Hello, My Dear

Chapter One: I Don't Believe We've Met

"The replicator in Captain Picard's ready room won't make anything other than frogs."

You looked down at the PADD to re-read the repair ticket – sure enough, it had come from the man himself.

Replicator malfunction – ready room. Only frogs. (No tea.)

"This has to be a joke."

"Nope," your supervisor replied. She took the PADD back and assigned your name to the repair code. "You'd better get up there, he listed it as a Priority One."

You didn't move. You hated the Bridge.

"Are you sure there aren't any repair tickets from somewhere else?" you asked hopefully, trying to stall. "I mean, Engineering is way overdue for a plasma leak, why don't I go by –"

"Dismissed, Ensign."

Scowling, you glumly headed to the turbolift. It was still possible you had just become an unwilling participant in a very elaborate prank, but you knew better. Nobody on your shift was known for having a sense of humor, and your week had been going too well for it not to get ruined by having to step foot on Deck One.

You dreaded Bridge repair tickets. Not because the repairs themselves were difficult, but the timing.

Inevitably you were always called up right before peace negotiations ended in the words, "Fire photons," or the Borg deciding they needed a little more excitement in their life, or the ship unexpectedly falling into a wormhole by way of a quantum singularity. You still broke into a cold sweat whenever you heard the words, "Romulans," "Neutral Zone," and "gentrification" used in the same sentence.

But your most recent incident on the Bridge had left you seriously debating the merits of putting in for a ship transfer. The Enterprise was the flagship of the fleet, but this kind of bullshit never happened on the Cerritos.

You had been elbows deep in the aft ops console that morning, slightly hungover from the night before and minding your own business, when Q dropped by for a visit.

As he was wont to do, he immediately began overstaying his welcome, but instead of standing in solidarity with your very unamused colleagues, you found yourself secretly enjoying the spectacle. Captain Picard's face was a picture, and Q was in especially rare form, lamenting about the decline in quality of Earth entertainment over the last four hundred years – with the added bonus of costume changes.

"The whole place is dull as dishwater now," he was saying as he paraded around the Bridge. "And to think it used to have character! The Crusades," his Starfleet uniform disappeared, replaced by a white tunic and chain mail, "the Spanish Inquisition," he now wore the scarlet robes of Torquemada, "Watergate –"

A hysterical snort of laughter escaped from you.

Q's reference (and outfit) to Watergate had gone sailing over everyone's heads but your own. Reading about twentieth century Earth was a guilty pleasure of yours, and the thought of sloppy political espionage being a landmark event in the entire history of the planet – combined with the sight of Q clad in an ugly brown 70s style coat-and-tie – struck you as wildly funny.

Mortified, you clapped a hand over your mouth and hoped no one had heard, but it was too late. Q spun on his heel, spotting you almost immediately, and his sharp gaze caught yours and held.

You looked back at him, transfixed…and promptly ducked behind the ops console.

As soon as you were certain you were out of his sightline, you yanked off the first circuit panel your fingers touched and set about pretending to fix it as if your life depended on it — and judiciously continued to keep your eyes glued on your work when a silvery white flash of light appeared in your periphery, followed by a pair of black Starfleet-issued boots.

Then the circuit panel vanished, the boots came a half-step nearer, and you reluctantly tilted your head up to look into the face of the Federation's self-appointed favorite misanthrope.

Q towered over you, watching and waiting. He cast a long shadow by his height alone, the lines of his uniform made him appear taller still, and you were literally kneeling crouched at his feet. You were never one to be easily intimidated, but if there had been even the slightest chance of bolting around him and making a run for it, you would already be cowering behind Lieutenant Worf.

"Hello, my dear," he purred when you kept silent. He leaned down to offer you his hand, then casually stated the obvious: "I don't believe we've met."

You warily studied his open palm and debated your next move. Playing along with whatever game he was up to was probably the safest option. The question was what species you would be once you were back on your feet.

"Are you going turn me into a frog?" you blurted out.

Q thoughtfully cocked his head, eyes fixed on yours, and then lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug.

"I haven't decided yet."

A mercurial smile played about his mouth as he offered his hand to you again, and this time you grabbed it before you gave him any other bright ideas.

