Q (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
qcontinuum) wrote2008-03-10 11:17 am
qcontinuum) wrote2008-03-10 11:17 am
Letters I will never send
OOC: crossposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse today.
I actually rather like the letter format. It allows you to say things to people without giving them any opportunity to talk back to you, so they can't interrupt or misunderstand before they're done reading the thing. Also, it allows you to talk to people and then destroy the letter without them ever actually reading it. I know, I could just have a conversation with someone and then wipe their memory (well, if they're not a Q, anyway), but that seems like cheating.
Prompt 173: Write a fan letter.
Dear Q,
I am pretty sure that even if I intended to send you this letter, the fact that you're dead would raise some fairly insurmountable difficulties, even for me. But then, the terms under which I'm writing this letter don't require that I need to be able to *send* it.
I wish you could see what you've brought about. I mean, if you could, maybe you wouldn't have chosen to die, and then you wouldn't have brought it about, so from a certain perspective maybe it's just as well, but y'know, I'm having a hard time with that logic. Yes, if you weren't dead, your principled stand in favor of your right to die wouldn't mean all that much, and your death wouldn't have terrorized half the Continuum into agreeing with me that we'll all die if we don't change, and then we wouldn't have had the war, and I wouldn't have won it if we hadn't had it, and thus nothing would have changed and the Continuum would still be stagnating. I don't care. I wish you weren't dead.
I'm sorry I voted with the others to lock you up in that comet; that kind of imprisonment for something you believed in was horribly unfair. At the time I thought it was the only way to save your life. Yes, I know I'm missing the point. You wanted to die, you were bored senseless by existence, continued immortality was merely refined torture, yadda yadda yadda. I *still* think you were wrong. Life is worth living if you look hard enough for the things that make it worth it. But I know. The point is that it was *your* belief that your life was not worth living, and you were as much of a Q as I was, my equal, my comrade. Who in the universe was I to say you were wrong or misguided about what you wanted to do with your life? Who were any of us?
Freedom is the freedom to do things other Q don't like and don't approve of, otherwise it's hardly freedom. I can't very well champion freedom for myself and then turn around and say you didn't deserve yours. But you know all that because I told you when I gave you the poison to kill yourself. Except, of course, that you don't know anything. Being that you're dead, and all.
You transformed the Continuum. I just picked up the banner you carried and ran with it. I wasn't brave enough to stand up for my beliefs without your example to follow; if you weren't dead, I'd probably still be cowering in terror of the Continuum's disapproval. You were a braver Q than I ever was. And I'm glad for your sake that you got what you wanted, that we finally let you have your freedom, that you're at peace now. But for all that... well, I'm still a selfish creature. I still wish you weren't dead. Because I miss you.
Your friend,
Q
Prompt 188 pt 2: Write two letters: One to someone you hurt and the other to someone who hurt you.
Dear Q,
No, this isn't you about hurting me. Although you did. But I can give as good as I get, you know that. And in the end, I am a highly respected member of the leadership council of the Continuum and you are slumming in Klingon bars or fighting wars against the Vulcans on Andor and everyone laughs at you behind your back, so I'm pretty sure I came out on top in this one. Nyaah nyaah nyaah. Where's your "I'm a respectable member of the Continuum and you're an immature brat" attitude now?
No, I have nothing to say to you about the way you hurt me. But I've got something to say about what you did to our son.
He still loves you, you know. Yes, I think he's a moron for it. But he says he can't help it; he only has two parents and you're one of them, and he can't *not* have you for a mother just because you're a bitch.
I don't want you to come back and reconcile with him because I ever want to see your face again; far from it. In fact, I would be personally happier if you never saw *him* again, either. I had to deal with centuries of the crying and the "Why did Mommy go away?" and the "If I completely change my personality will Mommy love me again?" Honestly, I don't need to deal with it. I'd be better off if he could cut you entirely out of his life, like I did.
