The BLTS Archive - La Danse Macabre
by Vedek Weyoun (jgray@altoona.com)

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All Star Trek characters are property of and copyright 1999 Paramount
Pictures, Inc.

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The time was close.  She knew that, if she knew anything anymore.
Even if _they_ kept coming in and telling her she'd outlive them all.
No, she wouldn't.  She knew.

Kathryn Janeway lay in the bed, waiting.  She was 132 years old, a
Starfleet Admiral, decorated for bravery and character, celebrated for
her exploration of an entirely unknown quadrant of the galaxy.  The
Voyager story had been the subject of a hundred holodocumentaries,
dramatized presentations, songs, and poems.  The "Lost Ship of the
Badlands" had been a cause celebre after the crew had found a
wormhole, previously uncharted on the Federation side, and arrived
once again in the Alpha Quadrant.  After the stories had been told,
and Neelix and Seven were explained and interviewed, the entire crew
had found themselves in the unfamiliar position of celebrity, even the
enlisted crewmen.  All had received commendations, on Janeway's
recommendation. Starfleet had extended those commendations to include
her, despite her initial discomfort over accepting an award for
getting them out of a situation that she felt she had gotten them
into.

Where was he? she wondered.  He'd promised, years ago. Back before
Voyager had made its way home, he'd promised her.  She'd laughed then,
and turned him down.  She was ready now.  And she knew he remembered.
He never forgot anything.

"Kathryn," she heard, almost a whisper from the side of the bed. "My
Katie."

Kathryn opened her eyes and saw him standing there, in 'street
clothes' rather than the Starfleet uniform he usually wore.  That was
a habit she'd been trying to break him of for what seemed ages.

She spoke, breathy and faint. "I believe you owe me a dance, Q."

"I believe I do," Q agreed, and if she didn't know better, she could
believe he was beginning to grieve for her.

"Are you sure..." he began, but she interrupted him.

"No, Q.  I don't want to be 'saved' or live forever.  I'm done. I'm
tired.  I just want the last chapter to end, the last sentence to be
punctuated.  Life's done writing my story.  And I hate books that
ramble on for chapter after chapter when they've been done telling a
story for a hundred pages.  I don't want to be one of those, Q."

"I couldn't do that for you in any case, I'm afraid.  The oldest law
of the Continuum prohibits it.  What I meant to ask you was this: Do
you want to be young again, for a while?  You don't have to end it as
a crippled old woman, Kathryn."

She looked up at him, the years of his barbed observations, his
constant pestering for the opportunity to create a child with her, his
popping in and out of her life at the most inopportune times crowding
her mind. She smile lightly.

"I don't want to be young again, Q," she answered, smiling. "I just
want to _feel_ young enough for that dance you promised me all those
years ago."

"_That_ I can handle, ma petite capitaine...or should it be ma petite
admirale now?"

"Q," she said, her mind grabbing onto something she hadn't thought of
before.  "All those years that you tried so hard to convince me to
mate with you...they weren't necessary, were they?"

The omnipotent being looked uncomfortable for a second, then dropped
his usual mask of cynical amusement back over his face.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Janeway struggled to sit up, managed to get herself set on the edge of
the bed.

"You know very well what I mean, Q.  You're an omnipotent being.  It's
not as if my consent was necessary for the particular service you
wanted me to perform.  You could have impregnated me with a flick of
your finger.  Why the hearts and flowers and fast talking?"

Q turned away and walked toward the window of the room.  He looked out
at the gardens of Giverny, on the grounds of the Starfleet Medical
Terminal Care Center, for what seemed a very long time.

"Because," he began, then continued in a voice so low that Kathryn
couldn't understand a word.

"What?" she asked him. "You'll need to speak up, Q. I _am_ a very old
woman."

"Because I love you!" Q cried. "At first I was merely intrigued by
your character and the situation.  You know, Federation starship,
crewed by two factions that should, by all rights, be at each other's
throats, thousands of light years from home. Then I got to know you
and...I was caught.  You're an amazing woman, darling Katie.  And the
more you refused me, the more I wanted you.  Yes, I could have done
the deed with a snap of my fingers, but I didn't want to cause you any
pain, and an involuntary impregnation is rape by any means."

"Q...why didn't you tell me?"

"You obviously had no interest whatsoever," he said with a slightly
sheepish look on his face. "You were cold and somewhat biting most of
the times we talked, if you remember."

"Well, omnipotent beings _do_ tend to irk my democratic sensibilities,
I'll admit," she replied. "But I always had the sense that you were
playing a game with me, with all of us."

"That _is_ how it started out, my Kate," Q admitted. "But it grew into
something more. I'm only sorry that I never admitted it earlier. Oh,
_why_ must you humans be so short-lived?!"

"It's the way we're built, Q.  We wear out.  We die.  We make room for
new people.  Without death, there is no new life.  I'm more than
willing to make the sacrifice if it means, for example, that Tom and
B'Elanna's new grandchild can be born."

"Kathryn," he said, looking into her eyes, "if it weren't absolutely
prohibited..."

"No, Q.  Even knowing...I wouldn't want to live forever, or be a part
of the Continuum.  You've proven to me that it's not exactly Paradise,
you know.  I may be old, but I haven't forgotten that."

She struggled to rise from the bed, and said, "Besides, I'm calling in
that promise.  Dance with me, Q."

The godlike being moved toward her, a bittersweet smile on his face.
As he put his arms around her, she transformed, her hair darkening to
a mahogany color, the skin of her face and hands firming and filling
out, her matronly nightgown becoming a full-skirted ballgown of
antique lace and veridian satin.

"Q..."

"Shut up and dance, my Kate," he said softly, and raised his right
hand in a gesture.  A Strauss waltz began, seemingly coming from
nowhere.  The pair moved into the music as if they had been born to
it, circling and stepping around the hospice room.

The waltz ended and a more dramatic selection from the swing era
began. Glenn Miller, she thought, her memory sharper than it had been
in years. String of Pearls...

They danced for more than an hour, she was sure.  Anything that could
be danced to while holding a partner.  Waltzes, sambas, swing, rock
ballads from the 1970's, the divas of the late 20th Century: Houston,
Carey, Jackson, and Ciccone.  At the last, she began to tire, even
though Q was sustaining her energy.  She knew what that meant.

"It's almost time, Q. I can feel it."

He looked at her sadly, then gestured back at the bed behind them.

"It's past time, Kathryn."

She looked to the other end of the room.  And saw herself.  Her
elderly self, lying across the bed.  Realization flooded her mind.

"So it's already over?  I thought I would feel it..."

She could feel herself growing thinner, whatever it was that had been
dancing with Q for the last hour wisping away.

Q looked at her, his eyes filling as she watched.

"I tried to hold you as long as I could.  It wasn't long enough,
Kathryn."

She looked into his eyes, her own moistening.

"I want you to know, before...the feeling could have been mutual.  I
think, at a level that I suppressed, it was, Q."

Kathryn Elisabeth Janeway faded away as Q stared after her.

And, for the first time in his very long life, Q wept truly felt
tears.

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The End