trees, when the creature suddenly lunged forward
and grabbed his foot in its mouth. Picard shouted in alarm as he
clutched desperately at the nearest bushes, arms straining as the huge
snake began to drag him into the water.

Then, unbelievably, Beverly Crusher was there, dropping out of the
trees with a screech like an avenging Valkyrie, bashing the creature
on its elongated snout with what looked like a broken-off branch. She
was a blur of half-seen motion, darting in and out of the thick
underbrush as she hit the snake a second time, then again and again,
until it finally decided it had enough and released the captain's
boot. Picard moved the instant he found himself free, rolling away
from the dangerously open path and into the undergrowth. He spared a
moment to examine the foot the snake had nearly pulled him into the
water by, noting with relief that the rows of holes in the heavy
material of his boot didn't penetrate to the skin, or even all the way
through the boot; the pain he was feeling was due to pressure, not
punctures. Then he scrambled to his feet, looking around to make sure
his CMO was safe as he assured her that he was unharmed by the attack.

She'd dropped her improvised weapon and seemed to be headed up the
nearest tree at top speed, urging him to do the same. After sparing a
glance to make certain the creature had actually returned to the
water, the captain followed her example, limping only slightly.

"They can't climb, or at least they don't climb. They even seem to
lose interest in chasing their prey once it's up a tree; in fact, I've
never even seen them trying to get through the undergrowth." Crusher's
voice floated out from across the path, but she remained hidden by the
dense growth. Picard cautiously came to a stop several branches up,
relieved to find that his instinct to sleep off the ground had been
correct. Crusher was still talking: "I think it might be some sort of
mating season; this is the closest to shore I've seen one of them come
in a few days. Usually I can see them at night, further out in the
water. In pairs."

"How long have you been here, at the lake?" Picard asked, wondering
why he hadn't seen any signs of the huge snakes as he traveled the
paths. Of course, he was usually safely up a tree by the time night
fell, and not that close to either the paths or the lakes; it just
hadn't seemed prudent. He glanced uneasily at the now-placid waters
below. There was no sign of his assailant, not even a ripple on the
deceptively smooth surface of the lake, and it occurred to him that he
should have realized Q wasn't speaking metaphorically when he
mentioned snakes. Of course, leave it to the alien not to mention the
SIZE of the creatures...

"Two weeks now," the doctor was saying in reply to his question. Her
voice sounded marginally closer, and Picard returned his attention to
the branches around him. "I spent my first night in a tree south of
here, about a day's walk away. When I spotted the lake, it seemed the
logical place to wait for a rescue party." She paused hopefully. "You
are a rescue party, aren't you?"

"I wish I were," Picard replied apologetically. Her voice sounded
closer still, and some of the branches were shaking suspiciously. He
focused his gaze in that direction as he continued. "Unfortunately,
we're both in the same predicament. Q." That single word was spoken in
a tone that more than adequately conveyed his emotions.

"I had a feeling he was involved." With those words, Crusher's face
and arm appeared almost directly overhead as she leaned down to grasp
Picard's outstretched hand in her own. "One minute I was in my
quarters, the next I was in the middle of this forest. Without my
communicator." She helped haul him up to her level.

Picard got his first good look at the doctor, and his fingers
tightened on hers in sheer surprise. Crusher stared back at him in
confusion, then automatically followed his gaze to a point just below
her neck.

She'd completely forgotten what she was wearing --- or rather, what she
wasn't wearing. All she had on --- all she'd got in the habit of wearing
during the hottest hours of the day --- was her Starfleet-issue
underclothing. Which consisted of a body-hugging pair of briefs and a
bra.

She felt a blush forming as her gaze returned to Picard's equally red
face. "TOO hot for the sweater and pants I had on when I ended up
here," she offered, clearing her throat uncomfortably. "I didn't want
to risk the chance of heatstroke. And the longer it took a rescue
party to show up... " She shrugged.

Picard nodded wordlessly. His eyes had flown up to her face the moment
he realized he'd been staring at her as if he'd never seen a woman's
body before, and he found himself utterly at a loss for words.

Crusher turned and reached for a connecting branch from the closest
tree, cheeks still burning. "I have a sort of tree-house," she called
over her shoulder, keeping her eyes resolutely away from his. "We can
talk there."

Picard mumbled his acknowledgment, too flustered and embarrassed by
his clumsy reaction to offer a more graceful response.

A few minutes later, Picard joined the doctor on the sturdy platform,
sparing a moment to look her improvised shelter over approvingly.
Branches had been intertwined overhead to form a crude shelter over
half of the even more carefully woven flooring, and a pile of leafy
branches formed what was obviously a bed against the central trunk.
"Why do I feel as if I've stumbled into an old Tarzan vid?" he asked,
forcing a smile as he turned to face his CMO.

In the time it had taken him to follow her up the complex web of
branches that formed her path to the tree, Crusher had managed to
throw her pants on, if not her heavy sweater. Picard felt a curious
mixture of relief and disappointment, wondering briefly if it was for
her own benefit or his that she had covered herself, then chased the
thoughts and feelings away irritably. Now was not the time for such
nonsense.

Crusher rolled her eyes and shook her head in mock exasperation at his
comment, but he didn't miss the relief in her eyes at his tacit
agreement to drop the subject of her attire and focus on the business
at hand. "If that same thought hadn't crossed my mind while I was
working on this thing, I'd probably take that comment a lot less
gracefully," she stated, an answering smile briefly appearing on her
lips. "Fortunately, I spent an awful lot of time building tree-houses
with my cousins. When I was pretty young," she added hastily.

"Somehow I didn't think that was how you spent your last few shore
leaves," Picard returned lightly, before lowering himself to a sitting
position near the edge of the platform. Time and past to get down to
business. The doctor followed suit as the captain explained, quickly
and succinctly, what had happened to him. Crusher then gave her
version, and the two of them fell silent as they contemplated their
situation.

