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"... You want me to what?"
"I want you," Q repeated patiently, "to scare my formerly mortal self to death. Well, not actual death, but -"
Picard blinked at him, suddenly connecting a thousand tiny dots that had been scattered in his mind for three quarters of a century.
"... There was never a storm that night, was there?"
Q rolled his eyes, sighing dramatically.
"Yes, there was definitely a storm that night," he said crisply. "We're about to make one, aren't we? Do keep up, dear."
Still hardly accustomed to thinking in a non-linear fashion, Picard quirked a brow.
"You intend to be the architect of your own humility."
"I intend us both to be, in fact. Isn't that what married couples do? It's practically a date."
He paused for a moment at the look on his beloved Frenchman's face, gaze distant.
"I..." he twisted lips, his face scrunching up for a moment. "Dearest, time is in flux; time is fathomless, and untethered, and wild, and yet somehow it has led me here. To you, to everything. Forgive me if I feel the need for some retroactive insurance."
Picard's face softened considerably. "And you think time wouldn't have led you here without that evening's humility."
"Would it?"
A hand came to his shoulder, a smile blossoming across a former human's face. "I'm sure we'd have found some way forward, mon soleil."
Q shivered a sigh into interstellar air for a moment, warmth lacing his gaze. "You lie with such wondrous eloquence, you know."
"I do my best." His husband grinned, before his eyes took on a steely defiance. "Before you ask, I am not shooting lightning from my hands as though I'm some absurd avatar of Zeus."
Q stared at him, scandalised. "Well, I suppose even the best people disappoint one eventually..."
Picard laughed, and thrust a hand forward; lightning coursed through the planet's atmosphere, and reassurance burst through Q as he smiled, and snapped, thunder bellowing at his command.
Sorry, he vaguely directed to his old self, not feeling particularly apologetic. It's worth it eventually, I promise.