But apparently he can't. I've tried to get him to do so, believe me, but he says I don't understand because I don't have a mother. Which, you gotta admit, he has a point there. Neither of us know what it means to have a parent. If he says that he misses you and he loves you and he wants to see you again, because you're his mom, well, I may think he's an idiot all I want but I can't escape the fact that you *are* his mom, and I can't be everything to him because I'm only half of him and you're the other half, much as I wish it were otherwise.
I couldn't reject the Continuum when I thought they hated me and wanted no part of me; I thought it would be different for him because *I'm* there for him, and at least some of the Continuum doesn't despise him. But no. He says he needs you.
So, since I don't want to see him have to beg and crawl back to you crying for Mommy, I will contact you myself. How about you stop being such a selfish witch and try being a mom for once? Come home and see your kid, for the love of all. And maybe try not to be such an ass when you talk to him. A lot of those negative traits you hated when you saw in him *didn't* come from me, you know. He's not a mortal; he doesn't have recessive genes. Half of what he is comes from you, and if you don't like it, maybe take a good hard look at yourself before you bitch at him.
I'll bury the hatchet if you will. Just come home and see him again.
With no love,
Q
Prompt 188 pt 1/Prompt 108: (Write a letter)... to someone you hurt.../ Write a letter to anyone about anything. Say what you have always wanted to say but have been afraid to.
Dear Jean-Luc,
I am absolutely certain that I'm never actually going to send you this letter. *Almost* absolutely certain. Pretty certain, anyway. I mean, the universe is an uncertain place, so nothing is ever *certain*. But the more I contemplate the thought of actually sending this letter and letting you actually read it, the more I want to never write it in the first place, so if I'm going to get it written I think I need to at least vigorously pretend that I am absolutely certain you will never see it.
I'm sorry.
See? See? That's why I'm never sending you this letter. Because I don't apologize. For anything. Being omnipotent means never having to say you're sorry, right? And if I did say I was sorry I bet you wouldn't be gracious about it anyway, noooo. You'd be all "Well, you *should* be sorry. You've done atrocious things, Q," and "Well, I'm glad to see humanity rubbing off on you," as if humanity is the sole source of all positive traits in the multiverse and I couldn't possibly come up with an idea like apologizing to you unless I was thoroughly contaminated by contact with your species.
And it wouldn't do any good anyway. I mean, I'm sorry? What's the point in that? It doesn't fix anything, does it? Would it make you more inclined to trust me, or think more kindly of me, because you know that when I screw things up because of my temper and my cowardice and totally ruin your life I feel *bad* about it? Oh, I'm sure that's helpful. "Yes, I was raped by the Borg and transformed into a monster and I killed 11 thousand of my own comrades but it's all going to be fine because Q is *sorry* about it." I'm sure.
But... I am sorry. For whatever infinitesimal amount it's worth.
I wanted... I wanted things to be different. I wanted to show you the universe. I wanted to teach you about the Borg, not set you up to be nearly destroyed by them.
I wanted to be your friend. Should have paid more attention to mythology... or the life experience of practically every other Q I know. I could have been your friend if you hadn't known I have godlike power, if I'd restrained myself from ever using it around you. But you already *knew* who I was by the time I realized I wanted to befriend you, and I wanted to be myself. I didn't want to lie to you and hide who I was. I mean, it's not like I really look like what I look like when I'm with you, of course, but to your inferior mind the image of the thing is the thing, so taking a different form and never telling you I was Q *would* have been a lie.
But it doesn't work, a god and a mortal. It never has and probably never will. You understood that, that's why you told me no.
And that's why...
I was so *angry* with you. To be fair, you were being totally pompous. I knew you had no chance against the Borg without my help, but not you – utterly self-important, convinced your little species had it together and you could stand up to anything the universe threw at you. I knew better. But that wasn't an excuse.