"Well, the simple accomplishment of finding each other obviously
wasn't the motive for this latest little 'test' of Q," Crusher finally
offered, glancing around at their leafy surroundings. Her expression
clearly showed her dissatisfaction with the fact that the trees hadn't
immediately transformed into the walls of the ship. "We're still
here."

Picard nodded grimly. "So we are." Their eyes met. "Any suggestions as
to how we might rectify this situation would be most welcome, Beverly.
I confess that I have no idea what Q's requirements could be, either.
He was extremely vague on the subject."

He was lying. Once he'd seen that Beverly Crusher was his companion on
this little woodland adventure, he knew exactly what entries from his
journal had piqued Q's interest. But he wasn't about to tell the
doctor that; for one thing, he didn't want to be rushed into any hasty
moves, and for another, he absolutely refused to play Q's game. Vash
had refused to play the alien's game once, and the results had been
favorable. He devoutly hoped that it would work that way now. With any
luck, there would be no need to tell Beverly about the sense of vague
dissatisfaction he felt regarding their current, ambiguous
relationship. A dissatisfaction that he hadn't really paid attention
to, not until a few weeks ago, when he was re-reading the very journal
that had landed them in their current predicament. The entries that
gave the clues were fairly far apart, which was why he hadn't noticed
as he wrote them.

But he'd certainly noticed them upon rereading, and he most definitely
noticed them now. And Q had noticed them as well. Not a pleasant
thought, that this was all his own fault, but then, it was hardly
sporting of Q to read the captain's private journal and act upon that
information with his usual callous disregard for the feelings of
others. Beverly would be absolutely mortified if she ever found out
the truth. Especially if she ever discovered that Picard had been in
love with her when she was still married to Jack Crusher. No, that
would definitely not be good, Picard thought with an interior shudder.

"I think we both know that it would be impossible to try and out-think
Q," Picard said cautiously, relaxing slightly as she nodded her
agreement. "If we simply concentrate on surviving until Commander
Riker and the Enterprise arrive, we should be fine. Who knows; if we
ignore Q, he may get bored." A futile hope, perhaps, but one Picard
found himself clinging to devoutly.

Crusher gave another nod of agreement, although he thought he saw a
speculative gleam appear and disappear from the doctor's blue eyes
almost too quickly to see. Was his desire not to delve too deeply into
Q's motives that obvious? Picard shrugged mentally. He would just have
to watch himself, that was all. If he betrayed his feelings for the
doctor --- past or present --- Q would just laugh all the harder. The
captain of the Enterprise knew, with absolute conviction, that such a
betrayal wouldn't do a single thing to get them free of this
situation.

---

A week later, Picard found himself reevaluating the validity of his
theory. Surely the Enterprise should have located them by now! Unless,
of course, they were further away than Q had implied. And unless he
wasn't planning on the two of them being rescued.

With that sobering thought in mind, Picard had, with Crusher's
assistance, constructed a sleeping platform similar to her own, on the
branches of a tree next to hers, one whose branches were so entangled
with those of her own tree that it was hard to tell where one ended
and the other began. If he felt a twinge of disappointment at her
willingness to separate their sleeping areas, he repressed it sternly.
Certainly she showed no such disappointment. Which only served to
confirm the captain's suspicions; if Beverly Crusher were to discover
the reason behind Q's meddling this time, she would be extremely
embarrassed. The only purpose it could possibly serve would be to make
the two of them highly self-conscious around one another,
uncomfortable even with the careful friendship they'd built up over
the past several years --- a friendship that Picard told himself he
valued too much to spoil by admitting that his feelings, which had
mellowed over the years spent apart from the doctor and then the years
spent serving together on the Enterprise, had once again begun to
deepen into something more. However, it wasn't just his feelings that
he had to consider, and Beverly had never truly indicated to him that
she felt anything more for him. Once or twice he thought he'd seen
something in her eyes, something more, only to dismiss it as nothing
more than wishful thinking.

In short, everything they had together would be ruined, and that was
probably exactly what Q was hoping would happen. "Shrill," he'd called
the doctor, even going so far as to change her into a noisily yapping
Irish Setter. It was quite obvious that the alien regarded her with
personal distaste, and Picard wouldn't be at all surprised if Q was
hoping to permanently damage their relationship.

Well, he wouldn't allow that to happen. He refused to be pushed into
doing anything, no matter what the reasons behind the pushing. He
especially refused to do what Q wanted him to do, no matter what that
might or might not be. Nodding firmly to himself, Picard returned to
putting the finishing touches on the half-roof of his tree-house.

---
Interlude
---

Q frowned petulantly. Not good. Not good at all. His two pawns were
not reacting in the way he wanted them to. Time to add a new piece to
the game. A bishop, perhaps, to give a testimonial... he reached up and
plucked a small, leather-bound volume from mid-air, hefted it
consideringly, then nodded. The book vanished before he finished his
gesture, and the smile that spread across Q's face did not bode well
for the author of those words.

---
The Enterprise
---

"I can't believe it," Riker muttered, shaking his head in
discouragement. "I can't believe it's been six weeks." He was standing
in front of the bank of windows in the main briefing room, staring out
at space. It was a pose Deanna Troi had seen him in far too often
lately, an unconscious reflection of his urgent desire to find the
captain and Dr. Crusher. He spent more time looking at space, she
thought uneasily, than he did at people. Not his usual pattern at all,
even in a crisis situation. Especially in a crisis situation. She
traded concerned looks with Vash and Lori Crosby, who might not know
Will Riker as well as she did, but whom she trusted to be perceptive
enough to sense her concern for him --- a concern that was quickly
becoming as important as her concern for the captain and Dr. Crusher.

The four of them were the last people left in the observation lounge,
after another fruitless brainstorming session. The meeting had been
called in desperation after yet another search pattern failed to turn
up the missing people. The captain's cousin was getting ready to
return to her ship, but didn't seem able to bring herself to leave
yet. "Six weeks isn't really that long," Lori said optimistically.
"Not when you're doing something constructive."

