Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek and all the characters created therein.

Summary: What one worn-out, ridiculous TNG plot device has torn asunder, let another worn-out, ridiculous TNG plot device bring back together.

A/N: This look at the finale does bring in elements and characters from TNG!

A/N 2: This was originally written for the House of Tucker; all italics were formatted i/i for that submission and I tried to change them all in this one--my apologies if any were missed.

Doomed To Repeat It

1. Dying

I was surprised by the explosion, I didn't think it would feel like that. Okay, admittedly, I didn't entirely think it through. I guess I thought it would be a flash of light and then nothing…well, one out of two ain't bad. It was a flash of light and then it hurt like hell. But that was then.

So this is what it's like to be dead. At least I think I'm dead. I don't think I'm in that hyperbari-whatever-chamber anymore. You'll have to forgive me, I didn't catch the whole name. I was dying at the time, though.

I don't think I'm there anymore, though. I feel…lighter. Freer. There's no pain. I'm not even worried about that stupid speech anymore…not that it's stupid, it was just a silly thing to focus on while I was dying. So many things to be said, but I just couldn't say them. But you never know how you're going to take your death, I guess, until it's actually there. I'm sure the Captain knew what I meant.

I crack open my eyes, some part of me still thinking I might just see the inside of Phlox's magical medical machine in Enterprise's sickbay. I don't. I notice two things right away.

The first is that I'm standing, and that I'm whole. I inspect my uniform but all the parts of me that are supposed to be inside are firmly where they're supposed to be and all the parts of me on the outside are smooth and unbroken. No blood, no bones, nothing's leaking. I smooth my hands over my uniform and wonder why, in death, I'm still attached to Starfleet. Interesting.

The second is that everything is white, the whole room—if it's a room, that is. I can't make out the edges and there are certainly no doors or furniture. It reminds me of the white space T'Pol and I used to share, once upon a time.

T'Pol. Why was I babbling about that speech when I could have been telling her…telling her what, exactly, Trip?

Those were some wonderful times, when we were together. You know how everything is new and exciting when you first start going out with someone? How everything they say is interesting and clever? How every little detail is unique to them and them alone? Well, try a relationship with someone from a different species. I guarantee it'll knock your socks off.

Too bad it didn't last. I know she had an easier time putting it behind her than I did…

"Are you sure?" a voice asks.

Oh my god. "Oh my God," I say aloud, without irony. My heart (why do I still have a heart?) is beating a mile a minute. I am, quite literally, about to meet my maker.

"Oh don't be so melodramatic," the voice continues, exasperated. Next to me (he wasn't there a minute ago!) stands…

A Starfleer admiral? Geez, I knew Starfleet had fingers in a lot of pies but this is ridiculous. He has brown hair and brown eyes and is slightly taller than me. He looks at me with a mix of amusement and disdain.

"You humans have such a tendency toward drama. It's really unnecessary." He leans forward and puts his nose close to mine, squinting. "Like regret."

"Huh?" I croak. Not the most eloquent start, but I think you'll agree I deserve a little leeway while I'm getting my bearings here. I just found out God is a Starfleet admiral, okay?

"Oh, very well put," he sniffs. "As always, the human mind is a wonder to behold."

"Who are you?" I ask. "Am I dead?"

He flaps a hand. "Dead or alive, alive or dead—you think in such limited terms. You're neither. You're both. Think of it as somewhere in between."

Okay. What the hell does that mean? I'm about to ask when he raises a hand to silence me.

"Commander Charles Tucker III of the starship Enterprise, think of me as your guardian angel, the ghost of Christmas past, he who watches the watchers," he waves his arms expansively, "…and think of this as an addendum to your story."

Now I am really confused. "A what? What's going on?"

He sighs and drops his arms. "This was so much easier with Picard." Before I can ask anything else he snaps his fingers and disappears.

Or rather, I disappear.

A split second before winking him out of existence, Q regarded the nervous human before him with a mixture of sympathy and disdain. Well, mostly disdain. He snapped his fingers and the engineer was gone.

"Have fun," he said smugly to the empty air of the blank white space he now occupied alone.

"That was abrupt," a voice over his shoulder observed. A blond man in a set of neutral coveralls stepped out of the ether and stood beside Q.

"Only way to stop all the questions, questions, questions."

"He didn't ask many."

"Oh, believe me, he was just getting warmed up. Once he realized this wasn't the kind of afterlife usually advertised in the brochures—the kind with," Q made a face, "angels and clouds and puppies and their silly deities—it would've been nothing but questions. Humans tend to use them excessively to try to understand things obviously beyond their grasp. Much better instead to get him started right away."

"Started on what?" the blond man asked, curious.

Q raised an eyebrow and refused to look at his friend. "Wouldn't you like to know."