I could have tried a little harder to hide my presence from the Borg, created a wormhole and thrown you through it rather than just dragging you across space. Then maybe you wouldn't have been such a priority for them, if they hadn't known you interested *me*. I could have annihilated that particular cube after it encountered you, before it had a chance to upload back to the Collective. But... I didn't. Because after you broke down and asked for my help, after you admitted that you needed me to save you from a situation you'd never have been in if I hadn't put you there, I was going to help you. I was going to give you advice, when you encountered the Borg for real. I had this whole elaborate plan about this Charles Dickens thing where I was going to be the Ghost of Past and Alternate Presents and Future and I was going to show you how the Borg got involved with your species in the first place and the things that had happened in other timelines and the things that might happen to you if you didn't do anything about it, and you'd have had a big chunk of information you and your Starfleet could have used to fight them off, and maybe you'd have bruised them so bad they wouldn't have come back in your lifetime. So I didn't think I needed to hide myself from the Borg; in fact it suited my plans at the time to accelerate the time table. I wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be too long a gap between my preparing you for the Borg and their actual arrival.
But, well, you know. The Continuum took my powers away. You know that, you were there. What you don't know is that after they did it they forbade me to interfere between you and the Borg. I argued that I caused the situation – or accelerated it, anyway, they'd have been on their way no matter what but I sped things up – and the Continuum argued that that didn't matter because I was a screwup and I was too personally involved with your species and I'd actually tried to go live with you, with my powers, and plainly I had no self control when it came to you. So no, I wasn't allowed to help. At all.
So I watched what they did to you. And I was too terrified of being made mortal again to defy the Continuum. There was nothing I could do, but watch. I almost chickened out on even that much, to be honest. I mean, I don't really care about your fights with your girlfriends or your little dance with Crusher or your cute little diplomatic missions like you have to single-handedly bring peace to the entire galaxy, and I don't feel a great deal of angst when I see you getting shot at because I'm pretty sure you'll find a way to handle the situation and if you don't, well, I'm allowed to save your life personally if I can make the case that it won't change the course of human affairs much... but seeing the Borg take you over, knowing how you felt about it and knowing there was nothing I could do... that hurt. I am not used to empathizing with my favorite mortals. You're supposed to be exciting and entertaining and disposable. I'm not supposed to suffer when I see you in pain. But I did.
Maybe I'd eventually have gotten up the courage to do something about it if your pals hadn't found a way to save you anyway. Maybe I wouldn't have. I don't know. I can find out a lot about what I might have done or did do in some alternate timeline, but that one, I've never wanted to know.
I know you still have nightmares. I know, every so often when they get really loud, you can still hear the Borg. I also know that maybe it was best for your entire species that it was you it happened to. You're the one who was friends with an android, who could link with you and try to pull you out of it, and now you have this connection you can use to spy on them, occasionally. They might have permanently altered your past if not for that connection, and I am sorry to say that the Q had too much going on at the time to pay attention or stop them, though we usually do interfere with major attempts to shift the timeline like that. We were sort of ramping up for a civil war. Sorry about that, too. I mean, no, I'm not really sorry we had the war because it had to be done, and I won, but I'm sorry it interfered with our duties and you had to go back in time and stop the Borg because we couldn't be bothered. So maybe it's just as well it was you.
I'm supposed to think that way. I'm supposed to be detached, to consider every member of your species fundamentally interchangeable, to be willing to make harsh decisions that sacrifice any one or ten or thirty million of you if it saves the entire species, assuming I even care about saving your species. I am not supposed to want to go back and change it, change everything, save you from the consequences of my acts even if it would mean I would have to directly intervene to protect your people from the Borg afterward. I had to do that in the timeline where you didn't get stabbed, you know; I made someone else, dumped a copy of your personality onto them and had them get assimilated by the Borg so your timeline would work out the same without you. You really are that important. I just couldn't tell you so when I was trying to convince you to change your own past so you'd learn not to want to.
In the "real" timeline, the stable one you live in, the one that's not a construct I invented and then let vanish, I can't go back and change anything *I* did. So I cannot go back and save you from the Borg. I want you to know that. I would if I could, even though I know it's a terrible idea. Just like, you had a choice between your ship and your friend and you chose your ship and you've regretted it your whole life. I know what I didn't know at the time, that what I did to you *did* in fact empower you to fight the Borg, that I *did* save your species by letting you get assimilated. It had the right result... but I did it for the wrong reasons, and it was the wrong thing, and I regret it. I'll never stop regretting it. And if I had the power to do it all over again I'd find another way. I would.