It was the wrong thing to say. Riker's back stiffened and he turned to
stare at her incredulously. "Something constructive? You call running
around in circles and jumping through Q's hoops constructive?" He
turned back to the window, shoulders slumping in defeat. "We may as
well give it up. If Q wanted them found, we'd have done it by now."

"Will, we can't just give up," Troi interjected. "Starfleet
understands; they've given us time --- "

"Not enough," the acting Captain countered, not bothering to turn
around. "Admiral Aimsley's already hinted that we've spent enough time
on this. It won't be long before they yank us back to full-time duty
and issue their condolences to the Picards and Wesley." The words were
filled with bitter anger, more emotion than Riker had allowed himself
to show in a long time. Too long, as far as Deanna Troi was concerned.
Will Riker was a man of action, and he became extremely frustrated by
situations like this, where he was unable to take any decisive action.
Searching was too passive; he needed to be doing something more
concrete, and that was impossible.

"Even if they do," Lori cut in, seemingly undisturbed by Riker's
outburst, "you know I won't give up. I blew the only schedule I had to
meet when that ion storm disabled my ship. I can keep searching till
hell freezes over if I have to, and Starfleet can't do a damned thing
to stop me."

"Besides," Vash added encouragingly, "Q won't let it go that far. You
know him; he hates to be interrupted. If the Romulans declare war,
he'll make them stop until he's played this game out to whatever
conclusion he has in mind. Doesn't it seem a little peculiar that it's
been so quiet lately? That the Enterprise hasn't been needed for any
emergencies?"

"What if this is the conclusion he has in mind?" Riker returned
tiredly, ignoring her final, suggestive questions. "What if he intends
to leave them stranded? What if Q lied and they aren't even in this
sector of the galaxy?"

None of the women present had answers; they had all asked themselves
the same questions at one time or another during the course of their
desperate search.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Captain Crosby spoke up
again, her voice filled with determination. "I'd better get back to my
ship so we can head out to the next search sector." Troi and Vash
murmured good byes, but Riker merely nodded abstractedly, his eyes
remaining glued to the vista of space. Lori shrugged and headed out
the dr, Vash following a minute later. Troi hesitated the longest,
then finally turned and followed the other two women, leaving Riker
alone with his thoughts.

There wasn't anything she could do to help him right now; he would
have to work his frustrations out by himself.

---
Elsewhere
---

Another day gone by, and still no sign of rescue. Beverly Crusher
reached back tiredly to remove the blue thread --- one of many that her
sweater had given up over the past month and a half --- that held her
hair away from her face. She allowed the heavy red tresses to fall
free as she splashed a leaf-bowl's worth of water onto her hot face.
Then she stepped out of her pants and the remnants of her boots,
wincing as a blister rubbed painfully against the frayed material.
Next she removed her underclothing, rinsing the items in another,
larger "bowl" of water and laying them flat; by morning, they'd be
completely dry, if a little stiff. When she finished her nightly
routine, she padded over to her bed and threw on her blue sweater. It
was still far too hot to wear that particular item of clothing during
the day, but just cool enough for it at night. Besides, it was a far
less durable piece of clothing than her pants and underwear, in spite
of manufacturer's claims to near indestructibility. She supposed under
ordinary circumstances it would have lasted for years, but these were
hardly ordinary circumstances.

Her boots and pants were also showing signs of strain; her
underclothing was rapidly turning out to be more durable than anything
else. Not that they were completely unaffected; being worn for 42
straight days and nights, and being washed almost as often, was bound
to wear out even the toughest fiber, Starfleet-issued synthetic or
not.

As of course was happening with Jean-Luc's uniform. Crusher repressed
a giggle at the memory of the look of outrage he'd worn once he
realized his black pants were beginning to get a bit ragged around the
edges, so to speak. "You're just lucky we're not in a true tropical
climate," Crusher had commented. "That kind of humidity can literally
rot the clothes off your body, if they haven't been properly treated."
She glanced down at herself ruefully. "Which these most definitely
have not."

Picard was not amused. "This material is supposed to be able to
withstand much more severe treatment than constant wear in the
outdoors," he'd snapped, then stalked away at her grin, mumbling
something about finishing the new latrine.

Crusher's current grin faded at the memory of the turn her thoughts
had taken as she watched him walk away. Her eyes had lingered
admiringly on a certain portion of his anatomy that was becoming more
noticeable as the material wore away from sitting on the rough
flooring of their platforms. She'd shaken her head in dismay, turning
away from him as well. I can't believe I was thinking about what a
great tush he has! she thought as she lowered herself to her bed and
carefully crawled under her makeshift blanket of loosely woven leaves.
Although the nights were almost as warm as they had been when she
first arrived, it became much cooler toward morning. Cool enough to
require some sort of protection from the breeze that seemed to spring
up in the early hours before sunrise. She lowered her head and turned
to face the trunk of the tree, freezing as her hand touched a foreign
object. Slowly, carefully, she moved her eyes sideways to see what it
was her fingers had grazed.

It was a book.

She snatched her fingers away reflexively, then frowned, closed her
eyes and shook her head, certain she was imagining things. When she
opened her eyes, however, the impossible book was still there. She
reached for it hesitantly, picking it up with two fingers, as if
afraid it would vanish when she touched it.

It was a real book, or at least it looked and felt real. And it was
open. Crusher's eyes automatically took in the fact that the page was
covered with handwriting. Not any kind of printface; actual, real
handwriting.

Vaguely familiar handwriting at that. Her brow furrowed as she scanned
the page, stopping half-way down as a word sprang out at her.

It was her name. Intrigued, she began reading.

And found herself even more intrigued by the words surrounding her
name.