He helped you up in one quick swoop, then subtly drew you towards him just a little too close to be polite. Omnipotent or not, you didn't like being toyed with and stood your ground (the little of it he had left you) instead of pulling away.

"Stay away from her, Q," Picard warned. "Better yet, just get off my bridge."

"Oh, psh-tosh, mon capitaine," Q lightly scoffed. He had still not looked away from your face, and judging by the gleam in his eyes, he seemed pleased by what he saw. "We both know I do what I like. It's simply a matter of when and where and…" His mouth split into a wicked grin, "With whom I choose to behave."

Your heart stuttered as he leaned in even closer, and in a voice filled with mirth, whispered in your ear, "But where's the fun in that?"

In the next breath he was gone, leaving you staring at the empty space he had occupied only seconds before. He had been near enough that you could already feel the loss of his warmth, but more troubling than that realization was the fact you had no idea what the hell had just happened…or why.

Weeks later, you still weren't sure what to think of the encounter, but no one had looked at you quite the same way since. How were you supposed to know that an omnipotent entity found pre-first contact Earth history to be interesting? Or that he would turn his sights on you after discovering you both shared a mutual hobby?

This is going to be an easy job, you told yourself as you counted the remaining decks between you and the Bridge. You've repaired plenty of replicators. A couple of diagnostics, swap out a few replic-diodes, and you'll be on your way.

True, this was your first frog-related service call, but nothing could scare you after the tribble outbreak in Ten Forward.

(Which wouldn't have happened if Guinan had been paying better attention and stopped Lieutenant Barclay from drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Romulan ale after the whole "Goddess of the Mind" incident. By the time she thought to check on him, he had reprogrammed all the replicators and was surrounded by tribbles because he thought they might make better friends than people, and you ended up having to pull back-to-back shifts rewriting code and trying to explain to a breathtakingly agitated Lieutenant Worf that use of his bat'leth was not going to be a more efficient way of solving this problem. The only reason you were still on speaking terms with Guinan was her agreeing to ban Barclay from the bar; as for Barclay, you extracted a blood oath from him that he understood you were going to be just friends, and started joining him occasionally on the holodeck.)

Shuddering, you leaned against the wall of the turbolift and resumed thinking happy thoughts.

The Enterprise was presently en route to Vulcan, traveling through known space. The odds of getting tangled up in a Gorn wedding were slim to none.

Rumor had it that Commander Riker and Counselor Troi were back on (each other) again, and if Counselor Troi was in a good mood, everyone on the Bridge was in a good mood.

Last you heard, the Cardassian Empire had fallen so deeply in debt to the Ferengis that they were too busy re-negotiating their high-interest loan to be paying much attention to the rest of the quadrant.

This was going to be fine.

You felt the turbolift slow to a stop and squared your shoulders. When the doors slid apart, you scurried out, kept your eyes straight ahead and walked with purpose. You had almost made past Tactical without being noticed when Commander Riker glanced up and saw you.

"Good luck, Ensign," he quipped as you went past, then added a cheerful, "We're all counting on you."

You didn't trust yourself to reply with anything that wouldn't qualify as insubordination. Instead, you gave a thumb's up to Mister Congeniality, walked the last few steps to the Ready Room, and depressed the door chime.

"Come."

Plastering a smile on your face, you took a deep breath and stepped inside, but the words, Hi, Captain, died in your throat before you had finished crossing the threshold.

Captain Picard was seated at his desk, wearing That Face and looking harassed.

At least ten frogs had taken up residence in various corners of the room, croaking every so often as they hopped about.

…and Q lounged on the couch, making a show of examining his nails and lying in wait.

"Ensign!" he jovially exclaimed, sitting up as soon as he spotted you. "Come in, come in. Jean-Luc and I were just having a delightful conversation about upright hominids and amphibians…"

He paused, and in a voice laced with equal parts velvet and malice, slyly finished:

"…And you."

Goddamn it, why couldn't it have been tribbles?

AN: Did you catch all the Easter eggs?

For those keeping track, this story takes place not long after the episode "Déjà Q," but a number of Q's mannerisms are based on his portrayal in "True Q." All the inside jokes and references are canon, but not necessarily in chronological order.

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