But I can't. Even the Q have limits. That's one of them. I can't change my own past, I can't undo what I did. So there's nothing I can do about what happened to you, because there was nothing I was allowed to do about it then and now it's too late. And I'm sorry.
So, yeah. Me, Q, apologizing. I suppose I can't send this letter, the universe will end. More to the point, why? What good would it do? I mean, maybe it might even make me feel better. I don't like feeling guilt – it's like owing someone a debt or betraying a trust. It's an encumbrance and I don't like them. If I want to be bad, I want to be bad in my own way, unrepentant, uncomplicated, and certainly not feeling guilty about it years later. Who knows, maybe unburdening myself to you would actually make me feel better. But what good would it do you? I can't fix it, so why apologize? It's not going to make it have not happened if I say sorry. Should I do something for you to make it up to you? Like what? A little trip around the multiverse won't really do much for something of this magnitude – it's why I didn't even bring this whole thing up when I was trying to pay back my debt for your saving my life – and something really big, like bringing your brother and nephew back to life? Oh, you'd probably just get mad at me and tell me "Humans die, Q, we're mortal, that's what gives meaning to our existences" and blah blah and be really bothered by the whole thing, and anyway, it'd still be just bribing you to forgive me, and that would be the act of a *total* loser. I mean, bad enough I feel guilty at all. But just saying "I'm sorry" is so very, very meaningless in the face of something like this. I half expect you'd just slap me for saying it. (Or lecture me. The slapping thing's more Sisko's style.)
I think... I think I do wish I could tell you how I feel. That I'm sorry. But it feels so meaningless. So pointless. Words have only ever borne a passing relation to reality for me anyway. If I was going to apologize I would want to *do* something but I don't know what.
Well. Someday either I'll figure out what to say or do, or you'll die and render the point moot, right? I'll outlive whatever guilt I feel about what I did or didn't do to you. Someday.
Sincerely, but still absolutely certain I'm never going to tell you *any* of this,
Q
theatrical_muse today.I actually rather like the letter format. It allows you to say things to people without giving them any opportunity to talk back to you, so they can't interrupt or misunderstand before they're done reading the thing. Also, it allows you to talk to people and then destroy the letter without them ever actually reading it. I know, I could just have a conversation with someone and then wipe their memory (well, if they're not a Q, anyway), but that seems like cheating.
Prompt 173: Write a fan letter.
Dear Q,
I am pretty sure that even if I intended to send you this letter, the fact that you're dead would raise some fairly insurmountable difficulties, even for me. But then, the terms under which I'm writing this letter don't require that I need to be able to *send* it.
I wish you could see what you've brought about. I mean, if you could, maybe you wouldn't have chosen to die, and then you wouldn't have brought it about, so from a certain perspective maybe it's just as well, but y'know, I'm having a hard time with that logic. Yes, if you weren't dead, your principled stand in favor of your right to die wouldn't mean all that much, and your death wouldn't have terrorized half the Continuum into agreeing with me that we'll all die if we don't change, and then we wouldn't have had the war, and I wouldn't have won it if we hadn't had it, and thus nothing would have changed and the Continuum would still be stagnating. I don't care. I wish you weren't dead.
I'm sorry I voted with the others to lock you up in that comet; that kind of imprisonment for something you believed in was horribly unfair. At the time I thought it was the only way to save your life. Yes, I know I'm missing the point. You wanted to die, you were bored senseless by existence, continued immortality was merely refined torture, yadda yadda yadda. I *still* think you were wrong. Life is worth living if you look hard enough for the things that make it worth it. But I know. The point is that it was *your* belief that your life was not worth living, and you were as much of a Q as I was, my equal, my comrade. Who in the universe was I to say you were wrong or misguided about what you wanted to do with your life? Who were any of us?