---

Beverly Crusher replaced Jean-Luc Picard's personal journal on her
bed, pulling her legs up to rest her arms on her knees as she stared
out at the fading light of the day. Her mind drifted through memories
of past encounters and near-misses with the author of the words she'd
just read. The time virtually the entire ship had been affected by a
judgement-inhibiting "virus," for lack of anything better to call it.
Including the CMO and the Captain, who had come very close to
revealing certain things to each other --- things that had gone
unmentioned once everyone had been returned to normal. The time Picard
had been temporarily replaced with an exact duplicate, one that had
teased her with overtures of intimacy, then sent her merrily on her
way. She'd never spoken to the captain regarding his replacement's
actions, telling herself that it was as much to spare him as herself
from any embarrassment; after all, hadn't she told his double that she
was comfortable with the way their current relationship was? Why make
something out of nothing? she'd asked herself. It wasn't worth it, if
in the end things merely went back the way they'd always been, after a
brief period of discomfort between two friends.

Then there were the times she'd tried to tell him how much she valued
him, how much he meant to her, only to have fate intervene at the last
minute and the words go once again unsaid. The way, she admitted with
a feeling of shame at her cowardice, she shied away from those
feelings the minute things returned to normal, just as she had when
the captain's double had left and the real captain had been returned.

Apparently, however, her feelings of vague dissatisfaction were also
felt by the captain of the Enterprise. She thought she'd been
imagining things, that Jean-Luc felt that their relationship was just
fine the way it was. So much for her ability to predict other's
reactions; Deanna Troi's job was certainly safe and the galaxy
fortunate that she'd gone into physical medicine and not
psychological.

"Another excuse shot down," Crusher murmured to herself, then stopped
in the process of rising to her feet. Where had that thought come
from? Her subconscious had apparently already pinpointed her problem,
if thoughts like that could float to the top of her mind fully formed.
Her subconscious and, of course, Deanna Troi. Crusher found herself
wishing desperately that the ship's counselor were here now; she
suddenly needed someone to talk to.

Someone besides Jean-Luc Picard. Her eyes strayed to the book once
again, this time guiltily. She'd read the captain's private journal, a
few pages anyway, and had only stopped because of the rapidly fading
daylight and because it ended only a few pages past the spot it had
been opened to, the last journal entry written only a few days before
their kidnapping. She'd actually found herself wanting to go back and
read it from the beginning, and that desire had jolted her back to
reality. A journal was an intensely private thing, and the captain was
an intensely private man; she'd violated that privacy, and the excuses
she offered herself about it really being Q's fault for putting the
book in her bed fell flat.

But it was certainly food for thought. She picked the book up, slid it
under her "pillow," and laid back down. She'd decide what to do about
it in the morning.

When the light of the rising sun hit Crusher's eyes, she stretched and
yawned, then stiffened as she remembered her bedtime reading material.
She stretched a cautious hand under her pillow, determined to return
the journal to Jean-Luc.

It was gone.

---

"Well, it's official," Picard announced.

"What is?" Crusher turned away from her newest project --- an attempt at
a pair of sandals --- and glanced inquisitively at the captain. They were
sitting near the edge of a small, isolated clearing they'd discovered
near their campsite, one that gave an almost uninterrupted view of the
rarely seen sky and allowed them to move around without being whipped
by underbrush. Although no paths led to the clearing, it was
accessible by their "tree-branch highway," which made it the safest
place to come to ground. The snakes, they'd discovered, were still
following the paths to the water, although sporadically, but still
made no attempts to force their way through the underbrush or to
create new paths. That, plus the fact that their observed speed on
land was considerably less than that of their speed in the water, made
this an ideal place to spend time when they needed to feel the ground
beneath their feet.

"We've been here exactly eight weeks." Picard stepped away from the
small tree he'd been studying. A portion of its trunk was neatly
covered with small notches he'd scratched there with one of their
painstakingly created stone knives. The notches indicated the length
of their enforced stay on the world Picard had wryly christened
"Paradise." Crusher craned her neck to peer over Picard's shoulder as
she studied the notches.

"Eight weeks. Fifty-six days," she said musingly. She dropped the
sandal --- it wasn't turning out all that well --- and gave him her full
attention. "Now what?"

"A very good question, Beverly," Picard murmured. "A very good
question, indeed." He glanced skyward. "I still can't believe Q's
allowed things to drag on this long."

Crusher shrugged. "Maybe he hasn't got what he wants yet," she threw
over her shoulder as she turned to retrieve the sandal. Perhaps there
was still hope for it; after all, anything would have to be better
than her rapidly disintegrating boots. She hadn't enjoyed walking
around barefoot since she was a teenager. "I'm sure he doesn't intend
for us to stay here until we're as rotted as our clothes." With those
words, she retrieved her working materials and abruptly headed for the
trees. "I think I'll go back to camp. I need something to eat."

Picard stared after her, then shook his head slightly. Beverly had
been acting very mysterious for the past week or so; he occasionally
caught her looking at him with a speculative gleam in her eyes,
turning away without explanation when he raised a questioning eyebrow.
He didn't like it; was it possible that this place was finally getting
to his CMO?

It was certainly beginning to get to him. Robinson Crusoe had always
been one of his favorite books; now, he doubted if he'd ever pick it
up again. Not that, not Swiss Family Robinson, not even Shakespeare's
play "The Tempest." Nothing having to do with being stranded.

Q had definitely gone too far this time. It was obvious to Picard that
they were nowhere near where the Enterprise had been; Q had probably
placed his two captives on the opposite end of the galaxy. It still
seemed rather uncharacteristically drawn-out for one of his "games,"
but then, Picard could hardly judge the alien's behavior. Become weary
of it, yes; hate it, want to change it, but never judge or even
understand it.

Something wet plopped onto the captain's head. Frowning at the
interruption to his thoughts, Picard automatically looked up. Plop!
Another fat raindrop caught him in the eye. While he'd been brooding,
storm clouds --- something unseen in the skies until now --- had moved in.
"Wonderful," Picard muttered, turning and heading for the shelter of
the trees. "Just wonderful." As if they didn't have enough to worry
about.

---

Those two drops of rain turned out to be the signal for the start of
what the two castaways could only assume to be the rainy season. They
were followed by more drops, and more, until a virtual torrent
streamed down almost constantly, seemingly unimpeded by the thick
foliage.

After a day spent frantically working on a better roofing system for
the two tree-houses, there was nothing for them to do. Especially
since the snakes chose that time to come back out of the water and
spend the bulk of their time slithering around the trails with no
discernable pattern or timetable. Which made descending to the ground
for anything but brief periods of time impossible.

Which in turn left them with nothing to do but talk to each other.

---

"I must have lost 15 pounds," Crusher commented on their fourth
evening of enforced stay in the tree-houses. They were in Picard's
this afternoon, lingering in each other's company after an early
supper. Long summer days or not, the rain brought the night that much
earlier, and it was almost impossible to keep a fire going in the
pervasive dampness. The doctor glanced down at her hips with a slight
grin. "Too bad Dee isn't here; she's been complaining that aerobics
weren't helping her lose enough."

"Perhaps," Picard replied absently, his gaze trained on an unseen
point in the distance, "she should stop rewarding herself for a good
workout by having a hot-fudge sundae in Ten-Forward."

Crusher giggled behind one hand. "I wouldn't dare try and take her
chocolate away from her; I'm not that brave."

"I don't believe it would be my place to say anything to her; it would
have to be you," Picard countered with a lazy grin, sliding his eyes
over to meet hers. He was perched on the edge of the platform, just
under the shelter of his newly extended roof. "After all, you're not
only her aerobics partner, you're her friend."

Crusher shook her head violently and shivered in mock fear, leaning
her back more firmly against the trunk of the tree. "No way. Not in a
million years. Not even if that were the only thing that would get Q
to send us home --- "

ps. She'd done it now. Picard's eyes narrowed and he turned away
from her sharply. Mentioning Q was the surest way to put the captain
in a bad temper, especially during this period of enforced inactivity.
Not that she was so awfully fond of the alien herself, but she had
certain knowledge that Picard did not to make her reconsider what Q
was up to.

She still wasn't certain how to act on that knowledge, nearly three
weeks after the revealing document had made its appearance --- and
disappearance. Or if she even should act on that knowledge. Somehow,
she didn't think Jean-Luc would be too thrilled to discover that Q had
"borrowed" his personal journal and left it for her to read.
Conveniently open to a spot that was guaranteed to attract the
doctor's attention. Nor would he be too thrilled to discover that
she'd taken a bit longer to put temptation aside than he might feel
was appropriate. She hadn't had the courage to tell him anything about
the incident, not even that the book had appeared --- which at least
showed that Q was still somewhere around, still paying some slight
attention to them, that he hadn't simply abandoned them here to rot.
Crusher was ashamed of her cowardice, of the fact that she had that
certainty while Picard did not. He seemed to feel that Q had, indeed,
abandoned them, when she knew perfectly well that he hadn't, and it
just wasn't fair to the captain to leave him in the dark a minute
longer.

And not just about evidence of Q's continued interest in them, she
decided as she studied his brooding profile. No, she owed it to
Jean-Luc to tell the truth. Perhaps it would be better to have things
out in the open; since they were both feeling the same feelings, it
might do them a lot of good to talk about those feelings. At first,
her reaction had been that he should be the one to initiate any sort
of relationship, since he seemed to be the one who'd first discovered
that his feelings toward her had changed. That had been good for the
first week, until she admitted that she was merely trying to avoid the
issue. Then she'd told herself that it wasn't the right time or place
for such a discussion, that enforced isolation --- Q enforced --- on an
alien world wasn't the right situation for important emotional
revelations, but she was honest enough to admit that was just more
procrastination. After all, what better time, what better place, would
they find? They were alone, there was no one to interrupt them, and
they would no doubt have plenty of time to thrash things out to their
mutual satisfaction.

She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it abruptly as something else
occurred to her, something she hadn't considered until now. What if
the journal wasn't really Picard's? What if Q had made up the volume,
hoping she would do exactly what she was contemplating doing? Or
worse, what if the book were legitimate, but the entries she had read
were not? That would be Q's style; she knew he didn't like her, and of
course the feeling was mutual. What if he wanted her to embarrass
herself by revealing things to Jean-Luc that would do nothing but
destroy their friendship? After all, he'd never really indicated such
feelings to her in the past; all the evidence she had to go on was the
book Q left for her to read and her own, subjective hopes.

She rose to her feet abruptly, unable to deal with her troubled
thoughts a moment longer. Not with the object of those thoughts
sitting right across from her, oblivious to her internal turmoil. Such
thoughts required privacy, and a night's sleep to put them in
perspective. More procrastination, but necessary, she decided. Very
necessary. One way or another, she would speak to him in the morning.
"Good night, Jean-Luc," she said, then turned and headed for her own
sleeping area. She heard his startled, "Good night," as she plunged
into the rain, moving a little faster than was probably safe on the
slippery branches.

Crusher reached for a branch with one hand, letting go with the other
a fraction of a second sooner than she should have. Her foot chose
that moment to skid on an unseen patch of fallen leaves, and she lost
her balance with a dismayed yelp.

Picard sprang to his feet at the sound of Beverly's incoherent yell,
moving swiftly across the interwoven branches of his floor to the side
leading to the doctor's shelter. He peered over the edge, calling her
name urgently.

"Jean-Luc!"

He looked down, feeling his heart lurch as he saw Crusher's fingers
desperately clutching the edge of the broad, almost flat branch they
used as a footpath. She'd barely caught herself. "Hold on, Beverly!"
he called down, cautiously lowering himself and grasping the guide
branch firmly with one hand. It would do neither of them any good if
he fell as well. "I'm coming!"

"My fingers are slipping," she said, her voice conversational but
edged with the slightest tint of urgency. "And there aren't any
branches near enough for my feet to reach."