Freedom is the freedom to do things other Q don't like and don't approve of, otherwise it's hardly freedom. I can't very well champion freedom for myself and then turn around and say you didn't deserve yours. But you know all that because I told you when I gave you the poison to kill yourself. Except, of course, that you don't know anything. Being that you're dead, and all.
You transformed the Continuum. I just picked up the banner you carried and ran with it. I wasn't brave enough to stand up for my beliefs without your example to follow; if you weren't dead, I'd probably still be cowering in terror of the Continuum's disapproval. You were a braver Q than I ever was. And I'm glad for your sake that you got what you wanted, that we finally let you have your freedom, that you're at peace now. But for all that... well, I'm still a selfish creature. I still wish you weren't dead. Because I miss you.
Your friend,
Q
Prompt 188 pt 2: Write two letters: One to someone you hurt and the other to someone who hurt you.
Dear Q,
No, this isn't you about hurting me. Although you did. But I can give as good as I get, you know that. And in the end, I am a highly respected member of the leadership council of the Continuum and you are slumming in Klingon bars or fighting wars against the Vulcans on Andor and everyone laughs at you behind your back, so I'm pretty sure I came out on top in this one. Nyaah nyaah nyaah. Where's your "I'm a respectable member of the Continuum and you're an immature brat" attitude now?
No, I have nothing to say to you about the way you hurt me. But I've got something to say about what you did to our son.
He still loves you, you know. Yes, I think he's a moron for it. But he says he can't help it; he only has two parents and you're one of them, and he can't *not* have you for a mother just because you're a bitch.
I don't want you to come back and reconcile with him because I ever want to see your face again; far from it. In fact, I would be personally happier if you never saw *him* again, either. I had to deal with centuries of the crying and the "Why did Mommy go away?" and the "If I completely change my personality will Mommy love me again?" Honestly, I don't need to deal with it. I'd be better off if he could cut you entirely out of his life, like I did.
But apparently he can't. I've tried to get him to do so, believe me, but he says I don't understand because I don't have a mother. Which, you gotta admit, he has a point there. Neither of us know what it means to have a parent. If he says that he misses you and he loves you and he wants to see you again, because you're his mom, well, I may think he's an idiot all I want but I can't escape the fact that you *are* his mom, and I can't be everything to him because I'm only half of him and you're the other half, much as I wish it were otherwise.
I couldn't reject the Continuum when I thought they hated me and wanted no part of me; I thought it would be different for him because *I'm* there for him, and at least some of the Continuum doesn't despise him. But no. He says he needs you.
So, since I don't want to see him have to beg and crawl back to you crying for Mommy, I will contact you myself. How about you stop being such a selfish witch and try being a mom for once? Come home and see your kid, for the love of all. And maybe try not to be such an ass when you talk to him. A lot of those negative traits you hated when you saw in him *didn't* come from me, you know. He's not a mortal; he doesn't have recessive genes. Half of what he is comes from you, and if you don't like it, maybe take a good hard look at yourself before you bitch at him.
I'll bury the hatchet if you will. Just come home and see him again.
With no love,
Q
Prompt 188 pt 1/Prompt 108: (Write a letter)... to someone you hurt.../ Write a letter to anyone about anything. Say what you have always wanted to say but have been afraid to.
Dear Jean-Luc,
I am absolutely certain that I'm never actually going to send you this letter. *Almost* absolutely certain. Pretty certain, anyway. I mean, the universe is an uncertain place, so nothing is ever *certain*. But the more I contemplate the thought of actually sending this letter and letting you actually read it, the more I want to never write it in the first place, so if I'm going to get it written I think I need to at least vigorously pretend that I am absolutely certain you will never see it.
I'm sorry.
See? See? That's why I'm never sending you this letter. Because I don't apologize. For anything. Being omnipotent means never having to say you're sorry, right? And if I did say I was sorry I bet you wouldn't be gracious about it anyway, noooo. You'd be all "Well, you *should* be sorry. You've done atrocious things, Q," and "Well, I'm glad to see humanity rubbing off on you," as if humanity is the sole source of all positive traits in the multiverse and I couldn't possibly come up with an idea like apologizing to you unless I was thoroughly contaminated by contact with your species.