"Just hold on," Picard urged, speeding his steps but maintaining a
firm grip on the guide branch. He reached a spot near her fingers,
then carefully lowered himself to one knee, gripping the branches
tightly with one hand and leaning the other near his foot. "I'm going
to grab your wrist," he said, enunciating each word clearly and
speaking over the non-stop pattering of the heavy rain. "When I do,
swing your other hand over to mine. I'll pull you up."

"Right," came the strained reply. It had the sound of a word escaping
from between clenched teeth.

Picard silently cursed the rain and darkness once again as he
rechecked his grasp. Once he felt secure, he leaned over and carefully
reached for her wrist. He caught a handful of wet synthwool, tried for
a better grip, then yelled as he started to lose his balance. His knee
came down painfully on the doctor's fingers as he struggled to right
himself. Crusher's wrist slid out of his grasp, and he heard her
screech as her fingers contracted in automatic reaction to the pain,
loosening their desperate grasp on the branch. The fingers of her
other hand slid away from the wet branch with frightening speed, then
disappeared from view as she fell.

"BEVERLY!" Picard hurried to swing himself down to the ground after
her. He heard her crashing through the lower branches, then an ominous
"thud" as she hit the ground. She hadn't made a sound since that first
scream, and he sped down the tree in desperate fear. They weren't that
high up, but with no medical facilities available to them --- and only
the most rudimentary knowledge of this planet's medicinal herbs and
plants --- any injury could be fatal. The branch extended over one of the
paths; what if there were a snake down there? She could have hit her
head on another branch and gotten a concussion, she could have broken
a limb, she could even have snapped her neck...

With those gruesome thoughts for company, Picard finally arrived on
the ground --- thankfully free of snakes --- and hurried toward the doctor's
unmoving body. Bits of leaves and twigs rained down around him,
disturbed by the speed of his passage, mixing with the rain to cling
to his clothing and skin. He ignored them, concentrating on Beverly
and forming half-remembered prayers from his childhood as he
cautiously neared her. She was lying in the middle of the path, arms
outstretched and decorated with the same litter of leaves and twigs
that covered him. In the fading daylight, he could just see that she
was breathing. He closed his eyes in relief, then opened them as he
knelt gently by her side. He strained to see if there was any blood.
"Beverly?" Picard said, barely breathing, his hand reaching to touch
her cheek.

Her eyes flew open at the sound of his voice and met his. Their gazes
remained locked until the doctor unexpectedly began to laugh. It was
weak laughter, she was terribly out of breath, but it was laughter
nonetheless. Startled, Picard pulled back, then frowned as she
struggled to move, his hand moving from her cheek to her shoulders,
his fingers pressing her back against the ground in concern. "Are you
all right? Shouldn't you wait a little before moving?"

Crusher nodded weakly, waving him away as she rolled over onto her
side. "I'll be all right; I'm just winded. And I'll have a hell of a
bruise collection in the morning, not to mention a headache. But I'm
fine," she reassured him, pulling herself to a sitting position as he
pulled back a little and rested on his heels. "I haven't fallen out of
a tree like that since I was ten, and when I saw you, you looked
exactly the same way my cousin Samma's father did." Another small
burst of laughter as her fingers moved to pluck the larger pieces of
debris from her hair. "It just struck me as funny all of a sudden;
nervous reaction, I guess. Sorry."

She didn't look at all apologetic, Picard noted with a feeling of
outrage, but that wasn't important at the moment. "Are you sure you're
all right?" he asked. Concussion was definitely still a worry,
especially considering her reaction to what could have been a fatal
fall.

"I'm the doctor; shouldn't I know when I'm all right?" she snapped,
suddenly irritated at his concern, and irritated at herself for being
irritated. It wasn't his fault he'd reminded her of her uncle. "I
didn't black out, and I didn't hit my head hard enough for concussion;
the branches broke my fall. I'm fine." She struggled to her feet,
glaring down at him as she backed up a few steps. "I was just a little
careless."

"Well, perhaps you would do better to be a little less careless in the
future, Doctor," Picard snapped back. He was fuming now, the shock of
her fall finally wearing off and reaction setting in. Fear had become
concern, then relief, and now anger was surfacing. "You were lucky you
didn't hurt yourself worse. We don't have any medical facilities here,
you know." He returned her glare with one of his own. "We have to
depend on each other to survive until the Enterprise locates us."
Without thinking, he added: "It's our duty."

It was the wrong thing to say. Her back stiffened and her eyes
narrowed, his words seeming to prove the theory that had originally
sent her fleeing his presence. Q had deliberately misled her with the
journal, damn him, had wanted her to betray her feelings to someone
who obviously didn't return them. She lashed out at Picard, dimly
realizing that it wasn't his fault she'd allowed her desires to get
ahead of her intellect, but too upset to care. "Is that all you were
worried about?" Crusher's fingers dug into the palms of her hands as
her hurt feelings overpowered her better judgement. "Just the natural
concern of a captain for someone under his command? Someone who'd been
stupid enough to get herself in trouble?"

Picard stared at her, completely taken aback by the intensity of her
emotions. At the unexpected intensity of her emotions. "Why are you
acting so belligerent?" he demanded, sounding more than a little
belligerent himself. Not to mention frustrated, irritated and just
plain mad. He had risen to his feet and stood with his hands on hips,
glaring at the doctor from the opposite side of the narrow path, rain
dripping down his face and off his chin. He'd just about had it, with
Q and this whole situation, and Crusher's behavior wasn't helping at
all.

"Because I love you, dammit!" Crusher shouted back, angrily shaking
the rain from her own face, suddenly not caring if this was what Q
wanted. She was tired of trying to second-guess the alien, tired of
fighting her own emotions; it was as if the fall had knocked some
sense into her head even as it had knocked the wind from her lungs.

Picard opened his mouth to make some other comment, and it remained
open in shock as Crusher's words came pouring forth. Unstoppable.

"I love you, and that scares me more than any stupid little scenario Q
could ever cook up, more than giant snakes or being stranded or even
falling out of a tree. Because loving you means taking the chance of
losing you, and it would be hard enough to lose you as a friend, much
less as... something more." She closed her mouth and swallowed, hard,
as the words finally stopped, seemingly of their own accord. She
stared at Picard, as shocked by those words as he was; she hadn't
intended to say any of them. Now, it was all out in the open. For
better or for worse, the words had been spoken, the emotions
acknowledged.

Without conscious thought, the doctor found herself suddenly much
closer to the captain, whose mouth had finally snapped shut; had he
moved, or had she? She wouldn't have been able to answer, not to save
her own life. It wasn't important. All that mattered was that they now
stood close enough to touch, staring into each other's eyes, Jean-Luc
gauging the depth of emotion behind what she'd just revealed to him,
Beverly gauging his reaction to that revelation.

Finally, Picard spoke. "I've never heard sweeter words," he said
softly, "spoken in such anger. Can you forgive me for being a stubborn
old fl, mon amour?" He reached up to gently touch her cheek. "I was
so busy trying not to play Q's game that I completely ignored my own
feelings." A pause. "He read my private journal and saw what I did not
want to see, not until he forced me to realize what I'd been trying to
tell myself. That my feelings for you had changed from friendship
to... something more. Something much more."

Crusher tried a tentative smile as she murmured protestingly: "You're
not so old. And I was trying just as hard not to let Q pull my
strings." Another smile, this one not quite as wobbly. "So where does
that leave us?"

Her answer was a slow smile as Picard cupped her face in his hands and
stepped closer, softly placing his lips against hers. Her arms snaked
around his neck, their bodies moving closer as the kiss deepened.

Neither of them noticed the hum of the transporter beam as it bore
them triumphantly away.

---
The Enterprise
--

O'Brien frowned. "I'm having a hard time separating their signals,
sir," he reported to Riker.

"Keep trying!" The first officer snapped as he continued to pace
anxiously in front of the transporter pad.

Troi glanced over at him uneasily from her unobtrusive post by the
dr. "I'm still sensing intense, turbulent emotions," she reported.
"It's difficult to tell exactly what they represent." Her voice was
apologetic.

The Enterprise had finally located the missing pair through sheer
luck. They had almost passed this system by; initial scans indicated
no planet capable of supporting human life, and Q had capriciously
taken Vash's holographic projector away. At least, they assumed he had
taken it, since it had vanished from Vash's room without a trace
almost a week ago. Vash had called it a good sign, an indication that
they must be getting closer. Now, it seemed she was right. Data had
detected something not quite right about those scanner readings; he
and Geordi had discovered that there was some sort of natural
shielding created by the asteroid belt and the three gas giants that
made up the rest of the system. Shielding that caused the little Class
M planet to appear as an inert, dead body, much like its two small
moons.

It was while they were coming into orbit that Troi was finally able to
pick up emotions emanating from intelligent life forms --- two
intelligent life forms, to be exact. "They're here," she'd turned to
Riker to report, her voice tense with repressed excitement. "It has to
be them."

That belief was confirmed, at least indirectly, by the fact that Vash
suddenly disappeared from the bridge, her face startled. Direct
evidence was afforded mere seconds later, when Q's disembodied voice
rang out: "Took you long enough," and Data confirmed that the sensor
readings were, indeed, indicating two humanoid life forms in the
southern hemisphere.

Now they were ready to transport the captain and Dr. Crusher back to
the ship. Two people whose emotions had undergone a series of alarming
changes since the ship came into transporter range, from relative calm
to desperate fear to chaotic, unexplained turmoil.

"Got 'em!" O'Brien's triumphant exclamation interrupted Troi's
thoughts, and she returned her attention to the present. The
Transporter Chief's hands moved delicately over the control board.
"They're pretty close to each other, that's what was confusing the
signal. I'll have to bring them up together --- "

"If they're that close and that agitated, they must be in some kind of
danger. You'd better hurry it up!" Riker snapped urgently.

O'Brien nodded. "Beaming them up --- now!" All eyes turned toward the
transporter pad and the sparkling pattern that visibly corroborated
O'Brien's success.

The pattern coalesced into two forms, extremely close together, just
as O'Brien had reported. However, if they were in some sort of danger,
Troi thought with relieved amusement, it was only the possible danger
of melting the transporter pad.

Riker stared with increasingly wider eyes at the two bedraggled,
soaking wet forms, clothing and hair littered with leaves and small
twigs. But it wasn't that sight that shocked him into silence; it was
the fact that the two people they'd just rescued were locked in what
Troi privately rated as one of the most passionate embraces she had
ever seen. The emotions she now sensed from the doctor and the captain
left no room for doubt; the ones emanating from the first officer and
Chief O'Brien, however, were decidedly mixed.

After a few seconds passed and Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher showed
no signs of breaking their clinch, Riker cleared his throat. Still no
reaction. He glanced over at Troi, raised an eyebrow, and cleared his
throat again. Loudly.

Two pairs of eyes snapped opened, noticed where they were, and widened
in unison. Two pairs of lips hastily parted, and two bodies pulled
abruptly apart. Picard's blush crept to the very top of his head as he
self-consciously tugged at his shirt, and Dr. Crusher's cheeks very
nearly matched her hair in color as her hands fluttered in a useless,
reflexive attempt to straighten her tattered clothing.

"Um, welcome back," Riker finally found the ability to say, although
his tone was more questioning than welcoming. Troi, who had moved to
his side, frowned and nudged him in the ribs. He winced, then returned
his attention to the two people in front of them. "It's good to have
you back."