And it wouldn't do any good anyway. I mean, I'm sorry? What's the point in that? It doesn't fix anything, does it? Would it make you more inclined to trust me, or think more kindly of me, because you know that when I screw things up because of my temper and my cowardice and totally ruin your life I feel *bad* about it? Oh, I'm sure that's helpful. "Yes, I was raped by the Borg and transformed into a monster and I killed 11 thousand of my own comrades but it's all going to be fine because Q is *sorry* about it." I'm sure.
But... I am sorry. For whatever infinitesimal amount it's worth.
I wanted... I wanted things to be different. I wanted to show you the universe. I wanted to teach you about the Borg, not set you up to be nearly destroyed by them.
I wanted to be your friend. Should have paid more attention to mythology... or the life experience of practically every other Q I know. I could have been your friend if you hadn't known I have godlike power, if I'd restrained myself from ever using it around you. But you already *knew* who I was by the time I realized I wanted to befriend you, and I wanted to be myself. I didn't want to lie to you and hide who I was. I mean, it's not like I really look like what I look like when I'm with you, of course, but to your inferior mind the image of the thing is the thing, so taking a different form and never telling you I was Q *would* have been a lie.
But it doesn't work, a god and a mortal. It never has and probably never will. You understood that, that's why you told me no.
And that's why...
I was so *angry* with you. To be fair, you were being totally pompous. I knew you had no chance against the Borg without my help, but not you – utterly self-important, convinced your little species had it together and you could stand up to anything the universe threw at you. I knew better. But that wasn't an excuse.
I could have tried a little harder to hide my presence from the Borg, created a wormhole and thrown you through it rather than just dragging you across space. Then maybe you wouldn't have been such a priority for them, if they hadn't known you interested *me*. I could have annihilated that particular cube after it encountered you, before it had a chance to upload back to the Collective. But... I didn't. Because after you broke down and asked for my help, after you admitted that you needed me to save you from a situation you'd never have been in if I hadn't put you there, I was going to help you. I was going to give you advice, when you encountered the Borg for real. I had this whole elaborate plan about this Charles Dickens thing where I was going to be the Ghost of Past and Alternate Presents and Future and I was going to show you how the Borg got involved with your species in the first place and the things that had happened in other timelines and the things that might happen to you if you didn't do anything about it, and you'd have had a big chunk of information you and your Starfleet could have used to fight them off, and maybe you'd have bruised them so bad they wouldn't have come back in your lifetime. So I didn't think I needed to hide myself from the Borg; in fact it suited my plans at the time to accelerate the time table. I wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be too long a gap between my preparing you for the Borg and their actual arrival.
But, well, you know. The Continuum took my powers away. You know that, you were there. What you don't know is that after they did it they forbade me to interfere between you and the Borg. I argued that I caused the situation – or accelerated it, anyway, they'd have been on their way no matter what but I sped things up – and the Continuum argued that that didn't matter because I was a screwup and I was too personally involved with your species and I'd actually tried to go live with you, with my powers, and plainly I had no self control when it came to you. So no, I wasn't allowed to help. At all.
So I watched what they did to you. And I was too terrified of being made mortal again to defy the Continuum. There was nothing I could do, but watch. I almost chickened out on even that much, to be honest. I mean, I don't really care about your fights with your girlfriends or your little dance with Crusher or your cute little diplomatic missions like you have to single-handedly bring peace to the entire galaxy, and I don't feel a great deal of angst when I see you getting shot at because I'm pretty sure you'll find a way to handle the situation and if you don't, well, I'm allowed to save your life personally if I can make the case that it won't change the course of human affairs much... but seeing the Borg take you over, knowing how you felt about it and knowing there was nothing I could do... that hurt. I am not used to empathizing with my favorite mortals. You're supposed to be exciting and entertaining and disposable. I'm not supposed to suffer when I see you in pain. But I did.
Maybe I'd eventually have gotten up the courage to do something about it if your pals hadn't found a way to save you anyway. Maybe I wouldn't have. I don't know. I can find out a lot about what I might have done or did do in some alternate timeline, but that one, I've never wanted to know.