Picard nodded regally. "It's... good to be back," he answered with only
a slight hesitation. He took a single step toward the edge of the
transporter pad, then stopped. "The captain is a very private man"
rang through his mind. Beverly's words, Q's words, about him. Not this
time. Shaking his head, he reached back to take Beverly's hand firmly
in his own. A slow smile replaced the slightly disappointed expression
that had briefly blossomed on her face and they walked off the pad
together, hand in hand. "Is the Far Traveller still around, Number
One?" Picard asked as they stopped in front of the console.

Riker nodded, looking slightly taken aback, either at the question or
at the fact that the captain and the CMO were holding hands like a
pair of teenaged sweethearts; Troi wasn't sure which. "Geordi's crew
finished the repairs within a few hours of initial contact, and
they've been helping us search for you ever since," he replied after a
hesitant pause. Even without resorting to her empathic abilities, Troi
could tell he was at a complete loss. On the other hand, the small
wink Beverly gave her while Will's attention was on the captain was
all Troi needed. She winked back, then put an appropriately sober
expression on her face as the first officer glanced down at her again
in confusion.

"Good," Picard murmured. He glanced back at Crusher and raised an
inquisitive eyebrow. She nodded, still smiling. Picard allowed a brief
smile to cross his own face, then looked back at Riker. "Please ask my
cousin if she would do us the honor of presiding at our wedding," he
announced casually, moving purposefully toward the dr. "Ask her to
be ready in... " He glanced down at himself and his somewhat
worse-for-wear uniform and grimaced before continuing. "Give us about
five hours, once we're done getting checked out in Sickbay. Is that
enough time, Beverly?" He looked over at her once more as they paused
in front of the dr, his voice tender.

She nodded once again. "More than enough." The CMO's eyes moved from
his to those of a hugely grinning Deanna Troi. "Come on, Dee, the maid
of honor always helps the bride get ready." She waved gaily to the
others as she and Picard started moving again. "I wonder what I should
wear. And I'd better contact Wesley --- " The doors slid shut behind the
two of them, cutting off her words.

Troi looked up at Riker critically, gauging the level of shock. "You'd
better come along too, Will," she said gently. "I think the best man
has a lot of things to do in just five hours." Struck dumb twice
within five minutes, she thought to herself in amusement. A new
record. She reached up with one finger to close his still-open mouth.
"Come on, Will," she urged, tugging gently at his hand. "We haven't
much time."

He finally allowed himself to be pulled along, but not without turning
to stare in continued bemusement at Miles O'Brien. The transporter
chief merely shrugged in an eloquent "what can I say" gesture.
"Coincidentally, I get off duty in a few hours," he commented,
directing his words to Troi. "Keiko and I should have no problem
getting a babysitter."

Troi smiled. "Ten-Forward in five hours; and please make an
announcement to the crew, if you don't mind. I've a feeling I'll be a
little busy." O'Brien nodded enthusiastically as she added: "Don't be
late!" Then the dr was closing and she and Will were in the
corridor, but not before she heard O'Brien mutter to himself, "It must
have been some kiss, if they didn't even notice they were being
transported."

Troi continued to smile serenely as she lead a now-docile Will Riker
down the hall. Just like she'd told Crusher, things had a way of
working out in the end.

---
Epilogue
---

"Was it really necessary to give Deanna that awful headache?" Vash
asked, her voice tinged with exasperation as she and Q materialized in
the middle of their floating "Ski Lodge." She deliberately turned her
back on him and held her hands out to the fire, still uncertain of her
reactions to the little scene she and Q had just invisibly witnessed.
Any vague ideas of sharing some part of her future with Jean-Luc
Picard had certainly been banished by that announcement of marriage.
Not that the kiss had left any doubts; he'd certainly never kissed her
like that...

"Why, Vash, I thought you knew me better than that," Q protested,
plopping onto the sofa. "I merely made use of my exquisite sense of
timing." She glanced back over her shoulder questioningly as he
continued: "As you know, I've made your mind immune to telepathic
scans of any type. One of the unfortunate side effects of that process
is that anyone trying to 'read' you gets a blinding headache after a
short period of time --- a headache that lasts for about a week and is
unfortunately unaffected by conventional medication. So you see," he
finished with a flourish, "the counselor actually brought it on
herself. I simply waited for the right moment to make my appearance."

"Ah," was Vash's noncommittal response.

Q glanced at her sidelong. She was still angry, he could hear it in
her voice, but not as angry as she had been --- and not as angry as she
would be if she ever found out that he'd orchestrated this little
incident from the very beginning, starting with a certain unexpected
"ion storm" that disabled a certain Free Trader just long enough to
divert a certain Galaxy-class starship. His little experiment had been
a complete success.

Well, almost complete. A petulant frown crossed Q's face. Although he
had successfully proven to Vash that she still had feelings for the
esteemed Captain of the Enterprise --- the true reason he had brought
all of this to pass, in spite of everyone's incorrect conclusions
otherwise --- he had also inadvertently brought Picard and Crusher
together on what might be considered a permanent basis. Or at least as
permanent a basis as such ephemeral beings as humans could manage.
Disappointing, that, but it did have the saving grace of being
unexpected; it was one of the few times Picard hadn't reacted exactly
as Q thought he would. He would've sworn that the Enterprise's captain
would continue to ignore his feelings for the ship's CMO out of that
over-developed sense of duty he had. If only Vash could see his
point... Q looked over at her again.

A small smile was hovering about her lips. Q blinked in surprise,
turned to look at her fully. "What are you smiling about?" he
demanded suspiciously.

"Oh, nothing," she replied evasively, refusing to meet his eyes. The
smile deepened as she saw her missing projector, nestled innocently in
the middle of the white bearskin rug. She touched the button, and a
star chart sprang into existence. "Where to next?" she asked casually,
leaning over and pretending interest in their next destination. "The
Gamma Quadrant?"

Q's frown deepened, but Vash continued to ignore him. She'd be damned
if she'd ever let him know that there was still some small part of her
that loved a happy ending.

After all, Q wasn't the only one allowed to have secrets.

---

The End