I know you still have nightmares. I know, every so often when they get really loud, you can still hear the Borg. I also know that maybe it was best for your entire species that it was you it happened to. You're the one who was friends with an android, who could link with you and try to pull you out of it, and now you have this connection you can use to spy on them, occasionally. They might have permanently altered your past if not for that connection, and I am sorry to say that the Q had too much going on at the time to pay attention or stop them, though we usually do interfere with major attempts to shift the timeline like that. We were sort of ramping up for a civil war. Sorry about that, too. I mean, no, I'm not really sorry we had the war because it had to be done, and I won, but I'm sorry it interfered with our duties and you had to go back in time and stop the Borg because we couldn't be bothered. So maybe it's just as well it was you.
I'm supposed to think that way. I'm supposed to be detached, to consider every member of your species fundamentally interchangeable, to be willing to make harsh decisions that sacrifice any one or ten or thirty million of you if it saves the entire species, assuming I even care about saving your species. I am not supposed to want to go back and change it, change everything, save you from the consequences of my acts even if it would mean I would have to directly intervene to protect your people from the Borg afterward. I had to do that in the timeline where you didn't get stabbed, you know; I made someone else, dumped a copy of your personality onto them and had them get assimilated by the Borg so your timeline would work out the same without you. You really are that important. I just couldn't tell you so when I was trying to convince you to change your own past so you'd learn not to want to.
In the "real" timeline, the stable one you live in, the one that's not a construct I invented and then let vanish, I can't go back and change anything *I* did. So I cannot go back and save you from the Borg. I want you to know that. I would if I could, even though I know it's a terrible idea. Just like, you had a choice between your ship and your friend and you chose your ship and you've regretted it your whole life. I know what I didn't know at the time, that what I did to you *did* in fact empower you to fight the Borg, that I *did* save your species by letting you get assimilated. It had the right result... but I did it for the wrong reasons, and it was the wrong thing, and I regret it. I'll never stop regretting it. And if I had the power to do it all over again I'd find another way. I would.
But I can't. Even the Q have limits. That's one of them. I can't change my own past, I can't undo what I did. So there's nothing I can do about what happened to you, because there was nothing I was allowed to do about it then and now it's too late. And I'm sorry.
So, yeah. Me, Q, apologizing. I suppose I can't send this letter, the universe will end. More to the point, why? What good would it do? I mean, maybe it might even make me feel better. I don't like feeling guilt – it's like owing someone a debt or betraying a trust. It's an encumbrance and I don't like them. If I want to be bad, I want to be bad in my own way, unrepentant, uncomplicated, and certainly not feeling guilty about it years later. Who knows, maybe unburdening myself to you would actually make me feel better. But what good would it do you? I can't fix it, so why apologize? It's not going to make it have not happened if I say sorry. Should I do something for you to make it up to you? Like what? A little trip around the multiverse won't really do much for something of this magnitude – it's why I didn't even bring this whole thing up when I was trying to pay back my debt for your saving my life – and something really big, like bringing your brother and nephew back to life? Oh, you'd probably just get mad at me and tell me "Humans die, Q, we're mortal, that's what gives meaning to our existences" and blah blah and be really bothered by the whole thing, and anyway, it'd still be just bribing you to forgive me, and that would be the act of a *total* loser. I mean, bad enough I feel guilty at all. But just saying "I'm sorry" is so very, very meaningless in the face of something like this. I half expect you'd just slap me for saying it. (Or lecture me. The slapping thing's more Sisko's style.)
I think... I think I do wish I could tell you how I feel. That I'm sorry. But it feels so meaningless. So pointless. Words have only ever borne a passing relation to reality for me anyway. If I was going to apologize I would want to *do* something but I don't know what.
Well. Someday either I'll figure out what to say or do, or you'll die and render the point moot, right? I'll outlive whatever guilt I feel about what I did or didn't do to you. Someday.
Sincerely, but still absolutely certain I'm never going to tell you *any* of this,
Q